Narrative Dive

Burnout is everywhere, but so many people keep pushing through it, convincing themselves they are just tired, need to work harder, or should be able to handle it on their own. In healthcare especially, that story can become dangerous. In this episode, Dr. Pamela Buchanan opens up about her own experience with burnout as an ER physician and the quiet toll that high-pressure environments can take on...

Rich Sternin witnessed recruiting evolve from Rolodexes to robots. Now, as founder of Madeline Labs, he's on a mission to cut through the AI hype paralyzing today's job market. What do Applicant Tracking Systems  actually  do? Where does human judgment end and automation begin? And why are both job seekers and employers more frustrated than ever despite so much tech? This episode explores...

Confused and simultaneously afraid of AI agents after all the recent hype? Dilip Dand, a pragmatic AI strategist and entrepreneur discusses the evolving landscape of AI agents: how they’re defined, their strategic implementation in businesses, the importance of measuring success, and the risks associated with AI deployment. Dilip emphasizes the need for proper governance and change management as A...

Is it too late to change your career after 40? Engineer and business strategist Sairan Aqrawi says, "absolutely not!" She corrects the limiting stories about midlife career prospects for her clients so they have a clear roadmap for a successful career transition driven by intent. Inspired by her journey from Kurdistan to the United States, Sairan also shares her insights on the challenge...

WTF is up with the job market?! Floods of workers are taking to LinkedIn to vent about their frustrations searching for a new role. What is happening and why are so many talented, qualified people out of work despite a steady flow of job openings?  The narratives around today’s job seeking experience range from grim to hopeful and can cause emotional confusion. Albert Qian, founder of Albert’s Lis...

The founder–investor world often transactional, misaligned, and void of deeper values. In this conversation, economist Danetha Doe shares a different vision. She’s redefining how entrepreneurs and investors connect—prioritizing shared values over pitch decks and financial projections. Through her work launching luxury brands, Danetha challenges the tired idea that innovation must be born from solv...

Negotiation and conflict resolution expert Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida offers insights into navigating everyday interactions to life-course altering conversations from her extensive experience in negotiation and communication. Using her How can I use that? approach, Beth emphasizes the importance of personal narratives and emotional intelligence in effective negotiation while highlighting the impact o...

In an era where anyone with a laptop can become a media outlet, what does "media" even mean anymore? Simon Owens - a seasoned journalist and publisher of ⁠a newsletter⁠ dedicated to exploring the media industry - joins me to dive into the seismic shifts reshaping how we consume, create, and monetize information. From the democratization of expert voices to the rise of newsletter-preneurs...

Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. At the heart of her wrongful conviction was the power of sensational “sticky” media narratives—stories shaped more by spectacle than truth, and weaponized in particular ways against women. Amanda reflects on the journey of reclaiming her voice from the grip of global tabloids. She unpa...

AI's rapid ubiquity is exciting and threatening, especially to those outside of its development. Emmanuel Acheampong, the visionary co-founder of yShade.ai, has meticulously curated a dataset of 12 million diverse skin tones. This feat isn't just transforming the beauty industry's approach to inclusion—it's poised to enhance safety standards for autonomous industrial machines, prevent fatal accide...

Imagine waking up to find your most intimate images plastered across social media platforms and search engines—whether authentic or AI-generated. How would you cope? What could you do? Host Jessica Buchleitner delves into the dark side of media technology, exploring how the transition from 90s VHS tapes to today’s generative AI has fueled the rise of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), also kn...

America is Angry. Companies and individuals are profiting from our current state.  The Anger Industrial Complex - the interconnected relationship between economics, business and online vitriol - has plagued the United States since the 2016 presidential election (and arguably even before), driving our societal fault lines deeper, post after post on social media. Jessica Buchleitner joins multi-awar...

Jessica Buchleitner sits down with Marla Sofer to unpack the complex narratives surrounding personal finance that begin with parentally instilled beliefs and end with a crowded financial services ecosystem often too confusing for the average consumer to navigate. Marla shares her journey to founding Knomee, a financial wellness platform that offers the tools to understand your unique financial ide...

Author Hillary Augustine and host Jessica Buchleitner deep dive into the currency paradigm: a gestalt view of four individual, yet interwoven currencies: Time, Money, Energy, and Space. This four-currency guidance system is rooted in one simple concept: if you want to experience a greater sense of wholeness, you must acknowledge total currency flow. Augustine discusses the monocurrency world - our...

Can the location of your birth and era affect the stories you conceive of and tell? Birth narratives take on intricacies beyond their literal meaning by signifying new beginnings, conceptualizations around motherhood and the creation of life, and a notion of self-recreation that leads to perceived redemption. Angela and Jessica dive deep into their intricate tapestry, unraveling the complexities o...

Human history is obsessed with virgins and virginity. They’re in religious texts, as alternating terms in our vernacular, peppered throughout our mythology, and embodied in our urban legend horror movies, teen dramas, and novels. We use the term “virgin” to refer to both purity and our first time trying something new. But what is actually behind the virgin curtain? This episode delves into the com...

What do fraternities, sororities, the Barbie movie, and Taylor Swift fans have in common with Jim Jones? Cult narratives. We explore the blurred lines between zombie-stoked paranoia and end-of-times claims to die-hard, dedicated brand fans, challenging what makes a cult an actual cult.

We’ve all heard of boogeymen as children- the fabled creatures who live under our beds, ready to strike if we wander around at night or act mischievous. Now, boogeymen have found their way into every facet of our lives via the algorithms and platforms where we engage and via the news we consume. A "boogeyman" is a media catchword, phrase, or individual symbolizing a larger group of peopl...

Beginning in childhood, we are inundated with “good guy vs. bad guy” tales in society, religion, and culture. According to structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, binary narratives are a necessary way for us to interpret our world, but at what cost? Angela and Jessica analyze the origins of these two-headed stories via current and past events, mythological origins, and societal influence to understand...

Since 2021, the dystopian classic 1984 topped Amazon’s bestseller list despite being written in the 1940s. Dystopian narratives are common these days due to escalating geopolitics and the conspiracy theory rife COVID-19 pandemic. But why would we want to conceptualize worst-case scenarios? Angela and Jessica explore this narrative's origins and how, despite being fiction, it encourages us to reima...

Every nation has its legends who begin as flesh and blood people until stories evolve them into undefeatable, superhuman god-like legacies through time. With each passing century, they become more powerful, more immortal, and more unbreakable. Angela and Jessica dive into the Narrative of the Unbreakable Warrior to uncover justifications for hustle culture, breeds of nationalism, Donald Trump’s se...

What do The Lord of the Rings , the Star Wars saga, millennial optimization, and the Greek myth Jason and the Argonauts have in common? The Hero’s Journey. Heroes are central to all stories as our celebrated protagonists embarking on quests for truth and wisdom. The Hero’s Journey narrative is prevalent in world religions, literature, mythology, and psychology and is a popular storyline in Hollywo...

Is there a template for the narratives we’re bombarded with in our daily media consumption? Where do they come from? In this inaugural episode, Jessica and Angela discuss Metanarratives - overarching and dominant anecdotes represented throughout history and cultures. Think of them as cultural software programs running in the background and powering our constructs. As templates for stories that con...