Welcome to Season 2 of Love Letters to Troublemakers (formerly Circle Back Club): (Not) The Best Places to Work.

In our season premiere, Aparna Rae and co-conspirator Rob Hadley take a sledgehammer to the multi-million-dollar industrial complex of workplace certifications.

From the pay-to-play economics of top workplace lists to the glaring hypocrisy of companies like Enron and Amazon taking home awards, we pull back the curtain on why these lists actually exist.

We explore how these certifications are designed to inflate executive egos, act as recruitment shields, and gaslight workers into thinking a toxic culture is actually a personal failing. We also examine why identity-based lists—like "Top Employers for Women"—often mask deep pay disparities and a total lack of basic accommodations for working mothers.

Rob shares his insider perspective from running an employee experience analytics group on how these surveys are manipulated and why a company-wide ranking is essentially meaningless when culture varies drastically from one department to the next.

If your work feels absurd right now, you are not imagining it. Join the investigation, send us your worst corporate memos, and let's dissect the sacred cows of corporate culture together.

TIMESTAMPS:00:00 - The inherent hypocrisy of wanting to be on a "Best Places" list00:45 - Welcome to Season 2: Taking a sledgehammer to sacred corporate cows04:57 - The reality of running employee experience analytics07:20 - How the lists actually work: Application fees and manipulated surveys10:24 - The Hall of Fame of Harm: Enron, Starbucks, and Amazon12:59 - Mouse vibrators and workplace surveillance13:38 - The $200k healthcare executive docked pay for a lack of keystrokes16:23 - Why identity-based lists are often the most frustrating and deceptive24:15 - Executive ego and screaming over bonus stoplight charts37:40 - The Verdict: Keep it, fix it, or let it die?

RESOURCES & LINKS:

• Website: https://aparnarae.com

• Send your stories and redacted screenshots: loveletters@aparnarae.com

#LoveLettersToTroublemakers #AparnaRae #FutureOfWork #CorporateCulture #BestPlacesToWork #WorkplaceSurveillance #HRCompliance #Bestplacestowork #greatplacestowork

Welcome to Season 2 of Love Letters to Troublemakers (formerly Circle Back Club). This season, we are launching an open-source investigation into the sacred cows of modern work culture - the practices, policies, and habits everyone performs but nobody actually believes in.

From the award badges your company paid a ton of money for, to wellness apps masking unmanageable workloads, to "unlimited" PTO that you can never actually take, we are putting corporate absurdity on trial. Every episode, we ask where these policies came from, who they actually serve, and what would work better, before delivering a final verdict: keep it, fix it, or let it die.

If work feels absurd right now, you're not imagining it. Only one out of three people feel respected at work. It’s a design problem, and it’s following us home to our families, our neighborhoods, and eventually, the ballot box.

CALL TO ACTION: Be our sources. Send us the memos, job postings, and Slack messages that made you stare at a wall, and we'll read the best ones on air. New episodes drop on Thursdays.

📧 loveletters@aparnarae.com

"We have lost the art of struggle... We need strong neural pathways built through pressure, not stress, but pressure. And that comes through challenging our thinking." — Ruhee Meghani

IN THIS EPISODE

The AI train has left the station. While media headlines fixate on tech giant valuations, compute power, and data center energy consumption, a quieter crisis is taking place inside the daily lives of white-collar workers. We are told AI will free up our time and build capacity, yet daily users are experiencing unprecedented levels of cognitive exhaustion, job precarity, and structural anxiety.

In this episode, Aparna Rae is joined by Ruhee Meghani, founder of Allied Collective, calling in from Melbourne, Australia. Australia leads the world in progressive workplace safety legislation, formally classifying workplace stress, low job control, and poor organizational change as legally enforceable psychosocial hazards.

Aparna and Ruhee examine AI through this regulatory lens, moving past tech hype to ask the human questions: How does cognitive offloading erode critical thinking and creativity? How is AI surveillance destroying psychological safety? And why is "AI transformation" often driven by executive FOMO rather than true organizational need?

TAKE THIS WITH YOU

• The 17 Psychosocial Hazards: Australia legally regulates psychological injury from 17 distinct hazards—including high job demands, lack of job control, poor organizational change management, and remote isolation.

• The Cognitive Gym: Replacing human reflection, writing, and problem-solving with AI shortcuts strips our brains of the "sustained pressure" required to build strong neural pathways, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence.

• AI Surveillance as Structural Harm: Keystroke tracking, mouse-movement metrics, and video emotion/engagement scoring create intense workplace anxiety and erode workplace trust.

