Episode 382: Come Away Corrupted with Dr. Meghan Sullivan

Summary

Forever35 Episode 382: Come Away Corrupted with Dr. Meghan Sullivan

Hosts: Doree Shafrir & Elise Hu
Guest: Dr. Meghan Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy (University of Notre Dame)
Release Date: December 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Forever35 co-hosts Doree and Elise sit down with Dr. Meghan Sullivan—a dynamic Notre Dame philosophy professor dubbed "the most interesting philosopher you'll ever hear." Together, they tackle what it means to live a good life, why philosophy still matters, and how ancient wisdom applies to modern problems like burnout, meaning, and parenting. Through approachable and often humorous conversation, the episode explores self-care, virtue ethics, the value of the humanities, and the real ways philosophical thinking can help us navigate messy, complicated lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Dr. Meghan Sullivan (16:38)

• Doree and Elise express excitement about interviewing their first official philosopher.
• Dr. Sullivan jokes, "Isn't everyone a philosopher?" but predicts listeners may end up grateful they aren't philosophers by episode’s end.

Dr. Sullivan’s Evening Self-Care Routine

[17:29]

• Dr. Sullivan shares her self-care: “I am a morning person… my self-care routine happens in the evening. I go to bed at, like, I start going to bed at 8PM. I change into pajamas, take a shower, light some scented candles… By 8:45 max, I have transitioned into going to bed... I just love that feeling.”
• Even while traveling, she keeps this wind-down routine (minus the candles, "because that gets you in trouble with hotels").

2. How Dr. Sullivan Became a Philosopher (19:16)

• Grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, not from an academic family.
• Got "shuffled" into an Intro to Ethics college class—“within a week, that was my all-time favorite class.”
• Originally intended to become a lawyer; a “miserable” legal internship changed that.
• A philosophy professor encouraged her to pursue what she loved, leading to a fulfilling academic career.

3. Why Philosophy Still Matters for Students Today

[22:36]

Dr. Sullivan on the value of philosophy:

“A human person is so much more than just their job… there are other components of a good life that are just as important: growing in your understanding of yourself, learning how to genuinely love other people, figuring out what you stand for… Philosophy is a gift that we give… to access these aspects of the good life.”

• Philosophy’s value lies not in conversion (even at a Catholic university!) but in helping students become well-rounded, reflective people.

4. Inside ‘God and the Good Life’ – Corrupting the Youth

[25:19]

• Dr. Sullivan’s most popular course aims to “corrupt the youth”—a reference to Socrates’ infamous charge.

• The course tackles ten “good life” topics:

  1. Politics ("the easiest")
  2. Money
  3. Responsibility
  4. Work
  5. Love
  6. Religion/faith
  7. Leaps of faith and decision-making
  8. Suffering
  9. The role of ‘just being’
  10. Death (“the hardest one”)

Quote (Dr. Sullivan, 25:19):

“We want every student who takes the class to come away corrupted… Over 14 weeks, we tackle questions about the good life in increasing level of difficulty… By the end [students] have thought really deeply about these 10 big questions—ending with the hardest one: death.”

5. Living in a Post-Truth Era (and What Plato Would Say)

[29:16]

• Elise asks how Plato would approach contemporary “bullshitting” and seemingly endless arguing.
• Dr. Sullivan explains how ancient Athens, with its innovation of democracy, developed a culture of “debate coaches” (Sophists) that prioritized persuasion over truth.
• Socrates rebelled against this, and Plato lost faith in democracy after Athens executed Socrates for “corrupting the youth.”

Quote (Dr. Sullivan, 32:00):

“If you pay [the Sophists] enough money, they will teach you to be convincing about absolutely anything… Socrates comes on the scene… and destroys their arguments and embarrasses them… This ultimately is what gets him into trouble… and they kill him.”

• Plato's warnings about democracy and persuasion echo contemporary concerns about post-truth politics.

6. Philosophy and Modern Problems: Burnout and Meaning (37:35)

Burnout & Work-Life Balance

• Virtue ethics suggests burnout isn’t just about poorly allocated time, but about a “lack of meaning in work.”
• Time management tricks (Pomodoro, rigid dials) are insufficient.
• Flourishing at work connects to personal meaning—not just hours worked.
• Managers have a philosophical responsibility: “My key job as a manager… is to help each person see the meaning of their contribution.”

Quote (Dr. Sullivan, 41:18):

“Burnout is not necessarily about the dials being mis-set, but fundamentally about a lack of meaning in work.”

On Parenting and the Perfectionism of Modern Childhood (42:27)

• Parenting is deeply meaningful but often not “pleasant in the moment.”
• Addresses the hyper-competitive culture around kids’ activities—says it leads to burnout for parents and kids, especially in higher income, achievement-focused communities.
• Argues for more “leisure”—unstructured, simply enjoyable time (citing philosopher Joseph Pieper).

7. Listener Q: Happiness, Meaning, and the Choice to Have Kids (47:37)

• Listener: “What does it mean to be happy, and is happiness necessary to have a meaningful life? Has your idea of happiness or meaning changed as you’ve aged?”
• Dr. Sullivan distinguishes between “feeling happy” and “flourishing” (the latter, from Aristotle, being deeper and harder).
• Re: Having children—philosophers debate if it’s essential; it’s “one of the very few philosophical questions where actually every way you reason towards an answer could… be compatible with flourishing.”

Quote (Dr. Sullivan, 48:25):

“Feeling happy is different from flourishing… Flourishing is something you can only do late in life, after you’ve grown for a while. No young person is flourishing…”

• Her concept of meaning has shifted with age—less focused on milestones, more on contentment and “the great and meaningful that’s just given to you.”

Quote (Dr. Sullivan, 53:10):

“There are aspects of happiness that don’t require you to do anything… so much of life that’s great and meaningful, that’s just given to you.”

8. Dr. Sullivan’s Philosophical Alignment: Virtue Ethics (56:13)

• Explains virtue ethics, the approach of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and central to the Catholic tradition:
  • Humans are inherently valuable, can develop in good or bad ways.
  • Life’s work is growing towards goodness with the help of others.
  • “The real meaning of life is that work of growth.”

