Factually! with Adam Conover - American Self-Reliace is a Toxic Myth with Adam Chandler

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

The phrase "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" actually started as a joke—because, let’s face it, it’s physically impossible. So how did this absurd notion become one of the most unshakable ideas in American culture? The truth is, the ideals of self-reliance and hustle have always been more myth than reality. This week, Adam sits down with Adam Chandler, author of 99% Perspiration, to explore how the myth of hard work and hustle culture has been weaponized to keep the rich richer, while the rest of us are left struggling in a system rigged against us. Find Adam's book at at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything.

Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thanks for joining me on the show again. I'm Adam Conover. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic.

I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I don't know anything Hey there, welcome to Factually.

I'm Adam Conover. Thanks for joining me on the show again. You know, a deep down American value is our belief in hard work. We are told as children that if you just work hard enough, if you make the right moves at the job, you can improve your lot in life

and be anything you want to be. But in recent years, a lot of us have started to realize that that is, simply put, a fucking lie. The machinery of social mobility has broken down in America because more American workers are more productive than ever. But most of the gains in our economy for the last 40 years have gone only to those at the top, while wages for regular workers, the people working our asses off every single day, have not kept pace. You know, it can be hard to imagine making a better life for your family

when the top 10% of households in this country hold two-thirds of the wealth. And that is why so many of us feel that that American value of hard work is bullshit, that we are just treading water no matter how hard we try. I mean, no one believes anymore that Jeff Bezos earned his hundreds of billions by working harder because there is not enough time in the day to work billions of times harder than another person.

I mean, Jeff Bezos has the annual wages of about 5 million medium workers combined. He's not working 5 million times harder than you. Fuck off! I mean Jeff famously doesn't even hold his first meeting until 10am. Get the fuck out of here. So where do all of these ideas about hard work come from? How did they get so deeply lodged in the American society? And how do we extricate them and build a work culture that makes more sense for all of us and our society? Well, to answer those questions, we have an amazing guest on the show today.

Before we get to it, I want to remind you that if you want to support this show and the hard work that I and all my crew do here to bring it to you, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. You can also join our Patreon book club. We got a lot of other great features. We'd love to see you there. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. And if you'd like to come see me do standup comedy

on the road, I got a bunch of new dates for you from January 23rd through 25th. I'll be in Toronto, Ontario. February 12th, I'll be in Omaha. February 13th, Minneapolis. February 21st Chicago, February 23rd Boston, then Burlington, Vermont, London, Amsterdam, Providence, Rhode Island,

bunch of other cities as well. I'd love you to see my brand new hour of standup comedy. It's called the Nihilism Pivot Tour. Head to adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to today's guest. He is absolutely wonderful. His name is Adam Chandler.

He's a journalist and he's the author of the new book, 99% Perspiration, A New Working History of the American Way of Life. Please welcome Adam Chandler. Adam, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me, Adam. Okay. All right. We're getting started quick.

So look, let's jump into it. If you had to describe American work culture to an alien or perhaps a European, what would you say? Like what defines American work culture? That's a, that's a great question. It's a depressing question. I would say, um, despair, despair defines it. We are working way too hard for too little and we don't accept that that's the reality of our lives. We just tell everyone around us to keep working and keep working harder.

So, um, Sisyphean, can I, can I break that word out this early in our conversation? I would say that that's probably what I would say is a useful way to describe where we are right now. It's a work culture. And what are those sort of defining tenets? You know, where did this come from? Well, we can go all the way back to Columbus and the pilgrims if you really want to look at how our work culture first came about. If we were talking about the idea that if you work hard, you'll succeed.

And it's been true for some people, but it's not been true for everyone. And that interpretation of it overlooks the fact that people had help at every turn, every corner, every stage of American life, whether it was unpaid labor, underpaid labor, Unpaid labor, underpaid labor, government investment, all of these different facets of help from outside sources, mentors. No one did it by themselves. And we kind of refuse to believe that. So that's a big part of the tenant is that we're rugged, self-individuals, self-reliant people, and we don't need help. And that's really not true. Yeah.

I think about, uh, how I see this expressed on television. You know, I love the show shark tank. Wonderful show, incredibly well-made show, compelling television. So much fun makes you feel like a billionaire when you're watching it. You know, you're watching it going like, Oh, I don't know about the, uh, about those profit numbers. You know, I think I'm out, right? Very fun show, but what that show valorizes

more than anything is that American myth of hard work. That all the people who come on say, I started this business in my garage, I devote all my time to it, even though I'm raising two kids and I have a full-time job. And then after they say that, Robert Herjavec goes, I like you, I like you. I like you.

I like your hard work. You know, you, you built this, you're a builder. Right. And they all describe themselves that way. I built my business out of nothing. Now, if I'm sure if you go through all of their biographies, they had so much help along the way, right. But the, the deeper story, including the contestants, uh, but the deeper story that, hey, uh, American success in American business and more broadly

American life means starting from nothing and working hard until you build something for yourself. It's like this sort of ur narrative of Americanism that is like very hard to escape even when you're criticizing it. Right, right. Absolutely. And this is across all facets of society. I'm sure in LA where you are, we hear a lot about nepotism babies, people who have famous last names coming up through the ranks and not earning it or not being dressed. But the people who have regular or not famous last names

probably also got a boost up in some form or another. There are so few stories of people who didn't, who absolutely came from nothing and found success without any sort of help from outside forces. And it also applies to accumulating wealth in this country. When we talk about the benefits that are bestowed on wealthy people, we don't look at those as handouts. But when we talk about food stamps, we talk about those things as if those kinds of benefits

are handouts. But it happens with writing off your home mortgage or your income tax or booking a first-class ticket and writing it off as a business expense. These are all things that kind of feed into handouts for wealthy people. We just don't view them that way because people already have the money, I suppose. Yeah. Well, you mentioned NEPO babies and that's such an interesting point to me because something always bothered me about especially the Internet conversation around NEPO babies over the last couple of years, where people would talk about it as though, you know,

the Nepo baby had violated some principle by which you were supposed to get ahead, right? That there's a virtuous way to, you know, get an acting job on a Netflix show, and then there's the Nepo baby way, and that's not deserved, right? And I would hear that working in Hollywood and think, well, I know why, you know, suppose that Netbo babies,

the children of famous people have success. It's because they live in Los Angeles where television is made, and they are members of a family that has connections, and connections are how you find every opportunity in life. Like, it doesn't matter what the opportunity is. It's how, you know, you get a job in any city where you live.

