thank you for joining us today. we will be talking with julia keller and elizabeth taylor. pulitzer, a pulitzer prize winning writer, was the longtime cultural critic at the chicago tribune. her new book, quitting a life

the slash the myth of perserance and how the new science giving up can set you free is. her 14th published book excuse me, she has written both fiction nonfiction and it joins her critically acclaimed eight volume mystery series, which is set in her home state of west virginia. julia earned a doctoral degree, ohio state university, and has at the university of chigo, princeton university and the university of notre dame. she was a nieman fellow at harvard. elizabeth taylor is the coauthor of american pharoah mare richard j daley daily. she's the coeditor of the national book review. she is on the current board and is the president of the national book critics circle. she's the past literary editor, magazine editor for the chicago the national crespondent for time magazine. and she's the previous creative director, slash row lit fest of sorry me mayor creative director

of printers row lit fest under current she's under contract with liveright book liveright norton, a book involving women in civil war reconstruction america. we will be having books the, books for sale right outside here via the bookstore there. and we will be doing a signing at the table us at the end of the program. thank very much. truly to it's so great to be here with you but i feel like there should be a starbucks whirring in the becse truly and i formed a deep friendship we worked together but most of our work was done taking a break at starbucks across the street from chicago tbune. now a condo building, which is a travesty. yeah. travis well,e and we we she

was a polymath you can talk to her about anything. i think what she's saying, i try to think is i d an opinion about everything, which is a little different, but now she anyway especially has an opinion about the word polymath. anyway, she is just it's she's written, you know, fiction. she's written serious nonfiction. she's mysteries and so when she i heard she didn't read a new book, i'm like, what? but quitting julia de pulitzer prize. what did you quit? and and i gave her, you know, so julia you know what have you quit? you know it is indeed i think it's a little bit surprising people because we do think of quitting is a bad thing. and that, in fact, is the essence of the book. why why do we look, upon changing course in life as a bad thing, we think of people who

stick with it and who are gritty and resilient. we attach such virtue to that, don't we? think about it. if someone comes to you and says, just thinking of quitting, i've had it. the first thing you're thinking is loser bum can't hack weekly. why? one of the things i try to do in this book is look at the history of that. i mean, ideas have histories just like we do. we have we call them biography institutions, histories, and so do ideas. our culture. and one of the ideas that i think is one of the most intriguing ones is wheree the idea that grit and resilience are so good because they're not always sometimes. yes, but not always so you and i were talking in and i mentiod theoratio alger and you and book point out actually goes way back further than that. and so can you explain sort of

the origin story of the idea perseverance as a virtue? well, and perseverance and grit. and also, i think it's where the origin of the modern self-help movement comes in. and we now have life coaches, all of this, right. you you you buy a certain set of ideas. you read them in a book, or yo hear it on a podcast. i'm a huge fan of podcasts, but there are fatoo many that want to tell you how to live your life. and if you just do these ten simple steps, you will indeed rich, successful, sexually attractive a everything will work out for you. where did we get this idea that you could follow steps and get there? and if you just stk with the steps, your success is guaranteed. not only your success in life fincially, but also that you'll be happier and more spiritually ffilled. where how i trace back to the 19th century as i talk about in the book and if you're interestedn this at all, i think you might might find it kind of intriguing a man named samuel smiles had tried a lot of differt things in his life. it's the middle of th19th century. it's and income is rst getting its hooks into the culture cause. before that, if you were rich,

you were a duke or a king or a prince or you were were it was entitled. you either royalty or he inherited your wealth. you inherit a title. the industrial revolutionomes and people in stages of life were rich. so you had many more people at the top than ever before. but that still very few compared to the entire population at the bottom. u had the vast run of people. so if you're a thinking person, just imagine the middle of the 19 century and you're thinking how this be? why are there people literally in the streets? why are mothers there with their with their children starving, dying in gutters? how can this be we want to believe in a just and loving go how can this be? it must be it must be that they didn't work enough. we have to find a reason. rationale. we always want to find reason for things so that we can sleep at night.

