Bad drivers beware: Phil & Matt say to stay home on rainy or snowy days. Phil starts his work-at-home life and gets Matt to provide some guidance on what not to do. Even though Matt was sick, we are committed to getting these episodes out!

Academics & The Changing Nature of Work (13:34)

As a way to open an ongoing discussion on academic careers, Matt & Phil talk about their schooling and career trajectories. What it takes to be a professor in today’s academic environment has changed from what were the historical benchmarks. H-Indexes are an example of what seems to count these days. The university hasn’t been the only field to be forced into altering their practices. Phil brings in Richard Sennett’s “The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism” (2000, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.) as a guide to start to understand how the structural changes to the nature of work have also changed our identities and sense of self. Entrepreneurship, just-in-time labour tactics, the need to market transferable skills and the need to adapt to the rhythms and flows of changing employment all play a role in how we experience new arrangements of our working life. It was a fragmented conversation about an increasingly fragmented aspect of our modern world. The show will pick-up and expand on these themes in future episodes. In the meantime, keep on 'trucking.     

Recommendations (1:05:15)

• Matt recommends Pete Seeger’s Little Boxes and Bob Seger’s Turn the Page

Concluding thought: In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category - Noam Chomsky

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