Quitted
Quitted is a podcast about quitting, hosted by Holly Whitaker and Emily McDowell.
What happens when you don’t want to be who you are anymore?
For all of us, there comes a time when in order to thrive (or simply survive!), we have to walk away from something that represents a huge piece of our identity. This could be a career, a relationship, a religion, a long-held dream, a social norm, a gender–whatever it is, it’s a massive part of who we are, and letting it go comes at great personal cost. Quitting means disappointing all the people invested in our staying; it requires giving up the security of what we know, and stepping into a liminal space where we’re not sure who we are anymore.
Unlike growing and building, which our culture obsessively celebrates, endings are quiet and lonely, because we don’t talk about them. Quitting is synonymous with failure. We’re conditioned to believe perseverance is a virtue, “winners never quit,” and giving up means losing. Quitting is only acceptable when it’s a waypoint to something greater, some imagined bigger and better future. But what if that’s all a lie?
We’ll talk with guests who have quit all kinds of seemingly impossible things, about the decision to quit, but even more importantly, about what happens after that. Quitting doesn’t mean going directly from being one thing to being another thing; in between, there’s a middle space, a transitional space, and that space is hard, confusing, and groundless. We’ll talk about navigating that space, and everything surrounding it, in order to help provide insight, permission, and illumination for others seeking the courage to risk everything to find a truer north.
We’ll also explore the concept of quitting itself, how it came to hold the meaning it does, its inextricable links to late-stage American capitalism, and how a shifting narrative around giving up could be the key to a different future.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
© Holly Whitaker & Emily McDowell · more info
Artwork and data is from the podcast’s open RSS feed; we link directly to audio · Read our DMCA procedure
This podcast may use tracking and attribution and dynamic content insertion
Stats: Statistics are produced by Acast to help Quitted to understand how many downloads it is getting, or how many people are listening. Your device’s IP address and user agent is used to help calculate this figure. Acast is IAB v2 certified. Here is more detail about podcast statistics.
Tracking and attribution: Acast or its partners may connect the fact you listened to this podcast to an action elsewhere on the internet. For example - it may spot a device that downloaded an episode of Quitted later visited the website of an advertiser; or it may track that a device that listened to Quitted also listened to a different show. This form of attribution is used to measure advertising effectiveness.
Dynamic content insertion: Acast may use limited data that they know about you - the device you’re using, the approximate location you’re in, or other data that can be derived from this, like the current weather forecast for your area - to change parts of the audio. Quitted may do this for advertising or for other forms of content, like news stories.
Quitted is able to use the above tools since its podcast host or measurement company offers this service. It doesn’t mean that this individual podcast uses them, or has access to this functionality. We use open data.
Listen and follow
Information for podcasters
- Podcast GUID:
0aff5c99-842d-54e1-80cd-4c865dcdafd7 - This podcast previously hosted on Acast (until Feb 2026), and still hosts with Acast with a different RSS address. See changes across podcasting.
- There is a different RSS feed listed in the Podcast Index (here) and Apple Podcasts (here). Our systems normally pull RSS feed addresses from Apple Podcasts; and it should normally match what’s in the Podcast Index.
- This podcast appears to be missing from iHeartRadio. We list all the podcast directories to be in.
- Validate this podcast’s RSS feed with Livewire, Truefans or CastFeedValidator