Tag Archives: philosophy

How Not To Kill Yourself

Suicide rates are rising at an alarming rate in America and the populations most at risk are no longer white middle-aged men, they are increasingly young people and minorities.  What societal ills might be fueling this tragic trend?

Clancy Martin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.  He is also a happily married father of five children.  His latest book, How Not to Kill Yourself is a portrait of the suicidal mind – his own – and in it he provides both a personal account of the multiple attempts he had made to end his life but also the positive strategies he has devised to safeguard his future and that of others.

CLANCY MARTIN is the acclaimed author of numerous books on philosophy. A Guggenheim Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New YorkerThe AtlanticHarper’sEsquireThe New Republic,  and The Paris Review. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Ashoka University in New Delhi.

RORY O’CONNOR is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland and President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention

O’Connor leads the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory, one of the leading suicide and self-harm research groups and can be found on twitter (@suicideresearch).

He’s the author of When It Is Darkest: Why People Die by Suicide and What We Can Do To Prevent It.

Recorded 6/14/2023

CF: How NOT To Kill Yourself 1
CF: How NOT To Kill Yourself 2

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Living A Good Enough Life

Do you constantly obsess about being happy?  Well, you’re not alone.  It appears that many Americans share this national proclivity.

These pervasive desires with how to be the wealthiest, the most powerful or famous, take up a lot of psychic energy, and the end results are not too impressive.  Despite the myriad of self-help books out there, we Americans are among the most anxious people on earth. 

So, we are taking a stop and asking, is there a better way? 

AVRAM ALPERT, writer and educator, shares his ideas from The Good-Enough Life, suggesting how an acceptance of our own limitations can lead to a more fulfilling life and a more harmonious society.

Obsessing about greatness has given us an epidemic of stress, anxiety, inequality and ecological damage.

Alpert is a writer and teacher, and currently a Research Fellow at The New Institute in Hamburg where he is working on a book on wisdom.

KIERAN SETIYA, a professor of philosophy at MIT, provides a refreshing and realistic antidote to many of the platitudes pushed by our contemporary American self-improvement industry.  His latest book Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help us Find our Way suggests that trying to live a perfect life in difficult circumstances only brings dismay.  Much in life that makes us miserable can neither be changed nor ignored, so we need to come to terms with reality.  

Both guests challenge the notion that happiness should be life’s primary pursuit – arguing we might be better served by living well within our means, acknowledging some difficult truths and concentrating on leading a meaningful life instead.  Embracing the “good-enough” life might be preferable to hankering for the perfect one, and we might just stumble across happiness in the process. 

Recorded 12/22/2022

CF Living A Good Enough Life 1
CF Living A Good Enough Life 2

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How To Think Long-Term In A Short-Term World

It’s time to trade in shortsightedness for long-term thinking. That’s according to author and philosopher Roman Krznaric, who writes about the power of ideas to change society in his new book The Good Ancestor.

Recorded January 6, 2021

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Krznaric outlines practical ways we can retrain our brains to think of the long view, including what he calls “Deep-Time Humility” (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and “Cathedral Thinking” (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to widen our focus, to inspire more “time rebels” like Greta Thunberg—to shift our allegiance from this generation to all humanity—in short, to save our planet and our future.


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Ways of being in the world

wise1Krista Tippett, host of award-winning NPR program “On Being“, discusses her latest book Becoming Wise: an inquiry into the mystery and art of living. Sh’s joined in conversation by poet and author, David Whyte

Whyte’s most recent publications are The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love and Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

Recorded  March 1, 2017

Listen to Ways of Being, part 1 & 2