Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. I find most career paths interesting, but I have a decidedly soft spot for stories that involve second acts. For example, you might remember my conversation with John Safkow, the l

Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. I recently saw a documentary called Heckler, which started out by focusing on the loudmouths who interrupt stand-up comics but then went on to paint film critics with the same bru

Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. In this episode, I talk to researcher Evelyn Ch’ien. I connected with Ch’ien after publishing "Peeking into Academe," a short post calling for more academics to weigh in at Wor

Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. As it happens, I've now interviewed three New Yorkers who made radical career changes after 9/11: Jane Viau left investment banking to become a high school math teacher; Hayes Slade

Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. After 9/11, Hayes Slade and her husband James (both pictured here) took stock of their lives and, like fellow New Yorker Jane Viau, they were moved to make some changes. After year

Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. Saying something funny every now and again is one thing. Being funny on demand—daily, for more than 16 years—is quite another. In this interview, Hilary Price explains how she c

Listen to the interview by clicking the arrow on the audio player below. Why would someone choose to be the one tasked with moving towards the bomb? I asked a few other questions, but when it comes right down to it, that's what I really wanted to know.

In this episode, I talk to Gerald Wong and Susan Hicks Wong, a husband-and-wife team who make their living as long-haul truckers—and the first thing I learned was that they don't really use the term 'long-haul.' They're OTR (over the the road) truckers

The more people I interview, the more I realize that I've been harboring all sorts of false notions about job satisfaction. For example, I've had it in my head that people who grow up knowing exactly what they want to do for a living are happier with thei

Back when Work Stew consisted of little more than my own inaugural essay, two friends of mine agreed to contribute essays of their own to what I assured them would eventually be a "collection." Ex-spy Lindsay Moran wrote a piece on the hazards of wor