The Evolution of Work: More Than Just a Paycheck

0:00 So you keep hearing nobody wants to work anymore because you see these jobs that aren't filled, but they're not filed because there are fewer people of working age are being born. You know, birth rates are going down. The population is great, you get more people like me. For a while, we were very restrictive with immigration right under a prencident Trumps and that close. You know, that restricted the pool of available workers. So that was the real issue. There weren't enough workers. But immediately people start moralizing about it. Oh, the problem is people's work at did I find that fascinating because based on my research, I don't think that's the issue at all. You may not want to work any particular job that only pays minimum wage and is dirty or dangerous, or has weird hours or something. They may want to work at a better job, but that doesn't mean they don't want to work at all.

1:07 Hello everybody, and welcome to this anthe life. I'm excited to have you all here today. I'm Adam gm All your host is always and I'm really excited to talk with Claudia Strauss today because, on the one hand, we know that our nature and ideas around work are changing, right, what does work mean to folks today? And that we have the rise of remote working. We've had a pandemic that has brought the rise of remote working and changing that. And then there's lots of contingent labor, gig work, things like that. So you know, do I have a nine to five? Do I have a forty hour work week? All these things are kind of changing and what work might mean to us. But the funny thing is that the narratives of the kind of national myths that we have around what work means are changing a lot much much more slowly. And I think that's something that is interesting that we can kind of dive into to get a sense with.

1:51 But I'm really excited. You know, Claudius Stress, you are an anthropologist, you know, so I always a good talk with the fellow anthropologist and a prof over at Fitzer College. And you have a I think a really exciting and important new book out that's called What Work Means Beyond the Puritian work Ethic. And besides being a nerd that you know, I like this idea of the purity and work ethic to think about with Max Weber, I love how your work helps us explode and think about that. So let's we're going to dive into all those things. But first want to say, Claudia, thanks for joining me on the podcast today. Well, and and thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to another anthropologist, right and. Alway feels kind of dangerous, doesn't it. I think we are a dangerous profession. Yeah, we weed t shirts that say that. I think you know.

2:32 So one of the things you know we're kind of staying up top cluty, is that your your research dives into, I think importantly, how Americans perceive their jobs right, perceive work for themselves. And you did a lot of really really. Interesting research talking with folks who are also kind of out of work or long term unemployed kind of figuring out that process for themselves. And I thought that was a really compelling way to frame your conversation. So I'd love to kind of kick off with getting a sense of why start there? Why do you find yourself starting talking with folks that are that are unemployed or kind of in this long term unemployment moment trying to figure themselves and their work out. Well, it was a moment following the Great Recession when a lot of people were unemployed and unemployed for a little time in the not that they wanted to be.

3:12 They were looking for work. I was practically everybody I was talking to I found because they were looking for work. But this was the time, and it's a very different labor market then now, So you have to cast your mind back ten years or more to a time when the unemployment rate in southern California where I did my research was over ten percent, when there were three job seekers for every job opening, which is opposite now now there's less than one person looking for a job for every job opening. So it was a very different moment. That's why I was talking to people were out of work, because there were a lot of them. And the thing is, when you're out of work and for a little time out of work, but you want to work, it makes you no one usually reflect it about what work means.

4:03 So it was a really good time to catch people, both because I had a well tride and because they were thinking a lot about what their jobs met to them, what they wanted in the next job, and what they would do differently maybe with their lives. Yeah, and I think that's such an important point. Both remember, like if we're getting a sense of like where we are in history, but then also reflecting of what that means for us today. So I think that is a really interesting and important distinction to think about. One that if we're seeing which which you know, almost feels crazy to think about, right, that there's there's three folks for every one job that might be out there, and now we're kind of seeing an opposite problem, right, that there's more work than workers. It's interesting because in between both of those, right, we might still see narratives from employers or even even folks themselves looking for work around the you know, we might think of it as a moral imperative, right that either like you know, nobody wants to work anymore today, which is really funny to look at research of that and see that people have been saying that since like eighteen fifty, like literally a newspapers, no one wants to work anymore. You know, it depends on what the work is though, right, which I think we can dig into. But then on the other side too, that there's more like I want to work, but I can't write. But there might be a slow perception that, oh, these people don't want to work, right from from employers or from folks, and so like, what's what's happening there?

5:12 Like there is this kind of weird moral tug narrative happening of that one should be working but can't or you know, doesn't want to, but should be. Like what's happening here in the American psyche about like what what should we be doing around work? Yeah, and I think I think that rapid shift. It's taking people while to realize what's going on. So, yes, you keep hearing nobody wants to work anymore because you see these jobs that aren't filled, but they're not filed because there are fewer people of working age are being born. You know, birth rates are going down. The population is great.

5:53 You get more people like me. You know, baby Bowers, I'm great too. You just can't tell. For a while, we were very restrictive with immigration right under Princident Trump and that close you know, that restricted the pool of available workers. So that was the real issue. There weren't enough workers. But immediately people start moralizing about it, Oh, the problem is people's work at Did I find that fascin because based on my research, I don't think that that's the issue at all. Hequal may not want to work any particular job that only pays minimum wage and is dirty or dangerous or has weird hours or something.

6:36 They may want to work at a better job, but that doesn't mean they don't want to work at all. Mm. Yeah, And I think that's that's such an important point too, because and you kind of I think said a key idea there too, in terms of like what is the the ones work ethic, right, like what do I want to do with my time and what kind of work do I want to do? But you know, I think you also importantly point out that that there is when we kind of gloss over in that narrative that we missed this idea that it's like not that I don't want to work, I just don't want to work this kind of job or that type of labor for multiple reasons, which you know, and that matters, you know, because it isn't just a do or do not want to work? And this gets into you know, we can kind of put our theory hats on for a second two and I think this is helpful to think about. We have these these ideas of kind of laborist and post laborist or productivist kind of frameworks of like what we should be doing for work, And I found this elucidating, like to kind of help make sense of why we're seeing this disjuncture and like kind of discomfortable.

7:27 Talking about this. So can you tell me a little bit about this in terms of like the laborist and post laboris perspectives and how is that shaping our discourse around. Well, I'm really happy to talk about it. I find this really fascinating because when I think you said putting our theory hats on, I think social theorists and also activists, political activists, even on the left. We often think of left right differences, but these are differences among progressives on the left. There are two very different ways of thinking about work and organizing organizing around it. The class, you know, Marxism, workers are central. You know, you've got a heroic working person, and that's the idea is we want a full employment economy.

