Join us for a conversation with Deborah Tannen, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University and author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation affects relationships. We dig into interactional sociolinguistics: how our skills at interacting depend on our conversational style rituals and habits, and how what we mean is often missed or misinterpreted when people with different styles interact.

Join us as we talk to Tabea Soriano, Partner at The Ready, for an exploration of organization design. We talk about the past, present and future of work, and how process, practice, and principles are the core of creating the meaning of work. How, by making the implicit explicit – who talks when, how agendas are assembled, and what meetings are actually about – we can experiment with small changes and create trusting workspaces where people can participate, contribute, and make more time for the craft of their work, ultimately reshaping how organizations work.

In this episode I go back to my neuroscience roots with Earl K. Miller, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Earl studies the neural basis of executive brain functions, the ability to carry out goal-directed behavior using complex mental processes. We talk about learning, memory, and cognitive capacity. How wisdom is our brain encoding our experiences into principles, categories, and concepts using data compression. How sleep and anesthesia are similar and so very different, both invoking full-brain oscillations but one producing memories and the other amnesia. We dig into executive function, multitasking, switching costs, and sensory overload, and how these are manifested in autism, attention deficit disorder, and depression. What is interruption in this milieu? Listen in to find out!

In this episode, we talk with professor and clinical psychologist Michael Karson (michaelkarson.com) about personality and societal rules for what is deemed “acceptable” behavior – and how these are normalized, tested, and evolved over time. We discuss the use of performance as a means of exploring – and challenging- roles and rules, as well as the use of interruption in therapy and teaching contexts, as a means to create safe spaces that engender trust and caring.

In this episode, we explore interruption in the context of conflict transformation with Lorraine Segal, founder of Conflict Remedy (https://conflictremedy.com). Disagreement is a natural part of human relationship, but as we discuss, you don’t have to stay stuck in conflict! We explore interpersonal conflict, what we bring to our workplaces and what our workplaces bring to us, and we tell stories, share mishaps, and dream about what can be if each of us could learn and implement conflict transformation in our own lives.

In this episode, we explore innovation and interruption in the research community with Jason Barkeloo, founder of the open science platform Therapoid about building a parallel pathway for innovation that provides open technologies, lab equipment, and microgrants. We get a bit nerdy and dig into persistent identifiers, cryptocurrency, open regulation, mitigating exploitation. Join us for a delightful conversation about opening up science!

In this episode, we explore interruption with Andrea Michalek. A serial entrepreneur, Andrea has led spin-outs, start-ups, and a major acquisition (twice). All that stopped abruptly in 2020, when Andrea suffered a traumatic brain injury from which she emerged over the course of three years. Join us as we talk about her career of interruptions and diversions, and her experience re-starting her own life.

In this episode, we talk with Emily Russo, Industry Fellow at the UQ Business School and Director at Autism Spectrum Australia, about talent management, and how interruptions in workplace culture are facilitating workforce neurodiversity. Join us as we dig into job crafting, the pros and cons of self-disclosure, and the critical importance of workplace conversations and managing to strengths.

In this conversation with Hanne de Jaeger, associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of the Basque Country and co-director of Dialogica UK, a majority autistic-led social enterprise, we explore participatory sense making – the capacity to flexibly engage with your social partner from moment to moment. And how this sense-making framework is interrupting cognitive theory, moving us from individualism to love.

Teaching – and learning – how to be in dialogue is both fun and complex. Join us as we talk with Diane Finegood, Fellow at the Morris J Wosk Center for Dialogue, about building scaffolding for effective conversation, fostering an ethic of care, and interrupting the “sage on the stage” mode of teaching.

We generally think of interruptions in the context of human conversation. Music is another form of conversation, with instruments interacting and purposefully building upon one another, melodies to harmony to counterpoint and fugue. In this episode, we talk with piano teacher and professional accompanist Doris Mattingly about her perspectives on interruption. Join us for an audio feast!

Interruptions can transform violence to peace. We can use specific breathing patterns to pause, bring our mind and bodies into the present moment, and “turn question marks into exclamation points”. Join our conversation with Mandar Apte, founder of Cities for Peace, a former petroleum engineer whose career and purpose evolved into social innovation.

Interruption is a destructive distraction in some settings, and we can also benefit from interruptions – when we are in intentionally crafted creative spaces and paying attention, conscious of the thriving of the people we are with. Join us as we talk with Marti Spiegelman and explore disjointed career paths, coming to wisdom about consciousness, connection and fluidity, energy and purpose.

We have deep-seated questions about “interruption” as a concept and social construct. In this podcast, we ask what is interruption and how might it be useful Our goal is to start evocative conversations across a diverse set of perspectives — and thank Josie Gibson and The Catalyst Network for hosting our launch episode.