Hey everybody — check it out! I’m excited + grateful to share this episode of Working 2050. 

it’s here.

the show notes/transcript are below.

Thank you so much to Sierra Doss, Kamal Sinclair, Katie In, and Kae Brachta for making this happen.

Working 2050 is a speculative oral history about workers of the future.

We talk to people about what they do all day and how they feel about it. 

Then we write science fiction about what the future might look in 2050.

“Welcome! To! Accept! Your! Death! I’m your host Sam Okafor.”

Listen to the episode here.

CREDITS: 

Concept and Script: H Kapp-Klote  

2020 Interviewee: Kamal Sinclair 

2050 Interviewee:  Sierra Doss

Host/"Interviewer" (2020/2050):  H Kapp-Klote

Editing, Mixing, Engineering, Sound Design: Katie In

Story Editing: Kae Bara Kratcha

EPISODE 1.02 TRANSCRIPT:

VOICEOVER: This is Working 2050. Working 2050 is a speculative oral history about workers of the future.  

We talk to people about what they do all day and how they feel about it. Then we write science fiction about what the future might look like in 2050. 

I’m H. 

When I started working on this project, one problem came up over and over again. 

It was distracting, not just for the people who listened to the first episode, but for me. I felt like I couldn’t really move forward on the project until we addressed it and pointed out the elephant in the room.

Here’s the problem: often, when you ask people about the future, about what they think people will do all day and how they will feel about it, they don’t have an answer. 

Not because they’re clueless or unimaginative. 

They just don’t think that we have a future.

That anyone has a future.

They don’t think the world has a future at all. At least, not one with humanity in it. They see the potential four degree rise in temperature as such a seismic shift that they simply, don’t have any hope.

It’s hard to imagine a hopeful future with a reality like that. 

It’s hard to think about the end of the world as we know it, even if you’re not particularly enamored with this world as it is, with all its horrors. But it’s way harder to imagine a hopeful future when in your heart you don’t believe that future is possible.

So what does it feel like to not believe in a future? 

And does it matter if we imagine hopeful futures anyway?

—

By 2015, I’d made a lot of mistakes at work, in community organizing. 

Choices I had made, whether it was turning away from the pain of people directly impacted by what I was working on, or not speaking up about decisions I didn’t agree with, had hurt people.

I didn’t see the point of changing, of trying to grow. 

Once I had messed up enough, I stopped believing anything could change. 

I didn’t believe in a hopeful future, not just for the world, but for me.

And looking back, part of me wonders if I hoped there wouldn’t be a future, so my choices wouldn’t matter. So I wouldn’t have to face them.

But here’s the thing: we might not know a lot about the future, and we might not have much faith in a hopeful one, we do know that there’s no such thing as no future at all. 

Even when everything collapses, other people, other worlds have survived collapse, invasion, genocide, environmental disasters and more. Even the most catastrophic scenarios for temperature rise, climate change, still leave some people still here, no matter how few.

And if there’s still a future for someone, our choices still matter. Future still matters.

So: who do you want to be on the way to the future?

-

KAMAL QUOTE: You're looking at potentially every human being on the planet being able to have food, education, health care and housing with everybody on the planet only working 4 hours a day 4 days a week. That is the projection, if, and there is a huge if, if that abundant resource can be used in that equitable egalitarian manner and if it is not co-opted. If it is co-opted by the extremes of wealth and poverty then we are gonna see the opposite of that.

VOICEOVER: That was Kamal Sinclair, one of the founders of the Future Architects Guild.

She’s spent years connecting people, collaborating, and imagining hopeful futures: futures where humanity doesn’t just survive, it flourishes, able to overcome the capitalist, individualist, white supremacist structures we live in right now.

KAMAL QUOTE: I had a conversation when I was doing this research with Eroquim Mohawk women from Canada Skowinatie. She runs the Indigenous Futures program, an incredible group of people that are looking at seven years forward in their speculative world. I asked her, "How do you feel about a future where there is only 4 hours a day, 4 days a week of work available?" and she said, "GREAT! I come from a culture where work was never supposed to be the majority of your day. Work was supposed to be a part of your day and the rest of the day or week supposed to be balanced between service to the trade, time with family, time with the community and time for creativity. That's the balance, everybody just doing this 20th century model of factory based, kill yourself ,10 hours a day then come home and wait for retirement so you could actually enjoy your life. That is not the kind of work that we understand as the value system." She saw this as a liberating opportunity if we could identify it.

VOICEOVER: The future that Kamal describes, The many hopeful futures she is connected to, are based in abundance. They’re fundamentally joyful. 