8:14 So it's organizing to make sure that everybody who is able to work can work at a good wage. But the push there is towards full employment. I think one thing that's uh, doctor Martin Luther King his Things March on Washington was on March for jobs and free He very much believed in this that what we want is for everybody to have good employment. But there's this other approach on the left, a post work approach, where the idea is work is only enriching the owners at capital. Our labor is only enriching the owners at capital. Why is there the social imperative to do that when we figure out a different kind of economy where be where people are so engaged in wage labor but much less of it. And so it becomes very interesting when you think about the future of work. Now, I don't know what's whether all the predictions of high levels of technological unemployment are going to come true, And I'd be curious to know from the other guests you've talked to or your thinking is about that. So I'm not making any productions whatsoever. But people circulate right and this, and but what's interesting is from these two perceptives, if you start worrying about being displaced by the robots, the laborists, the what to believe in the dignity of work, the importance

9:44 of work, the centrality of it, that your social benefits, anything you get from society should be dependent on either working or not currently being able to work, maybe not to work in the future when they think about a future of robots seeking jobs. The ideas we can't let that hat. We need to make work a central part of a good life. Wage. You know, when I'm talking, well, we're talking to work here, we always mean wage work, right, lots of things we can do that require effort, but we're wage. Whereas the post work theorists, the post work organizers are saying, bring on the robots, this is great.

10:24 This is kind of future we want is longness. Obviously people have to live. But you know then they would say, well, the government's got to figure you know, the the massive political revolts in our hands if the government doesn't somehow keep people alive. So those are two very different approaches. Now, I have to say, the way I talked about it might make me sound like on the post work side fixed people I walk to. I'm actually kind of in between. I think, you know, and this is something we can talk about. I don't. I'm not all workshild the most important thing you're doing and taking up your whole life. The people I talked to didn't want that, but I'm not.

11:07 Work has no intrints to value people don't want to be doing it, and if they could get them, and if they had some other way to make a loving you know, they wouldn't know. The people I talked to, most of them wanted to go back to work and even talked about enjoying work, having spot at work. I thought that was one of the most interesting parts also about your research finding too, is around this idea of enjoyment and fun because on the one hand, I think it is like very helpful to have these two framings in terms of when we see both employees wage workers people and then also business owners talking about what the labor market needs to be and if I'm looking for work, orf I need to find more employees, you know what that is? Like it's important for us to understand where they're coming from, you know, you know, as we like exanthra politics, just be able to not say that they're going to be specifically this one thing to your point, like they're going to be either labors or post laborers, but they can be a blend. But those do help us get a sense in terms of someone's kind of potentially background mental contact to write their mental models of like why I should be looking for the kind of work that I'm doing and why I should be working this way, or you know, why my employees need to be thinking.

12:07 About work a certain way. And this is why I think this is an important conversation because it helps us both get a sense of you know, the kind of employee side, but then also the the often implicit employer side too. Right, you know when we said the thing above in terms of nobody wants to work anymore, right, this is an anxiety often from the employer side, wanting to make sure that people will be able to fill positions. But I think, as you rightly point out there too, that we have to be able to kind of move between these positions. And why ethnography I think is really helpful. It shows us that oftentimes people will have these much more gray perspectives. It's not this, you know, it's very easy to say it's a polarize this or that, right, it's laborist or it's post laborist. But most of us don't live in either a theory or or like, you know, a perspective that's just one in one box or the other one. And also, you know, let's think about that in terms of the kind of in between there too, because I show that perspective in terms of that, you know, there is this desire around being able to do something in the world right, and for a lot of people they attached that to work doesn't have to be that though, and I think a lot of your interlocutors kind of pointed that out. So let's we can share some stories around that, I think, and then I'm gonna I'll put a pin or brack at the future workpiece till little bit later, because I do we can definitely talk through that too. I think that's a really interesting piece as well, because a lot of this, like you know, a lot of business managers and business folks were trying to.

13:26 They want to say, what is the future of work right? And you know, and I did. I have talked to a bunch of folks about that on the show. We can we can kind of think through there. But the important point about that too is as for the pin for that later is that like a lot of these people, I've talked with our business owners and so we can think about that in terms of what perspective they're going to bring around technology and what work can be. But we'll come come back to this. So for now, it's like this idea, the the kind of in between this that you saw talking with folks, right, this like that I work isn't everything, but it means a lot to me, and it means different things to different folks, right, And maybe enjoyment is a way to kind of get us in there, because it's it's interesting that we don't see fun as a term that comes up a lot in terms of tell me about your work, it's fun.

14:08 You know? Have I described jobs like that? I don't know, And so I think that gives us a really interesting window into different attitudes that folks have. So so what's happening there? Like, you know, fun stood out for you and White because it was something that we don't usually hear, like what it was about kind of fun? Funness that cut your eyes just came up over and over again. This was such a surprise. This is why I love doing anthropological research out the sort that I do, where I talk to people. We could talk about my ned bits, but you know, it's an approach where I'm just talking to people and people say things you don't expect. So for example, yeah, I was talking to an administrative as system. You know, we used to say secretary okay.

14:49 And she was currently in a situation where she was just taking temporary jobs looking for a full time job. But she was taught at some of her past temp jobs that you had. And she talked about one where she was working for a company or school district where they had to take information for one kind of file and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. And she said, Wow, that was so interesting. It was so much fun. And I said, take fun work. Wow. And then you know, when I asked her what does work mean to you? She said, I could get lost creating a power point, I could get lost formatting a document.

15:41 I could get lost figuring out an Excel street. She that's just fun for it. I mean, it would just come up. Now. You wasn't the only one. I have a list of my book I have, you know, I think at least of the I forget the figures. I had to go back and check. It was like a third or quarter of my interviewees used fun the connection with their work. Nothing that is expecting. It just keeps up. Now. I have to say, this is a very American way talking, and not even all Americans believe that. I think Uh, it fits in with the sort of very positive thinking, optimistic sort of chipper and it's But the thing is one thing they were not being sarcastic, because sometimes people use fun sarcastically. Oh that was fun. No, it's no.

16:31 They were only counting cases where they were sincerely found it fun. Now what's interesting is what kinds of things did they find fun? And that kind of broke it down into three kinds of things that they found fun. Uh. The most important really was relationships with other people's relationships with that they're you know, with your coworkers, with your boss. I had one woman who was an assistant in an accounting firm, and she you know what was interesting in these polarized times is this young woman is Republican and her bosses were Democrats. But they would just joke about the differences between them and their politics. So they just were joking teas another woman, again, an executive assistant, who just talked about how she would like to chick in with her coworkers and ask how her coworker's daughter did in that swim meet. And this is she said, this is how we're being human. She was the kind of yeah, it does you have to have a best friend at work, but making relationships like that. Yeah, the tasks themselves are really important. So do you enjoy the tasks? What are the what are you spending your time doing? Is it interesting?

