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Learn moreIn a wide-ranging narrative that takes us from a downsized marketing executive in Massachusetts, to a father of three in Appalachia finding purpose and meaning working in a convenience store chain, to an unemployed autoworker retraining in "advanced manufacturing," Shell reveals how work is essential to our flourishing and pyschological well-being—and how so many of the avenues to well-paid and meaningful work will be challenged in the years ahead. The future of work is not being faced openly. We live in a world where the rewards of employment are concentrated in the hands of the few. Today, the top 10 percent of wage earners in the U.S. bring home 9 times the income of the other 90 percent, and the top .01 percent earn 184 times as much. The economic gap between the few and the many is so vast, Shell says, that we might as well be members of a different species. Moreover, since the 1970s, real wages for most of us have stagnated, and with it our purchasing power. Half of all Americans earn less than 30,000 dollars a year. And the paths to landing those good-paying jobs that secure our financial future are disappearing in the wake of automation and the rise of AI.
Ellen Ruppel Shell is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly magazine and has written about science and medicine for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, National Geographic, Time, Discover, the Boston Globe, and dozens of other national publications. She is also the author of The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry, which has been published in six languages. Shell is a professor of journalism at Boston University, where she codirects the graduate program in science journalism.
Chris Sorensen is a veteran audiobook narrator with over 160 titles to his name. He has received three AudioFile Earphones Awards, and his recording of Sent by Margaret Peterson Haddix (Recorded Books, LLC) was selected as one of the Best Audiobooks of 2010 by AudioFile magazine. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA and the APA. Chris has worked extensively as an actor, playwright, and screenwriter. He studied at the Rutgers Professional Actor Training Program under William Esper, Edward Stern, and Maggie Flanigan. He is an original member of the Present Company, producers of FringeNYC. The Thin Air Theatre Company of Colorado considers him their playwright-at-large and has produced thirteen of his plays over the past twelve years. He has numerous optioned screenplays and has recently completed his first book for kids, The Mad Scientists of New Jersey.