Across The Bar Podcast

This is our Super Bowl. Jensen Huang is the leather-jacketed founder of Nvidia, a trillion-dollar company, and his keynotes can move the market. On Sunday he told his staff he'd been unfaithful to his wife. That came after reports tied him to Alice Huang, an executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed, whom US intelligence reportedly believes was working for Beijing. Ten days earlier, he'd called their...

We recorded this one the morning after, and yes, Laura brought champagne. Voters sent a message on Tuesday, and this week we get into what it actually means for the people who still have to show up to work on Wednesday. Political strategist, lawyer, and author Maya Rupert ( The Real Ones ) joins us, along with her 18-year-old cat Cuomo, whose name has aged in interesting ways. Maya breaks down the...

Microsoft offers 60,000 employees a buyout, and Weil Gotshal shuts down after more than 90 years. Peter and Laura get into what buyouts really pay, how a powerhouse law firm collapses, and the St. Louis company that has never laid anyone off. Also this week: Anthropic’s H-1B problem, Marissa Mayer’s AI startup Dazzle, Hollywood’s vanishing women executives, and why young chefs are skipping their d...

Peter spotted Midtown office workers waiting half an hour for frozen yogurt at 3 p.m. on a weekday, and he has thoughts. Laura thinks it might be the new dating scene. That’s just the warm-up. This week, a listening device allegedly found taped to a TV in an OpenAI conference room kicks off a conversation about how far corporate espionage has gone: foreign operatives landing remote jobs, honey tra...

A McKinsey partner went on LinkedIn to announce that the “glass cliff” isn’t real. He kept his job and lost his leadership role. He’ll also have that post as his top Google result for the rest of his life. Peter and Laura explain why LinkedIn is the one platform where your hot takes come with your employer’s logo attached. They also suggest what he should have done, which was host the authors for...

Remember when AI agents were supposed to take work off your plate? Journalist Laura Brounstein admits that she gives hers a performance review at least once a week (“we’ve talked about this, only use these sources”), while Attorney Peter Rahbar remains proudly agent-free and firmly on the cautious end of the spectrum. Together they get into why so many people who handed work to bots ended up promo...

Laura Brounstein is back, it's her birthday, and she brought a prop: an iced matcha, in honor of the hottest workplace debate on TikTok. Is walking into a job interview holding an iced coffee a harmless habit or a dealbreaker? Co-Host Peter Rahbar has an opinion, even if it might be an "old guy take." Laura brings receipts from her Anna Wintour interview. Peter and Laura also discuss how tech bros...

This week on Across the Bar, guest co-host Liz Baker Plosser is back from a week embedded in the international sauna scene, and she and Peter have plenty to say about the people in charge. They start with the White House pulling press credentials from CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. Peter explains why that fight will almost certainly be lost in court and why the real goal may be profit, not just payback...

Liz Baker Plosser is back in the co-host seat this week and we brought in Adam Rapoport to talk about the do's and don'ts of office lunches. Bring your own bowl. Clean the dishes. Do not, under any circumstances, microwave fish or crack a hard-boiled egg within smelling distance of another human. Adam's got the full rulebook, and Peter's ready to write it into every employee handbook in America. T...

This week, Peter and guest co-host Liz Baker Plosser are back from summer and diving straight into the work issues confronting everyone as they return to the office.  They start with a reader comment that hit a nerve: workplace acronyms and AI-speak have gotten so bad people are starting to sound like robots in their own performance reviews. Peter gives his advice on how AI should (and shouldn't)...

Should employers be covering menopause benefits? Peter and guest co-host Liz Plosser (Best Case Scenario) take on a listener's question this week — and it opens up a bigger conversation about the legal tightrope employers walk when choosing employee benefits, plus the real fear a lot of women have about whether even asking for support quietly marks them as a liability. Also, Liz's tips on how to s...

Summer's basically over, and everyone's dealing with it differently — some people are faking Wi-Fi outages to steal one more day off, while Peter's out here treating a plane's spotty signal as a built-in excuse to actually get work done. That tension — who owes their employer visibility into their time, and who's allowed to go quiet — ends up running through the whole episode. It's there in the co...

