Delaney - "How do I make the most of my time at my soulless job?" (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
So Frances, this morning I was looking at the actual data around layoffs because there's so much anxiety, understandable anxiety. And, and so many assumptions we make about this experience. There's a company out there called Revelio Labs that is trying to ground some of these assumptions in the data, and they looked at this question of how quickly people were actually getting rehired in this environment, because of course, the fear is—

[00:00:34] Frances Frei:
“I'm laid off and never to be…” Yeah.

[00:00:37] Anne Morriss:
Never gonna work again, or it's gonna take a long time. And these are real, these are scary existential questions. So, as of late December, tech workers, uh, who are being laid off right now at higher rates than other parts of the economy, tech workers are finding new jobs within three months at a rate of 72%.

[00:01:00] Frances Frei:
That’s encouraging.

[00:01:01] Anne Morriss:
So it's, it's encouraging.

[00:01:02] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Great.

[00:01:03] Anne Morriss:
And higher than, than I expected.

[00:01:07] Frances Frei:
It’s higher than I expected as well.

[00:01:08] Anne Morriss:
The other stat I saw that I thought was really helpful was that 40% of Americans have been laid off or terminated from a job at least once. And you know—

[00:01:22] Frances Frei:
Wow.

[00:01:22] Anne Morriss:
When we're going through it, when we're experiencing it, and we think it's a sign that there's something very wrong. We think that it's a rare event. It's not rare. It's what it means to participate in American capitalism, and you are going to be okay.

I'm Anne Morriss. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:01:45] Frances Frei:
I’m Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School. And your wife.

[00:01:51] Anne Morriss:
Most important.

[00:01:51] Frances Frei:
Most important. Yes.

[00:01:52] Anne Morriss:
And this is Fixable, from the TED Audio Collective.

[00:01:56] Frances Frei:
We believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything, everything is fixable.

[00:02:00] Anne Morriss:
Everything.

[00:02:02] Frances Frei:
And good solutions are usually just one conversation away.

[00:02:04] Anne Morriss:
Frances, today we got a message from Delaney. Delaney is not her real name. She's got a great job in tech but is starting to lose some motivation. So let's hear directly from her.

[00:02:19] Delaney:
My entire team was laid off except for me. I feel like I should be more grateful for the place where I am. My problem is that I want to do something great, but I'm not inspired by any of the work. So, how do you decide to cut your losses and take the risk to do something that's more aligned with you knowing what a dollar's worth, having been poor before? How do you decide?

[00:02:49] Anne Morriss:
Frances, what's your initial reaction?

[00:02:49] Frances Frei:
My initial reaction is how do you know when it's okay to jump to a less secure place? I have a lot of empathy. As someone who also grew up in, on the low end of the socioeconomic hierarchy, I totally get it. Like, when you have been without means, when you have been hungry, it feels, like, irresponsible to take the decision where you might be in need as opposed to someone who can provide, you know? And I was thinking in this episode is, is quite a bit different for us and it also is more real in some ways.

[00:03:31] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:03:31] Frances Frei:
Fixing is messy. I mean, it is messy. It's a little dreary. It, there might be points of conflict, so I would say that we're gonna get into some real issues here, and it's going to maybe feel a little bit uncomfortable along the way, but this is reality and we get to a really good place at the end.

[BREAK]

[00:03:57] Anne Morriss:
Hi, Delaney, welcome to Fixable.

[00:03:59] Delaney:
Thanks for having me.

[00:04:00] Anne Morriss:
What would make this conversation most shamelessly, selfishly helpful to you?

[00:04:08] Delaney:
Yeah, I shamelessly would love the step-by-step plan for how to occupy my time in the next year and a half or two years that I wanna give myself to keep working at this giant corporation, um, that sets me off on being an entrepreneur for myself.

[00:04:27] Anne Morriss:
Awesome.

[00:04:28] Frances Frei:
Wonderful.

[00:04:29] Anne Morriss:
Well, let's start with what, tell us about the work you're doing now for this big giant corporation.

[00:04:35] Delaney:
Yeah, so I work for a major tech company, which has just done some huge soulless layoffs that pretty much wrecked the last vestige of hope and, like, loyalty that I may have had for this company.

