The Work Only Humans Can Do: Why Connection, Vocation, and Meaning Still Matter in a World of AI
Episode Notes
Episode Shownotes
What does it mean to live out our calling in a world increasingly shaped by technology, efficiency, and automation?
In this episode, Dr. Alison explores the deeper meaning of vocation — not simply as a job or career path, but as the unique way each of us is meant to bring care, creativity, and connection into the world.
Joined by sociologist Dr. Allison Pugh, professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Last Human Job, they reflect on what Dr. Pugh calls “connective labor” — the deeply human work of seeing others and allowing ourselves to be seen.
This episode explores:
-Why the most important part of vocation has almost nothing to do with your resume
-The hidden kind of work you’re doing every day
-The small moment that can restore dignity in an instant (and why most of us miss it)
-The tradeoff nobody talks about: when “more efficient” becomes “less human”
-The uncomfortable question technology can’t answer for you — and why it matters right now
-The choice you still have (even in a system that feels unchangeable)
As workplaces change and technologies like AI reshape how we interact, this conversation offers a grounding reminder: while tools may deliver information, they can never replace mutual presence, empathy, and relational connection.
More Resources:
📥 Grab your 3 free Soul Mending resources here
📖 Read The Last Human Job by Dr. Allison Pugh
If you liked this episode, then you’ll love the following:
Episode 171: Why People Pleasing Actually Makes You Feel More Alone
Episode 178: How to Recognize Toxic Tactics and Stop Taking the Bait
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
Thanks to our Sponsors!
- Quince - Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
*Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.
TRANSCRIPT
People cherish these connections or this capacity to be seen and to see others.
And in its absence, especially when it's being kind of limited by technology, people
really yearn for it and notice it. Will that be a moment where people go, no,
actually humanity and connection is what is valuable here. Seeing doesn't work if the
other person doesn't feel seen. While AI can make people feel seen because one side
of it is a machine, you can never have that mutuality.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. I'm so
glad you're here today. We're talking about something that sits right at the
intersection of spirituality, psychology, and everyday life, our work life.
I like to think of it as vocation, that deep inner sense each of us carries that
our presence in this world matters, that God in his tenderness and creativity crafted
us not simply to do things, but to offer something uniquely ours to the people and
places around us. And right now with all of these new technologies,
there's a lot of uncertainty in the workforce. A lot of people have been laid off.
There's ways in which we're trying to figure out our relationship to work. Some of
us are working from home. We're no longer going to offices. The truth is, Nothing,
not any of this chaos around us can replace the human sense of calling,
the way we are designed to show up in meaningful ways contributing to the world
around us. When I use this word vocation, I'm not just talking about a job title
or a resume line. I'm talking about that deeper sense of calling, the way your life
becomes a channel of care, of creativity, of connection in the world.
For some people that calling shows up in a career. In my family, we have lots of
different conversations about vocation. My daughter is interested in medicine, right?
She's interested in what it means to use her gifts and her natural interests to
comfort and to heal. people who are sick. My son and husband are both in
technology, right? Their minds light up around solving problems and building systems,
and that's part of how they bring a contribution to the world around us. For me,
my vocation has looked like sitting with people in their pain and helping people
like you, my readers, and my listeners reconnect to themselves and to God through
the work of psychology and faith and spiritual formation, right? All of these are
jobs that pay the bills, and that's good. We need those things no matter what we're
doing. One of my favorite jobs of all time was when I waited tables. I loved the
work of waiting on people, not just because it was a job and a paycheck, but
because it was caring for people, right? So these aren't just jobs. They're not
just... paychecks. They're a deeper sense of purpose, of vocation,
of calling. This word vocation, again, is more than a job, a role, or a career
path. Vocation is the deep. inner sense of how your life is meant to contribute
goodness to the world. It transcends job titles, whether you're raising kids,
teaching, whether you're an accountant, whether you're working at the grocery store,
it's your unique way of participating in God's ongoing work of creating,
restoring, nurturing, building, comforting, and blessing. Location shows up in our
gifts and our strengths, and it also shows up in our longings. It shows up in what
energizes you about whatever the work is that you do in your given day. Not
everything will energize you throughout your day, but some things will. That's part
of your calling. It shows up in what you bring to others, what brings meaning, not
just productivity. It shows up in the specific ways God made your presence life
-giving, no matter. what you're doing it includes the work you're paid for and the
work you offer simply because you're you because you care because you're creative
because your presence your wisdom your problem solving your compassion matters to this
world. Vocation is how your life becomes a channel of God's creativity and love to
this world. And it's rooted in our sense of self. Vocation is the imprint of God
in you. Scripture says in Ephesians 2 .10, we are God's workmanship created in Christ
Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. I love this
word workmanship. It means we are God's art crafted with intention created to offer
something from ourselves into the world around us, woven into that design as our
capacity for connection, for showing up in ways no one else can replicate. It's the
way God's love flows through you. And here's why this matters so much.
