Podcasts about hello monday

Business titan Jack Welch passed 4 years ago this month. Today, we share a selection from our recent conversation with Suzy Welch - his co-author, business partner, and widow. Suzy recalls memories from their life together, including the never-before-shared story of how Jack leaned in so that Suzy could focus on completing her solo bestseller, 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea. Follow Suzy Welch on LinkedIn and read 10-10-10 for yourself. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners.

As workplaces increasingly call their employees back into the office, many of us have been forced to re-examine our values when it comes to work and life. Our guest today believes that there is a serious trade-off to be made by remaining remote. Suzy Welch is a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, a business advisor, and a three-time NYT bestselling author. She sits down with Jessi to tell us why she thinks we need to get back to the office.  Follow Suzy Welch on LinkedIn. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

16 - VGK Loses To Ottawa in Shootout, 41 Raiders Talk

What is the modern day meaning of midlife? In the past, its definition was limited and often attached to crisis. Today's guest has a more optimistic approach. Chip Conley is the founder of the Modern Elder Academy and the author of Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Life Gets Better with Age. Chip sits down with Jessi to share his experiences transitioning into middle age and asks us to reframe our ideas around all that this stage of life has to offer. Follow Chip Conley on LinkedIn and check out his newest book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback! Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Jessi Hempel is many things: an award-winning journalist, podcaster, author, and senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. But despite her myriad accomplishments, she shies away from labeling herself as ‘successful'. For Jessi, her illustrious career as a technology and business journalist was always a stepping stone on the path to her childhood dream of writing a book. However, after the publication of her memoir, "The Family Outing," Jessi found herself facing an existential quandary: what comes next after you achieve your ultimate goal?In this episode, Jessi takes the helm as we navigate through diverse topics, from the uncertainty of charting a new career trajectory post-success, to the poignant journey of motherhood and the heart-wrenching experience of loss. Together, we delve into the complexities of gender and sexuality, drawing from Jessi's personal narrative, including the remarkable tale of her transgender brother who embarked on a unique journey of pregnancy. Here's what's on the agenda:The challenges women face in defining success and navigating career milestonesWhat to do when you fall out of love with your careerUnpacking societal expectations and pressures surrounding motherhoodThe profound joys and challenges of parenting, including Jessi's unexpected journey into parenthood and coping with lossHow experiences of loss can instill a "f*ck it" attitude, reshaping perspectives on life's brevity, and pursing meaningJessi's journey to writing her memoir and the liberation found in giving yourself permission to explore personal narrativesWhy we need more nuance when it comes to speaking about and understanding gender and sexual identityThe ongoing struggle of asserting boundaries and saying no, even as you ageOUR GUEST: Jessi Hempel, a seasoned tech journalist and host of the acclaimed podcast Hello Monday, serves as senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. With over two decades of experience, she has crafted compelling features and cover stories on prominent figures and companies in the tech sphere. Previously, Hempel held editorial leadership roles at Backchannel and Wired, and her insights have been featured on major news networks. She is also the esteemed author of The Family Outing, recognized by Time as one of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2022, now available in paperback. Hempel holds degrees from Brown University and U.C. Berkeley, residing in New York City.Want more Jessi? Find her online at https://www.jessijhempel.com/ and listen to her podcast, Hello Monday, at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hello-monday-with-jessi-hempel/id1453893304 Follow Jessi on: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessihempel/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jessiwrites/ Want more Hotter Than Ever? Find us and episode transcripts online at www.hotterthaneverpod.com and sign up for our mailing list! Follow us on:Instagram: @hotterthaneverpod TikTok: @hotterthaneverpod Youtube: @hotterthaneverpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090728330453 Follow...

February is Black History Month so we're dedicating it to Black voices who inspire excellence. In this four-part series, you'll hear women who advocate for chasing your own version of excellence. This week Hello Monday's Jessi Hempel hosts Everyday Better podcast host Leah Smart, to reflect on her career journey and the roadblocks she has overcome to reach her current position at LinkedIn. She shares her experiences of navigating through different roles, making difficult decisions, and trusting her gut instincts. Leah discusses the importance of finding purpose in work, managing anxiety, and embracing personal growth. She also highlights the power of synchronicity and the role it has played in her career. Through her story, Leah encourages listeners to trust themselves, be open to new opportunities, and set conditions for personal and professional success. Follow Leah Smart on LinkedIn Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn

