What Works

About What Works

Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.

Publisher

Tara McMullin

Category

business · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Apr 2018

Latest episode

25 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

67 of 435 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   25 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Let's Talk About Reach, Baby!

   Host [Host Name] shares unexpected social media reach results and questions interest-based algorithms in this interview with Patreon CEO Jack Conte.

2. 

   18 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT

   I Gave Myself a Short Assignment

   Host Tara McMullin explores how to manage overwhelming ideas by implementing short, focused assignments to achieve project clarity.

3. 

   4 Jun 2026

   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 be a good one to share with the graduate in your life! *** This episode is about the long term—the commitments, projects, and relationships we can work on when our "temporal bandwidth" widens. How we perceive time and our ability to do what's meaningful to us in time does have to be constrained by the urgency of now. There are ways to feel more grounded and create more possibilities at the same time. Footnotes: Read the essay version of this episode. (http://whatworks.fyi/articles/temporal-bandwidth) The Steerswoman (https://bookshop.org/a/17354/9780991354689) by Rosemary Kirstein On Freedom (https://bookshop.org/a/17354/9780593728734) by Timothy Snyder Breaking Bread with the Dead (https://bookshop.org/a/17354/9781984878427) by Alan Jacobs How to Do Nothing (https://bookshop.org/a/17354/9781612198552) by Jenny Odell "Practicing the Future (https://whatworks.fyi/articles/practicing-the-future-3-ideas-for)" by Tara McMullin "Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey Stuff (https://whatworks.fyi/articles/wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff)" by Tara McMullin "Busyness Decoded (https://whatworks.fyi/articles/busyness-decoded-how-to-limit-what-you-say-yes-to?rq=time)" by Tara McMullin Find the What Works archives and subscribe to the newsletter at whatworks.fyi (http://whatworks.fyi/). (00:00) - EP 489: Temporal Bandwidth (00:04) - To be on time is to be late. Or is it? (04:58) - Time Flies (07:33) - The Steerswoman (11:19) - "Temporal bandwidth is the width of your present" (15:10) - Making the difficult choice (20:01) - Credits ★ Support this podcast ★ (http://whatworks.fyi)

Inside a recent episode

Let's Talk About Reach, Baby!

Published 25 Jun 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] This isn't necessarily a bad strategy, but there are plenty of ways it can go very wrong. I might dilute my core message, attract viewers who inadvertently push my content in a direction I don't want to go, or simply focus more on reaching lots of people than saying what I want to say. In the era of deterministic reach, Audience capture could be a big problem for creators. Audience capture is a phenomenon in which a creator becomes overly responsive to their followers. It's a reinforcing feedback loop that encourages ever more siloed, extreme, or radical content. In paradigmatic examples, creators end up hurting themselves or others to produce the content their audience wants to see. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

1,940

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

237 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

19 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 75 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

85

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

97