Today’s episode hit me harder than most. I came in tired — the kind of tired that comes from juggling late-stage capitalism, Substack life, and a multi-hyphenate existence where the eggs are cracked but the omelet is nowhere in sight. And then there was that New York Times article. The one asking — with a straight face — whether women are “ruining the workplace.”
It gutted
. And honestly, it punched me in the stomach too. We both felt that familiar mix of exhaustion, disbelief, and “is this really where the Overton window is now?” If you’ve ever worked in the real world — especially as a woman — you know the workplace hasn’t been ruined by women; it’s been held together by them.And that was the perfect moment for
to enter.Carlyn — author, illustrator, historian, science communicator, and one of the fiercest minds writing today — came in like a lightning bolt. What Dana and I love about Carlyn is her ability to take cultural chaos, run it through a scientific lens, and come back with razor-sharp clarity. The minute she joined, the whole emotional temperature of the show shifted.
Carlyn walked us through the dangerous worldview behind the Times piece: evolutionary determinism masquerading as scholarship, “conservative feminism” (which she correctly pointed out is as real as dry water), and the broader authoritarian project to push women, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and anyone outside the white male norm back into the margins. She called it what it is: eugenics-adjacent thinking wrapped in polite media packaging.
Dana — with her trademark empathy, intelligence, and lived experience — brought the human side of all this. She spoke so beautifully about what it means to come of age as a Gen X woman, to fight your way forward in the workplace for decades, only to watch the country flirt with rolling back your hard-won rights. She kept grounding us in the emotional stakes of the moment — something only she can do with that mix of vulnerability and fire.
Meanwhile, Carlyn kept cutting through the noise: pointing out that “wokeness” literally means staying awake to injustice; that gossip networks were survival tools long before HR existed; that historians, scientists, and workers of all genders benefit when workplaces evolve; and that the real threat to work isn’t women — it’s assholes and billionaires.
By the end of the conversation, the knot in my stomach was gone. Replaced with clarity. With anger that felt productive. And with gratitude — for Dana, for Carlyn, and for all of you who show up with us every morning.
Stay woke. Stay loud. And women — please keep “ruining” the workplace. It’s saving the rest of us.
Thank you
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