Quote (Dr. Sullivan, 56:13):

“Virtue ethics says… there’s something inherently valuable about being a human being. We are what is really valuable in this world… Our life’s work is to grow in the good ways and to try to avoid growing in the bad ways. And we don’t do it alone.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We want every student who takes the class to come away corrupted… You've been touched and moved by [philosophy].” (Dr. Meghan Sullivan, 25:19)
• “Philosophy is a gift that we give… to access these aspects of the good life that, if you only come to college to prepare for a career, you might miss out on.” (Dr. Sullivan, 23:09)
• “[Socrates] decides he’s going to start always causing… going around asking people, ‘Do I know what’s true?’… and they kill him.” (Dr. Sullivan, 32:35)
• “Burnout is not necessarily about the dials being mis-set, but fundamentally about a lack of meaning in work.” (Dr. Sullivan, 41:18)
• “There are aspects of happiness that don’t require you to do anything… just great and meaningful that’s given to you, and you don’t have to earn it or fight about it.” (Dr. Sullivan, 53:10)
• “There’s no topic that philosophy is not relevant to. I dare you to try to find a topic that I cannot make philosophy relevant to.” (Dr. Sullivan, 59:39)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [16:38] Dr. Sullivan’s introduction and evening self-care ritual
• [19:16] Sullivan’s journey into philosophy
• [22:36] The relevance of philosophy in modern education
• [25:19] "Corrupt the youth"—inside the 'God and the Good Life' course
• [29:16] The post-truth era—Plato, sophists, and modern misinformation
• [37:35] Burnout and the search for meaning in work
• [42:27] Parenting, perfectionism, and the need for leisure
• [47:37] Listener Q: happiness vs. flourishing, kids, and meaning
• [56:13] Dr. Sullivan on virtue ethics—her core philosophy

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Episode Tone & Style

The tone is lively, curious, irreverent, and warm. Dr. Sullivan makes philosophy “folksy” and accessible, rich with story and humor. The hosts’ style is self-aware and open, often reflecting candidly on their own lives and struggles.

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Additional Notes

• Dr. Sullivan’s book: The Good Life Method: Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning (Penguin Press, co-author Paul Blaschko) offers exercises for bringing philosophy into your own life.
• Dr. Sullivan can be found at Notre Dame (ethics.nd.edu).
• Podcast ends with the hosts reflecting on boundaries, self-care through the holidays, and intentions for the new year.

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For Listeners

If you’re interested in using philosophical tools to tackle big life questions—meaning, work, love, and parenting—this episode offers an inspiring and concrete start. Dr. Sullivan’s blend of classic wisdom and modern relevance makes ancient philosophy feel approachable, practical, and deeply needed in turbulent times.

Transcript

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[Dori Shafrier]

Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Dory Shafrier.

[Elise Hu]

And I'm Elise Hu and we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

[Dori Shafrier]

Welcome to the show. Today we have a philosopher.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, we do she is a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame and probably the most interesting philosopher you will ever hear because she's so funny, so vibrant. She makes these ancient ideas come alive. And I wish she was my instructor at some point in my life. We've been encouraging her to start a MOOC. Remember massive online courses? Her name is Dr. Megan Sullivan. We're going to hear a lot more from her later. She also has this like really charming North Carolina accent and so it makes everything a little folksy as she's talking about Aristotle and Socrates.

[Dori Shafrier]

And then later as I, as I texted Elise, like as we were interviewing her, I was like, she must be the most amazing professor. Like you could just tell. She's so engaging and like explains kind of complex philosophical ideas in a really relatable and easy to understand way. And I don't know, I just was like, being her student must be awesome.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah. And Dory, remind me, I know you were on your way to a PhD at one point. What were you studying?

[Dori Shafrier]

I was studying European history.

[Elise Hu]

Oh, okay. So some overlap with some of these.

[Dori Shafrier]

Yeah, I mean, not like not a ton, but when I was an undergrad, my concentration was in. I was a history and English major. My history concentration was intellectual history, which is like basically like the history of philosophy. Yeah, yeah.

[Elise Hu]

Western philosophy.

[Dori Shafrier]

So there's. There was a lot of overlap there for sure. Most of my, most of my courses were in like more modern intellectual history, like 19th and 20th century. I didn't do a ton with like ancient.

[Elise Hu]

I feel like I studied more of the so called Western canon when I was in like lit classes or English classes in high school than I did in college. Because by the time I got to college where I majored in journalism and went to a journalism school, it was more professional. Yeah. It was sort of vocational almost. Right. It was sort of like news writing, news ethics, history of American journalism, cross cultural journalism. And I would have just loved a great class on, you know, intro. Intro to philosophy. I never even took that.

[Dori Shafrier]

Right.

[Elise Hu]

And so some of this has just been really eye opening and fascinating to me. I did take an ethics course when I was in my second year of college that I loved so much. And I thought that professor made a really profound or a profound enough impact on me that I thanked him in the acknowledgments of my book.

[Dori Shafrier]

Oh, how cool.

[Elise Hu]

But very strange because when I reached out to him. So if you're hearing this professor in question, when I reached out to him when the book was coming out and I let him know like, hey, I thanked you because I thanked a few teachers throughout my life, and, you know, you made enough. You made an impact on me, and you were an influence. And he didn't write me back. He didn't write me back, but he followed me on Instagram.

[Dori Shafrier]

Curious. That is very curious, right?

[Elise Hu]

It's like, why. Why wouldn't you talk to me?

[Dori Shafrier]

I wonder if he, like, started writing you back and then, like, forgot.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

You know what I mean?

[Elise Hu]

Yeah.

[Dori Shafrier]

It's so strange.

[Elise Hu]

But all the other teachers that I did cite and I reached out to, including my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Blackmore, they wrote back and they were so delighted. And my seventh grade teacher was so proud. She was like, I just. I always thought you were an excellent writer. Oh. So that was awesome. She was surprised that I didn't go into, like, poetry or writing fantasy, because she thought that that was, like, what I was more into at that age.

[Dori Shafrier]

Oh, my God. Well, it's not too late.

[Elise Hu]

I mean, I actually find fictional worlds and building fictional worlds really hard. I don't think my brain is imaginative in that way, maybe, because I'll hear somebody's brain. Who I really admire, of course, is my man's, Rob's, and he is incredibly imaginative. So even when he's describing his dreams or he's setting up just like, he had these characters called the grunts, and the grunts were these very tiny little creatures that lived on the hottest hot sauce. And he came up with this whole grunts world that was just for his younger son that he told bedtime stories to.

[Dori Shafrier]

I love that.

[Elise Hu]

And during, like, before Fat Bear Week, you know, when they come out of. Or is it is Fat Bear Week when they come out of hibernation? Or before.

[Dori Shafrier]

I thought it was before, but I don't.

[Elise Hu]

Before.

[Dori Shafrier]

But he made up a whole story.

[Elise Hu]

About that, spun a whole yarn, you know? And so he's just really good at just coming, taking a morsel of a thing, and then building on it and building on it and expanding it. I find that to be a talent that I just can't conjure, you know? And so I think all of our brains are different. We're all special in our own unique ways. And there's something I really admire about people who work in fiction. Do you remember when we interviewed Stacey Abrams? And she was sometimes, like, she said something like, sometimes the character just goes their own direction. You don't know what she's gonna do next.