KAMAL QUOTE:  I was talking to my sister who is my idol when I was a little girl, she was older than me and to this day I just have so much respect and admiration for a life lived. She has raised two children with her partner and those two children are grown adults now and I love them, they are so impressive to me. Anyway, I love the life that she made and she invested a lot in her family and time with them. 

She would get up at the 4 in the morning and not get home till 7:30 or 8 for 20 odd years. I so admired her and her tenacity to be able to do that. I don't know if I could have done that. Then her weekends are completely her kids and then they would take big vacations and spend time. Her kids just came out amazing. I asked her about the idea of the future of work and I told her about the 79% of the work force being outmoded. She had this fear and said, "Oh my god what are people going to do? That's not fair." She said, "Sure a robot could check out somebody's groceries, but that's someone's job. That's someones livelihood. That's someone's identity. That's not fair to take that away from them even if a robot can do it." I said, "You know I understand that concern for sure and I think that's why we need to have a process where people can contribute to how they want to accept, reject or adjust to these technologies so that their own identity... so that they have some self-determination and agency over how their own identity evolves or changes or doesn't." I said, "Let's take you for example, you have spent I can't even imagine how many hours over 20 years on a train and working 40-50 hour work week as well. If you were able to cut that time to a third, what would you have done with the rest of your time? Would you freak out and no idea what you were gonna do with your time? Or would you have started the arts youth group that you have been talking about for 20 years that you wanted to establish?" She said, "Oh heck yeah, I would start that arts youth group and I would be running it." 

In our first episode, Rabbi Menahem said the world needs more people who are doing things that make them come alive.

The futures Kamal describes are futures where more people are more alive — no matter what they do all day.  

Where people have time to do the things they love. When people can heal from the things that have made their lives difficult, and we can heal from centuries of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. Where choices matter. 

So after I talked with Kamal, I wrote a science-fiction story set in that kind of future, in 2050.

That’s what you’re about to hear now.

Welcome to Working 2050– a centennial celebration of Studs Terkel’s oral history. 

This episode is called Game Show Host. 

(DESCRIPTION OF SAM OKAFOR: Chani Nicolas on a podcast energy but if she were a Gemini. The refraction of Ursula Delaney in the sense that Ursula Delaney was a mysterious figure who just wanted to hang out with children and play dumb games, this person is everyone’s favorite uncle who is going to agitate you abt your war crimes.)

VOICEOVER: Sam Okafor is the host and experience designer of Accept Your Death. 

Billionaires, former political leaders able to escape trial by fleeing to their own private biome, -- Sam approaches everyone with grace and empathy. She doesn’t condemn or forgive. 

Here’s a clip from last week’s show:

Welcome! To! Accept! Your! Death! I’m your host Sam Okafor and this is episode 3470. Today we’re talking with Jeff!

For those who don’t watch Accept Your Death, particularly our… older, more punitive listeners, here’s how it works. 

Each episode is a 24 hour live stream of archival footage, personal interviews, and the occasional clay text scare. It recreates the life of a single contestant, not just for the audience but for the contestant themselves, with Sam as a facilitator.

 But the hook, the real reason everybody watches? It’s because all of the guests are people thought to be irredeemable.

Jeff! What else does our audience at home need to know about you?

I think that is it. Ha ha, I’m pretty uninteresting.

Is that what you think? That’s too bad. What about your time at Exxon in the 70s?

I, uh…

Is that why you didn’t tell anyone about what Exxon was doing to the planet, why you didn’t prevent the Horrors? Because you didn’t think what you said mattered?

I… 

Jeff, that’s okay, you don’t have to answer right now. But while you think, I want to show you something we made for the episode -- it’s a picture of your hometown, Miami. 

It’s underwater now, right?

That’s… that’s right. 

This is what it would have looked like today, if climate protections had been followed w hi hen you had information about it, in the 70s. It’s beautiful, huh?

I…

Is it based on a gimmick? Absolutely.  ...But it’s a good gimmick. 

Sam doesn’t just torment her guests, just to make them suffer, though that would be enough for me to watch. 

Instead, Sam brings out contestants’ best selves by asking them to remember a simple fact: they are going to die. Even when the gimmicks keep escalating, Sam focuses on giving her guests a choice. Even if it’s a really… Not great choice.

SAM: Jeff, I know this has been a rough 24 hours for you. it’s OK to cry. No one here is judging you, at least not for anything you’re doing right now. 

We showed you a time lapsed 3D model of your childhood home eroding underwater, and a choreographed musical number about ways that your fear of failure allowed you to stay silent in the 80s and 90s. But it’s time to forget about the past Jeff, because the only thing that you can control right now is this moment right now (Studio audience says along with her). are you ready to talk about your death?

JEFF: (Shaky cry breath) I am. I am.

