Episode 187: Undercover Boss, Uber-Driving CEOs, and the "Empathetic Executive" Schtick

Episode 187: Undercover Boss, Uber-Driving CEOs, and the "Empathetic Executive" Schtick

"New Starbucks CEO plans to pull barista shifts in stores every month," CNN announces. "Uber's CEO moonlighted as a driver and it changed the way he operates the company," Fortune insists. "Your DoorDash driver? He's the company's co-founder," the Associated Press smirks.

Month after month or week after week, we seem to hear the same stories about bold corporate executives who've decided to roll up their sleeves—metaphorically or otherwise—and join their lowest-level employees as a delivery driver, barista, or retail worker. Their stated goal: to "stay connected" to and "better understand" the company, its customers, and its workers.

While these attempts to foster and express empathy may appear noble on the surface, they're anything but. In reality, the CEO-as-worker stunt is an entirely self-serving project, creating a pretext for worker surveillance and a distraction from labor abuses like poverty wages and union-busting, all the while seeking to convince the public that corporate executives are honest, hardworking folks, Just Like You.

Today, we will be dissecting the past and present of Undercover Boss-style corporate maneuvers, looking at the ways in which the C-suiter-in-the-trenches routine advances the squishy concept of "empathy" in order to obscure and undermine the material needs and demands of labor.

Our guest is Ligia Guallpa, Executive Director of the Worker's Justice Project, a community-based, workers' rights organization in New York City.

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Ep 240: How the Media's "Burden," the "Straining Resources" Framing Manufactures the Expendable Other

Ep 240: How the Media's "Burden," the "Straining Resources" Framing Manufactures the Expendable Other

In this episode, we discuss the ideological work done by our media's default frame of immigrants, poor seniors, homeless people, and those with disabilities as "burdens" and "strains" on our limited r...

8 Heinä 1h 34min

News Brief: Despite 9-Figure Infusion from Silicon Valley, Abundance Still Seeks Popular Support

News Brief: Despite 9-Figure Infusion from Silicon Valley, Abundance Still Seeks Popular Support

In this news brief, we catch up with Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, to discuss Abundance's PR problems, why this latest neoliberalism rebrand isn't catching on an...

1 Heinä 38min

News Brief: The ADL's Bogus Origin Story and Its Rise as Ideological Enforcer for Empire and Israel

News Brief: The ADL's Bogus Origin Story and Its Rise as Ideological Enforcer for Empire and Israel

In this News Brief, we talk with Emmaia Gelman, author of The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State, about how––despite posing a civil rights org––the ADL functions as defender of colonialism an...

24 Kesä 42min

Episode 239: The Vague, Capital-Serving Co-Optation of "Affordability" Politics

Episode 239: The Vague, Capital-Serving Co-Optation of "Affordability" Politics

In this episode, we detail the long history of generic "affordability" discourse and how, post-Mamdani, it's become the go-to establishment buzzword justifying tax breaks for developers, deregulation,...

17 Kesä 1h 20min

News Brief: The Call to Boycott—and Delegitimize—the New York Times

News Brief: The Call to Boycott—and Delegitimize—the New York Times

In this News Brief, we talk with Chris Mills Rodrigo from Writers Against The War On Gaza about their campaign to boycott the New York Times and remove the "paper of record" from its pedestal of alleg...

28 Touko 40min

Episode 238: The Fictional, Racist, Paranoia-Sowing "Sleeper Cell" Media Construction

Episode 238: The Fictional, Racist, Paranoia-Sowing "Sleeper Cell" Media Construction

In this episode, we detail the vague, baseless racism-sowing media coverage and pop culture obsession with so-called "sleeper cells," a construction that has consumed post-9/11 America but suffers fro...

20 Touko 1h 30min

Live Show: 'How to Sell a Genocide' Book Talk at The Word Is Change Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY

Live Show: 'How to Sell a Genocide' Book Talk at The Word Is Change Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY

This is a live recording between Nima and Adam at the Word is Change Bookstore May 7, 2026. In this conversation, we discuss key findings that can be found in Adam's new book, How to Sell a Genocide: ...

13 Touko 1h 3min

News Brief: "Peak TV," Streamer Studio Accounting Gimmicks, and the Precarity of Hollywood Labor

News Brief: "Peak TV," Streamer Studio Accounting Gimmicks, and the Precarity of Hollywood Labor

In this News Brief, we talk with Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, authors of the new book Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers, about rising inequality and precarity in Hollywood, st...

6 Touko 47min

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