17:52 And some people, like the administrative assistant you liked wrangling Excel spreadsheets for her? Was that kind of intuctual task for others? You know? A young man I talked to was doing, uh, building racecourses for extreme sports, and he said, when I build a mud wall that's eight feet high and so many feet long, that's just fun. You know, it's so satisfying to see that at the end of the day, but really enjoyed. The tasks and the fiscal attributes of the workplace are really important to you know, are just does it uh the temperature, the lighting, how the furnitures. Does it look pleasant? Is it, you know, this feel pleasant? Does it smell pleasant? When man talked about working in a warehouse for a candy company and he loved coming into the.

18:46 Smell of chocolate, that was pretty nice. Yeah. But anyway, so all these things could make work really enjoyable. Now that doesn't mean it was. Uh. They were passionate about they were doing it. Didn't mean, you know, they wanted to spend all their time doing it. And this is the other thing I want to talk about. Can I talk about the nature of the work that tends to go with this? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, because the people who talked about work at What was really interesting is that the worst of people I talked to who felt they had a calling to be doing what they were doing, and they would use words like calling or passion. It wasn't you know. It was a slow number, but there was a certain number.

19:33 Somebody who is a teacher, a special teacher, her sister had special needs, and she felt a real calling to be doing that kind of work. It could be all different kinds of things they tendedn't. They were less likely to use the word fun. They enjoyed it, but it was sort of a deeper kind of enjoyment and meaning. The people who were more likely to talk about fun, like a woman who was a real associated Adresshap this wasn't their work wasn't central in their identity their sense of purpose in life. It was much lighter and they how would I call a diligent nine to five work ethic?

20:15 And this is something I really want to say to people. You say, some of the people who listen to this podcast are business owners. This is one of my most important points that I really want to make to business owners, which is we tend to think about the good employee as the one who is passionate about their job. It is going to willingly spend long hours at that job. You know, you could call them up in the middle of the night. It's in the media owns whenever. They're just totally into it. This is all that matters to that. That woman I talked to it who found so much fun from wrangling itself spreadsheets. She also said, when five o'clock comes, I want to go home. That's him. I enjoy going to work, but when the day's over, I want to go home. And she said, no, work is not central to my identity. I asked everybody, so there's this in between category that we overlook of people who want to do a good job. They really take pride.

21:15 They would say when I west, is work central to your identity? A lot of them, a lot of people I talked to, would say, well, no, I wouldn't say that I'm a good worker. I always do a good job. But no, this isn't the most important thing in my life. My family is more important to me, or my religion is more important to me, God is more important. Here, something else is more important to me. That was the majority of the people I talk to. They're good workers, they'll do a great job, but they want to protect their non work too. This isn't all they care about. That's I think that's an important point. And I found that that section really fascinating too, that there's this discrepancy or this kind of you know, uh challenge between the idea of what an employer might look for in terms of a you know, I'm passionate about.

22:08 The job and this this when I was thinking about this too. This It's got me thinking of the challenge oftentimes in built the job application process and the interview process, right you you kind of have to I'm just going to say fane or lie about how excited you are about a job and like in not because there is the actual On the one hand, we might say one of the reasons you're getting the job is because there's a remuneration. You're getting paid for your time, you know, but you know there's a material benefit. But then also that the there's also just this you know, like it's employers want to hear about the intangible, like oh I I'm really excited about like this kind of work, or I'm you know, I'm very. Passionate about blah blah blah. You know, that's a really interesting kind of kind of piece because it's like, uh, I think to your point of like how we can see that the the idea or the norm of of like passionate workers like filters into them what employee employers are.

22:59 Expecting from like an application process. And it's like interesting that what if we thought about this in terms of what if we provide a good working environment so that passion can grow for somebody's job, right, or if you find enjoyment in working on Excel sheets, you know, or it's like something I found recently for myself. It's you know, I'm mean at theropologies also, but it's like I've. Been working a lot in in computer tech stuff for a few years now, and it's like, and I found that I really like nerding out over coading. You know, I'm not great at it, but it's like I'd like to be able to solve. A very specific or try to solve a very specific problem, right, And that's you know, fun, it's kind of maddening, but like that's not something that I would have ever said before. Like, oh, I also really would want to go work on coding.

23:40 But but like that's. Something that I wouldn't have known if I wasn't tinkering with something other other kinds of other kinds of working out and like and I will say, also, yes, I'm I'm as folks may not to, but I'm I'm you know, self employed. I run my own business. And that's an important part of like we can talk about that's alveso, you know, contingent labor and that thing, so we can dive with there too. But like, because I don't have an employer that's saying, hey are you are you really passionate about this work? I mean, I guess I'm my own boss, so I can I can be mean to myself, I guess, you know, But that's that's an important point, you know, to realize that. At the same time, though, I also want to say, like, you know, I don't always stop working at five, but I still feel like I need to stop around five, and I want to because I want to go play with my kid and my family, and like do other things right, and so it's like interesting that like across categories, right, there's a lot of this this there's more in between this than we than we kind of give credit for.

24:24 So Agreen, I think it's a really important point that that we do want to hammer home to to business owners and folks that are that are also just you know, at the hiring managers too, thinking about like we do like passionate workers like that is an important part of finding folks that that really want to do good work. But a lot of this too is recognizing that we're all like we're all there's much more diversity in terms of how we might approach what work could mean to us. And like just because I may not say or come out saying I'm super passionate about this job right now or you know, part of it, or that I want to be done at five, that I'm somehow not a good worker right, or that I'm I'm or that someone else that's like obsessed is going to be better, right, because I do think like what's been nice. The correl it on the other side is that we are seeing increasing conversations and I think in large part things to gen Z about mental health and about wellness in the workplace and like burnout right millennials, you know the meme I can't even write. It's just this like it's just too much right now, Like we've been asked to do family and work and life bla blah blah blah, and like you know, other generations make fun of us. But like there's this interesting part to to kind of think through what can this, what can this be? You know, and like how do we think about wellness and well being as part of that process? And you know something else that you wrote about too, is that we had seen that the interesting rise you know in terms of like fun at work.

25:31 Like there's the organic. Kind of fun, right that you know I might get from work in a spreadsheet, But then there's this other kind of like I guess inorganic, right that you startups are like famous for this sort of like putting ping pong tables and lunch every day, and like those are nice, you know, but then also you think about it's kind of a gilded cage, right, you know, you're never that far from your desk at that point. So I guess, how did you see folks kind of talking about this or you know what kind of takeaways you have around this this idea of like we need to be able to put passion in its own space and it's let it kind of be. Sometimes it's for the works of this specific tasks. Sometimes it's for my family, right, and they can all work and be a good worker. But then putting that in conversation with this idea of a well being in wellness, right, and that you know, and how can I guess how can fund and wellness play together?