these are decent, honorable people. samuel smiles was his name. he was a scot. he tried many things in his life. he comes along. he writes a book called self-help with illustratns of character and conduct. it was a brilliant idea. it's a series of short biographic portraits of successful men. all men then, of course, successful men of the day, industrialists, inventors, sea captains, even some artists thrown in there and in each of their lives. what's the through line? they didn't quit. they hung in there. now, we all know that when you're writing, you can make almost anything sound right, can't you? i mean, you kind of decide what u want to do. it's like those if you've written persuasive, know is and you can make anything out the way you want it tohe record just so stories. it's like, well, of course that happened. it looksnevitable. and that was as great genius it was a huge, huge copies flying off the shelves. he wrote a series of, sequels to it as well. and it iroduced the idea and the cuure that successful peop were people who were gritty and resilient, who hung in there and people who were unsuccessful, or people quit. and it was a lovely little life lesson, but unfortunately it's not true. it completely the role of happenstance, just db luck,

things that ju happen to people. i have a chapter in my book called things just happen, and if you look at your own lives. i'm sure y can think of things that just haened to you. it didn't mean you didn't work hard, didn't mean you didn't try, didn't mean you're a bad person something just happened. maybe you we. maybe you were. you were. you were t-boned at intersection and that set you back. maybe you things happened to you, maybe you were born with a physical disability or an emotional disability. many, many things happened to us in course of o lives. but how easy it and how terribly misleading to look at our own lives and the lives of the peop around us and say, you're not elon musk, you're not you know, you're not bill gates. you're not as rich as jeff bezos. it's because you quit, you hit that snooze button once too often. yeah, it's is this grit is so valorized, so it's well, the ok grit. how many people here havread the bo grit by angela duckrth. she's a wonderful, wonderful person.

i mean, i've seen i don't know her personally, but i mean, i've i've read the book. i've seen her interview. she seems like a lovely person. and i think she's completely and i love tdebate her. so anyone in here has any influence the world. please say to angela what you scared of that kler? what you want your debater? i would love to debate her because she says quite explicitly in that book at of all the things she's looked at anagain, she's a wonderful scientist, very renowned scientists. i've nothing against her personally, but i do think she's dead wrong. and i really wish she would be called more to account. those of you read it, you know, in the first chapter, she talks about a cls at west point and she talks about, i think it's like 6 to 8 young men that how much young menropped out of the class at west point and says, e only thing i can find the through line through all the people who was they weren't gritty enough. they gave up. and i'm thinng, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. maybe they decided they didn't want to be a soldi maybe they made another decision in life so why do we assume that it's a matter of a lack of character why doe look at people who make other decisions in their lives and we assume it's because they didn't try hard enough that they were too fond of a nap in the middle of the ternoon.

it's simply not true. and i should add to and i know you'll get to thishat there's a great deal of contemporary neuroscience that deals with this exact issue where in the brain and, how and why do our brains decide to quit where does that happen? because everything happens in the brains, right? that's where everything starts. neuroscientists now are discoveries that are absolutely breathtaking. the brain, as complex as it 86 billion neurons anthe average brain. some of you probably have a little more than that. within the brain. all of those neurons are all interconnected. and yet we do know where and how and which neurons are involved when we make that decision to stay or go, to quit or to stay the course. and how is that? you can imagine why this is being done. it's being done with addiction studies. why are some pele able to have one glass of wine and stop and other tragically are not? why does that happen? happens inside the brain to make of us know how tbe governors our own behavior in that moment

and others aren't. so all of this with quitting which i think is the very nexus, the very crossroads of our personalities, our ambitions and indeed our, are very spiritual cells on this earth. is this issue of quitting o not? the word grit itself. it makes one think, you know, coal, west virginia, i associate with y and i know that you worked in what younow now but i have been down in coal mine. yes. go down once. so she'll anything for a story and but wd grit really feels like it's work it's that's very associated with work. and one of the things i really like this book is that it's not abt work here. you're talking about like lakes, right? sometimes jobs. yes, but there's sometimes jobs. yeah. yeah. i'm glad you mention that. right. it's not just jobs and not just relationships, because when you

