As I say in the book, I think there are many midlife crises. I mean, my sense is that I was going through a lot of things. And so when I told friends I was having a midlife crisis, the reaction was, I got a lot more mockery than genuine concern, which is kind of what I wanted. I embraced the label partly because it was funny. The answer will not surprise you, which is that I was going through what I happily described as a midlife crisis. Well, this is sort of the opposite of clickbait, is, you know, why did I write this book? And I'm curious, why did you personally decide to write a book about midlife, and what were you going through when you set out to write this book? The three of us have read your book, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide. So Kieran, thank you so much for joining us today. My favorite book, Roget's Thesaurus, is really the greatest attempt to understand the world.Īll right.

So here we go.ĭante's Inferno or Milton's Paradise Lost? They'll start it off easy and get a little bit more interesting as we go along. So one of the things we like to do to get the show started is we do this sort of sequence of lightning round questions sort of do you prefer one or the other type thing? In this episode, Kieran Setiya boils down what happens to us at midlife and exposes the wisdom of those who have come before us and found satisfaction as they entered the second half of life.

As Kieran shares in his book Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, people as far back as ancient Greece have written about midlife crises and searched for answers to life's big questions.

Though most people pass through a midlife malaise or crisis, few have studied the phenomenon as closely as M.I.T Philosophy Professor Kieran Setiya.

Midlife a philosophical guide