Most likely, for a lot of people, it's like, oh, I knew somebody who was able to put in a good word. I knew somebody who told me the place was hiring, et cetera, et cetera. The networks of human connection and people helping each other, that is simply how the world works. The idea that one would show up in Hollywood and just

have no connection to anyone, never make a connection with another person, and just through hard work and talent be plucked from obscurity and put on a Netflix show, doesn't exist. People do move to Los Angeles and not know anybody. You know what the first thing those people do is? They make friends. Right? They go make bonds of affection and friendship with other people and then people help each other out. That's how I got, I moved to New York City not knowing anybody in comedy, but then I made friends with other comedians

and now 20 years later, you know, if I needed a job, what would be the first thing I would do? I would call my 30 friends, right? So that's not to say that someone shouldn't resent a nepo baby, but to criticize the nepo baby in that way is to fall for the myth of hard work, that all you should really have to do is hard work.

No, no, no, there's all these other human dimensions that we tend to A, either forget about, or B, when it's something that poor people use, then we demonize it, right? Then it's a handout. Then it's, oh, the government helped you because you were lazy and you should have worked harder. When rich people make use of those benefits,

we don't criticize, except in the case of Nepo babies, the one place where we tend to hyper-focus a little bit overdone. So I think it's such an interesting lens to look at this entire issue through. Yeah, absolutely. I think it is the one exception, and I think that kind of tangibleizes

how rare it is to actually critique benefits that, again, affect people who are well off or who have a leg up on everyone else. Otherwise, carte blanche, you know? And it's a real disappointing facet of life here because, well, we have this belief, right? The belief is that we don't have this futile baggage of European life where, you know,

you had a title of nobility that you inherited, that you earned your way up. And that was true and that is poignant and that is very romantic. That's why it's so pervasive, right? Is that this idea is so beautiful, but it's also not true. And we have to look at it for what it is

because the fact that people aren't getting by with their hard work today is causing us to hate each other. It's rending the social fabric. The extremism that we're seeing around the country can be pinned back to the idea that people are working hard and doing everything right and they're not getting ahead. And that's a huge problem. And rather than address the myth,

which is that if you work hard, you'll get there. We focus instead on blaming people for it. We make it a question of character or moral worth to say, well, you probably just weren't trying hard enough. When the reality is that 44% of jobs in this country are low wage jobs, if you look at research, that's a crazy number. Almost half of the jobs in this country

qualifies low wage work. So it's not about circumstance, it is about circumstance more than it is about the will to succeed. Yeah, so tell me some more, I'm sure you have plenty of statistics in your book about why hard work does not actually help you get ahead in America.

What is most vivid to you? Well, what's vivid to me is that we're coming around to understand that it's not true. There was this economic opportunity poll by this research group called Gallup, and a few years ago, it said that 39% of Americans said they were working hard and not getting ahead. That's a pretty big number. In 2002, 20 years ago, it was 23%. So that number has grown exponentially. And again, we're looking at the rage right now

that is engulfing the country and sort of making all of our social interactions and our politics toxic. It's the reality that people are working hard and they're not getting ahead. Another number that just jumps out at me is they ask people, this was Pew Research, they asked what's the most important factor of having a fulfilling life? And 71% of people said having a meaningful career that they enjoy is the most important part, is a key aspect of having a fulfilling life. And that ranked higher than marriage,

it ranked higher than close friends, it ranked higher than family. And so if you look at those metrics by which your life is supposed to be fulfilling, if work tops all those other things, you're going to be disappointed. And it is a kind of dark referendum on how we view our careers and our identity as being an extension of work and vice versa, instead of your community, your friends, your family. Those things seem less important to a lot of people.

That's interesting. So that statistic in your view is an example of work simply being too important to us as a culture. Like all those other things, family, loving relationships, community, those are all things you have more control over and that can be more genuinely fulfilling. But the reality is a lot of people do not have, because of the way our economy is structured,

the opportunity to have a fulfilling career, period. It simply is not available to them as a thing that they can successfully pursue. Yeah, I think that that's absolutely part of the calculus and what would lead someone to say having a fulfilling career, to me, is more important than getting married. Maybe we take these things for granted, but even still, I wish people said friends. I wish people said family.

There is not this focus on community in a way that I think ultimately harms us in really potent ways. Yeah. And when you mentioned rage, I see how this creates rage, because if you tell people that the key to a better life is hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work, not taking time off to spend time with your friends and family, but hard work, hard work, then when the hard work doesn't pay off, the people are angry because it has, your thesis has been disproven to them.

And so it, as a cultural value creates that rage. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And it's you know, in the book, I talked to a woman, her name is Nikita Long. She's working in an auto plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And she's working this job that she wants to make full time wages on and raise her two kids. She's a single mom. And basically at the beginning of the pandemic, she gets laid off and she realizes she's making more on unemployment than she was working

in an auto plant for two years. And she's furious about it because she's really trying her best to get to the American dream. She went to college, she has a master's degree. She's never made $50,000 a year. And she's like, I've done everything you've asked me to do. I went to school, I applied myself, I'm trying to find these jobs. And the situation is not working out for me. And what do I need to do different?

What do I how do I need to change? And a lot of people feel that way. And the answer, unfortunately, when you have political opportunists is to blame somebody else to say, you know, it's, it's, it's undocumented immigrants. It is, um, people who don't want to work. All these things are what's dragging down the quality of work. And the reality is that it's not just those things of all income inequality, it's greed, having a unsustainable work system in place. And those are the real things that we should be talking about. Was there a time in American history when you could work hard and

get ahead or at least more so than we can today? Yeah, people look at the post-war years as this this beautiful period where America really had no competition globally, Europe was kind of in shambles and we invested all this money in people and infrastructure. And that really did kind of boost the country in terms of opportunity, but those conditions were natural conditions. Again, Europe was in shambles,

America was a lone superpower, and we invested all these money in building roads and all of these really impressive structures that gave people jobs and boosted sort of the middle class into existence. But those aren't naturally occurring things. So it was kind of just this fantasy and we go back to this fantasy when we talk about

the old days of America being great and disciplined and simple, but it was never that case for everyone. And that moment that it really felt that way was just kind of a mirage. Oh man. You're calling me out a little bit because of my own work, I do tend to do a lot of it just in my most recent YouTube video I released, I do a lot of like, Hey, let's go back to the fifties and look at how some things were better in

the middle of the last century. Um, and talking about union density or, you know, uh, community groups most Let's go back to the 50s and look at how some things were better in the middle of the last century. Sure. Talking about union density or community groups most recently, mass membership organizations, so many things that we can see have been destroyed since the advent of the neoliberal order. But the other thing that I don't bring up often enough is how weird a time it was in history that in the post-war years, where literally this strange global environment where the US had advantages that almost no other country did, that were naturally going to disappear

once the rest of the country, once the rest of the world rebuilt itself. And so that, you think a lot of that hard work ethos, a lot of our economic values or our cultural values around the economy arose during that weird period that was never gonna last. Well, both of those things can be true. You're absolutely right to point out

that our civic institutions were much stronger in the 50s. We had this natural enemy in communism that brought us together in some ways and also kind of tore us apart in others, but we had higher union density. We had more sort of economic cohesion. CEOs weren't making, you know, 4,000 times more than their average worker. They were making 20 or 30 times more than their average worker.

