S5E4
· 37:46
Hello, and welcome to season five of Public Health Disrupted with me, Xand Van Tulleken.
Rochelle:And me, Rochelle Burgess. Xand is a doctor, writer and TV presenter, and I'm
Xand:This podcast is about public health. More importantly, it's about the systems that need disrupting to make public health better. So join us as we challenge the status quo of the public health field, asking what needs to change, why and how to get there.
Rochelle:In this episode, we'll be exploring the future of work, examining how shifts to the way we work could reduce stress, improve mental and physical health and support re entry into the workforce. From hybrid and flexible working to the four day workweek, we'll examine how digital technologies are influencing the way we work and how we can ensure that positive shifts to how we work are equally distributed.
Xand:Our first guest today is Joe Ryle. Joe is the campaign director of the Four Day Week Foundation and a former Labour Party press officer and adviser to former shadow chancellor John McDonnell MP.
Rochelle:And from UCL, we're super pleased to welcome professor Anna Cox. Anna is a leading expert in human computer interaction at the UCL Interaction Center. Every time we do one of these, I find a new center. UCL is ginormous. I absolutely love it.
Rochelle:As the head of the eWork Research Group, Anna's interdisciplinary research focuses on the use of digital technology across both work and personal life, and explores how technology design influences productivity, work life balance and recovery in settings such as healthcare, finance and academia.
Xand:Anna and Joe, welcome, and thank you so much for joining us. Jo, can I start with you? Can you talk about how the structure and the environment of work and work time impacts our health?
Joe:Sure. Mean the first very simple thing I want to say on this is that, and it's maybe not surprising that I'm saying this, is that we are just working too many working hours. And if you compare The UK with other kind of comparable countries across Europe, The UK does put in some of the longest full time working hours. At the same time we also have one of least productive economies which suggests that kind of all these long working hours we're doing aren't producing good results for the economy, A, but aren't producing good results for workers. We know that because there's eighteen million working days lost every year as a result of work related stress, depression or anxiety, that's figures from the Health and Safety Executive.
Joe:And work related stress, depression and anxiety are all on the rise. And I just think one of the simple reasons for that is we work too many hours. Work is very rigid in that way, this kind of nine to five, five day working week. We've had it for one hundred years now. Next year is the one hundred year anniversary of the kind of winning the weekend and the five day working.
Joe:It's just too much. And I say that as someone who is about to become a dad later this year, and I don't see how you fit a five day working week into kind of bring up a family and all the rest of life's kind of commitments and needs. And I think it causing lots health issues for people fundamentally and needs to be tackled, which is why I'm excited to be talking about a four day week and kind of the rise of that today.
Rochelle:I'm just so excited to be talking about this today, Joe, because I mean, in going back to work both times after having my babies, I am returning to work in sort of this flexi four day work week. And without that, it just would not have been humanly possible. So like working five days with small humans running around, it just feels and was quite difficult. I got ill, it was time off work. So I feel like I'm the living embodiment of every statistic and narrative you just shared there.
Rochelle:It's been really tough. So really exciting to sort of hear all of these about organizations like The four Day Workweek. It's it's so important and we don't give it enough attention, I suppose.
Joe:Yeah. And in a sense, we set ourselves up to fail, I think, this kind of nine to five, five day working week. I guess the COVID pandemic has shown that we can work differently. We can change these ways of working. It almost happened overnight with kind of the move to remote working.
Joe:You're totally right, looking at that again becoming a dad later just makes it impossible. We also, I mean unfortunately The UK also has bad paternity, maternity and all the rest of it as well to make things worse. But something needs to change. And I think there is most people in the country do have that sense that it doesn't quite work. It doesn't quite work.
Joe:You know, having five of your seven days at work and to kind of do everything else that you can do.
Xand:It just
Joe:it doesn't work. It doesn't fit.
Xand:Joe, can I just ask why it feels like such a kind of left right political issue when the first point you made was about productivity? Why does it fall along political lines when it it should just be a kind of pragmatic argument about how to to get the best out of people? Or maybe that's not the only argument, but that feels like an important part of what you're saying.
