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Layoffs are back in the headlines, but the hardest part isn’t the announcement. It’s what happens after: the endless applications, the four-round interviews that end in ghosting, and the quiet pressure to accept jobs that pay a fraction of what your experience is worth. We sit down with Taryn Talley, a marketing leader and LGBTQ2SIA advocate, to talk about the job market in 2024 with zero sugarcoating and a lot of hard-earned perspective from nearly three decades in digital marketing and design.

We get into the realities behind “just pivot” advice: how part-time consulting can leave you without healthcare, why unemployment barely touches the bills, and how age bias and DEI backlash can shape who gets seen and who gets sidelined. Taryn shares the kinds of hiring red flags she’s seeing now, from rejection without feedback to bizarre metrics like LinkedIn follower counts being treated like qualifications, plus practical ways to approach the volume problem and the ATS filter game without losing your mind.

Then we zoom out to the platform that drives so much career visibility: LinkedIn. We talk about reach dropping, why comments matter more than ever, how AI systems are changing what shows up in the feed, and what “AI slop” means for creators and job seekers trying to stand out with real work. We also touch online harassment, blocking as a safety tool, and the political reality affecting trans people navigating everyday life across state lines.

If you’re job searching, hiring, building a personal brand, or just trying to make sense of why everything feels harder, this one will land. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Work with Taryn: https://streamyard.com/xfv46vjrrtcc

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The internet keeps handing us the same recycled “insights” with a new filter, and we’re supposed to call it community. Madison sits down with Vanessa Smithers, a narrative consultant, poet, writer, and legacy archivist, to talk about the rise of Substack, the flood of AI-generated writing, and the weird new normal where people copy paste a robot’s voice and charge real money for it. We’re not anti-AI. We’re anti-empty. If you’ve felt your feed getting louder while saying less, you’re not imagining it.

We dig into what algorithms reward, especially for Black creators and anyone who gets boxed into a stereotype for views. We talk about the dopamine trap of engagement, why “authenticity” online can become a curated performance, and how to build a personal brand on LinkedIn or Instagram without letting metrics decide your worth. Vanessa shares the practices that help her stay grounded, including treating hobbies as joy instead of output and choosing what stays offline.

Then we crash out about privacy and consent in public life: filming strangers at the gym, recording run clubs, documenting every trip for “content,” and the way constant consumption kills tenderness. Vanessa also breaks down why being labeled a “content creator” can feel flattening when the work is art, emotional labor, and lived experience. We close with a hard truth about equity conferences and professional events that ask marginalized speakers to work for exposure or even pay to speak, plus what it really means to value your intellectual property

work with Vanessa.

https://www.vanessasmithers.com/

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The political noise around trans people is loud, but the day-to-day consequences are even louder. Bryce joins us to get brutally honest about what it feels like to live at the intersections as a Black queer transgender man in 2026 while public fear-mongering ramps up and basic safety gets treated like something you have to earn.

We talk about Bryce’s last 12 to 18 months, including a sudden layoff from a tech role centered on belonging, ERGs, and equity and inclusion strategy, followed by a job search that stretches far longer than anyone plans for. That path also leads from Seattle to Florida, and we unpack what “access” actually means when trans-affirming healthcare, employment protections, and community support vary wildly by state. Along the way, we challenge the lazy storyline that the South is a monolith and the privileged advice to “just leave.”

We also go deep on trans athletes and why sports became a culture-war target, even when the facts do not match the panic. Bryce shares personal experience as a former trans college athlete and as a culture strategist who planned a sellout MLB Pride Night designed to expand visibility and community connection. Then we zoom out to the bigger idea: a lot of anti-trans rhetoric is really about policing gender expression for everyone, rooted in colonial history and rigid norms that harm far more than trans people.

If you want a Pride Month mindset that lasts past June, this is your roadmap: humanize, learn the history, and use your power to hire, pay, and protect. Subscribe, share this with a hiring manager or ERG lead, and leave a review so more people find the conversation.

Want to work with Bryce?

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/brycejcelotto/

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