#386 | The Creation of The Modern Office

Charles Dickens made the Victorian workhouse famous, but the reality behind Oliver Twist was even worse than fiction. This episode tells how workhouses treated Britain’s poorest people, and how pensions and the welfare state finally replaced them. Oliver Twist and the image of hu ...  Show more

He wears a red hat, carries a stick, and laughs as he beats almost everyone he meets. This episode tells the odd, violent story of Punch and Judy, the puppet show that began in Italy and became a British seaside symbol. It looks at how Mr Punch survived for over 300 years, and wh ...  Show more

Do you work in your own office? Or is your office open plan. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the way we use the office is changing. In this episode, Pippa and Phil talk about office design and how it impacts work, with Kerstin Sailer, professor in the sociology of architecture at Un ...  Show more

People have been going back and forth about what makes a healthy and productive office since there have been offices. The 20th century was full of misbegotten fads and productivity innovations that continue to this day, even when the whole notion of what it means to be in an o ...

Work has looked very different over the pandemic. In this episode, we look at what we learned in the transition to work from home, and what work can look like when we go back to the office…. Or not. We show employees and leaders how to mindfully create cultures of trust, and how ...  Show more

Great or awful? How do people rate office working? We talk about it and teach vocabulary.