[Dori Shafrier]

That. That was kind of my experience, too, writing a novel. Like, sometimes you just like, oh, you're the character just doing this thing. But I like, I kind of. One of the things that I did like about fiction, having, like, always been a journalist, is like, you know, sometimes when you're, like, working on an article, you're like, I just wish I had a source that said, like, X, Y, Z. Like, no one's actually saying what you, like, want them to say. But when you're writing fiction, you can just be like, oh, they're going to say that thing, you know? Yeah, you can just make it up. I know.

[Elise Hu]

It's so crazy that you can just make it up. This is what was so funny about learning about the MacGyver writers room, because they would just make up some gadget that would blow up the right train or the cave or whatever, and they'd be like, okay, science, science, science. We're going to fill that in with some science, science, science. And, like, get somebody to some science scientific consultant to reverse engineer an explanation for how the cave blew up.

[Dori Shafrier]

Totally.

[Elise Hu]

But I find that. So I'm so incredulous. I'm like, how could you do that? That's not accurate.

[Dori Shafrier]

Right.

[Elise Hu]

Anyway, programming note. This is our last full episode of 2025 or last fresh episode of 2025. Because this Wednesday, this coming Wednesday is Christmas Eve. So we're going to do a rerun for that. And then next week we're actually going to take a vacation. We're going to take a break, so you'll have some things in the feed, but Tori's going to be doing some holiday travel. I'm going to be here in LA with my fam until we do our holiday travel the first week of the new year. I think it might be like 17 degrees in New York when we go. I. I saw a TikTok that was like, do not go to New York right now.

[Dori Shafrier]

Well, you have a couple of weeks. I feel like it's still early.

[Elise Hu]

Maybe it'll warm up. Yeah, yeah, warm up. Grandma Susan has already pulled out. She's like, nah, not going to do it. It's too cold. My skin is in.

[Dori Shafrier]

That's really.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah. I'm excited to just have some R and R. This year has been really exhausting on a lot of fronts for a lot of folks. And this past week notwithstanding, right. With all of the global headlines and the ones right here in Brentwood, la ca. So I hope everybody is taking good care of themselves. Showing yourselves a lot of grace. Taking breaks, taking breaks from your children if it's too chaotic in your home, which I actually had to do Last night, it actually got two nuts in the house. And I was like, I got to get out of here. Like, I thought I was going to have a mom temper tantrum. And so I was like, later.

[Dori Shafrier]

Did you just take a walk? Like, what did you do?

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, I got in my car because I needed to make a show of how I was leaving. So I got in my car and I drove, like, two blocks. And then I parked and I sat there quietly. Just. I love that silence. And it felt great.

[Dori Shafrier]

That's awesome. That's awesome.

[Elise Hu]

It felt great. It's just everybody's nerves are frazzled, I think.

[Dori Shafrier]

Like, yeah, I've been on edge for sure.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah. Yeah. But you know what will be a good balm for that is this coming conversation.

[Dori Shafrier]

That's so true. Oh, my gosh. I loved talking to Dr. Megan Sullivan. Do you want to introduce her, Elise?

[Elise Hu]

Sure. Megan Sullivan is the Willsey Family College professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where she leads the Ethics Initiative and founded the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. With support from the John Templeton foundation, the Institute advances research and teaching on human flourishing. Sullivan's work spans ethics, metaphysics, and religion. She's the author of Time Biases and co author of the Good Life Method, based on her acclaimed course, which is the most popular undergraduate course at Notre Dame. God and the Good Life. She's a delight. Y' all are gonna love her.

[Dori Shafrier]

It's such a delight. I think you're gonna love her. Before we get to our conversation with her, just a reminder that Our website is forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned here on the show. We are on Instagram @forever35 pod. Our patreon is at patreon.com forever35. We do our weekly casual chats. We do our monthly pop culture episodes, and after the new year, our casual chats are also going to be on video. So if you're into the whole video podcast thing, you can check out our casual chats on Patreon. Our favorite products are at Shopmy US Forever 35. And if you want to call or text us with any questions or comments or concerns for our mini episodes, you can do that at 781-591-0390 or email us at forever35podcastmail.com and we will be right back with Dr. Megan Sullivan.

[Elise Hu]

We'll be right back.

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[Dori Shafrier]

Megan Sullivan welcome to Forever35. We are so happy to have you.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

I'm so happy to be here. Yay.

[Dori Shafrier]

I think you're our first official philosopher. Like we've had armchair philosophers.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

But isn't, isn't everyone a philosopher? Right?

[Elise Hu]

Exactly.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

No, I think, I think by the end of this episode you'll be grateful you're not a philosopher. Let's dive in then you're gonn understand why you've never had applause for on this show.

[Dori Shafrier]

Well, we start off our interviews with the same question to all of our guests. So we will ask it of you, which is do you have any sort of self care practice? And that can be very broadly defined and if so, what is it?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yes. So I am a morning person, which means that my self care routine happens in the evening. So mornings I like jump out of bed. I'm like a firefighter. I'm just ready to go. But I go to bed early. Like what? Like old lady early. I'm not even that old. But I go to bed at like I start going to bed at 8pm I hate like it makes it seem like I have no life but I what a dream. Like oh my gosh, I love sleeping and I love getting all cozy. And so around 8 I like change into my pajamas, take a shower. I always kind of light some scented candles. I realized like three years ago that I've totally become my mother and I need like scented candles in my life and I'll kind of read the news on the couch for a little bit. Maybe I'll watch a Netflix episode. But by 8:45 max, I have transitioned into going to bed. I got the ceiling fan humming, got the like lights off. And I just love that feeling. So even if I'm traveling, I have to travel all the time for my job. And even if I'm on the road minus the scented candles because that gets you in trouble with hotels. But I totally start my wind down routine and I'm like, eight o', clock, the buzzer just goes off like it is time to go to bed.

[Elise Hu]

Love that Dory wants to be your best friend.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yeah, Dory, you like to be all.

[Dori Shafrier]

I aspire to go to bed early, but it just, it often doesn't happen. I am in bed by 10 o', clock, often a little earlier. Yeah. Which I feel like, you know, all things considered, is not bad.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

My coworkers hate me because like, you know, crack and dawn, I am just firing away and they're so snug in their beds.

