Molly Graham talks with longtime TED steward Chris Anderson about the counterintuitive power of giving things away, from opening TED Talks to the internet to stepping aside as CEO and ultimately handing off TED itself. Their conversation treats letting go not as loss, but as a leadership practice that can unlock scale, trust and renewal.

Bruce Daisley talks with organizational psychologist Rob Briner about the workplace ideas companies cling to despite thin evidence, from engagement surveys and psychological safety to culture change and growth mindset. Their debate circles a simple demand: stop reaching for fashionable tools before defining the problem you are actually trying to solve.

Molly Graham talks with executive recruiter Ify Walker about the "work twisties," the destabilizing loss of purpose and self-trust that can follow grief, burnout, or a career that no longer fits. Their conversation traces how Walker rebuilt her inner compass and why radical honesty matters in hiring, leadership, and figuring out where you actually belong.

In a live TED conversation, Molly Graham makes the case for careers built through risky leaps rather than orderly promotions, arguing that fear, awkwardness, and reinvention are often signs of growth. She reflects on scaling fast-moving companies, the value of asking naive questions, and the need for leaders to build environments where people can do their best work.

Charlie Warzel talks with writer John Paul Brammer about recovering a reading life in the age of feeds, alerts, and algorithmic distraction. Their conversation reframes the so-called attention crisis as a crisis of curiosity, arguing that books can restore stillness, deepen thought, and sharpen both writing and the sense of what feels genuinely human.

Gary Shteyngart revisits the eerie prescience of Super Sad True Love Story and traces how a culture of ranking, optimization, and screen-mediated life has hollowed out intimacy and pleasure. The conversation turns toward beauty, craft, and conviviality as stubborn forms of resistance to a joyless, hyper-efficient age.

Leadership coach Anne Morriss argues that hard organizational problems persist not because they are unsolvable, but because leaders misdiagnose them, underinvest in trust and storytelling, and wait too long to act. She lays out a five-step approach that starts with humility and buy-in, then uses speed as the final mechanism for turning intention into real change.

Molly Graham talks with former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson about the hidden chaos inside celebrated careers and breakout companies, where outages, doubt, and bad bets sit alongside growth. Their conversation turns on how to tell the difference between a difficult stretch worth enduring and a situation that demands an exit.

Mark Zao-Sanders makes the case for timeboxing as both a productivity tool and a way to restore calm: put tasks on the calendar, assign them real limits, and let intention outrun distraction. The conversation links better planning to better collaboration, arguing that visible commitments and clear deadlines reduce anxiety for individuals and teams alike.

Molly Graham and Ashley Murphy field workplace dilemmas that resist tidy business-book answers, from how to disagree with a CEO without losing integrity to when a company’s culture is simply a reflection of its founder. The conversation also traces the difference between coaches, therapists and advisors, and argues that so-called generalists are really specialists who need sharper language for the problems they solve.

Molly Graham reflects on walking away from the executive roles she was built to excel at and the longer, messier search for work that actually made her feel alive. In conversation with Anne Morris, she treats purpose less as a grand calling than as a practical process of noticing what energizes you, what proves draining, and what kind of impact feels close enough to matter.

Chris Lipp argues that real authority at work comes less from title or dominance than from a felt sense of control, internal conviction, and willingness to act. The conversation traces how people build that kind of personal power through responsibility, values, fairness, and even the way they guide a meeting.

Caroline Wanga traces a career built less on certainty than on curiosity, describing how a series of self-made maps helped her test roles, recognize her strengths and know when it was time to move on. The conversation widens into a candid philosophy of work, urging people to trade personal branding for personal purpose and to treat failure and doubt as material for growth.

A conversation about how middle managers can move big ideas upward by framing problems in strategic terms, building coalitions, and anticipating resistance before they enter the room. Sue Ashford and Ellen Bailey break down the politics, emotional discipline, and practical persuasion required to turn insight from the middle into organizational change.

Neuroscientist and physician Mithu Storoni argues that in an AI-saturated workplace, human efficiency should be measured by the quality of ideas rather than the quantity of output. She explains how attention, creativity, learning, and even boredom follow distinct brain states that managers can better support through flexible schedules, protected focus time, and work designed around natural cognitive rhythms.

Joanna Stern joins Big Technology to talk through her year of using AI for nearly everything, from parenting and health questions to work, wearables, and even a flirtation with an AI boyfriend. The conversation treats AI less as a futuristic gimmick than as an intimate, sometimes unsettling layer in ordinary life, where convenience, companionship, and bad habits start to blur.

Molly Graham talks with former Facebook executive and Sundial co-founder Julie Zhu about treating risk as a craft rather than a personality trait. Their conversation moves from everyday acts of candor and feedback to the manager’s job of creating trust, shared values, and enough safety for people to make bets and learn from being wrong.

A rerun organized around ordinary people confronting extraordinary responsibility moves from a wrongful-conviction case haunted by a daughter’s silence to a family besieged by a neighbor and, finally, to Shalom Auslander’s darkly comic theology of two starving hamsters. Across the hour, power appears less as authority than as the burden of what one person can do to another.

Bruce Daisley talks with journalist Kate Murphy about the elusive chemistry of human connection, and what her research into synchrony suggests about teamwork, meetings and the limits of digital communication. Their exchange moves from the contagion of a single workplace "bad apple" to the rare colleague whose presence can steady a room.

Muriel Wilkins joins the Women at Work hosts for a practical conversation about communicating under stress, from knowing when you are too depleted or reactive to speak well to staying present, patient, and clear when the stakes are high. The discussion also turns to authentic appreciation, hard messages, and the difference between avoiding discomfort and finding steadiness in the middle of it.