So people are getting along better because we interacted with each other more. We didn't live in economically segregated neighborhoods the way that we kind of do now. If you look at some of the research out there, it's really fascinating to see how it's not just that we are economically divided, we're also politically divided in terms of where we live and who we encounter in our day to day.

And that really brings up a crisis of not having any good faith toward people you meet, right? If you don't meet anybody who's different than you, whether it's rural, urban or old, young or rich, poor, it becomes a huge problem in terms of actually knowing what people are struggling with, what communities are going through.

And there are problems beset in all communities. There are things that are going on everywhere that are sort of wrecking the order of the country. And it's hard to see each other clearly when you don't encounter someone who's different than you that often and not enough people can. Yeah. And maybe some of these values make sense in a limb, in a small group of people, but not across the whole country. Like I imagine, you know, Mark Cuban might be able to say,

hey, I work harder than, you know, I got $10 billion. I know this other dude, he only has $1 billion and I work harder than him. He's a lazy billionaire and I'm a hardworking billionaire. And maybe there's some truth to that, right? Like I could say the same thing in comedy in my own field, right, where I'm like, I work really hard as a comedian and maybe I have a friend or two I'm critical of.

I'm not really judgmental of people, but I could imagine, right? Saying I did the right thing and someone else did the wrong thing. But that's only true in my little community, right? In this sort of narrow sense. Um, more broadly in the economy, there are people who are doing far worse than, you know, Mark Cuban or I, and are probably working double the far worse than, you know, Mark Cuban or I, and are probably working double the hours, either of us are, right? Because they live in an economically different universe, and if Mark and I don't encounter

those people, we maybe don't have a frame of reference for what their lives are like. But unfortunately, we're also the people at the top of the food chain culturally, and so we're able to set those values. What I mean is some people at the top are able to say, ah, hard work really works. I've experienced it in my life. Um, and not really understand how that isn't available to everybody else. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a great point because we do have these bubbles and echo chambers and we do,

I mean, it's natural, it's a natural part of, of, of how, how we group as people and, you know, sociologists would point to how we interact with each other. The ways that that's changed over the years, if you go to a baseball game, for example, you know, think about how that experience has changed over the last 20 or 30 years. You have all these different ways of going to a game. You have the cheap seats and then you have separate entrances. If you're part of a VIP, you have all these lounges and different sort of experiences of the everyday. You can go to a hospital and have a VIP kind of suite set up for you where you don't really

have to mess with any of the other things that people who go through the main entrance deal with. There are all these different markers that separate people. And part of that speaks to the income inequality at the time. And part of it speaks to the fact that people can get a better view of a baseball game without having to deal with the mass of the crowds. And those are things that I think people,

it's been a slow creep that we look around us and see, wow, it's really, it's not just getting into college, it's going to a baseball game, it's going to get medical care, it is getting on an airplane. You can just have these mirror opposite experiences. It's really strange. Yeah, we really have turned into a two tier

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nutritionally complete meals in minutes so you can focus on what really matters. Use code FACTUALLY. How did these values get instilled in America specifically? I mean, I'm sure hard work to some extent is a value in many different cultures, but it does seem to be uniquely pernicious in America. Where did it come? Why here is where this happened? Yeah, the US was sort of formed in opposition to the British and to European values. And those were ones that did have those, again, titles of nobility. That was one of the things that was actually really beautiful about the Constitution is that it abolished titles of nobility

and basically said that anyone is equal. And at the time, that wasn't exactly true. And that wasn't true for a long time. Yeah, but the theory of it was true. The the the value behind it was true. It was formed in opposition to this idea that you couldn't ascend because there was a state church. And if you believe something else, you weren't free. You weren't you weren't able to be a member of society, you couldn't vote if you didn't have land. And that was true in the, you weren't free. Um, you are, you weren't able to be a member of society.

You couldn't vote if you didn't have land. And that was true in the U S for a while too, but eventually we got rid of it. We were in constant state of improvement here. Um, generally speaking, but, um, it's, you know, some things have improved over the last couple of hundred years in the United States. Some things took too long, and some things were head backwards on, but I take your point. Well, so look, one person I talk about a lot in the book

is Benjamin Franklin, who is this person who is held up as the ultimate tinkerer. This guy came from nothing, and he rose to fabulous wealth by being a curious, hardworking person with a great work ethic. But he also was a publisher who posted, you know, advertisements and made money off of enslaved people who'd run away. He published those things in his newspapers to make money off of runaway enslaved people.

And he also lived at a time of slavery when that era was marked by everybody profiting off of it. It wasn't just the South, it was the textile mills in the North. Those people were getting rich off of the cotton that was being picked in Mississippi. So this thing cut furrows across the entire economy. And so when you look at somebody like Benjamin, frankly,

who's held up as this character of great industri, um, great industriousness and, you know, creativity, those things are true. But also, you know, the values that he was preaching at the time were ones that were selective in, in, in their application to people. And that's again, that tracks all the way through, you know, you can say that about the 1950s as much as you can say that about the 1790s as well. I mean, the example of slavery makes it so vivid. The idea that one could work hard to get ahead when there are people in your society who are working, who are being worked extremely hard and not receiving anything for their labor other than a bad meal and a bad place to sleep and a lot of violence and death

and that others profit from, right? That that is like literally what the American economy was founded on. Putting it that way really makes it vivid how much a lesser version of the same is true today. That we have, you know, if you look at the Jeff Bezos of the world, you know, it's not possible for Jeff Bezos to work billions of times harder than everybody else. Why does he have so many billions of dollars?