[Elise Hu]

Well, Megan, those of us who have read your book the Good Life Method Reasoning through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith and Meaning, know a little bit about your background and how you came up. But tell us for our listeners, how did you become interested in philosophy in the first place?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

No, it's a great question. So I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. My mom was an administrative assistant in a dental office and my dad worked for this china replacement company in Greensboro. So I don't come from an academic family, come from like redneck family that I love. And when I was in high school, my best friend's dad was a philosophy professor at our local university. And you'd think that was where I got interested in philosophy, but it was not. We're like, oh my gosh, these are the books that he writes. Like, this is so ridiculous. So I knew as a youth what a philosopher was and had adamantly rejected it as like a life option. But then I didn't really know. And then I went to college. I went to the University of Virginia and like every college freshman didn't get into any of the classes that I wanted and instead just got like shuffled into classes that had free seats. And there was an intro ethics class called Issues of Life and Death in the philosophy department that my academic advisor stuck me in. And within a week, that was my all time favorite class. It was my first semester of college in that class. And then some teachers. I had like the next semester that put this light on in my head of like, I love thinking this way. I want to be good at this. I can remember having that urge of thinking, I don't really understand all of this, but I want to. And I thought for the first two years of college, my students at Notre Dame talk this way. I thought for the first two years, philosophy will be my fun major, but then I need a real major, so that'll be government because I have to be a lawyer when I grow up, and between my second and third years of college, I did this legal internship that I just hated. I was completely miserable that summer. And I came back to school at the start of my third year and ran into one of my philosophy professors. He was like, how was your summer? And I said, I'm so sad because I realized, like, I only have two years left on earth to be happy, like, the last two years of college, and then the rest of my life is going to be this. And I hate it. And he looks at me and he's like, you know, why don't you maybe don't be a lawyer. Why don't you. If you really like studying philosophy, just try it for a little bit longer, See where it takes you, like, at each step. I loved what I was doing, and I had great mentors and teachers who were like, you don't have to have it all figured out. Just keep doing it for a little bit longer and sort of see where the spirit leads you. And then, of course, once I got. Once I got my job as a professor at Notre Dame, then. Then I started getting really serious about it and started treating it like a. Like a real job.

[Dori Shafrier]

Well, you ended up at Notre Dame, which, like, seems to take the study of philosophy very seriously. And your book was kind of based in part on, I guess, the most. One of the most popular courses at Notre Dame that you developed called God and the Good Life.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yes.

[Dori Shafrier]

And it, you know, it.

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[Dori Shafrier]

It feels like we are in an age where the humanities and the liberal arts, including philosophy, are perpetually under attack. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what you see as the value of philosophy to this new, you know, new generation of college students.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Absolutely. You know, so I love teaching. I've been at Notre Dame for 15 years, and as you said about 10 years ago, I developed this big, very popular philosophy course called God and the Good Life. And Notre Dame, like many Catholic universities, actually makes a big investment in philosophy education. Like, really, really wants students to study philosophy, especially when they first arrive at college.

[Elise Hu]

I like that.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

I think it's amazing.

[Dori Shafrier]

And one.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

The. And the reason for it is not the reason for this kind of Catholic school interest in philosophy is not because we think studying philosophy will cause you to convert to Catholicism, because I guarantee you, it does not. Like, if you. If you read my book and you read half the philosophers we study in class, they. They. They do not have that effect on. On people. But the. The view for a Catholic institution is that a human person is so much more than just their job. Like, it's a wonderful thing for you to train in college for a great profession and to be able to make money and to build an economic life for yourself. But that is only one component of a good life. There are other components of a good life that are just as important. Growing in your understanding of yourself, learning how to genuinely love other people, figuring out what you stand for in this life and what you're unsure of. And the view of our university is that young people should be. Everybody should be given the opportunity to think through those questions and to get access to wisdom of previous generations and to debate them and wrestle through them, because to enjoy this life, you've got to do that kind of work. And so the Notre Dame's perspective is that philosophy is a gift that we give to the young people that we teach. It's the opportunity to access these aspects of the good life that if, you know, if you only come to college to prepare for a career you might miss out on, and as a result, you're going to live a somewhat impoverished life after this. And so I really. I love being at a university that, you know, believes as a matter of, like, faith and principle, that this is something that everybody should have access to.

[Elise Hu]

And what should the kids ideally come away with by the end of a semester in this class? God and the good life.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

And so if you. If you come ever visit me in my office or see any clips from this, you see, I got the huge banner, this huge banner on my wall behind me that says, corrupt the youth, which is a quote from soc. It's my job on earth. But it's a quote from Socrates. Socrates is a great father, founder of philosophy, philosophy in the Western world 2,400 years ago, was sentenced to death by Athens for teaching young people philosophy. And the reason why the Athenians were so scared about it was because young people were asked to really question and think seriously about what they believe about, literally, like, every question that you face in life. And the Athenians were nervous about this because sometimes if you're running like a small country, you don't want people asking hard questions. You want them to kind of go with the flow. We want every student who takes the class to come away corrupted. What do I mean by that? I don't mean that they've lost their values. In fact, the students that come out of this class believe and think much more deeply about what they care about than they did before I got my mitts on them. But over 14 weeks, I got the students for 14 weeks we are going to tackle questions about the good life in increasing level of difficulty. We tackle 10 big topics in the class, and by the end of this class you will have thought really deeply about what you think about these 10 big questions ending with the hardest one we can think of. So the easiest one that we start with. And the book kind of follows this progression. The easiest question of the good life. Your listeners are going to laugh at me. It's politics. How do you deal with people that you politically disagree with? We do that the very first week of class. Like, what does it mean to care about the truth and to have arguments about difficult questions with other human beings? And that's important. Good life skill. A lot of people think right now that's the hardest thing on earth. Actually, I don't think it's the hardest. I think it's. It's like the entry point. So we talked about politics, then we talk about money, the second easiest problem of the good life, I think. But still a problem like, how do you get it? How much do you need? We talk about responsibility. We talk about work in the good life. We talk about love in the good life. And at least when I got to see you recently in Atlanta, I think we were talking and thinking a lot about love and the good life.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

We talk about whether or not you should practice any religion or believe that there's a God in this world and what that means to you. We talk about leaps of faith, not just religious leaps of faith, but all the aspects of the good life where you have no clue what to do and you just gotta make a decision anyway. That's a pretty hard one.

[Elise Hu]

I like that.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

We talk about suffering. That's the. Now things are getting really hard. The fact that you might do everything right and still suffer immensely in your life. We talk about the aspects of the good life that don't require you to do anything but just to exist. Which is actually just a hard thing for my young driven students to wrap their minds around. But maybe the good life is just given to you and you don't actually have to do well on a test or win anything to get access to it. And then the final topic that we do right before we send them home for Christmas and for summer break to be with their families is death. And we make them think really seriously about what do you think is going to happen to you when you die? What does that mean to you? That you're going to die someday. And that's a real doozy. That's way harder than politics and hopefully you leave corrupted in the sense that, like, you've been touched and moved by that.

[Elise Hu]

I love that you have turned this class into a book, but I kind of wish there was a MOOC for this. Remember when MOOCs were big?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Oh, yeah.

[Elise Hu]

Massive online courses.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yeah. Yeah, we need to mook it.