When we lose connection within our sense of calling, we become burnt out.
We fear loss. We start comparing ourselves to others. We lose that sense of
belonging, that larger sense of our connectedness to the world around us. We can
feel untethered, unmoored, like something inside of us isn't quite operating the way
that we were intended to operate in this world. Vocation,
calling, meaningful work isn't just what we do. It's part of who we are and who
God made us to be, which is why today's conversation felt so important, and I was
so grateful to have it. My guest, Dr. Allison Pugh, is a professor of sociology at
Johns Hopkins University, and she has spent years studying the work that only humans
can do, the work of attunement, of empathy. and connection her latest book is called
the last human job the work of connecting in a disconnected world.
It explores how we as humans are uniquely designed to carry this work of connection
in ways that no technology can ever replace. Her research is rich,
it's helpful and illuminating, and it shows that no matter what you're doing
throughout your day, whatever your work is, whatever pays the bills, whatever you've
given yourself to throughout the day -to -day course of your life, nothing can take
away what you uniquely have to offer to your kids, to your family,
to the community around you. And I cannot wait to share this conversation with you.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Allison Pugh.
I'm just so grateful you're here. I really, gosh, this was such a fun episode to
research and just came across your work kind of accidentally. And one of the things
I just want to start off with that I really appreciated about your book,
The Last Human Job, is that it's not just theory. You shadow teachers,
physicians, therapists, spiritual directors, veterinarians, a lot of... listening to
this audience are many therapists listen, people in ministry, spiritual directors.
So lots of folks who I think can relate. Lots of people who are helping others,
right? And you're trying to understand what connection really is. So before we kind
of dive into the technology piece and all of it, what surprised you most as you
spent time inside these professions about... this idea of human attunement. You call
it attunement. We talk about that a lot in the therapy world. I just thought it
was so... that you were looking at that outside of the therapy room and in these
other realms. It really transcends so much of our work life. It really does.
I would say that there were a bunch of surprises, but one of them was how similar
people sounded about their work. across a lot of different occupations and so the
the beginning part of this research was really like a journey of discovery where i
was like this sounds just like the doctors this sounds just like the teachers like
interesting i um the similarities i just kept being struck by the similarities again
and again um and and that's not i mean it's not that i didn't take seriously the
very real differences between say a therapist and I don't know, a soccer coach,
you know, like there's a lot that's different. Yes. But the way they did their
work, especially around the imperative of seeing the other and having the other
person feel seen, that's shared across many very disparate occupations.
I just love that. I never... thought about that but it really is sort of the
essential ingredient no matter what you're doing i think about it when i'm getting
my hair cut right the person the artist who has a skill set i do not have there's
an attunement there there's a relational quality there that transcends so many
different types of occupations you use this beautiful phrase connective labor to
describe Again, this work that only humans can do. What do you mean by connective
labor and why is it so essential to our work life and really all of our lives,
all of our interactions? Yeah. So connective labor is just that, the labor of seeing
the other and having the other person feel seen. And I'm someone who likes to put
names on things, labels on things, because I think without that, we...
Like it's an attention drawing resource to give something a name.
If we don't have a name for it, we don't know what we're protecting or worried
about or what's being threatened or how, etc. And there's a lot of other words out
there like emotional labor, affective labor, emotional intelligence.