He has millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people working for him who are working longer hours and yet will never benefit from that huge increase in capital. So under those conditions, it's almost amazing that this myth persists at all. I mean, is it that the myth is designed to distract us from that inequality and from that? Like, is the myth so powerful because the opposite is actually so true, right? That the myth has to be there to paper over how unequal and how much of a lie it truly is. That's a great, that's a great, that's a great point. It's a great question. I think, I think that I think that's pretty on the nose. I mean, if you just think about how, for example, okay, Ron DeSantis, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

got himself into some trouble a few years ago when he said essentially that, you know, yeah, slavery was bad, but it also taught people who were enslaved valuable skills about how to work. Like we're still carrying water for this idea that like our history is still somehow good, even when it wasn't good. We can't look at it clearly. And if you just look at the baseline existence of what people have today in terms of, okay, 40 years ago, you know, real wages were higher than, than they are now for people of color and people without college degrees.

Wow. So that's a fact. That's just a fact. And if you look at that experience, you can't honestly say that this is a place where people just succeed. Look at the cost of living, look at housing, look at childcare, look at all of these things.

We just hit record homelessness in this country and we're the richest nation in the world. And our economy is in great shape, but our unemployment rate is record low, still hovering at record low. All of these things are true. And yet, like we still have these, these absolutely terrible things that are happening.

And we can't reckon with it because we're so focused on it being an individual struggle and individual drama to become successful, right? It is this personal quest to become successful as opposed to these structural obstacles that exist. And as long as we're not addressing those structural obstacles, it'll always be a question of whether someone is lazy or working hard enough or has the moral fortitude to actually apply themselves, not, well, look, there are no good jobs, things are too expensive. In some places, there are more low paying jobs than there are any other kind of job.

It costs some people more to get childcare and transportation to a job than it does for them to actually get paid for that job. It actually benefits some people to not go to work for those job. It actually benefits some people to not go to work for those reasons. And we won't address those because it cuts against our ideology so strongly, right? And we have to face it.

We're going crazy over the idea that it should work differently and it just doesn't. Are there other countries that have different work cultures and what have you found of them? Yeah. So in the book, I traveled to France. And part of this is because I became obsessed with the show Emily in Paris during the pandemic. Like a lot of, oh, who didn't get wrapped up in the story of

Emily in Paris? The idea of a woman. No, I actually didn't. Well, good for you. My wife also named Emily did not, and she would leave the room when I turned the show on, but like locked it home during pandemic times and needing like, you know, wanderlust escapism. I would watch the show.

Just the idea of a person going somewhere was like a fantasy. Like, oh, wow. Exactly. A lady went to Paris. What a science fiction story. Let a fantasy. Like, oh wow, a lady went to Paris? What a science fiction story. Let me watch this. Amazing, a dream. Well, so this is when I was at the beginning

of writing this book. And so of course it spoke to me because you have the story of, no spoilers here, but it's about an American go-getter who is a careerist marketing ingenue who wants to rise through the corporate ranks. And she gets sent to Paris on a work assignment. And she has to interact with a French culture that absolutely hates people who are careerist and hardworking and, you know, obsessed with their

with with making it in ways that seem, you know, strategic and pernicious. And so for me, going to France and spending some time looking at the work culture there, you really see what a leisure rich society has to offer. You know, if you go to museums in Paris and all around France, they have a special tier of admissions for people who are either unemployed or looking for work.

They charge you less money to enter the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, all of these magical places. If you're currently looking for work, they will charge you less because they want you to still go to a museum, even though you're unemployed and having a tough time. That's what leisure is. They have these things built into the workday.

They have lunch breaks where you're by law, and again, they're loopholes, but by law, you're supposed to leave your office for at least an hour during the day. And so people are going to have lunches with their friends or catch up with their coworkers in totally non-professional capacities. And they're running their errands. And so you're not crazy at the end of the day or end of a week running around picking up all the slack of things that you dropped over the course of a week.

And that's just built into the society. They have this thing called the right to disconnect. You may have heard of it where you don't have to respond to work emails or slacks or texts or correspondence after hours. And they wrote that into the law. And again, there are a lot of loopholes. It basically just says that if you work for a big company, you have to work out some policy between the employees and the management or the union to make sure that everyone's on the same page about what it means to get an email from your boss at

11 p.m. on a Friday night. And to do that, you're just setting a baseline culture of there are boundaries between work and and their boundaries between life. And those two things should not meet. And that's not something that we have any familiarity with here. We're attached to our phones, we are getting those work emails, we feel culturally implored to respond to those slack messages or those texts or whatever it is. And as a result, work is on the brain all the time and we don't have that separation. And it again, it's one of those things that's making us very lonely and isolated and sad.

And in other places where they don't have that, it sounds insane to them that there's the, there aren't those protections. Yeah. Uh, you saying that is you're calling me out once again, like I feel that I honestly, you know, since I started trying to build a career in comedy, I've spent the last 15 years, you know, obsessed with work, just working as hard as I could. I've really realized it over the last 10 years that I moved to LA 10 years ago, started working in television and, you know, very high pressure environment. I just got used to, you know, I see weekends

as a chance to catch up on the scripts I need to revise, rather than a chance to go relax. And as a result, I realized this year, I've spent 10 years not really loving the place that I live, and I realized it's because, oh, I spent all my time working, and I didn't spend it exploring, or, you know, going to restaurants, to restaurants or going to museums or going for hikes or all those sorts of things. And just enjoying my life. And I had always seen that as sort of a positive value, despite knowing all the stuff you're saying about American toxic work culture.

It still kind of infected me. You know, when you're describing this, people behaving this way in France, I'm like, oh my God, that sounds so nice. Oh yeah, and they go to the cafe and they eat baguette and drink cappuccino and you know, look at beautiful people walk by and then go to the museum and they're like, I'm unemployed, let me in for free. You know, like. Right, right, right.

Okay, but the difference is, and all fairness to you, it's working for you, it's paying off for you. Yeah, Well, okay. But the different, the differences and all fairness to you, it's working for you. It's paying off for you. You know, sure. I'm not happy. I didn't say you were, I didn't say you were happy. I'm just saying it's paying off for you. No, but in all, in all seriousness, yes. I am lucky in that. I am lucky in that my hard work has led to material gains for myself in a way that has not for many people in the economy.

Absolutely. Yeah. And so if you're imagining that you were doing everything that you're doing those late hours as obsessive times and it didn't pay off, how unbelievably angry would you be? How furious would you be if you were just trying to stay afloat in a job that perhaps isn't as creatively or emotionally fulfilling as yours is, just trying to stay afloat and it wasn't all working out. You would be unbelievably upset and you'd feel angry at institutions. You'd be mad at your politicians. You'd be mad at everyone who ever told you just to work hard and apply yourself. Right. And you'd probably, you know, hate anyone around you who seems to be doing okay.

