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Psychedelic Salon

Audiobook 09 – Digital Wobblies: Sabotaging the Gig Economy

Psychedelic Salon

Lorenzo Hagerty

Personal Journals, Science, Society & Culture, Natural Sciences, Philosophy

4.8567 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2026

⏱️ 297 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speakers: Lorenzo and his AI Friends PROGRAM NOTES: Chicago: the city where the IWW was born in 1905, and where, in 1942, the world's first controlled atomic chain reaction took place. A city of chain reactions: some splitting atoms, others forging solidarity.Moira Kowalski is twenty-six, drowning in debt, and watching AI devour her freelance career. Then a podcast mentions a name from Chicago's radical past, and she discovers a century-old tradition of workers who refused to accept the world as given.The Digital Wobblies follows one young woman's journey from gig-economy isolation to solidarity and purpose, connecting the soapbox orators of Bughouse Square to the scattered workers of today, all searching for the same thing: a way to build a new society within the shell of the old.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Three-dimensional transforming musical linguistic objects.

0:09.0

Helmachshelms.

0:12.0

Hello. Greetings from Cyberdelic Space. This is Lorenzo and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic

0:27.3

Salon. Today I'm releasing my latest audiobook and this one may hit a little closer to home for some of you.

0:35.3

As the title suggests, it's about the current struggles that gig workers are coping with.

0:41.3

This story was sparked by dozens of conversations that I've had with gig workers, ride-shared

0:46.6

drivers, food currier, who in passing moments told me something about their work that

0:52.2

I never suspected. Some spoke about surveillance,

0:56.1

others shared dreams to purge, degrees unused, or philosophies formed in solitude. I met a

1:02.8

former union organizer delivering groceries, a poet driving lift to pay rent, and a coder doing work

1:09.7

under several fake names. What struck me wasn't

1:13.1

the precariousness of their economic situations, it was their unspoken wisdom, their quiet defiance,

1:20.6

and their refusal to accept public assistance. It reminded me of the soapboxers and street

1:26.3

philosophers of another era.

1:29.0

Remembering those earlier workers led me back to the tales of slim brundage and the College of Complexes,

1:36.2

and eventually to the realization that the radical working spirit hasn't vanished,

1:41.9

it's just been dormant, waiting. Now here's my latest novella,

1:47.6

The Digital Woblies, sabotaging the gig economy. The following audiobook is published under the terms

1:55.2

of the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication. This designation allows for the work to be freely accessed, shared,

2:03.2

modified, sold, and or used by anyone for any purpose without restriction.

2:10.3

The Digital Woblies

2:11.5

Sabotaging the Gig Economy

...

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