[Elise Hu]

Yes, you should mook it. I bet you could make some money if you mooked it. And we'll make some money maybe for the university.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Well, podcast it. But I don't know how to podcast. Like you guys know how to do this. And one thing I've learned is doing a great podcast. It's a real skill. And I'm, as you can tell, like, I like to talk, great podcasters like to dialogue and listen. So I don't know if we could ever turn it into a good podcast.

[Elise Hu]

Oh, this. This topic is just endless. Or these topics are endlessly fascinating for us. Let's start with something easy. Something at the beginning of your book which is about bullshitting and just arguing and this sort of post truth time. Because we aren't the only people, contrary to what we may think, we aren't the only people who are living through this post truth period or a post truth period.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yes.

[Elise Hu]

In fact, Plato had dealt with this.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Oh, yeah. And he lost his mind about it.

[Elise Hu]

We all want to live a little bit more intentionally, but we are living through these turbulent times in which people are just arguing for argument's sake. So I'd love to get just a quick primer on how Plato would address this and what Plato said about this.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yes, I love it. So go back in time with me 2400 years ago. You've got ancient Athens. It's this little tiny city state that thinks very highly of itself. It's disco. They're discovering geometry. Geometry. They're learning how to write plays. They're learning about philosophy. This is where philosophy starts in the Western world. And in the east, it starts with Confucius about 100 years earlier. But in the west, it starts with Socrates and his student Plato. And in ancient Athens, they were a democracy, and they were just inventing democracy. They were just figuring it out early days. Early days, very experimental.

[Elise Hu]

This is a very important time to be talking about this. We're talking about early days, and we're living in potentially the end day.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

I mean, Plato honestly predicted all of the problems we are having with the United States right now. If you read Plato's Republic, he totally predicts what we're going through. And the fundamental issue is if you live in a Democracy, the way to have power is to convince other people to go along with you. Like, power comes with being convincing because you got to vote on things. In Athens, you voted on everything. Should we tax wheat? Should we sentenced dory to death? Like, every possible thing was put to a vote. So I know every. No, no, I vote I. I vote no. But like any. Any possible issue is voted on by at least the male citizens who are in power. And so if you want to succeed in Athens, you gotta be super convincing. Like, you got to be able to convince other people to follow you, because that's how you get power. Well, so the wealthy families in Athens, they're not stupid. They start hiring these debate coaches for their kids, who are basically like, a combination of debate coach and, like, college application ghostwriter. Like, people who can form Operation Varsity Blues.

[Elise Hu]

Totally in times.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yeah. This is absolutely what it is, is, like, a young person's going to have this debate coach that's teaching them how to be as, like, slick and persuasive and suave as possible so that other people will listen to them and follow them, so they'll succeed in life, so that they'll have power and so they won't be oppressed by other people. And you totally get why this would be a thing. Well, as you can imagine, these debate coaches, they're called the sophists. That's their term. A lot of them are pretty unscrupulous. Like, if you pay them enough money, they will teach you to be convincing about absolutely anything because all they care about is winning. And so this culture develops in Athens, where everybody who's got the power to hire one of these coaches or to be part of this. This sophist market is doing it. And Socrates comes on the scene, and he's a good debater. He's really good at logic. He's very persuasive. Apparently he's really ugly, but also very charming. And all of the stories about him. He's mildly alcoholic. He has a lot of relationships. I love this guy. He's a real person, too. He's not a character. This is a real dude. But he's kind of a. He becomes, like, a debate coach, and he, like, he teaches people how to do this, but after a while, he gets fed up. He's like, what are we doing here? Like, we're all just trying to convince each other, but none of us care about whether or not what we're talking about is good. Like, we just. Like, we'll just do whatever. Whatever, you know, however the spirit moves Us, that's what we're obsessed with. And he's like, this is no way to live your life. So he decides he's going to stop being a sophist. And he's just going to start always causing. Always going around asking people, do I know what's true? Like, do I really know what I'm talking about? And if not, I should stop. And he teaches people, he finds people who are really proud or really powerful, and he subjects them to all of these questions. And he's a really good debater, and he destroys their arguments and embarrasses them, and then they don't know what to believe about the world in themselves. And this ultimately is what gets him into trouble. And again, Athens tells him to stop doing it because it's kind of destabilizing their system. And he won't stop. So they kill him. And his student Plato, he watches all this go down and he's shocked. He's like, this is no kind of way to run a government. This is no way for people to live their lives. Plato has a reaction I think a lot of us have right now. And we think, look at all the idiotic things on TikTok about important questions in the world. I cannot believe that people are obsessed with this content and never able to take a step back and just wonder, like, think for themselves about what, what we should ultimately care about. Plato has that kind of reaction. He's just like, this is ridiculous. And I can't believe they killed the one guy who was trying to help us. And so Plato thought that democracy itself is what leads to this kind of chaos. And Plato as a, turns into a kind of scary figure and says, like, we shouldn't let people vote. Like, he, you know, Plato's world is a totalitarian government that's run by, like, enlightened philosophers. A system that none of us would ever want to live in, where you're taken away from your parents as a young child and, like, trained to be a super soldier in the Platonic universe, like, Plato goes becomes an extremist. But his diagnosis of, like, this is just a challenge of deciding you're going to live in a social system where votes and consensus rule the day that that can mean that people get obsessed with convincing other people and lose touch, lose their grasp on the truth.

[Elise Hu]

Wow. Wow. I love hearing you kind of just lay this out. Also, you make it so accessible. Like these dudes.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Just a bunch of guys having a party in ancient Athens and then one of them gets killed.

[Dori Shafrier]

But that was, you know, they say. They say what radicalized you? But that was what radicalized Plato.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Oh my gosh. He killed. They killed his, like, beloved mentor and there were all these civil wars. Exactly. Oh my gosh. Plato could have been just a chill guy who was good at wrestling, but.

[Dori Shafrier]

They had to go kill his mentor, you know.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Exactly. It was a turning point. 399 B.C. that was when it all hit the fan for Plato.

[Dori Shafrier]

Yeah, it's when it all went down.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

It got weird.

[Elise Hu]

Okay, let's take a break and we will be right back.

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[Dori Shafrier]

On a On a slightly different note, we get a lot of questions from listeners about, I guess broadly about work life balance and burnout. And I'm wondering what virtue ethicists say about kind of reconciling our work life with the good life.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yes, I think that virtue ethics and philosophy can be. It's not going to be a magic bullet that solves burnout.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

But I really think it can help people understand this phenomenon that so many of us experience.