SAM: How are you feeling right now? Of everything you’ve seen

JEFF: disgusted with myself. Horrified. Just… I can’t believe I let this happen, that I was so afraid that I just… Didn’t pay attention.

SAM: well, we know why it happened Geoff, remember the dance number on your attachment issues andyour loyalty to Exxon?

JEFF: (more crying)

SAM: so Jeff, you and I both know that there’s nothing you can do to change the past. We can’t go back in time. But what I wanna know, when you look at everything that’s happened before, that you regret. What do you want to do now? What’s the one thing that if you died, and you are going to die Jeff, if you died right now take a look at your imagined decomposing skeleton on the screen there, what would you regret most?

JEFF: I guess… I guess, I would regret having never apologized. To anybody, for any of it. I’ve never apologized to my kids, for the world they have to live in, because I’ve been too afraid to own it, to say that this is on me, I am responsible for this. 

SAM: and do you choose to be responsible for this? Are you going to own it after what you’ve seen today?

NARRATOR: it’s worth saying that at this point the 3-D skeleton is turning to dust.

JEFF: Yes. I want to apologize.

SAM: Beautiful Jeff. Really beautiful. When we come back we’re gonna help you do that just that. Let’s take a break folks. We’ll be back after a brief PSA. 

That focus on choice makes some episodes genuinely powerful, and the bad ones… well, palatable. With the AU justice system is still very much under construction, where cooperative courts can feel like everyone is making it up as they go along, and most of the real people who did the fans in the horrors that killed millions, now reside in Amazon territory or their own private biome, heavily defended and invulnerable to militias, Sam’s show can be truly healing.

Just as importantly it makes viewers at home ask the question: who do I want to be, before I die?

I decided to ask Sam a few questions myself.

—

SAM: Hey hey! 

NARRATOR: Hello! 

Thanks for agreeing to talk with me!

SAM: Yes. Of course. I feel like when I’ve interrogated so many people about their life story, that if anybody asks me to do a real interview... Then I have to do it.

NARRATOR: Well… Thank you.

SAM: Thank you.

NARRATOR: So… Walk me through a typical preparation for a show, or a typical day.

SAM: Well, there is no typical day. For any of us, ever, you know? We are all fractals, spiraling in infinite loops, and every single second is Infinitely different from the previous one, sending us spiraling down a path that is impossible to replicate or recreate.  

(Awkward silence)

Sorry, I’m just kidding. Usually in the morning, I meditate, spend some time reflecting on who I am and how I got here, pray. 

I feel like my persona is somebody who’s just like constantly praying, self-flagellating, LSD all day every day, you know? I’m too old for that. I don’t pray. Unless a contestant cancels last minute. (laugh)

But the show is big enough at this point that people don’t really cancel, you know? I think they’re afraid I’m gonna put a picture of their decomposed corpse on the show Jumbotron and fly it around the Midwest. 

But we only did that for Jeff Bezos. You can’t do that more than once.

What about you? You pray? Do any mega meditation or anything like that?

NARRATOR: Uh… not really. 

SAM: Just curious. people are usually dying to tell me about their spiritual transformation. I met this guy who put fishing lures in his back, kept sending me pictures, asking me if I wanted to have him on the show.

 If you’re using that to transform your life and your choices that’s fantastic! But I don’t wanna put fish hooks in your back! 

NARRATOR: Yikes. 

What do you do to relax, beyond fish hooks? Does your Cooperative have any good games right now?

SAM: I’m not in a cooperative. I’m a little suspicious of them to be honest. My mom got kicked out of hers right before I was born. She had an autoimmune disorder and while she was pregnant she couldn’t work or pay any of the fees. 

So they kicked her out. Nice community. 

a lot of the people who work on the show, they don’t have cooperatives, didn’t grow up in them either. it’s a little anti-cooperative cooperative, I think.

NARRATOR: Did your mom try to join another cooperative?

SAM: No. She died. 

NARRATOR: Oh. 

(No one says anything for a second.)

SAM: Sorry.  For somebody who spends all day asking people hard questions, I thought this would make me a little bit less nervous. Let me take a deep breath here. (She does) 

Can I ask you a question? It makes me feel a little bit less stressed to ask questions.

NARRATOR: Sure.

SAM: Why are you making this? Why the retro audio only deal?

NARRATOR: I don’t know really. I started making these a couple of years ago, had a lot of nervous energy and free time.

SAM: Oooooh. I hear that. 

NARRATOR: My dad, I don’t know, all the older people in my cooperative… They were just always so busy. They’re always doing things, things that matter to them, or processing what already happened to them. they just did so much all the time. Social services, inventing new antibiotic strains, budget and infrastructure, precision fermenting, militia building, you know…

SAM: Yeah. People in cooperatives love to be busy. 

