The good life is painful

Back in 2015, before President Donald Trump, before January 6, before all the craziness of the last decade, Matt Yglesias made a blunt prediction: American democracy is doomed. Guest host Zack Beauchamp talks with Matt about what that argument got right, what it missed, and why t ...  Show more

What does it mean to be “woke”? It's become a catch-all term to smear or dismiss anything that has any vague association with progressive politics. So anytime you venture into an argument about “wokeness,” it becomes hopelessly entangled in a broader cultural battle. Today’s gues ...  Show more

Tamler and David leech off of their listeners and dedicate an episode to their favorite comments, questions, and criticisms from the past few weeks (but not before Tamler goes on a rant about bicycle helmets). Included in this episode: Does doing research on hypothetical moral ...

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an ex ...  Show more

Today’s book is: The Good-Enough Life (Princeton UP, 2022) by Avram Alpert. We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive ...  Show more

Abby and Patrick welcome novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood, author of The Life of the Mind. They discuss the novel’s protagonist Dorothy (who hires a second therapist to talk about her relationship with her first therapist) and Christine’s approach to p ...