TED audio collective.
You'Re listening 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, is not the class for you.
And so I walked out of that.
Lecture hall 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 Scherr from his work on the office parks and rec 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.