For the most part, I interview people about the work they do to make a living. After all, it is that challenge—how to find work that feels meaningful and pays the bills—that preoccupies so many of us. But occasionally I also talk to people about the

Wrestling with my own career doubts, I've often found myself thinking wistfully about the field of medicine. In these moments, I start to think that physicians—despite all their sacrifices—have it easy in at least one respect: they must feel utterly f

Scott Urner makes a living writing closed captioning for adult films. That's a pretty unusual job, which is one reason I wanted to interview Scott. But I also wanted to talk to Scott because I think he's part of a wider theme in the work world, which is t

Last week, physics (yes, physics!) grabbed the headlines: a group of scientists at Switzerland's European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) presented results suggesting that subatomic particles known as neutrinos had been clocked going faster than the sp

After 15 years spent working as a wordsmith or a spin doctor (depending on who you ask), I found myself wanting to change tracks. I was drawn to mediation because it seemed to require many of the same skills (in mediation, spin is called "reframing") and

I had a lot of questions for comedy writer Nick Malis: When did he get it into his head that maybe he could write jokes for a living? How did he break into the business? What does it feel like to write for other comics versus getting the laughs for yourse

John Safkow was a flight attendant for more than twenty years before he left the airline industry to become a gorilla caretaker. (Yes, he reports that, by and large, gorillas are in fact more evolved than airline passengers.) I wanted to talk to John in

You wouldn't know it from the photograph, but Alethea Black has worked hard at being a writer. Her first collection of short stories, I Knew You'd Be Lovely, came out last month. Since then, her life (at least from the outside looking in) has been one lon

Many amateur chefs dream of leaving their office jobs, enrolling at cooking school, and then going to work at one of the world's best restaurants. But only a few follow through. After all, cooking school is expensive, and restaurant jobs are known for the

A lot of new graduates, hoping that their work will contribute in some meaningful way to society at large, consider a career in the non-profit world. Similarly, many career switchers, tired of laboring long and hard in pursuit of narrow corporate goals,