Laura is on a well-earned summer break, so Peter's joined by special guest co-host Liz Plosser, former editor-in-chief of Women's Health and the voice behind the wellness Substack Best Case Scenario. First up, the GLP-1 conversation nobody knows how to have at work — commenting on a colleague's weight loss feels harmless until it isn't, and HR is starting to notice. Then, the reader question of th...

Peter's joining from Sardinia this week, which means the vibe is loose but the topics are not. First up: Gen-Z parents have entered the chat at work, showing up to job interviews and calling managers to contest their kid's firing. Peter and Laura's rule is simple — unless your child is in a literal coma, hang up the phone. From there, we turn to HR, a department that's had a rough couple of years...

A Netflix production exec named is suing after getting fired following a corporate retreat where he disclosed medically supervised ketamine treatment for depression during a trust exercise — and also, per Netflix, drank a Guinness standing on his head. Peter and Laura dig into where the actual legal exposure sits: if the termination was really about the medical disclosure, Netflix has a problem; i...

This week we start in the West Wing, where the man responsible for scrolling President Trump's speeches across the teleprompter turned out to have a lucrative side gig: allegedly trading on Kalshi based on what he already knew the President was about to say. It's the kind of insider trading story that writes itself — except it's paired with something arguably worse, reports that early access to th...

Apple and OpenAI used to be in business together. Now Apple's accusing its former partner of coaching employees to walk out the door with company files — and Peter's got thoughts on exactly how not to do that when you leave your own job (hint: never sync your work iPhone to your personal iCloud, you absolute rookie). Meanwhile, Meta's facing a lawsuit alleging its layoff algorithm had a very speci...

Remember when every AI company was telling you your job was toast? They've quietly changed their tune — Anthropic just leased a whole building in Hudson Square and is hiring by the hundreds, OpenAI did the same in SoHo weeks earlier, and suddenly it's all "efficiency" and "job creation." Peter's not buying the whiplash and explains why so many layoffs blamed on AI have nothing to do with AI at all...

Peter and Laura are recording on the last day of June — drinks in hand, holiday weekend approaching — and the Supreme Court just had one of its biggest weeks in years. They break down what the rulings actually mean for you, your company, and the stability of the business environment Americans have long taken for granted. From the gutting of Humphrey's Executor to birthright citizenship to Citizens...

The World Cup is taking over America — and it's actually a masterclass in everything that makes a great employee. This week, Peter and Laura are joined by Ed Foster-Simeon, President & CEO of the US Soccer Foundation, to talk about what youth sports really build in young people, why coaches are some of the most underrated leaders in our culture, and what this historic tournament could mean for...

The New York Knicks just ended a 53-year drought — and we're breaking down what their championship run means for New York. Then we shift to the workplace: summer office fashion do's and don'ts, why Costco's model of paying workers more and its CEO less is actually a masterclass in business strategy, and why remote work keeps beating the odds despite every "return to office" headline. Plus — CEOs a...

The workplace is full of surprises this week — and we've got all of it covered. Peter Rahbar and Laura Brounstein dig into six stories at the intersection of work, law, and culture, from prediction markets to newsroom meltdowns to what your out-of-office message says about you. Prediction platform Kalshi just announced it will require users to disclose their employer before placing bets in markets...

This week on the Across the Bar Podcast, employment attorney Peter Rahbar and journalist Laura Brounstein break down a packed week in workplace news — from corporate transparency failures to what a Senate candidate's controversies teach us about background checks, to the AI spending reckoning hitting companies everywhere. Microsoft is facing backlash after employee's questions the integrity of a r...

It's a (sort of) America 250 edition of Across the Bar! 🇺🇸 Employment attorney Peter Rahbar and journalist Laura Brounstein break down a packed week of workplace stories — from a CIA gold heist to a $642 deli platter that cost JPMorgan millions. ⚖️ The Union Comeback Is Real — Unionized workers just hit 16.5 million, a jump of 463,000 in a year and the highest level in 16 years — even as employers...

This week on Across the Bar, employment attorney Peter Rahbar and journalist Laura Brounstein pour one and dig into a week that had the workplace world buzzing. First up: Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow made headlines by defending his decision to fire the company's entire HR department — arguing the team was inventing problems that didn't exist — as part of a broader restructuring that also cut roughly 30%...