Episode Overview

Podcast: Fixable (TED) – Special Episode: How to stop devoting yourself to your job w/ Sarah Jaffe
Host: Chris Duffy (from How to Be a Better Human)
Guest: Sarah Jaffe, journalist and author of Work Won't Love You Back and From the Ashes
Date: December 29, 2025
Main Theme:
This episode explores our complex relationship with work—why so many of us feel compelled to devote ourselves fully to our jobs, the consequences of tying identity and self-worth to our labor, and how to reclaim life, community, and meaning outside of work. Sarah Jaffe draws on her experience, reporting, and personal grief to challenge prevailing ideas about working for passion and profit, and suggests tangible ways to think differently about our labor.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Origins of Work Won’t Love You Back (02:25–06:17)

• Personal Job History: Sarah shares her trajectory from “punk rock and crappy jobs” (trash pickup, record store, waiting tables, managing her parents' bike shop) to journalism, noting that dream jobs often don’t deliver much better conditions than undesirable ones.
• Insight: The core realization: “Work is still work and we are still doing it at the end of the day because we've got to pay the rent, not because we just woke up that morning and decided that slinging sushi to tourists in Denver would be great fun.” (Sarah Jaffe, 05:45)
• Key Message: Even if you chase your dream job, the fundamental dynamics—precarity, exploitation, the need to pay bills—don’t magically change.

2. Reframing the Source of Meaning and Self-Worth (06:17–08:35)

• School vs. Work Structure: Chris notes that school offers clear benchmarks and feedback, whereas in work, it’s easy to let your job become the primary source of validation.
• Jaffe’s Rebuttal: “At the end of the day, I need to have other things that give me meaning and give me validation and give me the sense of doing something important in the world.” (Sarah Jaffe, 06:52)
• On “Labor of Love” Jobs: Many essential careers (nurses, teachers, etc.) attract people who desire meaningful work—but this does not mean accepting poor conditions. “Your life is more than this workplace, and you get to have demands on your workplace.” (07:34)

3. Collective Action & the Public Good (08:35–12:24)

• Bargaining for the Common Good: Story of the Chicago Teachers Union’s 2012 strike, whose slogan was “Our working conditions are our students' learning conditions.”
• Notable Quote: “They sort of demonstrated their worth to the community by going on strike, which is the classic sort of labor tactic. [...] You want our conditions to be better because it's actually good for everyone.” (Sarah Jaffe, 09:05)
• Connecting Care Work and Grief: Moves to how care workers and coal miners both experience deep connection to labor and community—but that transitions and strikes are particularly emotionally fraught for care workers.

4. The Miners, Care Work & Solidarity (10:29–15:34)

• Kevin’s Story: A former UK coal miner who transitioned to care work after the mines closed. For him, union solidarity and care work are deeply connected. The skills of “having your back” are transferable between dangerous labor and caregiving.
• Loss of Social Infrastructure: When industries collapse, entire communities and their rituals disappear—not just jobs.
• Memorializing Loss: The first COVID workers’ memorial Jaffe saw was in an old mining town—underscoring how such communities are used to commemorating public tragedy.

5. Changing Attitudes toward Unions (15:34–17:36)

• Personal Shift: Chris describes how, as a teacher, his initial skepticism toward unions was replaced with an understanding of their importance in creating beneficial structural support.
• Value Beyond Pay: Unions also enable sharing, teaching, and collective problem-solving among coworkers.

6. Concrete Steps to Rethinking Your Relationship with Work (18:01–20:50)

• Sarah’s Advice:
  • Talk to coworkers: “It’s probably not just you.”
  • Don’t organize on workplace email: Use private tools for safety.
  • Remember your rights: You don’t have to be in a union to advocate collectively.
  • Assess Demands & Leverage: Identify what you want, and how you can effectively push for it. Sometimes that’s striking, but sometimes it’s “work to rule” (doing exactly what’s required and no more).

7. Grief—Personal, Professional & Societal (24:24–32:53)

• Connection Between Life & Labor Grief: Jaffe explains that grieving the loss of a parent made her newly sensitive to the widespread, unacknowledged grief caused by job loss, deindustrialization, and the pandemic.
• Disenfranchised Grief: Borrowing from clinical practitioners, she describes how unacknowledged grief can become toxic: “People are carrying around a lot of unacknowledged pain and that comes out, if we're lucky, in ways that are just sort of messy. If we're really not lucky, it gets toxic and it can destroy your relationships, your grip on reality, your health.” (Sarah Jaffe, 32:53)
• Societal Expectations: In late capitalism, “we just sort of are supposed to get back to work,” even after profound loss.

