Today's episode is all about trust and responsibility—and how those qualities impact the cost of doing business and the work that's required for any company to be successful. And specifically, it's about something I'm calling the Trust-Profit Paradox. Simply put, you can't build trust and optimize for profit at the same time. After losing my ish listening to The Verge's Nilay Patel stump Airbnb's Brian Chesky with a question about AI-generated images on the Decoder podcast, I started to think about the responsibility that companies like Airbnb have (or, rather, avoid). From there, my research took me to some truly unexpected places—like into mainstream management theory. Footnotes: "The Pope Francis Puffer Photo Was Real In Our Hearts" by Eileen Cartter on GQ "'I can't make products just for 41-year-old tech founders': Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is taking it back to basics" on Decoder with Nilay Patel (audio & transcript available) "The Delusion of Profit" by Peter Drucker in Wall Street Journal "Cost of Capital" on the Harvard Business School blog "If you're getting ripped off, it's not surprising" featuring Niko Matouschek at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern "The Age of Customer Capitalism" by Roger Martin in Harvard Business Review "'Is Substack Notes a Twitter clone?': We asked CEO Chris Best" on Decoder with Nilay Patel Join me for a workshop called "Tending Your Media Ecosystem" on Wednesday, May 31st at 1:30pm ET/10:30am PT—exclusively for paid subscribers to What Works. Get started for just $7/month! ★ Support this podcast ★

What are we really talking about when we talk about our hopes and fears about AI?It's us. We're the problem.Actually, we're not the problem—we're more like the solution. But that's less mimetic.Sure, this is yet another pod hitting your feed with a take on AI. I'll assure you, though: this episode isn't really AI. There's no fear-mongering or cute suggestions for prompts. It's a bit of a meditation on the very human parts of our relationship with technology. And it's probably one of the most hopeful pieces I've put together in a few years!  ***Anyhow, today's episode is the second edition of This is Not Advice, a "not advice" column for paying subscribers of What Works. This is the final public edition, so if you'd like to keep getting a dose of "not advice" from me every other week, plus submit your own topics and questions, and support independent analysis of the future of work, business, and leadership, go taramcmullin.substack.com/subscribe and chip in just $7/month.I'm also hosting a workshop on May 31 for paying subscribers called Tending Your Media Ecosystem. I'll share how what I read, watch, and listen to becomes what I write, produce, and post. Footnotes: Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Deja Q" Grammarly's new AI Assistant "Did clickbait kill BuzzFeed and the digital media era?" on Offline with Jon Favreau "Readers Aren't Flocking to Chatbot Novels Just Yet" in Counter Craft by Lincoln Michel "Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins" on Folding Ideas with Dan Olson "Dingus of the Week: Pivoting to Robots" in Men Yell at Me by Lyz Lenz Every new episode is also published in essay form! Click here to read. ★ Support this podcast ★

There's a sort of inside joke in the online business space of coaches, creators, and service providers. Or maybe, at this point, it's an "outside joke?"Q: What's the surest way to make more money as a creator or small business owner?A: Teach other people how to make money as a creator or small business owner.Hilarious, right? Anyhow, this isn't some weird quirk of extremely online people. It's something huge companies do, too. Douglas Rushkoff calls it "going meta." You can see it in the stock market, in automakers, and—yes—at Meta. In this quick Dispatch, I take a look at how "going meta" changes work, both for self-employed and traditionally employed folks. And, I consider how we might do things differently.Footnotes: Survival of the Richest, by Douglas Rushkoff Team Human, by Douglas Rushkoff "What a Meta For?" by Douglas Rushkoff on Medium Kyla Scanlon's tweet "How Ford Makes Money" on Investopedia ★ Support this podcast ★

