LinkedIn Presents.

I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea.

Today, the surprising benefitsados in a grocery store. But when I'm not sure where you are right now. Maybe you're walking your dog, driving to work, squeezing

avocados in a grocery store. But whatever you're doing, some of you may have an extra bounce in

your step because of the outcome of the recent election. And some of you may feel despondent,

hopeless, angry at the world. In either case, there is nothing we can do about it.

The world, I've noticed, resists our attempts to control it. But there is a silver lining.

Even when the world is upside down, maybe especially when the world is upside down, it remains

fascinating. It's almost more interesting

when it's not behaving the way we think it should. Taking an interest in the world is, in this sense,

a kind of insurance policy. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, it's interesting.

This outlook has helped me psychologically throughout my life.

You can imagine my surprise at discovering that my guest today, the philosopher Lorraine Besser,

just wrote a book making precisely this case.

It's called The Art of the Interesting, what we miss in our pursuit of the good life and how to cultivate it.

For thousands of years, philosophers have been arguing about the good life, what it looks like, how to live it.

For just a few decades, scientists have been looking more systematically at what actually leads to a life of flourishing.

And only very recently have they begun to collaborate.

Lorraine, a philosophy professor at Middlebury, partnered with psychologist Shige Oshie

to explore the tantalizing possibility that our pursuit of happiness and our pursuit of meaning

don't paint a full picture of the constituent

parts of a rich and beautiful life.

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