NARRATOR: And… My dad was always really big on, do whatever you want, follow your purpose, your passion, I don’t care what it is! 

But… I don’t really want to do anything. 

So I thought… maybe it will help to see what other people do all day.  

SAM: I see. It’s like am I normal?

NARRATOR: I guess so.

SAM: I see. My mom was big on Not Doing. Not in a healing committee way, like a scheduled mindfulness project, just… Not doing things.  

She called it the right to be boring.

NARRATOR: Yeah?  What do you think of that? Uh, the right to be boring? 

SAM: yeah. It’s not real. My mom didn’t do “nothing,” she had an autoimmune disorder. She couldn’t make product for the cooperative, couldn’t “contribute “ but she sure as hell wasn’t doing nothing. When she was being tried, there’s a lot of focus on her choice, her choice to do nothing. In her hearing they said she chose to lay in bed all day, to skip important cooperative meetings, to get Pregnant when she knew she had this disease. She didn’t choose any of that, except to have me, and that’s a choice thousands of people every day make without losing their home or dying.

The thing she actually chose was to be one of the most present people I’d ever seen. The things we call “nothing”? Most of the time, those are the most important things anybody can do. 

NARRATOR: being present is important. it sounds like your mom was pretty important to me.

SAM: yeah… But she wasn’t excited to be part of the team, you know what I mean? She was bored, visibly bored, at the meetings where people were talking about hierarchy and budgets and their personal drama.  

That's all anybody saw, that she was falling asleep during meetings and not following the rules. 

NARRATOR: That’s sad. 

SAM: Sure, it sure is. 

NARRATOR: tell me about how you started the show. Why do you talk to hated people?

SAM: they were the only people who would go on my stream!

That was in the 30s. Media was totally busted. It was just me and the world’s worst self actualization AI. I didn’t even own it, I borrowed from my friend. 

He was a real streamer, an esports guy. sometimes he would come over in the middle of the worst moment of a contestants life and be like, “hey man, my next match starts in 10 minutes, give me back the Monica.” (Laughs). 

Talking to “bad” people about death only started because my first big Influence guest was A guy convicted of helping build Amazon's firewall,and I kind of think he thought he was doing a self actualization therapy course, had no idea that we were going to stream it until he showed up that day.

NARRATOR: What changed after that interview? 

SAM: I went from a nobody with bad lighting to someone with something to offer.  A lot of powerful people have done very bad things, and they feel really bad about it. (Laughs) My budget, both my personal budget and the shows budget quadrupled. I could buy my own damn Monica.

NARRATOR: do you wish that your mother had gotten to tell her side of the story the way that your guests do? Is that why the show matters?

SAM: ehhhh. I mean, I hear what you’re trying to say, it’s a good hook. but most of the contestants have a lot more power than my mother did. They did horrible things. 

still, that’s true, they only get seen one way. And after the show, most of the time, they choose to try to be someone different.

So I mean… I do it for the people watching. For anyone who thinks that they can only be one type of way in the world, that they’re already bad and it ain’t gonna change.

People make choices for themselves based on the things they see — they forget the infinite things they can’t see. 

NARRATOR: what version of you do you think people choose to look at when they talk to you?

SAM: well… What do you see, right now?

NARRATOR: someone trying to forgive themselves by demanding forgiveness for other people.

SAM: (laughs) yeah. Well, That’s it. You didn’t need to interview me at all, you know what’s going on. 

NARRATOR: Do you think about your mom when you do the show?

SAM: I think about her every day. 

NARRATOR: You know… Since the cooperative exclusion act passed last year, a lot of cooperative ejection cases from the 20s and 30s are being reviewed. A lot of the people who were involved, they’ve been in the public eye again…

SAM: Oh… You’re not crafty! I know where you’re going. And damn that would be some authentic content, wouldn’t it? Me making the people who kicked my mom out of their cooperative ‘accept their death’?

NARRATOR: Is that what you want?

SAM: It's not. That part, that choice... it’s not for me, at least not for me at work.  I want to heal in private. 

NARRATOR: I see. Well… Good luck with everybody’s infinite faces.

Wait, one last question... 

SAM: Yeah? 

NARRATOR: Have you accepted your death?

SAM: No way! I’m gonna live forever baby. (Laughs). Kidding. But no, I haven’t. It’s a work in progress, every second. But I keep trying.

-- 

VOICEOVER: Welcome back to 2020. 

I haven’t accepted my death either. 

Whether it’s from climate change or something far more mundane, whether it’s tomorrow or long after 2050. I am still working on that. I know that no matter when it happens, the choices that I make today right now, still matter.

I hope that your day to day, whatever it looks like, can help you grow towards a hopeful future.