“This cancerous economic principle means that executives and venture capitalists have abandoned the concept of value within a business. Through decades of corporate greed, production has become almost entirely separated from capital, meaning that executives (and higher-ups) are no longer able to understand the nature of the businesses they are growing.”— Ed Zitron, “Absentee Capitalism”This might sound weird—but most companies today aren’t in the business it appears they’re in. Netflix isn’t really in the content business. Facebook isn’t in the social media business. Etsy isn’t in the handmade marketplace business. Instead, companies are in the growth business. And this impacts all of us, tying how we work not to the production of valuable products and services but to the potential for capital growth. Even for independent workers and small businesses, the capital growth game sets the rules and obstacles for the game we play.Today’s episode is about gaming the system—how the game we play dictates the decisions we make and the actions we perform. After all, you have to know what game you’re playing to know how to win. And you also need to decide whether that’s the game you want to play.Footnotes: Games: The Art of Agency by C. Thi Nguyen “Bent but Not Broken: The History of the Rules” via NFL Operations CBS Sports: “Results of 2023 Rule Change Proposals” MSNBC: “BuzzFeed News to shut down” “Absentee Capitalism” by Ed Zitron "Amazon's Trickle-Down Monopoly" by Moira Weigel “The Valuable Business of Maintenance Work” by Tara McMullin What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin Support independent research and analysis about the future of work and business by becoming a paid subscriber of What Works! For just $7 per month, you help make my work possible. Click here to pledge your support! ★ Support this podcast ★

Today’s quick episode is a sample of something I’m creating for paid subscribers to What Works. I’m calling it my “This is Not Advice” column. Or, TINA for short. Not to be confused with TINA a la “there is no alternative”—if you know, you know.Paid subscribers not only receive this subscriber-directed content, but they also have the chance to, well, direct the content! When you’re a paid subscriber, you can write in with a question, topic, or observation that you’d like my take on—some added context here and some sideways observations there. If you like today’s episode and want to get more of it, go to read.explorewhatworks.com and become a paid subscriber for just $7/month! ***Today's Question:What else can I do to grow my [audience, platform, brand, list, etc.]?To me, this isn’t only a question for independent workers and small business owners—although it’s especially salient for that group. It’s also a question that points to a bigger trend in work in general. And that trend is the way all workers are now encouraged to be entrepreneurs of themselves. This is evident in the portfolio career model, the lessons about personal branding, and what Micki McGee has called the ‘belabored self,’ that is, constant work on perfecting oneself to fit the market.This question has become quite fraught over the last 9 months or so. When I would have once been able to begrudgingly prescribe a series of actions on various social media platforms or construct a content strategy designed to attract new readers/listeners/viewers, the media landscape has become, to borrow Cory Doctorow’s term, enshittified. Thanks to enshittification, none of the legacy platforms are viable candidates for a concerted strategy. And splitting one’s effort across multiple platforms is just watering down already ineffective action.Listen to hear my answer! Or find the written version at read.explorewhatworks.comFootnotes: Become a paid subscriber to What Works for just $7 per month! "The Enshittification of TikTok" by Cory Doctorow on Wired Micki McGee on the "belabored self" "How Audience-Building is Not the Same as Finding Clients" by Tara McMullin Psychopolitics by Byung-Chul Han Liquid Love by Zygmunt Bauman "Why Creating Remarkable Work Matters" by Tara McMullin "Revisiting Remarkable Content to Explore Digital Ecology" by Tara McMullin ★ Support this podcast ★

What does a bad movie from 1992, loss aversion, Steinbeck, pizza, farm animals, and the founder of a software company have in common? Well, you’ll find them all in this episode.This episode will take you places. I don’t want to spoil it. So suffice it to say, this episode is all about questioning why we act the way we do when it comes to how we scale up (and scale down) our dreams. Footnotes: Learn more about Nathalie Lussier and AccessAlly Far and Away (1992 film) Oklahoma land rush of 1893 “A primer on the 30s” by John Steinbeck More about loss aversion 2002 pizza study Psychopolitics by Byung-Chul Han Check out Nathalie & Robin’s farm on YouTube What Works by Tara McMullin Support the research, journalism, and analysis that goes into What Works by becoming a paid subscriber for just $7 per month. You'll get access to bonus content and help me continue to do this work (instead of, ya know, selling you stuff).  ★ Support this podcast ★