think of quitting, those are the main things you talk about, right you quit a job, you change your major college, you maybe let go of friend because a friend isn't isn't fulfilling needs and all that. but this iike to think of this as much bigger than i like to think of it really on an almost spiritual level of what we decide to do, our limited time on this earth, we move toward what i just, iead this in a letter, a robert louis stevenson letter and i love this. he was talking about his father who passed away and he said, it's something we all must think of as we move toward our common meaning, death. and i. what a beautiful, lilting to talk about death. because we all know our lives are circumscribed. they're constricted, all going to die. we know that we have a limited you're going to think i went to this great session at lit fest. this woman told us we're all going to die. it was so uplifting, but truly it is our common destiny. so what do we do with brief, brief interval? we here? what do we do with it? andhat's why i think the issue of quitting as liz suggests, is so much bigger than how we in

our living or who we surround ourselves with in terms of partners and whether or not to have children and w we raise our even bigger than that is that soul by soul, spirit by spirit we are we are creating lives as we go along and quitting this issue of creative quitting is one of the ways we can do that. i more and more beautifully. yeah. i mean yohave one example o it as a teenager, i a teenager who decides has been doing gymnast her whole life and then sighs like that like she wants do something else. and there's she wants more out of her life, right? yes. in fact, that was one of my former colleagues athe tribune asell. it's like liz and i interviewed the young woman because i thought this will be interesting becausthose of you in here are parents you know, there's that moment when your kid comes to you and says, i want tquit the french horn. i want to quit the soccer team. want to and we've been told and so what you're supposed to say as a parent, you can you can back me up on this is no, no, no

you can't quit this is going to be a character building. you must stay. well, it's tricky. it's very complex. yes. there are certain good things to be gained when we when we stic with something we don't like. absolutely. i'd never claim otherwise. but. but that's the great key to know when to quit and when to stay. and sometimes, in fact, i interview teachers in the book. it's like my pride favorite interviews with two teachers and they' retired now. i wanted teachers who were renowned for being tough because i was sure. i was sure that they were gog to say that. i said, what wou happen if a kid would come to you? one was a math teacher. one was an english teacher. kid would come to you and say, i just can't it i'm going to have to quit. i was sure, sure as i'm sitting here that they were going to say, i tell them, absolutely not. you stick with i don't care if you have to stay up all night and. i was completely wrong. these two women, both of whom really extraordinarily teachers, both of them said separately, but in separate interviews, said, ohno, no, no, it's individual. we're all different. often the very best thing that

child could do was to quit because it was ruining their life. it was they at a point where they were spiritually bereft. and i knewhat if i pushed them any harder, it would a bad thing and not a good thing. and that was the great art of so i'm so, so in all of great teachers because 's an art and a science and it's that art of dealg with human beings and what they' going to respond to. so the young woman you're talking about decided she wanted gymnastics she'd done it from the time she was this high and she was now a senior high school. and she said to her mom one day, she just that was it. i don't want to dohis anymore. and her mother again, a colleague of mine. so you know, i'm going to say she did the right thing, but i think she did. heidi stevens, some of you may know or she is a columnist and, writer and all around all around good person. and she said, gre great. bushe knew her daughter. but i guess the question is, if somebody says that thewant to quit, isn't it a conversation? and delving into tha why.

is very much it's not it seems it's a moment quitting right it is a moment those of you we've all quit something. so when you think there is that moment but but surrounding that moment, backing up that moment leading up to that moment is so much more i mean, i think of it also well, like with politicians, you know, when they will quit, things are not just politicians, people who are in leadership positions when they quit. there's always this idea of, well, quit. and it's always said with this kind umbrage like, yeah, they just couldn't hack it. and i just think that's so wrong, because many times what's leading to that, as you say, is, is conversation right. i mean, because you make the idea a criticism of a changing course, the process which i think is really imptant. it isn't like a flick on or a flick off. yes, i have a thing in there. i call the class. i quit now not to be confused wi quiet quitting which i despise. right. i maintain quiet. quitting is just thievery. i mean you're just you're you're you're telling someone you're doing a job and you're really not you're waiting for the boss to turn her hd so you can, you know, put your feet up on the