When Jessi Hempel came out of the closet she had no idea her whole church-going family had been hiding in there with her. And things got complicated fast when the closet door kept swinging open.  Jessi Hempel is author of The Family Outing: A Memoir. She is also host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, and a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. Her features and cover stories have appeared in Wired, Fortune, and TIME. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. Hempel is a graduate of Brown University and received a master's in journalism from UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and children. REFERENCES Jessi Hempel, "My Brother's Pregnancy and the Making of a New American Family," TIME (Sept. 12, 2016).   Transcript   JESSI HEMPEL: I started reading the section about homosexuality and I was like, "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" Then I thought, "Oh my goodness, they're gonna come home and see me reading it and they're gonna know." Now I'm, you know, fourteen or fifteen years old. I was so nervous they would discover what I was researching, that I was reading for personal gain, that I was trying to figure something out. So, I immediately turned to the section on menopause because I think, "Well then they'll just think I'm reading for curiosity because there's no way I'm going through menopause." BLAIR HODGES: Jessi Hempel wasn't going through menopause. She was figuring out she was gay in the late 80s in a family where that wasn't particularly safe. She could keep it hidden for a while, but she knew that someday it wouldn't be a secret anymore, and she was afraid. So, Jessi managed to stretch the secret out. Then one day, her sister discovers something on their father's computer that will turn the whole family on its head. There was more than one secret closet in this family, and the closet doors would swing open again and again. In this episode, Jessi joins us to talk about her incredible memoir, The Family Outing. There's no one right way to be a family, and every kind of family has something we can learn from. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations.   THE FAMILY LEAST LIKELY TO KEEP IN TOUCH (1:38)   BLAIR HODGES: Jessi Hempel, welcome to Family Proclamations. JESSI HEMPEL: Well, thank you so much for having me, Blair. I love what you're doing with the show. BLAIR HODGES: I'm excited to talk to you about this book, The Family Outing. You're a professional writer, you didn't just write a book because of your amazing experiences. You also have technical skills with this, so people might not think twice about the fact that you've published a book. But I do think this particular book is sort of surprising if we look at your other professional stuff. Like your career focuses on tech reporting, and this is a really personal memoir. Talk about what it was like to kind of transition to a different mode of writing to get this book done. JESSI HEMPEL: You're very correct, Blair. For the first 25 years of my life as a writer—and that's a lot of years, by the way, I had been writing for a long time—I thought that if I ever wrote a book it would be about technology, artificial intelligence, or the rise of social networks, or any of the myriad things I geeked out on related to business and tech. I had spent my entire career until that point writing for magazines like Business Week, and Fortune, and Wired about the kinds of things that kept me up at night, which were and are things having to do with things like the evolution of new technology. And that was my identity. And I start there, Blair, because I think what happened to me actually happened to a lot of people. In March of 2020—and I should start by saying, if you just say “March of 2020” most people get this dour look on their face, right? Yeah, we can all think about where we might have been. And for me, I was living in Brooklyn, New York. And I was this technology writer, and I was a fairly new parent, my wife and I had a baby, he had just turned a year old, and I had a real strong sense of my identity, right? I traveled all the time, I was out in the world, career focused. And then overnight all of that changed. My job was thankfully safe, but there was a question as to whether it would continue. And suddenly, there was no traveling. In fact, there was no office to go to. There was no daycare, which meant that I was home with my child all day. And New York was a particularly scary place to be. My wife and I finally got to a point where we said we gotta get out of here. Bear with me, because this does have to do with the book. I know, Blair, right here that you're like, this not the question that I asked. [laughter] BLAIR HODGES: I'm following, I'm following! JESSI HEMPEL: Okay! So, my wife and I put the baby and the dog in the back of the Subaru—because those are the lesbians that we are—and we hit the gas and started driving south. Her parents lived in Tupelo, Mississippi, and we drove all the way to their house, which was 18 hours. And when we got there, we thought we'd stay for 10 days, and—you know where the story is going—we stayed for months. Those first couple of weeks that I was living in my wife's childhood bedroom, you know, I did the things that we did at the very beginning of the pandemic. Like I got Zoom-crazy, right? I did Zoom happy hours and Zoom yoga and I Zoomed with friends I hadn't talked to in a while. And then very quickly, I just grew so tired of Zoom and really tired of talking to anyone. I was depressed. I was super down. And while I was so down, I discovered that there were just a few people I wanted to talk to. And I wanted to talk to them every single day. And that was my brother, my sister, and my mom, and my dad. And I thought that was pretty wild because if you had known us in our youth you would have voted us the family least likely to keep in touch with each other. We were just a hot mess, right? But here we were in the middle of this global emergency, and these were the people I was reaching for. And we were quarantining in five different houses in four different states. And we were texting and in touch with each other every day. So all that was going on, Blair. Back in New York, I had this very commercial literary agent who kept calling me and saying, "Jessi, now is a great time to write a book." And I would say, "Have you seen my life? There is nothing great about this moment. I'm kind of busy trying to keep my head above water. It's not a good time.” And she kept saying, “No, no, this is a great time. There are not a lot of writers bringing books to market.” She was right about that. “And so if there was ever a moment when you had a real dream, like the dream project, this is the moment you could get that project done.” And so I said, "Okay, I'll think about it." And I came back to her, and I said, "Well, how about I write a tech book about the business of tech?" and she said, "Boring." She said, "Go back and bring me the book that you would be most afraid to write." So I thought about it. Then I came back to her. And I said, "Well, what if I interviewed everybody in my family and wrote the story of how we all came out? Because here's the thing, I think the reason why we like each other so much right now, and why we depend on each other so much emotionally, and why we are close, is because things were so hard and broken. And we all did this internal work of coming out. And that work—not only did it help us each to realize ourselves, but it helped us to realize something about each other.” And she said, "Perfect, we'll call it The Family Outing." And literally, from there I was writing the book.   FRAMING THE STORY (6:44)   BLAIR HODGES: And it was in the course of starting those interviews that you started to wrap your head around the story of your family, because the easy story to tell, which you say in the introduction is, we had this family, there was all this dysfunction, and then we all came out of the closet, and now we're all okay. And that's an interesting story in and of itself, but you weren't entirely satisfied with it. Why wasn't it satisfying when thought about framing your book and the story you wanted to tell? JESSI HEMPEL: I love that sort of overview of it, because that is how I kind of have been telling it my whole life and it was a great cocktail party story. Like, "Hey, I've got the gayest family. My family can out-gay your family. Listen to how gay we are. We all came out of the closet.” And I should say when I say that, Blair, I came out of the closet first. I came out at 19. Just straight up gay. I would even call myself a little bit of a boring gay. I'm very in the box, like, you know, fairly heteronormative in presentation, like, just discovered Ani DiFranco at 19 and was like, "Yeah, there we go." [laughter] Shortly after, my dad came out as gay, which forced him to leave his marriage. My sister came out as bisexual, my brother came out as transgender, and later went on to carry a child. And that whole process caused us to do a great deal of self-reflection. And my mother came out as a survivor of a series of crimes so heinous, I could really only learn about them in little bits over time. And all of this change happened over the course of three and a half, four years, a very short period of time. And while it was happening, I've got to say, it was terrible. It was terrible. And it was hard. And terrible and hard—once you get to the other side of them—forge character, right? And so what I was interested in was, I wanted to figure out not just what my version of the story was, but what every member of my family thought happened. I wanted to see if I could get to one common narrative that we all agreed upon, like, "Hey, here's what happened." So I kind of pitched the story to everybody. I was like, "Hey, you know what we could do is, I could interview you, we could do a whole lot of interviews, you could tell me your side of the story. I could figure out where they line up. And then I could just come up with one common narrative." And everybody agreed to it, which, God bless them that they all agreed to it because, especially for my parents, it was a huge leap of faith. They were essentially agreeing to allow me to air all my family's dirty laundry, and to live through that. BLAIR HODGES: Because for interviews they have to be involved with it, right? Like not just your parents telling you, but they have to dig— JESSI HEMPEL: Right. I mean, there was so much digging, and subsequently so much healing in the writing of the story. And I should say, by the way we're talking about it you would think this is like an encyclopedia about my family. But I also endeavored to write a beach read. I wanted to write something that would move so fast you would sit down and start to read it, and if it was a book that spoke to you—and I will say books are very personal, not every book speaks to every person—but if those books spoke to you, that you would sit down, open it, and want to finish it right away and just fly through it. But you know, when I started to try to get all of our stories to line up, the only thing I really learned, Blair, is that even when five people endeavor in good faith to tell one story, memory is really crappy. And people remember things differently and nobody could get the details right.   JESSI'S FATHER (10:17)   BLAIR HODGES: Part of your project, then, was to get a narrative thread that worked, but also that would be satisfactory and representative of the perspectives of your family. You were juggling a lot of different stories here. One of the most interesting for me was about your father. He was a young man in the 1970s. He was the son of a very religiously devout minister. And he's thinking about maybe entering the ministry himself. But things aren't really clicking, his mission work gets cut short, he finds himself in this meeting with a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, and he's listing off all these ways he feels lost in his life. And then he just tosses out, "Oh, also, I think I might be gay." Tell us a little bit more about your dad in this moment and what that must have been like for him to be a gay young man in the seventies from this devout family. JESSI HEMPEL: I mean, I think so much about this. Because if you had met my dad as a 10-year-old child, you would probably have identified him—especially in our contemporary culture, maybe not back then—but even from his youngest years, he was somebody who people probably identified as, "Oh, that kid's probably gonna grow up to be gay." He just had a manner about him. And I think that really scared his parents. My grandfather was a German Methodist minister who even felt like the Methodist Church wasn't quite strict enough. So he would bring his family for extra churching on Wednesdays to the Baptist church down the street. He really took his relationship with God seriously, and was somewhat panicked you know, he had three children, he had two daughters, and then he had this son, and in their family, I mean, everything was about the son. They just really wanted the son to accurately represent the family and take on the tradition, which was a religious tradition, whatever that was. And there was my dad, this young gay kid, and they became so worried about him being—I mean, they never used the word “gay.” Let me be really clear, Blair. But you know, even in middle school, they had a couple of experiences where—and this isn't in the book, but just from my dad talking to me, you know, his parents found him like trying on his big sisters' petticoats. And they just were concerned enough that they figured out how to get him into a rigorous Christian boys boarding school. And all that time, my dad knew in his heart that he was gay, or that he liked boys. I don't think he had a word for it. BLAIR HODGES: I think that's a really important point, too, that it wouldn't have been thought of in terms of an identity, but rather as sinful inclinations, or temptations he was supposed to fight. So it wouldn't have been, “Oh no, my son's gay.” It's, “Oh no, he's going to struggle with these temptations. How are we going to Christianize them out of him? How are we gonna fix that pathology?” One of those solutions then was to get married, like, "This'll fix it." JESSI HEMPEL: Super interesting, right? My father didn't really know what he wanted to do with his life. He's a very bright guy. He graduated top of his class at his Christian boarding school. He went off to Middlebury College and he got a scholarship. His family had no money. He finished Middlebury College a semester early and he had no career path, no idea what he wanted to do. He was kind of like, as bright as he was intellectually, he was kind of a dud socially. Couldn't figure out dating, couldn't figure out anything, and so his parents really kind of pushed him into the mission. And that seemed like a thing to do. His older sister had become a missionary. And by the way, it was a great lifestyle for her. It worked really, really well for her. She has continued this lifestyle for her entire life. I mean, she eventually got married and had children. But this lifestyle did not work for my dad. And here's where I have to give the Methodist Church some credit. It seems from what I could figure out—and again, I wasn't able to talk to any of these people personally—but just from reading diaries of my father and picking up stories and reading my grandfather's notes. You know, my grandfather pushed the Methodist ministry to invite my father into the mission. I think that they knew he didn't want to be a missionary, and they knew that he was a really lost kid, and that he needed some guidance. And so they finally said to him, "Look, we're just going to let you out of this commitment and we're also going to pay for counseling for you. So go get yourself settled somewhere. And we the church are then going to pick up therapy for you." And that's really cool. The other side of that was that when my father finally got himself settled somewhere, he went off to live with his sister for a couple months, he got a Christian therapist who listened to him and assured him when he mentioned that maybe he could be possibly, I mean, there's a potential that he could be gay—you know, mumbled the word, didn't even say it loudly—they said, "No, no, no, no,” you know, “a lot of young adolescent men feel this way during one stage of growth and adolescence, and you just need to get married. Just get married, that'll take care of it."   JESSI'S MOTHER (15:11)   BLAIR HODGES: And so then he does. He meets your mom. And your mother—you found out in the course of writing the book, and throughout your life, your mom had experienced some trauma around the time she met your dad. She was going through some things. So your dad's sort of trying to find his way, deciding to get married and this and that, and your mom was trying to figure out her future family life at this time, too. She was working at this department store. And she had a coworker there that she kind of had a crush on, who was actually revealed to be a friend, and maybe even an accomplice of a serial killer in Michigan. I didn't expect this in The Family Outing. Talk about that for a sec.   JESSI HEMPEL: In the late 60s, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, there was a man who preyed upon women in my mom's community. And it was still the early sixties you know, this was before the heyday of serial killers in our culture, back when that was still sort of a new idea. But women started disappearing, probably when my mom was in about ninth or tenth grade. And, you know, there would be women that my mom knew. It would be like the assistant art teacher at the high school, or the church deacon's secretary, and they'd be people that were about my mom's age and that looked a lot like my mom. And the town became increasingly fearful as these disappearances and subsequent murders happened at a cadence of like once a year, and then once every six months, and then moved into a cadence of happening quite frequently. And all of the men in town became volunteer neighborhood watch folks, including my grandfather, and all the young girls were put on curfews. And this was the backdrop against which my mom attempted to live her adolescence. I think it's probably true when anybody experiences something as persistently scary as that, you become immune to the fear, and you just have to live your life. And my mom did that. She worked at a department store downtown, and she developed a crush on a guy. And there was actually a moment when that guy scared the bejesus out of her in a way that suddenly— BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, he corners her in a back room. JESSI HEMPEL: And he throttles her throat, and he threatens her! And she was looking at him and she was trying to get him to stop. And then she realized, "Oh, my goodness, I actually don't know anything about this man." And then he lets go. And he's like, "I'm only joking. But, like, what would you do if I were the killer?" And my mom goes home with this information. She's trying to process it. And she doesn't even have time to process it because that's when this man and his best friend are arrested for the murders. And he later gets off in exchange for testifying against his best friend. BLAIR HODGES: Right, which is kind of sketchy because he could have been more involved. But he's the one who talked to the cops, basically. JESSI HEMPEL: That's exactly right. And most people in Ypsilanti, Michigan who were alive at that time and paying attention believe that he was, if not in on the murders, he certainly knew about the murders. And so my mom lived with this. And this shaped her. Her parents loved her very much. But in our popular culture in, you know, the late sixties and early seventies, I think what love looked like in white middle class American families was, “Hey, we're not going to talk about this. We're just going to try to put this behind us. We're going to focus on something else.” And so my grandparents encouraged my mom, “Hey, let's not talk about this.” Then the guy was arrested, he was taken away. There was never any further discussion about it. My mom continues to work at this department store, her life goes back to some semblance of something like normal, whatever normal is. And a year later, maybe a year and a half later, she meets this effeminate son of a minister who wants to get married right away. And he's safe and lovely. And it's no surprise to me that they found each other in that moment.   