The Value of Things

What does it mean to undertake "ethical" research in complex and changing social settings?Marion Vannier, from the University of Manchester, uses diaries and letters written by prisoners in her research with older men serving life sentences. Her work, including ‘Project Hope’, of ...  Show more

What does Émile Durkheim’s 1897 study of suicide tell us about the social conditions that shape whether life feels worth living and how does a current project add to our understanding?Laurie Taylor is joined by Alexander Oaten, from the University of Lincoln, and Sarah Huque, fro ...  Show more

On this episode of The Psychology Podcast, friend of the show Emily Esfahani Smith sheds light on how we can craft a life that truly matters. Finding meaning in life is a crtitical existential good, and with today’s discussion we take a science backed look at how we can achieve t ...  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

How could a good life include one with anger, or jealousy, or spite? In Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good (Oxford UP, 2023), Krista Thomason flips the script on popular ways of dealing with our emotions, including neo-Stoicism, mindfulness, and even the pros ...  Show more

Sam Harris speaks with Scott Barry Kaufman about human well-being. They discuss intelligence and creativity, wisdom and transcendence, the history of humanistic psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the connection between well-being and ethics, self-esteem, psychedelics and me ...  Show more