Book Society will be closing at 5:30pm Wed 8/26 for a special author event, City on the Edge. Tickets still available!
Tue, Aug 18
|Book Society
How to Not Know: A Conversation on Uncertainty
Join us for a conversation with Simone Stolzoff, bestselling author of The Good Enough Job, on his new book How to Not Know. He'll be joined by Dr. Emily Anhalt, clinical psychologist and author of Flex Your Feelings for a talk on why we're so bad at sitting with what we don't know.
Time & Location
Aug 18, 2026, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Book Society, 2945 College Ave, Berkeley, CA 94705, USA
About the event
We live in a world that rewards certainty—the confident answer, the five-year plan, the decisive take. But what if our discomfort with not knowing is costing us something essential?
In How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers, journalist and author Simone Stolzoff makes the case that uncertainty isn't a problem to be solved but a skill to be practiced—one tied to creativity, open-mindedness, and a kind of wonder that certainty tends to flatten. Drawing on psychology, history, Zen philosophy, and conversations with people who've made peace with the unknown—including an economist who founded a "Department of Doubt" and a death doula who sits with families in life's most uncertain moments—Stolzoff offers a way of thinking about ambiguity that feels less like a burden and more like an invitation.
Stolzoff will be in conversation with Dr. Emily Anhalt, clinical psychologist, cofounder of Coa (the…