From 9 to 5 to The Office, we’ve got plenty of examples of cookie-cutter cubicles where workers toil away in soul-crushing boredom and fatigue. On today’s show, we flip the script and hear a defense of office life.
Print media circling the drain, record and film companies battling piracy, the rise of cheap, reality TV: while some sectors have bounced back from the recession, creative industries seem to remain in peril. A former arts reporter ponders the decline of the creative class and what society loses when artists can’t make a living.
Listen to the full show and click Read more for individual segments.
A Love Letter to the Office
- Jennifer Senior is a contributing writer for New York Magazine where she wrote about the upside of office life: "To the Office, With Love."
- Jennifer's New York Times best selling book on parenting, All Joy and No Fun is now available in paperback.
- We've also got a list of films that don't exactly paint the office in such a shining light. Check them out at this link.
Office by Day, Gallery by Night
- A few years ago, amid the cubicles and conference rooms of a San Francisco life insurance office, an insurance salesman decided to become an after-hours curator. Producer Raquel Maria Dillon brings us the story.
- You can listen to this story again at PRX.org.
Culture Crash
- In his new book Culture Clash: The Killing of the Creative Class, Scott Timberg outlines, in a series of essays, the ongoing assault on the creative class that has been underway long before file sharing and smart phones became ubiquitous.
"Necro-Streaming": Watching the Remains of a
Dying
Dead Show
- What can we gain by watching the last gasps of a television show that's been cut down in the prime of its life? Philip Maciak, television critic and films studies professor explains the practice of "necro-streaming".