But for a variety of reasons, I felt like none of those captured this exactly.
Interesting. And what do you mean? Like what when you're naming it? I love that
you're putting a name on what you were seeing across all of these.
You know, another similar word is attunement. But connective labor is a little
different. So what what is the essence of the quality that you're naming?
What are we? looking for? We know it when we see it or feel it, but what is it
that you were observing? Well, what I think is slightly different from attunement is
it's a kind of, I would call it deep reciprocity. It's a mutual achievement.
And I really want to call attention to that because emotional labor,
emotional intelligence, et cetera, all those kind of live within the seer. And it's
really vital to understand that seeing doesn't work if the other person doesn't feel
seen. So it is a dance between two people and or more.
And that's vital for a lot of reasons.
We'll talk later, I'm sure, about, you know, kind of automation and AI. And while
AI can... people feel seen because one side of it is a machine. You can never have
that mutuality. Right. So let's talk about that mutuality.
So a teacher, a therapist, a spiritual director, a doctor,
I'm intrigued by what you're saying because I think what you're saying is it's not
just the person conveying information. It's the recipient receiving that so that it
becomes Both people are benefiting from that.
Also, the person presumably giving the information. Is that right? Yeah, there's so
much to say about what you just said. The first thing is I would distinguish really
strongly. I draw a bright line between kind of just delivering information and
connecting in this way. I think many... engineers,
administrators, people that don't quite understand this work think that the job of a
physician or a teacher is just to deliver information. And I've actually spoken to
professionals or practitioners who can get frustrated, like, why don't these people
just get the information I'm trying to pass to them that I know from my years of
training, etc. But more people that I spoke to, most of them understood that it's
so much more than that. It's actually the relationship that makes that information
come alive, that makes it stick, that makes it relevant and resonant,
that it allows someone to hear you. So yeah, I wanted to make a big distinction
between, you know, information delivery and the relationship. Yeah, I've heard you
talk about how even thinking about the physician, we go to our physician, presumably
to get help, to get a diagnosis, to get medicine, but really what's happening there
is the relationship. is forming. And I've heard you say something to the effect of,
you know, a physician may have some ideas about what I need to do to be healthier.
But if they just give me the information, I mean, some people will do it, you
know, in some circumstances, you will do it, but often you need. that connection and
then earlier you had mentioned that like these there are benefits and that the
benefits go both ways yeah that's the other thing that i want to kind of um
emphasize from what you said that absolutely and i feel like that was another you
know kind of surprising and to me very profound um revelation because we are used
to i think talking about like kind of the benefits of this work for the patient or
for the student you know like yes many many physicians told me for example um the
relationship is what motivates the patient to take care of their health or whatever
so they're all everyone's on board with motivation of the recipient.
And that's the primary benefit of this relationship. But actually,
you know, I did five years of research, all these interviews and observations. And I
found that actually, when we talk about motivation for a patient or a client,
there's also motivation or what we would call purpose for the worker,
the practitioner, the teacher, the physician and the therapist and you can actually
kind of trace uh these kind of two -way benefits um all the way throughout through
so if you think that like being seen a human being offers dignity. Well,
it also kind of generates dignity for the seer,
what we might call humanity. They kind of got in touch with their inner humanity.
So it kind of goes both ways. And we don't talk about that too much.
How does observing of that shape your own professional?
Mindset and understanding of your own work. Yeah. So for me, my connective labor,
you know, I'm as you can tell, I was like finding it everywhere. So all the
different ways that all the different moments that I experience it for sure in in
-depth interviewing, which is the way I do my research. So that's a very fundamental.
you know, kind of moment of connective labor, but also teaching even in a college
classroom. And then for sure, my PhD advising with kind of graduate students.
So that's a very intense one -on -one experience where I'm trying to kind of see
their truth to kind of elicit the research project that they want to do,
you know, that kind of thing. So it's changed. The research changed,
made me more aware of probably what I knew already.
I think the reason why I did this work is probably because I was seeing it in my
own, you know, kind of professional life already.
