Work is Weird Now

What happens when work stops being about having a person in a seat and starts being about delivering an outcome? This week, we’re joined by Giselle Gonzales , founder of Equal Reach , to explore a different way of thinking about how work is structured. Drawing on her experience connecting businesses with teams of refugee and local talent, Giselle has a unique view of the changing jobs market, from...

LinkedIn feels a bit weird right now. Reach is down, feeds are filling up with AI-generated content and even the people who have built careers on the platform are questioning whether the effort is still worth it. So we asked Ash Jones, founder of Great Influence and In Good Company, and one of the UK’s leading voices on personal brand. We talk about what LinkedIn is actually useful for now, why ge...

Graduate hiring is falling, the first rung of the career ladder is disappearing, and the deal many of us grew up with, work hard at school, get qualifications, go to university, get a good job, suddenly feels a lot less certain. So, what on earth are we supposed to tell our kids? Oliver Pickup, human work evolution storyteller, founder of Pickup Media and author of Go Flux Yourself , is back on th...

What Now? Series wrap-up Every so often, work asks you a question you didn't plan for. The family you imagined doesn't arrive. The country you live in changes. The job disappears. And you're left with the same two words: what now? In this solo episode, Alice and Dan wrap up the What Now? mini-series, bringing together what three very different conversations with Chloe Alana Williams, Christer Berg...

The third episode in our "What Now" mini-series, exploring the questions people are really asking themselves when the old rules of work and life no longer apply, tackles redundancy. This week's guest, Emy Cragoe, co-founder of Ori, a new platform rethinking how people understand themselves, navigate their careers, and communicate their value, makes the case for flipping the stigma around redundanc...

Continuing our "What Now" mini-series on the questions people are really asking themselves when the old rules of work and life no longer apply, this episode turns to place. This week's guest, Christer "Chris" Berggren, a Swedish senior project and production professional, community builder and advocate for location independent living now based in Bulgaria, has spent three decades proving that wher...

For generations, adulthood came with a promise: work hard, progress in your career, buy a house, start a family. This episode kicks off our new "What Now" mini-series, digging into the questions people are really asking themselves when the old rules no longer apply. Our first guest, strategist and writer Chloe Alana Williams, co-founder of 8th Day, describes the old promise as a three-legged stool...

Dan and Alice took an AI agent called Dinah to a conference at Meta's Kings Cross HQ — and let her challenge a room of 100 senior leaders live on stage. In this episode they unpack what happened, what surprised them, and what it actually feels like to work alongside AI. Then they hand the mic to Dinah herself.

What’s today’s best career advice? In this solo episode of Work is Weird Now, Alice Phillips and Dan Emery unpack the career advice that no longer fits the reality of modern work — from climbing the corporate ladder and staying loyal to one company, to following your passion at all costs. Instead, they explore what actually matters now: building T-shaped skills, learning continuously, creating opt...

In this episode of Work Is Weird Now , Dan and Alice sit down with Suze Cook to unpack what happens when the traditional career ladder no longer works for early career talent. From hidden internships and broken graduate pathways to project-based work, AI-native skills and social mobility, Suze shares why the future of early careers may look very different — and why businesses need to rethink how t...

Here’s a tighter podcast bio option that keeps her credibility and personality, while tying directly into the episode themes: Alex Issakova is an AI strategist, educator and founder helping businesses navigate the messy reality of generative AI. After 15 years working across tech, systems thinking and machine learning for Silicon Valley companies, she left corporate life to build her own business...

This week on Work Is Weird Now, we’re joined by Lizzie Penny and Alex Hirst, co-founders of Hoxby and The Workstyle Revolution, to unpack how work needs to evolve beyond industrial-age thinking. From the legacy of the 9–5 to the rise of digital, distributed work, we explore why organisations are struggling to balance autonomy with structure and what happens when people are given freedom without th...

She Shapes AI: Who gets to build the future? Alice and Dan recap their experience at the She Shapes AI Global Awards and Conference at the London School of Economics an event that didn’t just celebrate innovation, but challenged who gets to shape it. The day opened with a bold Oxford-style debate asking whether AI will lead to an era of abundance and human flourishing. Arguing the opposition, Alic...

