What does it mean to live well in morally incoherent times? Alan Noble joins the show to discuss his new book To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, which uses the four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues as a framework for navigating choice paralysis, the loneliness epidemic, and contemporary anxiety. The conversation covers why courage and temperance feel especially urgent today, the difficulty of writing on justice, hoping all things for political opponents, the sunk cost fallacy in vocational discernment, and why friendship requires intentional cultivation. Grace, not optimization, grounds the virtuous life. Hosted by Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and James Wood.

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Chapter Markers

00:00 - Welcome and introductions
00:52 - The pitch for To Live Well
03:30 - Diagnosis: alienation or anomie?
06:30 - The four cardinal and three theological virtues
08:14 - What is a virtue?
10:11 - Office hours and the paradox of choice
14:54 - Fortitude in an anxious age
18:41 - The sunk cost fallacy and pivoting well
21:40 - The heap of broken images and Christian wholeness
25:07 - Hoping all things for political opponents
29:36 - The hardest chapter to write: justice
32:17 - What pastors and churches can do
34:40 - Grace, virtue, and the Protestant hesitation
38:55 - Friendship as the practice of love
44:31 - Closing thoughts