Joe:Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if it does fall into the kind of natural culture kind of war issue that we've seen the other issues have done. I mean, I know, for example, we've done polling and actually, you know, people who support the reform party actually are for a four day working week, and that fits the kind of polling we've seen over the years. In general, people are pretty kind of pro capitalism, actually they don't wanna be working so much. You know?
Joe:So
Xand:I like capitalism. I just don't like work. So yeah.
Joe:Still wanna do it five days a week. And, you know, yeah, you'll always have those opportunists who will kind of jump upon an issue like the four day week and turn it to their advantage around, you know, narratives of lazy workers and all the rest of it. But I just don't think it works because we're not lazy, you know. We work longer full time hours than most countries in the world. We work really, really hard and people also have that sense of proudness of working hard and bringing in income for your family and all the rest of it.
Joe:But it's just got to change. And I do feel hopeful that this this is something that is supported across the board. And that, you know, that's personally why one of the reasons why I got involved in campaigning for it because I think there's something in it for everyone. You know? I think whenever we see the four day week in the news, it always seem to get gets people attention.
Joe:I think I think it can cross over those natural political boundaries, and hopefully, it will continue to do so.
Rochelle:Anna, did you wanna jump in? What are what are your thoughts on this?
Anna:Well, you know, one of the big ideas behind the four day work week is that we're going to have more time for everything else. But there's a lot of everything else that we want to try and fit in. Because if we think about what happens when we're working, if we're not working for our employer, we're probably working when we get home for our family. We're doing the cooking, the cleaning, looking after the kids, organising holidays, you name it. There's work everywhere.
Anna:And we're just trying to fit all of that in and it's really difficult. And if we want to have a bit more balance to make sure we've got time for everything, I think that's one of the reasons why I'm really fascinated by this topic. I've been spending all these years just trying to fix my own problems.
Rochelle:Yeah. Don't we all do that a bit, don't we? We're sort of like, I got to figure this out somehow. Joe mentioned something about COVID and how that shifted things for a lot of people. We all of a sudden were engaging more with digital technologies to allow us to do that remote working.
Rochelle:Anna, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that digital space and what that's opened up for us. How have you seen it working? How are they supporting a diversity of people participating in the workforce, maybe things like that?
Anna:Yeah. I mean, I think the truth is a lot of us have been using technology to work. I mean, before COVID. And when we think about people who work in offices, I mean, we're all using it in our offices anyway. And prior to COVID, lots of people worked at home.
Anna:In fact, we looked at some data on this and we saw that lots of people had worked at home at least once. And they'd had some reason for doing that, maybe some special arrangement at work that meant they were able to do that. It's just that compared to now, it wasn't culturally the norm for people to work at home often. But the technology has been there for a really long time. And when COVID happened, we saw this dramatic change.
Anna:Literally overnight, organisations who beforehand had said that working at home wasn't something they were willing to support, they had no choice in the matter and they just had to kind of make it work and really enable it. And then since the lockdowns, it's been really interesting watching how that's paid out over the years. I think that people who've experienced working at home, they've really seen the benefits for themselves. And some of those benefits, it makes it easier to fit in work amongst everything else, like all that other work that you're doing. And maybe you don't have to spend so much time commuting.
Anna:And in fact, that's another benefit, not just sort of our work life balance, but during COVID, we saw these really big reductions in emissions because people weren't driving so much. So it's not that it's just good for work life balance, it's also good for the planet. So I think when we think about what role does technology play here, we can see it's really enabled many people to have this kind of flexibility. And working remotely in this way means we can work at different times and different places. So there are some organisations who are allowing people to go and work in another country for a certain amount of time or to work at different times of the day.
Anna:So you don't have to own work nine to five anymore. You might be able to spread your work across different times of the day. In fact, there was this recent paper that showed that software engineers used to have two peaks of work. So one in the morning, one in the afternoon, kind of how you'd expect. But now you can see that they have a third peak in the evening.
