This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The number of people leaving their jobs voluntarily, the quit rate, hit an all-time high this year.

That phenomenon is now known as the Great

Resignation, and it's shaking up industry after industry, from office jobs to restaurant work.

The repercussions of the pandemic and how and where we work are going to play out for some

time to come. Helping us understand all this is Cal Newport.

Cal writes our column, office space.

He teaches computer science,

and he's also the author of the book,

A World Without Email.

Lately, Cal Newport has been thinking about an idea

that was all the rage not so very long ago,

the four-hour work week.

Your main work is as an academic. As a professor,

how has this transformation, which is obviously inextricable from the pandemic so far,

affected your own work as a teacher, as a writer, as a researcher?

Well, I think one of the obviously biggest short-term transformations was this experiment we've been

forced into over the last year and a half into what if we shut down offices.

What if we make work remote?

This has had an impact, of course, on academia.

My university, Georgetown University, was effectively shut down for most students and faculty

for over a year. I felt this was a hard period. I'm happy now that I can actually be back and

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