Most everyone wants to live a good, meaningful life, though we don’t always know what that means and how to do it. Plenty of modern self-improvement programs claim to point people in the right direction, but many of the best answers were already offered more than two thousand years ago.

My guests have gleaned the cream of this orienting, ancient-yet-evergreen advice from history’s philosophers and shared it in their new book, The Good Life Method: Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning. Their names are Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko, and they’re professors of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Today on the show Meghan and Paul introduce us to the world of virtue ethics — an approach to philosophy that examines the nature of the good life, the values and habits that lead to excellence, and how to find and fulfill your purpose as a human being. We discuss how to seek truth with other people by asking them three levels of what they call “strong questions” and engaging in civil and fruitful dialogue. We then delve into why your intentions matter and why you should use “morally thick” language. We also examine the role that work and love has to play in pursuing the good life, and how the latter is very much about attention. We end our conversation with how a life of eudaimonia — full human flourishing — requires balancing action with contemplation.

• AoM article and podcast on phronesis or practical wisdom
• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
• After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
• AoM Article: Why Are Modern Debates on Morality So Shrill?
• Sunday Firesides: Virtue Isn’t Virtue Til It’s Tested
• Iris Murdoch
• AoM Article: Why Men Should Read More Fiction
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• AoM podcast on The Road
• AoM article on contemplative self-examination, including instructions on how to do the examen of St. Ignatius

• Meghan’s Faculty Page
• Paul’s Faculty Page

Think of all the texts, emails, and social media posts you're inundated with each day. Sometimes you read them, and sometimes you swipe them away, telling yourself, perhaps not so honestly, that you'll revisit them later.

If you're the sender of such missives and memos or the creator of content, you hope the recipient has the first response, that, instead of deep-sixing your message, they take the time to engage and take action on it.

How do you increase the odds of that happening? Rather than just guessing at the answer, Todd Rogers has done empirical experiments to discover it. Todd is a behavioral scientist, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the author of Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World. Today on the show, Todd explains the four-stage process people use in deciding whether to engage with your writing, whether in a personal or business context, and how influencing these factors not only comes down to the style of your writing, but its overall design. Todd offers tips to improve both areas, so that you can effectively capture people's attention.

• AoM Podcast #971: The 5 Factors for Crafting Simple (Read: Effective!) Messages
• AoM Podcast #666: The Power of Brevity in a Noisy World
• AoM Podcast #580: Why People Do (Or Don’t) Listen to You

• Todd on X
• Todd's faculty page
• Writing for Busy Readers website

What if there was one piece of fitness equipment that was affordable, didn’t take up much space, could get you both strong and flexible, and was fun to use?

While that might sound too good to be true, my guest, Pat Flynn, would say you can find all those benefits in the old-school kettlebell. Pat, who’s the author of Strong ON!: 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat, Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility―in 20 Minutes or Less, calls kettlebells the Swiss Army knife  of workout tools and the minimalist’s ultimate secret fitness weapon.

Today on the show, we unpack why Pat’s such an advocate for bells, but before we get there, we first take a dive into his background in philosophy and why beginning a workout program takes faith. We then talk about how to use kettlebells to get an all-around fit physique, including the three kettlebell weights that make for an ideal starter set, the two best exercises for building muscle, the pyramid-shaped program that can facilitate body recomposition, how to incorporate progressive overload into kettlebell training, which kettlebell exercise Coach Dan John considers “the fat-burning athlete builder,” the “300 Swings Challenge” that will help you take a Bruce Lee approach to fitness, and much more.

• AoM Article: Become Strong Like Bull — The Kettlebell Workout
• AoM Article: How to Perform 4 Kettlebell Exercises — An Illustrated Guide
• AoM Podcast #295 — Kettlebells and the Psychology of Training
• AoM Article: Strength, Power, Conditioning — How to Master the Kettlebell Swing

• Strong ON! website
• Kettlebell Quickies YouTube Channel
• Pat on IG