The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Jason Read to talk about how to understand work in the 21st C.

In this episode, Jason Read (Philosophy, University of Southern Maine) joins us to examine the Boots Riley‘s film Sorry To Bother You (2018) and what it might be able to tell us about the dystopic situation of the 21st C. worker. Why has it become so important that the worker demonstrate that they “love” their work? How much of our work demands “emotional labor”? Why is it necessary for (some) workers to abdicate their real or “authentic” voice in order to survive? How have we become so accustomed to accepting less and less, even as more and more is demanded of us?

Are workers in the 21st C. just a pot of boiling frogs?

Check out the links below to thinkers, ideas, and other phenomena referenced in this episode:

• Jason Read , “Cold Caller” On ‘Sorry to Bother You'” (2018)
• Emma Spector, “Emotional labor is not what you think it is” (Vogue, 2018)
• Karl Marx, “Estranged Labor” from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
• Jason Read, “Three Recent Books on Work” (2021)
• The “White voice” scene in Sorry To Bother You
• Jason Read, “The Double Shift” (2021)
• Sarah Jaffe, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (2021)
• Sydney Cusic, “The Magical Negro Trope in Literature and Film” (2021)
• Jason Read, “Right Workerism: or, Class Struggle in Reverse” (2020)
• The Boiling Frogs apologue
• Charlie Sprang, “Importance of Solidarity!” (Trades and Unions Digest, 2019)