Episode 226: As Christmas approaches, memories have a way of resurfacing — sometimes warmly, sometimes painfully, often with more force than expected. In a holiday-themed episode, hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada take a close look at why this happens, and what it means for how people live, relate to and care for one another.

The conversation centers on nostalgia — not as a vague sentiment, but as a powerful psychological and ethical force that shapes expectations, family dynamics and personal well-being during the holidays. Drawing on recent psychology research, personal stories and everyday experiences familiar to many listeners, the hosts examine why memories tied to Christmas feel especially vivid and emotionally charged.

The hosts explore how holiday traditions — from meals and decorations to music and family rituals — can ground people in connection and continuity. Remembering loved ones who are gone, revisiting childhood experiences or repeating familiar customs can offer comfort and a sense of belonging. At its best, nostalgia helps people understand their own story and motivates them to create meaningful moments for others in the present.

But the episode also confronts the darker side of holiday remembering. Idealized memories can distort reality, create unrealistic expectations and quietly turn celebration into pressure. When people chase a version of the past that never fully existed, disappointment often follows — especially when family relationships are strained, gatherings fall short of expectations, or loved ones are absent. For some, the holidays heighten loneliness rather than ease it.

Through stories ranging from cherished family recipes to awkward childhood gifts and unexpected acts of generosity, the hosts explore how memory is inherently selective. They consider whether it is acceptable — or even wise — to smooth rough edges when retelling family stories, and how storytelling itself shapes moral identity over time.

Episode 225: As digital noise continues to shape modern life, the latest episode of “The Ethical Life” turns inward, offering listeners a wide-angle look at how ancient ideas can help people navigate an era marked by distraction, isolation and growing cultural tension.

Hosts Scott Rada and Richard Kyte revisit the seven-part series they released this fall based on Kyte’s public lecture program, “The Search for Meaning.” The series explored a set of foundational concepts — truth, goodness, love, beauty, the soul, justice and nature — each presented through the lens of a major historical thinker.

This week’s conversation steps back to examine the project as a whole. Kyte explains that he launched the lecture series after noticing both a renewed hunger for purpose and a cultural landscape that makes deeper reflection difficult. With entertainment, social media, and algorithmic feeds competing for every spare moment, he says, people feel increasingly unmoored from the community, rituals, and shared practices that once helped anchor their daily lives.

Rada and Kyte trace how that tension surfaced throughout the series. Topics such as goodness and the soul proved more challenging to condense, Kyte says, because they resist simple explanation. Others — including justice and nature — were difficult for the opposite reason: he had too much to say. Yet as the series progressed, he found that the ideas were more interconnected than he expected, each building on the last as the philosophical timeline moved from Socrates to Aldo Leopold.

The episode also looks ahead. Kyte says he has begun the early stages of transforming the series into a book, drawing on months of research and the community discussions that followed each lecture. The core ideas will remain, he says, but he hopes to frame them more explicitly around the pressures of modern life and the need for intentional habits of attention.

Episode 224: A recent article by Jason Feifer serves as the starting point for this episode of “The Ethical Life,” where hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada examine the quiet struggle many people experience when reaching out for support.

Feifer’s piece argues that the fears holding us back — such as imposing on others, appearing incompetent, or being judged — are often misplaced. In reality, offering assistance tends to strengthen relationships rather than strain them. Rada and Kyte use that insight to explore why hesitation remains so common and what it reveals about modern life.

Rada opens the conversation with a story from Thanksgiving, when he asked a relative to pass the butter while preparing mashed potatoes. The request was trivial, yet it offered a striking example of Feifer’s point: rather than being put out, the relative felt useful and included. That small moment reflects broader research cited in the episode, including a study featured in The New York Times, which shows that people who help typically feel more satisfied and appreciated than those who request support.

Kyte connects the issue to cultural forces, noting that American society often elevates self-reliance as a virtue. Many people, he says, absorb the message that competence means handling everything alone, even when collaboration would be healthier. He recalls his experience trying to stabilize a struggling nonprofit as its interim leader. Although he initially tried to shoulder too much himself, he soon realized that without asking others to join in, the organization couldn’t build the collective capacity it needed.

The episode also highlights how interdependency forms through everyday social rituals, including children’s birthday parties. Rada explains that critics once argued such celebrations encouraged selfishness. Instead, as Feifer notes — and the hosts echo — these gatherings helped establish mutual obligations among young peers, teaching them both to receive recognition and to reciprocate by showing up for others.

Listeners also hear practical guidance on making responsible and thoughtful requests. The hosts discuss the SMART framework — specific, meaningful, action-oriented, realistic and time-bound — which helps ensure outreach feels respectful rather than burdensome. Kyte emphasizes that clarity is especially important for volunteers, who want to know not just that they’re needed, but how they can be genuinely useful.

Episode 223: Hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada take on a modern problem that feels both familiar and persistent: why so many people feel unmoored despite busier lives than ever. Their conversation explores whether stepping outside — even briefly — can provide a clearer path to reflection, balance and personal insight.

