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Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being. Like the radical notion that we should get rid of small talk completely.

We talk about current events. We talk about what you do for a living. But not, do you love what you do for a living? Is this your dream job?

For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mange Shachikular and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way.

I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know.

Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Where's my phone?

Juliana, maybe we can ask an actual human.

Yes, because I have questions, and I bet you do too. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that, and I still need to know why my poop's been green.

We've got actual people answering these exact questions. Listen to Bill and Juliana.

The podcast.

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

I'm Tarika Foster-Brasby. What's up, y'all? I'm your girl, Cheryl Swoops. And it's WNBA All-Star season. The best players in the world are on the floor. Every week, I get to break down the GOATs of today. And I get to break down the GOATs with the GOAT of all time, you. Check us out. Levels to this. New episodes every week on the iHeart Women's Sports Network. Listen to Levels to This with Cheryl Swoops and Tarika Foster-Brasby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's Mojo in the Morning Show. So we were talking before the show about a friend of ours that works for another radio company, right? Uh-huh. And this radio company has, what is it called?

people have different names for it but i think it's called responsible time off it's basically unlimited days off is the new policy and i know a lot of workplaces are adapting this they're not saying like you know you've been with the company for so long so you get 10 days off and you know you can accrue days for the longer you've been at the company if you're a salaried employee do you get paid yes it's paid time off but they just want you to be responsible about the amount of vacation time that you're taking. Okay. All right. Okay. I have a lot of friends who have this at their workplace. Interesting. And it's not, there's no maximum amount of days. There's no maximum amount of days. And what a lot of employers are finding is that people don't take as many days off as they would if they had the days to burn through. So it's almost like reverse

psychology. It is. It's like reverse psychology. People are afraid to take advantage. So this friend

that you're talking about, who again, works in radio, works for a different radio company, not for iHeart, but their company started this policy last year, this responsible time off policy. So again, no limit. And he has his family and the majority of his friends live out of state. So he loves traveling. He loves going to visit them and spending time with them. So he took some vacations last year, which totaled to about seven and a half weeks off.

Oh my God. That doesn't sound very responsible.

That's a lot of time off. Now, mind you, he's doing great. So it didn't inhibit his job performance, but still seven and a half weeks of time off. So he just got invited to go on a trip. This coming weekend is MLK weekend, right? Yes. Is MLK Day next Monday?

Monday, yep.

So he got invited to go on a trip this weekend. And so he decided to take off like Friday and then Tuesday or something to make it an especially long weekend. So he goes to request his days off and his boss calls him into his office and started giving him a super hard time about it. saying you know you took seven and a half weeks last year and we're just starting out the year and and so our buddy is going well wait a second though the policy is there's no limit on the amount of time off that i get to take so who's in the right here it's funny because then you worry

about if i actually follow the policy it is the policy but then are they going to look at me later for to try and get rid of me and fire me because i'm actually going on the vacation but his

argument is ratings are good ratings are good not affecting my job performance well i will give him

advice can i give him advice i've been doing this for a little bit yeah ratings aren't always good and when the ratings aren't good guess what responsible uh responsible time off they're gonna fire your

So let's take the radio out of it Because our business is very different You are so f***ing fired If it were any other job but radio Yeah Who's in the right?

Well, I think that there's And when they mean responsible time off I don't know, he only gets two weeks a year?

He gets as many days or weeks as he wants

No, I'm saying, what was the before responsible time off?

Oh, I don't know

Two weeks, which is pretty much probably norm

Yeah, probably But that's not enough

If you go five weeks over the normal time that you get off from work, that doesn't seem like – it seems like you're taking advantage of the system.

And I feel like the reason the companies are moving to that whole policy is because, especially with the younger generation, they have anxiety over, oh, my gosh, if I really do that, they're going to – I can't leave that long. They're going to fire me or they're going to realize they don't need me or they're going to think I'm taking advantage.

The younger generation does?

I think so.

I don't think so.

I think the younger generation is afraid to, they're going to be afraid to take unlimited vacation or whatever their version of that is.

You're just so poorly of my age group.

No, it's not your age group. It's your younger age group. It's the younger one.

So now you just called me old. Wow. Disrespectful on two fronts, sir.

