What Works Podcast

Is an AI chatbot, like ChatGPT, a search engine? Does it scour the internet for helpful information so that it can respond to user queries?

These questions were at the heart of a small kerfuffle on Bluesky last week between decorated speculative fiction writer Ann Leckie and a few prominent tech thinkers. Honestly, it bummed me out. But I found that the next morning, I had a lot to say about it. So I enlisted my dear husband, Sean, and I talked him through it.

This episode is different than the last 6 months or so of episodes. If you have the same taste in podcasts that I do, you'll recognize the format. I've been wanting to try it for a long time, and this was the perfect topic to give it a go. It's far more casual than the last 15+ episodes, but just as rigorous. If you like it, reach out on Bluesky, and let me know! Sean is already asking when we can do it again.

Footnotes:

• Read the essay version of this episode.
• Ann Leckie's original post
• Casey Newton's post
• Anil Dash's post (in response to someone agreeing with Leckie)
• Courtney Milan's post about the "card catalog effect"
• The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan with Quentin Fiore
• "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜" by Emily W. Bender and Timnit Gebru

JOIN ME FOR SUMMER SEMINAR!

Summer Seminar is an intellectual oasis for creative thinkers and curious adventurers.

It combines speculative fiction, big questions, and practical application. For Summer 2025, we’re reading Sofia Samatar’s critically acclaimed novella The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain.

We’ll pair it with adventures in systems thinking and cultural analysis. And we’ll apply what we discover by reflecting on the systems we create and encounter in our own lives and work.

Summer Seminar is designed to fit into any schedule and explores critical thinking skills you can apply to any goal or challenge.

To learn more, visit whatworks.fyi/summer

"I have so many thoughts and not enough time to think them," I recently blurted out to my husband. For me, "thinking thoughts" means scribbling notes or writing messy paragraphs about whatever is on my mind. Of course, no one wants to read my scribbles or suffer through my unrefined musings. So once I've spent some time thinking thoughts, I have to figure out how to organize them. To structure them. To narrate them.

That's what today's episode is all about. Whether or not you're a writer, content creator, or other media maker, I know that thinking thoughts and figuring out how to share them is important to you—and essential to your work.

Footnotes:

• Read the essay version of this episode.
• The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han
• Related: "Temporal Bandwidth" by Tara McMullin (EP 489)
• Related: "An Ode to Exceedingly Complex Systems" by Tara McMullin (EP 480)

NEW: The Return of Summer Seminar

Summer Seminar is an intellectual oasis for creative thinkers and curious adventurers.

It combines speculative fiction, big questions, and practical application. For Summer 2025, we’re reading Sofia Samatar’s critically acclaimed novella The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain.

We’ll pair it with adventures in systems thinking and cultural analysis. And we’ll apply what we discover by reflecting on the systems we create and encounter in our own lives and work.

Summer Seminar is designed to fit into any schedule and explores critical thinking skills you can apply to any goal or challenge.

To learn more, visit whatworks.fyi/summer

(Today's episode is a significant revision of a piece I previously wrote for premium subscribers in April 2024.)

• (00:00) - EP 494: How Structure Transforms Ideas
• (22:37) - Credits

"No one is ever completely safe from the critical gaze of a culture steeped in the makeover ethos." —Micki McGee

I have a theory that you can measure the decline of any social media platform by the time it takes for its feed to become a firehose of unsolicited advice. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are all sludge piles of advice now, but it took them years to devolve. TikTok took maybe 18 months. Substack Notes? Like 3 months. Threads? Instant.

Most of us (I think) can agree that the vapid posturing that occurs through posting advice on social media makes a platform less enjoyable. I don't open one of these apps in the hopes that I'll learn the one weird trick that can turn my frown upside down or give me six-pack abs. What we once loved about these platforms is how people shared their everyday descriptions of life, love, family, and curiosity. But much of that mutual exchange of experience has been ceded to the commercial interest of advice.

After all, we love advice. We also hate advice. We love it when someone can tell us what we should do next. And we also hate being told what we should do next. So what gives? Today, a description of why that is. But first, things are going to get awkward.

Footnotes:

• Read the written version of this episode.
• Awkwardness: A Theory by Alexandra Plakias
• "Signs of social awkwardness and 15 ways to overcome it" via BetterUp
• Self-Help, Inc by Micki McGee
• Self-Help, LLC - a special What Works series exploring the business and culture of self-help

• (00:00) - EP 493: Why We Just Can't Quit Advice Culture
• (19:44) - Credits

Intractable challenges are often the result of a lack of imagination. That is, our solutions are constrained by existing systems and structures that likely created the problem in the first place. To dream up novel solutions that allow us to realize higher values, we need to build structures that enable and extend our imaginations.

And sure, I'm talking about macroeconomic, climate, and political challenges.

But I'm also talking about our day-to-day work and family lives.

Footnotes:

• Read the written version of this episode.
• "The WPA Federal Music Project in New Mexico" by Charles Cutter
• "The New Mexico Federal Music Project: Embodying the Regional Spirit of Roosevelt's New Deal" by Audra Bellmore and Amy S. Jackson
• Professor YouYoung Kang speaks about the Federal Music Project at Scripps College (YouTube)
• "Transcript: Mark Zuckerberg Announces Major Changes to Meta's Content Moderation Policies and Operations" by Justin Hendrix, TechPolicy.Press
• "Values Aren't Chains; They Are Wings" by Tara McMullin

Find more episodes and essays at whatworks.fyi.

Many of us (most?) have an inner voice that loves to remind us that "If there's time to lean, there's time to clean" or that "Coffee is for closers." We nag ourselves about being more productive, working more efficiently, or hustling for more money. Even if we value rest, care, and comfort, that voice can be hard to ignore.

Well, meet your Tiny Capitalist. Or rather, Tiny Capitalists: the Tiny Puritan, Tiny Manager, and Tiny Entrepreneur. Understanding the role they play helps us make better decisions about how we navigate the systems we exist in.

Footnotes:

• Read the essay version of this episode
• "Is There a Tiny Puritan Living In Your Head? Tell Him to Get Lost." by Joy Marie Clarkson
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
• The New Spirit of Capitalism by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello
• "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards
• Clips from The Office, Severance, Office Space, Parks and Recreation

• (00:00) - Why Your Inner Critic Sounds Like a Bad Boss
• (17:24) - Credits