Anna:So they're making those other peaks smaller, shorter, but then spreading their work out across the day. And that's obviously good for them, I assume. That's why they're doing it. Maybe it helps them to fit work in around picking their kids up from school, for example. But we can also see this can have benefits for lots of other people.
Anna:So if, for example, GPs were doing this sort of things, they're working at different times of the day. It might be good for them. They can fit in work around their other responsibilities. But it also serves our society well because it means that GP appointments are available in the evening when people who work all day might find it easier to go. So we're seeing, you know, these really big shifts that are changing our kind of culture, how our society works.
Anna:And I think, you know, that's really good for all of us.
Xand:Anna, is there a is there a danger of sort of it feels like this, in an optimal way, could could could be enormously beneficial, but that there's a danger that rather than getting three peaks, you can just end up with one long permanent sort of obligation.
Anna:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm painting a rosy picture of all of the benefits, but there are some things that are difficult. When people started remote working during COVID, we found that they found it difficult to take breaks. So they felt like they needed to be always available. When we interviewed them, they told us that it was because if you were sat in your desk at an office, you've been there all morning, and, you know, you saw other people going off for lunch, for example, that kind of cued you to go and take lunch.
Anna:And people might see you do that, and that seemed like a really normal thing to do when you're in office. But when you're remote working and you're not immediately available, so you don't respond to a message someone sends you, what does that mean? And people really worried about how that might be interpreted. So they thought, you know, is everyone thinking I'm just having a nice time in the garden? Or, you know, or is there some legitimate reason that I'm unavailable?
Anna:Am I actually taking my lunch break? And so, you know, I think people worry about that when they're when they're not visible. So they worry about taking those breaks. And without the cues from other people, it's really easy just to keep on going, just to keep on working. So people have to try to find ways to set boundaries around their work.
Anna:And that's something that they find difficult. Because it's not just when there's nothing else to do, you just keep on working. But even when you're trying not to work, your devices ping you all the time. So you might be in the playground with your kids after school, but you're getting a message from your boss asking where such and such is. And you feel like you have to be responsive all the time.
Anna:So our devices do make it harder to maintain those boundaries because the the messages we get sort of interrupt us regardless of where we are.
Xand:I'm sort of itching to ask how how we can get to the to the promised land. But first, Joe, can you talk a bit about health? Like, what are the implications? If if it was possible to get this right and you could move towards a more flexible or a four day week, what does that do for our health and how?
Joe:So, well, I'm pleased to to be able to talk about the results of one of our latest, four day week pilot. It's actually published tomorrow, but, I think it's okay to talk about because, this will come out after that. And the results tomorrow do mirror results seen in trials that have taken place all over the world now where workers have moved to a kind of four day working week or shorter working week with no loss of pay crucially. And I guess some of the headline figures, this is a new report we've got out tomorrow looking at 17 companies that have successfully moved to a four day week. There's been the kind of 62% reduction in burnout, 41% increase in sort of improvement in mental health.
Joe:These mirror results from other trials that have taken place in Portugal, Spain, America, lots countries. And I guess we don't know yet how that translates at a bigger scale in terms of what that would mean for society, for the NHS. Know, because you can imagine from these kind of finding on these smaller players, this would replicate that at bigger scale. Huge kind of cost savings for the NHS, for example, because people are in better physical health, better mental health. And one of the things we're now calling for is the government to kind of create a working time council to bring together kind of business leaders, industry leaders, health leaders, trade unions as well to kind of coordinate on policy and implementation of a shorter working, rather than it kind of been left up to individual companies to sort of do it themselves and to kind of coordinate much more widely.
Joe:And as we hope, if the four day week continues to be rolled out at scale, we're not quite there yet, it's still sort of early days, then I think we will start to see some of these bigger impacts for society very, very positive.
Rochelle:It sort of feels like that rollout needs just to come alongside sort of shifts in how we think about ourselves in relation to work, sort of picking up on some of the stuff that Anna was talking about. We can do these things and we can sort of enable more flexible working or we can sort of put the work week into four days. But if we sort of personally still feel that we owe what we owe to employers or how we have to present or be present in our working lives also aren't shifting, then it feels very much like, you know, what will we do? We'll just start sort of shoving all of the work into our four days and working super, super long four days or something like that. Mean, Hannah, do you feel like that's fair?