I've been a very capable, enthusiastic, creative, imaginative, hardworking employee. So people say, “Oh, come with me on this big idea that I have ‘cause you are gonna help me get there.” And I go, “Sure.” And then, I'm following someone else's dream, and I'm spending all my energy on their vision, and by the end of the day, all I wanna do is play The Sims and dissociate into a made-up reality.

[00:05:27] Anne Morriss:
How long have you been there?

[00:05:27] Delaney:
Four years.

[00:04:29] Anne Morriss:
Okay.

[00:04:30] Delaney:
And four years ago I was an English teacher and was very invested in the vocation part of teaching. I taught ninth grade, and I loved them. I love 14-year-olds.

[00:05:41] Anne Morriss:
I love that age.

[00:05:43] Delaney:
They’re so great, um—

[00:05:44] Anne Morriss:
We have one of those in the house with us. Yeah.

[00:05:46] Delaney:
Oh. They’re the best. They're truly the best. I loved it, but I was broke. And um, I had this incredible opportunity fall into my lap where in the middle of the spring semester at the school where I worked, a friend of mine who had worked at this company for the last few years and who I'd been, you know, kind of under the wing of, as she tried to teach me ways of working in that company's mindset and, and I'd applied many times and been rejected.

She called me and said, “Hey, I'm trying to start up an education program within this company, and I'm three weeks from going on maternity leave, and they finally gave me headcount, and I don't trust anyone else to start up an education org except for you. So I wanna hire you as a contractor, and if you just trust me, we'll spend the next year getting you converted to be a full-time employee.” And I was like, “When do you get this opportunity, right?” Yes.

[00:06:49] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:06:49] Delaney:
So I entered this corporation. With all these adults, and not children.

[00:06:56] Anne Morriss:
There are lots of adults in corporations. Yeah.

[00:06:59] Delaney:
Yeah.

[00:07:00] Frances Frei:
Very few 14-year-olds.

[00:07:00] Delaney:
Very few. And like the vibes were so different. You know, I was not the authority anymore, the way that I was in a classroom. And then, those first six months were really hard ‘cause I didn't have an ally. I was learning corporate world politics, energy. I learned fast. When I became a full-time employee, I started to believe that like, actually I've got a really good thing going on. I'm pretty valuable to this group. But it turned out that the job that she had offered for me, it wasn't quite as inspiring or awesome as I had hoped.

Instead of really being about transformative education, it was about compliance, you know, and making sure that the people in this department, which was a, a privacy and security department, were following regulations, basically. So I spent two years in this education org. Then, my other friend who I've networked and made friends with over this two years, he says, “Hey, your education job sounds boring and frustrating. Come work with me on product.”

So I follow him and his vision, and this team was a complete sea change. Like, it was a lot of, I would say, like, to put it kindly, it was, uh, Silicon Valley on steroids. Like, it was a bunch of men who were like “I understand women, I've got a wife,” you know, and just comments like that constantly.

So again, like another element of my illusion is shattered ‘cause I start to see this gross culture. But I was starting to gain confidence. I can do this, I belong here. They need me. So as soon as my brain clicks into this, my company lays people off. And they lay off my entire team except for me. So every meeting that I'd had in the last six months was now meaningless.

Every project that I had worked on? Gone, and not only that, but our VPs and senior leaders had no plans for what to do with the people who remained. My manager is like, “Honestly, just chill. You're fine.”

[00:09:36] Anne Morriss:
Delaney, what's the case against just leaving? Like if this, if you're feeling this degree of friction, why stick around?

[00:09:47] Delaney:
I think they call them the golden handcuffs. Having been a teacher, to be in this position where I'm making four times as much money, to know that at some point in the next year, I'd like to get pregnant, and it would be great to have maternity leave covered by this company makes me go, “It's not practical to leave now.” But I know that I want to leave, so how do I maximize this time? How do I figure out, in this time, how to reinvent and become the next thing?

[00:10:25] Anne Morriss:
Can I give you the punchline?

[00:10:27] Delaney:
Mm-hm.

[00:10:28] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:10:28] Anne Morriss:
You can't make the company the villain in the story because you can't be in relationship with any integrity with this entity if they are a cartoon version in the story that you're telling and now living within.

