What Does it Mean to Live a Good, Meaningful Life? Despite the (really) Hard Stuff. With Kieran Setiya.

Untangle

Health & Fitness

4.3 • 822 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wow…I loved talking to today’s guest, Kieran Setiya, an Author and Professor of philosophy at MIT. I’ve always loved philosophy, but I was especially taken with the way Kieran applies it to our most challenging events, as well as to our day to day lives. In his book Life Is Hard, How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way — he offers us a roadmap for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to loneliness to grief to failure and the myth of the ideal life to injustice and even the absurdity of the world. It’s hard to summarize this discussion because there’s so much here, but his wisdom is rich with guidance on how we can face suffering and life’s inevitable hardships. He’s so eloquent in how he shares his insights on life >> from his rich archive of philosophy to his own personal journey. Life is a collection of small successes and small failures. And A good life, he says, is a way of living every day, DESPITE the hard stuff. He inspired me to reflect on quite a bit here. How do I live well, what makes a life meaningful, how do I face regret, aging, uncertainty…even what should I hope for given where I am in my own life.

He was originally inspired to philosophy by his own sense of wonder and undertow of worry at 7 yrs old. I love that…a blend of worry and wonder, anxiety and awe. How perfectly true!!

Kieran is also the author of Midlife: A Philosophical Guide. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times,the Boston Review,the London Review of Books, The Atlantic, and The Yale Review.

As always, we’re Untangle, the podcast from Muse, the brain sensing headband dedicated to unlocking your brains potential. Check out choosemuse.com and use code untangle15 for your discount.

Resource: ksetiya.net

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Transcript

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1:14.3	Welcome. start building the career and like you actually want. Welcome to Untangle. I'm Patricia Carpus. I absolutely loved talking to today's guest,
1:21.6	Kieran Satya, an author and professor of philosophy at MIT. I've always loved philosophy, but I was especially taken with the way he applies it to our most
1:32.5	challenging events as well as our day-to-day lives.
1:36.4	In his book called Life is Hard, How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,
1:41.3	He offers a roadmap for navigating rough terrain from personal trauma
1:46.4	to loneliness, to grief, to failure and the myth of the ideal life, to injustice, and even
1:53.1	the absurdity of the world sometimes. It's hard to summarize this discussion because there's so
1:58.8	much here, but his wisdom is rich with guidance on how
2:01.8	we can face suffering and life's inevitable hardships. It is true. Life is hard and it's best not to
2:09.9	pretend otherwise. He's so eloquent in how he shares his insights on this, from his rich
2:15.7	archive of knowledge on philosophy to his own personal journey.
2:20.9	Life is a collection of small successes and small failures, and a good life, he says,
2:26.3	is a way of living every day, despite the hard stuff, or maybe because of it.
2:32.4	He inspired me to reflect on quite a bit here. How do I live well?
	...

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