FAMILY UNHAPPINESS (19:07)   BLAIR HODGES: And so they do. They get married, and they have three kids—you and two younger siblings. It seems like your classic American family at this point. You've got two churchgoing parents, you got Dad as the breadwinner, Mom is the primary caregiver to the kids. And in fact, Dad's actually sometimes a bit too distant because of his work obligations. And that's how their relationship actually starts to fray. JESSI HEMPEL: They're trying so hard, right? And they're trying to check off the list of things you check off in order to qualify for the Olin Mills picture in like the eighties that would go on the Christmas card, and they're doing a great job at it on the surface. And here I think it's important to remember that at the beginning, my parents really were in love, and I think when one tells these kinds of stories and the end of the stories is that a marriage dissolves, we forget that before there was bad, there was a lot of history in the good that is worth considering. It wasn't like my parents lied to themselves in any overt way when they fell for each other. They actually did fall for each other in a moment. But, you know, as life went on, my father—it becomes harder and harder for him to bury this truth about himself. So he just becomes more and more distant. He just checks out. And my mother then is in a marriage that on the surface looks like everybody else's, and she thinks she should feel happy. But truthfully, she's so lonely because she's trying to raise these three children kind of all on her own. And then her own flashbacks and memories start to come up and she becomes extremely depressed. And I think about this long period—ultimately my adolescence, right? For me, it was age ten to twenty or so—as the closeted period in my family's life. And we were all pretty miserable and pretty unhappy and often emotionally violent to each other, and my parents in particular to us, and sometimes even physically violent. And that is the product of living in the closet. That is what it means to have to hide yourself. You become your worst version of yourself.   JESSI'S CHILDHOOD SECRET (21:11)   BLAIR HODGES: Seeing you grow up in the book, I love this. I loved reading about little Jessi. You start getting called “Jessica” in the third grade. This Jessica seems so precocious, and that she really needs to be seen in some ways. But also, she says she couldn't be seen. Here's something you write: "When I was a child, I believed there were things I couldn't reveal about myself, things that made me despicable, unlovable." So on the one hand, you wanted to connect, you wanted to be seen. And on the other hand, you had what you felt like was this dark secret about yourself. Talk about what that was like for you. JESSI HEMPEL: Well, you know, I was gay, and by that, I mean, I also didn't have a word for it. But I knew by the time I was in early elementary school that my desire was programmed differently than other people's desire. And that this was something I needed to hide. I don't even know exactly how I knew that. But I knew that. And that if anybody ever found out, that would be bad for me. I think one thing about the eighties and into the early nineties was that this was a time when maybe you could be gay, but you just didn't talk about it. And none of the people we knew on television came out on television. You know, Ellen DeGeneres didn't come out of the closet on TV until 1996. BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I was in high school. JESSI HEMPEL: You probably remember it. Do you remember it, Blair? BLAIR HODGES: I do! I do. And at the time, I was in a place where I thought something was very wrong with that. I was unsettled by it. But I think I didn't know much about what it meant. And the thing is that growing up, we would say all the slurs, we would say “queer” and stuff like this without really even thinking about what it meant. I did get the sense that I was expected to become a man, I always had heteronormative cultural expectations, but I didn't know that I knew any gay people. So Ellen was one of the first people where I was like, oh, there's gay people. Okay, there's one in real life. JESSI HEMPEL: Completely. And that was so profoundly important. It started a cultural change that grew into the movement that we have today, right? But, you know, before all that happened, I was like, "Queer" was the word we use to describe things that were strange and not cool in high school. And I used it all the time before it became the word that was my identity. But I knew I also had these crushes on girls starting in middle school and into high school that I could kind of get away with because I think this kind of friendship is more sanctioned between women than it is between men. BLAIR HODGES: Can we read about one of these? There's an excerpt on page 80 I thought would really speak to that. Just to the end of the page there. JESSI HEMPEL: Okay. Yeah, awesome. "In sixth grade, I love Becky Orr. She's my best friend. She has long brown curly hair that she parts in the middle and pins back with two barrettes, and a face like a Cabbage Patch Kid doll, round with dimples on her cheeks. We spend our time doing things that border on little kid, like running through the sprinkler and watching the Mickey Mouse Club. Then we go to our respective homes and talk on the phone. “When we're not talking, I'm thinking about talking to her. I can find a way to weave Becky into any conversation. For instance, if Dad mentions going to the beach next summer, I might say, 'You know who loves the beach?' 'Who?' he'll say, even though he knows the answer: Becky Orr. “Being a closeted gay girl in the 1980s involves hiding out in the open. It's constantly declaring your feelings to the object of your affection and getting away with it because girls are allowed to love each other. Loving is entirely condoned. Lusting is something of which we don't speak. “I don't have a name for this way that I'm drawn to Becky, I always longed to be closer to my best friends, but I don't even know what I'm longing for. To feel more? To merge into them more? To crawl inside their heads? This merging desire feels most possible when a friend is most vulnerable, such as when she is falling in love with someone else. In this way, I learn to lie to myself. When Becky calls to tell me David kissed her at the St. John's Dance, I feel the universe cleave into sections, see her spinning backward from me. She'll like David better than me, differently than me. But just now, it's me for whom she reaches to share this new experience and I want to hold onto her attention. 'I'm so excited for you, Becky,' I say, 'Tell me everything.' It's always this way for me with a best friend. For a brief period, I will inhabit them, and then I'll lose them." BLAIR HODGES: We get to see more of that as you tell more of your story. A couple of years after this, you still haven't really got a word for it, you haven't really nailed it down for yourself. But a couple years later, you're babysitting for some neighbors a few houses down. And there's a book they have there. And I recognize the title of this. It's called Our Bodies, Ourselves, this book is on the shelf there and you're curious. So you pick it up and you start to read it. And this book really brings some things home. JESSI HEMPEL: It really does. And I just remember, Blair, I was so nervous they would discover I was researching, that I was reading for personal gain, that I was trying to figure something out, I started reading the section about homosexuality. And I was like, "Oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh, dear! Wow, that really..." And then I thought, "Oh, my goodness, they're gonna come home and see me reading it. And they're gonna know." Now I'm, you know, fifteen years old, fourteen years old. So I immediately turn to the section on menopause because I think well, then they'll just think I'm reading for curiosity, because there's no way I'm going through menopause! [laughter] BLAIR HODGES: But you knew then, right? You say you knew. In fact, read the end of that chapter there. JESSI HEMPEL: "From this point on, I know the thing about myself I have been trying not to know. I understand that it cannot be changed, that it is innate, like my eye color. “I'm gay. “One day I will need to accept this, and I believe it will end the good part of my life. It will end my ability to get along with the people I know and love. I am gay. I will spend my adult years in a dirty city living with men I do not like. I won't have kids. But hopefully also, I'll know women that look like the women in this book. Would that be so bad? “Maybe, I think, I can stave this off until after high school. Maybe I can buy myself a few more years of the good life in which I think I can be like everyone else. Maybe no one else has to know."   KICKED OUT OF THE CLOSET (27:42)   BLAIR HODGES: And as you're dealing with all that, your relationship with your mother is deteriorating. People who read the book will see how that plays out. You're struggling, things in your family feel disconnected, and things are going to come to a head eventually here. Chapter 14, I think, was probably one of the most painful chapters to read. This is when your sister makes a discovery on your dad's computer. JESSI HEMPEL: My dad was outed. We like to say that he was kicked out of the closet more than he came out of the closet. I was just out of college. My sister, who's four years younger than me, had just finished her first year of college and she was home for the summer. And things were not great between my parents by this point. Years and years of not taking care of their relationship had led to a situation where, you know, Mom watched TV all evening long and Dad disappeared into the den and they didn't really talk to each other. And Dad would get on his computer. So my sister is in her bedroom. And she is IM'ing—one of those early chat programs, with her boyfriend. They're sort of newly in love. And then her computer dies. It runs out of batteries. It's an early laptop. And so she gets frustrated with it. And she goes into the den to use the family computer to pick up the conversation. And when she goes on the computer, somebody she doesn't know pings her back. And she quickly discovers this person she doesn't know seems to be a man involved with my father. And she puts it together very quickly that this person messaging her is some man that my dad is having an affair with. And then everything blows up, Blair. In that particular moment, my dad and my mom were hosting visiting relatives— BLAIR HODGES: I know. It was such a bad moment!— JESSI HEMPEL: I mean, is there ever a good moment, though? Could you ever plan, could you ever be like, you know, "On July 20th—" [laughter] BLAIR HODGES: No, but maybe on a quiet weekend, though, with no visitors! JESSI HEMPEL: That would've been better, but no. [laughter] They were just waiting for my aunt and uncle to arrive. They were driving home from, I think, shopping for furniture, and my sister calls my dad—we had one of those early car phones, it was sort of a bit before cell phones, and they were like these big bricks, and you didn't really want to use them because it was super expensive, but for emergencies, right? So my sister calls and wants to talk to my dad, my mom picks up and my sister basically intimates to my mom, she says, "Tell Dad that So-and-So says hi." And in that moment my dad knows exactly what has happened. And he panics, and he just thinks, “I can undo this, I can fix this, I can fix this.” So he races home, he tries to get time with my sister, but my sister's not having it. And she leaves. She goes to her boyfriend's house, he lives in Vermont. She basically says, you know, “You tell Mom, or I will.” And so my dad has to tell my mom, you know, “Hey, I've been doing these,” you know—his understanding of what's happening at this point too is really important. Because I think it is like the process of coming out of the closet is not a light switch that you flip on and off. It's a gradual awakening or awareness. And so his thought at this point is that he has been afflicted by something, rather like he might be afflicted by some form of cancer that's surely curable if you get the right treatments. And so his first sort of revelation to my mom is like, "I've been afflicted by these unhealthy desires, and I've acted upon them and broken the covenant of our marriage. And I'm going to fix this. And we can fix this. And I'm so sorry that I'm sick." Luckily, for everybody involved, that's not where his emotional work ended. But that's where it started. BLAIR HODGES: And Mom wanted to hang in there for a minute, like they really thought they could figure this out. She became invested in making this work, and it sort of starts getting drawn out, and you're seeing your parents try to make what is appearing increasingly to be a sham, they're trying so hard to make it work, and your dad is experiencing what you call the "Rainbow Phase." He's kind of finally started to embrace his gay self, but he's also trying to not be gay. He's also trying to maintain this mixed-orientation marriage at the same time, which is so strange. JESSI HEMPEL: I mean, imagine it, though, because he loves my mom, and he loves this family we have created. He also has a pretty intact relationship with his religion and with God at this point. And stepping outside of the framework of those things is completely unknown to him. This is also the summer of his fiftieth birthday. He turns fifty about two weeks after all of this happens. So imagine if you live the first fifty years of your life with one identity and then you are called to ask to rethink it. It seems impossible. You think you know who you are. How could you also be this other person? BLAIR HODGES: Do you think there was some excitement in it, too? Like the Rainbow Phase part of it? JESSI HEMPEL: Coming out is great, okay? Blair, let me tell you, coming out involves coming into a community of people who have been waiting for you, many of whom have also experienced rejection and hurt and hardship from their families of origin. And when you finally get brave enough to figure out how to bring a dish of macaroni to the potluck at the LGBT center, what you discover is a whole lot of people who are like, I want to be your friend. You want to go to the theater with me? You want to join my biking club? He joined a church for a little while that was composed of people who had left their churches because they couldn't be a part of it. He walked into opportunities for belonging. And I think it's such an important distinction, Blair, because when you are the spouse being left in that situation, you don't walk into belonging. You have to rethink everything, you have to reconstitute your identity, and there's no flag waving for you. BLAIR HODGES: No. Your mother had such difficulty and talked about a suicide attempt even. She came to the point where that was on the table for her. What was it like writing about that? And how did she feel about that being part of the book? JESSI HEMPEL: It was really hard to figure out how to write about it. She was pretty unhappy at first with that being part of the book. She felt, you know, she is a mental health practitioner. And she worried that— BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. That's a community she fell into, like, figuring out mental health and becoming a therapist and all that, so to speak, she needed a place to fall. But we're talking about what happened before that. Sorry, just wanted to interject that— JESSI HEMPEL: Right. But in her moment of crisis, and you asked specifically about how she felt about me writing about it, she was scared that if she revealed exactly how vulnerable she was, people would think less of her. And so that was her fear in the book. And yet, she was really honest with me about what that moment of crisis felt like. And I was able to really reflect both how she thought and felt about that moment of crisis, but also how it affected my brother who was still in high school, and my sister who was at college. When an event like that happens in a family system, it happens differently to everyone, and hopefully the book sort of captures that.   