[00:10:47] Delaney:
For me, it's less that they're a villain. They're a place where I'm getting the means with which to jump into the next self. The layoffs were almost like this freedom, like liberation, because it was just so clear. They don't really care about us. They're a corporation, not a human, not a family. And I'm not gonna lose myself in the work.

What I don't know is how to now take the things that I care about and turn those into the main event and not the after-hours event. A little bit about those. I'm a painter.

[00:11:28] Anne Morriss:
Cool.

[00:11:29] Delaney:
And my paintings have been the place where I've found so much, uh, self, like life feels so big when I'm painting.

[00:11:43] Anne Morriss:
What's in the way of you doing that right now?

[00:11:46] Delaney:
Time.

[00:11:46] Anne Morriss:
Can I play back the story?

[00:11:49] Delaney:
Mm-hm.

[00:11:49] Anne Morriss:
Just a little? And Frances, please jump in and stop your wife.

[00:11:53] Frances Frei:
No, no, no.

[00:11:54] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Um, but it sounds like you have made a fair exchange with this organization where you get a subset of things, and the organization gets a subset of things, so you're getting the security that you crave and didn't get when you were in the classroom.

That makes sense for you at this point in your life. The organization gets an awesome, creative, adaptable employee who they can put in lots of different environments, and she seems to step up to the challenge and that contribution has been tested. This is a difficult environment to keep a job in tech.

You have managed to do that. That is a testimony to your talent and resilience and contribution. Help me understand the tension point. Is it that there were trade-offs that you made that you don't feel great about and wanna figure out how to feel better them so you can stay for another 2, 3, 4 years? Or is it that you're looking for a graceful exit? Just from a practical standpoint, I'm struggling to find a friction point that I actually believe, “Bye.” I don't believe you have a problem.

[00:13:18] Delaney:
Where my problem is, is I don't feel like I have enough space and time to invest properly in the art dream and in what that world looks like ‘cause it's, I, I don't have an audience. I don't have a website. Like I need to be able to invest significant time in this.

[00:13:40] Anne Morriss:
I wonder if you can find any bandwidth in the current situation you're in.

[00:13:43] Delaney:
Oh.

[00:13:44] Anne Morriss:
Where you’re getting paid very well, but nobody's asking you to do anything.

[00:13:47] Delaney:
Trust me. You should see some of the pieces I've been making. I mean, I've sat here and I've been creating and making, and it's what really motivated me of like, I should talk to these people ‘cause this isn't gonna be the case forever.

[00:13:56] Anne Morriss:
Delaney, it sounds like the perfect fucking situation. I'm gonna say, I'm saying this with so much love and respect in my heart. You are on the payroll being paid still 4-6, probably now 6 actually, what you were making in the classroom. No one today is expecting you to do anything.

You're waiting for your next assignment. This week should have been the greatest week of your life. You can make art all day while you wait for the memo that says, “Please do something for the company that's paying you.” Why is this not the greatest moment in your professional life?

[00:14:35] Frances Frei:
And your problem, why isn’t this just a gift from the heavens?

[00:14:37] Delaney:
It has an expiration date on it. It's like I have all these pieces, but it, they're not attached yet to a structure to a center. I have—

[00:14:47] Anne Morriss:
Do you want this company to be funding your art or do you wanna jump off the cliff and try to fund it yourself?

[00:15:00] Delaney:
…I don’t wanna jump off a cliff.

[00:15:01] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so we're taking that off the table. So that's door number two. That's door number two. And to go and live the life of an artist, which people do every day. There’s insane security trade-offs.

[00:15:15] Delaney:
This is why I'm like, I think there's like, two years. I really think there's about a year and a half, two years. I think there's, I, uh, one of the problems is that I commit myself to things.

[00:15:28] Anne Morriss:
That doesn’t sound like a problem.

[00:15:30] Delaney:
Well then how do I, how do I use these two years where I will not be investing 40 hours a week in the business that I want to start? Every piece of business advice I've ever heard or seen is something about like, “Hustle. You gotta get, you gotta go all in on making your, on making your dream happen.” And like, I, I just, I won't be able to because I will still give my attention to this place where I'm being paid.

[00:15:54] Frances Frei:
May I step in here?

[00:15:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah, please.

[00:15:56] Frances Frei:
So, um, I, and I'm watching the two, and I feel my wife's frustration and then I, and I hear your frustration, so I'm gonna, um, so you are getting, you're choosing to stay with the company.