I am on board when it comes to technological progress. I look forward to updating my devices (although I don’t do it as frequently as I used to). New apps and features excite me. I’m pretty quick to adapt to change. I am not a Luddite. Or so I thought. “The word Luddite still means an old-fashioned type who is anti-progress,” writes Jeanette Winterson in her book 12 Bytes. “But the Luddites of the early 19th century were not against progress; they were against exploitation.” Reading these lines was the first time what the Luddite movement actually stood for really sank in. Where I had once seen atavism and fear, I now saw labor politics I could get behind.When I picked up Gavin Mueller’s Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Were Right About Why You Hate Your Job, I did so to learn more about the radical roots of Luddism and how the movement could inform my own thinking on the future of work. I also picked it up amidst the current fervor over AI and debates about whether the robots were finally coming for writers’ jobs. In this episode, I share my favorite ideas from Mueller's book and apply them to commonplace tools like project management apps (ClickUp, Asana, etc.) and social media scheduling apps. I think you'll have a different perspective on tech once you've listened!Footnotes: Breaking Things At Work by Gavin Mueller 12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson Gavin Mueller on the Chris Voss show (YouTube) "AI and Automation are destroying jobs, not work" via Quartz (YouTube) "Dear YouTube, creators keep burning out. Here's the fix." via Channel Makers (YouTube) "Creator burnout is real. 6 ways to recover" via Sidewalker Daily (YouTube) My 2021 TEDx talk on remarkable work "Kids at Work, Games as Labor, Content as Product, and Surplus Elite" by me on Substack "The Game is Rigged: Rethinking the Creator Economy" by me on Substack "Intelligence Superabundance" by Packy McCormick on Not Boring "Moss introduces Jen to the internet" from The IT Crowd (YouTube) "You have to start talking" via GaryVee Video Experience (YouTube) Want more of What Works? Subscribe FREE to the What Works newsletter at read.explorewhatworks.comOr, upgrade to a paid subscription for just $7/month and get bonus podcast episodes, the "This is Not Advice" Column, and more. ★ Support this podcast ★

It seems like every company today claims to be "on a mission" to change the world or improve our lives. They bill themselves as social movements more than profit-driven enterprises. It sounds nice. But how does it really function in the lives of workers? Do these missions meaningfully improve our communities?In this episode, I briefly explore the history of the corporate mission statement and then dive into a critique of the bestselling leadership book, Start with Why. You'll hear why the Start with Why ideology is so appealing, how it sets us up for disappointment, and whether it's actually an effective brand and marketing strategy. Plus, I leave off with an alternative take that flips this ideology on its head. Footnotes: Walmart’s Statement of Purpose Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices by Peter Drucker The New Spirit of Capitalism by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello Start with Why by Simon Sinek “Start with Why” TEDx talk by Simon Sinek The Problem with Work by Kathi Weeks Want more of What Works? Subscribe FREE to the What Works newsletter at read.explorewhatworks.comOr, upgrade to a paid subscription for just $7/month and get bonus podcast episodes, the "This is Not Advice" Column, and more. ★ Support this podcast ★

At least in my corner of social media, there are a lot of folks asking what makes a business ethical. Or, perhaps more accurately, there are a lot of folks answering that question. And there are probably even more folks worried that there’s something unethical about the way they run their businesses. They’re afraid they haven’t checked all the ethical business boxes. When Brooke Monaghan emailed me to ask whether I wanted to have a messy conversation about some of the messaging around ethical, equitable, or trauma-informed businesses, I jumped on the opportunity. You see, while this is certainly not true of all messaging on these topics, much of it unintentionally replicates problematic systems and social relations. Capitalism always appropriates that which tries to resist it.This episode explores a few different ways to think about the messages you’ve probably run into as you think about working or doing business differently. It’s not about calling anyone out or shaming anyone. It’s a look under the hood at some of the unexpected forces at play.Footnotes: Find out more about Brooke Monaghan. “Does social media leave you angry?” on NPR Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher A Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville “White Women/Black Women” by Phyllis Palmer Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell Utilitarian ethics Deontological ethics I release every episode in essay form on Thursdays. Get them delivered straight to your inbox, or read the archive at read.explorewhatworks.com.Want to support the ad-free independent analysis I do at What Works? Become a paying subscriber at read.explorewhatworks.com. For just $7 per month, you not only get access to all of my free content, but bonus podcast episodes, the “This is Not Advice” Column, and sneak peeks at works in progress. Go to read.explorewhatworks.com to subscribe. Want more of What Works? Subscribe FREE to the What Works newsletter at read.explorewhatworks.comOr, upgrade to a paid subscription for just $7/month and get bonus podcast episodes, the "This is Not Advice" Column, and more. ★ Support this podcast ★

