Digiday Media's WorkLife is proud to present season three of The Return, a podcast about the modern workforce, with this season focused on middle management.

Last season, we heard what it’s like for Gen Z to enter the workforce for the first time in a post-pandemic world. We highlighted themes like why values are so important to Gen Zers, whether or not they are loyal to their employers, how they use TikTok for career advice, what it means to be a young professional who is a boss to older workers, and so much more.

This time, we’re hearing from the population of workers that some argue is the backbone of a successfully-run organization: middle management. They are the ones who are navigating those RTO mandates, welcoming a new generation of workers that have a different approach than those who came before them, the rise of artificial intelligence – the list goes on.

In season three of The Return, we speak to middle managers themselves to hear beyond their everyday stresses of the job, but what they need to guarantee everyone they manage has what they need to be the best at what they do. C-suite, listen up because they need your help too.

We dive into how middle management stress is a decades-long issue (there are New York Times headlines dating back to 1971), how the wrong people are being chosen to be managers which is leading to the rise of “accidental managers,” what it’s like to have hard conversations and having to be a therapist at times, where people are finding support as a middle manager, and how AI is impacting the job of a middle manager.

With a Q+A format, you will hear in-depth conversations with folks including Colette Stallbaumer, Microsoft’s general manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work Marketing, Rob Pierre, former CEO of advertising services platform Jellyfish, and Emily Field, partner at McKinsey & Company who co-authored “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work,” to name a few.

Season three of The Return is hosted by Cloey Callahan, senior reporter at Digiday Media’s WorkLife, and produced by Digiday Media’s audio producer Sara Patterson.

Subscribe to the WorkLife podcast now on Apple Podcasts – or wherever you get your podcasts – to hear the first episode on Tuesday, April 23.

Where there is play, there is usually work, too. The metaverse is no exception.

Meta’s first virtual reality tool under its Horizon metaverse brand was Horizon Workrooms, a tool that allows VR headset users to virtually sit alongside each other inside a metaversal office, taking meetings as if face-to-face. Given the sheer amount of work already taking place inside the metaverse, it’s no surprise that Meta decided to use coworking as its springboard into the virtual world.

Last week’s episode of Is This The Metaverse broke down how marketers are already spending millions of dollars developing branded experiences — essentially immersive ads — inside metaverse platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite. These ads don’t simply appear out of thin air; just like any other creative aspect of the advertising business, somebody needs to build them.

In the sixth episode of Is This The Metaverse? hosts Alexander Lee and Sara Patterson explore the future of work in the metaverse. They meet with the builders of virtual offices and the creators of VR training exercises — and learn how some people are already making millions of dollars designing and selling items inside Roblox. The metaverse is an entire virtual society, and that society includes plenty of labor.

The metaverse is built to sell ads.

It's not a secret. In recent years, executives at companies like Meta and Roblox have thrown millions of dollars into their goal of building an immersive virtual world. Eventually, they must figure out a return on that investment — and, like any new media channel, advertising looks to be the most promising way to do that.

It all started with video games. For years now, games like FIFA and NBA 2K have seamlessly integrated brands into their in-game environments in a way that doesn't even register as advertising to most players. More recently, platforms like Horizon and Roblox have taken virtual ads a step further, building out custom-branded digital stores and even programmatic ads in metaverse environments.

In the fifth episode of Is This The Metaverse?, hosts Alexander Lee and Sara Patterson discuss the inevitability of advertising in the metaverse, speaking to some of the advertising and tech executives behind the effort to convert users' virtual eyeballs into tangible revenue. Metaverse builders are trying to build a new virtual world — and, like every aspect of the physical world, brands are jockeying to be part of it.

NFT’s might be dead, but digital fashion to wear in the metaverse is only becoming more important. 

Similarly to the music industry’s halt on live events during the pandemic, the fashion industry also underwent a shift to online worlds as catwalk shows and presentations were cut. Interestingly, fashion has already been dipping its toe into virtual worlds and fashion with gaming collaborations with the likes of Final Fantasy and League of Legends pre-pandemic. 

However, it wasn’t until designers and brands were forced to reconsider their formats that virtual events – and more importantly – digital fashion took hold, and companies like The Fabricant and DressX funneled interest into wearing it. Then the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), took place March 24-27 2022 in Decentraland, and brands have been looking at ways that people can experience fashion in digital spaces ever since. 

In episode four of the Is This The Metaverse? Alex hands over the reins to Zofia Zwiegliska, international fashion journalist at Glossy to talk about fashion in the metaverse. Zofia and Sara explore Metaverse Fashion Week together, and ask fashion experts, designers and those bridging physical and digital fashion production about what the metaverse means to them and their work. 

In April 2020, Travis Scott’s virtual “Fortnite” concert was millions of people’s first exposure to the concept of the metaverse. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic; desperate for any form of live entertainment, users flocked to the popular first-person shooter game in droves to watch a pre-recorded virtual Scott perform alongside far-out, fantasy-inspired visuals.

The success of Scott’s virtual concert inspired scores of other popular musicians ranging from Justin Bieber to Ariana Grande to perform their own virtual shows, both in “Fortnite” and beyond. But as pandemic restrictions lift and music fans return to in-person shows, the jury is out on whether virtual concerts will stick around.

In the third episode of Is This The Metaverse?, hosts Alexander Lee and Sara Patterson speak to a Roblox concert super-fan and interview a metaverse-native pop star to learn why — and how — live music is becoming one of the most compelling reasons for people to enter virtual worlds. Plus: Sara finally enters the metaverse herself.

The idea of an immersive virtual world might come off as more scary than exciting. It evokes a future not unlike that of the movie “Wall-E” — in which humans transform into sedentary creatures, satisfied more by their virtual entertainments than the physical world around them.

But for some users of the metaverse, merging the physical with the virtual is more or less the entire point. In growing numbers, athletes from the physical world are taking to platforms such as Zwift and VRChat to exercise with each other inside virtual spaces, bringing the human co-experience of the metaverse into the fitness world.

In the second episode of Is This The Metaverse?, hosts Alexander Lee and Sara Patterson speak to the creators of virtual fitness platform Zwift — who say that their product is certainly part of the metaverse — and sit in on a VR gym class populated by fantasy-inspired dragons and life-sized otters.

It's an NFT collection. An idea from a sci-fi novel. The next evolution of the internet. A product invented by Mark Zuckerberg. A video game.

If you've been conscious at any point between 2021 and today, you've probably heard of the "metaverse," and the many ways in which it will disrupt the very fabric of society. Two years into the hype, though, metaverse experts and laymen alike remain split about what exactly it is.

In Digiday's Is This The Metaverse? podcast, journalists Alexander Lee and Sara Patterson break down the many different ways people are translating their physical lives into virtual worlds — and the ways brands and platforms are looking to make money from all this activity. But before they can define whether those activities are truly part of the metaverse, they need to come up with a practical definition for the term.

In the first episode of Is This The Metaverse? Lee and Patterson speak to metaverse builders, metaverse skeptics and metaverse power-users to figure out what people really mean when they talk about the metaverse.