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Know Your Enemy

The Entrepreneurial Ethic & How We Work Today (w/ Erik Baker)

Know Your Enemy

Matthew Sitman

Right Wing, National Review, History, Socialists, Reactionaries, Conservative Movement, Conservatism, News, Society & Culture, Ronald Reagan, Leftists Look At Conservatism, William F Buckley, Politics

4.71.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2025

⏱️ 96 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt and Sam talk to historian Erik Baker about his new book, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America."

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

All right. Welcome listeners to episode 108 of No Year Enemy. I'm Matt Sitman, your podcast co-host,

0:06.1

and I'm here as always with my great friend Sam other bell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. How are you doing today?

0:11.9

I'm good. It's January 19th, so it's the day before Donald Trump's re-inaguration.

0:19.2

Well, I have to say, it's been a dark and dreary day in Rome. So this is kind of like

0:24.5

transatlantic weather-based sympathy with what you're all enduring. It's dark and gloomy here.

0:30.5

But the podcast is pressing on. We have a lot of great episodes lined up that we're very excited about.

0:36.8

We won't talk about them yet.

0:38.2

But we're here to introduce one. We recorded just a few days ago, and it was a conversation with

0:43.5

our friend Eric Baker. Listeners might remember him from our bomb power episode on Gary Will's.

0:49.8

Eric just came out with a new book called Make Your Own Job, How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic

0:54.8

Exhausted America. He's also a lecture in the History of Science at Harvard University.

1:00.6

His writings appeared all over the place, The Drift, N Plus One, Harper's the New Yorker, and he's

1:05.7

also an associate editor at The Drift. So Eric was a great guest. We loved his book.

1:12.6

Yeah. You can tell from the title,

1:18.0

this is a book about Americans' relationship to work, and in particular, the entrepreneurial idea, this idea of the ideal worker as well as the ideal manager as someone who is

1:24.0

creative and innovative and disruptive, who loves their work, who loves their own job.

1:30.7

And in many cases, as the title suggests, makes their own job. So it's all the kind of workplace

1:37.0

career self-help nostrums about believing in yourself and that's how you are successful in the

1:43.2

American economy, making your

1:45.0

job be something that reflects your true self and your personality and all these ideas that

1:49.9

we might think of as basically just sort of like self-evident good advice in the American economy,

1:56.9

but actually have this really fascinating history and genealogy in the 20th century, which

...

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