de and go back to work. well, that's not what i mean. quasi quitting is sanot an all off toggle switc but more of a reset dial. right. does everybody know what a reset dial is? i mean, i got such pushback from people saying. i don't know whayou're talking about. am i am? i maybe i'm like living in the 1980s, a real estate diet, like on a on a dining room, light. you have a little switch in your will. yes. said sure. god bless you. yes. right dear. dimmers, that what they call it nodimmer switch. well, land sakes. yes they don't have those years in the city. i don't live in a big city anymore. it's like, yeah, back in west virginia, we call them areas that now. but thank you dimmer switch i'm going start using that. that's the phrase i mean but that's think of it that way and that's part of that conversation idea. it's a conversation with someone and we all we all that we all. but when it comes down, these decisions are made in the crucible of our owhearts and minds. ultimately, it isn't individual decision, but preceding and sort of arising. all of that is this idea of

quitting as spiritual question, more a question of where you're going to be and, what y're going to be doing and how you're goingo earn a living, or how you're going to marry or continue to cohabit with. is this issue of you spending your own time? and it's in that it's in that quiet crucible of your own heart and mind that the question of quting really, really finds it hard. julia in yourll your resrch. grief research and you done so much scientific research, jie actually wrote aook about traumatic injury. so she's like really sort of up on this. so do you see a difference between men anwomen? you know it's fascinatg. you say that because i do think the first thing we always have to ask or i do like, okay, is it a cultural difference? women or is there an actual sort of bone bone deep difference? we know onthings i found out in that research for traumatic brain injury is that in

rehabilitation fro traumatic brain injury, we n know that men, women respond differently. there are different hormones in the brain. so we now know that you can't have a one size fits all rehabilitation strategy with brain injury or a problem with any. but th was what i was researching at the time and that surprised me initily because in contemporary culture we're supposed think oh we're all really the same, right? black or white, male or female, wherever we are. well, we're not we're not there are differences. and then there's those differences can lie more successful rehabilitation strategi, but from a cultural sense, too. i think it's a real difference. think that there's a great burden on men to. say the course, perhaps more so than women. i've always felt that we do we have this kind of artificial pressure we put on men, you know, it's like breadwinner and bringing home the bacon and all of this. so in termof a job and in terms of supporting a family, we do have this tremendous pressure of, you know, good friend of mine. i can mention them because i don't live in the city, but he is a very high powered, well-paid executive.

but the dream of his life is to be a high school soccer coach. so what he wantso do but he feels he can't do that because he makes a lot of money and th're they're used to a certain lifestyle and being a high school teacher and soccer is not really going to be anywhere close to that. so i think for a man, there is a little bit a little bit more pressure that could be wrong about that. and i'm willing it's one of those things where i like to have conversations about because women, of course, have pressure to they in a family situation, women have, i think, far more pressure to to stick with things and to get done and all that. so you can you it's one of those one of thoseonversations that can cut a lot of different ways when you're talking about gender differences. i mean, one thi you and i have talked a lot about sort of in e course of our lives, the role of luck, i 's overrated underrated. what well, i thinkon't like to acknowledge it at all. we were having convsation just before the session with our old our old boss about the ways our

lives. you know, the line in the poem that says all roads lead to where i stand. and it does look that y, doesn't it? it's like, well, of course this all worked outhat way. this is and they call them just so stories this was how it was supposed to work out. how do i know? well, becae this is how it worked out. well, so many things come along. i a chapter titled thingsust happen and wthey just do i interview a woman. one of my favorite interviews, too was woman who now runs a an animal shelter an animal rescue shelter in cleveland, ohio. she had a very high powered job at cleveland clinic, was in their in their cardio unit, their cardiac rehabilitation unit. and, you know, cleveland clinic, heart attack. that's where you want to be. she did a wonderful there. enjoyed it, but knew there something missing. so one day she's walking animal shelter where she agreed to volunteer because she had some fr time and there was dog and she found out the dog had been found that afternoon by a dumpster in an alley close to death. and the dog had been nurtured back to life. and as she puts it, i love this description said there wasn't a

