It's time to confront one of life's most certain yet most avoided topics: the end of life. While death eventually greets us all, most of us skirt around the topic and what it means for us and our loved ones. In this illuminating conversation, we aim to demystify this phase of life and empower you to approach it with a sense of preparedness and dignity.

Our guest, Shoshana Berger, serves as the Global Editorial Director at Ideo and brings a unique expertise to the table. She's worked on transformative projects with Zen Hospice to improve end-of-life experiences and is also the co-author of the pivotal book 'A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death' with Dr. BJ Miller.

Together, we'll explore why people are so hesitant to talk about facing death, arm caregivers with essential knowledge for this stage, and discuss how to articulate your own wishes for this profound chapter of life.

Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/36

In the bestselling book Radical Candor, author Kim Scott laid out a simple framework for how to create, foster, and thrive in a culture that effectively gives and receives feedback—direct, clear, concise, and actionable. However, when you write a book about feedback, well, you get a lot of feedback, and indeed she did. Rather than ignoring or hiding from it, however, Kim decided to do the hard work of internalizing and processing it with the result being her latest book, Just Work. We had the pleasure of talking with Kim about just work, as well as hearing about the personal journey and experiences that motivated her to write it.

Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/35

Think your job is stressful? Try being an emergency response physician at the Mayo Clinic, one of the top hospitals in the US that sees some of the most extreme emergencies. Dr Richard Winters has been responding under pressure in chaotic situations for a long time, and it’s taught him valuable lessons about decision making and leadership.

In his book, You're the Leader. Now What?, Richard distills his knowledge into simple frameworks and practical tactics that can help us lead colleagues and communities with confidence and make decisions with clarity.

Show notes and transcript: http://reconsidering.org/episodes/34

An apology can mend old wounds, reunite people, and heal communities. Despite the potential power it can have, a good apology is hard to find. There's a simple structure to a good apology we should all have memorized along with the traits of a bad apology that will only lead us into pain and misery.

In this episode, we're going to the apology experts for guidance, Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy, authors of the book “Sorry Sorry Sorry: The Case for a good apology” and founders of SorryWatch.com. Marjorie and Susan teach us how to make a good apology and give examples of bad ones. Learning this essential skill will help you preserve and strengthen the most consequential relationships in your life. What could be more important?

Like it or not, change is inevitable. Your career, relationships, body, health, mood are all in constant motion. We can fight it but it’s unproductive and leads to suffering.

Our pal Brad Stulberg is back on the show to help us look at change differently. His new book Master of Change: How To Excel When Everything Is Changing - Including You is full of deeply researched wisdom from science and philosophy that will help you become more resilient and adaptable.

Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/32

There’s a point in our lives when we’re told it’s time to grow up and stop playing games. To move away from the trivial pursuits of childhood and get serious about how we spend our time. But what if that advice is wrong? What if games are actually one of the best ways to spend our time and one of our best opportunities to learn about our world and even ourselves?

Why are games so embedded in the human experience and how should we think about them as part of our own lives? That’s the topic of our discussion today with author Oliver Roeder.

Oliver is a senior data journalist at the Financial Times who has also written for the Wall Street Journal, FiveThirtyEight, and the Economist. He is also the author of “Seven Games” – a book about the history and culture of seven of the most popular games in the world today: checkers, chess, go, backgammon, poker, scrabble, and bridge.

Show notes, a transcript, and links from this episode are at: http://reconsidering.org/episodes/31

Friendship is something that’s easy to take for granted. Meeting friends in our early years might have come easy but as we age friends move away, people couple off, careers and families start and suddenly making friends isn’t as easy as it used to be.

As many studies have shown, if you want to live a longer, more fulfilling life you’ll need to invest in friendships now.

In this episode we speak with friendship expert and author of We should get together: The secret to cultivating friendships, Kat Vellos. Kat shares practical guidance to jumpstart and strengthen your friendships.

Show notes, a transcript, and links from this episode are at: http://reconsidering.org/episodes/30

Are you one of those people who thrives off a check-list? It feels satisfying to complete things, but the satisfaction only lasts for a fleeting moment as a cleared check-list invites more tasks. It's an exhausting treadmill that inevitably gives rise to guilt and shame when we can't keep up.

Madeleine Dore, author of “I Didn’t Do the Thing Today; letting go of productivity guilt” joins us to talk about giving yourself permission to let go to focus on what really matters. We’ll talk about the difference between happiness and satisfaction, burnout and how to spot it, and how to create your own user manual so we can live a more energized and rewarding life that’s tailored just for us.

Show notes and links for this episode are at http://reconsidering.org/episodes/29

A few years ago, most of us were still heading into the office five days a week. But the pandemic changed the workplace dramatically. Most of us now work from home or are working in a hybrid environment, which has introduced challanges in our both our personal and professional lives. How do we navigate these changes?

Annie Jarvis, Vice President of Product at Indeed, joins us to talk about the future of remote work, what she’s seen working at Indeed during the pandemic, and her experiences as a leader working in a remote environment.

Show notes and links from this show: http://reconsidering.org/episodes/28

Mentorship can be a powerful force that improves life but it's often hard to come by. Most of us struggle to ask, “will you be my mentor” and may not even know what kind of support or commitment we're asking for.

Felix Lee, founder of a thriving community of mentors and mentees called ADP List, saw a lot of people losing their jobs and looking for guidance and support during the pandemic. He also recognized that the crisis had caused people to raise their hand to support those in need. At just 25 years-old, Felix founded an organization that's connecting mentors and mentees in the design and technology industry around the world and chaning the trajectory of thousands of careers.

In this episode, Felix Lee shares the power of being a mentor, the rewards of receiving mentorship and how people can come together to enrich and improve their lives.

This episode is brought to you by Indeed Design (http://indeed.design), a resource for designers, researchers, and all UX professionals who do design work that matters.

Show notes and links: http://reconsidering.org/episodes/27