I'm gonna give you my punchline. I think you have to fall in love with the company for this to work. So when you got on the call, you painted a pretty villainous organization. Um, and by the time we got to the end of your story, This is a very benevolent organization to you. I think you're gonna have to fall in love with the company and with your situation at the company if you want the next 18 months to work.

I think a cynical transactional relationship isn't gonna work. I can feel it with you. Some people can do cynical transactional things. I don't think you can.

[00:16:45] Anne Morriss:
I don't think you can, Delaney.

[00:16:46] Frances Frei:
So I'm gonna take that off the table, which means you’re gonna have—

[00:16:49] Anne Morriss:
Which is our greatest compliment, by the way.

[00:16:51] Frances Frei:
Yes. So if you want to work at this company in good faith, I, and accept their money and their benefits, I want you to figure out how you can add delicious value to it. I want you to honor what they are and what they're doing because you are accepting their salary, and you're talking about it in hours. But I would rather talk about it in energy. So if you are depleted at the end of the day, you're not doing anything else. But if you are energized at the end of the day, you all of a sudden have time. So how can we make what you are doing energy-producing as opposed to energy-depleting? So, I would recommend that we just completely reverse the narrative.

[00:17:39] Anne Morriss:
Can, can I take another swing now?

[00:17:42] Frances Frei:
You take another swing.

[00:17:44] Anne Morriss:
I wanna start with the list of attributes that you present to us—

[00:17:49] Frances Frei:
To us, yeah. Yeah. Fine.

[00:17:49] Anne Morriss:
And, and I'll start with me and then Fran, maybe you can fill in, um, savvy, sophisticated thinker, super creative, intelligent. I have a hard time believing the story that in the past, you know, four years, you have only really worked in the service of other people's hopes and dreams. It feels like you are very much in touch with what it is that lights you up about the world. And so then where my coaching brain goes is why is this human invested in this version of the story?

Like, what is underneath, and is it that she hasn't forgiven herself for the factoring security into her decisions about the work to do? Which is a beautiful choice for you, for the child you're contemplating.

[00:18:58] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:18:59] Anne Morriss:
Beau—bringing into the world. I just, I wanna just honor that that is a choice that is not just rational and cold and, but also really beautiful.

[00:19:10] Frances Frei:
Beautiful.

[00:19:11] Anne Morriss:
It’s a, that's an investment in taking care of you, and I wanna invite you to have some compassion and forgiveness and deep respect for the part of you that, that demanded that she be fed and nourished in that way.

[00:19:31] Delaney:
It's been very challenging to, and I apologize for the emotion in my voice. Um, it's been a challenge to shift identities from being a classroom teacher, trying to make the world a better place, and then to go into a, an environment where being promoted, getting money… It's hard to justify the work to my moral self.

It's like it was just starting to percolate. I was made a lead on the team, and then they're all just taken away. I think to myself like, is this just a wake up call from the universe? Like, keep your distance. Don't fall in love with it because it doesn't love you back, and it doesn't have to. That's not its job.

[00:20:30] Anne Morriss:
Well, Delaney, I feel like we're finally in the real conversation.

[00:20:32] Frances Frei:
The real situation, yeah.

[00:20:34] Anne Morriss:
So thank you for going on that ride with us. And for showing up vulnerably, I have a lot more to say, but we need to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

[BREAK]

[00:20:50] Anne Morriss:
All right, Delaney, I'm gonna play back what we hear the issue is for you, and you tell us if this feels right: you were in a position where you correctly diagnose that there was a gap between, uh, what you wanted to be doing, probably your core value system, and the role you had initially been cast in, you skillfully found an exit from that role into this role that was more energy-producing and more aligned with the work you wanted to do and your core values.

You just experienced a shock to that solution, which is that your team went away, and now there's a lot of uncertainty about that role and you're trying to figure out what your next move is on this chessboard of Delaney's life. Is that a reasonable summary?

[00:21:44] Delaney:
Mm-hmm.

[00:21:44] Frances Frei:
And, and you have articulated two paths forward. One is close yourself off so you don't get burned, so don't fall in love again. And I am, it’s like when you coach somebody after a breakup; I’m never gonna get close to someone again, and I'm, we don't wanna give all of that power away to the other thing. And so I don't want a random shock in the world to influence your trajectory of falling in love.

