Brigid Schulte has baked cupcakes until 2 a.m., carried her BlackBerry on school field trips, fearing she’d be fired, then gone back to work until 4 a.m. after her children were in bed. Like so many of us, she began to question whether it is possible to be anything you want to be, have a family and still have time to breathe.

When Schulte, an award-winning Washington Post journalist, met a sociologist who studies time and he told her she enjoyed 30 hours of leisure each week, she thought her head was going to pop off.  What followed was a journey to discover why so many of us find it near-impossible to press the ‘pause’ button on life.

Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time maps the individual, historical, biological and societal stresses that have ripped working parents’ leisure to shreds, and asks how it might be possible for us to not burn our candles at both ends and in the middle.

In conversation with Tom Bowman, an NPR National Desk reporter. Book signing to follow.