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Hello, where does work fit into your set of New Year's resolutions?

Maybe you're hoping to find a new job this year, or a job.

Maybe you're resolved to work harder, or to ease off, and spend more time with your family or more time pursuing personal goals.

Work can be completely demoralizing as anyone who's ever hated their job knows.

And it can also be a source of pride and self-fulfillment.

Most of us have no choice but to work for nearly all of our adult lives. But what is work? What does it do for us and to us? And how do we fit work into a meaningful life?

Henry David Thoreau, one of the more thoughtful people in the history of the planet,

had a lot to say about work.

He was himself an incredibly hard worker and yet somehow he's gotten the reputation of being the guy who didn't work,

who left it all behind for a simple life in his cabin in the woods by Walden Pond.

Can we reconcile these two images of Thoreau and can we take any lessons

from Thoreau and his writings about work.

We'll talk to Thoreau Scholar and expert Jonathan Van Bell, co-author of the new book

Henry at Work.

Thoreau on Making a Living, today on the History of Literature.

Hmm, hello, hello, I'm Jack Wilson, exciting to be exciting, excited to be talking to you today.

Let's just get straight to it.

Thoreau on work, I hope I have worked up your appetite for that. That's part of my job here, part of my duties. I'm a podcast host and a family man and there's work in there too and I've been a worker so

since I don't I suppose my first job is a holler of typewriters

way back there is a is a, maybe a tween when I started that, right through my gigs as a farm hand and a

carny and a truck driver, a house painter, a teacher, and all the rest. Work, and more work.

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