Joe:Yeah, mean, the question I often ask on this is sort of, and I agree, I think we need a much wider societal shift on the issue in terms of the personal side of it. And the question I always ask is kind of, why is it seen as a badge of honor in today's society to kind of be seen to be working all the time and be really busy? Why is that a badge of honor? And I think it is changing kind of polling and anecdotes that have been suggested that the kind of younger generations coming through don't really want to work so much, they don't want to kind of pride themselves by working the same way they've seen their kind of parents generation, grandparents generation. I do think it's changing.
Joe:It will take time because these things are very embedded and have been very embedded for a long time. I guess on the other side of it, the companies we've worked with, we've really tried to get them to focus more on actually what they the question we often ask at the beginning of these programmes that we run with companies like, what do you actually what are you trying to achieve as an organisation? I'm surprised sometimes when organisations actually don't have a clear answer to that. And I think what that results in is a lot of presenteeism across the British economy. Know that the idea that you're sort of you've turned up and you might be sitting at your desk or at work wherever you are, but you might not actually be doing anything that's really contributing towards the kind of main aims, main objectives of that organisation.
Joe:So we really get organisations to focus on that. Once And you do that and spend time when you think about it, you find lots of the tasks that people do in their normal week kind of fall away sometimes. You know, they often often and there's always hours that people spend in a working week that they're doing isn't really contributing to what the organization is trying to achieve. So if you can cut and eliminate some of that that that type of work, it does make a four day week much easier.
Rochelle:I'm a chronic overworker. I fully believe that I was promoted to professor in six years because I've completely overworked myself for six years. I just worked like a machine. And I think that's really unhealthy.
Xand:It's not a badge of honor on this podcast, Rochelle. Joe's just taken that gold medal away from you. You should be ashamed of yourself and all your hard work.
Rochelle:Man, I'm so tired.
Anna:I think a lot of this come from, like, organizational culture. And it's been really interesting seeing that shift a bit from when we were all doing remote working and then companies tried to do hybrid. And many employees were happy with that, having some days at home, some days in the office. But then lots of bosses, even though they've realised that productivity is the same or sometimes even better, they still want to get people back in the office more. And so we're kind of seeing this return to the office a little.
Anna:And as time goes on, I think there's perhaps more and more pressure on some people because they're being told that they should be in the office more. When they're there, they're largely on calls to people who are not in the office. And those people are sat at home. So I think we do really need to think about the culture that we have and the cultural shift that we could have within companies. Because there's a lot of technology that already helps us work from different places.
Anna:And maybe this technology could help us to do other things, including helping us to stop overworking. So thinking about all this new AI technology we've got at the moment, some of the software that we use in our meetings could do things that make things more efficient for us, save us time. Perhaps we could work a bit less. So maybe rather than spending all day in big meetings where we're mainly just receiving information, we could just get the AI summary instead and read that. And that might be more efficient for us instead of spending hours listening to people talking all the time.
Anna:So I think there were some things like that that could help. But there were also other technologies that we can see embedded in some existing software that are trying to help people to stop working at the end of the day. So to disengage from work. And these can be things that, for example, cue you to do some kind of meditation practice for five minutes as a way to stop working or help you to think about, okay, well, if I write down everything I need to do tomorrow, will that help me stop thinking about it when I go home? And I can kind of put that aside for the rest of the day.
Anna:And in fact, we've been looking at how you can use technology to really help you to disengage. One of the things we've been looking at is video games and how they can help you to switch off. There's a lot of talk about video games and how they can be bad for you. And certainly for some people, they can cause a problem if they play them all the time. But for many people, playing games is just a really good way to forget about work, feel good about yourself and have some fun connecting with other people.
Anna:So I think that for us as individuals, we need to start thinking about what do we really want our lives to look like? What's our ideal work life balance? Where are the opportunities for us to try and create that? And then perhaps we can start applying some pressure to our bosses to engage in the four day work week, for example. And that would give us more time to be at home, more time to engage in our hobbies, hang out with our friends and family.
