Chris Duffy

Until then, stay curious.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and I love my job.

I feel so lucky that I get to host this show and have conversations with incredible, interesting people about their ideas.

And yet there's this weird thing for me and honestly, for almost everyone else I know, where if you have a job that you like, that's rewarding and meaningful, you feel compelled to give it all of yourself to organize your life around the work rather than the work around your life.

But we're worth more than just the parts of us that can make money.

That's true whether you have a job you love or a job that you despise.

Today's guest, Sarah Jaffe, is a writer who has been exploring this complicated nature of work and life and self and identity for years.

She struck a real chord with people across the globe when she wrote the book Work Won't Love You Back.

How devotion to our jobs keeps us exploited, exhausted and alone.

Sarah is currently a writer and a journalist.

Her dream job.

She's doing it.

But before that, she worked a whole slew of other jobs.

And here is a clip where Sarah gives me a brief glance at some of the other items on her resume.

From random odd jobs to dream jobs, Sarah argues that no matter what we're doing, we need to re-evaluate our relationship to work and to make sure that we don't give all of ourselves away.

In her latest book, From the Ashes, Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire, Sarah takes that idea and she goes even further, weaving her own personal story of grief after losing her father with the broader societal grief at job losses and the pandemic and the climate crisis.

In both of her books, Sarah is exploring how our humanity is so often limited by the very narrow confines of the work that we can do that makes money.

These are big topics.

This is weighty and challenging stuff.