Julie Bowen And Chad Sanders On New Podcast ‘Quitters’

Amidst pandemic, Americans famously quit their jobs in droves last year.

While the word “quit” has often carried a negative connotation in the U.S., more than half of the 47 million who moved forth in 2021 went on to earn a greater income.

The new podcast, co-hosted by actress and director Julie Bowen and writer, director, actor and musician Chad Sanders, seeks to destigmatize the word. Focusing on a wide array of topics, like marriage, addiction or career, Quitters shines a light on the positives that can be found when people move on from often self-defining things that become toxic over time.

The podcast hosts come from radically different backgrounds. Bowen is a successful white TV star who’s appeared in series like Modern Family and Boston Legal while Sanders is a Black author who examines race in the revelatory book Black Magic.

Candid conversations move fast during each episode of the Quitters podcast, now available for streaming via platforms like Apple, Spotify and Audacy, with bells occasionally forcing the hosts to pause and reflect.

“When Julie and I started to have a friendship, there is a dynamic,” explained Sanders. “When we started to do these interviews… I brought these bells. So that I, or Julie, could ring the bell if ever one of us felt microaggressed or macroagressed or hurt – if one of us had done something that pained the other,” he continued. “Because the conversations move so quickly. And there’s moments where we need to stop and re-calibrate and talk about our human feelings. It really is important to the show.”

Bowen is candid about the end of a marriage and quitting an early eating disorder, destigmatizing the idea of therapy throughout the course of bold Quitters conversations. Sanders focuses more directly on the workplace, breaking down his experience out of college as an employee at Google. The hosts examine the human condition during conversations with guests like actor Lamorne Morris, Modern Family co-stars Ty Burrell, Sarah Hyland and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, musician Meghan Trainor and late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

“Being candid about it was really scary and painful. But I was so tired of carrying around the whole, ‘You have to be perfect in public. You can’t share your messy, dirty secrets’ thing,” said Bowen. “That was one of the big things I wanted to quit – to quit having the shame of talking about it. Just say it. We’re all just humans trying to do our best.”

I spoke with Chad Sanders and Julie Bowen about the dichotomy that informs the Quitters podcast, the importance of curiosity and storytelling and creating a safe podcast space where people can share. A transcript of our video call, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below.

Chad, the podcast was your idea, right? What made Julie the right partner?

CHAD SANDERS: Julie and I were talking about a bunch of stuff. We were actually just talking about life really more than anything. And I think we both probably had the light bulb moment around the same time – that our conversations had sort of an electricity and a tension and a curiosity to them that I thought would do well as the voice of this show concept that I was already developing. And Julie was like, “What?! Yeah!” She was really into it. I pitched her two concepts actually. And this was the one that she really hooked onto.

JULIE BOWEN: We spent a bunch of hours just talking and talking, thinking, “Is there something there?” We couldn’t stop talking to each other – but we couldn’t figure out if there was anything anybody would want to listen to. When he came with this idea, I was like, “Yeah. That’s it! Everybody wants to quit something – or they have.” And there’s a freedom in talking about it. I liked that.

Chad and I come from very different places, different points of view. But we have this intersection of not being straight, white men. And it felt like that was always a way that we looked at problems and it was always a way that we were able to talk. And we sort of thought, “This allows us to talk to almost anyone.”

You guys both seem to have pretty curious minds. How important is that to a project like this?

JULIE: I think it’s incredibly important. I know that I’m very curious. And everybody has always told me that talking to me is like Late Night With Julie Bowen. I’m constantly asking everybody questions – sometimes too many. And what I really like about working with Chad is he will ask the question I could never think of. He will come in and sit there thoughtfully. I’m sort of going down one road and he’ll just come in to the left and say – my favorite question that he ever asked is, “Who gave you permission to feel that way?” And I was like, “What?!”

Just having somebody else, who comes from a totally different place and sees things from a different point of view, is invaluable.

