Over the next few weeks, I've got something a wee bit different for you! This is the very first edition of Cold Pitch, an experimental media project from YellowHouse.Media. Cold Pitch explores media, curiosity, and identity through a variety of forms and methods.

In this first edition, Sean McMullin (my husband & partner at YellowHouse.Media) and I talk about, well, cold pitches. A cold pitch, simply put, is a request to a stranger to do something for you. Podcasters deal with cold pitches every single day. Most are terrible. Not only are they irrelevant and poorly executed—they most often start with an outright lie.

I have feelings. Clearly.

In this conversation, we talk about the social "meat space" basis of a cold pitch, the psychology of email, what you might learn from the autistic folks in your life about honest & direct communication and more.

If you dig it, follow along with Cold Pitch at coldpitch.substack.com
And you can find a written version of this edition, along with links to references, here: https://coldpitch.substack.com/p/an-inbox-full-of-lies

• Learn more about YellowHouse.Media, our audio production agency
• Find out more about Sean McMullin
• Support What Works

This is the final installment in Strange New Work, a series that uses speculative fiction to explore radical work futures.

Power. Some fear it. Others hoard it. Some with power speak softly. Others carry a big stick. Power is charisma, or coercion, or violence. Power is name recognition, or money, or computer code.

Regardless of your definition or perceptions of it, power plays a critical role in how we work.

Today, we explore power—what we can do with it, how we can grow it, and, critically, how we can share it—because power in the future of work will look very different than it does today.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about Tania Luna
• Lead Together by Tania Luna
• The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "The Lathe of Heaven" BBC film adaptation
• "Mary Parker Follett—Creativity and Democracy" by Gary M. Nelson in Human Service Organizations
• "There Is a Better Way to Use Power at Work. This Forgotten Business Guru Has the Secrets" by Matthew Barzun in Time Magazine
• "Content Decision Making" via Sociocracy For All
• Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "A Band of Brothers, a Stream of Sisters" by Ursula K. Le Guin

This is the penultimate episode of Strange New Work, a special series from What Works that explores the future of work through the lens of speculative fiction.

What's the most undervalued skill of the 21st-century economy? Moderation.

I very well might be forgetting something. But with more of our lives and work showing up online every day, the way our feeds, data, and connections are moderated is critical to our daily lives. Moderation can be many things—it's how platforms are designed, how content is incentivized or de-incentivized, and how communication between people is mediated. Some moderation is done structurally, some is done with code, but lots of moderation is done by real people all over the world.

In this episode, I take a close look at the skill of moderation, its role in our evolving tech futures, and the politics that complicate this essential work.

Footnotes:

• "Welcome to hell, Elon" by Nilay Patel on The Verge
• "Why Elon's Twitter is in the Sh*tter with Nilay Patel" on Offline with Jon Favreau
• Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
• Work Without the Worker by Phil Jones
• "Content Moderation is Terrible by Design" featuring Sarah T. Roberts on Harvard Business Review
• "Moderating Social Media" on the agenda on YouTube
• "How Microwork is the Solution to War" by Ben Irwin on Preemptive Love
• "Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge" by Scharon Harding
• Rosie Sherry on tips for content moderation
• "Neal Stephenson Explains His Vision for the Digital Afterlife" on PC Mag

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