Episoder
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In June 2022, Holly drove across the country to move back to Los Angeles from New York after Martha Beck live-coached her into it on episode 14.
The plan was to get to New Mexico by Friday in order to record episode 22 of Quitted (quitting compulsory sexuality!), but then Roe got overturned, and because we were both in the middle of having total life meltdowns already and didn't have much grace or space to begin with, we kind of broke. By July, neither of us had any desire to be talking in public; we couldn't even get ourselves together enough to release a five minute episode explaining why we were quitting Quitted.
In the two years that have passed things have changed significantly for both our hosts in really beautiful and surprising ways, mostly thanks to their shared commitment to remaining in the messy ass middle of their individual transitions from founder/CEOs/influencers to whatever they are now (people??).
This episode is a catch up episode in which both Emily and Holly discuss where they were, where they are now, and what happened when they didn't try to find their next gig, and instead sat in the complete shi^^y mess that is the long in between.
Links:
https://quitted.myflodesk.com/
https://www.emilyonlife.com/
https://www.hollywhitaker.com/
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Diane Sanfilippo Quits Diet Culture Part 2
Last week in our interview with best-selling author of diet books and former-diet-entrepreneur-turned-anti-diet-activist Diane Sanfilippo: we got deep into how after 20 years of dieting and building a whole VERY SUCCESSFUL career steeped in diet culture, Diane found she couldn’t make herself lose the same x pounds yet again. Last week we dug into what diet culture is and how that came to define Diane’s existence. This week we go deep into the implications of that decision. We talk about changing our minds in public, being true to our integrity at the cost of the public’s understanding or agreement; the dreaded liminal space and what happens when you’ve got ADHD and nothing to keep you structured, and committing to the truth over consistency.
About Diane Sanfilippo: Diane is the owner and founder of Balanced Bites - a wholesome food company that creates frozen meals, organic spice blends and snacks - all shipped nationwide. She's a certified holistic Nutrition Consultant, and two-time New York Times bestselling diet book author turned anti-diet advocate. Diane co-hosts Full Plate, a weekly podcast about healing from diet culture, setting boundaries, exploring mental health, and finding body liberation. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Scott, and two fur kids.
You can find Diane on Instagram: @dianesanfilippo
and via her websites balancedbites.com and dianesanfilippo.com
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Diane Sanfilippo Quits Diet Culture: Part 1
During the pandemic, Diane Sanfilippo got on the scale and saw a number that was more than when she started dieting twenty years before; and she realized she couldn’t make herself diet again. This isn’t entirely exceptional, it probably happened to a lot of us, except in Diane’s case she was the author of six bestselling diet books, from Keto QuickStart to Practical Paleo to The 21-Day Sugar Detox. So it wasn’t as if she was just done dieting; she was also done with her career, livelihood, an entire identity.
What happens when the thing you believed in stops aligning? What if that thing is a decade’s worth of best-selling books that don’t represent your current value system? What if you’ve been the poster child of dieting and you’ve decided to not just stop dieting, but become a visible and active critic of diet culture itself? Or what about this: what if you’re career kept your life together, kept you structured, and all that just goes away and you’re left in the vacuum of what’s next?
In this first part of a two-part series, we get into a lot: What diet culture is, how it keeps us distracted and forever chasing acceptance within patriarchy instead of burning it down; what about using diets to actually not feel horrible or to improve our health and the spectrum of anti-diet to diet positive; whether sugar addiction is real!; how in 2021 Diane realized after getting on the scale and seeing she’d “undid” all her work and that she couldn’t diet again or spend the rest of her life managing her food, and what came from realizing she was part of the problem.
In next week’s episode we get way down into what happened after Diane walked away and how she’s managing a pretty extreme liminal space.
About Diane Sanfilippo: Diane is the owner and founder of Balanced Bites - a wholesome food company that creates frozen meals, organic spice blends and snacks - all shipped nationwide. She's a certified holistic Nutrition Consultant, and two-time New York Times bestselling diet book author turned anti-diet advocate. Diane co-hosts Full Plate, a weekly podcast about healing from diet culture, setting boundaries, exploring mental health, and finding body liberation. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Scott, and two fur kids.
