Dr. Devon Price unpacks “the laziness lie,” how AI and “bullshit jobs” distort work and higher ed, and why centering human needs—not output—leads to saner lives.

Guest bio: Devon Price, PhD, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago, a social psychologist, & writer. Prof Price is the author of Laziness Does Not Exist, Unmasking Autism, and Unlearning Shame, focusing on burnout, neurodiversity, and work culture.

Topics discussed:

• The laziness lie: origins and three core tenets
• AI’s effects on output pressure, layoffs, and disposability
• Overlap with David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs and status hierarchies
• Adjunctification and incentives in academia
• Demographic cliff and the sales-ification of universities
• Career choices in an AI era: minimize debt and stay flexible
• Remote work’s productivity spike and boundary erosion
• Burnout as a signal to rebuild values around care and community
• Gap years, social welfare, and redefining “good jobs”
• Practicing compassion toward marginalized people labeled “lazy”

Main points:

• The laziness lie equates worth with productivity, distrusts needs/limits, and insists there’s always more to do, fueling self-neglect and stigma.
• Efficiency gains from tech and AI are converted into higher expectations rather than rest or shorter hours.
• Many high-status roles maintain hierarchy more than they create real value; resentment often targets meaningful, low-paid work.
• U.S. higher ed relies on precarious adjunct labor while admin layers swell, shifting from education to a jobs-sales funnel.
• In a volatile market, avoid debt, build broad human skills, and choose adaptable paths over brittle credentials.
• Remote work raised output but erased boundaries; creativity requires rest and unstructured time.
• Burnout is the body’s refusal of exploitation; recovery means reprioritizing relationships, art, community, and self-care.
• A humane society would channel tech gains into shorter hours and better care work and infrastructure.
• Revalue baristas, caregivers, teachers, and artists as vital contributors.
• Everyday practice: show compassion—especially to those our culture labels “lazy.”

Top three quotes:

• “What burnout really is, is the body refusing to be exploited anymore.” — Devon Price
• “Efficiency never gets rewarded; it just ratchets up the expectations.” — Devon Price
• “What is the point of AI streamlining work if we punish humans for not being needed?” — Devon Price

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

Dr. Joseph Crawford unpacks how AI is reshaping higher education - eroding student belonging, redefining assessment in a post-plagiarism era, and raising the stakes for soft skills.

Guest bio
Dr. Joseph “Joey” Crawford is a Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Tasmania and ranks among the top 1% of most-cited researchers globally. His work centers on leadership, student belonging, and the role of AI in higher education, and he serves as Editor-in-Chief of a leading education journal.

Topics discussed

• AI in higher education and the “post-plagiarism” era
• Student belonging, loneliness, and mental health impacts
• Massification of education (8% → 30% → 50.2% participation)
• Programmatic assessment vs. essays/exams
• COVID-19’s lasting effects on campus culture and learning
• Recorded lectures, flipped learning, and in-person tradeoffs
• Soft skills, leadership education, and employability
• Academic integrity, peer review, and AI misuse by faculty
• Labor shortages, graduate readiness, and industry pathways
• Social anxiety, AI “friendship,” and GPA outcomes

Main points & takeaways

• AI substitutes human support: Heavy chatbot use can provide a sense of social support but correlates with lower belonging and reduced GPA compared to human connections.
• Belonging matters: Human social support predicts higher well-being and better academic performance; AI support does not translate into belonging.
• Post-plagiarism reality: Traditional lecture-plus-essay or multiple-choice assessment is increasingly unreliable for verifying authorship.
• Assessment is shifting: Universities are exploring programmatic assessment—fewer, higher-stakes integrity checks across a degree instead of every course.
• Massification pressures quality: Participation in Australia rose from 8% (1989) to 30% (2020) to 50.2% (2021), straining rigor and prompting curriculum simplification and grade inflation.
• COVID + ChatGPT = double shock: Online habits and interaction anxiety from the pandemic compounded with AI convenience, reducing peer-to-peer engagement.
• Less face time: Many business courses dropped live lectures; students are now ~2 hours less in-class per subject, raising the bar for workshops to build soft skills.
• Workforce mismatch: Employers want communication and leadership; graduates often lack mastery because entry-level “practice” tasks are automated.
• Faculty risks too: Using AI to draft peer reviews can embed weak scholarship into training corpora and distort future models.
• Pragmatic advice: Don’t fear AI—use it—but replace lost micro-interactions with real people and deliberately practice human skills (e.g., leadership, psychology).

