PODCAST · business
What Does It Profit Podcast
by Dr. Dawn Carpenter
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Spoiler alert: Nothing. This bible verse has endured over the centuries as a reminder that we can't put our price tag on what matters most. Yet, time and again, businesses have put profits above all -- leading our world to the brink of a climate catastrophe, an inequality crisis, and the greatest extinction of other creatures since the dinosaurs (except this time, the meteor is us). Can we align growing returns with the greater good? Former investment banker turned business ethicist Dr. Dawn Carpenter believes we can -- and that figuring out how just might save the world. In What Does It Profit, Dawn talks with the world's leading thinkers and researchers, entrepreneurs and executives, exploring the most innovative ways we can reconcile capitalism's demand for profit with the long term well-being of people and the planet. From socially responsible investing to conscious consumerism to business ethics in this
Episodes
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S6.E8 | Burying the Doubt: Women Rebuild Death Work
For most of human history, women cared for the dead. They prepared bodies and guided families through grief. Then death became a business, and women were pushed out. In this episode of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter brings you inside the death care industry with Doris Amen and Alexandra...
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S6.E7 | Beyond Play: The Business of Belonging
In this episode of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter explores what happens when a business begins with a simple question. Where do people go to belong? More women are starting businesses than ever before. Yet ownership does not always mean access. Women still face barriers to capital,...
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S6.E6 | Game Changer: Rewriting the Rules
A board game may look simple. A set of pieces. A set of rules. A way to win. But every game is a system. It teaches us what to value, how to compete, and what success looks like. In this episode of What Does It Profit?, we follow the unexpected journey of Elizabeth Hargrave, a health policy...
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S6.E5 | Bridge Builder: Engineering Confidence
In Season 6 of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter explores dignity at work by stepping inside industries where women are still underestimated and often unwelcome. In this episode, we meet Aine O'Dwyer, a civil engineer and the CEO of Enovate Engineering. Raised on a dairy farm in Ireland,...
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S6. E4 | Tools & Tiaras: Jobs Don't Have Genders
In Season 6 of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter goes inside industries where women are still underestimated and often unwelcome to explore how they are reshaping the meaning and structure of work. In this episode, we meet Judaline Cassidy, a master plumber, union leader, and founder of...
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S6.E3 | Long Haul: Driving Toward Freedom
Less than 10% of truck drivers are women. The open road has long been seen as a man's world. But that is changing. In 2012, Jess Graham left an abusive relationship and enrolled in CDL training within days. Weeks later, she was licensed and on the road with her ten-year-old daughter, living...
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S6.E2 | Sparking Change: Women Fighting Fire with Fire
What happens when women enter one of the most dangerous, male-dominated professions... and change it from the inside? In this episode of What Does It Profit, Dr. Dawn Carpenter goes from D.C. firehouses to wildfire lines to meet the women fighting fire with fire. At Camp Spark in Washington…
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S6.E1 | Women in Labor: Essential Work, Unequal Pay
Women have always worked. But when women entered the U.S. labor force in large numbers during the 1970s, equal pay did not follow. In this episode of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter explores the history of women's labor rights—from the rise of the Nine to Five movement to the equal pay...
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Season 6 Trailer | Women Redefining The Workforce
This season on What Does It Profit, host Dr. Dawn Carpenter steps into the worlds where women are least expected—and often least welcomed. From firehouses to funeral homes, construction sites to game design studios, meet the women breaking barriers and reshaping the meaning of work itself. Their...
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S5.E.5: Turbulent Thoughts | Flight Crew Safety
In this episode, we delve into the challenges faced by airline pilots and flight attendants, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a national pilot shortage and increased workloads, safety is at risk as pilots and cabin crew work longer hours without adequate rest. Former airline…
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S5.E4.: Health vs. Hustle | The Cost of Convenience at Amazon
In this episode, we delve into the harrowing experiences of Amazon warehouse worker Wendy Taylor, who suffered a serious injury while under immense pressure to meet unrealistic productivity quotas. Despite her injuries, Taylor was denied proper medical care and forced to return to work,...
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S.5E.3: Coal Crisis | Silica and the Resurgence of Black Lung
This episode explores the resurgence of black lung disease among coal miners, particularly due to toxic silica dust exposure. We revisit the Season 3 story of Joe and Elizabeth Opyoke, highlighting the dangers miners face. Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers of America, discusses...
