All Episodes
Displaying 1 - 20 of 64 in total
EP 62 Hot Flashes, Horse Urine, and the $26.6 Billion Menopause Problem HR Ignores with Mare and Raquel
Mare, Raquel, Steve, and Tony laugh their heads off discussing perimenopause, menopause, and post menopause. Menopause costs U.S. employers an estimated 26.6 billion ...
EP 61 Theresa Hummel-Krallinger or Just Great HR?
Theresa Hummel-Krallinger joins the guys for a more than an hour of laughs and great insight. Theresa talks about what makes great HR, and reacts to Johnny C Taylor's...
EP 60 Reacting to Johnny C Taylor's State of HR Answer at SHRM '26 in The Empty Red Seat
Steve and Tony react to Johnny C Taylor's SHRM 2026 speech about the state of HR. Johnny answered the question the guys ask all of their guests, What is the State of H...
EP 59 An HR Department of One, the Wild Wild West, and Almost Quit with Claire Lizear
Claire Lazaire is back for round two, and this time she's traded corporate HR for something she calls the wild, wild west: running HR solo across fifteen entities and ...
EP 58 An "Accident" at Work and Gandalf is HR's Best Recruiter with Melissa Yergensen
Melissa Yergensen has done HR at a two-hundred-person county government, an underground mine, a giant hospitality company, and back again, and she has an opinion about...
EP 57 Careless Hiring, Skinwalker Ranch, and Britt Davies' Long Awaited Debut
Britt Davies started her HR career before she graduated High School, and is most recently in the tech industry, which puts her right in the middle of the layoffs and A...
EP 56 Where's My Ashtray, Hire Right Fire Fast, and the OceanGate Culture Collapse with Bryan McCurdy
What does a foreman burning a coworker with a cigarette have to do with a submarine imploding two and a half miles under the Atlantic? On this episode, Tony and Steve ...
EP 55 Disrupting Benefit Management with Rhonda Nerenberg and Jacob Davis
The guys sit down with Rhonda and Jacob from Weltrio and talk maximizing effective use of benefits. Rhonda and Jacob give the history of Weltrio and how they are help...
EP 54 HR's Opportunity to Drive the AI Bus with Ryan Kohler and Fragments of Tony's Skull
Ryan Kohler, founder of Applicant Pro, joins the guys and blows Tony's mind in the first minute of the podcast. As Tony picks up pieces of his skull, Ryan unfolds the...
EP 53 Joe Tate Music, Japan, and the Power of Presentations
Joe Tate got into HR because his handwriting was better than the other guy's. He left one of his biggest roles because he refused to let his HRIS manager take the fall...
EP 52 Turns Out Smiling Is Free: Aric Bostick on Attachment Theory and Why Your Face Is an HR Problem
Tony and Steve welcome Aric Bostick, keynote speaker, former classroom teacher, professional crowd-energizer, and the man Steve publicly credits for telling him to get...
EP 51 Fueling HR with the NY Times at Central Utah SHRM
Steve and Tony attended the Fuel HR conference on May 14, 2026. They talked the EEOC's case against the NY Times, diversity, and interviewed several attendees. The mo...
EP 50 The Empty Bolt Seat: The CEO Who Thinks He Doesn't Need HR, Grogu, and Reddit
A CEO returns to his struggling startup, looks around at the wreckage, and decides the HR team is the problem. He fires them. All of them. Then tells the world about i...
EP 49 - HEED This: Reading Body Language, Running Investigations, and What Counterintelligence Teaches HR with Derik Clark
Tony and Steve welcome Derik Clark — Army counterintelligence veteran, body language expert, and apparently a crowd favorite on par with Steve (high praise). Derik bre...
EP 48 May the Fourth, Socks, and Why Performance Reviews Are Stuck in 1955 with Albert Foster
Tony and Steve kick off the show in full Star Wars mode — it's May the Fourth, Steve spent $19.77 on themed donuts from Lehi Bakery, and the great AT-AT pronunciation ...
EP 47 Pure Inspiration at JAG (Jobs for America's Graduates)
We're not choked up, you're choked up. Wow! The guys spend an afternoon interviewing students at JAG's (Jobs for America's Graduates) National Career Development Con...
EP 46 Retention, Troy Blanchard's Connections, and Ken Miles Got Jacked
Steve and Tony talk international remote workers and retention methods with Troy Blanchard from ZConnect. Steve talks about implementing COVID early and often. Tony ...
EP 45 The State of the Hot Tub Workplace in the Empty Red Seat
Tony and Steve break down parts of SHRM's annual State of the Workplace report, but only after venturing into stories of strange women playing footsies with Steve on a...
EP 44 The Dichotomous State of HR, AI, and a Huge Announcement At The Very End of The Empty Red Seat
Tony and Steve talk about the state of HR, AI, eating catnip, and the fact that HR is both doing well and in trouble. Tony's cynicism is both peaking and ebbing as he...
EP 43 The Toxic Environment of the Empty Red Seat - and How to Cure It
In this episode Tony and Steve tackle toxic work environments and Tony's fantastic ability to kill wasps from more than 10 feet away. What is a toxic work environment...