A couple things that need to be said
Friends,
Last week’s hearings were a painful reminder that the experience of men is not the experience of women, that the abuse of women’s bodies is often overlooked in service of the desires of powerful men. And that we’re on a very long, challenging path towards a modicum of equality.
On Thursday, and again on Friday, Janelle Monae’s mantra kept playing on repeat, no matter what I actually wanted to watch or listen to.
"Everything is sex / Except sex, which is power / You know power is just sex / Now ask yourself who's screwing you / Let's get screwed! / I don't care / You fucked the world up now, we'll fuck it all back down."
But last week’s hearings were something else too: They were a reminder that there are heroes among us; women whose courage, integrity, resilience, and persistence can and are beginning to affect real change in our current political hellscape. From Christine Blasey Ford’s unyielding grace in the face of fervent inequity to Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher’s relentless determination while confronting Jeff Flake to the thousands of women who have protested and called and raged and selflessly exposed their pain so that others may not endure the same. I am thinking about these heroes this week and, if you are a survivor of assault, I am thinking of you most of all.
My team and I spend a lot of time imagining the ways storytelling can be used to move past such trauma, we think about our client Soraya Chemaly and her fierce crusade to normalize and support women’s anger. “Should women be angry?” Chemaly asks. The answer, as she knows and beautifully explains, is yes. And we are.
You’re tired of it. We’re tired of it. Everyone with ears and eyes and a cerebral cortex is tired of it. But we have to keep going — the only way out of this is through. So call your senators, yes. Donate to RAINN, if you can. Check in with each other. If you’re a survivor of assault be extra gentle with yourself in these weeks, months, year.
Take a break from the ever-maddening news cycle and look for things that spark joy. Like this, a video of a seal hitting a kayaker in the face with an octopus.
We are all this kayaker right now.
We’ll take the laughter where we can.
Sweet catharsis.
Please Give a Standing Ovation for: ‘The Dream’ by Little Everywhere
Speaking of incredible women: Meet client Jane Marie, who is currently doing amazing work in the podcasting space. Jane is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist who produced This American Life for nearly a decade. She’s also served as a columnist for both Jezebel and The Hairpin (RIP). Her new podcast, “The Dream” (created with Dann Gallucci, formerly of Modest Mouse) is characteristically excellent. But, as the great LeVar Burton once said, don’t just take our word for it: see what the press has to say.
Multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) are as American as baseball, apple pie, and shameless financial chicanery. Although they’re commonly derided as pyramid schemes, MLMs like Amway still attract hundreds of thousands of new members every year.
How can they be so gullible? Are MLMs brainwashing people? What’s it actually like inside an MLM?
These are the questions ‘The Dream’ sets out to answer. This new podcast from our friends at Little Everywhere is a fearless, darkly funny investigation into the secret world of MLMs. Hosts Jane Marie and Dann Gallucci travel across the country to interview dozens of people who were the victims (or masterminds) of these schemes. Producer MacKenzie Kassab even goes undercover for a firsthand experience of MLMs’ cult-like atmosphere.
The New York Times calls it a “fantastical scammer tale,” and it’s already hit #4 on the iTunes charts. If you’re looking for a new audio obsession*, this is it.
*If you’re a media person who’d like to chat with the Little Everywhere team, let us know and we’ll be happy to set things up.
Jobs, Jobs, and Additional Jobs!
We know a LOT of organizations that are looking for talented, accomplished, interesting people – which, if you’re on our newsletter list, probably describes you to a T. So we decided to put together a recurring list of job announcements that you might enjoy perusing, because connecting people we like with great opportunities they’d like is one of our favorite things to do.
Words! Coding! Video! If you’re good at any of these three things, chances are you’ll find a lot of jobs to like in this month’s roundup.
Take a look and let us know if you want us to put in a good word with anyone!
The Atlantic
The New York Times
Hearst
Fortune
CNBC
Video Journalist
Contact: jeniece.pettitt@nbcuni.com
San Francisco Chronicle
New Scientist
Gusto
Freelance Writer
Contact: rowena.li@gusto.com
Raycom Media
Habitat for Humanity
Lending Tree
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Ledger Bennett
Words That Made Us Think
Our jobs require us to read millions of words a day, figuratively speaking. Many of these are the linguistic equivalent of cornflakes – more or less OK, but entirely forgettable. However, every once in a while we see something so breathtakingly brilliant (or stupid) that we just have to share it with the world.
~ excerpt from “Can You Enjoy Work Too Much?” by Jessica Wildfire
If you have six spare minutes today, you could spend them in many worse ways than reading Professor Wildfire’s brilliant commentary on work-life balance. She’s an eloquent and insightful writer whose description of modern jobs was eminently relatable: “work and play and relaxation all bleed into each other, making it impossible to log my exact hours.”
I don’t know how many times I’ve been flicking through Twitter on a lazy Saturday morning and seen an article that made me think, “Ah yes, this is the perfect thing to post in Slack! Coworker X would totally love it!” So I switch apps and share the link… and before I know what’s happened, I’ve spent the next fifteen minutes scrolling through channels, reading what everyone posted after I signed off on Friday.
Now, to be honest, I do enjoy this, though I’m uncertain if it makes me more ‘productive. But I am certain it annoys the hell out of the people in my life.
And this is the point that I think Wildfire misses in her article: constant connectivity may be a way to put your own job-loving conscience at ease, but as an economist might say, there are externalities to consider as well. Specifically: the other human beings in our lives. We expect them to be conscientious of our needs, and we owe the same to them. Sometimes the best way to be conscientious is by getting off Slack and just, well, slacking off. Our actions have impacts, seen or unseen, on those around us. In our quest for that elusive work-life equilibrium, we shouldn’t forget to balance our needs with the needs of others.