honored to be here with all three of you. i now feel even somehow more honored and i appreciate all the good words and just all the good work you do. and i want to encourage audience to find these authors books. and if you're literally in this audience, you can get right here. sarah, is there anything else need to say? just it will be good if you do purchase a book or if you brought one. we will be doing the signing behind us here. the next event starts at 2:00. thank you very much for being here. thank you. thank youthank you for joining . 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 perseverance 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 chicago, 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 correspondent 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 there, 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 because 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 tribune. now a condo building, which is a travesty. yeah. travis well, me 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 had 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 where we 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 mentioned the horatio 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 you hear it on a podcast. i'm a huge fan of podcasts, but there are far too 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 and everything will work out for you. where did we get this idea that you could follow steps and get there? and if you just stick with the steps, your success is guaranteed. not only your success in life financially, but also that you'll be happier and more spiritually fulfilled. where how i trace back to the 19th century as i talk about in the book and if you're interested in this at all, i think you might might find it kind of intriguing a man named samuel smiles had tried a lot of different things in his life. it's the middle of the 19th century. it's and income is first getting its hooks into the culture because. 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 revolution comes 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. you had the vast run of people. so if you're a thinking person, just imagine the middle of the 19th 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 god, 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 illustrations of character and conduct.

it was a brilliant idea. it's a series of short biographical 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 you want to do. it's like those if you've written persuasive, know this and you can make anything out the way you want it to the record just so stories. it's like, well, of course that happened. it looks inevitable. 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 introduced the idea and the culture that successful people 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 dumb luck, things that just 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 you can think of things that just happened 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 were. maybe you were. you were. you were t-boned at an 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 our lives. but how easy it and how terribly misleading to look at our own lives and the lives of the people 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 book grit. how many people here have read the book grit by angela duckworth. 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 to debate her. so anyone in here has any influence the world. please say to angela what you scared of that killer? what you want your debater? i would love to debate her because she says quite explicitly in that book that of all the things she's looked at and again, 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 class at west point and she talks about, i think it's like 6 to 8 young men that how much young men dropped out of the class at west point and says, the 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 thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. maybe they decided they didn't want to be a soldier maybe they made another decision in life. so why do we assume that it's a matter of a lack of character why do we 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 afternoon. it's simply not true. and i should add to and i know you'll get to this that 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 and the 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 people 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 to be 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 or not? the word grit itself. it makes one think, you know, coal, west virginia, i associate with you and i know that you worked in what you know now but i have been down in a coal mine. yes. go down once. so she'll anything for a story and but word 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 about 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 i like 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, i read 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? and that'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 how 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 you have one example of 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 at the tribune as well. it's like liz and i interviewed the young woman because i thought this will be interesting because those of you in here are parents you know, there's that moment when your kid comes to you and says, i want to quit the french horn. i want to quit the soccer team. i 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 stick 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're retired now. i wanted teachers who were renowned for being tough because i was sure. i was sure that they were going to say that. i said, what would 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, oh, no, 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 knew that if i pushed them any harder, it would be 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 it's an art and a science and it's that art of dealing with human beings and what they're 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 do this 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, great great. but she knew her daughter. but i guess the question is, if somebody says that they want to quit, isn't it a conversation? and delving into that, 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 important. 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 with 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 head so you can, you know, put your feet up on the desk and go back to work. well, that's not what i mean. quasi quitting is say not an all off toggle switch, 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 what you'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 now dimmer 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 to 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 own hearts and minds. ultimately, it isn't individual decision, but preceding and sort of arising. all of that is this idea of quitting as a spiritual question, more a question of

where you're going to be and, what you're going to be doing and how you're going to 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 quitting really, really finds it hard. julia in your all your research. grief research and you done so much scientific research, julie actually wrote a book about traumatic injury. so she's like really sort of up on this. so do you see a difference between men and women? you know it's fascinating. 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 one things i found out in that research for traumatic brain injury is that in rehabilitation from traumatic brain injury, we now 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 this was what i was researching at the time and that surprised me initially 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 strategies, 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 terms of 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 wants to do but he feels he can't do that because

