Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
Ford Has Read This Book Before
It takes some nerve for a GM man to recommend a book to Ford. In my defense, GM did not want it.
In 1943, General Motors invited a young Viennese writ…
9 hours ago
The Loop We Won't Pay For
Trim 2 was the bottleneck at Lansing Delta Township. Night shift, nine hours, and most nights it gave up fifty or sixty minutes of downtime. Supervis…
2 days, 9 hours ago
The Fork in the Road
Twenty-six essays ago this argument began at a factory in Fremont, California, where American workers GM had written off as lazy and ungovernable mat…
4 days, 9 hours ago
The Steering Wheel Is in the Middle
On a Saturday night in September, Jan and I watched The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist on Netflix. When it ended, she said we had finally …
1 week ago
In the Loop and Emptied by It
On night shift at GM’s Lansing Delta Township plant, there was no one upstairs in engineering to call. I was a shift leader. When the line went down,…
1 week, 1 day ago
The Job Is Never a Suspect
On Rachel Barber, “Workers keep leaving the US labor force. Experts can’t agree why,” USA TODAY, July 9, 2026.
I went to LDT with hope in my heart.
Thi…
1 week, 2 days ago
The Knowledge
Evidence: David Autor and Neil Thompson, “Expertise,” NBER Working Paper 33941, 2025.
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w33941](https://www.nber.org/papers…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Bill for Not Looking
There were days on my glass leg at Lansing Delta Township when the glass would not stay put. The robot laid the urethane bead, swung the glass toward…
1 week, 6 days ago
They Rebuilt the Guild and Charged Tuition
In 1999, the last year Buick City built cars, a supervisor in Trim 1 was told to form me.
His name was Rick Stork. He held no teaching credential. He …
2 weeks ago
Charan Didn't Say What You Heard
Reacting to: Vibhas Ratanjee, “The Old Career Mindset Is Dead. The System Already Knows. Most Leaders Don’t,” Forbes, July 16, 2026.
Trim 2 on nights …
2 weeks, 2 days ago