I could imagine, but it probably brought it to the surface because I thought about
that when I was researching is, you know, even the people with whom I work now,
even, you know, technically I have someone here to help me out with the technology.
There's connection. It's not just, and this is kind of takes me to the next part
of the conversation because on some level, and I love how the book ends very
hopefully, we're living in a world that is making it harder to do the human work,
right? Some folks might say we think about AI taking over jobs. We see layoffs.
And this way in which our work, whatever it may be, has been such a fundamental
part of our sense of purpose and how we contribute to the world and also how we
connect with others.
And I've been thinking about that because I am somebody who, and this isn't even
about AI, this is just about the pandemic, kind of went from, you know, working in
an office to working mostly from home. And suddenly I find myself like my husband
works from home and suddenly our relationship, we become off connection.
It's a different layer to our relationship, even though we don't work in the same
field, we're not in the same area, but we're suddenly each other's work colleagues.
Yeah. So we're going to find connections somehow right now. Or the folks who are
helping me with the technology that now makes it possible. There's suddenly connective
labor there, right? There's ways. So that's kind of the backdrop. I was thinking
about it as I thought to myself, no matter how much technology comes in, we're
going to have to find this connective tissue. How do you...
First of all, let's say the bad news. How do you see the world making it harder
for kind of this deeply human work where connection is sort of the primary
facilitator? And then I want to get to how can we continue to prioritize it
regardless of what's happening in our technological landscape? The bad news is we
are, you know, kind of making it harder. And there's many trends that are
contributing to that. And actually, I think that AI is actually just,
I would say, what do we call that? The leading edge of the spear or whatever. You
know, it's actually just an extension of trends that have been going on for decades
where we kind of try and capture. I would say organizations or institutions are
trying to capture connective labor to make it more predictable and reproducible and
measurable. You can almost see their frustration about how out of control these,
you know, kind of interpersonal feelings are. And can't we just kind of get a
handle on all that chaos? And so they've done a lot of scripting and they've done
a lot of data analytics, which I end up calling counting. So they're like kind of
dominated by, you know, trends of scripting and counting. And that's been happening,
you know, spreading out from, say, teaching, which has experienced it for decades.
Yeah, where you're teaching to test, teaching to metrics. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And then there's like a kind of low wage retail, like maybe hairdressing
there, you know. increasingly being asked to you know finish up within 22 minutes
one of my interviewees told me exactly and it's actually breading out into,
you know, kind of high wage professionals, say physicians or, you know, and and
therapists are interesting because they've really been able to hold off a lot of
that. But I looked, I interviewed and observed therapists in,
you know, things like VA hospitals where they're. really being corralled and managed
into very tight time windows. And so that's very unlike the therapist who gets to
kind of see people for as long as they want and don't take insurance. And so
there's a very wide range of how much therapists are subject to this kind of
efficiency imperative, but it's really spreading across the economy.
And it's affecting um it's it's it's on some level quite antithetical to simply
seeing somebody and establishing those connections in all their fullness yeah and uh
you know you could say that ai is just the next step like if we're already trying
to kind of corral this then like why not make it more efficient and why not you
know that kind of thing That's a really good point. You think about customer service
over the last 20 years, where it's gone from someone really a thing,
you know, where you have an art to being service oriented. You know, I picture my
grandparents think, you know, how they thought of customer service, right? To where,
you know, when I grew up, you know, it's just, it doesn't feel human, even though
it is. There's sort of a script in it. and many buttons you have to push till you
even get too human to what you're saying you're right to now almost maybe i should
just talk to a robot because you know it might be right right so that's been
eroding for a long time i get what you're saying and that's a really good point
and so so how do we i guess there's a couple of questions how do we hang on to
ourselves through inevitable change how do we not you know i think there's that that
part of us that wants to just fight it you know um but it's coming it's already
here to your point to some degree we've already been muddling through reduced
connectivity a lot of us i think go to the the doctor and notice it you know it's
no longer a real conversational relationship it's sort of a bureaucratic list of
questions and nobody wants to step outside of the lines and It's not, you know,
so how do we, I'm not sure what my question is, I guess, how do we remember our
worth both? And I'm thinking both of the folks who are in the professions, right?
