Working

Self-described "tailoress" Cheryl Lofton makes new clothes fit better, brings new life to old clothes, and helps design customer's dream clothing on a budget. She spoke with Jacob Brogan about her family history in the industry and how she works with customers today.In a Slate Plus extra, Cheryl and her assistant Cindy talk about their relationship and measure Jacob for a pair of pants he needs hemmed. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_Brogan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Working embarks on a new series with the people who make sure that we look good. This week, we start with foundation. Christin Michelle, a professional freelance makeup artist helps clients get ready for weddings, photo shoots, galas, and more. She tells us how she began doing makeup artistry, what she carries around in the super heavy kit that she brings to jobs, and how she professionally manages the heightened emotions of a wedding day.In a Slate Plus extra, Michelle tells us about how and where she shops for the makeup she keeps with her at all times. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_Brogan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the Smithsonian's National African American History and Culture Museum had its grand opening, so we're sharing a conversation we had earlier this year with one of its curators. Ever find yourself at a museum wondering about who chose the artifacts and wrote the captions? We spoke with Mary Elliott, a museum specialist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Along with her colleague Nancy Bercaw, Elliott has worked years on a massive exhibit that explores the global history of slavery and the makings of America.And in a Slate Plus extra, Mary Elliott tells us more about the family history research that began her career. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_Brogan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jim Adams keeps every plant at the White House healthy and beautiful as the Supervisory Horticulturist for the National Park Service Special Liaison to the White House. In this last episode of our Working at the White House series, we spoke to Adams in the White House’s Kennedy Garden about the history of the White House as a National Park, about his year-round rotation of plants, and about his encounters with the President’s dogs and other wildlife on the White House grounds.And in a Slate Plus extra, Adams tells us about what goes into setting up the White House Easter Egg Roll and other special events. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Outside the gates of the White House, Lafayette Plaza is often full of tourists, Secret Service, Performers, and Protesters. We spoke to Philipos Melaku-Bello, an advocate for nuclear disarmament who has been supporting a peace vigil across from the White House for over 30 years. Melaku-Bello shares how he and a small group of volunteers have kept the vigil going through winter blizzards and blistering summer days, and how he interacts with passersby, human and animal  alike. In a Slate Plus Extra, Melaku-Bello shares some of the history of the vigil.  If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. For this week's episode, we spoke to someone who was a little less familiar with the institution. Chase Woods, a rising senior at the University of Chicago, served as an intern at the White House this past summer. He talked to us about how he found his way into that role, and what he did during his time there. We spoke to him about everything from his daily decisions about where to eat lunch, to the time he nerded out when he saw Merrick Garland in the hallway. If you've ever wondered about what it's like to be one of the least powerful people at one of the most powerful places on earth, this episode is for you. In a Slate Plus Extra, Woods chats with former Slate intern Ian Philbrick about what it's like to intern in an expensive city full of transitory people.  If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus Hosted on Acast. Se

We're taking a short vacation, so it's a great time to catch up on the rest of the series. Learn about who writes the President's speeches, who picks out his letters, and who manages his schedule. We'll be back in early September with the end of this season. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet the President's chief negotiator in Congress, Amy Rosenbaum.This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. For this episode, we visited the West Wing office of Amy Rosenbaum, President Obama's Director of Legislative Affairs. She shuffles between the White House and Capitol Hill striving to persuade members of Congress to get behind the President's legislative priorities. She discussed her handling of the Iran Deal and when she decides to bring the President himself to the negotiation table. In a Slate Plus Extra, Rosenbaum tells us how the time she spent working on Capitol Hill earlier in her life led to her work with the Obama administration today. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This season, we've been going to the White House trying to understand how the Presidential administration's employees operate and interact. To get a better sense of how the building itself operates, we spoke to Maju Varghese, Assistant to the President for Management and Administration. A former of member of the President's advance team, Varghese is now responsible for the literal management of the White House itself, looking after teams that handle everything from maintenance, to payroll, to the visitor's office. We chatted with him in his cavernous office on a day when President Obama was meeting with the Prime Minister of Singapore, an event that had the White House campus abuzz. Even as he helped manage that energy, Varghese was still working to ensure that everything else functioned smoothly. He told us about how he makes sure that everyone's talking to one another and discussed how the White House has changed in his time there. . In a Slate Plus Extra, Varghese describes how he ended up in his current r

This week we took a step back from the administration itself to talk to the Washington Post's White House Bureau Chief, Juliet Eilperin. A former environmental reporter for the Post, Eilperin made the jump to her current beat back in 2013, and she's been covering the Obama administration ever since. She talked to us about everything from the challenges of covering a story in an environment where security is the rule, to the strangeness of having the President mispronounce your name when he calls on you during a press conference. We also chatted with her about what she tries to capture in her articles and about some of the stories she's proudest of.  In a Slate Plus Extra, Eilperin, who wrote an entire book about sharks, tells us some of her favorite details of those ancient predators of the deep. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f

