In episode 179 of Overthink, 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.

In episode 173 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about theft. They discuss the lack of legal repercussions for tech companies stealing information to train new AI models, how feudalism and capitalism produced the conditions for stealing land with the creation of private property, and what the historic association between kleptomania and women demonstrates about the gendered dimension of theft. What does the move from heist films to grift docudramas say about 21st century capitalism? Can you steal land if it’s not already property? And why do we sometimes take the side of thieves?