Those of us who are noticing we're not able to do what we wish we could do, but
also those of us on the other side of it, to your point, there's two sides of it.
It's not good for either person involved. How do we, what do we do?
I mean, I completely agree. And I also don't think it's good for like our
communities or our democracy. I think, you know, being seen across these different,
in these different, you know, kind of spaces, being seen by your barista, being seen
by your librarian, being seen by your hairdresser, like these are all different kind
of moments of connection that matter, especially like in a kind of cumulative way,
for sure. So yeah, I think it's vital. The only thing I would say, about your kind
of prefatory comments here. You made a comment about inevitable change.
And that's where I'm going to push back. And that's where I find the light at the
end of the tunnel. Because it's not inevitable. The inevitability of it is part of
the hype machine that's coming out of, you know. I don't know, those that are
purveying industrial logic, but certainly the AI companies in Silicon Valley.
But I was glad to write chapter eight,
which was all about places that are actually prioritizing connective labor right this
second. Like they're not needing a world revolution or, you know, the U .S.
to grow a welfare state where it doesn't have one, you know. Instead, it's like
right this second, they have some unique constellation of circumstances that enable
them to prioritize seeing and being seen.
And that's... I think that's, of course, on the administrators,
but it's also on workers, those that have choices,
to make choices based on rewarding organizations that take it seriously,
that take attention seriously. And then as consumers, as you said,
we're the patients, the clients, the students, and the consumers. We have some power
also in kind of choosing those kind of circumstances,
factors, organizations, practitioners that make the space for this.
And I think that will have an effect, that plus regulation and all sorts of
advocacy on a kind of much bigger macro level. Yeah. So I'd love I'd love what
you're saying. It's not inevitable. We have choice both as workers and consumers. And
I love that. I I even as a consumer, I was thinking about this customer service
thing because I noticed in myself getting tremendously inhuman and heated when you're
dealing with trying to call someone things like Verizon. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
and reminding. I mean, I had this experience very recently. I was like in the
Hyatt. I think I was in some mass chain. asking for an extended checkout,
a late checkout. And they had a fake AI, like an AI, but one that they were
disguising as a human. So she had, it was a she and she had like kind of, she
had, you could hear her breaths and she had pauses and um, and a kind of cute
style. And I was like, oh my God. And she was like, so you want an express
checkout? And I'm like, no, you know, it was very frustrating. So this,
I mean, this is a very real example of right hanging on to our humanity on the
consumer side, which because in the past I could say, let's say it's tense. This is
a human at the very least. And I'll say, I don't care if they're, you know, you're
a human. I'm sorry. I got frustrated. This is hard. And you can have, you can find
the human connection, no matter how much the institutional organization is trying to
bury it. But in that situation, right. Yeah. You're,
you know, it's tricky. It's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. Give me some examples.
Go ahead. And I'm curious about some examples that you found of where folks are
fighting this. But I'm curious. Yeah. Some of the examples, my favorite example was
a clinic, which was a little crazy in how much it
prioritized connected labor so that instead of the 20 minutes for an appointment,
people had essentially two hours for their first appointment.
And I think they had, maybe it went down to, I forget, an hour and 40 minutes or
something for the second, you know, like long time. And then they had the medical
assistant who they had kind of amped up to a bigger job go with patients.
accompany patients to specialists and it was just so profound and i had was talking
to these medical assistants saying like i wish my parents had this everyone deserves
this yes you know and it was so inspiring um so yeah that that's really great i
have to think that uh i'll say this maybe on my more pessimistic days I think that
that is not possible on a wide scale. And instead,
I think much more likely is the kind of deployment that we're seeing now.
So the example of the customer service bots or whatever is a great example where
they are deploying AI to handle the easy cases and then the complex cases go to a
human being and you and i and others know this that like if you're like getting
really frustrated just go agent agent agent and it will take you to a human being
yes and that is one version yeah of the future that we are all getting
It's it's it's something I think, again, both as participants, whatever, you know,
and then those of us. And my heart goes out to folks who, to your point, we want
to try to continue to provide a connection and a care.
