What Works
Tara McMullin
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Recent Episodes
We're Not Late (Or, Rethinking the Long-Term)
Today, I'm resharing an episode from last spring but with a fresh introduction about the feeling (too) late and some timely advice for my daughter, who graduates from high school tomorrow. It might…
Rethinking Social Media
"No matter how hard you post or what sites you do it in it’s never going to be 2019 again." — Amanda Mull on BlueskyI'm thinking about getting back on social media. Weird, I know. But (1) I have a…
Just Because You Can: The Eggbeater Effect Revisited
Eight months before ChatGPT launched to the world, I wrote about "the eggbeater effect," or the tendency for labor-saving tools to create new labor. Four years later, I'm revisiting that idea.…
Apples, Oranges, and Iceberg Metrics
You can always rely on me to channel my righteous indignation at shoddy data analysis into a lengthy podcast episode. Footnotes:Read the essay version of this episode."How Short-Form Clips Took Over…
Oh Joy! On Facing Down Burnout
Another episode featuring HBO's The Pitt? You know it. This time: finding your course of action in the space between personal challenges and systemic and structural failings.Footnotes:Read the essay…
The Wages of Hierarchy
On March 11, the 5-time World’s Best Restaurant, Noma, began a 3-month Los Angeles residency. The vanguard establishment of New Nordic Cuisine, was finally available to Americans without an…
Technicians, Visionaries, and the Myth of Going Solo
To the uninitiated, "being your own boss" sounds pretty nice. Of course, the moment you go into business for yourself, you realize the wide variety of skills it requires—skills that you yourself do…
This Process is a Mess
I live for people explaining how they approach analysis and critique. I desperately want to know how other people think about things so I can learn to think in new ways. I want a compelling…
How I Learn a New Skill
So a couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Final Cut Pro and committed to learning how to use it. Despite logging hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in other video editing software, this is a big…
Wait... what?!
You’re going along, minding your own business, and then it hits you: “Wait, what?!” Your expectation or assumption bumps against the facts. Things aren’t the way you thought they were. It’s not…
Rethinking Higher Ed for the 21st-Century Economy with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
It's no secret that one of my, let's say, special interests is higher education. The reasons for this are at least threefold. First, I have a kid heading off to college next year. Second, I have past…
Grieving The Future Self
A brief meditation on grief at the loss of one's future self and how often that loss passes unacknowledged.Footnotes:Read the essay version of this episode.“10:00 am” (Season 1, Episode 4) The Pitt…
Circling Back
How often do you revisit old work? Do you have systems for circling back to what you've created in the past to see how you could improve upon it or take it in a new direction? In this episode, I…
Making Intelligence Masculine Again
I've had all the various parts of this episode swirling in my head for months—from The Paperclip Maximizer to The Great Feminization to Meta's Masculine Energy to mind-body dualism to the AI…
What Else Must Be True?
Have a big decision on your mind? Trying to choose between a bunch of good options?Today, I'm talking about decision-making… not so much how to choose, but the context of our choices. No decision…
Getting My $#*! Together: A Messy Review of 2025
Here we are at the tail end of 2025. I just "opened" my Spotify Unwrapped... And after 3 years of burnout recovery, I’m finally ready to figure out what getting my shit together in the shadow of…
On Getting Attention, Encoding Messages, and Diving into the Deep End
How do you get people to care about what you care about?It's a marketing question. A movement-building question. A question at the heart of the attention economy. And in one form or another, it's the…
Drifting Toward the Status Quo
If you’ve ever chosen an ambitious, unconventional, or deeply meaningful aim only to see your plan devolve into something far more run-of-the-mill, this one is for you.Footnotes:Read the essay…
Rethinking Busyness (With Help From HBO's The Pitt)
Try as we might, many of us can’t shake the overwhelming sense that we're just too damn busy—that feeling that there’s something we’re forgetting about, somewhere we should be, some person we should…
Delightful Misdirection (Or How to Rethink Your Options)
How we think about a problem or goal really matters. The variables we include, the relationships we draw between them, the flows of influence or resources—they change the interventions we choose.…
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What Works has published 433 episodes since April 2018, covering topics in Business, Entrepreneurship.
What Works is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 35m.
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