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Brian Lehrer: As we enter COVID year three in the midst of yet another variant that is making a lot of people hunker down, some of you may be returning to old pandemic hobbies or trying hobbies you didn't get to you the first time. Anyone working on a sourdough starter you couldn't figure out in 2020? Hobbies are what a lot of people have been sharing on social media for the past few years too. Some have even made careers out of the pandemic hobbies. If you don't have one, it might make you feel a bit bad about yourself for not spending your leisure time more productively, but we didn't always have hobbies in the US.

They coincided with the rise of the labor movement after the industrial revolution. The promotion of having hobbies as a moral virtue has coincided with any time in which labor in the country has dipped. That history, according to my next guest, Julie Beck, senior editor at The Atlantic where she oversees the family section and is the creator of It's The Friendship File series. She has a new piece in The Atlantic not entirely hobby-friendly titled How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life. Julie, thanks so much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Julie Beck: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Infiltrated, a lot of listeners are probably thinking right now, "Wait, hobbies are bad?"

Julie Beck: Hobbies are not in and of themselves bad. Hobbies bring us a lot of good things; satisfaction, pleasure, achievement, but I think there is an attitude in the United States that promotes hobbies as the most wholesome and virtuous way that we can spend our free time, and that's where I think things can get a little sticky.

Brian Lehrer: You write in your piece, a hobby was not always something to aspire to, so how did people view hobbies, say, pre-industrial revolution?

Julie Beck: Up until about the 1880s or so, the word hobby didn't necessarily mean what it means today. It seems like it was more of a general term for any sort of preoccupation and it wasn't always positive. If you were obsessed with something and just wouldn't shut up about it, you might be accused of riding a hobby horse, but the word evolved and then came to be used the way we use it today to mean a wholesome productive form of leisure.

Brian Lehrer: And you write, "If it seems like everybody has a hobby and you should too, there's a reason for this. The anxieties of capitalism are not confined to the workplace, they have a long history of leaking into our free time." What does having a hobby have to do with capitalism?

Julie Beck: Capitalism, especially in America where it comes paired with this Protestant work ethic that's very foundational to our culture; values, productivity, and progress, and hard work, and sometimes it almost doesn't matter what you're working hard at, hard work itself is seen as morally good. This historian who I spoke to for the piece, Steven Gelber, his theory of hobbies is that while, on the one hand, they are providing a break from your actual job, on the other hand, they're reinforcing those values of the workplace; achievement, hard work, productivity. Hobbies are a very work-like form of leisure.

I think what happens is that hobbies are put on a pedestal in American culture as the most virtuous and morally good way that you can spend your free time. There's a known sense that having a hobby is better than playing video games or having a nap or just hanging out because you are producing something. You're either producing something tangible like a birdhouse or a novel or you're producing self-improvement in the form of a skill like playing an instrument or something. It's not taking away from any of the good things that hobbies can do for us and they certainly can, I just think that we should question the idea that the best and most virtuous thing you can do in your leisure time is be productive.

Brian Lehrer: Definitely the first time anybody said building a birdhouse or writing a novel as a phrase on this show. Listeners, did the pandemic make you think differently or maybe even feel insecure about your relationship to leisure time and specifically hobbies? If you're one of those people who's wound up with a lot of leisure time during the hunker down periods of the pandemic which we're back in one right now for those who have that luxury, 212-433-WNYC. Tell us your hobby and hobby insecurity, maybe story, 212-433-9692.

If you don't really have any hobbies, seeing all of the social media around pandemic, bread baking, and weaving, and things make you feel insecure, did you feel like your leisure time was suddenly less valuable? If you did start a new aspirational pandemic hobby, did you stick with it or did you let it go? If you've always been a hobbyist, how did it start for you? Is it something you fell into and had to try to care about or did it happen naturally? Any hobby story you want to tell us especially as it relates to these pandemic times, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. What counts as a hobby in your telling? If I like to watch the Nets, is that a hobby or is that just hanging around?

Julie Beck: You're right that the definition of hobby is a little squishy. For my piece, I went with, there's a scholar, Robert Stebbins, who coined at the term serious leisure and that's how people often define hobbies. Under his framework watching TV or hanging out with friends is casual leisure. It's more passive, and serious leisure is something that you have to work at, persevere at. You might make progress on it over time. That's how I've been defining hobbies when I'm talking about them.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Toby in Brooklyn, a therapist, you're on WNYC. Hi, Toby.

Toby: Hi, good morning. Happy New Year and thank you for taking my call. I am a psychotherapist and I often have to tell clients that they are taking productivity way too seriously. I think, in many cases, productivity is overvalued, and doing nothing can often be very healthy for your mind, your peace of mind, your mental and emotional health. That's basically all I wanted to say.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a story, obviously, without revealing any client identities, of somebody who presented with a particular thing like this?