26:13 Right? You know? And how do you see folks kind of talking about these two arenas. Yeah, people talked about it a lot, and I thought that was really interesting, and that is saying something about this moment the importantness of wellness and not just gendn't see. I mean, I was seeing this from middle aged people I talked too, and it was really interesting how wellness played into their thinking about work, because they would say things like they would see working on a regular basis as part of what's needed to stay well. They would say things like it's like a car if it just sits out there at all ruts, or they'll say I looked at my father and when he was lost his job at the steel mill and couldn't get anything else.

26:57 Then I think that's where he started going downhill. So people would say that they'd see regular works and a good job. It's not just working at anything what the job is, because some jobs wear you down. You think we'll leave you less all over it. But the right kind of job they saw was part of the good life. But they also saw again that balance as part important for wellness. They stall love they so one man I talked to again was a supply chain strategist for a cosmetic company. Loved the tasks, loved to found that intellectually really interesting, great variety. So he would sound very enthusiastic when he was talking about the content of what he's doing.

27:45 But when he talked to these hours, he said, they ex took me to work ten hours a day, twelve hours a day, and then I've got a commute, you know, he had an hour commute in each direction, a top of a twelve hour day and ten or twelve hour day, and he said, it just made me bitter. It just took out all the joy of what he intrinsically liked the job. But those long hours, you know, that didn't leave them any time to de stress to pursue anything else that was important to it. So there was definitely this discourse around wellness. Again you had the work could be part of that, uh, but not to an excess hmm.

28:28 Yeah. And it's it's interesting too because that that like makes me think about the there's I had. I have not read Mary Wolfenstein, but you mentioned her later on in this idea of like fun morality, which I thought was a really interesting and kind of creepy idea, you know. But but this like you know, curious. American notion that like we're obligated to have fun, you know, both at elsewhere but also at work, right, And you know, I think that that filters into kind of how you're you're talking about we have this like chipper chipperness right that we think about in the American Worker, And like that was an interesting piece to to put in there for for multiple reasons. But like two that came to mind was one that it sounds like fun and pleasure are things that we that don't jive well with this we haven't talked about yet, but we will now. Like the Puritan work ethic, right, this idea that like a lot of this is based on like seriousness and like there's there's a higher calling to your work, right, and that's why we do what we do. And this is why we talk about a calling as one of the highest forms of work in typical like you know, work theory, and and I think that filters into a lot of it and how how people think about work, whether they like consciously say yes, this is a you know, what I should be doing, but then like, uh, but in this case, like Wolfenstein says, and that you're pointing out to is that it's like fun morality is not about this idea that like over doing the opposite of like this the serious kind of calling out work. But it's actually like a not evolved but just like an adapted form of like this still kind of puritanical way that we should be working. And there's a challenge and the problem with that too, right that you point out that I want to break down because it's like this interesting idea that there's a diffuseness to that pleasure. Right, this

30:00 is why it's okay, it's not like a super intense moment of pleasure, but that like it's spread out across work tasks and days, and so I don't know, this is this struck me as a really interesting and curious piece to think with in terms of like we do talk about the rise of need for fun and things like that, but there's these kind of interesting challenge points that like, you know, are we are we actually helping ourselves get out of the box and really think about what it means to say like let's let's have fun. I have work, and I think that's what your work does a good job of is helping us break down both the diversity of what what like small pleasures at work can be, but then also recognizing that like when an employer says we're going to have a picnic together or we're going to have a fun event, and like this kind of mandated fun or the kind of fun morality is this really tricky thing? Because I don't know you, but I've definitely had those things where like, you know, if you're working with someone or client or you have a boss and like they're like, hey, we're gonna have our you know, annual meeting, or like let's all get together and have an icebreak, and you're like, oh man, you know, it feels so forced.

30:54 Right, yeah, And it might kind of if it's after hours, if I put into your free Also people, I mean, I know some young people, you know who sense Some of my students have said things like, well, I finan to take a job in a new city. I want the kind of job where people getting together after work is that's how all people. Yeah, that's fine, that's really fine. So yes, be boor different. But you know, among my interviees, being forced to attend, you know, social events after hours could be a real imposition. And you know, one of the women I talked to lost her job because she had a two year old and a one year old. She wanted to be home with them, but she was in HR and she was expected to attend these DHR events after hours and she didn't want to do it.

31:43 So yeah, so that kind of mandated fun. Yeah, now, that's one person I talked to liked it, But most people did not like it. When they talked about fun at work, that's not what they were talking about. Was it things that organically arose just from the nature of the tasks, pleasant social interactions with co workers, the nature of the workplace. But I also wanted to get into this, and you brought up this idea that there I've seen occupational psychologists will talk about the highest approach being seeing your work as a cooling. I really take issue with that because I think there's sort of a built in value judgment there which we have to help just try and understand other people's values. We're trying not to puz our own. And the value judgment I see being a policier is you have to feel you're doing good with your work. You have to feel it's deeply meaningful. You have to feel it's making you a better person and making the world a better person. Yes, people I talked to did feel that they were doing that, and sometimes in very unexpected ways, you know. But but there was this other category we don't recognize. We sort of socially, we culturally recognize seeing your work as appalling or as a passion, and we call we recognize the opposite extreme

33:14 of work is work. It's just a job. We also recognize, you know, get a good job, you know that'll pay well, and so forth. We recognize all those pasts. Well, we don't recognize it. Again, there's another one of these in between categories that I call the good enough occupation. That there was another Journalistsu's discovered the same thing with his interviews. Uh, but yeah, this idea I want to I don't want just any occupation. I want something that will not run contrary to my values. I want something that'll be interesting, but it doesn't have to be something that's necessarily making the whole world a better place. Maybe I just you know, I'm doing a good job there to help this organization achieve its goals. I enjoy it again. You know, there's this kind of in between category that's not recognized. It doesn't have to be a calling to be to give you a very satisfying thing to do with your life and way to make money, and.

34:19 That runs, you know, somewhat contrary to the every single like you know, commencement speech we hear at college, right, Which is funny because it's like, on the one hand, we want to be inspired to do to do things in life, and that's you know, one of the great roles of universities. I think. But then it's an interesting point that like, but most of us you know, don't go either either know what our calling is or ever. And like most of us, I think to anybody after forty is like, you know what, I always talked about that idea, but now it's like, yeah, but I think I've ultimately just found a good enough job and I'm actually totally fine with that, you know, And that's and it's great because a I can to leave when I get home, or I found unexpected. Pleasure in the kind of work that I'm doing, or whatever it is. You know. It's like it's this funny idea that we we have, like we sort of tell one myth at earlier points in our lives and then like as we as we as we learn more, I guess we're like kind of see more than we kind of change some of that narrative.

