In this episode, I'm talking to the team behind the research project Bloody Work, which is about managing menstrual disorders at work.

Drs. Cara Reed, Jenna Pandeli, and Helen Williams are investigating the hidden physical and emotional labour employees undertake to manage painful or leaking bodies while remaining productive.

We discuss the motivation for the project, participants' experiences, and what they'd like to see change as a result of this project. We also discuss the Ideal Worker, marginalisation, and the general shame and silence that comes along with having a body that bleeds.

Find out more about the project here: Bloody Work instagram

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Listen to Part 1 first to understand our references to the Puritans and the Work Ethic.

In this episode, Professor Anderson and I discuss whether tech bros are the latest version of landlords that the Puritans would have despised; the core source of the feminisation of poverty; how labour is entirely mis-valued; and the invisible apparatus of unpaid care work that firmly holds an ungrateful capitalist system in place.

Buy her book Hijacked here

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Other references:

Callaci, E. (2026). Wages for housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise. Penguin Group.

Mazzucato, M. (2018). The value of everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. PublicAffairs.

Varoufakis, Y. (2023). Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Random House.

Sometimes when you have big questions about work, science can't help you. When the questions concern one's understanding of self, of what is 'good' and 'right', and what we ought to do - well, you need to talk to a philosopher.

In this episode, I speak with Professor Elizabeth Anderson - John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies.

We talk about the evolution of the work ethic in this Part One. We discuss having a calling, the conflation of money-making and goodness, and the original promoters of Meaningful work.

In an upcoming Part Two, we'll talk about care work, billionaires as 'land' owners, and how the Puritanical past might inform a Future of Work!

Prof Anderson's book: Hijacked

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