Hello and welcome to Money Talks and Slate Money, where we chat with brilliant and interesting

people. I'm Emily Peck. I'm a markets correspondent at Axios and co-hosts of Slate Money,

and I'm here today with Cal Newport.

Cal, welcome to Money Talks. Emily, thanks for having me. He's a contributing writer at The New Yorker

where he writes a column called Office Space. Cal's latest book is called Slow Productivity,

The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. I mean, how would you describe it to people who have

not read it? Well, it's an answer to a

question that became more important for a lot of people, I think, during the pandemic,

especially people who worked office jobs. Is there a way to think about productivity that could

both support good work that also doesn't completely exhaust you? That doesn't impede on all other aspects of your life.

Can we, in other words, reform the very notion of productivity itself

to be something sustainable for these type of jobs?

Yeah.

It somehow inspired me to both work less and more.

Can't wait to get into it.

So if you have a job or you do any kind of work, I feel like you should be reading Cal's column. It's basically an indispensable go-to source for

anyone who cares about what happens at work, which, especially over the past few years,

as we've, you know, gone through the work from home revolution, then the great resignation and

quiet quitting and now AI, it's like you turn to Cal to like understand what's happening

and to feel sometimes outraged if you asked me. So I guess let's just

start off by talking about the book. Yeah. I mean, why do you think you needed to write it or

maybe put another way like, why were people so burnt out? Why did that happen at such an

...