PODCAST · society
Unproductive Labor
by Pete Sinnott
A podcast about work, the work ethic, what it means to be a productive member of society, working conditions today, and the history of how we got here. So, yeah, we cover a lot of ground.
Episodes
-
Non-compete Agreements and Corporate Subsidies with Pat Garofalo
This episode I'm pleased to be speaking with Pat Garofalo. Pat is the director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of 'The Billionaire Boondoggle: How Our Politicians Let Corporations and Bigwigs Steal Our Money and Jobs." He also writes the Boondoggle...
-
The Problems and Possibilities of Graeber's BS Jobs with Matteo Tiratelli
In this episode, I talk to Matteo Tiratelli about bullshit jobs. Tiratelli recently published an article in the journal Catalyst exploring the problems and insights of David Graeber's well known theory Tiratelli is a lecturer at UCL's Social Research Institute where he teaches historical and...
-
Essential Workers and Labor Activism During the Pandemic: An Interview with Jamie McCallum
This episode, I talk to sociologist Jamie McCallum about his new book, Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice. We talk about working conditions and unemployment during the pandemic, labor activism, and glimpses of working class unity. McCallum is a professor of...
-
We'll Always Need to Work: An Interview with Alex Gourevitch
In this episode, my erstwhile cohost, Luke Mergner, and I talk to Alex Gourevitch who published a piece last year in Catalyst that levied a critique of anti-work discourse and universal basic income. We talk to Alex about what the anti-work and post-work crowd get wrong in their thinking about…
more -
Inflation, the Labor Market, and Inequality: Two Interviews
This week a double episode, first a discussion about inflation and the labor market with Brian Callaci, chief economist at the Open Market Institute. Then an interview with political scientist David Lay Williamas about the inequality today and its place in the history of western political…
more -
Violence and Class Solidarity
This episode, Pete interviews Chad Pearson about his new book, Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). They talk about the use of violence to discipline workers, labor battles in the long nineteenth century,...
-
What Austerity Has done to Care Work and Care Workers: An Interview with Emma Dowling
In this episode I talk to Emma Dowling about her book, The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It? In the book, Dowling connects the recent history of privatization, austerity, and financialization to the decline in the availability and quality of care. Her book asks us to think about...
-
Why We Need Unions: A Conversation with Eve Livingston
This episode I talk to Eve Livingston, author of Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions. We discuss the need to organize unions to meet the challenges of work today and the need to build connections between unions and community organizations outside the workplace. Eve Livingston is a Scotland-based...
-
The Great Resignation, a Delayed Reaction
This week my erstwhile cohost and collaborator, Luke, and I have a free-flowing conversation about the Great Resignation. This was a hot topic last fall as 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November 2021 and 4.3 Million in August of 2021. That's according to reports from the US Department…
more -
An Interview with Peter Linebaugh on the Commons, Crime, and the Meanings of Industry and Idleness
In this episode, I'm joined by Peter Linebaugh, a historian whose thinking and writing about the commons spans the entirety of a quite distinguished career. His books include The London Hanged, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Stop Thief, Red Round Globe Hot Burning, and, with Marcus Rediker, The Many...
-
Company Unions and Why Voters Don't Care about Policy: An Interview with Matt Bruenig
This episode, I'm talking with Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project or 3Ps, a think tank in Washington D.C. We discuss Marco Rubio's and Jim Banks' proposed Teamwork for Employees and Managers bill, a piece of legislation that would make it easier for corporations to establish...
-
The Need for a Shorter Working Week with Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge
This episode, Pete interviews Will Strong and Kyle Lewis about their book Overtime: Why We Need a Shorter Working Week. They talk about work time and its connection to feminist and environmental discourses, the pitfalls of talking about work as abstraction, and the benefits of shorter working…
more -
What Weber and Foucault Get Wrong about Institutions: An Interview with Steven Klein about the Welfare State
Steven Klein is a Lecturer of Political Theory in the Department of Political Economy, King's College London. His first book, The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State (CUP 2020), examines the democratic potential of struggles over welf are institutions. He is also working on a…
more -
The Genius (and Fraud) of Frederick Taylor, Covid Capitalism, and Other Topics: An Interview with Jamie McCallum
This week, I talk to sociologist Jamie K. McCallum about his book Worked Over, how the ethos of Silicon Valley shapes our work ethic, the genius and deceptions of Frederick Taylor, what Covid 19 has taught us about work in the 21st Century, and more. McCallum is an author, teacher, and activist,...
-
The Long Con: Scarcity and the Origins of Virtue
The threat of scarcity, the promise of wealth, the problematic rhetoric of wage labor as a form of slavery, and the not so straight line between seventeenth century attacks on the commons and neoliberal welfare reform. Contact US Twitter: @PublicSeminar, @lmergner, @pete_sinnott Email:...
-
The Hope of Pleasure in What you Make
In his book, Breaking Things at Work, Gavin Meuller argues that we can't think of technology in the workplace as "just" a tool but always as a tool created for a specific purpose to benefit specific groups and exploit others. As such, breaking machines in the workplace--which means many…
more -
The Origins of Wage Labor
Wage labor is one of the core principles for organizing our lives in western societies. How did that happen? We attempt to answer that question in 20 minutes, moving backward from Keynes to seventeenth century England to Virgil's Georgics. It's quite a ride. We also talk about farming. Contact US...
-
Human Evolution Has Left Us Ill-Prepared
In this episode, we have a conversation with Emily Guendelsberger, author of What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. She worked at Philadelphia City Paper, the Onion's A.V. Club, Philadelphia Weekly, and the Philadelphia Daily News, and has contributed to the Philadelphia...
-
Work Society and Unworked Community
James Chamberlain is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Mississippi State University. His dissertation, Undoing Work, Rethinking Community, was published in 2020. It explores some of the normative and theoretical questions around the topic of work. James has also co-edited a…
more -
The Terrible Consequences of Solving the Economic Problem
In this episode, we talk to James Livingston about his book No More Work: Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea, a pithy polemic that questions some of the underlying assumptions about work held by both the Left and the Right. Among other topics we discuss why politicians and policy makers are wrong…
more -
For Only $184 million You Can Have a Bespoke Labor Category For Your Business
In this episode, we have a conversation with Alex Press, a staff writer at Jacobin magazine who covers a range of topics around labor in the United States, including the gig economy. We talked about the gig economy, what's at stake for companies in and workers in categorizing workers as…
more -
The Problem with Work
This is the first episode of Unproductive Labor, a podcast made with support from Public Seminar. The innovations of the gig economy are not just about technology but change our expectations, and the laws, around what companies owe their workers. This introductory episode of Unproductive Labor…
more
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Unproductive Labor have?
Unproductive Labor currently has 22 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Unproductive Labor about?
A podcast about work, the work ethic, what it means to be a productive member of society, working conditions today, and the history of how we got here. So, yeah, we cover a lot of ground.
How often does Unproductive Labor release new episodes?
Unproductive Labor has 22 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Unproductive Labor?
You can listen to Unproductive Labor 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 Unproductive Labor?
Unproductive Labor is created and hosted by Pete Sinnott.
URL copied to clipboard!