35:07 And obviously it doesn't have to be you know, only linear, but I thought this was a really really compelling idea too, that a lot of the work that people find and is ultimately like on one end, like anthropologist we know too, it's like people just make do with what they what they can in the circumstances that they're given. Like and it's not just that we you know, we we I know, we make them. We have agency too, but it's just like when there's you know, societal constraints or agentave constraints in terms of what we can do and structures kind of shaping things, then we often will do what we can to make the best in those scenarios, and like and the one in the goodnot occupation kind helps us point to that idea, and it also busts this this you know, I agree this value judgment that like the calling is really what you want to go for. And it's like, yes, I think passion is a nice thing to have in our lives, and many of us can find it, but it's like more that we're we're kind of also sold the narrative that that should be around your work, right like this there should be a kind of thing that you should be doing, and it's like, uh, maybe you know, but you know when a lot of us either can't do that, you know, and or that's not what we'less you're looking for. It's like it's interesting because like again this this tension of like, you know, what am I passion about? What what's like getting the intensity of my time and in my might want to want to do in the world versus like both helping me either get by or like kind of find work.

36:16 You also spoke to like something else that that some of your interlocutors were talking about in terms of this idea of like the audition around wanting to move up in one's career or two like that. Sometimes it can be about like I either love the challenge of kind of like working on a big project and getting kind of move up there, like having this kind of ambition to do more. But sometimes it was also just this of like hey, I'm just actually happy to help my firm do better, right, or helping my improve my my colleagues day or something, And like I also kind of felt an echo here too. I know we've been teasing like the Protestant work ethic idea, but like I felt an echo in this idea too, of like an asceticism of like not wanting to like want too much, right, like you don't want to be over the ambitious because then also is kind of like a you know, points towards a sinful idea, I suppose, which is interesting as well, that you know, I don't think people kind of came out and said that specifically, but like this idea of like what's the what's the right way to think about, like.

37:05 What do I enjoy? How do I want to move up in a company? What does that mean? For ambition doesn't mean too much too little, you know, and I am I doing everything right. So like a lot of this like there's just like this, you know, I don't know, just like this ambient sponge of like you know, this this like work ethic that is pervading a lot of the narrative that both people just break because of how they're actually living their lives. But then it's like still there, you know, and like this interesting like kind of substrate. But I think also, so I guess let's say a little bit about I keep talking about it, so like it's a little bit like what is what is this like Puritan work ethic, which I know you I think you correctly change the term of it and not call it that it it like this has been pervasive, And I do want to bucket this by saying that one thing we've been doing so far on our conversation, which is important, is like pointing out also the specificities of people's things are doing at work right, And so a lot of this can be like again a big theory like this this this from Max Faper, we'll talk about as work the abstract, right, and so we are talking about a little bit about that, but like also a lot of what we're saying here so far, and your point out in the book too, is that like specificity matters, right, Like context is going to make a huge difference of like what kind of work matters and when and what am I doing in the specific tasks, you know, and like what's going to make something fun makes a huge difference.

38:17 Right. So so I'll just brock it and we're we're going to zoom up and zoom back down, right, And so we've been kind of in this specificity and so this is a bigger kind of theory to help us think about what's been shaping the broader narrative, right, And so this is the things we've been saying about asceticism and pleasure and fun and like that make us rethink, you know, passionate and calling these pieces are fitting into this, like they're kind of speaking from this this broader bucket of the work at the Purity work ethic. But I'll let you, I'll stop talking in the. What's happening here, you know, Well, maybe it would help at this point to explain what did Vapor mean by the purity work ethic, and that we can kind of go from there. Is that? So yeah, Okay, sounds great.

38:58 So, first of all, what Vapor was really interested in was kind of a modern What he saw is a real shift that happened with modernity in Europe, a shift away from just working to live to living to work, and he he sees as decisive and not a good thing. Okay, he was a real critic of this. His theory and it's controversial, not everybody believes him, was that it happened two steps. There were two steps in the development of Protestantism.

39:40 The first was Luther's idea that you can be virtuous in the eyes of God, not just by becoming a priest or at none, devoting yourself to a religious vocation, but doing whatever your worldly tasks are and doing them well. So work, just doing your work well is what makes you a good person in God's eyes. That was one shit. But then he saw the real shift for Vapor came with a development with calvin Calvinism is you know, Puritanism is a form of Calvinism where the pure chans were worried about am I going to be saved? There's no way for sure to know that I'm going to be saved.

40:29 But if I'm very successful in my projects, it must be a sign that God has found favor with me, and I will be sick. And there was alts of this idea. You have to labor constantly for God in this world. You can rest all you want after you die in the next life. Okay, So it was an approach to tie spend all your time working in a constant anxiety. Am I successful enough? That my good enough? And it kind of led to this work becoming central to people's identity and purpose and meaning. And he said the religious part of it dropped out. He said, it dropped that very quickly or ready by the seventeen hundreds.

41:15 That was not so important, but that centrality of work, just living to work, even if you had enough money to meet your needs. You know, it wasn't about making the money to live well, because, as you said, there was this ascetic element to it. You weren't you know, it was opposed to a conspicuous conception. You weren't doing it for the money. You're just doing it on this irrational desire to be highly successful. Keep working, work it because means so much to you, and because you feel guilty if you're not being producted. I see productivity and central here and so I like to call it a productivist work ethic. Protestant makes you think, oh, this only applies to Protestants, you know, And even Vapor is saying, no, you know, the religious elements dropping out. This isn't just apply to protest it. So I'd rather say it productive this work now. Yeah, so Vapor felt. Now Vapor was writing at the beginning of the twentiethcentric all right, and he already felt at that point that consumerism had become much more important, that industrial capitalism was so well established.

42:25 I didn't care what people motivated people. They had to kind of go along with the cysts. So that's what Vapors say. And there's a lot of truth to those two points. What I think he misses, though, is he misses a couple of things. He still sees this centrality of this living to work ethic. That he's focusing just again on your entrepreneurs, your people who were into the household culture, not that people again Centric nine, but there were entrepreneurs then, yes, yeah, that those are the types that fascinated him, The types of just kept pouring their time into their business. Well they earned the profits from the business, of course, they bought the time into the business.