lot of flair to hue. he just an ordinary brown dog. but he he attached to her and e to him and that changed life. she ended leaving that job at the cleveland clinic and taking a job but far less salary. d at that the animal shelter went from volunteer position to pay position a then later was asked to direct an even larger shelter for the entire of clevelan and she attributes it to the brown dog. now had that brown had hue not been rescued in time, had hue sadly not been found and h perished in that alley and had never come into her life, would that have happened in ways thinking about the fragility of our lives and how we end up where were is so incredibly you can't stand it for very long, you know what i mean? you can't you think, well, what if i hadn't met that person, what if i hadn't? we were talking about the happenstance that each of us into our jobs. i an, for me, i was said a kid sitting in west virginia without much on and i happened to be watching a talshow and an

investigative was on there. and he mentioned that he had interns. so i thought, well, okay so i wrote a letter and got an internship in washington, d.c. and then everything came from that i had no journalism degree or and i ended up then later at the chicago tribune. now why i would love to say it's because i'm soonderful. i'm just so gat. course this was going to happen. of cours of course not. we know oulives are ruled as much by happenstanc just dumb luck as as buy as by our own volition, by own intention. and there's that. there's thatalance. how much of it is it? is we do and how much of it is what happens? i think it's one of the reasons why we love literature so much. literature alls us to go through all these other imagined ves. this is what would have happened if i hadn't done this. not the specific circumstances ofour life, but it gets you thinking other lives and you're able to inhabit other lives where other of luck came along d things or didn't affect things oaffected them in a different way. that's one of the things that allows us to do, because i said,

if you ever stopped for a moment and thought about just sheer luck, it would just be i think it would be yowould just sit all day long and sort of stare at the cling and, see biophilia every every w minutes, either this sad subject. let me go to addiction. you write about addiction and you know, just say no. but you also talk about harm reduction and other. yeah, that's one of the real purposes of i mentioned this that the neuroscience research now on quitting you can think well why, would we be spending all this money studying why, you know, why one person quits her job or not? the real the real momentum. a lot of our studies now in neuroscience about where in the brain this happens and which specific neurons are involved comes from the idea of addiction. why is it i said why is one person able to stop something and another isn't? why does that happen i mean, we think of it's really a vast mystery. it's not that one person is a better person than another. again, we love to do that. we love to attach all this moral

judgment on things. we do love tdo that. i don't know why, but we do. i mean, we're all kind of judgmental in our own way. and it turns out actually, that there are different different switches and triggers the brain, chemical and electrical and that's at neuroscientists trying to find out. they're called stay or go decisions. for some people, people who are who are unfortunately saddled with like obsessive disorder, they can't stopomething. they can't they want to quit and they can't. for someone who is an alcoholic or has a problem with drug addiction, they want to quit and can't. so you've got you've got all these different iterations of this issue. the stay the go mission. it's much more complex than we ever understood. now, you may ask, how do you do neuroscience study on quitting? how would do it like attach electrodes to somebody before they go their local kfc and quit their job and figure out what's going to happen? one of the ways they do it, and this is quite fascinating at the howard hughes medical institute, they use zebrafish, which are tiny, tiny little minnow like creatures and reason that

they're used is because they're cheap to get. and also they're translucent in the larva stage, so so they can attach electrodes and certain electrodes will will grow brighter when they're in use, when they are activated. so you literally can work with a zebrafish in larva stage. you can you can watch what can watch them thinking you can watch it happen. that's all you need to do is just look at them. so how do you make that zebrafish want to quit? all right. this sounds like a terrible. why do you just keep yelling at them? u knowyou're a you' never amount to anything. it's aery very clevethe way that they do it. dr. misha arens is is a researcher there. if he wants to change colors, right? yeah. but the poor little zebrafish, how do you do it? they use a they use virtual reality and they trick the zebrafish. the zebrafish is a tank and they project wavy lines on the side and the bottom of that so is as fast as zebrafish are swimming against the current. he looks like he's getting nowhere because. the lines are going in the other direction. so he keeps trying and trying and try be like if you were standing on a street corner and