But there are times when you can't and you need the work. And if someone's telling
you to read a script or keep it to 10 minutes, you know, just trying to find
your. Your humanity within that. Yeah.
Is going to be. I mean, I. Yeah, that's really true. And I've talked to people who
whose jobs have been. I mean, I would call that corroded.
Maybe other people might not agree, but. Yeah, like whose jobs have been.
organized in that fashion to me though when I talk to people about what people got
out of this job they talked about how meaningful it was and when they talked about
it when they were burnt out or drowning in it or overburdened or you know needing
the kind of escape that a 10 minute script would give them.
It was more about how they were working for a place that didn't allow them the
space to see someone else well. So I felt sympathy for them going,
you know, I'm burned out and I just need a break. And, you know, a little AI
would do me a great job, you know, do me a great favor. But at the same time,
I didn't want us to lose sight of the fact that If they were able to see the
other and have the time to do that, they would not be screaming for AI to help
them. Yes, that's right. The burnout, because to your point, there's a dignity on
the person who is doing the seeing. And when you deprive them of that, it's not
good for them either. right right and it leads to that burnout and that
demoralization um yeah yeah what do you see so i want us to kind of head back to
the beginning and be like let's solve that part instead of like saying here let's
get you a scribe or whatever yeah yes yes interesting well so let's get to so
suddenly i felt a spark of hope what is the hope in this this is kind of What
I'm wondering, if the human, our need for purpose, our desire for connection and
creativity will begin to, I love what you just said, oh, what I need to do is get
back to the connection. Yeah. And we'll find ways to do that. What do you see as
the hope? That is my hope.
It's my, I also have a fairly gloomy. version of it but maybe i'll just take you
down the really hopeful one first which is it is it does feel like you know people
cherish this um these connections or this capacity to feel to be seen and to see
others they they value it tremendously yeah and um and in its absence especially uh
when it's being kind of transformed or limited by technology,
people really yearn for it and notice it. So that's suggestive that maybe there
might be some pushback. There will definitely be a retrenchment at some point.
We're not always going to be like kind of hurtling towards embracing AI in every
single corner of our lives. It's just a little crazy moment that we're in right
now. So there will be retrenchment. And my question is, in that retrenchment moment,
if it comes in two, five or 10 years, will that be a moment where people go,
no, actually, humanity and connection is what is valuable here? Yes.
I mean, I hope that that's true. I know people feel that way. The question is
whether they will be able to express it and find it. Yeah. Yeah. Listening to you,
reading the book, that was my big takeaway is I want to be someone, whatever I'm
doing, that's trying to bring that in somehow. And you do. This is doing that.
Well, you know, I mean, we're in a screen. We're not in person. But I want, I
really, that's one thing I've really gotten from your work is this is the
irreplaceable thing is the connection. between us yes exactly right you can't replace
it and it means something and it matters we have to figure that out whatever that's
the thing we can hang on to whatever's happening we can't we can't control amazon
we can't control you know the powers that be we can't control everything but we can
control the moment we're in to some degree and until as you're saying i love what
you're saying you know the dust will settle somewhere um it will I mean, I have to
say that part of the fight here is a fight about evidence because you can't really
count this work very well. It's a very qualitative kind of experience.
And that kind of evidence is sometimes...
kind of disparaged as, oh, just testimonials or, oh, just stories. And people,
even kind of policymakers know that stories drive, you know,
emotion, but they really rely on, you know, randomized controlled trials and
statistical evidence to kind of make policy. So this is a really,
at its core, we have to be able to rally the troops.
the connective labor troops around asserting the importance of this kind of evidence
also. And that's why I wanted this to be about like maybe alternative means of
moving needles, like using art and using poetry and using novels and using,
you know, like just trying to kind of touch people in their hearts where they might
be able to hear these. and profundities that we all experience.
And we just know, I love what you're saying. And here you are at the middle of
Johns Hopkins, which is a very research scientifically driven institution.
I mean, of all of them, it's probably the most in some ways. Yeah.