You can find Diane on Instagram: @dianesanfilippo
and via her websites balancedbites.com and dianesanfilippo.com
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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An Update Episode: Holly Whitaker and the Lost Place
This week, we’re checking in with Holly, who in 2021, basically removed her skin and left it in the closet of her former life. She lost the thing she’d thought she’d do forever, and the person she thought she’d be forever; in her first “who’s Holly Whitaker?” episode that we recorded back in January, she was deep in the long, humiliating, humbling, sucky journey of surrender through the lost place. In this episode, we catch up on where she’s at, and talk about her shifting perspective, the completion of cycles, and the surprising peace that eventually came from living in the quiet of the in-between – and from getting to really, really know herself.
We didn’t do an intro for this one; we just get right into it.
About Holly Whitaker: Holly is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol. Her work has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and many others. Holly's work focuses on understanding the intersections of systems, culture, and individual experience and identity through the lens of addiction and recovery. She writes the newsletter Recovering on Substack, co-hosts the Quitted podcast, and posts three times a year on Instagram as @holly.
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Sara Clark Quits the United States
It was meant to be a short vacation to Grenada in February 2020, but then Covid hit, and Sara Clark, who just happened to have all her things in storage (!!), followed her intuition and stayed in Grenada and left the U.S. for good.
That one terrifying (and she means terrifying) leap led her to an unimaginable quality of life as a Black woman now living in a Black country and as a recovering New Yorker living on an island with just over a hundred thousand people. The move to Grenada along with Covid also forced Sara--a well known yoga teacher at the top of her career in 2020---to take a step back and reconsider her entire career.
In this episode we talk about those big moves, impossible leaps of faith and terrifying risks, how the voice inside can tell us to burn it all down and how that is sometimes only sane thing to do, the difference between being rich in life and being rich on paper, and what kind of sacrifices we're really willing to make to live well and follow our hearts.
About Sara Clark:
Sara Clark is an international yoga and meditation teacher with over two decades of experience. She has been a Global Yoga Ambassador for lululemon, faculty at Kripalu and has graced the cover of Yoga Journal twice along with Prevention Magazine. Sara has created yoga and meditation videos for Shape Magazine, Yoga Today, and Glo. Known for her compassionate approach, Sara’s teachings merge the physical and spiritual practices of yoga with mindfulness and meditation techniques that support practitioners stepping into their limitless potential. You can find Sara at @saraclarkyoga or saraclarkyoga.com
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Mar Grace Quits Trying to be Someone
Hi! Holly here. In this conversation between my friend Mar Grace and myself, we mean to talk about Mar being (their words) a “double black diamond quitter,” but just end up talking about our recovery, very different relationships to relapse, hating each other’s work (at times!) but loving each others’ essence, giving up on leaving a legacy or trying to be significant, divorces that you saw coming and break ups you didn’t want to and which is better, being grateful to those who quit before we are ready to, mental illness and being people who have a hard time living in the world, and writing about mental breakdowns in real time. It’s a JOYFUL conversation about all the things.
The intro ends, and the episode begins, at 00:3:20.
About Mar Grace:
Mar Grace (they/them) is a dancer and writer whose work focuses on the self, devotion, ritual, creativity, and art making. Their practice is rooted in improvisation as a compositional form that takes shape in movement videos, books, quilting, online courses, and hosting artists. You can find their zines, things they make, artists they host, and more at marleegrace.space/home; you can subscribe to their newsletter and advice column at marleegrace.substack.com/subscribe.
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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An Update Episode: Emily McDowell, Now With Even More Quitting!
This week, we’re talking about the big thing Emily couldn’t talk about until now: in April, Em & Friends—the brand she founded and infused with her name, personality and life experience—was acquired, and Emily didn’t go with it. What did it feel like to, finger-by-finger, let go of the future she thought she’d have? WTF is she gonna do now? We get into it all. Big themes include the idea of comfort vs. growth; the feeling of knowing it’s time to go, but deciding to hold on anyway because the unknown is terrifying and security is seductive; and the things we believe keep us safe.
The intro ends, and the episode begins, at 00:10:45.
About Emily McDowell:
Emily is a writer, illustrator, keynote speaker, teacher, and entrepreneur who is fiercely committed to not doing all of those things at the same time. She’s best-known as founder of the stationery brand Em & Friends (formerly Emily McDowell Studio), which makes cards and gifts for the relationships people really have. She also co-authored and illustrated the book There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love; and she’s the co-host of this podcast. Find her at emilyonlife.com, and on Instagram @emilyonlife.
