In this conversation, Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer explains why startup culture treats long hours as a badge of honor and what the research says that costs founders in health, sleep and relationships.

He describes why founders push themselves harder than any boss would, how ego and comparison keep them in situations they know are hurting them and why a better question is how wisely hours are spent.

The discussion also examines why stress and burnout spread through households and companies, what investors should be monitoring alongside burn rate and how a founder can tell when work is making them sick.

Dr. Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks discusses the cultural origins of American professionalism, tracing the belief that emotions and personal lives don't belong at work back to the Protestant work ethic and showing how that belief still shapes startup culture today.

He explains why the ideal worker who sacrifices everything is a myth rather than a requirement for success as well as what his research on startup pitching reveals about investors' response to founders who show both passion and worry.

The discussion also touches on loneliness among founders, the rituals leaders can use to normalize connection at work and what it means to be a person who happens to be building a company rather than a company with a person inside it.

In this conversation, Dr. Trent Williams explains why the loss of a company can produce grief comparable to losing someone you love, particularly when a founder's identity has become intertwined with the venture.

He describes the three paths founders tend to follow after failure, why the ones who blame only themselves or only others rarely learn from it and the impact of silence from investors once the shutdown.

The discussion also examines what the startup ecosystem would need to build to take entrepreneurial grief seriously and what a founder in the middle of it can do to make sense of the experience.