Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load Podcast

Peter Drucker noted that what gets measured, gets managed. Other iterations evolved to suggest what gets measured gets done. My take is that what gets measured becomes addictive and compulsive. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Inside my head there is a ball of Velcro. Every time I encounter someone, have a conversation, teach a course or facilitate a workshop, some of what I encounter sticks to the ball. There’s no rational criteria to what sticks: sometimes it’s something I know will come in handy for the next session, sometimes it’s just freaky and fun and sometimes it has depth and potential that bears examination. T...

Did your social graces suffer a massive setback during the pandemic? Are you only now finding your way back to navigating dinner parties, networking events and conversations involving more than one person at a time? It’s not a trivial trend because, as we lost our opportunities to socialize, we also lost our comfort in communing with strangers and that’s bad for them and for us. This is a public e...

When we’re children we believe our parents came into the world just as we first encountered them and, even as adults, while we can know lots about our parents, we can never know them the way we know the contemporaries we grew up with because we simply were not there. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.su...

I’m so pleased to introduce my guest substacker, Roxanne Stasysyzn, who agreed to share her mixed thoughts and emotions on the death of yet another community newspaper. This isn’t just about one slim bundle of adverts in a suburban neighbourhood; it’s the demise of an institution that, among other things, stitched together a fractious north. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this...

I had a scheduled Zoom meeting today, and so fired up the old Zoom room in anticipation of my client joining. In the meantime, I went into the kitchen, just down the hall, to make a quick coffee. My sweetheart came up from his office/man cave and we chatted about a radio interview he had been asked to do, one that was fraught with potential pitfalls. As part of my work is media training, and I spe...

There’s nothing wrong with saying “we were friends” or “we used to be friends” or even “we will become friends” because each of them reflect the passive, or active, nature of those relationships. “We are friends”, however, simply cannot be. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I baked a beautiful cheesecake today, the traditional New York dense kind, not my recently acquired favourite, the fluffy Basque cheesecake. (Fabulous flavour but keeps wanting to separate, GROAN.) I even smashed up chocolate wafers to make a chocolate crumb crust as the Christie cookie company has discontinued its bags of crumpled up Oreos. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this...

I had a vaguely alarming experience recently when two colleagues, reminiscing about our shared media past, related an incident that involved all three of us. It was one of those media events where various TV and radio personalities take part in risky, ill-advised and potentially fatal activities, such as riding race-horses and flying upside down in open airplanes. This particular event was a wind-...

Must be something in the water. I thought that by now the dust would have settled from the Great Attrition, the Great Resignation, the Great Lateral Promotion…but nope. This week saw half a dozen conversations and coaching sessions with people looking for tips on how to navigate employment or promotional interviews because they haven’t interviewed in years ! This is a public episode. If you'd like...

30 years ago Darryl was a PhD candidate in Australia, moonlighting as a nightclub bouncer. One night the boss announced he had hired a female bouncer, given the number of unruly drunk women his crew had to contend with. He assured the boyos she could look after herself. Name was Martha. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...

I received the phone call the other day, the same one you probably get every couple of months/years/weeks. The one that asks, did you spend $4500 on a Turkish carpet at Carpetmania, many miles from where you live? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

What the hell is wrong with everyone? We’re surrounded by incivility, incompetence masquerading as caution, and a complete lack of ambition. It’s a pandemic of shittiness which has taken hold of the world and until we figure out what’s causing or contributing to it, we can’t take any steps to turn back the tide of awful offal. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subs...

How do you feel about blackouts? About losing time and memory? About general anaesthetic? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

You can never “look back” on motherhood because, once you become a mother, you remain one forever so the looking is equal parts remembering, experiencing and anticipating. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

You know when you’re flying into Palm Springs, for example, and every other yard has a pool? Think of that as mini Blue Zones all over the world. That’s the dream. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Blue Zones are places in the world where people live inordinately healthy and long lives. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episo...

Hello and thank you for being here! If you subscribed to my enewsletter I have taken the liberty of migrating you to this Substack instead. Of course you can always opt out, unsubscribe, leave a flaming bag of dogshit at my front door. I promise to not take it personally, at least I’ll try. So happy to have you here! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or...

YES I want to hear about how you met your partner, best friend, first baby, dog or cat, or any other significant OMG it’s YOU kind of story, please and thank you! This week’s offering starts off with Sue’s account of how a truly fabulous beginning turns to shit in the longer run. It was, however, a movie-worthy start: After a long, boring summer job and before heading to graduate school I needed a...

There’s a moment of weightless limbo when you move from one state to another, liquid to gaseous, for example. Or from independent adult to fatherless child. That moment came for me last Wednesday at 11:35 a.m. when my father died. You might be taking exception to my framing his death as my loss, my experience, but how else to understand the event except through my eyes, brain and heart? Even a rec...

I received the phone call the other day, the same one you probably get every couple of months/years/weeks. The one that asks, did you spend $4500 on a Turkish carpet at Carpetmania, many miles from where you live? Speaking with Cherise, the helpful credit-card rep, I realized it had been a few years since one of my cards was scammed (only paying subscribers receive my PIN number), and that time it...

The man sitting next to me is a tightly wound bundle of energy, or ADD, hard to tell. He is in his 60s, lean and wiry like a crazed marathoner, and does everything quickly and with gusto. He stuffs a laptop and a book, Michael Lewis’ Premonition into the seatback pocket and pulls out a large plastic bag which contains, as it turns out, multiple sandwiches and some blue cheese (for which he apologi...

My Friday morning yoga instructor announced today she was leaving and I became ridiculously sad and emotional even though I don’t know her all that well. I attend most of her sessions and have done for a couple years; we chat often, mostly ritual how-are-you’s but occasionally more personal. I don’t know much about her outside of the studio. I know she has a UK accent, pronounces something and any...

Those of us with grandchildren already know how precious time spent with them is, and how much we miss when we are apart for long stretches. Sometimes it’s illness that keeps us apart, sometimes it’s distance and travel but oftentimes it’s because, well, they just don’t want you over because your grandparent comments and behaviour make them crazy. New parents are already stressed out by the realit...

I baked a beautiful cheesecake today, the traditional New York dense kind, not my recently acquired favourite, the fluffy Basque cheesecake. (Fabulous flavour but keeps wanting to separate, GROAN.) I even smashed up chocolate wafers to make a chocolate crumb crust as the Christie cookie company has discontinued its bags of crumpled up Oreos. As I worked on it, swirling the melted chocolate into th...

During my time in junior high school, a boy in the senior grades committed suicide in the family home. This wasn’t a boy who was in trouble, skipped school and so on. He was an A student, a little quiet but popular and friendly. The overall conversation, after the initial shock, was stunned disbelief that someone with “everything to live for” could commit suicide. Recently, two young men whose liv...