Episode 382: Come Away Corrupted with Dr. Meghan Sullivan
We want you to come away from this episode corrupted, in the best way, thanks to our guest Dr. Meghan Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She joins Doree and Elise to discuss how to live “The Good Life,” and they get into everything from the beginning of democracy and the role philosophy played (and continues to play) in it, to virtue ethics and its relationship to work-life balance. She also gets existential with us about flourishing, happiness, and the vexing question about whether to have children.
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode is AI generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:17):
And I'm Elise Hugh and we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Doree Shafrir (00:22):
Welcome to the show. Today we have a philosopher.
Elise Hu (00:27):
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? Yes. Her name's Dr. Meghan Sullivan. We're going to hear a lot more from her later. She also has this really charming North Carolina accent. And so it makes everything a little folksy as she's talking about Aristotle and Socrates. And then later-
Doree Shafrir (01:12):
She was very cool. As I texted Elise, as we were interviewing her, I was like, she must be the most amazing professor. You could just tell she's so engaging and 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 (01:37):
Yeah. And Dori, remind me, I know you were on your way to a PhD at one point. What were you studying?
Doree Shafrir (01:45):
I was studying European history.
Elise Hu (01:47):
Oh, okay.
Doree Shafrir (01:48):
So some
Elise Hu (01:49):
Overlap with some of these?
Doree Shafrir (01:51):
Yeah. I mean, not a ton, but when I was an undergrad, my concentration was in ... I was a history and English major and my history concentration was intellectual history, which is basically the history of philosophy.
Elise Hu (02:07):
Yeah. Yeah. Western though.
Doree Shafrir (02:08):
So there was a lot of overlap there for sure. Most of my courses were in more modern intellectual history, like 19th and 20th century. I didn't do a ton with ancient ...
Elise Hu (02:23):
I feel like I studied more of the so- called Western Canon when I was in 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, a
Doree Shafrir (02:39):
Lot of my course was more professional.
Elise Hu (02:41):
Yeah. It was sort of vocational almost. It was sort of like newswriting, news ethics, history of American journalism, cross-cultural journalism. And I would have just loved a great class on intro to philosophy. I never even took that. 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 acknowledgements of my book.
Doree Shafrir (03:17):
Oh, how cool.
Elise Hu (03:19):
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 made an impact on me and you were an influence and da, da, da." He didn't write me back. He didn't write me back, but he followed me on Instagram.
Doree Shafrir (03:42):
Curious. I was very curious.
Elise Hu (03:45):
Right? It's like,
Doree Shafrir (03:47):
Why wouldn't you talk to me? I wonder if he started writing you back and then forgot. You know
Elise Hu (03:51):
What I mean? Yeah. It's so strange. 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 always thought you were an excellent writer." So that was awesome. She was surprised that I didn't go into poetry or writing fantasy because she thought that that was what I was more into at that age.
Doree Shafrir (04:19):
Oh my God. Well, it's not too late.
Elise Hu (04:24):
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 too.
Doree Shafrir (05:00):
I love
Elise Hu (05:01):
That. And during like before Fat Bear Week when they come out of ... Is Fat Bear Week when they come out of Hibernation or before?
Doree Shafrir (05:10):
That is when, I thought it was before, but I don't-
Elise Hu (05:13):
Before.
Doree Shafrir (05:14):
He
Elise Hu (05:14):
Made up a hole. I don't actually know. That spun a whole yarn.
(05:18)
And so he's just really good at just taking a morsel of a thing and then building on it and building on it and expanding it. And I find that to be a talent that I just can't conjure. 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 going to do
Doree Shafrir (05:47):
Next.That was kind of my experience too, writing a novel. Sometimes you're just like, "Oh, the character's just doing this thing." But one of the things that I did like about fiction, having always been a journalist is like, sometimes when you're working on an article, you're like, "Ugh, I just wish I had a source that said X, Y, Z." No one's actually saying what you want them to say, but when you're writing fiction, you can just be like, "Oh, they're going to say that thing." You can just make it up. I know. It's so crazy that you can just make it up.
Elise Hu (06:22):
And this is what was so funny about learning about the MacGyver writer's room because they would just make up some gadget that would blow up the- Right, you can just make it up. ... 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 they'll get some scientific consultant to reverse engineer an explanation for how the cave blew up.
Doree Shafrir (06:48):
Totally.
