The “sharing economy,” which has been on the rise for the past decade, has become increasingly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, with American unemployment reaching its all-time high back in April and more workers struggling to make ends meet under ever-changing conditions.

Today on the show, Patty discusses the gig economy and how to make it equitable for the users and workers most exploited with professor Juliet Schor, author of After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back.

They cover topics like the gig economy and the Green New Deal, the impact of COVID-19 on gig workers, government regulation of ride-share services like Uber, and what it would look like for these apps to function as worker-owned cooperatives.

Juliet Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College. She is the author of several books, including The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books, 1992), The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (Basic Books, 1998), and After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win it Back (University California Press, 2020).