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Zach Anderson Quits Everything He Knows
Zach Anderson was raised to be a devout Mormon, with the belief that he could earn God’s favor if he could only be good enough. Obedient enough. Perfect enough. But Zach had a secret: he was gay, which meant his very existence was condemned by the church—and, so he believed, condemned by God. Zach’s specific story is about leaving Mormonism and its community; coming out at age 37 after a lifetime of being told that to be gay was the worst thing he could be; deconstructing his faith and relationship with God; letting go of perfectionism as a survival mechanism. But more broadly: this is a story about the process of leaving everything you know in order to become who you are, and the courage it takes to build a new life that costs you the entirety of your old one.
The intro ends, and the episode begins, at 00:03:13.
About Zach Anderson (he/him):
Zach is a dad, gay man, attorney, nutrition coach, ex-Mormon, & former collegiate swimmer. He was born and raised in Mesa, Arizona. He grew up in a devout Mormon family amidst a significantly sizeable Mormon community.
He attended Brigham Young University and served a mission for the Mormon Church in Eugene, Oregon. While at BYU on a swimming scholarship, he had a prolific swimming career. He was a three-time All-American and placed in the top 16 at National Championships five times. He attended Creighton University Law School where he met and converted his ex-wife of 9 years.
Beginning in 2015, he started to address some significant internal issues he had with Mormonism. In 2020, he actively started to deconstruct his relationship with Mormonism and chose to affirmatively remove his membership records from the Mormon Church.
This was particularly done at the prompting of the expected birth of his daughter; in 2020, his daughter Maeve was born. Being Maeve’s dad caused him to deeply ponder how he could better love himself, and help equip Maeve to live a life of joy and fulfillment. And to actively remove her from a religion that caused him significant trauma and harm.
In September 2021, after nine years of marriage to his best friend, he finally came out as a gay man. Zach and his former wife divorced in March 2022.
Find Zach on IG @motionsustained, and at https://www.motionsustained.com/
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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PART TWO: Martha Beck Quits Lying
Author, speaker, teacher, legend, Oprah-endorsed Martha Beck is known for quitting a lot of things: her family of origin, her religion, marriage, heterosexuality, academia, multiple versions of herself…the list is long. But the thing she quit that has had the most profound and rippling effect was lying. And we mean, lying about anything at all. Years ago she made a resolution to not tell one lie—to herself or anyone else, even the pleasant little lies we tell to make other people feel better—for an entire year. It was through this one commitment that Martha conceived that if we all quit lying and told the truth ALL THE TIME we’d meet our most authentic, liberated selves. (We tried it; it’s hard.)
In this second episode of a two-part series (if you missed part 1, listen to that first; it aired last week), we continue our conversation about, well… how to be a person. We talk about how the only intention you need is to feel a little better, and how to get there – hint: get out of the mind and into the heart, because our minds are dumb and limited – and the difference between what we want and what we yearn for, and why the things we want won’t actually make us happy (even if what we want is a yacht, and we get it!). Also covered: how to recognize a soul teacher; the idea of abandoning both hope and fear; and the breakthroughs and benefits that come from trying on the opposite of our deepest beliefs. (Martha references “The Work of Byron Katie” here.)
The intro ends, and the episode begins, at 00:12:40.
Dr. Martha Beck is a New York Times bestselling author, life coach, and speaker. She holds three Harvard degrees in social science, and Oprah Winfrey has called her “one of the smartest women I know.” Martha is a passionate and engaging teacher, known for her unique combination of science, humor, and spirituality. Her newest book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self, was an instant New York Times Best Seller.
Find her at marthabeck.com
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Martha Beck Quits Lying
Author, speaker, teacher, legend, Oprah-endorsed Martha Beck is known for quitting a lot of things: her family of origin, her religion, marriage, heterosexuality, academia, multiple versions of herself…the list is long. But the thing she quit that has had the most profound and rippling effect was lying. And we mean, lying about anything at all. Years ago she made a resolution to not tell one lie—to herself or anyone else, even the pleasant little lies we tell to make other people feel better—for an entire year. It was through this one commitment that Martha conceived that if we all quit lying and told the truth ALL THE TIME we’d meet our most authentic, liberated selves. (We tried it; it’s hard.)
In this first episode of a two-part series, Emily has just quit her job and greeting card company, and tells this to Martha right after Martha—one of Emily’s heroes—tells Emily how in her household they know her as the greeting card goddess. 😩 From there we dive right into burning down versions of ourselves that no longer work (even if we’re goddesses in them), how sometimes we would rather die than face what life is asking of us, how when we tell harmless little people-pleasing lies we become exploding doormats, and how if all of us stopped lying our sexist racist patriarchal society would stop functioning. (!!) It’s a fucking gut punch of an episode we promise will make you want to burn some shit to the ground.