This Earth Month... buy more stuff?!We're about to be bombarded with messaging about corporate climate initiatives. We'll have the chance to buy merch to "support" the planet. And we'll be incentivized to spend more so that a small portion can be donated to organizations fighting climate change.As you might expect, it's all marketing. Earth Month and Earth Day seem to have become another excuse for a sale.But we miss a key issue in our fight for change if we stop at the "greedy corporation" critique. In this short dispatch, I compare Panasonic's #CreateTodayEnrichTomorrow campaign to Parks Project's mission to do good, and I advocate for a systems-level critique that can penetrate do-good messaging to get to the heart of the problem.Footnotes: Panasonic's ad: Green Impact (with Michael Phelps) Panasonic CES 2022 Top Things to See The Entrepreneurs Helping Save U.S. National Parks via Forbes Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher ★ Support this podcast ★

"All parasites have value, Sibling Dex. Not to their hosts, perhaps, but you could say the same about a predator and a prey animal. They all give back—not to the individual but to the ecosystem at large." — Mosscap, in A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky ChambersFor the next few months, I'm focusing on some big projects and taking my foot off the gas of the podcast a bit. But since writing is how I think, my big projects spin off shorter pieces as I work through ideas. I'll share some of these shorter pieces here on the podcast and in the What Works newsletter as "dispatches" from my projects.Today's dispatch explores our feelings about those who don't work—and how those feelings can create obstacles to more sustainable choices about how we do work.Footnotes: Monk & Robot novellas by Becky Chambers Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook by James Boggs The Immunity to Change process via MindTools ★ Support this podcast ★

I’ve called myself a recovering overachiever. I’m recovering not from the drive to excel but from the anxiety inherent to wondering if anything I achieve will ever be enough. And folks, it’s a struggle. The philosophy Byung-Chul Han describes this anxiety as central to contemporary society. He dubs our modern age the “Achievement Society” and argues that our plethora of potential projects and opportunities work to maximize our productivity. After all, what better way to inspire people to greater efficiency than by inspiring them to tackle #AllTheThings?This week, I talk with the host of The Anxious Achiever and author of the forthcoming book of the same name, Morra Aarons-Mele. We both the anxiety that the drive to achieve can create and how mental health conditions of all kinds impact the way we work.Footnotes: Pre-order The Anxious Achiever by Morra Aarons-Mele Listen to The Anxious Achiever podcast on your favorite app Find out more about Morra Aarons-Mele The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault “High-Functioning Anxiety - Life Fright of the Shy Loud” presented by Jordan Raskopoulos at TEDxSydney ★ Support this podcast ★

We all have deep human needs—for belonging, for autonomy, for creative expression, for safety and security. But modern life can make it a real challenge to get those needs met in meaningful ways. Instead, we’re offered products with flashy marketing messages. Kitchen gadgets, social media platforms, clothing, personal care products, and many others offer to help us live our best lives. Financial and educational products promise a greater sense of security and autonomy. But do these commodities really satisfy our needs? Or do they merely stave off the hunger a little longer?In this final episode of The Economics Of, I explore how various economic concepts can help us understand why we buy the things we do, how our consumption relates to larger economics forces, and how our relationships are influenced by it all. I also talk with Mara Glatzel, the author of Needy, about how to better understand our own needs and create the conditions through which we can get those needs met.Footnotes: Get your copy of Needy by Mara Glatzel Learn more about Mara Glatzel “Varieties of the Rat Race: Conspicuous Consumption in the US & Germany” by Till Van Treeck, via the Institute for New Economic Thinking “Trickle-Down Consumption” by Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse in The Review of Economics and Statistics “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” by Karl Marx Adam Smith’s America by Glory M. Liu Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman “Alienation” on Overthink with David Pena-Guzman and Ellie Anderson More on Thorstein Veblen via Investopedia Everything, All the Time, Everywhere by Stuart Jeffries Liquid Love by Zygmunt Bauman New episodes are published in essay form every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get them delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge, by subscribing to What Works Weekly: explorewhatworks.com/weeklyIf you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