Can AI education help level the playing field? This week on Work Is Weird Now , we’re joined by Anna Cejudo, co-CEO and co-founder of Founderz, to explore one of the most important questions in the age of AI: who actually gets to benefit? Anna unpacks why traditional education models are struggling to keep up — caught between exclusivity at one end and passive, disconnected online learning at the...

Can AI open doors to hidden candidates? This week on Work Is Weird Now , we’re joined by Hannah Töpler , CEO of Intrare and finalist in the She Shapes AI Awards (Future of Work category). While companies struggle to fill frontline roles, millions of capable people remain locked out of formal employment — including refugees, migrants, single parents, LGBTQ+ candidates and older workers. Hannah is b...

Can AI make pay fairer? Most companies know they have a gender pay gap. Very few measure it properly. In this episode of Work Is Weird Now , Alice Phillips and Dan Emery speak with Barbara Stolorz , co-founder of Levelly AI and a finalist in the She Shapes AI Awards . Barbara shares how her own experience returning from maternity leave and discovering her salary increases had simply been skipped l...

In this episode of Work Is Weird Now Podcast, Alice and Dan sit down with Paul Vezelis, CEO of Traxlo, to explore how pay is evolving as work becomes more fragmented, flexible and outcome-driven. Paul challenges one of the most embedded assumptions in modern employment: that time is the right unit of value. Instead of paying for hours, Traxlo breaks retail work into measurable tasks and pays peopl...

Mid-Season Review: Portfolio Careers, AI Anxiety & What’s Next In this mid-season review of the Work Is Weird Now podcast, hosts Alice & Dan reflect on season five, one year of WIWN, and the ideas that keep resurfacing in the future of work conversation. From Dan’s early “accidental” portfolio career (four-star McDonald’s badge included) to interviewing at Sainsbury’s after leaving corpora...

In this episode of Work Is Weird Now , we’re joined by Deborah Cohen , journalist, doctor and author of the new book Bad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked Our Health . We explore why trust in institutions is eroding and why people are increasingly turning to influencers, algorithms and online narratives over qualified experts. Drawing on examples from healthcare, leadership and workplace cultur...

Do work clothes still matter? In this episode of the Work is Weird Now Podcast , we’re joined by Julietta Dexter , Founder of The Communication Store and Chair of Smart Works , the charity supporting unemployed women with coaching, clothing, and confidence to secure work. The question sounds simple, but it opens up something much bigger: Do work clothes still matter? Julietta’s answer is a clear y...

What if the safest career move right now is… refusing to be one thing? In this episode, Alice Phillips and Dan Emery are joined by Charlie Rogers , founder of Undefinable Life Design and author of a new book launching this March. Charlie introduces the idea of the “undefinable” — people whose working lives don’t fit neatly into a single job title, industry, or identity. Not because they’re unfocus...

Are memes the new language of work? Memes. GIFs. Reels. The things we send without thinking and yet somehow they’ve become one of the clearest ways we communicate how work actually feels. In this episode of Work Is Weird Now , we’re joined by Martin Kevill , Creative Director at Tangerine Communications , to explore a deceptively big question: Are memes the new language of work? We unpack how meme...

How will work be weird in 2026? | Live episode We’re back — and for the first time ever, Work Is Weird Now went live on LinkedIn. In this episode, we’re joined by award-winning journalist and future-of-work commentator Oliver Pickup to unpack the seven big shifts shaping how work will feel in 2026. From AI readiness gaps and the collapse of the graduate pipeline, to workplace loneliness, resenteei...

Season 4 is a wrap and this episode is our 2025 Work Mixtape. Across nine episodes, this year quietly and sometimes loudly rewired how we think about work, careers, identity and contribution. From portfolio lives over single job titles, to contribution over credentials, this wrap-up pulls together the ideas, moments and shifts that stayed with us most. We revisit guests who changed how we show up,...

This episode features Ben Legg — former Google Europe COO and co-founder of The Portfolio Collective — as we dive into why portfolio careers are becoming the new normal. Ben explains the shift from single-employer dependence to earning through a mix of consulting, fractional roles, creative projects and more. We unpack the four types of portfolio professionals, the mindset shift toward life design...