i was i was rolling a scene beside, you. and so you kept thinking you're getting somewhere. no, i'm still right here. i still see dearborn station right there. i'm not getting anywhere. and i'm i'm sweang on amount of breath. how can i do this? and so then they would measure what happens with the zebrafish. this happens. at what point does that zebrafish give up? and there is a moment when they do and it's called futility induced passivity. and there's a point at which the zebrafish just says, that's it, i'm done. and he waits and then he goes back to it again. and so what the scientists are doing, obviously, is measuring how long that is, where that happens, the brain and there are addiction, a lot of work is being done. the of washington in seattle with where and human brains. i mean we're having to extrapolate because again we can't do it with humans you wouldn't be responsible scientist if you you know, made someone a addict and then and then recorded when they were to say no to to meth. so they'll use rats and mice and other animals as well. and to find out where that when

at what poinwill that where that mouse say no and stop. so these are again, we're just at the very threshold of all this, but that's to me, what's what's interesting and exciting is the thing that we think of as kind of just a part of our lives, like quitting saying. do we stick with this? do i want to quit my book club? do i want to do i want to quit that cooking class or do i want to do i want to maybe stay in this marriage that long? what am going do that actually that's at the very, very center of contemporary neuroscience research, which i think is just so fascinating because we think it as just kind of quotidian. it's just like a normal thing that we all do, right? ubiquitous. no, it's actually quite specia and quite important, quite crucial to who we are as humans. well, we'd like to open this up to questionsnd but you all go through all many people who want to ask questions go to the microphone in, the center of the. you're going to ask me if u should like leave your marriage or not. i really can't tell you that

that's to be i will say that i gave a speech one day and i said, i i'm not suggesting that the minute you home from this talk today, you pull into your driveway and you get out your phone and you and you texture your partner sorry, honey, it's over. no, quitting may be a good thing, but it's all individual, so. yeah, we'll be happy to answer to your. any questions, please? any questions. and. and. oh, great. i'm going to turn it around on the other side of the coin to regret. i know for my life after graduate school i got a great job in. congress. i was one of the first two women in the history of the country day a privileges but i made the terrible mistake of into the office on a weekend to check the pay salaries because they hid the pay and realized with two masters degrees i was making two thirds the secretary's salary and i asked for a raise and i didn't it. so i quit and went to job. biggest mistake of my life and

there was it. you're sure? oh, yeah, yeah. because i always say in my interviews i did about 150 interviews of this book and people, the vast, vast majority people more regretted the things they didn't quit but wish they had than the things that they did. so y're an anomaly and that's great. i just i wonder, though, because you obviously have done well in your life and so maybe that was i don't just maybe there's a broader way that it was the perfect job for my personality and my academic and interest. but it not about me so much. yeah. that he wouldn't. and the guy who was boss was a high school graduate. he had this great job. yeah. you know, i had. i had choices to make. i was in my twenties, sold a number of people. but, you know, i had them all like that, too. my first newspaper job, i was writing editorials because i was there and i happened to fi out that the man who'd done the job before was making four times more than i made. and i went into the manager, i said, stan was making.

he said, oh yeah. i said, well, what is it he's a man with a family. you're a single woman. of course. what's your what's your problem? so i resigned. yeah. otherwise, i would still be in the kentucky, which. great. but yeah. yeah, but i take your point. i ink that maybe you're selling yourself a little short. if i just say one of the things i hope people who read the book or even think about this, whether you read the book or not, although clearly you should is is to give ourselves cut ourselves a little slack and everybody elseo detach that the shame or the regret from quitting. and look at that broader context and say, you know, maybe not maybe this allowed other things to happen in my life that would not happened otherwise. i got a job with the conference of mays and i had to quit because the guy said, you have to stay with me. in the first year hotel at the annual meeting. and this was when this was when you couldn't even complain. so i quit and i moved back to chicago. i was just so fed up. but you move back to chicago.

