Ben Waterhouse on the Dream and Reality of Self Employment

Ben Waterhouse on the Dream and Reality of Self Employment

One recent study found that 81% of businesses in the United States have zero employees. That is, they are run by sole proprietors, working for and by themselves, The ideal of self-employment has become dominant in our culture, too. More Americans than ever dream of becoming an entrepreneur, an independent owner, a founder.

But for all of its prevalence in our economy and in our imaginations, the origins of this impulse are a bit hazy. When did so many of us begin to idolize self-employment? What might it reveal about broader shifts in the employment landscape in the 20th and 21st centuries? In his new book, One Day I'll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America, Ben Waterhouse answers precisely those questions. He explains how the rise of self-employment dates back to the economic transformations of the 1970s and intensified during the decades of precarity that followed. In our wide-ranging conversation, we touch on everything from franchise jurisprudence to the gig economy to the surprising story behind the Sam Adams beer company.

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Kendra Boyd on Black Business and Racial Capitalism during the Great Migration

Kendra Boyd on Black Business and Racial Capitalism during the Great Migration

Take a moment and picture the average person who came North during the Great Migration. Chances are good that you conjured someone who was African-American and working-class, bound for a city in searc...

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Trish Kahle on Energy Citizenship and Coal-Fired Democracy in the 20th Century U.S.

Trish Kahle on Energy Citizenship and Coal-Fired Democracy in the 20th Century U.S.

What do energy consumers owe energy producers? What does it mean to be a citizen in a coal-fired democracy? In this month's episode, guest Trish Kahle reckons with the costs and benefits of coal from ...

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Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship

Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship

How do you write the history of something as abstract, as placeless, and as vast as the globalization that has remade our world over the past several decades? If you're Ian Kumekawa, you make those i...

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Koji Hirata on Steel, Industrialization, and Chinese Socialism

Koji Hirata on Steel, Industrialization, and Chinese Socialism

This month's episode looks at the history of Chinese industrialization by focusing on Anshan Iron and Steel Works or Angang, located in Manchuria. Long portrayed as the quintessential model of Mao-era...

2 Touko 202533min

LIVE! @ BHC 2025

LIVE! @ BHC 2025

It's now been over a decade since the New York Times declared that the history of capitalism was in full swing at American universities. This podcast also just celebrated its 10 year anniversary. With...

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Justene Hill Edwards on the Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

Justene Hill Edwards on the Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

In this month's episode Justene Hill Edwards leads listeners on a deep dive into the rise and fall of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, also known as the Freedman's Bank. Among the topics expl...

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Erik Baker on the Entrepreneurial Century

Erik Baker on the Entrepreneurial Century

Back in high school, my social studies teacher—who was, of course, also the football coach—told my class that entrepreneurs were the heroes of American history. If we enjoyed a dynamic economy and goo...

3 Helmi 202539min

Mary Bridges on Bankers and the Dawn of American Empire

Mary Bridges on Bankers and the Dawn of American Empire

Looking back from our contemporary vantage point, the United States' global capitalist empire looks both omnipresent and inevitable. Much of the world's trade is denominated in dollars. American finan...

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