Beyond the Forum

As our team works on Season Two, here’s some of the original content that inspired our first season on The Good Life. This Veritas Forum with Daryl Davis — the guest for our fourth episode — was hosted by students at NYU in early March 2020 under the title: “Audacious Love: How Daryl Davis Convinced 200 Racists to Leave the KKK.”

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Does “the good life” mean that everything in your life is good? For the final episode of our first season, we talk with Yale theologian Dr. Miroslav Volf about the “why” of living — when we’re faced with sorrow and suffering, what keeps us going? Mirsolav helps us explore the tensions between joy and sorrow, justice and mercy, and invites us to consider how having a “why” to life could change us.

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What happens when you try to solve for something that can’t be solved—like what should you do with your life? Can you find joy even when there’s not an answer? In today’s episode, we talk about curiosity and awe with Dr. Satyan Devadoss, a math professor at the University of San Diego. Satyan *loves* math, but not because it’s useful, or a good problem-solving tool. In fact, he loves math because it leads to many more UNsolved problems. Most of Satyan’s time as a mathematician is spent on difficult, “wicked” problems, and he says that we can’t—and sometimes shouldn’t—solve everything.

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We know a lot about what makes us healthier. But what about what makes us happier? In this episode, we interview Dr. Tyler VanderWeele, an epidemiologist and the Director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He and his research team are working towards identifying the behaviors that make our lives better — not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, and relationally, too. Our conversation centers around one of his data’s main findings: regularly attending religious services can help you live seven years longer.

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Daryl Davis didn’t study conflict resolution or communications in any formal way in a classroom or lecture hall. But, through his extensive travels — first, as the son of diplomats, and then, as a jazz musician — Daryl has become an expert when it comes to cross-cultural communication. Over the past 40 years, Daryl, a Black man, has used his skills to build surprising friendships with white supremacists. So far, over 200 people have left the KKK and denounced its ideology as a result of their friendship with him. In this episode, Daryl shares about his life, his music, and how he found himself doing what he does now. He says it all ties into this one question: How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?

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Our communities can help us live “the good life.” But what about the people that tick us off? How do we form more resilient relationships that make us healthier and more connected? We discuss these things with Dr. Curt Thompson, psychiatrist and author of The Soul of Shame. He says that repairing broken relationships can actually usher us into a *greater* connection with others than we had previously.

* Our modern crisis of mental health (0:28)

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If death is a reality, how do we need to live? Dr. Lydia Dugdale, a medical ethicist, general practitioner, and author, joins us to begin our season on The Good Life. In 2020, Lydia worked on the front lines in New York City during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, only a few months later, in July 2020, Lydia released her book The Lost Art of Dying. In our conversation, she discusses both her experience on the front lines and her writings on death, inviting us to consider how thinking seriously about our mortality may be key to understanding The Good Life.

? How to approach medical ethics in a pandemic (3:25)

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People have been talking about “the good life” for centuries, but are you any closer to knowing what it is or how to live it? Given the past year, we thought now would be a good time to try! So we teamed up with PRX (the award-winning producer of This American Life and other shows) and some of our favorite thinkers to help you answer the question.

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