CHAD: I think one of my favorite things about Julie is that she’s curious. I think something I pointed out early in our relationship is that Julie doesn’t have to be curious. She could sort of ride a wave of privilege and money and whiteness and blondness and not have to care about what else is going on in the world or other people’s experiences. And I still don’t totally understand the why of it. But, for whatever reason, she really does want to take a tiny microscope to all of these other sorts of experiences and lifestyles to really understand what people are going through.

Chad, I believe it was in the second episode that you said you are an introvert. And Julie, correct me if I’m wrong, but you strike me very much as an extrovert. How does that dichotomy kind of inform what you guys do with the Quitters podcast?

JULIE: That’s really interesting that you say that. Because it really has been a clash of styles in the best and worst ways. And we’ve had to navigate that as we go along. And that’s one of the things that we promised ourselves we would do is do that out loud – and ride whatever bumps there were in public.

I am publicly extroverted. I can spend an enormous amount of time alone. That’s a different subject. But I have no problem jumping in, asking the question – interrupting. And Chad lays back. And if we don’t navigate that water together, it will be very imbalanced. And we have had those moments when it’s imbalanced. And we’ve had to talk about it. And we’ve had to address it in the podcast. How do these two people get along? How do we make it work?

CHAD: I think Julie is saying it nicely. I would say we had our first real fight over styles. Because Julie is more Russell Westbrook and I’m more Rajon Rondo or Steph Curry.

JULIE: I love that I am Russell Westbrook. I love it.

CHAD: It’s not specific to when we do this podcast. I can see that Julie is very feeling-led. She kind of rushes in. She’s face first. And I think that is what’s charming about her. And I think that’s what makes people respond to her. She’s willing to get her hands dirty with you. And I am a little bit slower on the take.

Honestly, she’s teaching me something. If I’m being honest, I do want to be a star. In whatever it is that I am – because I don’t know what the exact label is for it – I do want that. And she’s teaching me that you have to assert yourself. You have to put your voice in the mix.

And it’s good for the show. It does create like an electricity – that ping pong of voices. And we’re working on it.

In the first episode, Chad, you said one of my favorite words. And that’s storytelling. Obviously, as a writer, it’s critical to what you do. Julie, if you’re choosing a script or working through a character, it’s certainly there. How important is the idea of storytelling to the Quitters podcast?

CHAD: It is the podcast. We’re talking about people leaving things behind that feel self-defining. So we’re talking about a wide range of topics there: jobs, marriages, addictions, ways of seeing yourself, friendships. And what makes it hard to quit stuff is that… While you have, say, that job – for myself, at Google for instance – I’m living in a story about where that job is going to lead me. So I’m living in the life of where I am now and also where I think that job can have me 20 years from now. If I remove that element from my life, the story – all of the sudden I’m staring into the abyss. And I feel alone. And I don’t know what’s out there. And it’s scary again.

That’s what we’re asking people to share with us when they come and sit in that chair. Where does the story break off and where does it start again? That’s what we’re threading the needle of in the show.

JULIE: Chad had said to me – and I don’t know if it’s in the podcast or if it was offline – but that he’s constantly, as he said, writing the story of something as it’s happening. And even sometimes before it’s happened. And I am more plunging in and am not sure where the story is going. And I do think that contrast works well with the two of us. Again, it points to Chad being a much deeper thinker than I am. And I’m OK with that.

CHAD: I don’t actually believe that to be true.

With the stories though, it is interesting. Because people do come into the conversations and it seems like they do have a story that they’re ready to tell. And we break it up. We jump in there and kind of hit them in the nose a little bit and chop up their story. And then we hear and see them, in real time, reassess. There’s always a point in each conversation where I think we see the person leave their comfort zone. And they take a second to gather themselves and figure out, “Where are we going now?”

JULIE: That’s my favorite thing is when somebody comes in with the story they think they’re going to tell. Because, thus far, we’ve had the opportunity to interview people who’ve been in the public eye. Eventually, I kind of hope we earn the right to bring in people who are not in the public eye – like they do on Conan. I know that takes a while.