What makes an idea valuable? What turns it into a product that can be bought, sold, or rented? Ideas turn into capital assets thanks to our system of intellectual property rights. But understanding IP isn’t simply a matter of learning what a trademark or patent is, and then learning how to leverage it to create wealth. To truly understand intellectual property, we need to under property—what it is and why it exists—first.In this episode, I explore the origins of our conception of private property, why we’ve coded intellectual property rights into law, and how one business owner—Jenny Blake—licenses her IP to companies to generate (relatively) passive income. Footnotes: Jenny Blake’s Free Time Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow “Coding Land and Ideas | The Laws of Capitalism” featuring Katharina Pistor via the Institute for New Economic Thinking “Enclosure” on Wikipedia “Legal Evil” featuring Katharina Pistor via the Institute for New Economic Thinking “How to Unf★ck Intellectual Property” featuring Dean Baker via the Institute for New Economic Thinking Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy and Who Pays for It? by Brett Christophers Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher New episodes are published in essay form every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get them delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge, by subscribing to What Works Weekly: explorewhatworks.com/weeklyIf you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

This is Part 2 of The Economics of Getting (and Paying) Attention. If you haven’t listened to Part 1, I highly recommend starting there!In today’s episode, I explore the “right to publicity” and the value of celebrity as an economic condition. From there, we get into how audience-building businesses gain efficiency by vertically integrating media, ads, and offers and how micro-media creators often leverage monopoly power to charge exorbitant prices.Footnotes: “New wellness price point just dropped” Conspiratuality Instagram post The World After Capital by Albert Wenger (available free) “The Audience Commodity and its Work” by Dallas Smythe “From Celebrity to Influencer” by Alison Hearn and Stephanie Schoenhoff Good Mythical Morning on YouTube Sporked “How Audience-Building is Different from Finding Clients” by Tara McMullin Vertical integration New episodes are published in essay form every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get them delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge, by subscribing to What Works Weekly: explorewhatworks.com/weeklyIf you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and then rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

How comfortable are you with your own voice? How likely are you to say what's on your mind?Samara Bay, the author of the brand-new book Permission to Speak, is on a mission to change what power sounds like. I found Samara because one of my favorite podcasters was on Samara's show. I then binged her back catalog and started recommending her show to everyone I worked with. One of those folks then turned around and told Samara I had shouted her out! We've been fangirling together ever since. I first had Samara on the podcast during the Self-Help, LLC series (Episode 397: Bad Usage). But her book has just hit the shelves so I took that as an excuse to schedule another chat and bring it to you as a bonus "mini" episode. Enjoy!Footnotes: Buy Permission to Speak at Bookshop.org (or wherever you buy books!) Find out more about Samara Follow Samara on Instagram YellowHouse.Media ★ Support this podcast ★

