In the middle of the last century it was expected that the number of working hours– at least in the so-called “developed” world– would continue to decrease: just as they had gone from the twelve or ten hours a day down to eight at the beginning of the century,  they would continue to decrease to six or even less by the end of the century. Furthermore, it was thought that the mechanization and automation of labor processes would free millions from labor, reducing the need for workers.

The opposite seems to have taken place, however, as people are working more and more. So much so that the forty hour work week sounds utopian again. Why are people working so much and what are they doing? The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that the answer is bullshit jobs. What is a bullshit job? Why do they exist? What can we do to get free of them?

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers/ideas/texts/etc.:

• A new malaria vaccine

• The Madoff Documentary on Netflix 

• Documentary Now episode Any Given Sunday Afternoon  

• David Graeber’s short polemic Bullshit Jobs, and its subsequent expansion into a book by the same name  

• The cartoon mocking David Graeber can be found in Jason Read’s review of Bullshit Jobs

• Compliance Week

• Marx’s theory of alienation 

• Jamie Woodcock’s book Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres 

• Office Space 

• Dr. Seuss story The Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee Watcher 

• The New York Times article on high school students’ attitudes about higher education 

• “quiet quitting“

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