Dr. Martha Beck is a New York Times bestselling author, life coach, and speaker. She holds three Harvard degrees in social science, and Oprah Winfrey has called her “one of the smartest women I know.” Martha is a passionate and engaging teacher, known for her unique combination of science, humor, and spirituality. Her newest book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self, was an instant New York Times Best Seller.
Find her at marthabeck.com
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Koa Beck on Quitting Self-Optimization
Koa Beck made it to the top of her field: she was the was the editor-in-chief of Jezebel and before that was the executive editor at Vogue.com with many other coveted roles held along the way, before she left to write a book that guaranteed she'd never be employable by those institutions ever again. But this isn't the story of how Koa managed that transition--it's not her quitting story. It's the story of white feminism and the lie that self-optimization will save us from a system designed to crush us. If we want a different future, there's a lot of things we're going to have to quit individually and collectively; this is a conversation about that.
About Koa Beck:
KOA BECK is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind (Simon & Schuster, January 2021), praised by feminist writers Gloria Steinem and Rebecca Traister. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of Jezebel, the executive editor of Vogue.com, and the senior features editor at MarieClaire.com. Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the cofounder of Black Lives Matter, describes Koa’s work as “intellectually smart and emotionally intelligent” while the Boston Globe has deemed her “a perceptive cultural critic” and “a visionary.” She is currently working on her second book and lives in Los Angeles with her wife.
Find Koa at her website, Koabeck.com or follow her on Instagram @koabeck
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Africa Brooke Part 2: Knowing Who You Are So You Know How To Act
We’re back with the second installment of Africa Brooke. In this episode we dive into how Africa quit self-sabotaging and censoring and found her own voice and the self-confidence to say the things a lot of people are afraid to say. (Hint: it’s sobriety). We go deep on how identifying our values are the key to helping us remember who we are, what we care about, what we stand for, so we can quit trying to stand for everythingin the news cycle, speaking up about every issue just because everyone else is, and get real with what we personally want to prioritize and put our energy into—so we can all quit self-censoring. Everyone shares their own lists of values, hilarity ensues.
About Africa Brooke:
Africa Brooke is a globally recognized consultant, coach, speaker, and writer who specializes in helping people move through self-censorship and other forms of self-sabotage. Her work takes a close look at the complexity, mess, and glory that is the human experience, and she makes a strong case for why we need to accept discomfort as an essential part of the growth process. She hosts two podcasts: Beyond the Self & Unfiltered with Africa.
Find Africa on Instagram @africabrooke, listen to her podcast Beyond The Self or at her website, afrciabrooke.com
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Africa Brooke and Quitting Self-Censorship
Instagram, and social media, can be an amazing tool for social justice. It can also be an absolute trash fire where nobody listens to each other, everyone is outraged, and there’s an overwhelming pressure to post the right thing at the right time, or have an opinion about everything, and a deep fear of saying the wrong thing by mistake or being misunderstood. This week, we’re talking to Africa Brooke about navigating all this, how to stop self-censoring and self-sabotage (and the relationship between the two), and showing up, both online and in life, in ways that align with our own integrity.
This is part one of a two part discussion with Africa Brooke. The intro ends, and the interview begins, at 00:20:22
About Africa Brooke:
Africa Brooke is a globally recognized consultant, coach, speaker, and writer who specializes in helping people move through self-censorship and other forms of self-sabotage. Her work takes a close look at the complexity, mess, and glory that is the human experience, and she makes a strong case for why we need to accept discomfort as an essential part of the growth process. She hosts two podcasts: Beyond the Self & Unfiltered with Africa.
Find her on Instagram: @africabrooke
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on Patreon
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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It’s Quitting Season with Lindsay Crouse
“When the system doesn't historically stand for you, why sacrifice yourself to uphold it?” Today’s guest, Lindsay Crouse, is as close as it gets to a “quitting expert” in her role as writer and producer at The New York Times, and in this episode, we’re talking about some key things she’s learned and observed through her award-winning coverage. When female athletes at the top of their game like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka start saying no, what larger truth does that indicate, and what does it mean for the rest of us? What is the sunk cost fallacy, and how does it make us justify staying in situations we want to leave? What happens when you become a martyr to grit? Why do we celebrate endurance, especially as women, when quitting can actually be self-protection?
The intro ends, and the interview begins, at 00:16:15.