Elise Hu (06:49):
Totally. But I find that I'm so incredulous. I'm like, "How could you do that? That's not
(06:57)
Accurate." 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 Dori'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 saw a TikTok that was like, "Do not go to New York right
Doree Shafrir (07:36):
Now." Well, you have a couple of weeks. I feel like it's still early.
Elise Hu (07:40):
Maybe it'll warm up. Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (07:42):
Yeah, we'll warm up.
Elise Hu (07:44):
Going to manifest that for you. Grandma Susan has already pulled out. She's like, "Nah, not going to do it. It's too cold. My skin is in. " That was so funny.
Doree Shafrir (07:56):
That's really funny.
Elise Hu (07:57):
Yeah, I'm excited to just have some R&R. This year has been really exhausting on a lot of fronts for a lot of folks and this past week, notwithstanding 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 too nuts in the house and I was like, "I got to get out of here." I thought I was going to have a mom temper tantrum. And so I was like, later.
Doree Shafrir (08:38):
Did you just take a walk? What did you do?
Elise Hu (08:40):
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 in silence and it felt great. That's
Doree Shafrir (08:52):
Awesome.
Elise Hu (08:52):
That's
Doree Shafrir (08:52):
Awesome.
Elise Hu (08:53):
It felt great. It's just everybody's nerves are frazzled, I think. Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (08:57):
I've been on edge for sure.
Elise Hu (09:00):
Yeah. But you know what will be a good balm for that is this coming conversation.
Doree Shafrir (09:06):
That's so true. Oh my gosh. It really is. I loved talking to Dr. Meghan Sullivan. Do you want to introduce her, Elise?
Elise Hu (09:16):
Sure. Meghan 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 going to love us.
Doree Shafrir (09:52):
She's such a delight. I think you're going to 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 mention here on the show. We are on Instagram at Forever35 Podcast. 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/forever35. 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 forever35podcast@gmail.com. And we will be right back with Dr. Meghan Sullivan. We'll be right back. Meghan Sullivan, welcome to Forever35.
(11:05)
We are so happy to have you. I'm so happy to be here. Yay. I think you're our first official philosopher. We've had our child philosophers, but ...
Dr. Megan Sullivan (11:17):
Isn't everyone a philosopher of sorts? No. I think by the end of this episode, you'll be grateful you're not a philosopher. Let's dive in then. You're going to understand why you've never had a philosopher on this show.
Doree Shafrir (11:37):
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 (11:53):
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.
(12:04)
But I go to bed early, like old lady early. I'm not even that old, but I go to bed at like ... I start going to bed at 8:00 PM. It makes it sound like I have no life, but I- What a dream. Oh my gosh. I love sleeping and I love getting all cozy. And so around 8:00 I change into my pajamas, take a shower. I always kind of light some scented candles. I realized three years ago that I've totally become my mother and I need 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 lights off. And I just love that feeling. So even if I'm traveling, I have to travel all the time for my job.
(12:58)
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. It is time to go to bed.
Elise Hu (13:12):
Love that. Dori wants to be your best friend.
Doree Shafrir (13:15):
Yeah. Dory, you like to be all ... I aspire to go to bed early, but it often doesn't happen. I am in bed by 10 o'clock, often a little earlier. Yeah. Which I feel like all things considered is not bad.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (13:30):
My coworkers hate me because crack and dawn, I am just firing away and they're still snug in their beds.
Elise Hu (13:40):
Well, Meghan, 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 (13:55):
Oh, 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. I come from 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. I'm like, oh my gosh, these are the books that he writes. This so ridiculous. So I knew as a youth what a philosopher was and had adamantly rejected it as a life option. But then I didn't really know. And then I went to college. I went to the University of Virginia and every college freshman didn't get into any of the classes that I wanted and instead just got shuffled into classes that had free seats.
(14:53)
And there was an intro ethics class called Issues of Life and Death in the Philosophy Department that my academic advisor stuck me in.
(15:01)
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 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 thog 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.
(15:44)
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 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 looked at me and he's like, "Why don't you maybe don't be a lawyer? If you really like studying philosophy, just try it for a little bit longer, see where it takes you. " 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.
(16:22)
" And then of course, once I got my job as a professor at Notre Dame, then I started getting really serious about it and started treating it like a real job.
Doree Shafrir (16:33):
Well, you ended up at Notre Dame, which seems to take the study of philosophy very seriously. And your book was kind of based in part on, I guess, one of the most popular courses at Notre Dame that you developed called God in the Good Life. Yes. And 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 generation of college students.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (17:20):
Absolutely. 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 in 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. I like that. I think it's amazing. It's so cool. And 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. If you read my book and you read half the philosophers we study in class, they do not have that effect on people. But the view for a Catholic institution is that a human person is so much more than just their job.