The episode wraps up the show’s occasional series inspired by Kyte’s lecture program, “The Search for Meaning.” Earlier discussions explored justice, truth, love and beauty. This week, the focus turns to the natural world, which Kyte argues offers lessons not just about the environment, but about how people understand themselves.

Kyte explains that outdoor settings operate on rhythms vastly different from those that dominate our daily lives. Wildlife, landscapes and seasonal change create an environment that moves at its own pace — slower, quieter and resistant to human control. That contrast, he says, forces people to shift from constant activity to simple observation, a state many find both uncomfortable and deeply restorative.

Rada, attending Kyte’s recent lecture on the topic, shares stories from the audience discussions, including one student who began spending nights in a hammock on the bluffs above La Crosse. The stillness startled him at first, but ultimately became a source of comfort and clarity. Kyte notes that such moments push people to confront their surroundings without distraction and, in the process, learn something about their own reactions, fears and habits.

The episode also explores the writings of conservationist Aldo Leopold, whose classic “A Sand County Almanac” helped shape modern environmental ethics. Kyte describes Leopold’s belief that understanding the land requires both affection and attention — learning the names of things, noticing seasonal changes and recognizing the ways humans fit within a larger community of living beings.

Listeners hear personal reflections from both hosts, including Rada’s childhood memories of viewing nature through car windows and Kyte’s accounts of encountering wildlife just steps from busy city streets. Together, they argue that meaningful outdoor experiences don’t require remote wilderness or weeklong expeditions. Quiet city parks, early morning walks and small acts of noticing can offer the same rewards.

Episode 222: When a city planner mentioned that a large, developable tract of land might contain Native American artifacts, cohost Scott Rada started wondering how communities decide which parts of the past are worth protecting — and what the costs of preservation might be for the present.

This week’s episode examines the tension between honoring cultural heritage and addressing pressing human needs, such as housing. Rada and co-host Richard Kyte unpack the ethical dilemmas that surface when new development projects run up against the remnants of older civilizations.

Rada argues that while respect for the past matters, society’s first responsibility should be to the living — to families who need homes, jobs and public spaces now. He questions whether stopping or slowing modern projects for the sake of long-buried artifacts truly serves anyone.

Kyte counters that the choice isn’t always binary. He suggests that reverence for the dead and care for the living can coexist, and that certain places — burial grounds, ceremonial sites or historically significant landscapes — deserve deliberate protection, even if doing so requires compromise or delay.

Their exchange touches on Wisconsin’s effigy and burial mounds, the ethics of archaeology and how public policy shapes what gets preserved. Kyte points out that housing shortages typically stem from decades of zoning failures, rather than from the small number of sites deemed sacred or historically valuable. Rada pushes back, asking whether reverence for what once was can sometimes become an excuse for inaction.

The conversation widens to include broader cultural questions: Why do humans feel compelled to memorialize the dead? What promises do cemeteries represent to future generations? And how long should those promises last — centuries, millennia, forever? Kyte argues that physical reminders of our ancestors keep societies grounded in gratitude and perspective. Rada wonders whether our fixation on physical places distracts us from the spiritual or emotional connections that endure regardless of location.

About the hosts

Scott Rada is a digital strategist with Lee Enterprises, and Richard Kyte is the director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He is also the author of "Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities (and Making Great Friends Along the Way)."

Episode 221: Hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada tackle one of the most enduring moral questions — how wealth, privilege and authority shape our understanding of fairness.

Kyte argues that many of society’s moral blind spots emerge not from ignorance, but from a state of comfort. “When we’re insulated by prosperity,” he says, “we lose the capacity to recognize suffering — and once that happens, our idea of justice starts to shift.”

The conversation begins with the lingering unease around the Jeffrey Epstein case. Rada notes that the story continues to capture public attention years after Epstein’s death, not because of its lurid details but because it still feels unresolved. Why, they ask, does accountability so often end where power begins?

From there, the discussion widens — tracing the roots of moral perception from ancient philosophy to modern politics. Kyte describes how early Christian thinkers introduced the then-radical idea that all people possess inherent dignity, a belief that ultimately challenged institutions built on exploitation and hierarchy. That framework, he says, remains essential if society hopes to confront modern injustices such as human trafficking, forced labor and homelessness.

Rada presses on the practical side of justice: even when we recognize wrongdoing, why is it so difficult to act? The hosts explore examples close to home, from underfunded public defenders to social systems that keep citizens separated by class. Each instance, they argue, reveals how distance — social, economic and emotional — allows inequity to flourish unnoticed.

The episode also connects with Kyte’s ongoing public lecture series, “The Search for Meaning.”

Episode 220: For decades, the phrase “follow your dream” has been stitched into graduation speeches, greeting cards and social-media pep talks. But what if that familiar advice is doing more harm than good?

Hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada challenge one of America’s most cherished bits of wisdom. Drawing inspiration from a syndicated column by journalist Dick Meyer, the pair consider whether the pursuit of a singular passion has left too many people anxious, disillusioned or convinced that ordinary success isn’t enough.

Kyte argues that telling every young person to chase a dream sets them up for frustration.

“Most people don’t have one burning passion at 18,” he said, noting that interests shift and mature over time. Far better, he suggests, to focus on becoming useful, developing skills and finding work that contributes to others’ well-being.