About Lindsay Crouse:
Lindsay Crouse is a writer and producer in the Opinion section of The New York Times. Drawing on her own experiences as a competitive marathoner, she has spearheaded coverage of women athletes at The Times; the Emmy-nominated video series she produced in 2019, Equal Play, broke news by centering female athletes’ untold experiences and led to widespread reform in women’s sports. Now the Co-Executive Producer of Op-Docs, The Times’s series of short documentaries by independent filmmakers, she has produced more than 300 films, winning four Emmy awards (15 nominations), five Oscar nominations, and two Peabody awards—including the 2022 Oscar nominee “The Queen of Basketball.” She is the author of the forthcoming book
“The Case for Quitting.”
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Dr. Nathalie Dougé Quits Doctoring in the Middle of COVID
Nathalie Dougé always knew she wanted to be a doctor: to help people; to make her family proud; and to advocate for people who looked like her: a first-generation Haitian-American woman from the Bronx. When Covid hit, she was working as a hospitalist in Queens: the epicenter of the pandemic. In this episode, Dr. Nathalie Dougé tells us her story: what it took to become a doctor; what it was like to treat the sickest patients in the early days of Covid; how George Floyd’s murder intersected with what she was going through at work; and, ultimately, the messy, uncertain process of walking away from her calling, her training, and her identity as a physician.
Dr. Dougé was a participant in the award-winning documentary The First Wave, which follows a group of New York City doctors, nurses, and patients for the first four months of the pandemic, as they try desperately to navigate the unknown. You don’t need to have seen The First Wave to listen to this episode, but it’s free on Hulu, and everyone should watch it. We discuss the film in the intro.
The intro ends, and the interview begins, at 00:10:11.
More about The First Wave here: https://films.nationalgeographic.com/the-first-wave
Watch The First Wave on Hulu here: https://www.hulu.com/movie/the-first-wave-5e708670-e586-4a8b-a98c-f5338c4b865a
About Nathalie Dougé, MD:
Nathalie Dougé, MD is a board-certified physician in internal medicine. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, she served as a hospitalist and assistant professor at a tertiary academic center in Queens, NY. She is one of the participant's in the critically acclaimed 2021 National Geographic documentary film, The First Wave. She has been interviewed and appeared in media outlets, such as Esquire magazine, ABC's Good Morning America and Nightline, Forbes magazine, Amanour & Company on PBS, and MSNBC Politics Nation. She is a board member of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation. She lives in Queens, NY and is a doting dog mom to her rescue Mars. She is on IG @ndougemd.
Support us:
Quitted is listener supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day, https://www.adamdayphotography.com/
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Host: Holly Whitaker, https://hollywhitaker.substack.com/
Host: Emily McDowell, https://emilyonlife.com
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Aki Ito on Hustle Culture & How We Got Here
In white-collar, salaried America, there’s an idea that our jobs are supposed to give our lives meaning. It’s the gospel according to Steve Jobs, who famously said the only way to be truly satisfied is by doing great work. And in many industries, working long hours is a badge of honor. But it wasn’t always this way. Work in America was once viewed as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Up until 1980, salaried Europeans actually worked longer hours than Americans in similar jobs – but today, Americans work ten more weeks per year than Germans do. That is… a lot of hours.
So, uh, what happened? How and why did we get here? And where are we going? This week, we’re talking with business journalist Aki Ito about all this and more.
The intro ends, and the interview begins, at 00:07:50
Aki Ito is a senior correspondent at Insider based in California. She writes features about the economy and the workplace, and she's recently covered everything from the rise of working from home to salary transparency, the Great Resignation, and the history of hustle culture. Aki started her career as an intern at Bloomberg News in Tokyo, and went on to spend a decade at Bloomberg in Tokyo and San Francisco as a reporter, editor, podcast host, and video series host. She grew up in Tokyo and New York, and is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. You can find her on Twitter at @akiito7.
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Support us:
Quitted is listener supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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What Is It About Endings?
Quitting is a huge topic, and in this episode, Emily and Holly dive deeper into the angles they most want to talk about. Endings excite Holly and terrify Emily. Why? Holly loves destruction; is she okay? We get into ideas of success and failure and what they are; what “failure porn” is, and the glorification of failure (which doesn’t exist in recovery); how there’s so much guidance for creating and so little around walking away; what happens when you lose your purpose and your passion; do we have one magical assignment?; normalizing and valuing the groundless, hard liminal space before the “comeback;” how and why we don’t talk about death or have rituals for endings; and when our changing makes other people uncomfortable.