This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. Head Speechwriter Cody Keenan writes and edits the President's speeches. He takes us through his career starting as a speechwriting intern in 2008 and how a speech goes from the blank page to the teleprompter. In a Slate Plus Extra, Keenan tells us about some of the lighter speeches he's written over the years, including one he gave himself. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. Director of Scheduling Gregory Lorjuste is responsible for figuring out what the President will do from one minute to the next while he's on the road. In a Slate Plus Extra tells us about scheduling the inauguration in 2009. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.If you're looking for more about how Greg made his way from the difficult neighborhoods of his youth to his job at the White House, this article from BET tells the story in detail. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. Because the jobs of the people who work there are sometimes unpredictable, we weren’t able to bring you an episode this week. But we’ll be back next week with another conversation. In the meantime, be sure to check out our first two episodes of Working at the White House. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. For our second episode, we spoke to Paulette Aniskoff, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Aniskoff has been working with the president since 2007, and she brings many of the strategies developed on the campaign trail to the administration’s outreach to the American citizenry. She explored question large and small, including a bit about how the White House coordinates its approach to issues via sequences of morning meetings. Even in our digital age, much of the administration’s internal communication still happens through face-to- face conversations, Aniskoff suggests. That extends to the way she and her office work with constituents: She told us about the effort they put into bringing real people into the White House to talk with the president, going into the ways that they diagram seating charts for meetings in the Roosevelt Room.In a Slate Plus extra, Aniskoff goes into detail about how her job has changed since the early days of

There's no workplace that looms larger in Washington, D.C. than the White House. Hundreds of employees work within its walls, but most of us don't know much about what really goes on there. In a special season of Working, we're peeking behind that curtain talking to some of those who make their way through the White House's gates each morning.For our first episode, we're talking to Fiona Reeves, the Director of Presidential Correspondence. Every day Reeves and her staff sort through thousands of letters and emails that the President receives from his constituents. She ultimately selects ten for him to read each night. She talked to us about some of the most memorable letters she's examined, from the sad, to the funny, to the hopeful. And in a Slate Plus extra, Reeves tells us how social media and email have informed the art of letter writing. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_Brogan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We spoke to Faith Smith who orchestrates all of Slate's live events. She puts together live tapings of podcast episodes, and has also organized conferences, panel discussions, happy hours, and much more. She offered us a literal backstage look at the way that those events come together, starting with the way that she gathers participants and finds a venue. She also talked to us about preparing for the events themselves and led us through her day-of efforts. Finally, she laid out some of her pet peeves for events gone wrong.And in a Slate Plus extra,  Faith tells us of her early efforts for an upcoming event, Slate's 20th birthday celebration. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_BroganWorking is supported by Tictail, a social shopping marketplace. Visit tictail.com/working to create your profile and see a selection of our favorite products. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet the Chief Scientist of NASA, Dr. Ellen Stofan. By training, Dr. Stofan is a planetary geologist who has studied volcanoes both here on Earth, and elsewhere in the solar system. In her current role, she helps coordinate scientific projects of all kinds, which means she has to keep up with a dizzying array of recent research topics. She also discussed how she helps communicate NASA's work to students and the public at large, before addressing that big question: Are we alone? And in a Slate Plus extra, Dr. Stofan tells us why she'd like to visit Titan, a moon of Saturn that is much like Earth in certain ways and profoundly alien in others. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_BroganWorking is supported by Carbonite, protecting digital files with automatic cloud backup. You can try it free without at carbonite.com and use offer code "WORKING" for two free bonus months when you decide to buy. And by Tictail, a social shopping marketplace. Visit tictai

Ever find yourself at a museum wondering about who chose the artifacts and wrote the captions? We spoke with Mary Elliott, a museum specialist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Along with her colleague Nancy Bercaw, Elliott has worked years on a massive exhibit that explores the global history of slavery and the makings of America.And in a Slate Plus extra, Mary Elliott tells us more about the family history research that began her career. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus.Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_BroganWorking is supported by Carbonite, protecting digital files with automatic cloud backup. You can try it free without at carbonite.com and use offer code "WORKING" for two free bonus months when you decide to buy. And by Tictail, a social shopping marketplace. Visit tictail.com/working to create your profile and see a selection of our favorite products. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Visit Second Story Books in Washington, D.C. and meet book buyer and seller Topher Lundell. He told us about how they acquire the thousands of books that line the store's shelves and discussed how the internet change his brick and mortar business model. And in a Slate Plus extra, Topher tells us about some of the gloriously weird pulp Sci Fi novels that he posts to his Instagram @topherlundell. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Email: working@slate.comTwitter: @Jacob_Brogan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Mogavero is a dog walker based in Washington, D.C. who looks after a dozen or more pups every day. He went in deep with us on the particulars of his job, from the way he gets to know new clients—human and animal alike—to the way he arranges his schedule. Along the way, he covered a lot of other ground, discussing the contents of his fanny pack, how he keeps bones out of the dogs’ mouths, and much more.  And in a Slate Plus extra, Moagavero tells us about his nemesis, a unicycling dog walker who sounds an awful lot like a Portlandia joke come to life. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.