SIBLING RIVALRY (34:53)   BLAIR HODGES: Oh, it sure does. I think this is one of the main strengths of your book, because it shows how coming out can be such an involved and connected and networked process, that it's not an isolated thing. And people that experience it, there are shockwaves—there's joy, there's grief, there's so many different emotions. And it's not an isolated individual experience. It has repercussions for everybody around. We certainly get to witness that with you, and your siblings, and your mom, and how it impacted your dad, and how it impacted their religious faith and their connection to different religious communities, and how it connected your mom to communities of therapy and research and how to be in therapeutic relationship with others. I think that's such a central strength of The Family Outing, that we get to witness how that felt. With that in mind, let's take a second to talk about your siblings. So Katja is the middle child. And then the youngest is Evan. Evan was assigned female at birth. And Katja comes out as bisexual. It was interesting, your reaction to that. Because you had come out as gay. And when your sister came out as bi, you seem sort of like, "Oh, okay." Maybe talk a little bit about the bi erasure that kind of happens, right? Bi people often talk about bi erasure, that they're sort of dismissed, or that it's sort of looked sideways at, like, "Oh, okay, interesting…" JESSI HEMPEL: I'm so glad you brought that up. You know, my wife identifies as bisexual, and people can be somewhat callous of that being like, "Well, you and Jessi have been together for twelve years. Why do we have to call you bisexual?" BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I hear this with people that are married, too. I know a woman who's married to a guy, she gets the exact same question a lot, and she came out as bi later in life, and they're like, "But you're already married, and you have kids and stuff. Like, what's the point?" So that bi erasure is real. JESSI HEMPEL: One hundred percent. The other piece there that I really wanted to figure out how to highlight is that this book is about coming out, but it's also about how to receive people who come out to you. I wanted to call attention to the fact that, you know, I came out first. I thought I knew a thing or two about what it was to be queer and who got to be queer. And I actually, unfortunately, I thought I kind of owned it in my family. And I was not great to my sister or my brother when they came out. In both situations my first response was to belittle the experience, to say some version of, "Well, I mean, you know, okay, fine." Like with my sister, "Oh, you just want to be like the rest of us. Sure, you're bisexual, like you were the popular girl in school, you always had a boyfriend, like, I know, this is a passing fad." And with my brother, you know, a couple years later, I did the exact same thing. He said, "My pronouns are going to be he and him, the name I choose is Evan. Please call me that when I come to visit you." And my first response was like, "But you just wore that beautiful dress at Christmas. I'm sure this is a passing thing. Like, what's that about?" I think, you know, having some compassion for myself and for anyone in that situation, what's true is that when the people we love most, who are closest to us, family members in particular, but also good friends, reveal something about themselves that is so outside of what we think we know about them, it threatens our own identity. And sometimes our immediate first reaction is to get so wrapped up in the threat to our own identity that we can't receive what they have to tell us. BLAIR HODGES: We might even think like, how could they not have told me? There's perhaps also a trust thing, too, not honoring the reasons why people come out when they do. I also think this sort of a cultural experience might become less common, right, the more acceptable it is, the more people are coming out. Some people don't even need to come out. They're growing up in a family or culture system where like, that's just the thing. But as long as there are people coming out, the ways that they're received, especially by the people that love them the most, matters the most, and you're vulnerable in the way you talk about your own missteps and things you wish you could have done differently. You straightforwardly tell us those reactions. Like when Evan comes out and says he's trans, like you just described it, you're kind of like, “Okay…” and coming to grips with that yourself and being able to talk about it, again, I think it speaks to the strength of your book. I want to remind people, the book is called The Family Outing, and we're talking to Jessi Hempel. She's host of an award-winning podcast called Hello Monday, and also a senior editor at large at LinkedIn. Her writing usually focuses on work and meaning in the digital age. And you might have seen her on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, or CNBC, talking about culture and business of technology. She graduated from Brown University, got a Master of Journalism from UC—Berkeley, lots of education, lots of experience, a lot of writing. And you've got this whole family background behind all that, too.   SEEKING A CURE FOR THE EMOTIONAL FLU (39:30)   BLAIR HODGES: One of my favorite scenes, by the way, was when you were talking about being on CNN at one point, and you just went blank in the mind at this point. I can't believe it. You talk about the dead air. And that was kind of a crisis point for you, right? What were you doing there?   JESSI HEMPEL: In my late twenties I was always very career-forward. And in my early adulthood, I just really wanted to be a business writer. I started writing and I got a job at Businessweek, and I became a TV commentator. And I learned, Blair, that you don't actually need to know very much about whatever they're asking you on TV to be pretty good at this job. All you have to do for the most part is master the art of the bridge. So whatever question you ask, no matter how hard it is, or how little I know about it, what I can say is, "Blair, it's so interesting, you would ask that, but what people really want to know about is—" whatever I want to talk about, and then I started talking, and the TV viewers never even really put it together if I'm confident enough. And this was my trick for actually talking about a lot of things I really didn't know much about in my twenties on television. BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I would always call it “the pivot.” [laughter] JESSI HEMPEL: The pivot. But also during this period, I really hadn't dealt with a lot of the trauma that had happened in my family. And what would happen is that just every once in a while it would catch up with me. And I had a name for this, I think the modern-day version of it would be something like a panic attack, but I called it the emotional flu. And I would literally just check out for some period of time and be completely unable to manage. The way out of this, by the way, was therapy—a really great therapist that I saw weekly for nine years. But we're before that here. And this happened to me, this set of panic attacks that landed me in a place where I suddenly checked out, didn't show up for work for a day and didn't prepare for anything. And then I needed to go in to CNN, I was booked on CNN. So I put my makeup on and went into the studio, the car came and picked me up and brought me in, and they put me in the chair. And I kind of was like, I was so fragile. But I thought the question they were going to ask me was, “what did we do when we learned that the Olympics are,” wherever they were, I think I believed at the time that they were going to be in London. I was ready to talk about that. I had, like, one thing to say. And then it turned out that the Olympics were in Paris, and they asked me the question, you know, what do you think? What does it mean for Paris that the Olympics are going to be there and, Blair, I said, nothing. Just looked at the screen, panicked. And there's nothing more terrifying than silence, like, dead air on television. BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, everybody probably panicked right then. JESSI HEMPEL: Yeah, they made a little note in the book that said, “Don't book her again.” [laughter] It was probably four years before I went on CNN again. But that also was the moment when I realized if I didn't turn my attention to this, it was going to take something really important from my future. And so it was the reason why I think I finally got into therapy. BLAIR HODGES: And that made a profound difference for you. We also see you just trying to find meaning and connection, too. You got kind of wrapped up in these sort of personal improvement groups, people might be familiar with these like, I don't know, I won't say cult, some people would, but there are these groups you get involved with, and you have to pay money to do these levels of trainings. And so you're also trying to find connections, it seemed like, beyond your family, to just have your feet on the ground and also feel empowered yourself. We see you searching a lot. And that's another vulnerable part of the book, is where you talk about sort of getting connected to some of these self-improvement groups. JESSI HEMPEL: Yeah, I mean, I think the most notable group like this is Landmark, people may be familiar with it. The group I did was sort of a radical offshoot of Landmark. And what's true about these groups is they can be really problematic in the way they build, but they also contain really great learning. And for me—and I hope I conveyed this in the book—it was a little bit of both. In the end, I got so wrapped up in these that I needed somebody to step in and help me get out. But I also learned a lot about the idea that I could be responsible for my own happiness, and that I could make things happen for myself in my life. I took so much self-agency from this experience. And I'm grateful for that. BLAIR HODGES: It was nice to see you talk about the importance of “found family,” the people you connected with. There's a group, an organization called COLAGE—Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere—that you were connected to in some ways, but also that group can be kind of challenging, too, because you didn't necessarily see your own experience there. JESSI HEMPEL: That group is a great group that still exists and is a pretty wonderful resource for any child whose parents have come out. I stumbled upon it in my early twenties. It was wonderful to be part of a community of other people whose parents were also queer. The thing I found confusing at that point was that in those years I wasn't proud of my parents. Their marriage was coming apart. They were a mess. They were not in good shape. And I would be part of this group where a lot of the children in this group came from families more like the family I have gone on to create, where both parents were queer at the origination of the children, and they'd sort of grown up with queer parents. And it was hard to figure out how to be truthful about my own family in the smaller community, when also the public narrative I felt compelled to uphold was that gay families are great. We've got everything figured out, we raise good kids, because there's so much vitriol directed toward families with same-sex parents that I felt compelled to be defensive of them in public. Does that make sense? BLAIR HODGES: It certainly does. Your parents end up separating and your father has relationships—he finally kind of embraces that side of himself and meets a man to share his life with. And your mom gets into therapy and begins helping others. And then you came around to having kids through your connection to your partner, Francis. It didn't seem like something you were super excited to do throughout your life. But then through this partnership, you decided, "Oh, this could work for us." Do you think that's in part because you didn't have a lot of models to look at? Like, there weren't a lot of lesbian women obviously having kids. You didn't get to see families that look like that. So did you sort of just grow up thinking, "Well, I'm just not going to have that. It's just not really a thing”? JESSI HEMPEL: Yes, and I think it wasn't so much because I was gay that I thought, "Oh, I don't want to have children." But because I didn't trust myself to be a good parent because I did not feel I had been parented well. And I worried I would parent a child like I had been parented. And so rather than even creating the possibility that that might happen, I just moved right to "I don't want kids. I'm a person who doesn't want kids." And it wasn't until I had been in my relationship with my partner, Francis, for many years, that I came around, and even when she told me, "Hey, I'm ready to have kids," I still was like, "Oh, no, I guess we have to break up because I would be a horrible parent." And she had to really press me and say, "Well, are you saying you don't want kids?" And it was like, "No, I'm not saying I want them or don't want them. I'm saying I would be bad at it." And it caused a sort of crisis of my sense of self. I ended up writing to the woman who had really helped me in high school, the assistant principal of my high school. She'd known me since my youth. And I wrote to her and just basically said, do you think I can do this? Is this a really bad idea? And she was the one who wrote to me and said, "You don't have to be your history. You can be a new version of yourself. You have learned what you need to learn in life, and you can be good at this."   EVAN'S STORY (47:38)   BLAIR HODGES: I was also really moved by your brother Evan's story. There's a conversation you had with Evan at one point where he pointed out that your parents' secrets and your secrets were a little bit different. Evan was talking about how your parents' generation and your generation experience secrets differently. He said they are fundamentally different because your secrets aren't secret from yourselves. Like with your parents, they kind of had to keep it—especially your father—had to keep that from himself. For you all, it was more about keeping that secret just from your family. You actually kind of knew and were more ready to embrace it than the family was. And perhaps that's a different thing to experience. JESSI HEMPEL: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think what my brother was really trying to push me to think about was how this might impact our kids. Because, you know, when my brother and I had this conversation, we were both new parents. He had two little kids at home, and we had just had our second baby. And we were talking about what this might mean for our kids and what we hope for our kids. And he was saying, "Well, look, we've made it this far. But they're gonna have to do the work of figuring out what their secrets mean to them, and what their truths are. We can't do that work for them." BLAIR HODGES: And for Evan, I also enjoyed reading about his experience being pregnant and having children as a trans man. It's not terribly common. There aren't a lot of people who have written about it or spoken about it publicly. There's still plenty of prejudice and misunderstanding about trans folks today. So it was nice to see in your book an example of a trans man who went through that and gave birth to kids and wanted to have this family and has this family. So that's a story... I mean, your book obviously wasn't the Book of Evan, so you didn't get into it a ton. But I loved learning the little bit I learned about him. JESSI HEMPEL: I so appreciate that. And you know, the whole book owes itself to a story I wrote about my brother's pregnancy for Time Magazine, about his decision to get pregnant, what that experience was like for him carrying the baby, what the rest of the world thought as he did it. So if you're curious about it, also, if you Google my brother's name and the word "Time," I guarantee you it will be the first five things that pop up.   REGRETS, CHALLENGES, AND SURPRISES (49:47)   BLAIR HODGES: Perfect. I'll put a link to the show notes too, so people can check that out, and that'll fit well with some other episodes in the show as well. All right. That's Jessi Hempel, and we're talking about the book, The Family Outing: A Memoir. I wanted to conclude, Jessi, with regrets, challenges, and surprises. This is the part of the show where you get to talk about any of these things, or all three—something you regret or that you would change about the book now that it's out, what you would say was maybe the most challenging thing about writing it, or something that was revealed to you—a surprise you discovered along the way. JESSI HEMPEL: I love this question. And you know, Blair, I feel very complete in this book. I feel like it was the best story I could tell. The surprise, and the challenge, was in publishing. I thought once I sold the book, you know, I had the good fortune of selling this book before I wrote it, and then I had to go write it. And I thought, well, the hard part will be writing it. And then it will go out into the world, and I'll get to talk about it and that will be great. And in fact, I loved every day of writing it. It was the biggest gift of my life. And then it was published, and I found the process of publication very disorienting. And it's only now, about a year after publication, that I feel like I have my footing again and have a relationship with the book again. BLAIR HODGES: What do you think that vertigo came from? What happened? JESSI HEMPEL: Well, you know, the publishing industry is made up of people who dearly love books. And that is the best thing about it. But it's pretty broken. And so you know, even for me, my book came out from HarperCollins. It had an editor who loved it and was consistently the editor the whole way through. And it had a marketing team who were just spot on. But they had so many books to represent, and my book got a little sliver of attention, and then the attention meter moved on. And when it didn't become a bestseller in the first seven days it was out, the resources to promote it immediately went down. And it was hard not to take that personally because it was my family's story that was selling or not selling. And I managed that, Blair, proactively in advance by doing two things. One is I decided before I began that I never wanted to know the sales numbers, because writing this book for me was not about sales numbers. And so I don't even have the login to the portal that would tell me how well it sold. If you asked me, I could guess but like my guess and your guess would be about equivalent. I don't know. And that felt important. But then the most important thing I told myself then, and that has proven out now, is getting to have conversations like this. Individual people who respond to the book. Because the book is helpful. That's the point. But it's taken me a year to pull back enough from the process to connect deeply to that. BLAIR HODGES: That's hard. As you said, there's a lot of different pieces, not just the writing of it, but pitching it, selling it, going through the editing process, going through the promotional process. It's something we don't talk about often. I don't really dig into this part of it a lot in the interviews, but I think it's a really important aspect of what it's like to be vulnerable like you were in writing this book and navigating the emotions that it all brings. JESSI HEMPEL: Well, thank you, Blair. This was such a joy of an interview. I don't take it for granted when people really spend time with work, and I just appreciate it. So thank you. BLAIR HODGES: Thank you. It was such an easy book to spend that time with and I really strongly recommend it. I hope everybody checks this book out: The Family Outing by Jessi Hempel, and checks out your podcast as well: Hello, Monday. I'm glad you took the time to join us, Jessi. This has been really fun. JESSI HEMPEL: Take good care, Blair, I look forward to talking again sometime. BLAIR HODGES: There's much more to come on Family Proclamations. If you're enjoying the show, why not take a second to rate and review it? Go to Apple Podcasts and let me know your thoughts. And please just take a second to recommend the show to a friend. The more the merrier. Thanks to Mates of State for providing our theme song. Family Proclamations is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges, and I'll see you next time. [END]   NOTE: Transcripts have been lightly edited for readability.

