Work For Humans

People often want conflicting things from work because they carry different ideas about what makes a good life. What feels meaningful to one person can feel draining to another, and those differences often go deeper than personality or preference. That is what makes Derek Sivers’s book, How to Live, so useful here. It lays out 27 competing ways to live, each one convincing in its own voice. In this revisited episode, Dart and Derek discuss how those deeper beliefs shape the way people think a...

Rational choice theory has become so familiar that it can feel like common sense. We talk about trade-offs, optimization, ROI, and risk as if they capture what it means to think clearly. But many of the decisions that matter most do not work that way. They are shaped by context, values, relationships, and the larger story of a life. In this episode, Barry Schwartz returns to discuss how rational choice theory became the default way we think, how it shapes work and decision-making, and what a ...

In many organizations, some people are focused on keeping the lights on. Others are pushing for change. But what if the future isn’t something out there waiting for us at all? What if it’s shaped by what we do—and don’t do—right now? For Reanna Browne, that shift starts with how we think. Change how we think about the future, and we change how we act in the present. In this revisited episode, Dart and Reanna discuss how the way we think about the future shapes what we do today. Reanna Browne...

An 81-year-old woman shows up for work at Home Depot while managing serious health issues. She isn’t there because she loves retail. She’s there because stopping isn’t really an option. That story is one of many Noah Sheidlower encountered while reporting on Americans working into their 80s and 90s. Together, they point to something that's changing about retirement: for many people, it doesn’t arrive as a clear finish line, but as something delayed, reshaped, or out of reach. In this episode...

Most organizations approach change as something to manage. A new strategy, a new structure, a new set of goals. But what if real transformation doesn’t come from plans or policies, but from experiences that change how people see themselves and each other? Claus Raasted and Paul Bulencea design those kinds of experiences. Through the College of Extraordinary Experiences, they bring together people from very different worlds and immerse them in something unfamiliar, often uncomfortable, and dee...