I don't believe that because I have seen with buddies of mine who own businesses where people have worked for for them for like a week or two weeks and say can i just take this time off and they're like no you got to work for us for six months before you get a vacation time and they companies do that because that's like usually that's pretty typical and i think that's standard yeah yeah but people want time off right away and they're like wait a second you haven't even worked you haven't even gotten a paycheck sometimes and you're you're wanting a time off i have got to

comment on this i feel like young people don't understand work-life boundaries so they push themselves to the very edge so they're forced to take time off making it look like they don't care

about their job preach kp say it again louder from the man behind the control board who doesn't

get it how about the people how about the people who have time off and a decent amount of it but save it until the end of the year to take it off all at the same time so that they fight leave us without them for like weeks upon weeks without their voice.

The defined decent amount of time.

Well, and to stick up for her, we didn't, I don't know what they do now, but we didn't have people to cover for us. So there wasn't just a simple, hey.

That was a bad situation. I'm literally so sick of people saying that I literally screwed over everybody by taking an entire month off when I missed family vacations because nobody was there to cover for me. And I hadn't had a vacation day in 11 months because I wasn't allowed to take a single day off for vacation or for sick. So I am really sick of hearing of this.

You sound like you used to take off.

I could. You know what, Mike, though? I don't have a reasonable amount of time to take off in a year.

Alright, so what radio company is this so we can all get a job at this radio company that you can take seven weeks off?

I don't even know. I think it's like a mom and pop. I don't know what company here works for.

I will say this, Megan and Mike, in your cases, You should be able to take the time off When you want to be able to take time off And if you ask for time off And they say we don't have anybody to cover That's not your problem That's the problem of whoever the boss is

It's not my problem But at the end of the day it is my problem Because if nobody is going to come in to show up Then guess who gets fired

Me No no no There's different layers The person who hired those people Or scheduled those people Is the person who gets fired

I don't know if you know this That person has more power than me

and literally doesn't care well that's when you that's when you do what i was talking about just a few minutes ago you call up the national human resources person right right right and you say hey wait a second what's going on ashley how you doing good how are you guys we're good what's

happening so i our company has a responsible time off policy and i'm one of the people that i'm like terrified to take time off because i'm afraid i'm going to uh take advantage of it plus i have two young kids and being in daycare they're sick all the time so i just ended up not really taking much vacation and then towards the end of the year i noticed i only had like a week and a half that i'd taken off all year so our hr actually sent me an email saying i have not taken enough time off and basically said you need to schedule time otherwise we will schedule time on your

calendar and you will not that's a good comment yeah so that worked out question for you would you accept the money? If they said to you, hey, because I have friends that work for companies where they'll say, you get three weeks vacation a year, or we'll pay you for up to a week and a half of your vacation time. Because I would honestly take the extra cash.

I think it would depend on the year. I think there's some years where, like this year...

I have a lot going on. I have my sister's wedding. I have to travel for that. Plus, we skipped our family vacation last year, so we're going on that. I think it would just depend on the year. I would like to have that option. But then if I have stuff planned, then I'd like to just be able to take that vacation.

Yeah.

And now it's different than it was a couple years ago. I'll say that here. But now I might not even be in tomorrow because my son is sick. And I don't have a babysitter. I can't figure it out. i can't take any more days off like i have to go through that process now of asking people can you fill in for me can you do this can you do this and if they can't then i might have to bring my

kid into work there's not a there's not a system like there where you can call up your boss like we do with tony and say hey we can't come in today and tony makes a phone calls or has somebody make

somebody find a we don't have there's people who are doing other jobs here who have been i've been fortunate enough that it's worked out where it has worked every single time in an emergency situation i'm sure they would figure something out they're pretty good about that but there isn't a specific person that does that now well buck what's up yeah i think what you're talking

about is that like the 10 days or something that's for sick leave you get a specific amount of days for vacation which is vacation but it's people taking sick days coming up with bogus reasons to be sick they want people to be responsible and if you set a limit on that or no limit then you have people being responsible or irresponsible depending on your own personality i mean i gotta

be honest with you we get how many sick days a year five days i never use any of those days and that benefited me when i was really sick and i was able to use all the accrued sick days that i

had to be able to go and have my surgery but every woman i know my age isn't taking sick days either because they're trying to bank those in case they get pregnant.