Top quotes

• “We’re in a post-plagiarism world where knowing who wrote what is a real challenge.”
• “Some students are replacing librarians, peers, and support staff with bots—they’re fast, infinitely friendly, and never judge.”
• “AI social support doesn’t create belonging—and that shows up in grades.”
• “The lecture isn’t gone, but in many programs it’s recorded—and students now get less in-person time.”
• “Don’t substitute AI-created efficiency with more work—substitute it with more people.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

Author Eric Weiner argues that happiness depends less on wealth or location than on relationships, meaning, trust, and realistic expectations—while tech and social media often push the other way.

Guest bio:
Eric Weiner is a bestselling author and former NPR foreign correspondent whose books include The Geography of Bliss, The Geography of Genius, The Socrates Express, and Ben and Me. He writes about place, meaning, creativity, and how to live well.

Topics discussed:

• The “where” of happiness vs. the “what/who”
• Nordic stability in the World Happiness Report
• Moldova as a control case for unhappiness
• Relationships as the core driver of well-being
• Social media, AI, and the erosion of meaning/trust
• Money, inequality, and the Easterlin paradox
• U-shaped curve and Gen Z’s flattening
• Travel as transformation (place as permission)
• Gross National Happiness (Bhutan) vs. GDP
• Expectations as the enemy of happiness

Main points:

• Relationships matter most: “other people” are the two-word secret.
• Money helps only to a modest threshold; then diminishing returns.
• Inequality alone doesn’t predict happiness; trust does.
• Tech/social media amplify envy and faux-connection, sapping meaning.
• AI optimizes “good enough,” not creative leaps; it can erode trust.
• Gen Z shows worrying dips in meaning/connection post-2015 + pandemic.
• Travel reframes perspective; you can’t outrun yourself.
• Focus on process over outcomes; detach effort from results.

Top quotes:

• “If I had to sum up the secret to happiness in two words: other people.”
• “Expectations are the enemy of happiness—invest 100% in effort, 0% in results.”
• “AI is dangerously seductive because it’s good enough—but creative leaps don’t come from averages.”
• “Social media are envy-generating machines.”
• “Trust is the hidden variable of happy societies.”
• “Technology promises time, but unstructured time doesn’t make us happier—meaning does.”

Data points mentioned:

• U-shaped happiness across life; Gen Z may be an exception (smartphone ubiquity + pandemic).
• U.S. trust reversal: ~1960s ≈ two-thirds said “most people can be trusted”; recent polls ≈ two-thirds say the opposite.
• Easterlin paradox: happiness rises with income only up to a point.
• Gen Z snapshots (Harvard/Baylor cited in convo): ~58% lack meaning; ~56% financial concern; ~45% “things falling apart”; ~34% lonely.

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

A conversation with Stella Morabito on how the weaponization of loneliness—from Soviet propaganda to modern social media—threatens free speech, family, and community.

Stella Morabito – Writer and former CIA intelligence analyst specializing in Soviet propaganda and media during the 1980s. She is the author of The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer (2022) and a senior contributor at The Federalist.

• Morabito’s CIA background analyzing Soviet propaganda
• The concept of the “machinery of loneliness” and how tyrants exploit fear of isolation
• The pandemic as a “dress rehearsal” for social control and social credit systems
• Education, political correctness, and social media as tools of conformity
• Yuri Bezmenov’s four stages of ideological subversion
• The role of “almost psychopaths” in totalitarian movements
• Attacks on family, motherhood, and masculinity as destabilizing forces
• Gen Z’s shifting attitudes toward faith, family, and community
• Building mediating institutions (family, faith, friendship) to resist centralization

• Fear of isolation is a powerful tool used by tyrants throughout history, from the French Revolution to Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
• The pandemic revealed how easily fear could be weaponized to enforce conformity, resembling China’s social credit system.
• Education and media are central targets because they credential all other institutions and shape entire generations.
• Social media extends peer pressure 24/7, worsening youth mental health and magnifying political correctness.
• “Almost psychopaths” rationalize cruelty under pseudo-religions or ideologies and become enforcers of totalitarian conformity.
• Mediating institutions—family, faith, and community—are the strongest antidote to centralized control.
• Gen Z shows promise in resisting mainstream narratives and seeking meaning through faith and family, partly due to disillusionment from the pandemic.

