You can't lead a team through a hard moment if you can't manage yourself first. That's the core of Dr. Becky Kennedy's work. The clinical psychologist and founder of Good Inside built a global movement teaching parents how to navigate the hardest moments with their kids. It turns out those same skills are exactly what the modern workplace needs. This week, Dr. Becky joins Jessi in the studio to translate her parenting playbook for managers, leaders, and anyone who's ever had to deliver hard news, hold a line they didn't fully believe in, or hold it together when someone on their team fell apart. 

In this episode, Jessi and Dr. Becky discuss:

This conversation was originally recorded live and broadcast to LinkedIn Premium members. Premium members can watch the extended version here.

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Most of us think of negotiation as something reserved for high-stakes boardrooms—or even hostage situations. But Christopher Voss, former FBI lead hostage negotiator and bestselling author of Never Split the Difference, says negotiation is everywhere: in salary talks, in team meetings, even in conversations with your kids. 

In this episode from the Hello Monday archives, Jessi Hempel sits down with Chris to explore how we can all become better negotiators by focusing on empathy, collaboration, and trust. Drawing on decades of experience, Chris shares practical tools you can use to move conversations forward—whether you’re asking for a raise, dealing with a difficult boss, or navigating conflict at home.

Chris and Jessi discuss:

This episode was recorded live in-studio. For an extended, behind-the-scenes version, watch on LinkedIn Premium.

We tend to talk about AI and the future of work as a young person's game. Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, CEO of AARP, is here to challenge that notion. A physician turned healthcare executive turned nonprofit leader, she joins Jessi in the studio to talk about ageism, AI, and what it means to not just stay relevant, but to move ahead, in the second half of a working life. 

In this episode, Jessi and Dr. Minter-Jordan discuss:

This episode was originally recorded live and broadcast to LinkedIn Premium members. Premium members can watch the extended version here.

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“It’s not your fault.” This is the message Alissa Quart has spent over a decade trying to get people to believe when it comes to economic hardship. Right now, it feels harder than ever to embrace.

Alissa Quart is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the nonprofit Barbara Ehrenreich built after writing her groundbreaking exposé Nickel and Dimed. A journalist herself, Alissa is the author of seven books, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America and Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. She's spent over a decade reporting on class, caregiving, and economic precarity.

In this episode, Jessi and Alissa discuss:

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We've built an economy that rewards destroying value. Eric Ries wants to know how we got here, and whether we can build our way out.

Eric wrote The Lean Startup in 2011 and helped define a generation of entrepreneurs. Since then, he's watched promising, mission-driven companies get hollowed out, and he thinks he knows exactly why. His new book, Incorruptible: How Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great, is his attempt to name what's happening, explain how we got here, and lay out a blueprint for building something better. 

In this episode, Jessi and Eric discuss:

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Joanna Stern spent a year using AI to do (almost) everything: write her emails, analyze  her medical records, text her wife, drive her around, and even fold her laundry. The result is her new book, I Am Not a Robot, which documents what she learned testing AI as a journalist, a parent, and a newly independent founder.

Joanna spent over a decade as a tech reporter at The Wall Street Journal before leaving to launch her own media outlet, New Things. She brought the same approach that's defined her career — hands-on, consumer-first testing of the technology itself — to her year-long experiment in living with AI.What she found was more nuanced than the hype: some of it works, some of it really doesn't, and some of it needs guardrails.

In this episode, Jessi and Joanna discuss:

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Comedy writer Jenny Hagel has six Emmy nominations. The other week, she wrote 20 jokes. One made it to television. She doesn’t see this as failure, though. It’s the nature of the job. And it might offer the most useful career lesson you'll hear all year.

Jenny is a writer on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where she also regularly appears on camera in the popular segment Jokes Seth Can’t Tell. She is also the author of a new book of essays called Advice No One Asked For. In this episode, Jessi Hempel sits down with Jenny to talk about the arc of her non-traditional career, and what it actually takes to keep going in the face of failure.

In this episode, Jessi and Jenny discuss:

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Lesbian bars aren’t just nightlife, they’re evolving spaces of community and chosen family, and they have a special place in Jessi Hempel’s heart. On this bonus episode, Jessi sits down with one of Hello Monday’s own producers,  Rachel Karp, to talk about her new book The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America's Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces. 

Rachel’s journey started as a passion project: a documentary podcast in which the Cruising podcast team went on a road trip to visit every lesbian bar in the US. Their goal was to tell the history of lesbian bars and stories of the people who go to them. Now, those stories– and the lessons we can learn from them about how to create real-life community spaces–are in a book.

In this episode:

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We're trained to climb ladders and chase titles, but what if the real metric of career success was the positive impact you have on the world? In this episode from the Hello Monday archives, host Jessi Hempel sits down with Rutger Bregman to explore moral ambition—a framework for building a career based on what positive impact you can have on the world. 

Rutger's groundbreaking book, Moral Ambition: How to Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference, is a wake-up call for anyone who's felt something was missing from their work. Whether you're early in your career, questioning your path, or rebuilding after a layoff, this conversation offers a practical roadmap for pivoting toward meaningful work.

In this episode, Jessi and Rutger explore:

This episode is a call to action for anyone who wants to do good—and do it well.

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Rituals work. They help us make meaning, process transition, and connect with each other. That’s why we’ve been doing them for more than 300,000 years. So why, in this century, have we largely abandoned them? 

This week, bestselling author, repeat Hello Monday guest, and longtime friend Bruce Feiler joins us in the studio to talk about his new book, A Time to Gather: How Ritual Created the World and How It Can Save Us. Bruce traveled to 16 countries on six continents to explore why ritual matters and identify how we can bring it back into our everyday lives.

In this episode:

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