8. The Messiness and Non-Linear Nature of Grief (35:22–39:35)

• The ‘Middle Voice’ Concept: Grief, like love, happens in the “middle voice”—it is not simply something you do or that is done to you; it acts on you, and you act within it. “You are grieving, but grieving is also doing you.” (Chris Duffy reading Sarah Jaffe, 35:22)
• No Metrics, No A’s: Jaffe jokes about wanting to “get an A in grieving,” but learns that “the more you try to do that, the more [...] you're gonna screw yourself up.”
• Receiving and Giving Care: During grief, she realized the importance of accepting care without immediate reciprocation, and being that support for others in turn.

9. Grief, Community, and Moving Forward Together (39:35–44:44)

• Personal & Collective Messiness: Jaffe’s descriptions of grief are raw, dual, and contradictory.
  • Memorable quote:
    “Grief is not joyful or peaceful. It is a war inside me. It is an alien chewing its way out. It is a tornado somewhere beneath my lungs. It is breaking me. And somehow people can't see. I want them to see. And I am terrified they will see. And I am both of these things at the same time being pulled in opposite directions. Like there's a team of horses attached to each end. Except Somehow, unbelievably, I am stronger than the teams of horses, and I do not get torn apart.” (Chris, reading Jaffe, 39:35)
• Care in Social Movements: The “life-making” function of social movements is not just about protest, but offering “care that was physical, food, a place to sleep, masks and hand sanitizer during COVID-19.” (40:20)
• Imagining a Better World: Real solidarity helps imagine and build a world where everyone is cared for—not only through personal networks but structurally (43:00–44:44).
• Grief as Catalyst: “When you have to imagine the end of your personal world, [...] maybe in that space there is a possibility of imagining it better.” (Sarah Jaffe, 44:12)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Work won’t love you back.” (Recurring, foundational assertion)
• “Your life is more than this workplace, and you get to have demands on your workplace.” (Sarah Jaffe, 07:34)
• “Our working conditions are our students' learning conditions.” (Sarah Jaffe, 08:40)
• “You are grieving, but grieving is also doing you.” (Chris Duffy reading Sarah Jaffe, 35:22)
• “Grief is not joyful or peaceful. It is a war inside me. It is an alien chewing its way out...” (Chris Duffy reading Sarah Jaffe, 39:35)
• “The end of every life is a world ending. And so when you have to imagine the end of your personal world [...] maybe in that space there is a possibility of imagining it better.” (Sarah Jaffe, 44:12)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:25–06:17 — Sarah’s early work experiences and realization about work’s limits
• 08:35–12:24 — Bargaining for the common good, community connections
• 18:01–20:50 — Concrete advice for reevaluating work relationships & starting to organize
• 24:24–32:53 — Grief in family, work, and society; disenfranchised grief and toxic effects
• 35:22–39:35 — Grief in the “middle voice”; learning to accept and reciprocate care
• 39:35–44:44 — Pairing personal and societal grief, finding hope in solidarity
• 44:12 — Grief as a doorway to imagining better futures

Takeaways – Actionable Insights

• Even passionate, “dream” work doesn’t immunize you from exploitation or burnout—don’t give it all of yourself.
• Find meaning and validation in places other than your job.
• Talk openly with coworkers; collective struggle is at the core of change.
• Don’t organize on work-owned software; use private channels.
• Understand your rights: collective action is protected even outside unions.
• Recognize and respect the genuine messiness of grief—it's not on a schedule, and it affects both individuals and groups.
• Providing care (material and emotional) for each other is key—in advocacy, in grief, in everyday life.
• The “life-making” of solidarity—supporting each other in moments of loss, struggle, and hope—is as important as traditional markers of progress.
• Use moments of personal or collective grief as prompts to imagine and build better, kinder systems for all.

For More:
Sarah Jaffe’s books and work can be found at sarahljaffe.com.
Host Chris Duffy is at chrisduffycomedy.com.