Waving your flag for, you know, for connected labor, connective labor.
And I love it. I just, I think it's beautiful. I love what you're doing. I want
to encourage you. I came, you know, we were in Boston for just personally,
we were in Boston and then the pandemic allowed us to spend more time in the, I
grew up in a little town in Wyoming and it's allowed us to be here more because
honestly, there's, you know, there's more we can do remotely. But I will say being
in a smaller rural area and outside of sort of an academic world, the things you're
talking about are everywhere. Everywhere. and those connections.
And it's almost like it's such a healthy, right? Like my dignity in pouring this
cup of coffee for someone is so profound because I'm seeing them every day.
And I'm just like, that is, you know, it doesn't matter what my work is.
And I caught a little bit more of it. And I see you doing such a beautiful job
of through research, through trying to gather the evidence, through talking to people,
kind of wave that flag for this connective labor that brings us meaning in life and
in our work and no matter what we're doing. So I just want to encourage you. I
just thought it was beautiful and grateful that you are. part of bringing the
evidence, right? Bringing the data to say, no, no, this is it. Well, thank you.
Thank you so much. And I love hearing that about where you are, because I don't
spend that much time in more rural places. And so that's really terrific to hear.
You hear so much about kind of a, I don't know, alienation or loneliness.
And of course, you hear that about urban environments, but you also hear it about,
you know, rurality. So it's just really nice to hear that you're... a lot of
connection there yeah there's it yeah it's it's it's a very interesting that would
be it so as a sociologist i i would love for your analysis because i'm just
speaking purely anecdotally but there's a there is a quantifiable difference you know
just one little example when when we were gone for a long time in the suburbs of
boston And then we went back during the pandemic and people didn't know that we
were gone. Oh, no, really? Now, that might say something about us,
but it's a bedroom community. Folks live there and don't work there, right? That
wouldn't happen. You know, it's almost here. It's almost like, gosh, I wish I was a
little more anonymous. You know, people don't run around. But it's just anecdotally
and sociologically, you know, I love your, you know, that lens. It's like something
is going on here. That amidst the backdrop of this technology conversation is
interesting in how we're going to move forward as a people who live in need to be
connected to one another. Yes, exactly. And what you're describing is so interesting
because of the drawback or the costs of privacy,
you know, and like people want privacy. But also it makes us into these little
islands. And part of what's so important is to bridge those islands.
Yes. And to do so requires a little oomph to get over the inertia.
And some of that oomph is already provided in places where,
you know, you see each other every day. I have hope based on that because I just
think, oh, yeah, we will figure this out. But tell my listeners,
I love, I could keep going just back and forth because I just think it's such an
interesting, tell my listeners where they can find your book. We'll link to it, but
just give us the name of it and a little bit of what you hope folks will come
away from as they read it. It's such a beautiful piece of work. Oh, thank you.
Yeah, so. You can get The Last Human Job for sure at Princeton University Press.
You can get it on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Yeah,
it's pretty widely. It's still, I think, pretty widely out there. And what do I
hope people get from it? I wrote this book to kind of highlight the...
profound and vital work that people do to connect to the other and I felt like
that work was invisible, kind of taken for granted, assumed if you were a woman,
ignored if you were a man and I wanted us to kind of put it under a microscope
and look at what makes it like what enables it and what makes it more what makes
it more difficult to do and and also the threats that were posed by automation and
ai so i want i was kind of someone one of my reviewers called it a love letter
to connecting and and that is true i love it it is definitely a love letter to
connecting i love it but it's also about um you know kind of This is something we
need to preserve and protect against these kind of urgent threats. I love it.
Thank you. Thanks for just sharing your wisdom and thanks for just shining that
light. I think it's beautiful and important and I'm grateful to have you here today.
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for joining me for this week's
episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to
subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or watch
podcasts and click the plus or follow button. That'll ensure you don't miss an
episode and it helps get the word out to others. While you're there, I'd love it
if you leave a five -star review. And be sure to join us each weekday for The Best
of You Every Day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your mornings with a
steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor
God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God -given self.