• “The fear of isolation is hardwired into us… and it makes us not only miserable creatures, but easily manipulated.”
• “Free speech is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. Once we stop speaking freely, we lose it.”
• “The ultimate goal of totalitarians is not money—it’s to control the mediating institutions of family, faith, and friendship.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

Neuroscientist explains why school crushes creativity—and how to fix it—teaching “primal intelligence” and special-operations tactics you can use at work, at home, and in the classroom to think and innovate better.

Guest Bio: Dr. Angus Fletcher is a neuroscientist and professor of Story Science at The Ohio State University. He studies how intuition, imagination, emotion, and common sense work in the brain and advises U.S. Special Operations, Fortune 50 firms, and schools on creativity and resilience. His new book is Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know.

Topics Discussed:

• Creativity decline starting ~3rd grade; standardized testing & sit-still schooling
• Data vs. volatile reality; limits of AI/logic vs. human neural tools
• Special Operations creativity pipeline; training vs. selection
• “Why”-free inquiry (who/what/when/where/how) to deepen relationships & learning
• Unlearning dependency on external answers; experiential learning
• Personal story as plan/plot; fear, anxiety, and outsourcing your story
• Jobs, Shakespeare, and intensifying uniqueness; innovation beyond “grind” and “hack”
• “Eat your enemy”: learning asymmetrically from competitors
• Medication, signals, and growth; tuning anxiety as a sensor
• Myths like left-brain/right-brain; labels vs. open-ended growth

Main Points:

• Schooling often conditions “there’s a right answer and the teacher has it,” which suppresses creativity and initiative.
• Data predicts yesterday; real life is volatile. Human neurons support non-computational tools—intuition, imagination, common sense—vital for innovation.
• Creativity can be trained: Special Ops methods and experiential learning reliably build it.
• Skip “why” in discovery conversations to avoid premature judgments; stay curious with who/what/when/where/how.
• Reclaim your personal story; fear pushes people to borrow others’ plans, which erodes meaning.
• Innovation strategy: identify exceptions and intensify them (Jobs), and “eat your enemy” by absorbing rivals’ unique strengths.
• Emotions are signals; meds can be triage, but durable growth comes from engaging hard experiences.
• Left/right-brain personality labels are misleading; biological growth thrives on branching diversity.

Top Quotes:

• “School trains kids to solve math problems, not life problems.”
• “Skip the ‘why’—the moment you jump to why, you stop learning.”
• “Your story is your plan. Fear makes you outsource it.”
• “Anxiety is a calibrated sensor, not a flaw.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

Homeowner-advocate Shelly Marshall explains why many HOAs function like private governments—often stripping owners’ rights—and how to protect yourself (or avoid them entirely).

Shelly Marshall is a homeowner advocate and author of HOA Warrior. After battling abusive HOA boards in her own community, she’s spent 15+ years researching HOA law, advising homeowners, and pushing for reforms nationwide. She can be reached at info@hoawarrior.com and hoawarrior.com. She can be reached at info@hoawarrior.com and hoawarrior.com.

• How Shelly became an HOA advocate after a hostile board takeover
• Boards changing rules without homeowner votes; covenant enforcement gaps
• Liens, fines, special assessments, and foreclosure risk
• Why management companies and industry trade groups (e.g., CAI) shape incentives
• Legal exposure: joint liability, collateralization, and lack of transparency
• Horror stories: lawns, hoses, swing sets, condemned structures, and jail time
• Buying vs. renting; LLCs for limited protection; why “one election away from disaster”
• What due diligence (doesn’t) solve; legislative reform efforts and limits
• Practical survival tips if you’re already in an HOA

• Buying into an HOA is entering a business partnership with neighbors; your property can be leveraged, and you share liabilities.
• Boards often wield broad power, sometimes changing or selectively enforcing rules with limited transparency.
• Fines, fees, and special assessments can exceed mortgages and trigger foreclosures—even for minor “violations.”
• Industry actors (management companies, banks, attorneys) have financial incentives that can work against homeowners.
• Litigation is costly and asymmetric; few attorneys take homeowner cases.
• If you must buy, an LLC (cash purchase) offers better protection; otherwise, renting avoids systemic risks.
• If you’re already in an HOA: pay first, appeal later; avoid being labeled a “troublemaker”; document everything.
• Legislative fixes help only marginally; structural incentives remain misaligned.