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S5.E2: Locked Doors | The Legacy of Worker Safety Reforms
This episode we take listeners back to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. This was one of the deadliest industrial tragedies in U.S. history, claiming 147 lives due to locked exit doors and inadequate safety measures. This tragedy sparked significant reforms, including the…
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S5.E1: Safety First | The Dollar General Dilemma
In the Season 5 premiere of What Does It Profit, we explore the pressing issue of worker safety at Dollar General. Our journey begins with a bus trip to Nashville, where employees from nine states rally for fair pay and improved safety conditions. The episode highlights alarming safety…
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Season 5 Trailer | Worker Safety
To our long-time listeners... welcome back. To those who have just found us, we are the podcast that examines the social and moral value of business. In the 5th season of What Does It Profit, we grapple with what it means to feel safe at work. We talk to historians and workforce safety experts…
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S4.E6: Beyond Belief |How AI is Reshaping Religion
In the final episode of the fourth season of the What Does It Profit? Podcast, Dr. Dawn explores the impacts of artificial intelligence on religion . Dr. Dawn speaks to Josh Franklin, a rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in New York, who used the chatbot ChatGPT to help write one of his...
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S4.E5: Express Lane | AI's Journey to Better Transportation?
On this episode of the What Does It Profit? podcast, hitch a ride along with Dr. Dawn as she explores the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on public transportation in the U.S. In this episode, we hear first from Bill Domanico, a retired New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority...
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Thanksgiving Blend: Brewing Change at Starbucks | BONUS
This Thanksgiving week on the What Does It Profit? podcast we're taking a break from this season's AI theme to extend some thank you-s. Listen in for a re-air of our award-winning Season 3 episode, "Brewing Change: Labor Organizing at Starbucks." Loyal listeners know that in this episode we left...
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S4.E4: POTUS IRL| Public Trust and AI Priorities
In this unexpected mini-episode, Dr. Dawn pivots from our regular programming to reflect on President Biden's sweeping executive order on AI. The executive order, passed on October 30, 2023, is the Biden Administration's attempt to reconcile tech companies' demand for profit and unchecked...
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S4.E3: Hard Hats to Hard Drives | How AI is Revolutionizing Construction
In this episode, Dr. Dawn examines the newest addition to the construction industry's toolbox: AI technology. In this episode, we learn that AI is like a double-edged sword: While AI technology certainly threatens jobs in the construction industry, it's also ushering in a new era of efficiency…
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S4.E2: Entertaining AI: Disrupting the Creative World
In this episode, Dr. Dawn heads straight into the scene of the action, Paramount Studios in Hollywood, where writers and actors are fighting an existential battle that stems in large part from AI. We look beyond the glitzy Hollywood sets to learn more about how AI threatens the livelihoods of...
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S4.E1: California Dreaming | AI in the Heart of San Francisco
Welcome to Season 4. In this kick-off episode, we travel with Dr. Dawn to the hometown of tech, San Francisco. We start the season this way because we feel that it's important to start in the real world before we venture into the virtual one. Dr. Dawn shares her observations of fear, hope, and...
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S4 Trailer | AI and the World of Work and Wealth
Welcome to Season 4 of What Does It Profit. In this season, we're bringing you six stories about the hottest topic on the planet-- artificial intelligence (AI). Wanting to see firsthand what all the hype is about, Dr. Dawn packs up the WDIP production team and heads to Silicon Valley. In Season…
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WDIP | Summer School: Benefit Corporations
We've reached WDIP Summer School 2023. Our final lesson might seem a bit technical, but attention to this detail can make all the difference to the success of a social purpose enterprise. In class today, we learn that how a business is incorporated has a real impact on how a business venture can...
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WDIP | Summer School: Circularity
Welcome to WDIP Summer School. It's not summer school for those who have failed. It's summer school for those who want to catch up, and for those who want to get ahead. Every two weeks throughout the summer, we'll look back on lessons learned from Season 3 which was all about making change… right...
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WDIP | Summer School: Child Labor
Welcome to WDIP Summer School. It's not summer school for those who have failed. It's summer school for those who want to catch up, and for those who want to get ahead. Every two weeks throughout the summer, we'll look back on lessons learned from Season 3 which was all about making change… right...