Rada shares his own early ambitions — becoming a baseball announcer or a TV meteorologist — and how those seemingly unattainable dreams eventually resurfaced in unexpected ways.

The hosts also examine the modern pressure on college students to declare majors and find direction early, even as industries change faster than ever. They discuss the idea of a “growth mindset,” coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, which emphasizes adaptability and resilience over fixed talent or destiny. Both agree that in a world reshaped by technology and automation, curiosity may be the most important skill of all.

By the episode’s end, Rada and Kyte reach a thoughtful conclusion: Purpose isn’t a finish line but a moving target. Staying curious, taking on new challenges and investing in relationships often lead to deeper satisfaction than chasing the perfect career ever could.

Episode 219: In the latest episode of The Ethical Life podcast, hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada take on one of humanity’s oldest — and least discussed — questions: What is the soul? This episode is part of Kyte’s lecture series, The Search for Meaning.

It’s a timely conversation, released just after All Souls’ Day, yet Kyte points out that few people actually think about what the day commemorates. Instead, Halloween tends to dominate the season’s attention.

Still, belief in something beyond the physical remains nearly universal. Citing a recent Pew Research Center survey, Kyte notes that more than 80 percent of Americans say humans have souls — a rare point of agreement in a divided nation. But if nearly everyone believes, why is the topic so absent from everyday life?

Rada and Kyte explore that paradox. When people stop viewing themselves as souls, Kyte argues, they begin to see themselves only as bodies — and bodies, he says, “are intrinsically pleasure-seeking.” The result is a culture obsessed with comfort and consumption, rather than meaning. Seeing ourselves as souls, he adds, reminds us that fulfillment comes not from pleasure but from purpose.

The conversation moves from theology to psychology, touching on Sigmund Freud’s fascination with the soul despite his atheism. Freud saw the concept as vital language for describing the wholeness of human experience — including the unconscious mind, which can surface unexpectedly through what we now call Freudian slips.

Listeners will also hear Kyte reflect on stories of near-death experiences reported across cultures and history. These moments, he said, can’t be dismissed easily. “When you find a phenomenon that’s widely reported across cultures, it’s not simply a cultural product,” he said.

Rada presses Kyte on whether the mystery itself — not knowing what happens after death — might actually serve us. Kyte thinks it does. “It doesn’t really help us to know exactly what life after death is like,” he said. “What matters is how we live now.”

Read more: Rick's Kyte's column about souls

Episode 218: Hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada dig into a question that touches nearly every part of modern existence: What happens when a culture built on making life easier begins to lose the very relationships that make life meaningful?

From dishwashers to digital assistants, the 20th and 21st centuries have delivered one innovation after another designed to save time, reduce effort and simplify daily routines. But as Rada and Kyte note, every bit of friction we remove from life comes with a hidden cost. When we no longer share chores, wait in lines or depend on others for small acts of help, we also weaken the bonds that once held neighbors, co-workers and families together.

Kyte points out that humans have reached an unprecedented moment in history: For the first time, many of us are asking whether we have too much convenience. What began with washing machines and supermarkets has evolved into an on-demand economy that prizes speed above all else. And while few people would want to return to hauling water or scrubbing laundry by hand, the hosts argue that our obsession with efficiency may be quietly reshaping our moral landscape.

Their conversation ranges from the decline of repair culture to the rise of social media and hyperindividualism, connecting the dots between broken appliances, eroded patience and fractured civic trust. The episode also revisits the promise and peril of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, questioning whether they will truly grant us more leisure or instead fuel new forms of productivity.

Episode 217: Hosts Richard Kyte and Scott Rada tackle a subject that’s easy to overlook — beauty. Not the kind of beauty sold in store aisles or filtered through a cellphone, but the kind that stops us in our tracks and makes us forget, for just a moment, about ourselves.

Kyte recalls a recent camping trip during which he stumbled upon a scene so stunning that he instinctively reached for his phone — only to realize he’d left it behind. What followed, he says, was an experience of pure presence: sunbeams slicing through lifting fog, the quiet steps of deer and the realization that no photograph could ever do it justice.

That moment becomes the starting point for a conversation about how beauty reshapes our sense of meaning and morality. “We spend so much time in our own heads,” Kyte said. “Beauty reminds us there’s something significant outside ourselves.”

It’s an idea that stretches from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays on nature to Iris Murdoch’s notion of “unselfing” — the idea that paying attention to something beyond our own desires is the first step toward living ethically.

Rada connects those philosophical ideas to everyday life — including the digital habits that make true attention harder to find. He wonders whether seeing a beautiful image on a four-inch screen counts as the same kind of experience. Kyte doesn’t dismiss the value of photography but insists that beauty can’t be possessed, only encountered.

“The moment we try to capture it, we risk losing it,” he said.

The discussion ranges from foggy forests to still-life paintings, from Emerson’s influence on John Muir to the idea that even the way we see other people changes when we cultivate reverence. Along the way, the hosts wrestle with one provocative question: If we begin to see beauty everywhere, does it still feel extraordinary?