Xand:It be it does feel like this is a situation where opposition I can see that you're describing this as sort of cultural opposition or certain individual reluctance to change workplace culture or, you know, people prefer to see you in the office. But it does feel like people's interests are much more aligned than they are in some other areas of public health. You know, you're not trying to shut down the tobacco industry or shut down the the the the, you know, the soda industry. You're you're trying to say, look, companies can be more productive. You know, you might have to pay for fewer train tickets.
Xand:There are systems that will improve the health of your employees. That this does feel, I feel quite optimistic about this. Is that the sense you have? Do do you feel in the decades time that we'll have made significant progress on this? Like, Joe, can I start with you?
Xand:Because you're campaigning. How how I don't mean to say it all sounds easy, like, but how hard is the campaign and how much progress are you making?
Joe:Yeah. Good question. I mean, I think in some ways, it's both really radical and also not very radical at the same time in a kind of weird way. In that, it would completely transform people's lives to have that extra day off every single week. And let's also remember some people might like to take that time off by having five much shorter days.
Joe:Also allow that and we allow companies to accredit with us who do it that way. You might have 32 working week is the objective, anything less than that even better, but kind of thirty two hours being the gold standard. And that flexibility is really transformative. But in some sense, also we're just saying we're going to continue working. Going We're to do one day less.
Joe:I mean in some sense it's not that radical at the same time. But I do feel quite hopeful and optimistic that there is a bit of an inevitability to a kind of four day working week eventually. I mean, hopefully we'll get there sooner rather than later. But if you think about kind of all the technology we've had over the last few decades, AI and artificial intelligence is coming in already, is already sort of transforming the workplace. I mean, all of these technologies are designed to kind of make us more productive in the workplace.
Joe:That has happened. But unfortunately, workers haven't really had the equivalent decrease in time. If we're more productive at work, there's a very kind of common argument that we should then be free to have more free time and more leisure time, and it hasn't quite happened. But I do think that, you know, AI should we'll see what happens. You know, the genie is out the bottle now, but I I do think, you know, it should and people who who are campaigning on Public Health should be arguing really strongly that if we're gonna have AI and it's gonna make us more productive, and all the new technology we've also had already, then we've got to enable workers to benefit from that through more free time and more leisure time.
Joe:And I do feel optimistic. I believe we're at the kind of very beginning of a shift from a kind of in the same way that we moved from a six day week to a five day week a hundred years ago. Think we're at the very beginning of a shift from a five day week to a four day week. It took the best part of a decade or two decades a hundred years ago and perhaps it will be similar today. But, yeah, feeling quite optimistic.
Xand:Quite love that. Anna?
Anna:Yeah. Maybe I'm not quite as optimistic. I mean, I'd love it to be true, really, I would. But are the bosses gonna do this? I think the public health argument and the environmental argument are the most persuasive ones.
Anna:And there's some really interesting things, I think, that we might see as AI becomes more embedded in our workplace technologies. That's going to change the way that we deal with work and might make this more impossible. But I think we're not sure yet whether it will really mean we'll be faster at our work and can do it in less time. There are certainly some tasks with AI where you can see people speeding up. But in others, we see people using AI to get their work done because it means getting the work done is a bit easier, even if it doesn't actually shave any time off.
Anna:So whether any of that is really going to cut enough time for the bosses to say, Okay, you don't need to work so many hours. I'm not sure. And I feel like technology has been making this promise for us for a very, very long time. And we've yet to really see that play out. And I also need to think that we need to think about if we change the working week, what are the things we're going to cut?
Anna:So, you know, if Joe mentioned that getting rid of the things that might be wasted time, you know, that seems obvious that should be our mission. That would be really great. But does that mean we're going to be cutting down those opportunities for interpersonal interaction and the stuff that's really important for our new starters? Because I think when we think about the different generations of people in work, there are people who are just joining the workforce and they really need to find their feet, understand what work is about. And for many of them, they want to be in the office.
