Jerry Brito

Worker & Parasite

A fortnightly podcast on which Stably and I take a single book—philosophy, history, politics, fiction—and use it to think aloud about power, belief, and human nature. Recurring themes include modernity’s costs, institutional decay, post-religious belief, mass psychology, and decline without collapse.

  1. On the Suffering of the World by Arthur Schopenhauer — Jan 27, 2026
  2. The Return of the Common Good by Stefan Borg — Dec 30, 2025
  3. The Human Stain by Philip Roth — Dec 8, 2025
  4. Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough — Nov 6, 2025
  5. The Invention of Good and Evil by Hanno Sauer — Oct 15, 2025
  6. Total Defense by Andrew Preston — Sep 18, 2025
  7. The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker — Aug 14, 2025
  8. Why Nothing Works by Marc J. Dunkelman — Jul 17, 2025
  9. The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian — Jun 5, 2025
  10. The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies — May 18, 2025
  11. The Art of Happiness by Epicurus — May 4, 2025
  12. Huey Long by T. Harry Williams (Part 2) — Apr 17, 2025
  13. Huey Long by T. Harry Williams (Part 1) — Mar 15, 2025
  14. A Generation of Sociopaths by Bruce Cannon Gibney — Feb 18, 2025
  15. Kaiser! by Rob Smyth — Jan 28, 2025
  16. Fat Leonard by Craig Whitlock — Jan 17, 2025
  17. Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov — Jan 2, 2025
  18. The Image by Daniel J. Boorstin — Dec 17, 2024
  19. The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie — Nov 24, 2024
  20. The Prophets of Doom by Neema Parvini — Nov 7, 2024
  21. What Went Wrong with Capitalism by Ruchir Sharma — Oct 22, 2024
  22. The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman — Sep 26, 2024
  23. Losing the Long Game by Philip H. Gordon — Sep 3, 2024
  24. The World That Wasn't by Benn Steil — Aug 19, 2024
  25. The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford — Jul 25, 2024
  26. The United States of Paranoia by Jesse Walker — Jul 8, 2024
  27. The Populist Delusion by Neema Parvini — Jun 25, 2024
  28. Lessons in Stoicism by John Sellars — Jun 14, 2024
  29. The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg — May 17, 2024
  30. Virtue Hoarders by Catherine Liu — May 3, 2024
  31. The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter — Apr 19, 2024
  32. Technopoly by Neil Postman — Mar 21, 2024
  33. How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil — Mar 5, 2024
  34. A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith — Feb 15, 2024
  35. Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror by Andrey Mir — Jan 30, 2024
  36. The Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson — Jan 6, 2024
  37. In Defense of Civilization by Michael RJ Bonner — Nov 28, 2023
  38. Offside by Andrei Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman — Nov 7, 2023
  39. The Origins of Woke by Richard Hanania — Oct 19, 2023
  40. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman — Oct 6, 2023
  41. Transformative Experience by L. A. Paul — Sep 20, 2023
  42. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl — Sep 7, 2023
  43. The World Behind the World by Erik Hoel — Aug 22, 2023
  44. Up From Coservatism by Michael Lind — Aug 10, 2023
  45. End Times by Peter Turchin — Jul 21, 2023
  46. The White Album & Miami by Joan Didion — Jul 7, 2023
  47. The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom — Jun 20, 2023
  48. After Liberalism by Paul Gottfried — May 30, 2023
  49. Outlive by Peter Attia — May 16, 2023
  50. The End of Equality by Mickey Kaus — May 2, 2023
  51. The Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade — Apr 11, 2023
  52. Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton — Mar 21, 2023
  53. The Mind and the Market by Jerry Z. Mueller — Mar 7, 2023
  54. By the People by Charles Murray — Feb 14, 2023
  55. Obedience is Freedom by Jacob Phillips — Jan 31, 2023
  56. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Daniel Bell — Jan 17, 2023
  57. Western Self-Contempt by Benedict Beckeld — Dec 19, 2022
  58. The Authenticity Hoax by Andrew Potter — Dec 4, 2022
  59. Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski — Nov 21, 2022
  60. Nostalgia for the Absolute by George Steiner — Nov 6, 2022
  61. Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama — Oct 25, 2022
  62. Red Card by Ken Bensinger — Oct 9, 2022
  63. Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin — Sep 24, 2022
  64. The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman — Sep 11, 2022
  65. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer — Aug 28, 2022
  66. The United States of Anonymous by Jeff Kosseff — Aug 16, 2022
  67. The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan — Jul 10, 2022
  68. The Machiavellians by James Burnham — Jun 26, 2022
  69. Bad Religion by Ross Douthat — Jun 5, 2022
  70. War and the Liberal Conscience — May 12, 2022
  71. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche — Apr 19, 2022
  72. The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama — Mar 27, 2022
  73. This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev — Mar 6, 2022
  74. Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier — Feb 20, 2022
  75. Against Everything: Essays by Mark Greif — Feb 6, 2022
  76. Wanting by Luke Burgis — Jan 16, 2022
  77. The Sum of Small Things by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett — Dec 29, 2021
  78. The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa — Dec 6, 2021
  79. The Evolution of God by Robert Wright — Nov 22, 2021
  80. The Aristocracy of Talent by Adrian Wooldridge — Nov 1, 2021
  81. Waking Up by Sam Harris — Oct 4, 2021
  82. The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. — Sep 20, 2021
  83. On Decline by Andrew Potter — Sep 7, 2021
  84. After Nationalism by Samuel Goldman — Aug 23, 2021
  85. Isolationism by Charles A. Kupchan — Jul 26, 2021
  86. Great Founder Theory by Samo Burja — Jul 12, 2021
  87. Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran — Jun 28, 2021
  88. The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset — Jun 14, 2021
  89. Unsettled by Steven E. Koonin — May 31, 2021
  90. Why It's OK to Speak Your Mind by Hrishikesh Joshi — May 17, 2021
  91. The Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman — May 3, 2021
  92. The Final Pagan Generation by Edward J. Watts — Apr 19, 2021
  93. On Desire by William B. Irvine — Apr 5, 2021
  94. Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter — Mar 22, 2021
  95. Self-Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams — Mar 8, 2021
  96. The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch — Feb 22, 2021
  97. True Names by Vernor Vinge — Feb 8, 2021
  98. Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann — Jan 15, 2021
  99. Postjournalism by Andrey Mir — Nov 13, 2020
  100. Enlightenment's Wake by John Gray — Oct 23, 2020
  101. History Has Begun by Bruno Maçães — Oct 4, 2020
  102. The Jungle Grows Back by Robert Kagan — Sep 15, 2020