This week, Hello Monday is dipping into the archives to bring you one of our favorite conversations. In this episode, Jessi speaks with Bozoma Saint John, author of The Urgent Life. We welcomed her to the show to talk to us about her incredible journey and how she's managed to move through grief. Follow Bozoma Saint John on LinkedIn, and check out her debut memoir. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners: https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup 

It's no secret that there has been increasing pressure on diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders as their roles are defunded and programs are slashed. We're seeing cultural shifts away from DEI in the workplace, education, and in our lives. Today's guest has worked in this space for almost 30 years and is fully aware that her work is not over. Denise Hamilton is a DEI professional specializing in Ally Training and the author of Indivisible: How to Forge Differences into a Stronger Future. Her book takes a hopeful look forward and offers us the tools we need to create inclusive and equitable environments in our personal and professional lives. Today, Jessi and Denise have an honest conversation about the state of DEI and how we can work towards a more equitable future. Follow Denise Hamilton on LinkedIn and check out her book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup 

The Hello Monday team is excited to share this preview of Building One, the newest addition to the LinkedIn Podcast Network. Building One is hosted by Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer. In this series of engaging one-on-one conversations with accomplished product leaders, you'll trace the professional journeys of today's top builders, gain insights into the intricacies of product development, and glimpse the stories behind the tech world's most impactful products. Building One is for anyone considering launching or growing a career in product development, and for everyone curious about how your favorite products came to be. Follow Building One on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Then, find the conversation on LinkedIn.