Intro Note:
Holly and Emily talk about their shared (and until now, secret) love of ASMR, and we also forget to define what ASMR is. ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response.” The dictionary calls it “a feeling of well-being combined with a tingling sensation in the scalp and down the back of the neck, as experienced by some people in response to a specific gentle stimulus, often a particular sound.” Mostly people just call it “tingles,” despite the word “tingles” being slightly creepy.
The intro ends, and the episode begins, at 00:06:04
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Adam Day
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Support us:
Quitted is listener supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Elizabeth Gilbert, Black Diamond Quitter (Part Two)
This is the second half of our two-part episode with bestselling author and extremely wise person Elizabeth Gilbert. (If you missed part one, we aired it last week.) Liz is known for quitting many things, and for having a strong inner compass. She is also a person who Emily and Holly look to for guidance in their own lives (WWLGD?), and this conversation is filled with insight, permission, and surprises. It felt like an exhale to record it; we hope it feels that way to hear it.
In this episode, we talk about a post Liz wrote many years ago about the difference between quitting and surrendering, and how her point of view has changed; the freedom and clarity that come from learning to have our own backs and take loving care of ourselves; the things Liz has quit that feel the most important to her (not the ones the general public knows about!); the liberation to be found in the idea that we don’t have to be special; what “purpose anxiety” is; and what happens when we let go of the idea of having to know our life’s purpose (or even having one!).
The intro ends, and the interview begins, at 15:42.
After polling our Patreon community, we’re experimenting with different lengths and styles of intros to our episodes. This one is long and chatty; Holly talks about being terrible at flirting and using Mandy Patinkin as a dating service; Emily talks about her love for punishing rain at the Oregon coast; if you just want to listen to Liz, she comes in at 15:42.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of City of Girls, Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, as well as several other internationally bestselling books. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. She is (not) on Instagram at @elizabeth_gilbert_writer.
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Support us:
Quitted is listener supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted.
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Elizabeth Gilbert, Black Diamond Quitter (Part One)
This week and next week, we’re thrilled to have bestselling author and extremely wise person Elizabeth Gilbert on the show. Liz is known for quitting many things, and for having a strong inner compass. She is also a person who Emily and Holly look to for guidance in their own lives (WWLGD?), and this conversation is filled with insight, permission, and surprises. It felt like an exhale to record it; we hope it feels that way to hear it.
In this episode, we talk about why Liz quit social media 14 months ago (it’s probably not what you think) and what that process has been like; the dream career Liz walked away from in order to go write Eat, Pray, Love, and how she made that decision; how Liz’s talent for quitting is, in part, related to her talent for getting herself in trouble; and how to tell the difference between an inner knowing and an emotion-based impulse.
The intro ends, and the interview begins, at 00:11:22.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of City of Girls, Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, as well as several other internationally bestselling books. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. She is (not) on Instagram at @elizabeth_gilbert_writer.
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Support us:
Quitted is listener supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Holly Whitaker Reports From the Liminal Space
What happens when you have to quit the thing you thought you’d never quit? Welcome to the Holly Episode: Who is Quitted co-host Holly Whitaker, how did she get here, and why does she want to talk about quitting stuff?
Holly is publicly known for quitting things: drinking, drugs, bulimia. Her book is called Quit Like A Woman. What we’re saying is: quitting has been a key part of Holly’s narrative. And getting sober sent her down the path to what became her purpose: creating a personalized recovery model as an alternative to the two existing options of rehab or AA.
In this episode, Holly shares the story of building her company, Tempest, in the best way she knew how; and then, of leaving it, partially by choice and partially not. What do you do when you have to quit the thing you thought you’d never quit? How do you deal when your identity isn’t your identity anymore, and there’s nothing to replace it with? What comes with an extended stay in the in-between space? Why do we need to turn “failure” into “success” in order for it to be worthy? 2021 was the hardest, worst year of Holly’s life. But also, at the same time, it was beautiful?
About Holly Whitaker: Holly is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol. Her work has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and many others. Holly's work focuses on understanding the intersections of systems, culture, and individual experience and identity through the lens of addiction and recovery. She lives in upstate New York. She writes a weekly newsletter called Recovering, and is on Instagram @holly.
Music: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Sound engineering + edits: Michael Blumenfeld, mikebloomstudio.com
Producer: Cathleen Kisich
Support us:
Quitted is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/quitted
Become a Quitted supporter on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Se mer