Toby: I have had a number of client who they suffer a lot of anxiety because they always feel like they're not doing enough. It could be either at work, or on a personal level, family obligations. They have very high expectations of themselves and sometimes realistic and sometimes not realistic, but the idea that they're always supposed to be, in some sense, producing something causes them a lot of anxiety and makes it difficult for them to really enjoy leisure time. Even in their leisure time they feel they're supposed to be, in some way, producing something.

Brian Lehrer: Toby, thank you.

Toby: Okay, thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Call us again. Amary in Glenrock, you're on WNYC. Hello, Amary.

Amary: Hi. I wanted to talk about quilting and an uptick in the quilting fabric business during the pandemic. The last wave when we were shut down, it was a hurry up and I've got to complete all of these quilts that were hanging around and we were wishing for if I only had more time. Now I've completed a lot of those, but I'm still producing. It is interesting what the last person was saying about feeling the need to produce.

Brian Lehrer: Have you seen other people getting into the quilting that it sounds like you were already doing before the pandemic? Do you have a certain relationship to that, judgment of that, happiness about that, anything?

Amary: I absolutely have seen it more online because the business that I helped a friend out with, there's been a huge uptick in people ordering fabric. You can see it online that people have always wanted to quilt, but now that they have the time to do it that they're starting to teach themselves online. Actually, my opinion of it it's awesome because you can do it at any point in your life and you can put it down and it doesn't get unmade. You could do it for a long time, for hours and hours, or you can be really quick.

Brian Lehrer: Hooray, more people are discovering my thing, right?

Amary: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Amary, thank you so much. Suki in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Suki.

Suki: Hey, Brian, a huge fan. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to share my experience because I'm someone who's historically, I've done hobbies pretty consistently throughout my life. I'm a craftsperson and artists. For me, it's been a little bit difficult because I've been wanting to avoid using technology too much during the pandemic because having so much free time, I feel like I get overloaded with wanting to be on the internet, be on my smartphone, but at the same time, I've also picked up almost too many hobbies. In addition to the normal ones, I have of birdwatching, I've also stopped and started projects a lot more than I used to.

Instead of doing them and finishing them in one fell swoop, I found a lot of things unfinished just because there's really just so much free time that we have now at home that the joy that you get from doing hobbies or crafts and having them as a relief is a little bit diminished because it's almost more of a necessity now.

Brian Lehrer: Do you find yourself judging yourself for starting things and not following up?

Suki: Yes, for sure. That's something that, obviously, if it's a project that you're doing for fun, again, you don't want that to diminish the experience you're having. Also, I try not to be too hard on myself because also, if you're just painting or making a wooden ship or whatever it is, you can't be too hard on yourself in general for choosing that as your method of escapism if it's joyful in itself.

Brian Lehrer: Suki, thank you so much. Let's get one more in here, and then we'll get a last word from our guest. Mary in Fairfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mary, we've got about 30 seconds for you. Hey.

Mary: Okay, I just remember more years ago when an older gentleman finally retired. If they didn't have a hobby, it was really like a death sentence because they'd spent their entire lives working, and now they had free time and they didn't know how to handle it. People would say, "Oh, he doesn't have a hobby. Oh, gosh, what's he going to do?"

Brian Lehrer: Mary, thank you very much. Yes, people say it's a death sentence if you retire and you don't have a hobby. I don't know, we could start other call in for retired people who do or don't have hobbies and agree or don't agree with that sentiment. You do write a new article, Julie, that research shows that hobbies are overall good for mental health?

Julie Beck: Yes, hobbies bring us a lot of satisfaction, a lot of pleasure. I think there is a satisfaction to be found and working hard at something that nobody asked you to do and you chose to do yourself. I think what was really interesting that I discovered was during these periods when paid work is declining in America like the Great Depression and like the pandemic, that hobby is rushing to fill that gap.

That suggests that maybe we're not always thinking of them as a relaxing, fun, satisfying activity, but rather, as a replacement for productivity or a need to be productive at all times. I think we just want to make sure is that really the number one thing we want to aspire to, or can we reframe them and engage with them in a healthy way?

Brian Lehrer: As an example of the moralistic tone that some people have taken about hobbies during down economic times, you wrote that in the 1930s, Hobbies magazine even proposed that crime would be lower if everybody had a hobby.

Julie Beck: Yes, that was proposed. I'm not sure it was a super-strong argument. There was also an article that called hobbies the job you can't lose, which I think is very telling.

Brian Lehrer: Even though you don't necessarily get paid for it.

Julie Beck: Right.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there with Julie Beck, senior editor at The Atlantic where she oversees the family section and is the creator of It's The Friendship Files series. She has a new piece in The Atlantic called How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life. Thanks for infiltrating our show, come back.

Julie Beck: Thanks, Brian, have a good one.

Brian Lehrer: This show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond with help today from Max Bolton and Zach Gottehrer-Cohen working on our daily podcast. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. We had Milton Ruiz Marrero at the audio controls.

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