Attention is a scarce (and precious) resource. A gargantuan number of media outlets, advertisers, influencers, and brands vie for our attention every day. In turn, many of us (including me) are out there trying to attract attention, too. At the same time, the changing nature of the attention market (as well as larger macroeconomic shifts) creates some real weirdness.This is the first episode of a two-part deep dive into the economics of paying attention, getting attention, and audiences as a commodity. In this episode, we’ll question how an influencer can charge $100k per year for coaching, examine how attention scarcity impacts the market, and explore the “principal product of the mass media.” This episode is for you if you ever spend time on social media, consume any kind of traditional media, buy things, or hope people will buy things for you. We’ll get into the weeds—but all for the purpose of getting very, very practical.Footnotes: “New wellness price point just dropped” Conspiratuality Instagram post “Paying Attention: The Attention Economy” via the Berkley Economic Review The World After Capital by Albert Wenger (available free) “Georg Franck’s ‘The Economy of Attention’: Mental capitalism and the struggle for attention” by Robert van Krieken “The Economy of Attention” by Georg Franck, translated by Silvia Plaza “The Audience Commodity and its Work” by Dallas Smythe Dallas Smythe 1979 lecture via SFU Communications “The Economics of Working Together with Kate Strathmann” on What Works “Dallas Smythe Today - The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory” by Christian Fuchs New episodes are published in essay form every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get the delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge, by subscribing to What Works Weekly: explorewhatworks.com/weeklyIf you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and then rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

Toward the end of last week's episode, Kate Strathmann talked about the importance of understanding the "tiny economy" of your business. Digging into cashflow is a perfect way to do just that. When we start thinking about how money flows 3 dimensionally, we start to see new opportunities for investment, growth, and exercising our values.This episode originally aired in September 2021. Turns out, I needed an extra week to put together the economics of attention, and this piece followed up my conversation with Kate beautifully. I'll be back next week with an all-new episode!Footnotes: Cashflow Is A Feminist Issue (essay version) SBA report on credit market experiences among new business owners Report on the gender gap in business financing (CBS News) The Valuable Business of Maintenance Work Your Biggest Small Business Opportunity is Doing Less Decolonization is for Everyone: TEDx talk by Nikki Sanchez Written versions of each new episode are available at explorewhatworks.com every Thursday. Or, sign up for What Works Weekly—free—and get them delivered to your inbox automatically!If you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and then rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

Sure, you can build a business or independent career made for one. But once you start thinking about making a bigger impact or scaling up to serve more customers, you start thinking about hiring help. And that makes a lot of people nervous!The idea that we might unintentionally create a toxic work environment or exploit the people we hire is enough to keep many from hiring help at all. While you might expect this subject to get more of a psychological or sociological treatment, economics has a lot to teach us about creating equitable relationships at work, too.In this episode, Kate Strathmann joins me for a “conversation with no answers,” where we explore the possibilities of work relationships outside the traditional structures.Footnotes: More from Kate Strathmann and Wanderwell Consulting Previous episodes featuring Kate: 341, 298, 153 “Exploitation” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Episode 386: Extra Context — Getting Paid Surplus Labor in Radical Economics More about Guerilla Translation “Open Value Accounting” (contributive accounting) A written version of each episode is published every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get it delivered straight to your inbox by signing up at explorewhatworks.com/weeklyIf you’d like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that’s led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and then rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

The first time I heard you could charge $47 for a PDF less than 50 pages long, I was shocked. When I first encountered an online course selling for $2000, I about fell out of my chair. Of course, it wasn’t long until I, too, was selling information products for more than my first car cost. Of course, I’m also an autodidact who benefits greatly from the proliferation of “free” information. And I’m a writer and podcaster who chooses to make 99% of what I make free to consume and use. I’ve benefited from both sides of the equation when it comes to the economics of information. And so this episode is a long time coming. It’s an exploration of the seeming paradox at the heart of how we value information. And this episode covers some broad territory: from the 1960s and Stewart Brand who originated the phrase “information wants to be free,” to how information gets priced, to a case study on two of my most popular forays into information products, to feminist economics and the erasure of care work.Footnotes: “The Real Legacy of Stewart Brand w/ Malcolm Harris” on Tech Won’t Save Us with Paris Marx “The Zen Playboy” by Malcolm Harris in The Nation My courses on CreativeLive “Feminist Economics” video series from the Institute of New Economic Thinking, hosted by economist Jayati Ghosh Berik, Günseli, Ebru Kongar. The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics. 2021. 1st ed., Taylor and Francis, 2021. “What is Money? With Paco de Leon” on What Works Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici “Course Mechanics Canvas: 12 Levers to Achieve Course-Market Fit” by Wes Kao ★ Support this podcast ★