he makes a lot of money and they'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 i 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 those conversations that can cut a lot of different ways when you're talking about gender differences. i mean, one thing you and i have talked a lot about sort of in the course of our lives, the role of luck, i it's overrated underrated. what? well, i think don't like to acknowledge it at all. we were having conversation 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 way, doesn't it? it's like, well, of course this all worked out that way. this is and they call them just so stories this was how it was supposed to work out. how do i know? well, because this is how it worked out. well, so many things come along. i a chapter titled things just happen and we they 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 free 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

she to him and that changed life. she ended leaving that job at the cleveland clinic and taking a job but far less salary. and at that the animal shelter went from volunteer position to pay position and then later was asked to direct an even larger shelter for the entire of cleveland. 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 had 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 we are 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 mean, for me, i was said a kid sitting in west virginia without much on and i happened to be watching a talk show 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 so wonderful. i'm just so great. course this was going to happen. of course. of course not. we know our lives are ruled as much by happenstance. just dumb luck as as buy as by our own volition, by own intention. and there's that. there's that balance. 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 allows us to go through all these other imagined lives. this is what would have happened if i hadn't done this. not the specific circumstances of your life, but it gets you thinking other lives and you're able to inhabit other lives where other of luck came along and things or didn't affect things or affected 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 you would just sit

all day long and sort of stare at the ceiling and, see biophilia every every few 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 to do 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 what 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 stop something. 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? you know, you're a you'll never amount to anything. it's a very very clever the 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 sides. 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 sweating 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 point will 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 i 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 special and quite important, quite crucial to who we are as humans. well, we'd like to open this up to questions and 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 you 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 you'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 find 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 think 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 else to 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 mayors 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. and i think it's very smart and it's very regret is an interesting emotion in itself. i mean, i have certainly 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 center of all this is this issue of how we're going to spend our time, who we're going to spend it with. it sounds me like you've made decisions based on personal principles, and that's never a bad thing. but i guess i would flip it and after reading, usually flip 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 office, 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. do we have time for another question. these are great. this is what i love. this is what quitting does. i mean, you bring 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's 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 things just don't look that's it's not just me prattling on as fascinating as that would be it's a lot of other people and they're quitting stories so please go ahead. i'm sorry. yeah, i'm sorry. i had to come a few minutes late to. so i might have missed this, but it seems that quitting is in the

ether right? i see so many books with quitting 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 actually. that's when i began first thinking about this. you know when i was still i remember thinking like, well, this can't be a big deal. can it be like some of you are like that too? like really they can't just shut down the whole world. it does seem to be that kind a moment, but i would think that it's that i would say that it's more than that. it's also recognizing our sort of agents over ourselves in a way that maybe we haven't in quite while, 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're 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 they never 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 into. that's a that's a great question. i would say about 5050. it's great because if you know

what you're going to do next. and it isn't really of a challenge. it's not like leaving one job for another. 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. yeah. 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 couldn'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 angry and he said, what about when you have a and kids and a mortgage and so

you quit your job. and then i got the idea that a little bit of autobiography 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 as the 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 do in the world? you do have to have this certain as it's going to sound really woo woo. forgive me, this 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 professor. everything with numbers, everything was, you know. and what do you mean? he will? height of absurdity. wonderful man. but that was his 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 don't want to live that way anymore because i think

that there is an ultimate purpose for all of us. we're here for a reason we 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 think 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 named betsey stevenson, now the university of michigan, she was one of a bomb when they, the economists, it was on obama's team and she's written quite eloquently and it's been on a lot of podcasts about this issue. that's what she measures job satisfaction. and her point is that wanting to quit your job is a is an index of of 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 good thing. it's a good thing. yes, and it is up a little bit. but, you know, the numbers are a

little bit tricky. the university of chicago economists will tell you, well, the old line dad always uses figures 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 downtown and, i look between last week and this week like all we've got, we've got, you know, taste we've got. so it'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 say it's a privilege but. it's 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 as something 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 zebrafish. i'm just wondering so worried 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 did 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. and that 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 helping know.

so you help me. well, i think that it's because i got a lot of questions about that was kind of being mean to the zebrafish. and it's like suddenly 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's this incredibly short time before we hit that common destiny as robert louis stevenson will have it. and it's it's it's just what you owe to people around you. and what's most important though, it'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. all