#professional-communication
48 episodes
#5488: How Emoji Went From 176 Characters to 3,600
From a 176-character set built for Japanese pagers to a 3,600-character Unicode standard — and why your emoji breaks in production.
#5311: Churchill's McKinsey Interview: When Oratory Meets the Case
Churchill's rhetoric was architectural, every sentence load-bearing. McKinsey wants the answer in sixty seconds. Let's roleplay the collision.
#5306: The Trump Interview Playbook: A Filing Job, Five Rhetorical Patterns
What happens when a rally-style rhetorical machine gets aimed at a beige cubicle and a filing job? A touchpoint-by-touchpoint playbook.
#5275: Reading a Supplier in 20 Minutes
How does a two-person firm vet a supplier without a procurement team? Walk in, watch the workshop, read the room.
#5244: Model C: Keeping Doers Doing Across a Career
What if learning and doing never had to be separate phases? A look at the career arc that burns people out at both ends.
#5103: Getting Quoted Without Regret: Source Tips
A listener's dictated email became a published quote he regrets. Here's how to handle being on the record.
#5102: The Art of the Ask: Promoting Your Passion Project Without the Cringe
How to reconcile cultural modesty with the need to share your work — and why asking is a gift, not a burden.
#4990: How to Flip an Interview in the First 5 Minutes
What happens when you stop waiting for permission and start running the interview from the opening handshake?
#4986: How to Weaponize Small Talk (Anti-Guide)
Turn "How are you?" into a weapon. An escalatory ladder from honest answers to full conversational catastrophe.
#4961: Can You Learn to Be Good at Small Talk?
Why "just be curious" fails anxious people — and what actually works for better conversations.
#4911: How Airline SOPs Vary Between Operators
Why the same plane type can fly differently depending on which airline's procedures the crew follows.
#4894: How Diplomats Stay in Touch (and You Can Too)
Friendship maintenance is a learnable skill. Here's what diplomats know about keeping weak ties alive.
#4893: Redirecting Tough Conversations Gracefully
Practical techniques for steering away from topics you don't want to discuss — without making the other person feel judged.
#4888: Action Minutes: The Meeting Tool That Forces Clarity
How a diplomatic note-taking technique eliminates vague language and forces real commitments in meetings.
#4882: How to Run a Diplomatic Summit at a Bar
Importing the full diplomatic apparatus into a casual drink with a friend — agenda, run of show, briefing books, and all.
#4764: The Art of the Distant Relative Lunch
How to turn a family lunch into a master class in social craft without crossing into cruelty.
#4708: Creative Comebacks for "What Do You Do?
Tired of the dreaded job question? Learn witty, passable, and confusing ways to answer "What do you do?" when you're between gigs.
#4617: The Where-Are-You-From Answer System
A three-tier system for answering "where are you from?" without improvising, without evading, and without looking shifty.
#4323: Customer Service Speak as Social Trolling
A practical field manual for weaponizing call center scripts at the dinner table — and why it works.
#4304: Rhetoric for Interviews and Pitches
Three persuasion techniques from political speech, applied ethically to job interviews and client pitches.
#4251: How to Run a Job Interview Like a Spy
Three elicitation techniques that reveal what a company is really like — without sounding like an audit.
#4125: How to Kill a Conversation on Purpose
The art of weaponizing social awkwardness at high-achiever gatherings.
#4009: When Manifestos Actually Work for Voters
Three parties that reimagined the voter manifesto — and what they teach us about political communication.
#3851: When "Let's Discuss" Means Very Different Things
How the same email gets decoded three different ways in Berlin, Tokyo, and São Paulo.