And those are sort of, that's the grand differences that, you know, you're able to see how different it is for you because it's working out. But you also know that that's not true for everyone. And that's a true for everyone. And that's a huge difference. You there's nothing inherently wrong with hard work. It's just you have to look around and see who it's not working out for and why and not have it be something that you cast blame on them for without any real knowledge of the

situations that a lot of people are facing. Yeah. And I've had plenty of times in my life where I have put that work in and it hasn't paid off. I've had those periods. And I have many people in my life who I love and care about who are experiencing that, especially the last couple of years in my industry have not been great, but that's true of every industry in America.

At this point, that so many people are saying, I've done everything I was told to and it you know, it has not worked out for me, and what do I do now? And so that rage is palpable, you know, just in my community, let alone in the country at large. Here's the interesting question. At a time when this is the case, when we are seeing this rising rage,

we are seeing the death of the American dream, the failure of the American dream, we are seeing the death of the American dream, the failure of the American dream, we're seeing the fact that it was an illusion, and we're seeing the rage burst out in all these ways, like for instance, the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and the public reaction is a good example of this. There's many, many other examples.

At a time when that is so vivid, we are also seeing an unparalleled rise in hustle culture, in politicians who say that, you know, all you need to do is work hard to get ahead. In union busting, you know, union density is at an all time low, even though more people are starting unions than ever, you know, we still have very, very, very low union density. It feels that the story of hard work and individualism is more powerful than ever or more prevalent than ever, even though we are seeing more clearly that it has failed. Why do you think that is?

That's a great question. I mean, I do think that part of it revolves around the idea that as opportunity kind of narrows, the obvious solution for some people and people in power is to say, yeah, you've got to work harder to get there as opposed to like, well, let's look around and see why it is that baby formula is the most shoplifted item in America or medical debt is the top cause of bankruptcy in America. And those are the things that are true.

When you focus on hustling harder, that's the answer as opposed to kind of looking around. I think a lot of this comes to digital culture, the fact that we live online as brands and it's hard to admit that you're going through a tough time. It's hard to be honest. Very few people I, are able to distinguish or integrate their digital selves in their

personal lives in a way that makes it seem like you're a real human being online versus offline. So I think that that's a big part of it is that we're not connecting with enough people offline and who we portray ourselves as online. And this isn't groundbreaking or earth shattering, but the studies that they're doing on the epidemic of loneliness are really interesting because they connect it to the fact that people aren't spending time with their friends anymore. There are things that you can do online with your friends that are fun and meaningful,

but it doesn't replace in-person meeting. And I think that that's really where the real person in each of us comes out, where we just haven't found a way to integrate. I mean, some people are crying on their Instagram, but not everybody is. And those are meaningful changes that have happened over the last 20 years as we've become brands unto ourselves. That's sort of what digital culture has enabled.

So I'd look online, but it also would just, again, look at the fact that it's just gotten so much harder to succeed and have a stable life here that, um, the answer is always hustle harder. Yeah. The individualism in American society is being sort of reinforced by the atomization caused by the internet. That now we are more and more separated from each other, and so we end up consuming and creating media that valorizes individualism even more,

because we are even more separate from each other. But I also wonder if, again, it's that same effect of, as individualism hustle culture fails materially, the myth has to be told twice as hard. The fact that it is not working means that those in power need to sell the myth twice as hard as they used to. Shark Tank has to be rerun twice as often, even if it's twice as hard as it used to be

to get ahead as a individual entrepreneur than it used to be, perhaps? Yeah, yeah. In the book, I call this the American abracadabra. It's this idea that it's as impossible thing to argue with. If someone says, if you didn't make it here in the land of opportunity, you didn't try hard enough. It's really hard to argue with that idea because first of all,

it's just a series of catchphrases really. The idea that the America is the land of all, it's just a series of catchphrases really. The idea that America is the land of opportunity if you can't make it here, you can't make it, you know, you're a failure. It makes success as a question of moral worth and individual grit as opposed to, as I've kind of said, what society allows people or gives people in terms of opportunity.

But yeah, the abracadabra is real. It really is a force in our country where you just say, you know, if you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and we know the bootstraps method, it was a joke, right? The idea of the bootstraps concept was originally a joke because it's impossible to put yourself up

by your bootstraps. Yeah, because the bootstraps are attached to your boots, and so you'd be flying if you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps concept was originally a joke because it's impossible to put yourself up by your bootstraps. Yeah, because the bootstraps are attached to your boots and so you'd be flying if you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps, yes. Right, so you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you have this alternate narrative where you just have to keep working at it, you'll get there, but if you don't get there, it's because it didn't work hard enough.

It's this circular logic that just doesn't have any happy results if you're not making it. And if you do, you sacrifice a lot to get where you are you sacrifice maybe your personal life or your relationships or, you know, your free time achieving what it is you're meant to achieve. And for some people, that's a good bargain. But, you know, if we made a choice versus France, right, if France decided and France in the US, they worked, workers in France, the US worked about the same level in terms of hours in the 1960s

or 70s. And the US went way up and France more or less stayed the same. And they did that as a choice, you know, France chose leisure and time off and good weekends and separation from work. And we chose the opportunity to make more money. The problem is we're not making more money. We're not benefiting from this from this from this bargain that we made. And that is, again, part of what's driving the rage. We're just not if we've made this choice, it should pay off and it's not. And for a lot of people, it's just a cycle, and it makes it even worse. You know, I'll admit it, okay? I'll finally come clean and say it, I'm a little bit of a gadget guy.

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How did France make that decision? Because I don't recall a point in America where we decided, hey, let's have a really toxic work culture, right? Let's all vote and decide what kind of work culture we want to have. So what was it about France that caused them to have a more positive work culture or did they, you know, was it just people in coffee houses going,

I'm not fucking doing that, you know, or what, what was it? Well, the cultural shifts, I wouldn't even call it a shift. It was just clinging to values. So in, in the late nineties, France instituted the 35-hour work week. And this was a punchline in America for, it's been a punchline in America for decades since then where, ah, 35-hour work week, come on, that's nothing. That's ridiculous.

Like, work harder, come on. And they created this standard. And again, there are plenty of loopholes. There are plenty of people working way more than 35 hours a week in France. I'm not saying it's perfect. But they created this baseline idea where you shouldn't have that much time devoted to work. And if you are working late hours, if you're in

the office till seven o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night, grinding it out, it's not a sign of loyalty. It's a sign of inefficiency. It means your company is doing something wrong. It means you're on there. They're understaffed, or they haven't hired enough people are not efficient enough. And this is you know, this is something that's pretty prevalent as an ideology across Europe. When you talk to European workers, and I interviewed some of them about what it means to come to America

and work. They're like, I just like stay late because I'm supposed to stay late and show face as opposed to like go home and have dinner with my kids or whatever. It's a sign of loyalty that you're willing to grind out these late hours. Whereas, again, it looks like something is fundamentally wrong with your company or your ability to do your work if you're staying at the office late. Yeah, it's those kind of flabbergasting differences.