Right, but that's what I'm saying. If there are people that are just taking sick days just because they just want to use the days up, you guys are going to find yourself, unless you're not going to stay with your company for very long, you're going to find yourself in a situation where you might get pregnant, where you might get even, you know, there might be a sickness or something like that, and you might need those days.

Well, don't most companies have maternity leave anyways?

Yeah, but they don't give you much. What do they give you?

Not really. What is maternity leave?

In America, it's sickening how lame it is.

What is maternity?

The policy changed between Luce and Smith here. I think I had to exhaust a certain number of sick days, and then I think I got five weeks of like 60% of my pay or something.

Yeah, that's it.

It was really funky how we had to do it.

That was when I had the heart surgery. That was the same situation with the heart surgery. And if I didn't have the amount of sick days that I had, it would have been that I would have only gotten a fraction. What's up, Courtney?

Hi, I'm an HR director. So I just wanted to comment on this. And for one about the maternity paternity leave is here in the US, most companies actually just have FMLA or it's like a short term and long term disability. So it's not really even like a true paternal or maternal leave like you see in a lot of European companies. Some are becoming more competitive with it. But as far as the unlimited PTO or like responsible paid time off companies are switching to that So that really it's profiting the companies. And I've rolled this out in the past three companies that I've been at. And it's truly because if you have that responsible time off or unlimited PTO, the company doesn't have to pay you for time off when you leave. And so it actually is profiting them because the statistics show that people aren't really going to take that time off anyways. And so they don't want to give you those three weeks of accrued vacation because if you leave or go somewhere, they have to pay those three weeks out. Whereas if it's unlimited or they're responsible, they don't owe you anything.

Oh, that's interesting. So there's a little twist to it.

Right.

As a human resources person, what is too much for responsible time off? This guy took seven weeks off. Seven and a half. Seven and a half.

So I think it depends because sometimes as long as you're getting your work done or your projects are done, we can accommodate that time off. I also think it depends on the circumstances and how long somebody has been there. um but honestly in most companies that i've been at if it's two weeks or more like at a time that you're taking off it really requires like ceo approval so it goes all the way up to say how

long you're taking off if i was like a co-worker aren't there people on a show with him uh because if i was like one of his co-hosts i'd be like yeah it's like i'm doing all the work and this

guy's off all the time yeah i don't know how that works because you know what i mean like if i don't know if she does the show when he's not there if they do like a best of or i don't know what that's

the other thing about the job do you have to do all your work before you get to take a vacation some jobs people can just walk away and there's other people to do the job and then there's others that you have to do like four days of work before you leave to make sure you can take a day off well

that's the thing when when we take off oh my gosh and we run back we record so much stuff we record so much stuff shannon's got to like schedule all the best bitch which takes a million times you know it's like we try to keep it uh try to keep it pretty professional sounding but i don't know i don't know anymore i went to a beyond juice over the weekend and i felt so bad there were two people working there they had a million orders popping in because you know they get door dashes and uber eats and all that stuff on those you know coming in and i felt so bad guy comes in and goes yeah i put an online order in like 15 minutes ago it says it's supposed to be ready i mean these two people are trying and i'm looking at him going all right don't be a dick so so i said to the guy i go i go what'd you what'd you order just trying to make small talk with them and he angrily looks at me and he goes i ordered a smoothie and i go well here you want mine and you can remake it that's not what i ordered you know he kind of looked at the whole thing and i'm going man there's only two people here you know what i mean like i feel so bad for you know these those people that are working it's like don't yell at i love the signs that are up don't yell at our employees because at least they came in it's so true yeah don't yell at megan at least she came in today i'm gonna ask me my new policy i'm not coming in

tomorrow here at the happiness lab we're serving up some hot takes for the summer big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being like the radical notion that we should get rid of small talk completely. We talk about current events. We talk about what you do

for a living, but not, do you love what you do for a living? Is this your dream job?

For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mange Shachigular, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way.

I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know.

Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I am a sample long before I'm measured long before I'm named each piece of me has a message a nuanced role when you look beyond the average when you see where I belong you see why I behave the way I do when you start looking at my details when you include my context I start telling you the truth I always had a story you just needed a way to hear it

every sample has a story Learn more at 10xgenomics.com.

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