43:12 What about the people who work for them? You know, they have a different they're enough, you know, earning something from the profits at the Yeah, okay, they're in a different position. And Vapor doesn't spend enough time thinking about ordinary workers, the sort of people I talked to, and they're attcude about it, and so you kind of come out of this thinking, well, the only way to think about it is you know, and he said it was particularly prevalent in the United States. He's German. Okay, so he's looking over the United States. It's saying, what's with these weird Americans? You know. It was so because he traveled to the US and he said, ah, yeah, this is a strange these businessmen and just think of nothing except business. But but yeah, the world, these ordinary workers who have lots of other things to think about. So that was one problem with what he talked about. The other problem is, and it is he still focuses on this very grim this very moralistic attitude. And yes, there definitely is a moralistic attitude. And I did find that even people had what I call it the diligent nine to five work ethic. They felt one should be a productive worker. They did see a morality in that they did look down on people they thought were lazy. Absolutely, but again that's separate from seeing work as everything, making it central to your identity. Wanted to work all the time. Now, no, that's a different thing. And then this whole fun element

44:42 that he donic element of pleasure boy, that doesn't enter into Vapor's description at all, and out finding it both with the people who did I did talk to some people who lived to work, and you hinted that then a little bit. Some of them took real pleasure in meeting challenging goals. It wasn't just I need to do this, I'm rationally driven, pathologically driven to do it. It was fun for them to meet a challenging goal. They really enjoyed it. And then there were also the pep I talked to who didn't live to work, who wanted to leave at five o'clock but took fun. As I said in they could really enjoy the tasks or enjoy their coworkers.

45:23 That will fund and elements totally messy. Vapor like that'd be an odd third subtitle of his book, right Rid of Capitalism and the Joy of Unners. You know, Yeah, the pleasure really kept coming up a lot my. Inner dudes, which I think, I think is fascinating, right, and I think it's an important It's an important point because, like, you know, part of the interesting piece in terms of like both the framing of your work too is like, well, you know, and one had like why was vapor helpful to like think about? Like, because I agree, like we need to push back on his framework, you know, like why was why was it helpful for you in organizing this thinking? Right? And like did you I guess, did you go into the interviews having Aaberian kind of viewpointer like and obviously we already have some problems with it, but like or did it? Did it kind of come up as like, oh, this is an interesting foil to what people are talking about with their actual experiences around work.

46:11 Oh that's so interesting. I mean I did ask everybody, would you say that work is central to your identity? No, that was there and just baked into my research as something. And I don't think I had an expectation about what they would say. I had already guess this isn't the first project I've done around work. Ah So, but my dissertation research, which was back in the eighties, I talked to factory workers and I felt something very similar that many of these factory workers had been offered promotions into management and turned them down because they knew that once they were in management, their time was out their own. They could be cold at any hour to come into this It was a chemical factory come in six of problem, and they wanted to be home. So I already seen in the nineteen eighties that there was this other way of thinking about it. So yeah, so I was trying to kind of push back the framework that all Americans, you know, are lived to work and our workaholics and don't care about anything else.

47:19 It's funny too. We've also seen right, like the lionization of like the workaholic as an idea, which is funny because no one's like, yeah, alcoholics, right, you know, which is where it comes from. But it's just this funny idea that like there's there's a fetichization almost of what labor isn't. And can be, you know. And I think something else that I think could be really helpful to think about too, like both I mean both for our anthelitical conversation, but I think also again to think with with folks working in business that are trying to figure out both what anthropology can do but also what this specific conversation around work can do it and what your your book can help them think about. Is Like, even your methodology too, actually is really I think it fruitful because you take kind of a cognitive psychological approach and psycho psychological anthropological approach, and like what that means typically, right, is that you're dealing with an indie visual. You're talking with individuals, and I mean, you know, a broader culture. Anthropology will talk individuals too, but like it will then take kind of build a kind of team group perspective, right, And so there's an interesting distinction there of like why are we talking to individuals and then focusing premising on them rather than saying, here's the broad story of.

48:15 What what this like group is doing. And so I'm kind of. Curious from your perspective, like how that you know, you feel like that helps your perspective what you're looking at and getting a sense of of what does work mean? Especially because you know, coming away from this, like we're seeing that there's just a ton more great area of what work means to people, and like this is important for how employers think about what jobs can be, like how they're talking to employees and what they're expecting both the employees and of themselves. So tell me a bit about this and like how your your approach in your methodology like helped elucidate things in ways for you, and like what you might do I don't know if you do, if you do it again, like what might else it look like? You know, yeah, would you change anything? Oh? Well that yeah, okay, that's literally thinking about that.

48:55 That's a separate time question. Okay, God, it's really interesting. Good thing about Suppose you were just starting with a blank slate here and you were saying, I want to understand the meaning of work in American culture right now. I'm going to ask you at it. Suppose you're an anthropologist and you want us to design a project. What is the meaning of work in American culture right now? How would you go about doing. That's a great question. This is a good test. I mean, I think one, I want to see how people have talked about it before, and that could either be literature or interviews that we can see. Then I would just one hundred percent want to talk with people about their work lives right and like what work means to them. So that's why the title of your book is also good because it's basically to see, I need to see on the ground, how are people making sense of work? And then how can we connect that to broader trends that we're seeing, whether it's like labor statistics or demographics or things like that, and like, so what other kind of salient issues come up for folks that are shaping how they tell their stories.

49:51 Okay, so your first song was sorred of the same as mine. Hey, I want to go out and talk to people. Now, not everybody would go there. Some people say American culture. Okay, well, what are some important documents or statements or who are thought leaders here? What are the thought leaders saying? What do we see in popular culture? What's reflected there? What do we see in religious documents? Or you know, they'll kind of look at public culture and so, you know, it could be popular culture, it could be you know, again, you know what politicians. You could look at the discourse of politicians around work and you would see a lot of statements about the you know, where people who believe in working for what we have right and being self vicious, being self reliant. Right, so therefore let's cut any wealthare entitlements and right, you know, so you could examine what politicians say and all that makes sense. That's all part of culture too, right, it becomes really interesting. Right if you look at the popular culture, my gosh, right, we get very complicated because are you looking at you know, the serious dramas set in hospitals, or are you looking at the office, you know, the sitcoms set dysfunctional offices? Right, right, you know, you got all these sixt messages. But for me, it's a psychological anthropologist.