that's the salient line and i imagine then i moved to washington. well, now i've done it a couple of times, but anyway, judging my life that i. i truly, always regret that i think i regret that i don't know you there's a really, um, daniel pinker has a new book out about not new relative new ish about regret. d i think it's very smart and it's very regret is an interesting otion in itself. i mean, i have certaly have regrets, too, about things i've quit things i didn't quit. for me, it's more the things i didn't quit when i should have. so but again at the ceer of all this is this issue of how we're gng to spend our time, who we're going to spenit with. it sounds me le you've me decisions based on rsonal principles, and that's never a bad thi. but i guess i would flip it and after reading, usually fp it and say, well, if you'd stayed, what would have happened? not in the hotel room. we don't need to think that. but yeah, i l otherwise. yeah, i mean it is always, it really is always like. well, the way i, you know, how i cure myself of it. yeah. i've told this story times to

friends that if i had stayed in the whip's ofce, i might have been crossing over to office building and a car would have hit me and i'd be a paraplegic. so then, you know, you just never know what you avoid and things just happen things are random. that's is. doe have time for another question. these are great. this is what i love. this is what quitting does. i mean, you ing up topic and there's just stories and wonders. behold, so smokers don't quit this book. it is so much i can't convey is a really fun book. it' hard to quit. it's hard to quit, right? it is. she is like white flag really. permission slips, you know it's a kind of there are a lot of stories of people who have quit thin just don't look that's it's not juste prattling on as fascinating as that would be it's a lot of other peopland they're quitting stories so please gahead. i'm sorry. yeah, i'm sorry. i had to come a few minutes late

to. so might have missed this, but it seems that quitting is in the ether right? i see so many books with quting or quit in the title. then there's quiet quitting. i mean, maybe you could speak to that. what is going on and there this moment, you know, i conceived of this book before that began before that just the pandemic tually. th's when i began first inking about this. you know when i was still i remember thinking like, well, this can't be a big deal. can ite like some of you are like tt too? like really they can't just shut down the whole world. it doeseem to be that kind a moment, but i would think that it's that i would say that it's morehan that. it's also recognizing our rt ofgents over ourselves in a way that maybe we haven't in ite whe, that we recognize we really are in charge. we're we're made, but we're more than what made us is an arthur miller line. i've always loved that there is a lot of responsibility for our own decisions good and bad and that so so quitting is a part of that but it's a kind of a small you know, in the venn diagram,

the one that's over here. so i do think you're right. it is kind of in the news right now. yeah. in that in that quiet quitting idea again which just loathe and detest. but that's just me. it's because i think it's the west virginia in me. an honest day's work for honest day's all or you know, somebody pays you you do the work and if you don't want do the work and you think it's beneath you or not, what want to be doing then leave. have the courage to to leave it there. but i do take your point. i think you' i think you're quite right. it is kind of in the ether it is there are ideas. that's a great thing. our culture, isn't it? these ideas will be they will come and they will go. they will come to the fore. they will receive a bit, but theyever leave us where they find us. good point. thank you. and you know, the empty office buildings here in chicago are are a reminder of, you know, how work is really changing and. we're not maybe leaving it. we're just kind of readjusting it. right. i was wondering, you talk to people who quit did they always know what they were going to go to next. you know, did they know where they were going to or was it a leap int

that's a that's a great question. i would say about 5050. it's great because if you know what yo're going to do next. and it isn't really of a challenge. it's not like leaving one job for anher. it's like, well, so many people want my services and i'm going to go from one to another very often it is a leap into the unknown, not just with jobs, but again with relationships and with. i was just watching a sitcom the other night and a character was saying to this man, he said, you don't want to leave your wife. you think that you'll never have a significant relationship again. and it was a searing moment in the midst what should be a comedy. and i thought, of course, that is it. that's that's a lot time, isn't it? why we regret leaving certain situations, be it a friendship, a romantic relationship, because we think it no. one, we all have that where we don't quite know what's going to happen next. ye. do you like so in a way, maybe think like quitting is is a privilege in a certain way like like what would you say to somebody who like coul't quit her job? well, i hear that a lot. you know, i got a lot of mail. i got really and one angry email. i get a lot of emails from people which i love. it's hearing from your readers