Anna:They want those opportunities to interact with the broader workforce. And so I think it's quite a difficult problem. There'll be lots of implications that we don't quite know what they're going to be yet. But maybe Joe's organisation will be answering some of those questions for us in some of their future work.
Joe:And just to come back on that. I mean I do partly agree with you that the kind of particularly smartphones in particular but some of the technology has made us a lot more distracted. I do really agree with you on that and we've all experienced that where we're sort of, for me in my work, sat at my desk distracted by my phone over here with social media and you can waste a lot of time in that way and it's not good for our health either. Know there are screen addiction I think is going be a huge, huge it is already a huge issue but it's going to become a much bigger issue I think over the next decade. However, I do think if you go back further than the introduction of smartphones, I'm saying 1980s onwards, I mean all the data shows we're a lot more productive at work than we were in the 1980s.
Joe:But despite that fact, working hours haven't really reduced accordingly. We're still working a very similar amount of working hours as we were in the 1980s. I do think that is frankly ridiculous. And I and I do think, you know, hopefully, there'll be more people realizing that's frankly ridiculous over the next few years and campaigning on it. Mean, the what one of other reasons I'm positive is that the trade unions now are are getting a lot more on board with the kind of campaign for a four day working week because, you know, we know that in all we're not we can't expect in all cases that bosses are just gonna kind of hand down this sort of benefit.
Joe:Obviously, lot of them have benefits already themselves through better productivity, job recruitment, retention, you know, staff morale being up to the kind of working better that the companies do benefit. But we're just, yeah, it would be naive to think that that was the way that we would achieve a kind of four day week for all. I am increasingly seeing a lot more kind of trade union campaigning, workplace organizing to kind of demand a four day week from their bosses. And I think that's gonna have to be a big part of achieving a four day week for all.
Anna:Yeah, there might even be opportunities in the future for the technology to play a part in supporting the workers and the trade unions in this campaign. We can use the technology to evidence increases in productivity, for example. And then we've got a lot of evidence to help make that argument. I think otherwise it's quite difficult for a lowly worker to convince anyone that this is a good idea.
Rochelle:I like the idea that this is maybe a thing that will reinvigorate people's belief and engagement with unions. That's something that has sort of, like, tapered off over over the years. And I think it does feel like this is one of those things that has to be sort of a bottom up demand because the evidence sort of is there that it sort of means like you logically, fiscally, it would just make sense that businesses would do this. And so I just don't For me, it sort of feels like unless people are demanding it, that's the last missing piece. Leave it to the hippie to say, Yeah, we need the movement, people's movements.
Rochelle:But that sort of feels very much like where we're at. And it would be really cool, like in ten years that to see that, you know, or maybe less movements to have achieved that.
Xand:Just for clarity for the listeners, when you talk about a four day week, the ambition is to improve productivity, improve health, there are all kinds of benefits, but not to just say, well, you'll chop your salary by 20%. Is that right, Joe? Have I understood that correctly?
Joe:Yeah, exactly. No loss of pay is a kind of fundamental part of it. And I'd say not in all cases, should people expect to see improved productivity, we say that at least maintain productivity. And partly that's achieved again, by kind of refocusing actually the organization on what it's trying to achieve. But that's half of it.
Joe:And then the other half is just simply a rested worker is a better worker we found. And people are better rested when they have more time for themselves to deal with all the rest of life. The life admin you need to do every week. You do then come back into work more refreshed, more rejuvenated, more motivated. And that I think is half of it again explains sort of half the results we've seen.
Joe:But yeah, no loss of pay is crucial. We set the gold standard. We've accredited nearly a couple of 100 organizations now who who in The UK who have done this. It's kind of four day, thirty two hour working week, no loss of pay. Some people some organizations have gone further, thirty hours or twenty eight hours, but thirty two being the kind of gold standard.
Xand:Can you give us a couple of examples? Like are these famous companies? Are there any that we know?