So, I want us to explore at least the possibility of not doing the closed-off version of you, but perhaps doing the awesome version of you and realizing that you need to practice having some self-imposed limits. So that if you work till midnight and all day on the weekends, try to think of ways that you don't have to do that. So I wouldn't lessen the love, I would increase the operational capability.

[00:22:53] Anne Morriss:
But let's get super practical for Delaney.

[00:22:55] Frances Frei:
Sure.

[00:22:55] Anne Morriss:
Where does your mind go on her options in this moment?

[00:22:59] Frances Frei:
Oh I, so listen, you're given a reset moment, and you're gonna mourn the people that have left and the trauma that has occurred, but I, I would use it as a chance to refuel, put the oxygen mask on yourself, and use it as a reset.

You're choosing to have a hustle and a side hustle. Which I love, and honor that and do it with integrity, and I don't want you to have regret that you took money for something you didn't earn. So, how can you do both? Which is, how can I accomplish what it takes other people 10 hours to do in 6 hours? Now, I believe if you put that challenge in there, you could do that.

[00:23:35] Anne Morriss:
I think your framing was beautiful, Frances. I want you to, in this, this gift of 4, 5, 6, 7 days, uh, start to think about what role within the company would be energizing to you. What's like, what's your job description? Who are these other resources that you would work with?

Because these people are sources of energy for you. And I love that framing Frances, as a, as just a gut task. Is this task energizing to me? Is this human energizing to me? Is this daily experience energizing to me? So shamelessly like, get out the piece of paper and, and really write your own job description.

And so when someone calls you, and they'll put, they might not put it in this form. It might not sound like an invitation. It might be like, “Oh, Delaney, this is what you're gonna do next.” But in fact, it is. This is a negotiation because in most cases, you're an at-will employee. That also gives you tremendous agency and freedom.

You can say, “No, thank you. This is not gonna work for me, and I'm gonna leave.” But I want you to have a lot of clarity because there is something important to you in this relationship right now, is that there is a tremendous amount of security.

[00:24:49] Frances Frei:
And so if you have your job description already done, so it's not your emotional reaction, but you already know what you want, negotiate for those things. So if we had to just role-play right now, what is the role you would like?

[00:25:02] Delaney:
In the role that I make for myself, I, I get to share wisdom. That wisdom is not provided, but it is questions; it's discussion. I want to work with my peers. To expand their ideas, become better, um, collaborators, think effectively through problems together and not wait to be told what to do. So my role has some kind of that piece in it. Um—

[00:25:36] Anne Morriss:
Delaney, this is great. Uh, you have my—

[00:25:39] Frances Frei:
Beautiful.

[00:25:39] Anne Morriss:
You have my attention. Um, now I'm, now I'm roleplaying the other side of this conversation. I have unveiled your new job, and it's called Super Program Manager. Congratulations. What you just described, uh, is actually not on my list of Program Manager, necessarily. So tell me how what you just described connects to the mission of the company.

[00:26:04] Delaney:
So if, if I'm staying where I am, then you need these kinds of discussions because there are 5011 products at this company, and they all get created and shipped in different ways.

[00:26:16] Anne Morriss:
That’s confusing.

[00:26:16] Delaney:
That’s… makes it really hard to, to send out a unified product to users. So you need me to bring together the product managers and the UX designers to talk about what makes their product similar. Let's talk about it ‘cause handing down directions on high from these different silos isn't working, clearly, as you just fired a whole bunch of people because of inefficiencies.

[00:26:45] Anne Morriss:
I was just, you just used the magic word ‘cause this is the year of efficiency, Delaney. It sounds like you're gonna make this whole journey more efficient. More efficient and more effective.

[00:26:57] Delaney:
And I'm not gonna do it by being the person who knows all the things ‘cause I don’t. Let me bring you together, ‘cause I know I can facilitate that conversation. That's where my expertise is. It's in the facilitation.

[00:27:10] Anne Morriss:
Um, Delaney, how do you feel in your body having this conversation?

[00:27:16] Delaney:
I feel the groove ‘cause this is like, this is the expertise that I've earned since I was 20 years old and started working in a classroom ‘cause I didn't have to know the answers to the questions I was giving. I just had to set up the circumstances that enabled a conversation to happen.