[Elise Hu]

Yes.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

So there is all kinds of well meaning but bad advice about work life balance out there. I think that says the kind of secret to flourishing is to just be very careful how you're allocating your minutes. So to like make sure you sleep 8 hours a night, make sure you stop working at 4:30pm, make sure you do a Pomodoro every 10 minutes. Like everything is about Controlling the fixed amount of time that you have. And if you just get the right dial set, two hours with my children, one hour of, like, personal care time, if you, as long as you get the dial set, you're going to be happy. Like, that is just not true. Like, being happier is harder than that. And one of the things I love about virtue ethicists, philosophers have had a lot to say about work and its role in life over the last 2,000 years. And one of the key messages they'll say is that burnout is not necessarily about the dials being Ms. Set, but it's fundamentally about a lack of meaning in work that you must do. Like your inability to find the personal meaning in the work that you need to do. And to get to that meaning question is more than just how you spend your time. Obviously, if you are spending all of your time doing data entry and you never have any time to contemplate or to spend time with your loved ones, you're going to burn out because your life is going to feel meaningless to you. But there are plenty of jobs that are really time demanding that a certain particular person might find very meaningful. And as a result, they're probably never going to be burned out. Maybe you're a surgeon who finds just like deep, deep, deep meaning in healing people from cancer, and you have to work crazy hours because you've got to do these surgeries. But at the end of the day, you at the. Your narrative in your mind about why your vocation, what your vocation is, is to do this kind of healing work. And you might. That might insulate you from the pressures of your job. Likewise, you might have a kind of easygoing job. Maybe you're a college professor and you really only have like two days a week where anybody's keeping track of your time. But you feel really burnt out because you just are not inspired at all by your research anymore. And you can't figure out, like, what it is that's important about what you're teaching. And there it's not a time question, it's a meaning question. One of the best ways to try to deal with burnout, I think, is to start recognizing that it's not going to have this quick time fix, but you're going to have to do this deeper work with yourself of thinking, what do I think is the meaning of my work on Earth? And that's a hard question to just ask blank. Like, that's a philosophical question. That's a question that you're going to be better equipped to handle if you actually are dabbling in philosophy and having philosophical conversations with friends and loved ones. One other point that I'll make, and then I'll promise I'll shut up about this, is we talk so much about burnout as though it's a problem for workers that they have to deal with. I actually think that burnout is a problem for managers and leaders. I'm a manager. I run this research institute at Notre Dame, and I've got 20 people or so that report through me. And one of my key jobs as a manager to stop burnout is to be able to help each and every person that works with me see the meaning of their contribution to the common good. Like, make them feel like they're part of something that's big and meaningful and help them see how they fit into that and how their unique contribution is valued. And I think one of the things that causes a lot of people to experience burnout is they've got managers that are just not also willing to do that philosophical work with their staff.

[Elise Hu]

Meaning making.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yeah, meaning making. And that's a skill that people don't learn when they get these jobs. Like, it's something that managers and leaders should have more training in. But I think it's deeply philosophical. And I think for workers that are experiencing burnout, it's okay to say it's not all your fault. Like, it's a little bit about the system that you're operating in is need needs to be giving you something that it's not giving you.

[Elise Hu]

I want to build on this question and take it to parenting, because parenting, a lot of us would find inherently meaningful, and yet the actual practicalities of it lead to all sorts of feelings of burnout and alienation because of the nature of the work, I think. Right. Like, I am feeling particularly burnt out by having to drive an hour twice a week to my daughter's volleyball practice. Sure, we are together, and I'm nurturing her and her future, but the actual task of it is miserable. Help me, doctor.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

So I do not have children, but I am a super aunt. Super. I'm tiger aunt. I'm very, very involved with my nieces. So one, take everything I say with a grain of salt because I don't have kids yet. I think it's fair. 1. I think some of the most meaningful projects that we do are also unpleasant and cause suffering in the moment. So one thing a lot of philosophers, Aristotle. This is like, some of the good things in life don't make you feel happy when you're doing them. They're just like, yeah, so. So one is like, you're growing in virtue, your daughter's growing in love, but it might suck in the moment. And that's just a part of like, meaning comes apart from feeling happiness. And when you're stuck in traffic, tell yourself, like, I'm growing in virtue somehow. But I, I also think that we do a lot of work with K12 schools, with this ethics institute and some of our projects right now. And one of the things that I notice is for young people who are coming through the school system right now, they and their parents, they're just in this like hyper productivity, activity obsessed culture where the feeling like, is if you are not doing every activity, if you're not taking every AP examination, if you're not winning and producing every minute of every day, you are going to fail in life. Like, you're going to be left behind. You won't get into a good college, you won't be become a healthy, happy adult. And this structure is like a recipe for burnout. Like this culture and world that we've created is just a recipe for human beings who are not flourishing. And it's a bit of a collective action problem of like, how do we take a step back and pull back and say, like, you know, is there any way for volleyball to be a little bit more accessible and fun for the kids who participate in it rather than requiring this huge front investment? Or are there ways to have a high school student that has like three hours every day that's not programmed for them, where they're not doing homework and they're not doing an organized activity, but they're like, I don't know. Me and my friends used to like practice driving around the parking lot of the shopping mall and listening to Britney Spears. Like kinds of opportunities for the philosopher Joseph Pieper will call this leisure, like activity that's not designed at being productive, but it's designed to just like enjoying and cultivating your life. And America is one of these countries and cultures where we just implicitly decided that our young adults don't deserve that. Like retirees deserve it, People who are already rich deserve that. But we just don't think that this is a right for young people. And I think that that's a recipe for burnout and for the parents who love and care for them because the parents get sucked into this.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

It's not a decision, like it's a structural issue. So it's not the kind of thing that any particular parent or family can Totally opt out of. They can try. But it's something that's like really, I think requires a philosophical shift in reckoning in our culture to say just like why? Why do we think this is good? Like why is this what we're aiming at?

[Elise Hu]

I think. And it's so tied into money and economic precarity and everything too.

[Dori Shafrier]

Right.

[Elise Hu]

So it's a product of capitalism. As though.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

I think it's funny your readers can push back me on this. So I grew up in a low income family and I'd say about half of my family and extended family still low income. And then you got people like me that joined the rat race in college and like now hang out with all the obsessive type A rich parents. I think that actually lower income families have a more reasonable lifestyle for their kids than the like urban, high income, high educated families. They're the ones that tend to be caught up more in this productivity culture. But I look at like my little nieces, they're still little kids. They've got like tons of unstructured like let's just color and mess up the house time. And the kids in rural high schools have fewer AP exams to worry about and fewer opportunities as well, maybe as a result of that, but do have maybe more, a little bit more like of a life or discretionary time. And I wonder if this is also the burnouts, particularly a terrible side effect for folks who think that their income and education have somehow insulated them from suffering in life.

[Elise Hu]

Interesting. Deep.