We're heading into the second month of the year, which means many of us might need an extra boost of encouragement to keep those new year's resolutions going. Today's guest has a unique approach to achieving goals. AK Ikwuakor, also known as Coach AK, is an executive coach and the author of The Next Right Move. He works with professionals to form habits that bring them closer to what they want to achieve. He sits down with Jessi to discuss how mindfulness can help us understand ourselves, and by extension our goals, much better.  Follow AK Ikwuakor on LinkedIn and check out his book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

How do you view your colleagues? As a family, friends, or just the people you work with? Our guest sees them as a part of our community, worthy of the time and attention it takes to cultivate any other relationship. Jennifer Dulski is the CEO of Rising Team, a platform where companies learn to better develop their teams. She's built community focused products for companies like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook. Jennifer knows better than most what brings people together and she sits down with Jessi to discuss how we can all be better teammates. Follow Jennifer Dulski on LinkedIn. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Every week on Hello Monday we talk about the nature of work. Today, we're taking a look at the systems our work upholds. Here in the US it's capitalism– an economic system where the show is largely run by private entities. It's a system that's often critiqued for making it easier for the wealthy to amass more wealth, without offering similar mobility for the working class. Today's guest isn't afraid to envision a new way of living and working. Nick Romeo is a writer for The New Yorker and the author of The Alternative: How To Build A Just Economy. In his book, Nick imagines a more sustainable economy and today he sits down with Jessi to discuss what that would take.Follow Nick Romeo on LinkedIn and check out his book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

I'm so glad you're with me today! ~ DelilahSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hello Monday team is off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so we're bringing back an episode from the archives. Last year, Jessi sat down with LinkedIn Tech Editor Tanya Dua to discuss our listeners' experiences with ChatGPT and break down how artificial intelligence is changing the way we work. Follow Tanya Dua on LinkedIn Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

These days the only thing that seems certain is uncertainty. So how do we navigate our “new normal” when it seems to change every day? Today's guest might have a few ideas. Kit Yates is a mathematics lecturer at the University of Bath and the author of How to Expect the Unexpected: The Science of Making Predictions—and the Art of Knowing When Not To. In his book, Kit breaks down misconceptions around predictions and some common mistakes we tend to make. He sits down with Jessi to teach us all how to make better predictions and feel a bit better about the future. Follow Kit Yates on LinkedIn and check out his book, How to Expect the Unexpected. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback! Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

We're kicking off 2024 by using our imaginations to envision our dream jobs. In this episode, Jessi walks us through an exercise that helped her level up her own career several years ago. Grab a pen and paper and join us in dreaming big. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback! Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

This holiday season, we're returning to our conversation from earlier this year with Jamil Zaki. Jamil is a psychology professor, researcher, and author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. He sat down with Jessi to discuss embracing curiosity in the midst of adverse conditions. Follow Jamil Zaki on LinkedIn. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us in the new year on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Hello Monday! Thanks for tuning into this Agronomic edition of RealAg Radio! On this episode, host Shaun Haney is joined by RealAgriculture's in-house agronomist Peter Johnson to discuss: The lack of moisture; Yield potential; and, Reducing inputs. We will also hear a couple interviews from Agritechnica including Deutz-Fahr bringing Lamborghini tractors to North America for... Read More

Hello Monday! Thanks for tuning into this Agronomic edition of RealAg Radio! On this episode, host Shaun Haney is joined by RealAgriculture's in-house agronomist Peter Johnson to discuss: The lack of moisture; Yield potential; and, Reducing inputs. We will also hear a couple interviews from Agritechnica including Deutz-Fahr bringing Lamborghini tractors to North America for... Read More

In this week's episode, we welcome eToro US CEO Lule Demmissie to share her story. Lule found success in the investing space despite the social forces working against her. Her intellect and upbringing brought her a long way, and Lule attributes one more factor to her success– relentless optimism. She sits down with Jessi to discuss the philosophy that brought her through some unpredictable and unfavorable circumstances. Follow Lule Demmissie on LinkedIn. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