• “You don’t buy a home in an HOA—you buy into a business with all your neighbors.”
• “They can change the rules after you’ve moved in, often without your vote.”
• “One election away from disaster—every single time.”
• “Your house can become collateral for loans you didn’t know existed.”
• “Pay the fine first, fight later—escalation is how homeowners lose homes.”
• “My advice? Don’t buy into an HOA. If you must live there, rent.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

A spirited debate between Chadwick Turner and Emmanuel Maggiori on whether AI is a transformative technology or overhyped disruption, exploring its impact on jobs, society, and the economy.

• Dr. Emmanuel Maggiori – London-based software engineer, writer, and speaker. Author of Smart Until It’s Dumb, Siliconned, and The AI Pocketbook. Has spent a decade building machine learning systems for large-scale applications.
• Chadwick Turner – Seattle-based creative technologist and strategist, founder of Burnpiles, a consultancy helping organizations innovate with AI, immersive media, and digital strategy. Formerly led business development at Amazon and Meta.

• Hype vs. reality of AI as transformative vs. disruptive technology
• Historical parallels with VR, no-code, and industrial revolutions
• AI’s limitations: hallucinations, lack of extrapolation, long-tail problem
• Job disruption: automation, creative agencies, translators, paralegals, truckers
• Economic theory of production, labor, and technology’s role in growth
• Education: cognitive decline, plagiarism, and assessment challenges
• AI plateaus: “peak AI” without methodological breakthroughs
• Business realities: building sustainable products vs. hype-driven failures

• Chadwick’s Position – AI is likely the most disruptive technology in history, with potential 10/10 impact if breakthroughs arrive. Even at today’s plateau, it will reshape industries, automate repetitive work, and disrupt the economy.
• Emmanuel’s Position – AI is overhyped and limited by methodological flaws (hallucinations, lack of reasoning). Impact is real but moderate (4/10), closer to previous overhyped tech cycles. Most jobs won’t be fully automated away.
• Overlap – Both agree that:
  • Repetitive, low-stakes jobs are most at risk.
  • Businesses often misunderstand AI’s limits.
  • Future resilience requires critical thinking, adaptability, and business strategy, not just technical skills.

• Chadwick: “This is the first time we’re actually going into the keep of society—the human mind, repetitive processes, thinking capabilities. We’ve never had a technology like that at this scale.”
• Emmanuel: “AI learns by repetition—it’s good at interpolating, not extrapolating. Without a new methodology, hallucinations and long-tail failures won’t be solved.”
• Chadwick: “Content isn’t king. Great content is king. Same with software—plenty of tools exist, but only compelling, well-executed ideas will win.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Gary Rivlin discusses his book AI Valley, exploring Silicon Valley’s AI hype cycle, the dominance of tech giants, and the venture capital forces shaping the industry.

Guest Bio
Gary Rivlin is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter and author of eleven books, including AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence. He has covered Silicon Valley since the mid-1990s and has written extensively on technology, venture capital, inequality, and politics.

Topics Discussed

• Parallels between the dot-com boom and the AI hype cycle
• The explosion of venture capital funding for AI startups
• How media coverage of tech has shifted from hero worship to skepticism
• Why only the biggest companies (Microsoft, Google, Meta) can afford large AI models
• The outsized role of VCs like Marc Andreessen and Reid Hoffman
• Surveillance capitalism vs. scientific breakthroughs as AI use cases
• Winners and losers in the AI race, and who benefits financially
• The risks of hype, inequality, and AI’s impact on jobs and education

Main Points

• AI is following the same hype trajectory as the internet in the 1990s, with massive VC money, inflated valuations, and inevitable failures.
• The cost of AI models (data, chips, talent) locks out small startups, concentrating power in mega-corporations.
• VCs hype AI doom/utopia narratives to justify billion-dollar bets, while everyday adoption remains slow.
• AI could bring real benefits in science, medicine, and tutoring, but also risks reinforcing surveillance, bias, and inequality.
• The likely “winners” are the big tech companies selling both AI products and the “shovels” (cloud/data infrastructure).

Top 3 Quotes

• “Some great things can come from all this money—but a lot of it is going to go up in smoke.”
• “AI isn’t laser-eyed robots taking over. What we should worry about is surveillance, bias, and the jobs it’s already erasing.”
• “It’s scary that a small group of technologists, CEOs, and VCs in Silicon Valley are driving AI for the whole world.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
💬 For guest suggestions, questions, or media inquiries, reach out at https://elpodcast.media/
📬 Never miss an episode – subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show. It helps others find us.

Thanks for listening!