[Dori Shafrier]

Megan, we got a listener question lately that we'd love to have you try and answer as a philosopher. Elise and I kind of muddled our way through it, but I want to hear your answer. Love to get your take. Okay, so this listener wrote, it's my 35th birthday. Is it okay if we get existential? I've been thinking a lot about happiness, especially as it relates to the decision of whether or not to have a kid. I know I'm 35, so probably should have decided that by now. What does it mean to you to be happy? And is happiness actually necessary to have a meaningful life? Has your idea of happiness or meaning changed as you've aged?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

This is not only existential, it's personal. I don't know if my mom's going to listen to this podcast. I think she would like to know the answer to these questions.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, well, I'd love to know.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Yes, first year reader. It is always okay to get existential. Always. So I just celebrated a big birthday. I just turned 43, so I'm a couple of years ahead of your. You're a listener, but still face some of the same questions that she's facing. First, I do think that feeling happy is different from flourishing. Flourishing. It's a term you get from Aristotle. He's Plato's student. And Aristotle says that when you're genuinely flourishing, you're really fulfilling your particular function as a human being on earth. And it's something that you can only do late in life, after you've grown for a while. No young person is flourishing because you have to grow into it. And it's really like you've developed your capacity to love other people. You've developed courage, you've developed wisdom. You've become very pragmatic and prudent and all these virtues. Like, you've grown into yourself and in a great way. And you can't do that when you're young. You start doing it honestly when you're 35. Like, at this point, you need that much life experience to know if you're headed a good direction. Whereas plenty of young people have big feelings. Feel happy, feel despair, or your emotions are all over the place when you're younger. But you're not flourishing yet because you're still growing. You're seedling. So it's better to get to a point where you're beyond feeling happy. You literally are flourishing. And that's something that you only earn later on in life if things are going well for you. On the question on whether or not to have children, one of the things I would tell your listener is that this is one of the most hotly debated topics about the good life in the history of philosophy is whether or not, like, loving and caring for children is essential to leading a meaningful life. And many philosophers say, you know, like, no, you know, it's not. There's nothing. It's not the case that, like, there's something missing from your life if you don't have children. But there's something kind of incredible about the fact that human beings have the cre. Have the ability to create other humans with good, good lives. Who then we come to love. Like, that's this weird kind of way we can, like, add goodness to the world without missing out on any goodness. If we don't do it, if this makes sense. And it's a bit of a logical puzzle about, like, why we're obligated to try to grow into the best person we could possibly be. And there's something really incredible about the type of love that you can express when you have Children. But there are other ways of realizing that. Good. So it's a, it's a. But it's a complicated question. One thing that we know from psychologists is that a lot of folks, when they first have children, don't feel happy for a little while. Because waking, as Elise can tell you, like, waking up in the middle of the night to change diapers and losing sleep and dealing with angsty teenagers can lower your day to day feelings of happiness, but totally increase your overall growing and flourishing and meaning. So I think your reader is asking, your listener's asking the right kind of question. It's a genuine puzzle. I got a question from a loved one in my life a week ago, right before my birthday of, are you ever gonna have kids? Like, you're 43. What's. Are we just decided this is never gonna happen? And I was like, I don't know. I'm still, still, still discerning. And there's obviously a biological reality you also gotta face with these questions. But I think she's, she's asking a profound question. And this is one of the very few philosophical questions where actually every way you reason towards an answer could potentially, you know, be good and justified and be compatible with flourishing, I think.

[Elise Hu]

And then the last part of that question, Megan, was, has your idea of happiness. Well, we know your, what your idea of happiness is, which is it doesn't have to be tied to flourishing. So. And often isn't. But has your idea of meaning changed as you've aged?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

I think so. I think I'm a pretty ambitious person, as my colleagues would tell you. But when I was in my 20s, I don't know if you guys felt this way. I mean, I was just so hyper focused on these, like, really concrete measures of success. Like, I'll be incredibly happy if I just get a good job. I'll be incredibly happy if I just, like, do well on this exam or if, like, this relationship goes well. And just very, like, very concrete and rigid in my thinking about what I needed to do.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

And I feel like now that, you know, 20 years after that I'm in this phase of life. The pandemic really did this for me. Realizing that there are aspects of happiness that don't require you to do anything. Like, have nothing to do with, like, hitting that next milestone. And I bring up the pandemic because that was a really weird year in my life where suddenly, like, everything was canceled. There were no milestones. Wasn't, like, taking those trips with my friends. I wasn't trying to get to this next level at work. I couldn't go to that cool conference. I couldn't do anything. I just had to. I took a walk around my neighborhood for three miles every day and then like would bake cookies in the afternoon and chat with friends and family on zoom. But that year of forced sabbatical, like forced pause, actually reminded me that there's so much of life that's like great and meaningful, that's just given to you, like, to just enjoy and you don't have to earn it or fight about it. And it's not a competition or a race. And I don't think I was wired to even think those thoughts when I was in my twenties. I don't know. Is it like that for you?

[Elise Hu]

I totally relate. I totally relate because I came up in, and Dori and I both came up in journalism and media and there's so much scarcity in those fields, right? Because you're constantly, there's just more demand or there's more supply of journalists than there are jobs. And so there's a lot of just trying to look, looking over your shoulder and trying to get to the next thing and get a promotion so you can get the next best, better job. And it feels sort of futile at some point and exhausting.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

I think too. No, I totally see it. And I think too. I obviously, I spend a lot of time with young people with like 18 to 22 year olds in my job, and I have a lot of empathy for them because I think it's really, it's nice to be in your late 30s and 40s when you've got some of these big things figured out. Like, you've tried, you've learned how to be a journalist, you've learned how to be a good friend, you've learned how to be in relationships. And so you don't feel like you've got to be kind of like fighting all the time to learn and figure things out. But I look at my, like, you know, 20 year olds in my class and think, man, you're trying to figure everything out all at once. Like you, you've, you've, you haven't accomplished anything yet. You haven't like locked in on your, your big values yet. And so of course, everything feels like a frantic race to you because you don't, you haven't gotten any of the big ones locked in yet. And so it's, it's actually so wonderful to be in your 30s and 40s and think, like, I've got great long relationships now. I got a Job that I love and, like, I've got some stable things that now I can lean back on and enjoy. Yeah.

