What Are the Questions We Should Be Asking About Women?

John, Mark, and David each hold more corporate board seats than all female corporate directors combined. Not all three of them together. Each one of them, individually. Let that sit.

This is the season two Women's History Month episode, and we are not here to celebrate what women have survived. We are here to interrogate the systems that made survival necessary in the first place.

Dr. Patti Fletcher, Lynne Cuppernull, and Dan Ward ask the questions that the glossy Women's History Month content skips: Who wrote the rules women are still following and who are those rules actually serving? Why do we keep treating women as the variable that needs to be solved for instead of asking what kind of world we are trying to build together? What does it cost an organization when women hold real power without formal authority, and does anyone even see it? What happens to AI, the technology that has become our electricity, when women are not in the room coding it? And what would change if they were?

Also on the table: coactive versus coercive power, why soft power needs a rebrand, what men risk by showing up as feminists at work, and the French press calling Catherine Wright "the third Wright brother" and almost, almost getting it right.

This episode was sponsored by the long game. Played by women everywhere, often when they cannot see the scoreboard.

Resources we mention in this episode:

• "Disrupters: Success Strategies From Women Who Break The Mold" by Dr. Patti Fletcher
• Put a Woman In Charge, song by Keb’ Mo’
• UN Report on AI & Gender Equality
• “LIFT: Innovation Lessons From Flying Machines That ALMOST Worked and The People Who NEARLY Flew Them” by Dan Ward
• Why Women over 50 are the Future of Work in the Age of AI by Laetitia Vitaud, Fast Company
  
  

Listening for the Questions drops every other Tuesday wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe, leave a review, and bring a question.

Listening for the Questions is where curiosity is our compass.

Loneliness is everywhere, and most of us are pretending it is not.

In this episode of Listening for the Questions, Patti Fletcher, Dan Ward, and Lynne Cuppernull take on a topic that is deeply personal, widely shared, and still difficult to talk about. This conversation is not about being alone. It is about disconnection from others, from community, and sometimes from ourselves. It is about the quiet ways loneliness shows up even in full rooms, busy lives, and successful careers.

Together, they explore why loneliness is rising even as we are more connected than ever. They look at the difference between solitude, isolation, and loneliness. They examine how cultural expectations, especially around gender, shape who experiences loneliness and who feels allowed to admit it. They also discuss how loneliness often hides behind productivity, independence, and the appearance of having everything together.

The conversation moves beyond the individual and into the systems around us. What happens when community structures weaken. What happens when relationships become transactional. What happens when independence is valued more than interdependence. These are not abstract ideas. They shape how we live and how we connect.

As always, this is not an episode focused on solving the problem. It is about asking better questions. Loneliness is not a personal failure. It is a human signal.

This episode invites you to notice where loneliness may be present in your life, how you respond to it, and what might change if we approached connection with more honesty, intention, and care.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science by Pamela Ryckman https://www.amazon.com/Candace-Pert-Genius-Madness-Science/dp/0306831465

Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

Health Benefits of Hugs
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-health-benefits-of-hugging-202202162693

Psychology Today. Male Loneliness
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/loneliness

Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

Baby monkey bonding with stuffed animal
https://people.com/baby-monkey-at-zoo-goes-viral-for-having-stuffed-animal-as-friend-11908504

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Listening for the Questions is where curiosity is our compass.

Why do you read? And what biases are sitting on your bookshelf?

The hosts center their careers on innovation which means that they ask questions for a living. So when hosts Dr. Patti Fletcher, Lynne Cuppernull, and Dan Ward tackle reading, they don't ask what you're reading, they ask why.

This episode starts with the personal: reading as escape, ritual, education, connection, a cuddle for the brain. Then it gets harder. How diverse are the authors on your shelf? Did you know men make up only 19% of readers of books written by women, while women are 65% of readers of books written by men? What does that say about cultural conditioning?

The hosts dig into who reads, who writes, and who gets read. They examine economic dimensions: people with higher incomes read more, and people who read more earn more. They talk about creating reading cultures in organizations, the politics of whose books get attention, and whether it's okay to not finish a book (or write in one).

Then they take on AI. Would you read a book written by AI? What if you didn't know it was AI-generated until after? And what does it mean when AI reads our books without permission: Can we even call that reading?

Dan shares his experiment reading only books by women, people of color, and international authors for a year. Patti talks about intentionally seeking out authors of color after Black Lives Matter and forgetting she'd even made that choice because it became a natural, intentional part of her selection process. Lynne asks if reading is where avoided questions first whisper to us.

They close with a lightning round: Fiction or nonfiction? Long or short? Library or bookstore? Paper or screen?

Key Themes:

• Why we read versus what we read
• Gender and cultural biases in reading habits
• Economic dimensions of literacy and access
• Building reading cultures in teams and organizations
• Writing in books, not finishing books, buying books we never read
• AI-generated content and what AI owes to authors whose work it trains on
• Reading as anti-fascist practice and connection across difference

Resources We Found Helpful

Research & Data:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reading data
• U.S. Department of Education literacy research
• National Endowment for the Arts reading trends
• Pew Research: 23% of American adults haven't read a book in the past year
• Global readership data on gender disparities in reading

Referenced Authors & Works:

• C.S. Lewis: "We read to know we're not alone"
• Toni Morrison's *Beloved*
• The Brontë sisters (published under pseudonyms like Currer Bell)

People & Organizations Mentioned:

• Reed Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder, Greylock partner) - early ChatGPT user for book writing
• Tara McDonald - Natick, Massachusetts library system
• Anthropic legal settlement regarding AI training on books

Mentioned in Passing:

• Dan Ward's LinkedIn post on AI writing tells (especially the M-dash)
• B. Dalton bookstores
• National Reading Month (March)
• Read Across America Day (March 2nd)

Listening for the Questions is where curiosity is our compass.