I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.

I'm here in my deep work HQ, joined as always by my producer, Jesse.

Jesse, that was heartened to see a particular piece of reader feedback that you added to the script.

Because it's been a thorn in my side for a long time

and i'm glad that someone else noticed that yeah it was michael from massachusetts okay so i guess

he was visiting georgetown he was visiting with his kids because they're thinking about going there

and they're juniors so what michael noticed which is something I've long noticed but never brought up, is the

Georgetown bookstore doesn't carry my books.

Yeah, he was very upset.

Not only they not carry my books on the shelves, but they have right up front and they have

for a long time a table that is labeled faculty authors and it's books by Georgetown faculty.

And they're good books, but I will say I, you know, my, any one of my books is probably

outsold half that table.

Like, they're pretty well-known books, and they just do not put it on there.

I assume that because my books aren't with an academic press, maybe they just

don't consider them a faculty book because therefore a general audience, I guess. I don't know,

but for whatever reason, Georgetown just does not carry that bookstore, whoever runs the bookstore,

does not think about my books as being

Georgetown faculty authored books, I suppose. I'll read a quick sentence. As a frequent listener

to the podcast, I was very excited to visit the bookstore and purchase a few of Cal's books.

I thought this would be a great way to introduce Cal to my children. I wanted to get slow

productivity and how to win at college for my daughter. We got to the bookstore. We couldn't find any of the books. We asked the lady behind the counter

...