51:21 Our approach is called person centered. We're interested in Okay, Yes, all these messages are out there, and they're very diverse. You got your relatives talking about how they hate their jobs, or other relatives talking about that they love their jobs. You've got these different depictions. And but culture, you've got thought leaders saying be ambitious, thought leaders who are saying be content. You know, you're right. For me, psychological anthropologists, I'm really interested, Okay, how do people What are people taking from all that and what really becomes meaningful for them? And of course it's different for different people. And part of the message is who do you talk to you want to understand something about American culture. I got you know, it's a very diverse society. And it used to be that I people would say, well, the core of American culture is the white middle class. So all that I talked to white middle class people, Well, then you cutularly define me what it is by what this one group things, which itself is diverse. But but you know, I deliberately wanted to include lots of different occupations, different class levels, both early workers and solarly salary workers, people who were immigrants, all of the immigrants here at least ten years, but immigrants as well as people were born here, men and women, so different perspectives. This is all part of America. This

52:51 is who we are now. And then you talk to people and you hear these unexpected things like wow, that job they don't say, you know, that job dealing with spurtsheets was so much fun, and go wow, really wow? Okay, yeah, does does it make Does it make? You know? When when we hear you know, things like you know, quiet. Quitting right, and that that term came up had about a year ago or something a year and a half like that to me, felt like a manufactured term, you know, And and that's like I'm trying to think about, like how do we how can we reconcile things like that that? So I would say that that comes through public culture, right, I mean I think it comes through through media and because you know, journalists, we're talking with with folks too, you know, and and like, you know, do we it a cool thing to think about how did like things like that like filter into kind of every day people's conversations.

53:41 Or not right? And then like. You know, is there is it important to her? Do we need to like tease those those apart and like say that you know, if we do or do not see people talking about quiet quitting like that either means it isn't important to most people's lives and that it's actually this manufactured work term, or it's just like you know, what is it doing? You know? So it's it's kind of like one of these things of like how do we also account for either our own biases? Is what we think we're supposed to see right while we're doing research, and if we do or don't see it, like in the Funds of Good example of like I wasn't expecting to see fund, but it turns out it's actually diffuse in a lot of different. Places in really curious ways. So this is I mean something you know. And I get asked a lot too, like like, how do we think about our biases researchers to both make sure that we can have our research be sound, but then also recognize if we're not seeing something, which I think is also important. You know, how do we account for that if someone asks us like, hey, well you didn't see that.

54:29 Does that tell us something? Yeah? Well, and you know what would I change? I'd love to do my research again. Now do we get ten years? We know? So? Right? So would anything be different? Now? I don't know. I mean, I know that in terms of I've had some interviewers kind of hint, well, maybe it's because you're joking to such a diverse group that you're seeing people not making work the center of their life. But I actually compared the numbers of people who were born this kind and people were immigrants to see how many sent work essential to well how many lived to work. It was under twenty percent for both evans, likely higher for those born in this country, but interestingly a lot of those born in this country who were and not. Actually, there were also some immigrants who lived to work. A lot of those who had before their period of unemployment lived to work.

55:27 During that long period where they were looking for another job. Realized, wow, my life was really out of balance. This was not good, not healthy. They would again go back to that wellness discourse, that health discourse. This was not a healthy life. It was one hundred and twenty percent for both. And also this research I did in the nineteen eighties, these were white meal factory workers and they did not live to work. So now quiet quitting is something else. Quiet quitting is okay, you're there, body not in mind, You're just there for the pay check. You just putting in the nine to five. You don't care about the job. I think this reflects a real anxiety, you know. I mean I think there are two things. You know. Is there some anxiety on the part of employers that this is what we might be see And I wonder to what extent it's because you don't recognize another type beyond the one who lives to work and wants to state at nine o'clock at night or eight o'clock grows whenever. You don't recognize this diligent nine to five as somebody who is a really valuable employee who could fund fund the job, love the job, but just doesn't want to be, you know, disturbed after working hours. They're also I have a real problem with the Gallop Workplace Engagement Survey, which is sometimes us to back this up because there are only categories are gauged,

56:59 engaged and disengaged, and then you got this group in the middle and the people to be engaged. You have to it's really about your add tod It's more about the workplace. Are they constantly giving you positive feedback for your recognition, you know, for waiting for cheat, you know, so kind of recognition for way to a cheat. Do all your colleagues want to do their best at their work? Well, what if you qute say yes, I could say, oh, my colleagues really seem to want to do there but this, and then you come off as less engaged because you know, you can't apply all these superlatives to your workplace. They're the sheriff of all the people they talk to, or in the middle group they're actively disengaged. That's a minority, and they may not be in the top group that they call engaged, but they could have called very engaged, or they could have labeled great workplace. You know, working just come in the middle in an okay workplace where they probably feel okay, they're not disengaged, but not gets used as evidence of always got the ps epidemic of quiet quitting.

58:06 Well, yeah, feel that feels so inadequate. Yeah, yeah, So I think it's a real mythological problem. And I applaud Gallop for wanting to prove workplaces. I don't like the way it's being used to as alleged evidence. Of dis Yeah, I mean that's a great point, and it makes me think of you know, even as we're talking about like economic indicators and like national health right, we have like you know, the gross domestic product, which is a super aggregate number, right, but it's like, you know, compared to other countries that might be higher in the US. But then you look at like the happiness index, whereas happiness index in the US is like fifty seventh or something, or it's like one of the lowest, and it's like, you know, or in terms of wellness index and wellness scores, right, that the US is one of the only industrialized nation that doesn't have like you know, healthcare and childcare and education for young kids, you know. And it's like, he's interesting, Like when we're talking about whatever our markers of success, right, it says something when like both we when we use like we need to be able to put in the same box like economic indicators that we say, and then also like workplace engagement as the thing we're using as the measurement, right as the metric, because it does make a difference, right in terms of both the narrative that we're telling. But then if we're blind to the kinds of metrics that we're using, like you know, we're only going to see what we're measuring, and then if only measuring one thing, that's all we're gonna be able to you know, see and like, but recognizing the value that the value judgments that we might put on engagement, man, it's interesting to kind of realize that the top tier is engagement.

59:23 It's like, oh, well, it goes downhill from there. That's kind of scary, right versus like the super engaged in play, you know, versus. The the okay engaged you know. But even that idea too, like engagement is is an interesting thing to think about like I'm disengaged. Okay, does that mean the quality of my work is bad? Maybe maybe not, but you know it might be great worker, but it disengaged because I don't want to like go to you know, the after work function kind of thing. And it's that interesting piece you know that guess me. I mean it has been thinking about this this idea too, that you mentioned this at the end, you know, when you think about like both future work, but how we could like talk about like we need to be smarter, you know, in at least more kind just like what metrics we're using to measure you know, workplace wellness, engagement, you know, economic growth, and then also what that might mean for things like future work and how would is AI going to take jobs? You know, to come back to our labrist and post laborists ideas that we talked about up top, and you quoted technology journalist Kevin Rust that I think put this really well. That was just like we need to be not talking so much about like AI taking jobs, but like what's ais effects on the quality of jobs going to be? And I think that's that's one hundred percent right, Like not just because we're qualitative social scientists, but like quality matters versus quantity in this case too, it's like, you know, how many jobs there are, it does matter, But if all the jobs are terrible, then that's different than saying that there's like either a ton of jobs but they have great quality, right, or there's a few of them that have great quality.

