More Than A Feeling podcast launches The Dread Project
Saleem Reshamwala, host of the More Than A Feeling podcast announced the upcoming launch of The Dread Project (November 14), in tandem with the release of the podcast’s second season.
More Than A Feeling, which is part of the Ten Percent Happier podcast network, explores the stories and science behind everyday emotions. Host Saleem Reshamwala talks with neuroscientists, philosophers, musicians, therapists, hairdressers, pilots, and more to shed light on our relationship to our own emotions, and the emotions of others.
Reshamwala from More Than A Feeling said, "In the span of three short years, the world has experienced an unprecedented number of challenges that have left many individuals feeling consumed and overwhelmed with dread. In response to the increasing number of individuals within their own community expressing feelings of dread, More Than A Feeling will be launching The Dread Project, a five-day challenge dedicated to facilitating healthy and engaging discussion surrounding this often tumultuous emotion."
The challenge will provide participants with helpful guidance and exercises, developed by Ten Percent Happier’s own meditation and mindfulness experts, to empower participants with the knowledge and skills they need to flourish in the face of dread.
Life at Twitter under Elon Musk
In the most recent episode of the New York Times's Hard Fork podcast, hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton speak with two current Twitter employees to discuss life under Elon Musk.
While Twitter hasn’t spoken publicly since Musk bought the company a week ago, employees describe a mood of fear, chaos, stress and bizarre requests to print out code.
Some highlights below:
Casey Newton: I want to read you a post that someone had sent me from Blind. Blind is this app where you sort of log in with your work email, and then you can have these pseudonymous chats about what’s happening at your company.
And multiple people have sent me this post. And I wonder if you’ve seen it. And I’m not going to read the whole thing. But the headline is “I can’t cope.”
And it reads, “I’m on the 24/7 team working to make all of Elon’s ridiculous dreams come true. Management have repeatedly threatened to fire us if we miss delivery, even if it’s totally outside our control. If we don’t work on weekends, we’re gone. If we take PTO or leave, we’re gone.
People are working ridiculous hours. I’m working around 20 hours per day at absolutely full velocity. I’m waking up in the night to attend status calls. Even when I’m not working, I can’t stop worrying about it. I can’t cope. I’m an absolute mess. I’m at a breaking point. This is after just a few days of Elon.”
How closely does that track with what you are hearing and seeing from your colleagues?
Mockingjay: So there are two camps at Twitter right now, the people who are being completely ignored until they get fired and the people who are being pulled into these task forces. I think the better place is to be in the people who are being ignored and will be fired.
My heart goes out to this person. I hope they are able to find gainful employment, and in that four hours while they are trying to sleep and take care of themselves, applying to jobs.
And I sincerely hope that there is care taken for people who are on visas. All of the people I know who are here on visas have no idea what will happen to them. And they have not been told anything.
So this is more than just privileged tech people crying because we’re moving from one six-figure salary to another six-figure salary. These are people who are trying to immigrate to this country and have gainful employment and do a good job, who are highly skilled. [...]
Kevin Roose: So you said that there’s been very little communication from managers and executives at Twitter in the past week. What has been communicated? What’s happening?
Fulcrum: So there’s a couple of things. And it depends on where you are in the leadership stack, as far as Musk and his people. Generally the one overarching message that did get communicated was, find something cool that you like. And hopefully Musk likes it functionally.
Casey Newton: So it’s like — it’s become this kind of hackathon show-and-tell project?
Fulcrum: Yeah. One of my coworkers put it as “hack week, but with a gun to your head.”
Kevin Roose: That’s dark.
Fulcrum: Think about it. If you present him an idea and he thinks it’s cool, he wants it done within a week. And you’ve basically just sacrificed every team around you.
It’s fun to obsess over pop stars and racecar drivers — but is fandom making our politics even more toxic?
You can listen here to this episode of Hard Fork.
Freakonomics explores the risks and rewards of fandom
On this week's episode of Freakonomics Radio, host Stephen Dubner speaks with social psychologist Jay Van Bavel, who does research on the costs and benefits of fandom. He explains that fandom promotes group identity and can therefore help us feel more connected. But it can also make us antagonistic towards people who are fans of a rival entity, and corporations exploit those impulses - Coke vs. Pepsi, Apple vs. PC, etc.
The show also explores how, in America, a fan mentality in the political sphere has turned into hyper-partisanship. Politicians are incentivized to cater to the most fervent fans of their "team" - known, in the political context, as their base.
"I looked at the amount of followers different senators had on Twitter," Prof. Van Bavel explains. "The people who had the most followers are the people who are the most ideologically extreme in terms of their voting record. Having an extreme position can be monetizable for them. It can gain them a huge following, it can gain them political clout and leverage, it can help enormously with fund-raising."
Dubner also speaks with both an advocate and an critic of one proposed solution for this problem: ranked-choice voting. Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield believes that ranked-choice voting will only make our fandom-in-politics problem worse.
"Ranked-choice voting encourages people to vote for their favorite views and not so much for the common good. In other words, to vote for what they would like best, their dream candidate. And that puts them in the wrong sort of spirit. The spirit that you want is to elect a government that can govern the country with a majority, and therefore, legitimately, without people feeling offended or rebellious."
Listen to "I’m Your Biggest Fan" at freakonomics.com (there's a full transcript there too) or wherever you get podcasts.
Grammar Girl podcast releases its 900th episode
I am nervous writing this short entry about the Grammar Girl podcast, celebrating its 900th episode. Why? Because if Grammar Girl host Mignon Fogarty spots this entry, she may find a grammatical error. And if grammar were NFL quarterbacks, I would not be Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady. Maybe Mitch Trubisky of the Steelers.
Anyway, Fogarty built Grammar Girl out of the needs of several audience segments. You have the self-professed grammar nerds who can argue regardless / irregardless for hours. Then you have professional and aspiring writers who use the podcast as a valuable toolkit. Finally, you have listeners who share family slang, or familect, which proves the flexibility of language.
Fogarty is a fabulous host who knows her stuff, respects her listeners, and constantly evolves the podcast as listener tastes and needs change. And I really don't know what we'd do without her. Wait. Can I start a sentence with "And?" Should I use "really" as an adverb here?
Fogarty! I need help!
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