Joe:None of them are massively famous yet. We haven't brought in any like really huge big hit organizations yet. But there's like Atom Bank and one of the kind of financial challenger banks. They've moved to a four day week for sort of five fifty of their staff. But we've had the first councils move to a four day working week in Cambridge, South Cambridge, the District Council.
Joe:And again, that's kind of 600, six fifty workers. And the interesting thing there is they started it for the kind of white collar desk based workers, everyone in the office and did that for the first three months for their trial and they expanded out. And now we've been under been refuge workers on a four day week as well. So it really has been implemented across the council. And again, really fantastic positive results for both the well-being of workers and all the kind of council KPIs being met.
Anna:Yeah. Maybe we can get you, CL, to join it too.
Rochelle:Oh, yeah. I agree. Take that to our union.
Joe:I think the University of Sunderland are doing a trial at the moment. So there's at least one example. You might have to go and have a conversation with them about how they've done it. Cool. The
Rochelle:way that we traditionally wrap up is that because we're interested in disruption and disrupting thinking, not just in public health, but in multiple spaces, we always ask our guests about a piece of art or music or poetry or something in their life that has disrupted their perspective. And I just wondered if you guys would mind sharing yours with us today as to wrap up. Anna, do you wanna go first?
Anna:Yeah. I guess the example I would give would be the Black Mirror episode. I mean, they're designed to disrupt our thinking about technology, right? And to make us really think about what the future could look like. And even what the future of work can look like.
Anna:So, I think they're the sort of thing I'd point to as something that could be really disruptive in terms of our way of thinking. Any episode in particular? Well, there's so many.
Rochelle:I know they're all so good.
Anna:I think I enjoy the ones where they've shown workplaces that look horrific. Like, they want to motivate us, to want to make things better. Some of the ways in which everyday technology, like social media lead us to a really dystopian future.
Xand:Joe, can I ask what about you?
Joe:Yeah, mean, there's a couple of things that jump out. I mean, terms of inspiration, I remember when the Beyonce song came out actually, Break My Soul, which was quite inspiring for us because it showed that actually someone that level of fame and kind of popularity was speaking to the kind of struggles of the kind of nine to five grind and encouraging, almost encouraging people listening to that song to kind of find liberation from work. That was one kind of song. The other example, it a song or piece of art, it was a book, but it sort got turned into a piece of art. You may know of the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber and the late David Graeber actually, who used to be a friend of mine.
Joe:That book really transformed my thinking around work. And I remember at the time when it came out the website that was published on completely broke down because there's so many people were reading it. They also, the people around him, they had this kind of artwork that they put on the tube as well around as people were kind of on there, 8AM in the morning on the tube to work, there was some propaganda that was, it was art that was on the tube around kind of bullshit jobs. That really shaped my thinking in this area because his argument was that actually 40% of people jobs are completely bullshit essentially. If they kind of disappeared overnight, no one would notice.
Joe:And that just really struck me as something which felt partly true. It's a bit of a miserable, I don't want end on such a miserable tone. But it is kind of fascinating, you know, I think we it's important for us to remember that too with our work that there are lots of people who don't enjoy their work, but they have to go out to work. And if we can just give them a little bit more freedom from work by having one extra day off, then that would make me really happy.
Xand:What was he like? He had quite a good sense of humor was my impression. I thought a lot of his writing was quite funny.
Joe:He was quite funny. I mean, was just very down to earth. You know, I don't think you know, he was one of one of the most kind of famous anthropologists in The UK, and he'd turn up at events in tiny little community centres, community halls, he didn't show that at all. He was always someone who was open to talking to everyone, learning from everyone. Was a real kind of inspiration in that way.
Joe:It was very sad when he passed away early, just during the COVID pandemic, actually. Not not from COVID, during that time.
Xand:Yeah. It felt like he had much more much more work to do. Well, it's fantastic you'll you'll continue it, Both, thank you very much indeed. My favourite bits are always these sort of thoughts at the end that you don't know what people are gonna say. Really interesting, and they always always prompt us to go and read or watch something else.
Xand:So thank you.
Rochelle:Yeah. Thanks both. That was great.
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