Happiness and the Pursuit of the Good Life
Ancient wisdom, modern psychology, and the search for a life well lived.
For the full show notes and a link to the chatbot companion, see mlsatlow.com.
Happiness and the Pursuit of the Good Life
Latest Episodes
Episode 8: Worry, Control, and the Art of Letting Go
Most of the things I worry about never happen. This should be reassuring, but my mind draws the opposite conclusion: clearly the worrying worked. We are built to anticipate danger, and occasionally that ability saves us. More often, though, it ...
Episode 7: What Freedom Is For
A restaurant with no menu sounds liberating. You can order anything you want, prepared any way you like. It also sounds exhausting. Every possibility remains open, and every disappointing choice belongs entirely to you. We usually treat f...
Episode 6: Virtue and the Elephant
We tend to measure a life by what it produced: the work completed, the recognition earned, the things left behind. Virtue asks us to use a different measure. What kind of person did we become while doing all of that? Aristotle believed th...
Episode 5: Pleasure Under the Sun
Nothing lasts. The work, the worries, the possessions, the reputation, even the memory of having been here—all of it eventually disappears. Ecclesiastes does not answer this problem by discovering some hidden permanence. It asks whether t...
Episode 4: What Pleasure Costs
Pleasure sounds simple until we try to name it. A piece of chocolate, relief from pain, a long conversation, intoxication, falling in love, and the quiet after anxiety subsides can all feel good, but not in the same way. We seek some plea...
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