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WDIP | Summer School: Greenwashing & Social Washing
Welcome to WDIP Summer School. It's not summer school for those who have failed. It's summer school for those who want to catch up, and for those who want to get ahead. Every two weeks throughout the summer, we'll look back on lessons learned from Season 3 which was all about making change right...
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WDIP | Summer School: ESOPs
Welcome to WDIP Summer School. It's not summer school for those who have failed. It's summer school for those who want to catch up, and for those who want to get ahead. Every two weeks throughout the summer, we'll look back on lessons learned from Season 3 which was all about making change right...
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Fair Ball: A Living Wage for Minor League Baseball
In this episode, Dr. Dawn wraps up Season 3 by sliding into home plate. She takes us on a journey inside professional baseball. We hear the incredible story of how an inspiring group of athletes, allied with social justice advocates, finally took a stand to demand that the work of minor league...
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Industrial Roots: Designing a Circular Economy and Creating Homespun Wealth
In this episode, Dr. Dawn takes us on a trip to find her roots in rural North Carolina. She is the granddaughter of an orphan who worked in the NC textile mills in the 1940s. Without much to go on, Dr. Dawn leans on insights from James Benton, author of Fraying Fabric, and Jimmy Warlick…
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Solar Holler: Mining the Sun in West Virginia
In this episode, we are headed to West Virginia to flip the script on what we know about the energy business in the heart of coal country. We introduce you to a new type of energy and a new type of business. Meet Solar Holler, the "benefit corporation" that addresses some of the toughest economic...
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Dangerous Business: The Human Cost of the Meat We Eat
In this episode, we head to Crete, Nebraska, America's heartland, in our quest to gain insight into the human cost of the meat we eat. We tell the extraordinary story of the "Children of Smithfield," the adult children of meatpacking workers at Smithfield Foods who stood up to Big Meat, the...
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Brewing Change: Labor Organizing at Starbucks
In this episode, we tell an almost surreal story. It is the origin story of "union busting" at Starbucks, one of the country's best-known progressive and socially-conscious companies, and the highest ranking food service company on the list of Fortune's Most Admired Companies. Our host Dr. Dawn...
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Recovery Hardware: Retooling the Human Spirit
In our Season 3 kickoff, we celebrate the resiliency of the human spirit. We step into the psyche of Gina Schaefer, the founder and CEO of A Few Cool Hardware Stores in-and-around Washington, DC. Gina combined her entrepreneurial spirit and love of community into a space for people recovering…
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Season 3 Trailer
To the loyal WDIP tribe, welcome back! We've missed you. Thanks for your patience as we re-vamped the show. We hope you like the changes. For those who are just finding us, thanks for giving us a listen. We're the podcast for those who think that there is a social and moral value in economic…
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SPECIAL EDITION | Whistling At the Fake: The Value of Truth in Science
In this episode, Dr. Dawn is in conversation with Dr. Elisabeth Bik and Dr. Ivan Oransky. Dr. Elisabeth Bik is a microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant who has worked to call out fraudulent scientific papers. She became renowned in her fight against the bad science behind...
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Off-Season | Meme Stocks vs. Short-Selling for Good-- Revisited
As we head into the 4th of July holiday weekend, we dig into the WDIP back catalog to revisit a conversation from October 2020 with The Assassin, famed short-seller Fahmi Quadir. Now that meme stocks are a thing and short-selling and hedge funds have made their way into social media lexicon, we...
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Off-Season | Finance Justice: Promoting Lives of Greater Economic Success
In this off-season episode, we dig into the WDIP back catalog to revisit a conversation with Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) CEO, Lisa Mensah where we talked about the idea of "finance justice." The original conversation was released in December 2020. The work keeps pressing forward as OFN…
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Off-Season | About WDIP and Dr. Dawn w/Uncertain Things
This weekend is Memorial Day weekend-- the unofficial start of summer... at last! At What Does It Profit, we are officially in the "Off-Season" and busy cleaning house, tuning up, and otherwise getting ready for Season 3. During the off-season, we wanted you to get to know more about our host and...
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Capitalism In Service to Human Rights
We've reached the end of our second season. This is the time when we take a pause and look back. In today's episode, it means looking back to our pilot episode about shareholder activism and our Season 1 bonus episode called The Price of the Ecuadorian Chernobyl. This is the story of Chevron and...
