In this episode of the Tepper Reads podcast, Accelerate Leadership Center Academic Program Managers Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner discuss the character of Mark in Weike Wang's Joan is Okay. Topics covered include: how exposure to diversity and different cultures increases self-awareness and helps you grow as a person, the Golden Rule v. the Platinum Rule, and more.

In the first of two podcasts this fall about Weike Wang's Joan is Okay, Academic Program Managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, discuss how people don't always lead or influence in the same way, learning to empathize with characters you don't like, and the paradox of what makes an American.

In the final podcast of the Spring 2022 Tepper Reads project, Academic Program Managers in Tepper's Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, continue their conversation about Sanjena Sathian's Gold Diggers. In this episode they talk about history and the importance of knowing where you come from, whose stories are told and whose are erased and why, and the first rule of leadership: "It's not about you."

Our discussion of Sanjena Sathian's Gold Diggers continues in the second podcast of the Spring 2022 season. Academic Program Managers in the Tepper School of Business' Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, talk about metonymy, how it's different from metaphor, and how it helps us make sense of the world around us. Also discussed is America's penchant for quantity over quality, how gold functions in the novel and in real life, and different ways of being.

In the first episode of the spring 2022 podcast season, academic program managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, discuss why Gold Diggers is the Tepper Reads pick for this spring. In the discusssion they touch upon how the novel helps one understand the motivations of others, relatability vs. empathy, upending stereotypes, the joy of reading the novel, and much more.

In the second and final episode of the Fall 2021 Tepper Reads podcast we speak with Leanne Meyer, Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center in Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business about Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown. Leanne talks about her immigrant experience, the notion of "Be more," the model minority myth, John Denver, and the meaning of "home."

In the first episode of the Tepper Reads podcast for fall 2021, Accelerate Leadership Center program managers, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, talk about the genre mashups of Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, what white space on a page means, how something can be both funny and important, and why this book works so well for building empathy.

It's our final podcast of the Spring 2021 Tepper Reads season, and it's a great one. For our final podcast we talk with Leanne Meyer, Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center at Tepper, about what she's reading, leadership and identity development, and how it relates to The Vanishing Half, and a whole lot more. 

In this episode, Accelerate lead for Tepper Reads, Matthew Stewart, talks with Rhonda Fischer, Tepper's Chief Operating Officer, about colorism, the depth of Stella's deception, why understanding passing is important to understanding the racial landscape of America today, and so much more.

In this episode, Accelerate lead for Tepper Reads, Matthew Stewart, speaks with CMU School of English professor, Jane McCafferty about being seen vs. being unseen, the roles we play in families and society, the costs associated with changing your identity, imposter syndrome, and what all of this has to do with The Vanishing Half.