Feeling Meh about Lunch Today?
A work-culture convo w/ Matthew Halteman on lunching beautifully & imperfectly. We think it's ok to eat your feelings at work, if those feelings are as fun & hopeful as this podcast turned out to be!
This week, the Mode/Switch menu features vegan tiramisu, thanks to our a wise and mischievous guest, Matthew Halteman, the author of Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan.
Say, what? Joyful and vegan? Those words don’t seem to know each other. But after this pod, we think you’ll agree, the both/and there is a mode/switch worth making!
Look, we’re not here to incriminate you for pulled-pork leftovers in the break room. We are here to inspire you to do your work lunch more beautifully if still imperfectly.
Whether you’re a Boomer or an Xer making better food choices for health’s sake—or a Millennial or a Z making food choices to ease the earth—this is not a podcast about making you feel guilty and self-reproachful.
It is instead a convo about making you feel human again. Or, to borrow a phrase from Matt’s book, it’s about staying “as close as you can to who you already are.”
Grab a Christmas cookie, pour some coffee, and pop in your earbuds. Come for the food wisdom and stay for this week’s Spell It Out feature, when David, Emily, Ken, and Gen Z guest Haley ask why communal dining’s on the rise in the American workplace.
Couldn’t be happier you’re joining us at the Mode/Switch table!
-craig
Looking for a last minute-Christmas gift?
Buy Matt’s book here or here. Still unconvinced? Read my Good-Reads review here.
And That’s a Wrap for Mode/Switch 2024
Um, like a vegan wrap? Well, as Jim Gaffigan says, food’s got fewer calories if you roll it.
Heads-up! We’re taking a podcast break for the holidays. But we’ll be back January 17 with an extra mic at the Mode/Switch table. Our roster’s expanding, thanks to all the org leaders and authors joining the conversation.
You’ll still hear us Mode/Switchers bridging intergenerational divides at work. You’ll still hear us asking how to do more than cope when when work’s a lot. But you’ll also hear fresh voices helping us discern good, human futures for work.
Our goal’s always to craft a conversation about the kind of humans we want to be at work. The obstacles are big: burnout, imposterdom, surveillant managerialism, perceived ineffectiveness, and relational breakdown. But as Matt’s helped us to see today, the workplace is so problematic and complicated and—yeah, we’ll say it—so beautiful that we Mode/Switchers need each of you to join us to make it better.
Join the pod’s Season 3 for good ways to be a more human version of us in 2025.