• The "Work Slop" & Efficiency Paradox: AI tools rarely reduce workloads; they accelerate output expectations, compress deadlines, and flood workflows with low-quality content.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Australia's Safe Work Framework: Safe Work Australia Psychosocial Hazards

• Documentary: Coded Bias (Directed by Shalini Kantayya)

• Philosophical Frameworks: The Eight Limbs of Yoga & Samadhi (Self-Actualization)

CONNECT WITH RUHEE MEGHANI

• Website: alliedcollective.com.au

• Ruhee Meghani on LinkedIn

"Work across so many sectors trains us to treat real-world human problems like abstract strategy exercises." — Aparna Rae

IN THIS EPISODE

Are you tired of staring at a 50-slide strategy deck that feels entirely disconnected from the real world? In this episode, host Aparna Rae is joined by innovation researcher, knowledge architect, and equity designer Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon to explore the "sense-making trap" of white-collar professional life.

Together, they unpack why knowledge workers feel comfortable analyzing systemic issues from behind a screen but freeze when faced with relational, community-level work. Pierce introduces the concept of exposure therapy for changemakers, explaining why embodied knowledge matters more than theoretical frameworks, how philanthropic power turns communities into chessboards, and why you don’t need a massive grant to start making change.

From community weaving canvases to "social judo," this episode is your blueprint for getting your reps in and moving from thinking to doing.

THE QUESTION WE'RE SITTING WITH

Is your action for you, or is your action for we?

TAKE THIS WITH YOU

• Embodied Knowledge vs. Abstraction: You cannot learn how to swim by watching videos; you have to get in the water. White-collar workers need exposure therapy to the communities they are trying to impact.

• Start Small and Get Your Reps In: Build your changemaking muscle locally—through neighborhood associations, mutual aid groups, school boards, or simply paying forward a local need.

• Healthy Communities Feel Like a Forest: Ground your networks in biological ecosystems rather than brittle, top-down castles with moats.

  
  

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Relationality by David Jay

• Beautiful Trouble (Toolkit & Library) — beautifultrouble.org

• Tesa Collective (Movement-organizing games) — tesacollective.com

• One Piece (Anime/Manga governance model)

  
  

CONNECT WITH DR. PIERCE GORDON

Explore his curated social change library and framework at piercegordon.me

"Brands are for products. People are defined by stories. And when they tell those stories in powerful ways, there is nothing more magnetic."

IN THIS EPISODE

If you have ever felt dirty trying to "build a personal brand" on LinkedIn, or cringed at the pressure of corporate self-promotion, this episode is your antidote.

Aparna is joined by Amanda Hirsch, former Editorial Director of PBS.org and CEO of Mighty Forces - a storytelling company designed explicitly for people who give a damn. Together, they tear down the sterile, hyper-optimized machine of "personal branding" to discuss why brands belong to products, while human beings belong to stories.

Changing this narrative requires immense courage. Too often, white-collar workers face deep-seated fear and severe corporate retaliation when they try to step away from compliance and speak out. The system is designed to keep us quiet and it is time we reclaim our voice.

Aparna and Amanda break down why your authentic, intentional voice matters more than ever right now. Your true perspective is not a personal brand to be managed for algorithms – it is a non-negotiable tool for collective liberation and real structural change.

THE QUESTION WE'RE SITTING WITH

What’s possible when we share our stories - for ourselves and others?

TAKE THIS WITH YOU

• Ditch the Corporate Brand Label: Humans are not products or companies. When we force ourselves into marketing caricatures, we strip away our nuance.

• The Self-Promotion Gap: Women and marginalized professionals consistently struggle to advocate for their own brilliance online due to societal penalties—but rewriting your LinkedIn profile to reflect your true impact is a necessary, collective reclamation of space.

• From Striving to Collective Belonging: Storytelling shouldn't be a solo performance designed for individual gain. The deep medicine our world needs right now is showing up in the public square.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Learn more about Amanda’s work at mightyforces.co

• Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandahirsch/

• Improvising Adulthood: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me by Amanda Hirsch

Send us your stories, thoughts and connect with Aparna at pod@circleback.club; circleback.club or aparnarae.com

"No billionaire can pull off theft in broad daylight without the help of everyday professional class workers who choose to stay silent or act out of outright complicity."

IN THIS EPISODE We like to think that modern organizations are deeply objective, metrics-driven spaces. But what happens when objective data rubs up against the financial and personal goals of senior leadership? Let's say it plainly: the evidence typically loses.

In this summer bonus episode, Aparna Rae goes completely solo to unpack how data has been weaponized as an employer risk-management apparatus rather than a tool to protect people. Drawing from shocking insider stories—including a healthcare CHRO who cherry-picked engagement data to safeguard executive bonuses and a retailer that outright denied a warehouse team’s tactical request for winter gloves—Aparna challenges us to look closely at the middle tier of everyday professionals who make brazen extraction possible.

We're also looking closely at the education sector, exposing the multi-million dollar EdTech fraud schemes birthed directly by the Forbes "30 Under 30" pipeline, the pseudo-science behind corporate stack ranking, and the fine print that completely dismantles McKinsey’s most famous diversity case studies.

THE QUESTION WE'RE SITTING WITH When data flatters power a little too neatly, do you have the structural courage to double-click and ask where it came from?

