Ted Audio Collective. to how to be a better human and I am your host Chris Duffy.

When I was in college I signed up for an intro to philosophy class

and at the end of the first lecture the professor said,

if you feel happy and content in your life if you don't want to question all of your values

and assumptions and relationships then this is not the class for you.

And so I walked out of that lecture call and immediately dropped the class.

I was like, questioning all of my values and assumptions and relationships,

no thank you, that does not sound fun at all.

I would prefer to remain ignorant.

And so I did, I dropped it.

And yet here I am years later, and I finally realized that understanding how and why we make decisions,

particularly moral and ethical ones, well, it's kind of very important.

Luckily for me, understanding the philosophical underpinnings behind our decisions

doesn't have to be a dreary tear-inducing slog. And that is the quest we have today for the TV

showrunner and writer Mike Schur, to make confronting moral dilemmas funny and interesting.

Now you may know Mike Schur from his work on the office, parks and

wreck, or the good place, but he's also the author of a new book, How to Be Perfect,

which examines the history of moral philosophy and how we can apply it in our day-to-day lives.

I'm an enormous fan of Mike's work. I love the fictional characters he's created and the

jokes that he's written. But today we're going to get even deeper than just his hit TV shows and his thoughts on comedy.

We're going to talk about his journey to understand morality.

Here's a clip from Mike's TED Talk.

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