Most career conversations start with where someone ended up. This one starts with the decisions that got them there. Forks in the Road is an interview podcast with a simple belief — exposure to how others navigate hard choices is second only to a lived experience. Each guest is chosen for their honesty and the weight of the choices they've faced. For listeners who are more interested in how people think than where they ended up.
Bart Elmore is a Professor of Environmental History at Ohio State University and the author of three books, including Citizen Coke, which grew out of his dissertation on Coca-Cola's environmental footprint. Before that, he left a corporate law job after nine months, failed to kayak from Atlanta to the Gulf Coast, and taught ninth-grade English while obtaining his teaching license.
In this conversation, we talk about the graduate seminar that reoriented his entire path, recognizing when a prestigious job is doing you harm, and the childhood pull toward science that resurfaced decades later in the book he's writing now.
29 Jun 2026
5. Marisa Sweeney: "I Was Terrible at Faking It"
Marisa Sweeney is a registered dietitian, founder of Be Well Integrative Health Services, and an Assemblywoman for New Jersey's 25th legislative district
I talk to Marisa about what it felt like to sign her first private practice lease after her business partner backed out at the eleventh hour, how a vegan food festival that started with a chance encounter on a street corner landed a hundred thousand square feet of free event space in Atlantic City, and what made her decide to run for a seat that hadn't gone Democratic in nearly fifty years.
12 Jun 2026
4. Paul Gottsegen: "I never used the programming skills I spent three long years learning"
Paul Gottsegen is a technology marketing executive who spent more than three decades at companies including Compaq, Dell, HP, and Infosys, and recently published his first book, Do the Opposite, Sort Of.
In this conversation, we talk about how a single comment from his father set his entire career in motion, how Paul learned to enter new organizations at a high level without losing credibility, and what it took for him to finally put forty years of hard-won lessons into a book.
29 May 2026
3. Jonathan Fisher: "I was always worried that I wasn't going to be good enough"
Dr. Jonathan Fisher is a cardiologist, founder of MindHeart Now, and author of Just One Heart, who spent decades training at some of the most prestigious institutions in medicine before arriving at a crossroads inside the career he'd spent his whole life building.
In this episode, we talk about the forces that drove him toward medicine, what he discovered once he got there, and how he rebuilt his professional identity from the inside out.
15 May 2026
2. A.J. Baime: "At One Point He Fired Me, But Nobody Told Me"
AJ Baime has spent 30 years in magazines and written seven books, two of them New York Times bestsellers. He decided he wanted to write books when he was seven, wrapped his first one in wallpaper from his childhood home, and spent his twenties taking on jobs he wasn't ready for.
I talk to AJ about quitting his NYU PhD before finishing the program, getting fired from an early magazine job without anyone bothering to tell him, and how he survived the collapse of print magazines.
1 May 2026
1. Tim McGhee: "I Thought People Who Said They Loved Their Job Were Either Crazy or Lying"
Tim McGhee has spent 25 years at the center of sports marketing. He started on Wall Street, hated it, and briefly tried stand-up comedy before figuring out what he actually wanted to do.
I talk to Tim about leaving finance for business school, the dumb luck of standing in the right hotel check-in line, and why he twice turned down jobs rather than uproot his family — a decision he has never second-guessed.
28 Mar 2026
Highways, Not Ladders (Prologue)
Experience is the best teacher, but it's slow and costly. The next best thing is hearing how someone else moved through it. Forks in the Road is a podcast about the decisions that shape careers and the judgment it takes to make them. Each episode, I sit down with someone who has had to navigate real choices and ask how they actually did it. New episodes coming soon.
Source:
https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-recruiter-productivity-trends-report (https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-recruiter-productivity-trends-report)
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Apple Podcasts (US)
4.8 / 5
12 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
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