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Medium Lady Talks: Burnout Recovery for Millennials and Mothers

Medium Lady Talks: Burnout Recovery for Millennials and Mothers

Written by: Erin Vandeven
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 Welcome to Medium Lady Talks, the podcast for burnt-out millennial moms who want to reclaim their time, energy, and joy—without the pressure of perfection. Host Erin, a working mom and mindful living advocate, shares refreshingly honest conversations and practical strategies to help you navigate motherhood, career, and self-care with medium effort. If you’re overwhelmed by unrealistic expectations and craving a more sustainable approach to life, you’re in the right place. Tune in for relatable insights on burnout recovery, self-care that actually fits your life, simplifying daily routines, and embracing imperfection with confidence. Through thought-provoking discussions, expert interviews, and personal reflections, Medium Lady Talks is your go-to resource for mindful, realistic growth—because you deserve a fulfilling life, not just a busy one. Let’s ditch the guilt, redefine success, and find joy in the small moments. Follow Erin on Instagram @medium.lady and start your journey to a more intentional, balanced life today.Copyright 2021 All rights reserved. Careers Economics Parenting Personal Success Relationships Self-Help Success
Episodes
  • Episode 174: My 70/30 Rule: How I Decide When AI Is Worth It

    Episode 174: My 70/30 Rule: How I Decide When AI Is Worth It
    May 4 2026

    It started with a book club I never made.

    Last summer I designed it in excruciating detail — the reading schedule, the prompts, the whole vibe. I felt amazing doing it. And then I never launched it. In this episode I'm using that story as the entry point into something I've been quietly figuring out for a couple of years: my personal bar for when using generative AI is actually worth it.

    This isn't a pro-AI episode or an anti-AI episode. It's an honest account of how I went from delighted early adopter, to someone who noticed she was outsourcing her own discernment, to someone who has built what I'm calling a sovereignty muscle — a choosy threshold for when I open the tab and when I don't.

    I talk about the dopamine feedback loop that keeps us coming back to these tools even when the follow-through isn't there, the ethics reckoning I had as a reader and lover of human-made art, the environmental cost I started taking seriously, and why I eventually moved from ChatGPT to Claude.

    And then I get practical. The 70/30 rule — the tool brings the structure, you bring the discernment — and what that actually looks like whether you're a healthcare leader, a creative, or someone who just really wants to read more but can never seem to make it happen.

    No matter where you find yourself — quietly guilty about using AI, scared to start, or just exhausted by the noise — this episode is for you. You don't need the right opinion about AI. You need your own.

    Topics covered: generative AI, discernment, the outsourcing trap, the cheating feeling, environmental cost of AI queries, the Anthropic values pivot, the 70/30 rule, and the sovereignty muscle.

    Connect with Erin:

    • Instagram: @medium.lady
    • Patreon: www.patreon.com/mediumlady
    • Email: mediumladytalks@gmail.com
    • Explore more book-related content on "Medium Lady Reads." - link to Spotify
    • Instagram: @mediumladyreads
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    47 mins
  • Episode 173 Is Guilt Driving the AI Gender Gap?