1:00:41 And so it's like, I think that's a fundamentally important piece that we need to think about for how we set up workplaces, right, and like what is the quality of the kind of work that we're doing? Again, this is not a do you have ping pong tables? And it's also not just a like are we removing drudgery? Because like, again, what drudgery is for some people is different than others. Right, you know, building a nine foot wall doesn't sound very fun to me, but like the one dude loved it, you know, and so it's like that's great, and like that matters, And so that's not drudgery for one person's drudgery is another person's like treasure. Right to mix metaphors there, you know, and it's. Like that's that matters because that means that there's actually space for all kinds of work, right, and all kinds of tasks within work and people to be well in workplaces beyond these like broad narratives like oh aa is going to help us get rid of like repetitive tasks like you know, moving I don't know, data from a piece of paper to a spreadsheet. You know, some people might really actually love that work because it for them is mindless. They can listen to the radio, or they can do something else with that, like it doesn't you know, we shouldn't kind of prejudge the kinds of work that that work and jobs might might ask, you know. So I think that's important because as we as tell these like bigger AI narratives like.

1:01:43 We tend to miss these specificities. That like in New York, I think does a good job of showing us that there's such a big diversity of what can matter to people in their workplace. Like if we can learn. To ask and think towards that when like working with employees and work with other people, organizations like that can be a huge boon for like building a much better, you know, and healthier workplace because we're like finding what are your strengths, what's enjoyable to you, and let's build around that versus you know, come do this thing and we're gonna get rid of stuff that we don't we think is boring, even though. You might like it. Right, I do want to say there are some things, some aspects, some jobs that nobody liked. Okay, So I don't want this. I don't want to tick away message. D Hey, no matter how bad a job might seem to me, there'll be somebody out there who'll like it, because are somethings that nobody liked. Okay. So for example, the young man who was a lumper in a warehouse where he was kind of pulling this car and loaded with stuff. It kept bumping into the back of his ankle, and that's like I'm called bluffers. They would develop this huge welt we send in and it's noisy. The employees didn't enjoy being there. They shabby at each other. They you know, had none of those qualt these that makes work fun. Was not intrinsically interesting. That not good social relationships, a terrible workplace. Yeah. So another thing that was very harmful for a number of my interviewees were was harassment

1:03:18 of various kinds. It could be around sexual orientation. One of my interviewees was a gay black man who was harassed around his sexual orientation and that just ate away at him, or he'd be here in a raceist harassment, you know, that things just kind of ate away at him. A immigrants who one who really worked very, very hard and was put down by others in her work group. She had a nervous break there, I know. So yeah, I mean there's certain things that are bottom line that every job has to have. It's not like there's some horrible job out there that so that he's just perfect for you know.

1:04:00 Yeah, yeah, so totally y yeah, yeah, yeah, And I agree with you there too, And I think the examples you just share there too, like point out the importance of also having you know, a healthy, constructive work environment also, right, because it's like your colleagues and your boss can make a good job terrible. Yeah, you know, and. That matters too, right, So it's like it is one of those I guess that's actually the other side to think about this too. It's that like technology won't solve people, and people don't need to be solved, you know, like we have to we have to treat ourselves in each other like humans also as part of this as we figured this thing out, you know. And so that's the other the thing that can like numbers and technology can obfuscate for people is they forget that there's people behind it, right, And that's I mean, that's the entire thesis. We know. The work of Mary Gray's ghost work is that like all the technology that seems super shiny and AI and running it by itself is actually run by a ton of underpaid people often in other countries like that are doing the work that people here don't want to do, looking at like images that might be offensive, you know, so they don't show up on Facebook, you know, and.

1:04:54 Things like that. And so it's like there's it's one of those like in tech terms, like human in the loop is what they might say with AI instead of having it just fun itself. Is like you're going to pop in and like answer a question. Most of all this technology stuff has humans in the loop, you know, we just sometimes talk about it like it doesn't, and like that's actually a huge detgment also because it ignores potentially harassing and work like bad workplace environment also right for folks, and so that I agree as a key piece. So lesson there, keep humans in the picture at all times because that's one of the ones. We're the ones doing the. Work, you know, absolutely, absolutely awesome. H Well, Laudia, I want to say thank you so much for joining me on the pod. That's been really really great to chat with you. So be where we sign off, I just want to check is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to you want to make sure that we can we can kind of touch on the table is still open if that is interesting.

1:05:40 I mean that you're this is this answer all life, and I just wanted to throw out that. What I love about anthropology is it says, you know, the way we think now, the way we live now, this is not the only possibility. There are their options and that applies to work. You know, work is changing. I mean you brought up the rhymes of freelancers, independent workers. They're now you know. McKinsey found in twenty twenty two that thirty six percent of US workers are like you, they're independent and it's and most of those it was their primary source of income. It wasn't just a secondary, you know, source of income. It was the primary source of income.

1:06:27 So you the kind of thing you're doing working for yourself. This is the wafe of the future. And when we think about the future of work, we kind of have to put that together with the AI piece, the tech piece, and because they're going together, you know, and so it's not like, you know, I think in the future, you know, it's this becomes more and more important. It's not like you're either going to be employed or unemployed. If you're working for yourself, you can't be unemployed, right right. My black clients might lack income, but you're not. You know, there's nobody to fire you, right right. It's just a very different way of thinking about work.

1:07:10 Yeah, and I agree. How I'm curious like too, like how are are you thinking about that, like as a as a professor, as a teacher, like and thinking about your students and like helping shape their future, Like how how has that approached like either through your classes, through your department, or like how do you think about that in terms of like what what's our responsibility guess as anthropologists to help the next generation of anthropologists figure out this these like unstructured, uncharted pathways. Yeah. Well, what I think anthropology is good for is a look we can look at other societies we happened throughout history always had normal work right where with you know, you get a contract and you're hired, and that that wasn't the main way human beings made a living right right for Landia. Uh, this is a small slice of human history. And even today, most people around the world are in informal in the informal economy. They're not in the formal economy, and so you can look at examples in other societies for what are other ways of put creating a working economy that's not centered on full time standard employment.

1:08:29 M Yeah, that's such an important point and it's always as one of my favorite things that I found early on that that when I when I got my first job out of college, as you know, I did anthrow majors all the way, you know, anthrow nerd from from bachelor's on the way up, and like one of my early colleagues, you know, had showed me that post it was another world is possible, and I was like, that's anthropology, right, yes, you know that that helps us realize that. Absolutely we can go cool. So super excited to to chat with you today. I really appreciate you taking the time for folks to check out your can. I all have it linked in the show notes, and I really excited, so thank you for doing the research, pointing it out in the world, and excited to see what conversations we can generate from this. So thank you so much, Thank you, Adam.

1:09:10 Yeah, it was a real honor and pleasure.