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