    Episode 173 Is Guilt Driving the AI Gender Gap?
    Apr 27 2026
    Medium Lady Talks — Episode 173 Is Guilt Driving the AI Gender Gap? Hi, I'm Erin and this is Medium Lady Talks — the podcast for millennial women who want to live more intentionally, read more books, and stop burning out in the middle of a life they actually love. What this episode is about If you've ever used an AI tool (or thought about using one) and felt weird about it afterward — not quite wrong, but not quite right — this episode is for you. We spend the whole episode trying to figure out what that feeling actually is. Because I don't think it's guilt. I think it's something more useful. And the difference matters. We look at what the research says about women and AI adoption, why the gender gap exists (the answer is not what most people assume), and then walk carefully through the emotions that get bundled together under "guilt" — and why naming them separately changes what you do with them. What you'll hear The gender gap in AI use is real and documented across 18 international studies — but it isn't being driven by ethics, technophobia, or lack of access. The biggest driver is self-reported knowledge. Women say they don't know enough, and that uncertainty holds them back. There's also a specific research finding that stopped me: women are significantly more likely than men to describe their own AI use as "cheating." We sit with that one for a while. There are six feelings that tend to get bundled into AI guilt, and they each have a different signal and a different right response: trepidation, cognitive dissonance, identity threat, environmental concern, social anxiety, and actual guilt. Most of them aren't guilt. And the one that might be deserves careful examination — not a spiral. On the environment: the concern is valid at the systemic level, and the accountability belongs with the companies building and scaling these systems — not with individual users. The pattern of loading collective moral responsibility onto individual women while the systems that created the problem go unexamined? We've seen that one before. And the concept I'm now completely obsessed with: fierce ambivalence — from researcher Mara Bolis. The ability to hold two truths at once: I can use these tools to empower myself AND demand better from the people building them. That's not confusion. That might be the most coherent position available right now. Resources mentioned Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI — Otis, Delecourt, Cranney & Koning, Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 25-023The AI Gender Gap Paradox — Mara Bolis, Stanford Social Innovation Review. Where "fierce ambivalence" comes from. A five-minute read I highly recommend.We Did the Math on AI's Energy Footprint — MIT Technology Review. Individual queries vs. industry-level impact, clearly explained, this read is a little bit longer!Environmental Impacts of Artificial Intelligence — Wikipedia. Genuinely excellent. A good two-minute orientation to the full picture and lots of links to take you down a rabbit hole. In Episode 174 we'll get into the "Be Your Own Wife" concept — what a values-based relationship with AI actually looks like in practice. DM me on Instagram at @medium.lady your reactions and opinions will always be used in consideration of each following episde. Medium Lady Talks is created, hosted and produced by Erin Vandeven. New episodes drop weekly.
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    56 mins
  • Episode 172: Scared and Curious: What Even Is AI and Why I Can't Look Away

    Episode 172: Scared and Curious: What Even Is AI and Why I Can't Look Away
    Apr 20 2026
    This is the one Erin has been building toward for a while. Episode 172 kicks off a new series "AI for the Rest of Us" and it starts in the tension between fear and curiosity, between wanting to look away and knowing we can't. This is a messy, honest, first-person episode about what AI actually is, why the gender gap in AI adoption matters, and how a concept called the "pessimism aversion trap" might be the thing quietly keeping us stuck. No tech background required. No conclusions forced. Just a real conversation (always out loud and in process) from someone figuring it out alongside you. In This Episode Why Erin has been sitting on this episode for months and what finally pushed her to hit recordThe Reese Witherspoon moment: what her book club poll revealed about women and AI adoption (and why the backlash was valid but also beside the point)The gender gap in AI use: women are using AI at a rate approximately 25% lower than men, and the jobs most likely to be automated are disproportionately held by womenKaren Hao's "What is AI?" flowchart — a tool for making AI legible before you decide how you feel about it. Spoiler: it is not just ChatGPT.Mustafa Suleyman's "pessimism aversion trap" from The Coming Wave, the idea that our fear of dark futures can cause us to look the other way, and why that avoidance might be more dangerous than the thing itselfHow the trap works in both directions: tech optimists use it to wave away risk; everyday people (and moms especially) use it as a protection mechanism to just... keep movingWhy sovereignty is Erin's word for 2026, and what that has to do with AIA trust framework from creator Upasna Gautam: trust = transparency / self-interest — and why Erin is committed to transparency about how she uses AI as a podcaster, leader and mom.What Erin is actually using AI for when producing this podcast. Referenced in This Episode Reese Witherspoon — viral Instagram Reel (April 2026) on women and AI adoptionKaren Hao — investigative journalist, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (Penguin Press, 2025); creator of the 2018 "What is AI?" flowchart visualizationMustafa Suleyman — co-founder of DeepMind, CEO of Microsoft AI, author of The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future (2023)Upasna Gautam — technology and critical thinking creator on Instagram (@uposnagautam); shared Mark Cuban's trust definition: transparency divided by self-interestEpisode 171 — Erin's vulnerable personal disclosure episode that set the tone for this one Connect with Erin: Instagram: @medium.ladyPatreon: www.patreon.com/mediumlady Email: mediumladytalks@gmail.com Explore more book-related content on "Medium Lady Reads." - link to SpotifyInstagram: @mediumladyreads
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    48 mins
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