Philosophy often feels like a disconnected discipline, obsessed with tedious and abstract problems. But MIT professor Kieran Setiya believes philosophical inquiry has a practical purpose outside the classroom — to help guide us through life’s most challenging circumstances. He joins Sean to talk about self-help, FOMO, and midlife crises.
This episode originally aired in April 2024.
Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Kieran Setiya, author of Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way and Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Best of: Alison Gopnik changed how I think about love
Happy Thanksgiving! We will be back next week with brand new episodes, but on a day when so many of us are thinking about love and relationships I wanted to share an episode that has…
Best of: Vivek Murthy on America’s loneliness epidemic
At the holidays, I wanted to share some of my favorite episodes of the show with you (we’ll be back next week with brand new episodes). My conversation with Vivek Murthy tops that list, and…
What Democrats got wrong about Hispanic voters
Donald Trump has built his presidency on top of racial dog whistles, xenophobic rhetoric, and anti-immigrant policies. A core belief among liberals was that this strategy would help Trump with whites but almost certainly hurt…
Antitrust, censorship, misinformation, and the 2020 election
I’ve been fascinated by the sharp change in how the tech platforms — particularly the big social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and to some degree, YouTube — are acting since the 2020 election. It’s…
The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.
If the past week — and past four years — have proven anything, it’s that we are not as different as we believed. No longer is the question, “Can it happen here?” It’s happening already.…
The Joe Biden experience
Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. And — counting the votes of people, not just land — it won’t be close. If current trends hold, Biden will see a larger…
Chris Hayes and I process this wild election
This is not the post-election breakdown I expected to have today, but it’s definitely the one that I needed. Chris Hayes is the host of the MSNBC primetime show, “All In,” and the podcast “Why…
Stacey Abrams on minority rule, voting rights, and the future of democracy
We’re one day away from the election, though who-knows-how-many days from finding out who won it. But there’s more at stake than whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be our next president. There is…
Nate Silver on why 2020 isn’t 2016
As you may have heard, there’s a pretty important election coming up. That means it’s time to bring back the one and only Nate Silver. Silver, the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, boasts one of…
Sarah Kliff grades Biden and Trump’s health care plans
There are few issues on which the stakes in this election are quite as stark as on health care. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden plans to pass (and Democrats largely support) a massive health care…