Why do Americans work so much - more than their counterparts in almost every other developed country - and with the pandemic sparking a national crisis of purpose, how can we redefine our work/life balance to be healthier?

Americans spend more than 90,000 hours working over a lifetime - 10% more than our Canadian neighbors and 25% more than workers in Germany. How did this happen, why did our national assumptions and beliefs around work crash during the pandemic and what can we do to create a different work/life balance that's healthier? In our second episode of the season, we dive into America's history to understand how this work ethic emerged and why it is suddenly undergoing unprecedented change. From the Puritans to Horatio Alger, we navigate the cultural phenomena leading us to modern day. We also examine the decline in economic mobility that challenged this national mindset, and how we can now build different yet viable relationships with work. Guests are David Blustein, Boston University; Jared Rubin, Chapman University; and Aaron Benanav, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin.

What's the future of work if you're a college grad about to embark on a 60-year career? How to navigate the “big messy process” of charting a future in an uncertain world and the unique program that offers a strategic approach for all ages. 

Longer lives means longer careers. The second season of Century Lives looks at the arc of the new work lifespan and how to make it better. In the new season's first episode, we’ll hear students' thinking about and planning for their future careers as they consider the shifting landscape of work and the likelihood of an unprecedented number of years in the workforce. We explore the idea behind Bill Burnett’s innovative Stanford course Design Your Life, which encourages design thinking as a tool to approach career questions and viable for any age, particularly in periods of transition and uncertainty.

In the final installment of our four-episode bonus series, we head to Germany to get a glimpse of America’s demographic future. Germany is now one of a small number of “super-aged” societies in which more than 20% of the population is 65 and older, but many other countries, including the US, are expected to join the ranks of the super-aged by the end of this decade. Many years ago, Germany recognized the coming “demographic time bomb” and its implications for its labor force. Over the last quarter century, both the national government and many companies, such as BMW, have retooled to better support a more age diverse workforce. To find out more about Germany’s efforts to support older workers, we spoke with Ulrich Walwei, vice director of Germany’s Institute for Employment Research, and with Hannes Zacher, chair for work and organizational psychology at Leipzig University. Together, they lay out a road map for how the United States might better address its increasing problems with losing older, experienced workers from the workforce.

The math is unavoidable: an aging country needs to attract, support, and retain aging workers. But burdened by workplace ageism and an inconsistent response to the Covid criss, the U.S. is losing much needed older workers at a record pace. In the third installment of our four-episode bonus series, we tackle this problem head-on by looking at Singapore’s strategy for providing pathways for longer careers. We speak with Aubeck Kam, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Manpower in Singapore, about the country's reemployment system. We also talk to Kung Teong Wah, cluster general manager at two Singapore luxury hotels, about the details of employing and retaining older workers.

As the pandemic recedes, a battle is slowly brewing in American companies: bosses want their employees back in person, and workers are resisting a return to the office. Is that dynamic happening in other countries? Not in Finland, a country that has long fostered a highly flexible work culture. In the second installment of our four-episode bonus series, we speak with Hertta Vuorenmaa, Research Director for the Future of Work program at Aalto University, and Tuomas Syrjanen, co-founder of the Finland-based digital innovation company Futurice, in an effort to discover the connection between Finland’s working culture and its status as the happiest nation on earth.

2021 may be remembered as the year of the Great Resignation, when almost 48 million Americans left their jobs. The Great Resignation is not solely an American phenomenon, but while the pandemic hit every country, the Great Resignation did not. We wanted to find out why not. 

Our second season is premiering on May 4th, but every two weeks until then we will be releasing a bonus episode. During this four-episode arc, we will travel around the world to explore different approaches to work and different reactions to the pandemic. First up is Iceland, home of glaciers, the Northern Lights, and the first widely embraced shortened work week. Jack Kellam, co-author of the report “Going Public: Iceland’s Journey to a Shorter Working Week,” tells us about the impact of this change.

Ever heard of a 3-stage life? Chances are you’ve been seeking to live it: education in the first quarter of your life, then work for 40 years, and finally a blissful retirement. But Andrew Scott, an Economist at London Business School, says that’s likely not the model most of us will be using anymore. Welcome to the multi-stage life, where yes–you work for closer to 60 years–but you get more choices: pick from education, work and rest at any stage in your life, and have the flexibility to define what work means for you. 

After WWII, four-year college education became democratized and over the years the four-year degree has increasingly become the defining educational requirement for many careers.. But is a degree we’re meant to earn in our early 20s really equipped to set us up for life? In this episode we hear from Mitchell Stevens, a professor of Education at Stanford University, about the importance of lifelong learning in an era of longer career, and how higher education should be redefined to be more effective and more equitable. 

Before COVID, virtually all medicine in this country was practiced face-to-face, but the pandemic has upended, at least temporarily, where and how we interact with our doctors. Nirav Shah, a professor at Stanford Medicine, tells us how this change in practice could be the beginning of a healthcare revolution, one in which technology provides the basis for a preventative culture of medicine and one that provides broader and more equitable access to care.

In America, we’re taught to love our families, but not too much. For decades, we’ve held up the nuclear family as an idyllic model. But as we live longer, could our extended families hold the secret to maintaining our quality of life? Donna Butts, Executive Director of Generations United tells us why that might be the way of the future… and even of the present.