You know, you're told in your first job in America and a lot of places, you know, stay late, dedicate yourself, show that you're willing to do this. Go to all the after hours events and happy hours or whatever it is, go to all the offsite retreats, just make yourself available, answer emails late, show your dedication. And in other places, that's just not a norm

because that's not a sign of health or the right kind of devotion. It seems like maybe something's wrong with that person or that company. Yeah, I remember when I had my own shift in how I think about that. Thinking about staying late as being a positive versus being a sign that things are going wrong.

I remember when I was getting started in comedy writing in New York, friends of mine started working for late night shows. And a friend of mine started working at The Tonight Show. And I said, how is it being a writer for The Tonight Show? And they said, oh my God, the hours are hell. I gotta get up at 5 a.m. and write jokes and then we work until God knows what hour of night,

every single night. It's like crazy. We're doing a show every day. It's just like a crazy environment. I was like, wow, that's really rough. And then I had a friend who was working for The Daily Show. And by the way, this is 15 years ago. I don't know how things are now.

But I had a friend who was working for The Daily Show, which at the time was winning an Emmy every single year. Right? This was the most acclaimed, this which at the time was winning an Emmy every single year. This was the most acclaimed, this was like the peak of Jon Stewart's run. And I said, how is it working for The Daily Show? And they said, oh, so it's pretty easy. We get out of five most days. And I was like, oh, okay.

So you can run it however you want, right? You have the choice. When you're putting it together, I can either create the stress environment or I can create the you know The the environment of ease and comfort and we all get our shit done in time to have lives now I don't want to speak to what those are just two stories from two friends. I'm not really speaking to those shows Sure, the the contrast just really jumped out at me and now you know the way I work in Hollywood currently

There are you know writers rooms where people say oh God, the showrunner kept us in all late. They ordered pizza and we all had to stay late because the showrunner wanted to re-break Act Three or whatever. And when I hear those stories, I don't think, wow, what a dedicated showrunner. I think, what an anxious ball of stress who doesn't know how to manage their time

and is taking it out on their staff. And like, what a shame that that person behaved. That person should be embarrassed that they're doing that. I mean, there's extenuating circumstances, right? Sometimes, hey, we got to do our thing. But like that should be if you're running a business where people are staying in, like instead of going home and

having dinner, you should be embarrassed. You shouldn't be proud because it means like you fucking suck at like managing people's time. Right. Well, there's something fundamental in the in the two examples of The Tonight Show versus The's time. Right. Well, there's something fundamental in the two examples of the Tonight Show versus the Daily Show, right? Businesses, because we have weak unions

and low union density and very little worker power in this country, we leave it up to businesses to set those terms of how late you're gonna work. And so as a result of it, you can show up at a job and have it be totally reasonable. Good bosses, good hierarchy, relatively decent structure, solid hours, good benefits, those kinds of things exist. They exist less than they did before, but they exist.

And then you have the nightmare scenario where people are working you crazy hours and you're underpaid, you're not getting time off that you need, you're not encouraged to take time off because it's understaffed, whatever the reason is. Part of why, you know, unions are so important is because it just levels the playing field or creates the baseline expectation for what's good business and what's good practice versus what's abusive practice. And in the U.S., we just don't have those standards. So you could go from one job to the next and have no idea that you're stepping into a nightmare scenario.

Or you can go from one job to another and realize, holy shit, I had a really bad job that I'm coming from. This is so much better for so many different reasons. And it's because we allow business to dictate what work culture is here instead of having workers do it. And again, this doesn't mean we have to become a communist state, we don't need to become a socialist fjord out in Scandinavia.

It just means that we can reset the balance and make it a little easier for people to get by, have the time that they need, get paid for their work, and again, have balance. Because what's crazy about this, and again, looking into the research, companies lose a trillion dollars a year in the US annually from turnover, from people leaving jobs that they don't want to stay at because it's working them too hard or the hours are unset or unsteady or their bosses are toxic or

they're not listening or they're burnt out, that costs companies profit. If they actually treated their workers better, if they had clearer conversations about boundaries, about hours, about pay, they would actually save money by investing in workers. But that's such a foreign idea here that instead we just have this massive churn. The Amazon strikes that were happening in Los Angeles last week and around the country, their attrition rate was 150% at one point in during a few years during the pandemic because people couldn't stay for more than three months. Two out of three workers left without working there more than three months because the working

conditions were so bad there. That's bad business. I don't care how much money Jeff Bezos makes, that's bad business. And they would be making so much more money if they invested in the workers. And there's nothing wrong with, with making those concessions with having work be a better place to be as opposed to just churning through employees and losing money and morale and training as a result of it. And that's again, that's just a different way

to look at our working world. That's an easy solution to say, here's how you save money and make more profit. It's have happier employees who are more creative and more loyal and feel better about their work and are willing to engage with it instead of just, we all are dealing with terrible customer service wherever we go now. And a lot of it's because things are just work workers are disposable and

they don't take the job seriously because they're not treated in a way that they should. Yeah. And that's just the reality of it. It sucks when you go to, you know, a Starbucks and the people who work behind the counter are stressed out because there aren't enough of them there for the lunch rush, you know? Of course they can't remember how to spell your name. They're spelling tens of thousands of names a day.

They've got, they got too much shit going on. But if instead you went in and you're like, Oh my God, everyone's so well taken, well taken care of. They're so happy. That's a business that you're going to want to visit more often. And you mentioned turnover. It strikes me how much the idea of turnover is baked into the culture of how we talk about these jobs. The thing that is always said about coffee shop jobs, McDonald's, Amazon jobs,

things like that. What do the hustle culture people say? They say, well, if you want to make more money, get a different job, right? This is, this is not a job you're supposed to have for very long. Well, hold on a second. Actually, I'm stealing this from my friend, Brendan Lee Mulligan, very smart man. He said once in a very well-known clip of his, he said, well, hold on, if you use that logic, do you not think that anybody should be making coffee?

Like, do you, the person saying that, ever buy coffee? Do you like going to the coffee shop? Do you like having your coffee made well? There needs to be someone doing that job, right? So is your position really that everyone who has that job should leave and get a different job because just those people should be paid badly? Like you do live in a world in which you expect there to be coffee shops and coffee shop employees.