TAKE THIS WITH YOU * The "30 Under 30" to Indictment Pipeline: The collapsing infrastructure of companies like All Here proves that the Venn diagram of founders committing massive investor fraud and the people celebrated on elite tech lists is practically a complete circle.

• McKinsey’s Replicability Crisis: Independent scientific researchers proved that the famous studies linking diversity to financial performance got the arrow backward. Strong corporate profitability allows companies to invest in diversity, not the other way around. We should invest in equity because humans deserve a dignified way of making a living—not because it pads a spreadsheet.

• The Cost of Truth-Telling: Highlighting Sarah Wynn-Williams’ groundbreaking memoir, Careless People, and the lengths to which tech oligarchs will go to legally silence corporate whistleblowers.

• The File vs. The Floor: Filing a business license is not evidence of income. Real data fidelity requires precise, continuous accurate representation.

RESOURCES MENTIONED * Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

• Green & Hand Research on the replication failure of McKinsey's diversity metrics

• Season 1, Episode 6 with Dr. Nicole DeKay on the psychological harm of stack ranking

CONNECT WITH US Our digital space: aparnarae.com

Send this episode to a data lover or people analytics professional in your circle: hello@circleback.club

"The room isn’t empty because we stopped wanting to learn. It’s empty because we’ve made it harder to feed the hunger."

IN THIS EPISODE

Have you noticed that your interest in webinars, certificates, and professional cohorts has completely plummeted over the last couple of years?

You are not alone.

Sign-ups are down, virtual attendance is dropping, and the energy in professional learning spaces feels hollow.

In this special summer mini-episode, Aparna Rae digs into the data behind our collective white-collar exhaustion to share a working theory: We broke Maslow’s hierarchy.

Aparna breaks down the steep "cognitive tax" of job precarity, the quiet slashing of corporate training budgets, and the very real reason why your tolerance for generic upskilling webinars has completely cratered.

THE QUESTION WE'RE SITTING WITH

When organizations demand that workers "bootstrap" their own professional development during a historic decline in high-skill jobs, who actually has the cognitive margin to show up?

TAKE THIS WITH YOU

• Survival Mode is Cognitively Expensive: When you are calculating immediate bills or navigating layoff anxiety, your brain naturally prioritizes food, shelter, and caregiving over an abstract AI literacy course.

• The "Bullshit Meter": If a team has been cut in half while responsibilities double, workers have zero patience left for panel presentations.

• Learning Outside the W2 J-O-B: White professionals are rejecting hollow corporate upskilling, but they are deeply hungry for real, tangible skills 0 art, cooking, knitting, gardening, and connecting with nature.

CONNECT WITH US

Our digital home: circleback.club; aparnarae.com

Share how you’re experiencing learning and bandwidth in your own life: hello@circleback.club

"Dignity isn't a perk. It's not a leadership style. It is the foundation for safety, collective action, and honest work."

IN THIS EPISODE In our Season 1 finale, Aparna and Lars lay down the ultimate baseline for what it actually means to be human in modern work structures. For months, we have built a meticulous structural, historical, and embodied case for why contemporary white-collar systems make us feel so profoundly small. In this episode, we bring it all home to a single, non-negotiable word: Dignity.

Featuring real, unfiltered field recordings from grassroots organizers, tech coalition members, and national culture changemakers, we break away from corporate compliance theaterto analyze how our current economic environments treat human value as a conditional commodity rather than an inherent truth. From backhanded managerial compliments to the paralyzing trap of professional code-switching, this final conversation unmasks how late-stage capitalism intentionally decommissions human agency - and map out exactly how we can start reclaiming it person-to-person.

THE QUESTION WE'RE LEAVING YOU WITH THIS SEASON What choices would you make, and what would you build entirely differently, if human dignity were your absolute, non-negotiable starting point at work?

TAKE THIS WITH YOU INTO THE SUMMER - Dignity Cannot Be Earned: Stop outsourcing your self-worth to corporate performance ratings or manager validations; dignity belongs to you simply because you exist.

• Exhaustion is Structural Extraction: When you feel physical wrongness but force your body to override it for the sake of "business as usual," you are actively participating in your own behavioral extraction.
• Bring It Into the Room: Dignity is highly contagious when it is somatically and intentionally lived out; when you hold onto your own self-respect, you force the system to react to your truth.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• • What It Takes to Heal by Prentis Hemphill - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/726173/what-it-takes-to-heal-by-prentis-hemphill/
  • The Politics of Trauma by Staci Haines - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608550/the-politics-of-trauma-by-staci-haines/
  • Inside Organizer School — Founded by Jaz Brisack - https://www.insideorganizerschool.com/
  • Tech Workers Coalition - https://techworkerscoalition.org/

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CONNECT WITH US Our digital home: https://www.circleback.club/

Drop your career survival stories directly into our inbox pod@circleback.club

Thank you for walking with us through Season 1. Stay subscribed for exclusive between-season drops, and get ready for Season 2.