But people who are in the public eye are used to doing pre-interviews. They’re used to coming in with a story. They’re used to coming with a packaged idea of how they want an appearance on Late Night or Ellen or Kelly Clarkson to go. And the beauty of a podcast is that we’ve got time. We can blow that out. You don’t have to have a six minute package of funny, entertaining things, hit these points and get out. To see people come in like, “OK. So I have this idea, this thing that I quit…” They take that left turn when they realize they have more time and they can breathe into it.

And we’ve had these kind of Columbo, hand on the door knob revelations as people are leaving. We’ll be like, “So we’re good?” And they’re like, “Well… I quit this other thing…” “Oh! Let’s go back then!” And it’s really delightful to make a space where people feel safe enough to do that. I hope that, as more and more of our episodes air, people realize we’re not playing gotcha. We’re not trying to be salacious. We could. But that’s not our goal. We really want people to feel like this is a place where they can share.

For me, it’s all about the shame. And the more we talk about whatever these things are, the less shame we have to carry around.

In working together on this, in getting to know one another, and respect each other’s differences, what would you say you’ve learned from each other?

CHAD: So many things. I think, to be cute about it, I can’t quit the show in the middle of a show is something that I’ve learned. I can’t, because I’m stung or I’m ego-dinged or I don’t feel heard, recline in my seat and expect for everybody to stop and come placate my feelings. If I want to be someone in this business, I have to assert. I have to be present. I think I can be a challenging person. I’m always push, push, pushing if I’m actually being myself. I can be a little scared of pushing someone away. And Julie is helping me be more comfortable with being myself – challenging people and pushing people and respecting that they will be able to respond and sort of enjoy the experience of that.

JULIE: I’ve learned a lot. Chad says it over and over again to me, “You are a powerful person.” Not in like in an affirmation way. But he’s kind of saying, “You have a lot of natural power.” Which is not something I ever thought. But I’ve had to come to accept that my enthusiasm and my curiosity, when coupled with my incredible privilege – my education, my whiteness and wealth – can come across as overwhelming if I don’t check it and give it some balance. And it’s one of the reasons that I really like working with Chad as well – he just naturally buffers that. And we can play off of each other. And it really just gives me a different perspective.

I’ve really just learned that I don’t have all of the answers. At all. I’ve been raised to think that I do. And, instead, I’ve had to learn how to listen a little more than I’ve learned how to… um, talk.

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The Quitters podcast really takes the stigma out of the word “quitting.” It doesn’t always have to be a negative thing. How important is it to embrace that idea?

CHAD: Yeah. I mean, that is the thing. We’re sort of trying to take that word back. And, to sort of hit the broader message of this thing, people are already doing it. 40 million people, just in America, quit their jobs last year. That’s over 10% of us. That’s significant, right?

There’s a difference between quitting because you’re being challenged or pushed or because you’re not ready yet and trying to figure it out. But if you wake up every day, and you know the thing is hurting you – if it’s hurting you while you’re doing it – for me, I always have to at least consider quitting an option. And I think sort of our American diaspora tells us that quitting is not an option. It’s failure. And that failure is bad.

But people are quitting their jobs. I quit a job. I quit a big job. It was my first job out of college [at Google]. It was all I knew – and I thought it was the universe. When I did that, something just didn’t feel right. I felt squeezed by whiteness. I felt under-appreciated. I felt unseen. And I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to try all of these other things. The world really did open up for me. And I think that’s what’s going to happen for other people too. Watching people talk in our show about how they left something behind – and the next door didn’t immediately appear but after a little bit of drifting and wandering, they did find their way to that thing.

JULIE: I’m raising three boys. I’m divorced. And I have a good relationship with my ex-husband. But I still feel it’s important to give them the idea of stick-to-itiveness – which is something they learn in school – and grit and determination. Quitting algebra because it’s hard? That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about giving up on the things that you need to do. We’re talking about quitting the things that you have found that were self-defining but have become toxic.

I know there’s sort of the old school ideal of like, “You have to put on your boots and march through the mud!” Yeah. Sometimes you do. And that’s absolutely true when it comes to lots of things. But sometimes it’s just, “F—k it. You need to quit.”