sometimes. and this man was so ang and he said, what about when you have a and kids and mortgage and so you quit your job. and then i got the idea that a little bit of autobiogphy and what he was was asking me about and he said what, do you do? then i said, you know, very often you will hear people talk about their close relationship ashe excuse for not quitting. you'll hear, i do it because i've got to. and i always say, turn that around. they are the excuse to do what you want and to go out and do you want to don the world? you do have to have this certain as it's gointo sound really woo woo. forgive methis is not really who i am, but have become this. you do have to have a certain basic faith in the universe. i always say i come from a very kind of, dark, cynical family. my father was a math profeor. everything with numbers, everything was, you know. and what do you mean? he will? height of absurdity. wonderful man. but that wasis that was his way of looking at life. and i have i had to quit that i had to quit that i had to say that's that's i can't live that way anymore. and that was my quitting.

that was my quitting. i had say, i d't want to live that way anymore because i think that there is anltimate purpose for all of us. we' here for a reasowe need every single one of us. very good. does the it doesn't. the bureau of labor statistics track like what percentage of the workforce wants to leave their jobs. i thi read something like during the ending stages of covid that probably like two thirds of the whole country workforce want one in another job and it doesn't kind of sound like no one's satisfied with anything. it does. i quote in there, a woman med betsey stevenson, now the university of michigan, she was one of a bomb when they, t economis, it was on obama's team and she's written quite eloquently and it's been on a lot ofodcasts about this issue. that's wh she measures job satisfaction. and her point is that wanting to quit your job is a is an index off health and the economy. she says i want to say to people, yes, quit your job because you need churn. you need that change in the economy. you want people stuck, stuck,

stuck. so it's a od thing. it's a good thing. yes, and it is up a little bit. but, you know,he numbers are a little bit tricky. the university of chicago economists will tell you, we, the old line dad always uses gures don't lie, but liars figure. i mean, you can always justify with your numbers because it depends on you just the range. you know, if i want to prove to you that that there's been an uptick in in festivals dotown and, i look beeen last week and this week like all we've got, we've got, you know, taste we've got. sot's it's depends on the sample you're using. but in general, i think that you do see there is more of that now people willing to as you s it's a privilege but. it'a privilege not just because we are a privileged society right now, which we are. i mean we the poorest people in america now, live have a higher standard of living than the kings and like the 15th, 16th century. no question about. it so it's not just that, though. it's also more of this kind of enlargement of of looking at our work and our life and our time asomething that is precious to

us is unique to us and that we're responsible for nobody else. you can't blame your boss if you're not satisfied. that's not your boss's fault. that's your fault because you can go do something else. you can be with someone else. you can think other thoughts, you can read other books. it's all within your own grasp. all right. we all we need to wrap up. i know you want you real quick. i'm sorry. i prattle sorry. no. so thank you for your for remarks. the poor little zebrafi. i'm just wondering so worrie about, you know, because there are studies out there about just if a person comes up to a hill and they're by themself, they'll psychologically see it's steeper than it really is if they have somebody with them, a companion. so d they look at the poor that they ever get the little zebrafish, a companion and? then maybe life wasn't so hard. well you know. they persevered longer. that is a sweet thought. actually, they are. anthat they didn't do them individually. they were in a school.

so that's a good question. you know, we're together here. so we're helng know. so you help me. well, i think that it's because i got a lot of questions abo that was kind of being mean to the zebrafish. and it's likeuddenly i got into this whole peta about why that was. they don't kill the zebrafish, right? they just make them a little frustrated. but i thank you all for coming today. and i hope that if nothing else, you will kind of rethink, rethink the decisions you make in your life on a on a moment by moment basis of like if this is really what i want to be, what want to do, it'shis incredibly short time before we hit that common destiny as robert louis stevenson will have it. and it's it's i's just what you owe to people around you. and what's most important thoughit's what you owe to. well well and and i would i will just say. but joe quit buying and and read the books that does one of the most wonderful in chicago is

right outside and they have copies of this wonderful book and it's a really fun read and i hope that you will pick it up on your way out and is a great saw. thank you so much, everyone. al