(18:14)
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.
(18:28)
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 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.
(19:22)
And so I love being at a university that believes as a matter of faith and principle that this is something that everybody should have access to.
Elise Hu (19:33):
And what should the kids ideally come away with by the end of a semester in this class, God in the good life?
Dr. Megan Sullivan (19:43):
So if you come ever visit me in my office or see any clips from this, you see I got this huge banner on my wall behind me that says, Corrupt the Youth, which is a quote from ... It's my job on earth, but it's a quote from Socrates. Socrates is the great founder of 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.
(20:37)
And 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 and 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?
(21:22)
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 like the entry point. So we talk about politics. Then we talk about money, the second easiest problem of the good life, I think, but still a problem. 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. 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.
(22:06)
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 got to make a decision anyway. That's a pretty hard one.
Elise Hu (22:14):
I like that.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (22:14):
We talk about suffering. 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?
(22:56)
And that's a real doozy. That's way harder than politics. And hopefully you leave corrupted in the sense that you've been touched and moved by that.
Elise Hu (23:04):
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 (23:11):
Oh yeah.
Elise Hu (23:11):
Massive online courses. Yeah. Yeah. We need to mook it. Yes. You should mook it. I bet you could make some money if you moved it. Make some money maybe for the university. Well,
Dr. Megan Sullivan (23:24):
Podcast it, but I don't know how to podcast. You guys know how to do this. And one thing I've learned is doing a great podcast, it's a real skill. And as you can tell, 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 (23:40):
Oh, 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. In fact, Plato had dealt with this.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (24:08):
Oh yeah. And he lost his mind about it.
Elise Hu (24:10):
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 arguments 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 (24:28):
Yes, I love it. So go back in time with me 2,400 years ago, you've got ancient Athens. It's this little tiny city state that thinks very highly of itself. They're discovering geometry. They're learning how to write plays. They're learning about philosophy. This is where philosophy starts in the Western world. In the East, it starts with Confucius about a hundred years earlier, but in the West, it starts with Socrates and his student Play-Doh. And in ancient Athens, they were a democracy and they were just inventing democracy. They were just figuring it out. Early days. And
Elise Hu (25:08):
So
Dr. Megan Sullivan (25:08):
Early days, very experimental.
Elise Hu (25:11):
So 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 (25:16):
I mean, Plato honestly predicted all of the problems we are having with the United States right now. If you read the 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. Power comes with being convincing because you got to vote on things. In Athens, you voted on everything. Should we tax wheat? Should we sentence story to death? Every possible thing was put to a vote. So I know every now, no. I vote no. But 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 got to be super convincing. You got to be able to convince other people to follow you because that's how you get power.
(26:06)
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 ghost writer, like people who can form-
Elise Hu (26:20):
Operation varsity blues.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (26:22):
Of totally
Elise Hu (26:23):
Varsity bliss.on times.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (26:24):
Yes. 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 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. 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 Sophist market is doing it. And Socrates comes on the scene and he's a good debater.
(27:15)
He's really good at logic. He's very persuasive. Apparently he's really ugly, but also very charming in 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 that's a real dude. But he becomes like a debate coach and he teaches people how to do this, but after a while he gets fed up. He's like, "What are we doing here? 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. We'll just do whatever. 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 going around asking people, "Do I know what's true?
(28:03)
Do I really know what I'm talking about? " And if not, I should stop. And 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 like destroys their arguments and embarrasses them and then they don't know what to believe about the world and 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 when we think, look at all the idiotic things on TikTok about important questions in the world.
(28:54)
I cannot believe that people are obsessed with this content and never able to take a step back and just wonder, think for themselves about what we should ultimately care about.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (29:06):
Plato
Dr. Megan Sullivan (29:06):
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 result, turns into a kind of scary figure and says like, "We shouldn't let people vote." Plato's world is a totalitarian government that's run by 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 trained to be a super soldier in the platonic universe. Plato 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 can mean that people get obsessed with convincing other people and lose their grasp on the truth.
(29:58)
Wow.
Elise Hu (30:00):
Wow. I love hearing you kind of just lay this out. Also, you make it so accessible. These
Dr. Megan Sullivan (30:05):
Dudes, there's one guy. There's a bunch of guys having a party in ancient Athens
Doree Shafrir (30:10):
And then one of them gets killed. But they say, "What radicalized you? " But that was what radicalized Plato.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (30:19):
Oh my gosh. They killed his 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 they had to go kill his mentor. Exactly. It was a turning point. 399 BC, that was when it all hit the fan for Play-Doh.
