the third shift

The Third Shift: On the Mental Load

Society EN ↓ 4 episodes

The mental load — the invisible cognitive and emotional work of running a family — is one of the most consequential and least examined forces in modern working life. It's why talented women are quietly stepping back from careers they worked decades to build. It's why marriages that look equal on paper feel anything but. It's why so many high-achieving parents are exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix — and blaming themselves for it. The mental load isn't a personal failing. It's a systems problem. And when you can see it and name it, you can start to change it. Each episode, Jennifer Micke...

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the third shift

Episodes

Can AI Lighten the Mental Load? A Conversation with Danielle Matarasso, Founder of AI After Carpool 01.05.2026 44:02

Episode 4 — April 29, 2026 Can AI Lighten the Mental Load? A Conversation with Danielle Matarasso, Founder of AI After Carpool Jennifer Mickel sits down with Danielle Matarasso — Booth MBA, former tech executive, and founder of AI After Carpool — to talk about what AI can and can’t do for the mental load. They dig into why starting with a purpose-built app may actually work against you, the voice-...

Why Is the Mental Load Getting Worse? A Debrief with Emily King, CEO and Co-Founder of Faye 10.04.2026 33:14

Why is The Mental Load Getting Worse: A Debrief with Emily King of Faye Jennifer Mickel sits down with Emily King, CEO & Co-Founder of Faye, for a candid debrief after the Mental Load Collaborative event at Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business in Washington, D.C. They explore why the mental load has intensified in recent years — driven by digital overwhelm, AI adoption, and post-COVID stress — a...

Can Women Have It All? Reading Corinne Low’s Having It All with a Fintech Product Manager 14.03.2026 50:58

Jennifer Mickel and Dana Weinstein dig into Corinne Low’s Having It All — a data-driven examination of women’s lives and the structural forces shaping their choices. They discuss the “utility function” framework for balancing work, family, and personal fulfillment, the persistent gender gap in household labor despite equal workforce participation, and the brutal “squeeze” period when career and ch...

Who Does the Thinking? A Chief of Staff and an Executive Coach discuss Allison Daminger’s What’s On Her Mind 30.01.2026 54:34

Jennifer Mickel is joined by Becky Murray and Sunshine Yin to discuss Allison Daminger's What's On Her Mind — a deep dive into the cognitive labor that keeps households running. They explore Daminger's four-phase framework for invisible work, why even egalitarian households leave women carrying the anticipation and monitoring, and what it would actually take to rebalance it. Plus: practical system...