Episode Details

Your boss isn't watching you right now—but your body thinks they might be. This episode explores anticipatory stress, the booming "bossware" surveillance industry now monitoring 61% of US workers, and why knowing work could arrive at any moment causes more damage than actual work. We examine the global legal battle for a right to disconnect, from EU protections to US loopholes, and ask whether law can protect you from a curse that follows you home. 00:00:00 - Anticipatory Stress and the Science of Always-On 00:02:15 - The Bossware Industry: 550+ Products for Digital Surveillance 00:07:27 - The Curse Mark: Permission Without Protection 00:09:03 - Does Anyone Have This Figured Out? 00:12:23 - The United States Response 00:13:53 - Legal Right to Disconnect: Where It Works and Where It Doesn't 00:15:24 - The Future: Emotional AI and Screen Content Monitoring --- Sources & further reading: • Liuba Belkin, William Becker, Samantha Conroy — "Exhausted But Unable to Disconnect: The Impact of Email-Related Organizational Expectations on Work-Family Balance": https://source.colostate.edu/anticipatory-stress-of-after-hours-email-exhausting-employees/ • European Parliament — "Right to Disconnect" legislative train: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-europe-fit-for-the-digital-age/file-al-legislative-proposal-to-the-commission-on-the-right-to-disconnect • Equitable Growth — "Estimating the prevalence of automated management and surveillance technologies at work": https://equitablegrowth.org/research-paper/estimating-the-prevalence-of-automated-management-and-surveillance-technologies-at-work-and-their-impact-on-workers-well-being/ • Mayer Brown — "France: The Right to Disconnect Q&A" (March 2025): https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2025/03/france-the-right-to-disconnect-qa • DLA Piper — "A look at global employee disconnect laws for US counsel": https://knowledge.dlapiper.com/dlapiperknowledge/globalemploymentlatestdevelopments/2024/global-employee-disconnect-laws-for-US-counsel • Baker McKenzie — "Australia: The Right to Disconnect" (September 2025): https://www.bakermckenzie.com/en/insight/publications/alerts/2025/09/australia-the-right-to-disconnect-has-it-really-changed-the-way-we-work • NPR — "Work, Life Balance: VW Agrees To Switch Off After-Hours Email" (December 2011): https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/12/23/144200222/work-life-balance-vw-agrees-to-switch-off-after-hours-email • The Verge / reported via Slashdot — "Amazon's Algorithm Automatically Fires Inefficient Warehouse Workers" (April 2019): https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/04/27/0455256/amazons-algorithm-automatically-fires-inefficient-warehouse-workers • The Register — "Amazon's algorithmic management of warehouse workers slated" (March 2025): https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/03/18/amazons-algorithmic-management-of-warehouse-workers-slated/1064445 • High5Test — "Employee Monitoring Statistics in the U.S. (2024-2025)": https://high5test.com/employee-monitoring-statistics/ • European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) — "Implications of algorithmic management for work" (2025): https://a.storyblok.com/f/279033/x/f107664d4a/wpef25083-literature-review-implications-of-algorithmic-management.pdf • European Parliament Research Service — "Algorithmic management study" (2025): https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/774670/EPRS_STU(2025)774670_EN.pdf • Cambier et al. — "Work e‐mail after hours and off‐job duration and their association with psychological detachment, actigraphic sleep, and saliva cortisol" (Journal of Sleep Research, 2021): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8626826/ • …and 5 more in the episode research notes This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.