Like, you do live in a world in which you expect there to be coffee shops and coffee shop employees. So therefore, do you not think that coffee shop employees should be able to have, like, lives that are healthy and satisfying? Or do you believe that the job should be eliminated because it's destined to be shitty? Like, it's this weird, like, untenable position where, like, how is it possible that there is just a type of job that is supposed to suck and no one is supposed to have for a period of time if we as a society agree that the job should exist? Those are incompatible ideas. Right, right.

And these are people who like to fancy themselves as business-minded people who are, I know how the world really works. Well, if you know how the world really works, you know that some people work part-time jobs because they're parents and they want to be home with their kids or they're in school and they're trying to get a master's degrees or college degrees or GEDs. There are all these different reasons that people want to work at a Starbucks. They want a low stress job that's social. They don't necessarily want, they want to work somewhere close to home. They have all these different reasons for working these jobs.

And the reality is that, yeah, these jobs have gotten significantly worse over the years. My first book was called Drive Through Dreams. It was about the history of fast food in America. And part of why I ended up writing this book about work is because I kept meeting all of these people who started on the friars in 1970, you know, working for a dollar 25 an hour at McDonald's or Burger King,

and they all became millionaires, the ones who stuck around and they own franchises now or they're corporate executives. And they will tell you, like, all I had to do was work hard and I got millions of dollars by working my way up through the ranks of McDonald's and whatever. The reality is that like, you're not a teenager working for pocket money in McDonald's anymore.

The average fast food worker is 26 years old, is in debt, probably has a dependent based on the basic structure profile of a fast food worker. And they're paying whatever it is, college, housing, all these different things are for way more money than they did in 1970. And they're paying whatever it is, college, housing, all these different things are for, um, way more money than they did in 1970. And people can't grasp at that.

That perfect moment is not gone. And for them, they had fewer obstacles to get where they were going. And it's just not, not the case anymore. I mean, if you go to a McDonald's, you do not, and you order, you do not see teenagers working a summer job. You see moms, dads, you see old people, you see people in their 50s and 60s working at McDonald's. Like, it's not fucking teenagers. I don't know what to tell you.

Like, I've been to McDonald's. I don't know if those politicians have, but I've seen who has taken the orders, man, and it's people who are trying to scrape by and who really need the money. When we talk about this American story of individualism and hard work, you talked about earlier that it is a beautiful story,

that it is a story about, you know, it's American exceptionalism, We are a classless society. Your place in society is not determined by birth, and you really can, you know, pull yourself up and make something of yourself. You can be anything you wanna be, right? And that is a beautiful story. And I think there is a place for it.

I have found that it's a little bit hard to tell people, it's just not true. And in fact, I don't like saying that because, well, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, I think work is an important part of life. And it is important to be able to take pleasure in your work. That is a value I want to uphold. Work is one important thing.

There's just other things that are more important at many times in our lives. But also, like, I don't want it to be the case that social mobility is impossible. I don't wanna tell people that that's impossible. I just sort of feel that we have gotten that story out of balance. That's the only story that we tell.

And we have ceased to tell the story about, A, what we can do together when we band together and try to make things better for all of us and we're not so individualistic, and B, we have failed to tell the story of how systems shape our possibilities, and that we need to have those two stories in balance. There's the individual story and the systemic story.

I'm curious what you think about that. Is there some value to the American story of hard work still? Yeah, I mean, there is value. It is, again, it is a beautiful, very seductive story and people come from all around the world to live here because they want that shot. They believe in this idea and there are ways in which, you know, creativity and dynamism and dedication can be rewarded

in the right instances. It's not a totally bogus idea. It's just getting harder and harder and harder for it to be true. And that's what I think is really driving people crazy. But it's also about the investment. We didn't settle the frontiers because a bunch of guys and horses decided to go over there with their axes and, you know, chop down trees and build fortresses and make farms.

It was because the government invested in it. They gave out money for they give out money and they they dedicated resources and land to people to settle the West. There was big business involved in those, those cattle drivers. And in order to push out an indigenous population and genocide them. That was also part of the point of the subsidies and the settlements and all of that, right? Was it was a specific colonialism project, but go ahead.

Yeah, no, obviously none of this was innocent. And the idea that we have this rugged cowboy myth, the idea that we have this individualistic kind of narrative that is so endemic to life that can't be refuted, it all comes from a lot of investment, whether it's business, whether it's government, whether it is, you know, again, what got us out of the Great Depression was not, wasn't fucking grit. It wasn't grit. It was a lot of it was the new deal. It was investment. It was giving people jobs. It was creating infrastructure. It was putting people to work. It was having safety net of durable

safety net to keep people from slipping through the cracks. Yes, be poor in America in ways that you cannot be poor in a lot of countries that we love to compare ourselves to, like France. There are these baseline protections that keep people from being out on the street. And that is a huge reason why. And again, all these countries have problems, but the protections that we have here are so slim because we just keep hacking at it with this idea that you can do it. You don't need the help from the

government. The government's only getting in your way of being a full person who's proud and self reliant. And that's a huge problem because if you don't succeed, you feel immense shame, you feel shame and needing help. They talk about deaths of despair as an epidemic, especially among white men who the economy are, you know, is sort of leaving behind people without college degrees. Those are a lot of people who again, through the studies and through the, you know, through

the oral histories of these of these problems, you hear their stories about not feeling like they're catching up or they're staying afloat or that they're as important as they once were and not being able to ask for help because it's shameful to ask for help. That's a huge problem. Yes. I mean, the story of, Hey, you can do it. You have individual value. You can make an impact on the world. You have agency over your own life. That is such an important thing for people to believe, right?

However, what we also need to acknowledge and understand is that that is only possible if we as a society have created the conditions under which it can be possible. Right, like a social safety net, like opportunity, like the post-war economy, like having solidarity with each other and unions and all those sorts of things. We create the conditions by which individual effort can pay off.

So the two ideas are linked. The we and the overall conditions in the systems and the individual and the I and the me, right? They're a yin and a yang. They exist in connection with each other, right? One creates the conditions for the other. And it feels like in this country, we have only focused on the I, the me, the you,

the individual, and we almost never talk about how the conditions for that are created by us together. We never talk about how we can create them for each other and the ways in which our society has made that impossible right now. Like we just keep saying over and over again, you can do it by yourself while ignoring the fact that we together as a system have made it impossible for you to do it by yourself. It's a bizarre contradiction. We refuse to just acknowledge the other half of the coin.

