Our work determines how we spend most of our days, the people we spend our time with, the kind of lifestyle we can afford, and it influences our fundamental sense of who we are. It turns out that what we're paid and how we really feel about our jobs aren't always in sync. Al Gini, a professor of Business Ethics at Loyola University’s School of Business Administration and resident philosopher at WBEZ, has dedicated much of his career to understanding the value of work. He’s also the author of “My Job My Self." 

As fast food workers in 100 cities strike for a wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without interference, The Takeaway hears from two fast food workers about what it's like working in the industry—Naquasia LeGrand, a cashier at KFC who earns just $7.70 an hour, and Eduardo Shoy, a delivery man for KFC and Pizza Hut, as well as a forklift operator at JFK airport. Angelo Amador is the Vice President of Workforce and Labor Policy at the National Restaurant Association. He is on the opposite side of the debate, opposing the wage hike. 

Earlier this month, Boeing machinists in Seattle refused a new contract. Now, Boeing is looking for a new location to build the 777x, a place where unions have less of a foothold. Washington State is still lobbying to keep 777x production at home. But Aviation Industry Analyst Scott Hamilton explains why the state expects a lot of outside competition and what this means for American labor overall.

"Art Studio America: Contemporary Artist Spaces" is a new book that explores the relationship between surroundings and creativity, contrasting intimate visits to artist studios with explorations of America’s landscapes. It features the images and thoughts of 115 artists active today, including Chuck Close, Kiki Smith, Bill Viola, Marina Abramovic, and the great film and video artist Lorna Simpson, who joins us today, along with the editor and interviewer of “Art Studio America,” Hossein Amirsadeghi.

Towns in North Dakota's oil-rich Bakken region are exploding with people looking to make money off of the energy boom-- and law enforcement can't keep up. We look at the surging crime rate in these modern “boom towns” with Sheriff Scott Busching of Williams County, North Dakota.

Back in the late 1960s, when the first female traders were allowed on the floor of Wall Street, they were treated more like the butts of jokes than like trailblazers. Today, the finance and business sectors have come a long way, but they still struggle to put women in the ranks, or keep them there. Malli Gero and Rachel Sklar are two people who are trying to change that.

Palm oil is an increasingly ubiquitous, yet nearly invisible, substance. Consumers can find it in everything from Crest toothpaste and Gillette shaving cream to Nestle and Kraft food products. Benjamin Skinner, reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, says that rising demand for the product has masked the severe human rights abuses behind its harvest.

After months of working as an unpaid accounting intern on the film “Black Swan,” Eric Glatt came to believe something was terribly wrong with the whole internship system. And so he and fellow intern Alexander Footman sued Fox Searchlight, the production company behind the film, and late Tuesday afternoon, in a landmark decision, a federal judge ruled in their favor.

In an attempt to explore what, exactly, constitutes success, The Huffington Post is hosting its first ever women’s conference today in New York. It’s called “The Third Metric: Redefining Success Beyond Money and Power.” Actress, writer, television producer, and voice artist Susie Essman talks about how she defines success.

The boom in the hotel business in the U.S. right now is in low cost suite hotels that offer a free buffet breakfast and no restaurant on the premises. If you want food delivered, the front desk will be happy to give you a list of pizza places in the neighborhood. The Grand Hotel days have been over for a while, and now one of the holdouts is calling it quits on room service. The Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan is cancelling its room service. 

Last year Harvard and M.I.T. announced a joint online learning initiative called edX, that promised to reach students across the globe by providing online classes free of charge. Recently, there has been some debate about the effectiveness of the massive open online courses, or MOOCs, offered by the nonprofit start-up, and its for-profit competitors. Anant Agarwal, the president of edX, remains a strong advocate of online education and its ability to democratize education.

A new report by the Pew Research Center finds that 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who provide the sole or primary source of income for the family. In 1960, that figure was 11 percent. Bryce Covert is the Economic Policy Editor at ThinkProgress. She breaks down the Pew Research Center's findings.

As the road to recovery begins for the people affected by the Oklahoma City Tornado Monday, unsung heroes have emerged out of this tragedy. People whose jobs helped to save lives, keep others calm, and keep the public informed. Among them are the school teachers who rushed their students to safety.

It's the end of a television era tonight as the cast of the series The Office bids farewell for the final time. Whether or not you work at Dunder Mifflin, everyone can relate to having a difficult boss.

17 days after the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh, a resourceful worker was found trapped but alive. She was pulled from the rubble in Dhaka earlier today to the cheers of workers who had for days been only moving wreckage and disposing of bodies of victims.

All this week, as part of our series "Breaking the Glass Ceiling in Male-Dominated Fields," we've heard from women who have broken into predominately male occupations and risen to the top. They shared their lessons on how to juggle their demanding jobs and their family lives. We asked all of them and our listeners the same question: What is a moment that caused you to realize you were simply juggling too much between your job, your family and your personal life?

As the grim count of the dead continues to rise from that garment factory collapse last month in Bangladesh, a fire overnight in a different garment factory there killed at least 8 more people. Muhammad Yunus is an economist, founder of the Grameen Bank, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

All this week we're talking to women and mothers who have harnessed smarts, spirit, and self-awareness to break into male-dominated careers and rise to the top. Judy Woodruff has covered news and politics as a broadcast journalist for more than three decades for PBS, CNN, and NBC. She is also a wife and mother of three, including a son with spina bifida. Her children are now grown but she hasn't forgotten the feelings of guilt and sacrifice that accompanied juggling a demanding career with a busy home life.

The "Lean In" ideas of Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and the challenges facing tech leaders like Marissa Mayer at Yahoo have been much discussed topics over the last few months. But some voices have been lost in this conversation. In a new series, we mine the wisdom of women who have found success in an all male world and who aren't appearing on "60 Minutes" or selling advice books. Padmasree Warrior is the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Cisco.