A jetpack inventor rejects his position as an ivory-towered executive to stay grounded as an entrepreneur. A Jamaican-American chess player becomes the first black international grandmaster in history. This week, stories of childhood dreams and the realities of rising through the ranks.

Reach for the Stars

Behind every working human, there’s a story. Work in Progress is a new show about the meaning and identity we find in work. Each week, hear stories of personal ambition and debilitating insecurities, great successes and abject failures, the plans we make and the luck that…happens. Hosted by Dan Misener, produced by Slack. Follow along @slackstories or slack.com/podcast

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A reporter does her first remote live radio broadcast from inside a block of ice, a celebrity impersonator's first international trip teaches her what it really means to be “Big in Japan”, and a Japanese translator leaves her family for the first time only to get shipwrecked on a movie set shot in the Antarctic. 

For our final episode of the season, we hear the origin stories behind of some of the strangest, and yet most formative, work experiences people have had in their lives. We go back to where it all starts: the beginning.

Beginnings

The owner of a vintage retail store recalls how she made a career out of the eclectic clothing in her closet, and a doctor grapples with his community’s vehement protests against his plans to open a medical cannabis dispensary. In this episode, two stories of peace, love, drugs, and counterculture in '60s San Francisco.

Age of Aquarius

An environmentalist burns the midnight oil volunteering to preserve decades of climate change data amid a major government clampdown, and a Syrian medical student learns how his family’s chocolate-making business can equally be a cure for heartbreak. This week, stories about survival and the lengths people go to preserve a life’s work.

From the Ground Up

An enterprising retiree becomes a bustling cafés' new favorite server, and a former Wall Street banker finds renewed inspiration after accepting a summer internship with a group of college students. This week, stories of people who have proved that it’s never too late to find professional, and personal, fulfillment.

The Next Act

Meet three New York Times machinists who’ve helped print the paper for the last 30 years and an investigative reporter who waged war on mayoral misconduct from the front page of the Toronto Star. This week, stories of people whose lives (and careers) have been indelibly marked by the business of getting the story right.

Reach for the Stars

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