Right. It's really well said. And what I think is meaningful about it is we treat government and assistance and these ideas of investment in people as a bad thing, as an unnatural thing. That's a big part of the trope of people who are against those kinds of programs and those kinds of ladders and those kinds of safety nets. But the alternative to that is oligarchy.

When we have a really weak government, we have a bunch of really wealthy people who run the country. And that's exactly what we have right now. Co President Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, you know, looking at the things that are going on right now, having weak government means that we have these really strong rich people who are dictating the terms of how society functions. And that's also not good. So the balance is really out of whack and it needs to be put back into better order.

It doesn't necessarily mean total upheaval, but there are things that we can look at, other alternatives, other countries, other models that again, just make life easier and better for people who are trying hard in this country. If we really value the hard work, then we should reward the people who are working hard. So what are some of those policies we could put in place? What reforms do we need to reward hard work, but also to lift everybody up?

Yeah, sure. So, well, during the early days of the pandemic, we had this one moment where we actually kind of took care of each other for a brief shining moment. You know, we put an eviction moratorium. We didn't throw people out of their homes when they couldn't pay their rent because the job situation was so bad. We had the expanded child tax credit. That was something that almost, they cut historic drop in poverty, child poverty. And also acknowledge that people who stay home and take care of parents or children,

elderly are doing real work. That's what that is, an acknowledgement of work. We had all these brief things with stimulus checks and unemployment benefits that people were using to pay down their debt and to get certifications for better jobs. We had that for like six months and then all of that stuff, despite all the good evidence of it, it just went away. And so we had a taste of it. And people who were

lobbying and looking to get those sorts of benefits and those kinds of safety net, you know, emblems back, we already had the evidence that it works. It's just that we have to convince like three more senators to get it done. This is what happened. We lost because Joe Manchin thought people were going to use, you know, paid leave to go on hunting trips. Like that's ridiculous. It's fucking ludicrous. And we were so close to getting something almost sustainable done

and changing the relationship and we just didn't do it. So we've been close and we've had these opportunities come up and they came up, you know, after the, after the civil war with reconstruction and the Friedman's Bureau and all of these investments in railroads and infrastructure, um, we, it came up after the great depression and World War II, we've done these things that are difficult and may seem antithetical to our modern conception of ourselves, but paid enormous dividends. And it's not that hard to just twist a knob, sign a bill, do a couple of things to get things going again and stop leaving it up to individuals to, you know, carry the weight

for other people and to, um, you know, battle against impossible odds. Yeah. And we just need someone to tell this story. You know, if you look at, if you, I mean, as you are, but we need our political culture to tell it. If you look at, you know, the Democrats and the Republicans in the last election, the Republicans were saying, people are taking from you. They are taking away from you. The immigrants and et cetera are taking from you.

The Democrats did not make equally as powerful an argument. You had Kamala saying, opportunity economy. What does that mean? Like I can look between the cracks and see that maybe she was trying to say some of what we're talking about, that we wanna make the American dream possible or whatever, right?

But it wasn't couched in this story of, you know, inequality and, you know, the billionaire class has made it impossible for you to make a living the way that you have been told, the way that they tell you. And we are going to put things in place to bring that back to you. Like it just wasn't told in a muscular,

powerful way that actually meant something to people that actually they felt in their gut. And I think it's really a good example of how powerful storytelling is, like this deep story in American society of 99 cent perspiration. We didn't even talk about the origin of that phrase, which is Thomas Edison,

but, and I know you write about it in the book, so people have to get a copy to get the story. But the power of that story has real effects on our politics in the way this country headed. Absolutely. It's cultural, it's social, it's political. It's not just in our, you know, it's not just what we teach people in schools, it's in our music, it's in our TV shows, it's everywhere.

It's in our welfare policies, it's in what we talk about when we talk about opportunity and success, it's this idea. And it's something we need to break away from. We need to deprogram ourselves and just, again, talk about it more as a balance. Okay, great. So this is my last question for you. As someone who has been infected with toxic,

a toxic work ethic myself, and speaking to many of the people here listening who maybe have as well, how do we deprogram ourselves? Where do we start? You know, it's a great question. It's just looking at your community as a source of meaning a little bit more, you know,

and it's embracing leisure. And those are, again, those are two tiny, small things that you can do. It's just kind of focusing, and I'm guilty of it too. I'm not a prophet on this. I'm somebody who's also wringing my hands and going through my day wondering like, why am I so singularly focused on these things and what can I do to kind of plug myself in more?

It's just, you know, turning outward and doing whatever you can to sort of engage with people more in person and in your community. And I think that that just builds different muscles that I think allows you to kind of look outside of yourself. And, you know, I can't get too woo-woo about it. It's just ask people what they're going through, you know? Listen to people. It really, this is one of the joys of being a reporter,

but you hear the stories that people who are trying to make it here, what they're doing, and you're like, this person is not trying. These people are trying really fucking hard and not getting there. And it will alarm you. It will shock you.

So again, there are small ways to do that. And it's just part of an everyday. Well, the name of the book is 99% Perspiration. Of course, you can pick up a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com, slash books. Where else can people find it and your work, Adam? AdamChandler.com, as the other Adam here, as the other AC. But also you can, you know, shop your local bookstore. Look at indyshop or bookshop.com or.org for a place local

or your library for copies of the book. But I'm on social media, reach out, say hello. I'd love to hear your stories. Thank you so much for coming on, Adam. It's been wonderful. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Well, thank you once again to Adam Chandler

for coming on the show. Once again, if you want to pick up a copy of his book, head to factuallypod.com slash books. Any purchase you make there will support, not just the show, but your local bookstore as well. If you'd like to support the show directly, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. For five bucks a month,

you get every episode of this show ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits of the show and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week, I want to thank, we're going to choose a couple people randomly this week, I want to thank Quinn M. Enoch, Kim Keplar, Trey Burt, Patrick Ryan, Shannon J. Lane, and Matt Clausen. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover if you'd like to join them.

Once again, I'm headed to Toronto, Omaha, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, Burlington, Vermont, London, Amsterdam, Providence, Rhode Island, Eugene, Oregon, Vancouver, AdamConover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. I wanna thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time on Factually. I don't go away.

I don't go away. I don't go away. That was a HeadGum Podcast. Hi guys, I'm Ego Wodim. Check out my new show, Thanks Dad, now on HeadGum. I was raised by a single mom and I don't have a relationship with my dad and, spoiler, I don't think I'm ever going to have one with him because he's dead. But I promise you that's okay because on my new podcast I sit down with father figures like Bill Burr, Kenan Thompson, Adam Pally, Hassan Minaj, Tim Meadows, Andy Cohen, and

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