Escaping the Echo Chamber: Local Voices Share What Work is Really Like Around The World | Gregory Warner, Revisited

Work For Humans

As an international correspondent for NPR, Gregory Warner has lived and worked in some of the highest conflict areas in recent memory. He has climbed mountains with smugglers in Pakistan for This American Life, descended into illegal mineshafts in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Marketplace's "Working" series, and lugged his accordion across Afghanistan on the trail of the "Afghan Elvis" for Radiolab. On one occasion, while covering the terror attacks in Nairobi, he found himself in the middle of a coup. To save his own life, he had to hide in a large vase until the fighting subsided.
Greg was named a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale and received a Peabody Award for his journalism work. His podcast, Rough Translation, was named one of the New York Times’s Top 10 podcasts of 2021. Last season, he ran a series of surprising stories about workplaces and work cultures around the world. Today, he joins us on Work For Humans to discuss those stories.
In this episode, Dart and Gregory discuss:
- The power of storytelling through a local’s perspective
- Cultural norms, societal pressures, and value clashes around the world
- Chinese workers protesting work through slacking
- How crisis, government, and our parents shape workplace culture
- South Korea’s work trend of adopting English first names
- How countries brand themselves, and how this trickles down to work
- The exportation of Silicon Valley's work culture
- Jobs like truck driving that can push one into solitude
- The danger of hearing from a narrow set of international voices
- And other topics...
Gregory Warner has been an international correspondent for NPR for over a decade. As the host and creator of the NPR podcast Rough Translation, he has lived around the world and in conflict zones like Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Rwanda. Gregory was named a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale and has received various awards for his journalism work, including a Peabody Award. Rough Translation unpacks cultural norms, issues, and shifts close to home from a continent away. The podcast has received multiple awards from the Overseas Press Club and was named one of the New York Times’s Top 10 podcasts of 2021.
Resources Mentioned:
Rough Translation podcast: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510324/rough-translation
Slackers@Work: A Song for the Exhausted podcast episode: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/31/1102281666/slackers-work-a-song-for-the-exhausted
Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell: https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930
Connect with Gregory:
Around the World in 85 Days substack: https://aroundtheworldin85days.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radiogrego/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.