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The Economic Value of Dignity
We've reached the last regular episode of Season 2. Hold on to your passport. We're still travelling. We start in New York and then head to India with Megha Desai. Megha is the former ad agency protégé, who after a decade in the business, answered the call of the ancient Indian philosophy of...
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A New Soul for the Global Economy - The Economy of Francesco
Despite being in the midst of a global pandemic, we're going to take a trip around the world. We're talking about the Economy of Francesco (EoF) with Paulo Santori, an economic historian in Rome and with Myrian Castello, a "human-right-to-dream" activist and facilitator in Brazil. EoF is a global...
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Time: The Most Valuable Commodity (Roberta MacDonald)
This week we stay in the co-op space a little longer and get a two-for-one. As an homage to Women's History Month, we talk with one of the most celebrated marketer of co-ops-- and one of less than a handful of women responsible for driving the development of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in...
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Shared Economic Benefits: Intro to Co-ops (Casey Fannon)
This week, we're going to switch things up a bit. We are going to talk about the idea of inclusion, but from a slightly different perspective. We are going to learn all about economic structure called a co-op. Sure you likely have heard of housing co-ops, maybe even grocery co-ops… but do you…
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Diversity as a Superpower in Business (Logan Scott)
This week, we talk with Logan Scott, Manager for Diversity and Inclusion at The Walt Disney Company. Logan's work during Black History Month on the New York Times' 1619 Project inspired us. Logan talks about superheroes, diversity, equity, inclusion, and what it all means for business.
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The Power of Superheroes (Gareb Shamus)
This week, we take storytelling to a whole new level. We learn that each of us is a "superhero" at something. We talk to the man whose Instagram feed has selfies with the Hollywood Superhero A-LIST. In some ways, we think of our guest today as a kind of superhero himself, building community where...
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Corporate Democracy from the Inside Out (James McRitchie)
The winds of change are blowing in corporate governance. Where will they take us? Time will tell. This week we have a shareholder perspective from a man whose name is well-known in the investor relations offices of many of the most well-known corporations in America. We like to call him a dean of...
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Business Roundtable: Re-conceptualizing the Corporation? (Jessica DiNapoli)
In 2020, JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon's tenure at the helm of the Business Roundtable expired. But what about this whole new way of doing business? In 2021, shareholder activists put the stakeholder governance paradigm to the test, and JP Morgan said, no. The whole issue got us thinking. It's time...
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Transcending Robinhood: Finance for Good? (JC de Swaan)
In this episode, we're not talking about bulls or bears. We're talking about the big, fat elephant in the room. The finance industry is ethically-conflicted. We talk with JC de Swaan, hedge fund investor and Princeton finance ethicist, about Robinhood, Wirecard and a few other notable companies--...
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Democratizing Asset Management (U.S. Rep. Andy Levin)
In this episode, we explore the idea that everyone who has retirement assets should have the ability to know where their money is invested and how it has an impact in the world. With knowledge comes power-- the power to make sound economic and moral decisions. Our guest is Congressman Andy Levin,...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Spoiler alert: Nothing. This bible verse has endured over the centuries as a reminder that we can't put our price tag on what matters most. Yet, time and again, businesses have put profits above all -- leading our world to the brink of a climate catastrophe, an inequality crisis, and the greatest extinction of other creatures since the dinosaurs (except this time, the meteor is us). Can we align growing returns with the greater good? Former investment banker turned business ethicist Dr. Dawn Carpenter believes we can -- and that figuring out how just might save the world. In What Does It Profit, Dawn talks with the world's leading thinkers and researchers, entrepreneurs and executives, exploring the most innovative ways we can reconcile capitalism's demand for profit with the long term well-being of people and the planet. From socially responsible investing to conscious consumerism to business ethics in this
HOSTED BY
Dr. Dawn Carpenter
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does What Does It Profit Podcast have?
What Does It Profit Podcast currently has 67 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is What Does It Profit Podcast about?
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Spoiler alert: Nothing. This bible verse has endured over the centuries as a reminder that we can't put our price tag on what matters most. Yet, time and again, businesses have put profits above all -- leading our world to the...
How often does What Does It Profit Podcast release new episodes?
What Does It Profit Podcast has 67 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to What Does It Profit Podcast?
You can listen to What Does It Profit Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts What Does It Profit Podcast?
What Does It Profit Podcast is created and hosted by Dr. Dawn Carpenter.
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