What kind of leader do you want to be? Kind, wise, maybe a little more thoughtful? Our guest today is dedicated to getting you there. Jerry Colonna has been called the “CEO Whisperer,” and prides himself on coaching founders and CEOs to reflect, grow, and ultimately, to create more welcoming spaces within their organizations. In his latest book "Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong," Jerry encourages radical self-inquiry as a path to building more inclusive environments. In this episode, he sits down with Jessi to help us all become better leaders in our communities and workplaces. Follow Jerry Colonna on LinkedIn and check out his book here.  Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Jessi Hempel is the host of Hello Monday and a senior editor at large at LinkedIn. Today, we're running a crossover episode where we talk about the future of AI, self-driving cars, social media, and tech media. This is a fun, timely episode that covers many of the themes we speak about regularly on Big Technology Podcast. And I think if you like this show, you'll also love Hello Monday, which you can find in your podcast app of choice.  --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

In this special episode of Hello Monday, we're looking ahead towards 2024. What are the big ideas for the new year? Big Technology Podcast host, Alex Kantrowitz sits down with Jessi to break down everything new and exciting heading our way in the world of tech. Join this conversation for their predictions on the future of AI, self driving cars, and more. Follow Alex Kantrowitz on LinkedIn and listen to Big Technology Podcast here.  Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

When we feel tired, we sleep. When we are hungry, we eat. But what do we do when we are emotionally depleted? Today's guest is a neuropsychologist who specializes in using neuroscience to help people lead more emotionally intelligent lives. Dr. Julia DiGangi is the author of Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power. She has treated stress and trauma in communities around the world, including combat veterans and civilians. In this episode, she sits down with Jessi to discuss how we can harness our emotional power to build stronger relationships with ourselves and others. Follow Dr. Julia DiGangi on LinkedIn and check out her book, Energy Rising. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, The Family Outing, now in paperback.  Need a place to gather your thoughts about life and work? You're welcome in the Hello Monday community. You can subscribe to the weekly Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page each Wednesday at 3p ET for Hello Monday Office Hours, our community conversation. For even more conversation, this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky believes that no single course of action can guarantee a successful career. Instead, Ryan has seen time and time again that most careers are winding - including his own.  In this conversation with Jessi, Ryan opens up about traveling solo to support his own early career ambitions in professional sports, how he found himself in LinkedIn's C-suite, and what key lessons he's taking away from the first season of his video and podcast series, The Path. Follow Ryan Roslansky and The Path on LinkedIn. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter and continue the conversation in our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners, https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Earlier this month, artificial intelligence pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li released her memoir The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI . To celebrate the book's release, we're revisiting this 2019 conversation featuring Dr. Li's thoughts on the compassionate role humans can play in shaping the future of AI. Follow Dr. Fei-Fei Li on LinkedIn and check out her new book, The Worlds I See. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, The Family Outing, now in paperback.  Need a place to gather your thoughts about life and work? You're welcome in the Hello Monday community. You can subscribe to the weekly Hello Monday newsletter, and join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Anyone who's ever been called a geek probably wouldn't say it's a compliment, but today's guest would beg to differ. Andrew McAfee's book The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results dissects the mind of the tech startup founder to understand the traits that built some of the most impactful companies in the world. In this episode of Hello Monday, Andrew sits down with Jessi to discuss what he calls the “four norms” of geek behavior and how embracing them can make us better thinkers and innovators. Follow Andrew McAfee on LinkedIn and check out his book here.  Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

We're willing to bet that if you're seeing these words, you're no stranger to student loan debt. Either you or someone you know is likely to be carrying a significant balance for one of your degrees. Managing this debt is a huge stressor for many borrowers, and a new work field is emerging to help borrowers manage: the Student Loan Debt Counselor. Earlier this week, Jessi talked to two money experts about the intersection of feelings and finance. Today, producer Sarah Storm speaks with Carli Reddy, Head of Coaching at the financial services company Candidly. Carly's specialty is student loan debt. In this conversation, she shares her perspective on how to live with student loan debt, and what path to take if you'd like to become a student loan debt counselor.  Follow Sarah Storm on LinkedIn. You can visit the work that led to and came from her massive student loan debt here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, The Family Outing, now in paperback.  For more great conversations on how work is changing, and how that's changing us, subscribe to the weekly Hello Monday newsletter. To join our community in conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Finances are a huge part of our lives. They can affect how we live, show up for people, and often even how we feel about ourselves. While it's common to hire a financial planner to help you run numbers and think about your future, financial therapists are there to help you work through the emotional aspects of finance. In this episode, financial therapist Aja Evans and finance journalist - and author of A Healthy State of Panic, Farnoosh Torabi - join Jessi in conversation on the growing field of financial therapy.  Follow Aja Evans and Farnoosh Torabi on LinkedIn. To work with Aja, visit https://ajaevanscounseling.com/. Check out Farnoosh's latest book, A Healthy State of Panic, out now. For more on financial therapy, we really enjoyed this NYT article on financial trauma, featuring Aja. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

This week, Jessi Hempel, LinkedIn Senior Editor-at-Large and host of LinkedIn's award-winning flagship podcast, Hello Monday, sits in the hot seat for a round of rapid-fire questions about how she works. Jessi shares the motivating piece of jewelry she's always wearing, what she gained when she learned to bring her own perspective to her writing, and what one morning routine is the key to better work and deeper meaning. Got questions you want to hear on This is Quick? Share a post or comment on LinkedIn using the hashtag #ThisisWorking.Follow Jessi Hempel, Nina Melendez, and Dan Roth on LinkedIn. Subscribe to our This is Working newsletter - you'll get our next leadership insights delivered right to your inbox. For more insights into the changing world of work, follow Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel wherever you listen.

What happens when we achieve our goals? What if we realize that what we thought we wanted isn't really what we want anymore? What if the thing we thought we were supposed to do, isn't actually what gives us purpose? And who decides what we are “supposed” to do, anyway? These are the questions that author & technology journalist Jessi Hempel considers weekly in her acclaimed podcast “Hello Monday” which examines the evolving culture of work, and in her book, “The Family Outing,” about the evolution of her family members and their identities. In this episode of “Your New Life Blend,” host Shoshanna Hecht talks to Jessi about finding purpose in our work, taking stock of how we are evolving, and making space for where we've been and where we're going, and how we can all pursue the most authentic version of ourself. Show Notes:Book:The Family Outing: A Memoirhttps://www.jessijhempel.com/bookPodcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/hello-monday-with-jessi-hempel/id1453893304Website:https://www.jessijhempel.com/bookSocial Media:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessihempelhttps://www.instagram.com/jessiwriteshttps://twitter.com/jessiwrites  

Have you ever dreamed of starting again? Maybe after 5, 10, 15 years in the same field, your heart's just not in it anymore. Today's guest wrote her book based on years of interviews with professionals in this exact position. Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career breaks down the process of career reinvention, giving readers the tools to identify their next steps towards a more fulfilling career. Herminia has a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Yale University and teaches this subject as a professor at London Business School. Today, Herminia sits down with Jessi to break down the three ways of “working identity” and leveraging them to achieve your new career goals.  Follow Herminia Ibarra on LinkedIn and check out her book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives have changed rapidly over the years, and often not for the better. Many companies quickly hired DEI professionals and then dissolved these roles just as fast. Our guest today has put years of research into strategies that encourage workplaces to embrace social inclusion and for her, the solution lies in the power of recognition. Michèle Lamont is a professor of sociology and African American studies at Harvard University. Her newest book, Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How It Can Heal a Divided World taps into the universal desire to be seen and respected in favor of a more inclusive society. She sat down with Jessi to share a few of the insights she collected while conducting research for her book. Follow Michèle Lamont on LinkedIn and check out his newest book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Most of us have brands we've always been loyal to. Maybe you stick to one brand of paper towels, or have a pair of shoes that you swear by. What drives this loyalty? Today's guest would say that, beyond quality or familiarity, this tendency is most influenced by culture. Dr. Marcus Collins is a lecturer at the University of Michigan and a digital strategist who has run campaigns for Google, Apple, and even Beyoncé. His book For The Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want unpacks the power of culture. He sits down with Jessi to discuss how this power influences our behavior every day. Follow Marcus Collins on LinkedIn and check out his book here.  Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

We're posting this bonus episode on October 11, the 35th Annual National Coming Out Day. The Hello Monday team celebrates everyone who has ever come out of the closet, and we're marking this occasion with a personal reflection on queer identity by our phenomenal associate producer, Lolia Briggs. Follow Lolia Briggs on LinkedIn and check out her work here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, The Family Outing, now in paperback.  You are welcome in the Hello Monday community. You can subscribe to the weekly Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page each Wednesday at 3p ET for Hello Monday Office Hours, our community conversation. For even more conversation, this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

