Posts tagged the good life
EP. 43 - Friction: What Are We Losing by Making Life Easier?

What happens when we start removing friction from almost everything?

A teenager on an e-bike can travel further with less physical effort.

Dinner can arrive at the front door without us walking to the restaurant.

A map means we rarely have to get lost.

A screen means we rarely have to be bored.

And AI increasingly means we don't always have to struggle through the thinking, writing, researching or creating ourselves.

None of these things are necessarily bad.

In fact, many of them are extraordinary improvements to everyday life.

But perhaps we've started asking the wrong question.

Instead of simply asking:

How can we make this easier?

What if we sometimes asked:

Is this difficulty doing something for me?

The value of friction

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EP. 40 - Friendship: What Is Friendship For?

In this episode, Evan Sutter explores friendship as something much bigger than a social or psychological problem. If we're interested in the good life, what role should friendship actually play?

The conversation moves through:

  • Why friendships change as our lives change

  • Whether we are supposed to maintain every friendship we've ever had

  • The difference between friendship, belonging and solitude

  • What ancient philosophers such as Epicurus understood about friendship

  • How ambition and work can quietly crowd relationships out

  • Whether the lives we build determine who gets to be part of them

  • Why place, ritual and community matter

  • The relationship between friendship and attention

  • What mortality can reveal about the people we spend our lives with

  • Whether some friendships belong to particular seasons of our lives

  • And ultimately, what friendship is actually for

Perhaps friendship isn't simply about finding the right people.

Perhaps it's also about building a life in which friendship has somewhere to live.

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EP. 37 - Death, Impermanence, and Learning How To Live

Evan explores:

  • Why we tend to treat death as something distant and abstract.

  • What a minor health scare can reveal about the fragility of life.

  • Why contemplating mortality can actually make life feel more vivid.

  • The strange Western discomfort around talking about people who have died.

  • How other cultures can offer different ways of keeping the dead present in everyday life.

  • Why knowing intellectually that we're going to die isn't the same as living as though we know it.

  • What happens to our priorities when mortality suddenly becomes more immediate.

  • The relationship between death, restlessness and our constant pursuit of the next thing.

  • Why awareness of mortality doesn't mean chasing every pleasure or living as though every day is our last.

  • How discipline, patience, responsibility and long-term ambition still belong in a good life.

  • Why impermanence might be one of the most important ingredients in understanding what a good life actually is.

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