Doree Shafrir (30:39):
Yeah, that's when it all went down. It got
Dr. Megan Sullivan (30:42):
Weird.
Elise Hu (30:43):
Okay. Let's take a break and we will be right back.
Doree Shafrir (30:53):
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 (31:15):
Yes. I think that virtue ethics and philosophy can be ... It's not going to be a magic bullet that solves burnout,
(31:23)
But I really think it can help people understand this phenomenon that so many of us experience. Yes. 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 make sure you sleep eight hours a night, make sure you stop working at 4:30 PM. Make sure you do a Pomodoro every 10 minutes. 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 personal care time, as long as you get the dial set, you're going to be happy. That is just not true. Being happier is harder than that. And one of the things I love about Virtue Ethicist philosophers have had a lot to say about work and its role in life over the last 2,000 years.
(32:23)
And one of the key messages they'll say is that burnout is not necessarily about the dials being misset, 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.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (32:41):
And
Dr. Megan Sullivan (32:41):
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, your narrative in your mind about what your vocation is, is to do this kind of healing work. And that might insulate you from the pressures of your job.
(33:31)
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 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.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.
(34:24)
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.
(34:42)
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. The
Elise Hu (35:22):
Meaning making. Yeah.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (35:24):
The meaning making. And that's a skill that people don't learn when they get these jobs. 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. It's a little bit about the system that you're operating in, needs to be giving you something that it's not giving you.
Elise Hu (35:45):
" 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. 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, Dr..
Dr. Megan Sullivan (36:25):
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. One, I think some of the most meaningful projects that we do are also unpleasant and cost suffering in the moment. So one thing a lot of philosophers, Aristotle says 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 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 also think that we do a lot of work with K-12 schools, with this ethics institute and some of our projects right now.
(37:24)
And one of the things that I notice is for young people who are coming through the school system right now
(37:33)
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 exam, 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 become a healthy, happy adult. And this structure is like a recipe for burnout. 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, "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?
(38:23)
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 practice driving around the parking lot of the shopping mall and listening to Brittany Spears. Those kinds of opportunities for the thoughts for Joseph Peeper were called this leisure, like activity that's not designed to 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. 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 them and care for them because the parents get sucked into this.
(39:16)
I don't know. 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
Elise Hu (39:31):
In our
Dr. Megan Sullivan (39:31):
Culture to say just like, " Why do we think this is good? Why is this what we're aiming at?
Elise Hu (39:38):
"And it's so tied into money and economic precarity and everything too, right? Oh, absolutely. So it's a product of capitalism as well.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (39:45):
Though I think it's funny and your readers can push back on this. So I grew up in a low income family and I'd say about half of my family and extended family is 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, fewer opportunities as well, maybe as a result of that, but do have maybe a little bit more like of a life or discretionary time.
(40:38)
And I wonder if this is also, if burnout's particularly a terrible side effect for folks who think that their income and education have somehow insulated them from suffering in life. Interesting. Deep.
Doree Shafrir (40:55):
Meghan, 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- Ooh, 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 (41:37):
This is not only existential, it's personal. I wonder if my mom's going to listen to this podcast. I think she would like to know the answer to these questions.
Elise Hu (41:43):
Yeah. Well, I'd love to know. Yes.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (41:47):
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 listener, but still face some of the same questions that she's facing. First, I do think that feeling happy is different from flourishing.
(42:19)
Flourishing, it's a term you get from Aristotle who's Plato 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. At this point, you need that much life experience to know if you're headed a good direction.
(43:05)
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,
(43:41)
Is whether or not loving and caring for children is essential to leading a meaningful life. And many philosophers say, it's not the case that 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 ability to create other humans with 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 complicated question.
(44:33)
And 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 could 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 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 going to have kids? Like you're 43, have we just decided this is never going to happen? "And I was like, " I don't know. I'm still discerning. "And there's obviously a biological reality you also got to face with these questions, but I think 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 be good and justified and be compatible with flourishing, I think.
Elise Hu (45:35):
And then the last part of that question, Meghan, was, has your idea of happiness ... Well, we know what your idea of happiness is, which is it doesn't have to be tied to flourishing and often isn't, but has your idea of meaning changed as you've aged?
