Is it OK to just work all the time?
A conversation with Ira Glass
Happy New Year, we’re back with more episodes for you.
For our first episode in the new year, a reflection on how we spend our time. What we devote our life to, and the roads we choose not to take. A conversation with Ira Glass.
Our show is a funny mix. Some weeks we address a question with a documentary, some weeks we address a question with a conversation. This week’s episode was a conversation I felt really lucky to get to have.
Partly because some of these choices — how much to work, whether to have kids — are just really hard to talk about. It’s rare to find someone willing to be candid about these choices, in public. Which means that when we have to make those choices ourselves, we have less to go on than we otherwise would. I don’t know. One of the things this show is trying to learn is how to create a public space for the kind of long talk that usually happens in private.
For me, this week, we captured that feeling.
Things mentioned in this episode
The very first episode of This American Life.
Joe Frank, interviewed by Jonathan Goldstein.
Search Engine Live!
February 20th, in Brooklyn. With special guest Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker writer and, more famously, the host of Search Engine Engine. There are a handful of tickets left.
Next week… a story about the internet, with one of our favorite recurring correspondents.
Feel free to talk about kids, not kids, work, not work in the comments, but please (I feel like I don’t have to say this to you guys) be immensely respectful of each other.
See you all soon,
PJ
PJ,
I can do you one better.
I work. Full time. And it costs ME money to go to work. In comparing the costs associated with my job (commute, bus fare, parking, gas, tolls, dry cleaning etc.) vs. what I receive back in my paycheck, it works out to be I’m paying $100/week more than I see back in my paycheck. I love my job that much.
Would you (or Ira) do that?
I loved this episode. One thing I thought was interesting was that despite all the examination of why one would have children, there was very little about why one feels compelled to create art/podcasts.
I mean I get it, I have my own stupidly time-consuming artform, but what is it for you (and Ira) that makes you keep wanting to put these pieces of communication out into the world? A sense of duty, a need to be heard, a liking for celebrity, a desire for adulation and awards? Maybe a bit of all of those things.