We spent a while earlier this summer talking about good jobs. But what if you don't feel like you have one of those right now? Of course, no one is guaranteed to love their job all of the time - but what happens when you're feeling unhappy and are unable to quit? Enter Caroline Webb - executive coach, economist, and author - to help Jessi explore what a good day at work looks like, and how everyone can take concrete steps to have more of them. Follow Caroline Webb on LinkedIn. You can subscribe to her newsletter, How to Have a Good Day, and check out her LinkedIn Learning courses on fulfillment at work and leadership. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Have you found your purpose? Don't worry, many people wouldn't even know where to start. Even the most accomplished of people can feel their talent and energy are focused in the wrong place, including today's guest Suneel Gupta. Suneel has been a tech CEO, congressional candidate, and now author, but he only recently found what brings him joy no matter where he is in life. His book, Everyday Dharma, details some practices to help you find fulfillment in your day to day. In this episode, he sits down with Jessi to chronicle his journey to uncover his true purpose underneath ambition and pressure to perform. Follow Suneel Gupta on LinkedIn and check out his newest book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Happiness is one word that seems to have a million meanings. For one person it could mean health, for another it's material success. What is the universal meaning of happiness? And how do we achieve it? Today, we have a three-part answer from an expert on happiness. Arthur Brooks teaches the course "Managing Happiness" at Harvard University. He wrote his latest book, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, with an illustrious co-author– THE Oprah Winfrey. Today, we welcome him on the show to bust some myths about happiness and break down the genetic, social, and economic influences on human fulfillment. Follow Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey on LinkedIn. Check out their new book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now available in paperback!  To hear Arthur and Jessi in their first conversation, entitled "When to be Quick; When to be Wise," click here. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

These days it feels like kids come out of the womb glued to a screen. The term “iPad Kid” has been coined on TikTok – ironically another addictive piece of technology – to describe toddlers who seem to always have a tablet in tow. Even with kids' programming and parental controls, it still feels nearly impossible to shield children from the challenges of the internet. Devorah Heitner tackles this subject in her latest book, Growing up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World. In this special bonus episode, Jessi and Devorah have a conversation about kids' use of social media and its effects on their mental health. Follow Devorah Heitner on LinkedIn and check out her book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and continue the conversation in our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

In a society that rewards perfectionism, failure can be a hard pill to swallow. Even when we make silly mistakes, it can make us question our capabilities and intelligence, but what if we flipped this script on failure? Today's guest wants us to embrace the mistakes we make and even encourages us to “fail better.” Amy Edmondson is the author of Right Kind of Wrong: The science of failing well, which dissects the power of intelligent failure and our ability to create environments where people feel free to try, fail, and try again. She sits down with Jessi to break down some examples of complex failures in our world and to share takeaways that can help move us forward. Follow Amy Edmondson on LinkedIn and check out her book here.  Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

This Labor Day, we're returning to our 2020 episode with Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin. Dr. Orbé-Austin is a psychologist, TEDx speaker, and author of Own Your Greatness: Overcome Impostor Syndrome, Beat Self-Doubt, and Succeed in Life. She's leaving us with a few ways we can appreciate our talent and battle impostor syndrome.  Follow Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin on LinkedIn. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

We've all heard the age-old phrase, “it's not what you know, it's who you know.” While being knowledgeable can keep you in a great role, your network can open doors to your next opportunity. Today's guest, Susan McPherson, is regarded as one of the best-connected people in the social good world. She's sat on the board of organizations like the UN Refugee Agency and the The Lower Eastside Girls Club. Her book, The Lost Art of Connecting, is a guide to building and maintaining great relationships, and how the first step might be taking yourself out of the equation.  Follow Susan McPherson on LinkedIn and learn more about her work. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

At the end of 2022, OpenAI released the generative AI- powered chatbot ChatGPT to the public. We immediately put it to the test, using the chatbot to tell stories, write code, and even engage in philosophical conversation, all the while considering its implications in almost every industry. What are its uses in your workplace and your life? We posed this question a while back, and you answered. On today's episode, Jessi is joined by LinkedIn Technology Editor, Tanya Dua to share listener experiences with AI and break down how ChatGPT is changing the way we work.  Follow Ben Scherz, Sarah Podlewski, Amber Ratcliff, and N. Liberty White on LinkedIn. Follow Tanya Dua and Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn. Order Jessi's debut memoir and subscribe to Tanya's newsletter, Tech Stack. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

We spend what feels like half our lives on our devices. All our ideas and projects eventually find their way to a phone, tablet or laptop. How can we possibly keep track of them all? Just as our physical rooms, offices, or workspaces can get cluttered, our digital lives can get messy too. In this episode, Tiago Forte returns to Hello Monday to share his approach to taking control of your digital life. We first spoke to him a year ago about building a second brain, using technology. His newest book, The PARA Method, details an organizational technique that will forever change the way you manage information. Stay tuned after the interview for a book segment featuring LinkedIn News Editor - and resident bibliophile - Scott Olster, who joins Jessi to share a recent great read. Follow Tiago Forte on LinkedIn, learn about Building a Second Brain on his first Hello Monday appearance, and check out his organization duology here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir. Want to help our listener community grow? Please consider leaving us a rating, review, or comment wherever you get your podcasts. Here are some additional opportunities to build community with the Hello Monday team and our listeners: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation with other listeners, this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group. https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup.

In a culture that values perseverance, quitting is often seen as failure. We're encouraged to stick out jobs, hobbies, and often, people as to not be labeled a “quitter”. So what do we do when something just isn't going to work for us? Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author Julia Keller is shifting the narrative around walking away with her book “Quitting: A Life Strategy”. She joins us today to talk about the power of quitting and how sometimes, it's just the thing we need to set us free. As we produced this episode, we reached out to our Hello Monday community to hear your thoughts on what you learned and what you gained when you quit something. We feature a couple of your terrific thoughts in this episode during our Quick Tips segment, but there is so much more to explore. You can find those conversations in the comments to this post. Our team is so grateful to everyone who took the time to reach out. For more on Julia Keller visit her website, and check out her book here.  Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation with other listeners, this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group. https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

On the first day of a new job, we all cross our fingers hoping for supportive co-workers and empathetic managers, but the fact of the matter is that a positive office environment takes work– and not everyone is prepared to do it. Our guest today is Dr. Ben Michaelis, a clinical psychologist who has seen it all when it comes to the workplace. Dr. Michaelis coaches both individuals and teams in an effort to strengthen a company's office culture. In this episode, he is going to share what sets positive work environments apart from toxic ones and how we can build a company culture that we're glad to be a part of. Follow Ben Michaelis on LinkedIn, and learn more about his work here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir. Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET. To continue the conversation with other listeners, this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group. https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Before Jessi sat down with champion debater and disagreement expert Bo Seo, our team would have mostly told you that the goal of a solid relationship or colleagueship is being able to avoid disagreement. But Bo schooled us on the real opposite of bad disagreement: GOOD disagreement! Bo's work teaches us that avoiding conflict isn't the best path to good relationships. It's learning to listen and be heard, keeping in mind that disagreement can be a creative act, and above all else, remembering that our arguments are human, just like we are. Follow Bo Seo on LinkedIn, and check out his book, Good Arguments, now available in paperback. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation this week and every week, join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

Three summers ago, a major retailer phoned designer Aurora James, asking for help. At the height of the protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, this retailer wanted advice on how to meet the moment. Aurora, the creative director and founder of shoe brand Brother Vellies, offered a thought that became a movement: Since Black people are almost 15% of the US population, retailers should commit 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses, and pledge 15% of their budget to purchasing products from those businesses to sell to customers. And with that, the 15% Pledge was born.  Aurora believes that it's great business to do good for the world, and in this conversation with Jessi Hempel, she shares her journey into fashion, and what she's learned about how to be a force for positive change today.  Follow Aurora James on LinkedIn. Check out her memoir, Wildflower, and get to know The 15% Pledge as well as her recently-announced fund for Black founders. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Join the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, and join us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET.  To continue the conversation, this week and every week, join our LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners: https://lnkd.in/hellomondaygroup

In an effort to get a fair deal with the AMPTP - the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May 2nd of this year. A month later, in early June, the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) authorized their own strike. As we post this episode, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have extended their deadline to make a deal until July 12. In this episode, Hello Monday producer and SAG-AFTRA member Sarah Storm hosts WGA Strike Captain Laura Jacqmin for a conversation on how we got here, and what might come next for the Writers' Strike. As a veteran TV, theater, and video game writer, Laura has a deep understanding of the industry and what it will take for her union to get a fair deal. From AI to fair pay, she'll break it all down to help the rest of us understand how their fight might be indicative of a larger movement for all knowledge workers. For more on Laura Jacqmin, check out her website.  To learn more about the current and potential labor actions in the entertainment industry, visit WGAE, WGAW, SAG-AFTRA, and the AMPTP. Follow Sarah Storm on LinkedIn, and find her acting work on IMDB. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir.  Become a part of the Hello Monday community: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter, visit us on the LinkedIn News page for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET, and join our LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners to continue this week's conversation.