Dr. Megan Sullivan (45:52):
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 really concrete measures of success. I'll be incredibly happy if I just get a good job. I'll be incredibly happy if I just do well on this exam or if this relationship goes well and just very concrete and rigid in my thinking about what I needed to do. And I feel like now that 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. I have nothing to do with hitting that next milestone. And I bring up the pandemic because that was a really weird year in my life where suddenly everything was canceled, there were no milestones.
(46:56)
It 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 took a walk around my neighborhood for three miles every day and then 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 20s. I don't like that for you.
Elise Hu (47:37):
Yeah, I totally relate. I totally relate because I came up and Dorian 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 looking over your shoulder and trying to get to the next thing and get a promotion so that you can get the next better job. And it feels sort of futile at some point and exhausting.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (48:11):
I think too ... No, I totally see it. And I think too, 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. You've learned how to be a journalist,
(48:33)
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 20 year olds in my class and think, "Man, you're trying to figure everything out all at once." You haven't accomplished anything yet. You haven't locked in on your big values yet. And so of course everything feels like a frantic race to you because you haven't gotten any of the big ones locked in yet. And so 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 I've got some stable things that now I can lean back on and enjoy."
Elise Hu (49:13):
Yeah. 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 (49:31):
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 say 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.
Elise Hu (49:55):
Okay.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (49:56):
There's something inherently valuable about being a human being. We are what is really valuable in this world. And God, if God exists, is valuable too. But human people, 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 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 meaning of life is that work of growth, which again, maybe your reader's rolling their eyes like, "That seems obvious." Well, there are other schools of thought, the existentialists, the utilitarians, they deny that.
(50:53)
They just don't think that that's like fundamentally what goodness is in the world.
(50:59)
I think the virtue ethics tradition, not only do I think it 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 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. 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.
(51:58)
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. And so I think it's a very practical philosophy. It's a really old one. 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 join this tradition. You can be the next chapter. And I really think it could help us live better lives and build a better society."
Elise Hu (52:38):
Well, thank you for bringing that to us and just bringing your big brain and all of your practical ways of talking about philosophy.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (52:47):
Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. So if you ever need any more philosophical advice Forever35, I've got your backs.
Doree Shafrir (52:54):
Great. Oh, that would be fantastic. You're like our in- house philosopher. We'll just text you. Call
Dr. Megan Sullivan (52:58):
Me up. Yeah. 100%. We could 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.
Doree Shafrir (53:11):
Meghan, where can our listeners find you?
Dr. Megan Sullivan (53:14):
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, Meghan Sullivan, and my co-author and former grad student, Paul Blashko 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 spurring some better conversations and thinking in your life.
Elise Hu (53:47):
Well, you did it here on Forever35. Thank you so much. It was really a delight to have you.
Dr. Megan Sullivan (53:52):
Thank you
Elise Hu (53:52):
So much.
Doree Shafrir (53:57):
Well, Elise, I'm really glad that you met Dr. Meghan Sullivan at TED.
Elise Hu (54:04):
Yeah, I am too. That job has introduced me to so many people who have not only changed the trajectory of my life, but also just people that I'm just glad exist in the world that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise crossed paths with. Totally. 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 Chwong, who we met on an elevator. We met on an elevator at TED. I love that. So yes, thank you again to Dr. Meghan 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 ones that last until the new year.
(54:56)
So Doree, what was your last intention and what are you intending going for?
Doree Shafrir (55:00):
My last intention was to survive Hanukkah. And I would say we are surviving and thriving here with Hanukkah. It's going well. Great. My intention this week for the last couple weeks of the year is just to have some more good family time. We're going to see my brother and his kids and we're going to 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 (55:33):
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 leaving. 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'm going to leave." This is my way of managing-
Doree Shafrir (56:12):
You're self-regulating.
Elise Hu (56:14):
Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (56:14):
Yeah.
Elise Hu (56:15):
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. 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 three 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 Beckensale and John Cusack.
Doree Shafrir (57:07):
I don't think I ever watched that.
Elise Hu (57:09):
Okay. Yeah. There's skating in Central Park and there's going to get the frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity three in New York. And so there's some things that we're going to do. Love that. And so I thought we'd do that. And then we are going to do our Christmas tradition of Hotpot and we're going to go to an all you can eat hotpot place. Nice. So I'm hoping I hold it together and enjoy this family time. Rob is going to do 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. Love
Dr. Megan Sullivan (57:46):
That.
Elise Hu (57:46):
We're 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.
Doree Shafrir (58:11):
Yep. And just a reminder that Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everyone. Take care. Happy new year. Bye.