[00:27:36] Anne Morriss:
For what it's worth, I feel like I am having a conversation with your highest and best self right now, and so I'm super excited about what you just articulated. It also happens to align with the fears and anxieties of every tech leader that we know. That this is a mission-critical problem that needs to be solved.

You know, the homework we're gonna leave you with is to really, um, use writing as a tool for thinking here, but really put this down in a form that will help you think through it in a structured way, but that also that's, that someone else could consume, so that you can have this conversation in a fast-moving environment when these decisions are being made. How, what's your reaction to that as a plan?

[00:28:30] Delaney:
It resonates, as I shared before, the organization did not have a plan for any of the people left behind by the layoffs. And when I went and talked to this chief of staff person, um, I mentioned some of these things to her that I like, you know, I am a strategic mind. I'm great at hosting conversations. I bring people together. I ask important questions. I get people talking.

[00:28:54] Anne Morriss:
You see an opening to create order in the chaos and do it in a way that's gonna light you up. You're the only one with the information to put that equation together.

[00:29:05] Delaney:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:05] Anne Morriss:
And Delaney, that beautiful creative artist inside of you is not being left behind in this scenario. And that's the other part of the challenge is how do you write this job description in a way where she has a reason to show up?

[00:29:20] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:29:20] Anne Morriss:
Maybe not every minute of every day, but there are ways to do this that are creative and generative and help you build a world that's a little better today than it was yesterday without you making, uh, such a severe security trade-off.

[00:29:42] Delaney:
I feel like I have some work to do over the next couple of days, which is nice. I think that this kind of approach, I have faith that it will help me at least solve the other practical need I have, which is to find joy in the work that I do during the day.

[00:29:59] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:30:01] Delaney:
Um, and I hope that if I have this energy, that the outcome of having a job where I'm thriving is that at the end of the day, I do have that energy to devote to the side hustle. That’s, that's the dream.

[00:30:21] Anne Morriss:
We guarantee it.

[00:30:22] Frances Frei:
Yeah. I mean, we can guarantee it.

[00:30:24] Delaney:
Thank you.

[00:30:30] Frances Frei:
Phew. I got a sense that I could sit in on your private coaching sessions. You were super direct, and you broke through, so that was pretty mesmerizing on my end to witness. But let's think about the generalizable lesson of it.

[00:30:52] Anne Morriss:
Here's what I'll say: for people left behind after a layoff, I think there are so many complex emotions that come to the surface. It really strikes at the, at our most fundamental fears and anxieties. Am I going to be okay? Am I enough? Am I worthy? I think these, these questions that lurk in the background. And I think it is important to remember, whatever, wherever you are in the story, so much is happening that has nothing to do with you.

And so where she started was this is a bad company. And I was like, seduced into like, um, wasn't credible, but it was also the very understandable reaction to the situation that I think happens all the time.

[00:31:46] Frances Frei:
Yeah. And, and if that's the diagnosis, I, what I love about the prescription that we finally got to is that when all of these things feel like they're happening to you, how do you pivot from reactive to proactive?

[00:31:59] Anne Morriss:
These are mere mortals making decisions, and they don't have all the information.

[00:32:06] Frances Frei:
They do not.

[00:32:06] Anne Morriss:
And so to be active in answering the question, what is the best use of you? These are very dramatic moments to do that. There's also an opportunity to do that.

[00:32:17] Frances Frei:
All the time.

[00:32:17] Anne Morriss:
All day, every day.

[00:32:18] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yeah.

[00:32:19] Anne Morriss:
And so, um, really thinking about your role in co-producing—

[00:32:24] Frances Frei:
The best use of you.

[00:32:25] Anne Morriss:
The best use of you is, is an opportunity that all of us have at any point in a company's life cycle.

[00:32:34] Frances Frei:
Thanks for listening everyone. We would love to include you next time. Please reach out to us. Email at fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-fixable. That's 234-349-2253.

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Frei.

[00:32:55] Anne Morriss:
And me, Anne Morriss. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Grace Rubenstein, Sarah Nics, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, BanBan Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer.

[00:33:16] Frances Frei:
We'll be bringing you new episodes of Fixable every week, so make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And one more thing: if you can, please take a second to leave us a review. We love hearing from our listeners. See you soon.