[Elise Hu]

Okay. We have already taken up so much of your time, but before we let you go, I'm just curious because this is sort of how we met or the conversation that we had when we first met, and I didn't get an answer from you. Would you say you have a philosophical school of thought that you are most aligned with?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Oh, yeah. Great question for sure. So I've probably thrown around the term, like, virtue ethics a couple of times in this call, but now I'll actually define it. So this is this tradition in philosophy. It starts with those guys, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. And I'm Roman Catholic. A lot of Catholics are interested in this. But here's what the school of thought of virtue ethics says, okay? There's something inherently valuable about being a human being. Like, we are what is really valuable in this world. And God, if God exists, is valuable, too. But human people, like, we're aware the value lives, and we are not static. We're meant to be growing and developing. We're constantly developing. We can develop in bad ways. We can become cruel. We can become turned off from the world. We can become ignorant. Or we can develop in great ways. We can become wise, we can become loving, we can become courageous. And it's the. Our life's work is to grow in the good ways and to try to avoid growing in the bad ways. And we don't do it alone. We do it in communities with other people that love and care for us. And the real, like, meaning of life is that work of growth, which, again, maybe your readers like rolling their eyes like that seems obvious. Well, there are other schools of thought. The existentialists, the utilitarians. They deny that. They just don't think that that's, like, fundamentally what goodness is in the world. I think the virtue ethics tradition, not only do I think it's, like, captures a very deep truth that it's amazing that human beings have been able to wrap their minds around. I think it's really special that humans can think, can wonder about these things. A squirrel that's outside in the Notre Dame quad doesn't worry if it's growing towards being a good squirrel the same way that we do. And that's kind of really special about us. And I also think it's a practical philosophy in a way that, like, lots of other philosophical traditions can't give you a way of life. Like, I study. I read these guys, Plato and aristotle. I read St. Augustine, I read the 20th century virtue ethicists. And it gives me insights about how can I be a better boss, how can I be a better sister and child. When I met you, Elise, when we were at the TED conference, I was talking about love and like, what does it mean to like grow in vulnerability, like to be able to make yourself more vulnerable to other people. And that's not just like a new agey psychology thing. But actually there's plenty of great philosophers that say that being able to share your vulnerability with another person is essential to growing in love and love is essential to the good life. And I read those philosophers and then I think, all right, I'm going to have a different kind of conversation with my sister in law at Christmas because of that. So I think it's a very practical philosophy. It's a really old one. It's an old, it's a golden oldie. But I'd say my life's work is trying to introduce students and members of the public to this tradition and say like you can, you know, you can join this tradition, like you can be the next chapter in it. And I really think it could help us live better lives and build a better society.

[Elise Hu]

Well, thank you for bringing that to us and just bringing your big brain and all of your like practical ways of talking about philosophy.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. So if you ever need any more philosophical advice, Forever 35, I've got your backs. Great.

[Elise Hu]

Oh that would be fantastic.

[Dori Shafrier]

You're like our in house philosopher. We'll just text you.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Call me up. Yeah, 100%. We can tackle particular issues. There's no topic that philosophy is not relevant to. I dare you to try to find a topic that I cannot make philosophy relevant to.

[Dori Shafrier]

Megan, where can our listeners find you?

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

So I'm at the University of Notre Dame, Ethics nd Edu. Take you to my site and if you want to check out our book the Good Life Method published by Penguin Press, Megan Sullivan and my co author and former grad student Paul Blaschko are the authors. Please check out the book, let me know what you think about it. It's got exercises to try to help you get deeper into philosophy in your own life. And I think you'll love it. It's a book that's written for everyone. You don't have to know any philosophy to check it out. It's something that's just meant to be a way of spur conversations and thinking in your life.

[Elise Hu]

Well, you did it here on Forever 35. Thank you so much. It was really a delight to have you.

[Dr. Megan Sullivan]

Thank you so much.

[Dori Shafrier]

Well, Elise, I'm really glad that you met Dr. Megan Sullivan at TED.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, I am too. That job has like introduced me to so many people who have not only like changed the trajectory of my life, but also just I'm people that I'm just glad exist in the world that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise crossed paths with.

[Dori Shafrier]

Totally.

[Elise Hu]

As we said at the beginning of the interview, she just happened to be seated next to me at a book signing thing and we started chatting and that's how we met. And I love that. I mean same thing with the reason why we had face value tickets to the ERAS tour. Karen, my friend, dancer Karen Chuang who we met on an elevator. We met on an elevator at Ted.

[Dori Shafrier]

I love that.

[Elise Hu]

So yes, thank you again to Dr. Megan Sullivan. We are getting to the end of the show and time to revisit our intentions and set some new ones and this will be one ones that last until the new year. So Dory, what was your last intention and what are you intending going forward?

[Dori Shafrier]

My last intention was to survive Hanukkah and I would say we are surviving and thriving here with Hanukkah. It's going well. My intention this week for, you know, the last couple weeks of the year is just to have some more good family time. We're gonna see my brother and his kids and we're gonna see my parents and just want to enjoy our time with each other, with our extended family and yeah, just be grateful for everything we have here.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, lovely. My intention last week was just to say more no. Which I think I've lived out. I've decided to show not tell by just like leaving, you know?

[Dori Shafrier]

Yeah.

[Elise Hu]

Like I mentioned at the top of the show, I just left. So sometimes I think I'm drawing boundaries or at least holding boundaries by just like stepping out when things are getting a little bit too much for me and my nervous system is getting dysregulated. I actually said to the girls I was like I'm going to have a mom tantrum so I am going to leave. Like this is my way of managing.

[Dori Shafrier]

You'Re self regulating situation.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, yeah. And I want them to be able to learn emotional control and have their own strategies for emotional control. So that's what I did. So I guess in some ways I did follow through with my intention of saying more. No, and I will second your intention about this time of year and intend to really have some quality family time. I have some items on the to do list that have nothing to do with buying anything. Like, I really want to watch Elf together because none of us have gotten to watch Elf together. And then I was thinking maybe I was going to watch Serendipity with Ava because we're going to New York and she doesn't know about Serendipity 3 and the frozen ice chocolates. And that's a big plot point in that movie. I don't know if the themes of that movie hold up, actually, because I haven't watched it in a while. But that's the one with Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack.

[Dori Shafrier]

I don't think I ever watched that.

[Elise Hu]

Okay. Yeah, there's like there's skating in Central park and there's going to get the frozen hot chocolate in at Serendipity 3 in New York. And so there's some things that we're gonna do and so I thought we'd do that. And then we are gonna do our Christmas tradition of hot pot and we're gonna go to an all you can eat hot pot place. So I'm hoping I hold it together and enjoy this family time. Rob is going to do a couple nights, the last couple of nights of Hanukkah with his sons in Scottsdale and so hoping that that all goes well for them and then we'll be together for Christmas. So we are wishing all of you a very restful and peaceful holiday season. I know this can be a difficult time for folks as well. And so our hearts go out to you and we really look forward to. We appreciate your listeners and your community all of this year and then look forward to talking with y' all again at the beginning of 2026. Yep.

[Dori Shafrier]

And just a reminder that Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Dori Shafrier and Elise Hu and produced and edited by Sam Hunio. Sami Reed is our project manager Manager.

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[Dori Shafrier]

Thanks, everyone. Take care.

[Elise Hu]

Happy New Year.

[Dori Shafrier]

Bye.

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