Episode 179: Unemployment
Released July 14th, 2026
After a BIG announcement (!!!), your hosts David and Ellie get into the economic and psychological features of the state no one wants to be stuck in: unemployment. How does capitalism structurally construct “wageless life” while nonetheless treating it as a personal failure or unhappy accident? What’s the connection between unemployment and reactionary politics? And is AI going to put us all out of a job? Correcting misconceptions about automation, UBI, and more, your hosts take you through some significant arguments about the impacts of unemployment and reflect on why this socially-constructed position can make us feel so worthless even when we know that we’re not the problem. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David reflect on the end of Overthink and share some reasons for it.
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Works Discussed
Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work
Aaron Benanav, “Is the AI Bubble About to Burst?”
Eloundou et al., “GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models”
Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machines and Manufactures
Michael Denning, “Wageless Life”
Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism
Regina Bateson, “Perceptions of pandemic resume gaps: Survey experimental evidence from the United States”
