Good Is In The Details

A farmhouse. A cellar. A growing horde outside. What does George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) have to say about despair, freedom, and what it means to grow up? In this episode, we're joined by philosopher Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut) for a philosophical analysis of the original zombie classic. We dig into the film's nihilistic horror, its existential dread, and the absurdit...

A year ago, a simple question took over TikTok: if you were alone in the forest, would you rather encounter a bear or a man? Women overwhelmingly chose the bear. Some found it funny, some found it offensive, and many missed the point. In this episode of Good Is In The Details , we start with the bear and follow it somewhere bigger with Soraya Chemaly, journalist, activist, and author of All We Wan...

The First Amendment protects you from the government, not from your boss, your university, or a social media platform. J.P. Messina, philosophy professor at Purdue and author of Private Censorship (Oxford University Press), joins us to untangle what "free speech" actually means when most modern censorship isn't coming from the state at all. We dig into cancel culture, the difference between govern...

How do we build stronger relationships with our children, especially when we're tired, overwhelmed, or simply seeing a situation through adult eyes? In this special Podapalooza mini-episode, Gwendolyn talks with speech-language pathologist and The Language of Play host Dinalynn Rosenbush about how our understanding of child development is changing the way we parent. Dinalynn shares practical ways...

We're taught that perseverance is always a virtue, but what if the very trait we celebrate is quietly costing us our sense of meaning? Michael Scarano, a healthcare veteran turned speaker and coach, joins us to unpack what he calls "toxic perseverance": pushing forward not from purpose, but from unexamined beliefs formed by trauma and unmet needs. We dig into the real difference between healthy re...

Honesty might be the character trait we claim to value most, but what does it actually mean to be honest, and how is that different from simply telling the truth, or "being authentic"? Philosopher Christian Miller, author of  The Honesty Crisis , joins us to untangle these distinctions and make the case that honesty is eroding faster than we realize, from deepfakes and AI-written schoolwork to the...

What if the United States was never immune to cult thinking, but was built on it? Journalist Jane Borden joins Gwendolyn and Rudy to unpack her book Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America , tracing a direct line from Puritan doomsday belief to modern conspiracy theories, self-help culture, and our national obsession with strongmen and influencers. We dig into how to actually define a...

How do echo chambers influence our beliefs? How do you know what is true on the internet? Why does misinformation spread so quickly online? What is an echo chamber, and how does confirmation bias influence the way we evaluate information? In this episode of Good Is In The Details , Gwendolyn Dolske and Rudy Salo welcome sociologist Matthew Facciani, author of Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts...

  The mixtape structural metaphor ushers in a philosophical lens. Because a mixtape (as every Gen X person who ever made one knows) is a curated act of autobiography. It's how you tell someone the truth about yourself when you don't yet have the courage to say it out loud. It's the thing you hand to someone and say:  here is who I am, track by track, in the order I chose. That is exactly what memo...

Gwendolyn Dolske and Rudy Salo welcome Casey Berman: former attorney, founder of  Leave Law Behind (the leading coaching program helping attorneys transition into non-legal careers), multipreneur, strategy consultant, speaker, and author, for a discussion about work, identity, happiness, and the courage it takes to choose a different life. Casey knows this territory from the inside. He lived it. A...

In this episode of Good Is In The Details , Gwendolyn Dolske sits down with Karen Olson — founder and CEO emeritus of Family Promise , a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping homeless and low-income families, whose organization has trained and mobilized over one million volunteers over the past thirty years to provide services to homeless families, and author of Meant for More: Foll...

Critical thinking, happiness, career goals, and...how we understand moving about our cities.  What assumptions do we hold onto about our purpose?  In this episode of Good Is In The Details , Gwendolyn Dolske and Rudy Salo sit down with Paul Comfort — Senior Vice President at Modaxo Americas, former CEO of the Maryland Transit Administration and Transloc, host of the award-winning Transit Unplugged...

What can Star Wars teach us about happiness, attachment, and the search for meaning? In this episode of Good Is In The Details , we explore the philosophy behind one of the most influential cultural phenomena of our time, Star Wars, through the lens of Eastern philosophy with Professor Noble (One With The Force: 18 Universal Truths in Star Wars). From the Jedi's emphasis on detachment to the dange...

What happens when local journalism disappears, and how does it affect democracy, critical thinking, and informed citizens? Is local journalism disappearing, and what does that mean for democracy? In this episode of Good Is In The Details , we speak with journalist Liz Farmer about the decline of local press, the economics of modern media, and why journalism is essential for an informed public. As...

In 1990, 55% of American adults reported having sex weekly. By 2024 that number had fallen to just 37%, and among adults aged 18–29, the share reporting no sex at all in the past year has doubled, from 12% to 24%. We are in the middle of a sex recession. And most of us have no idea why, or what to do about it. In this special episode of Good Is In The Details ( recorded live at Podapalooza, a one-...

Every time you turn on your phone, you're building a case against yourself. You just don't know it yet. Your Ring camera. Your Google searches. Your Alexa. Your 23andMe DNA. Your fitness tracker. The apps running silently in the background. Every one of these generates data, and every one of them can be accessed by police and prosecutors with a warrant. And warrants, it turns out, are easy to get....

What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How much of our personality is determined by brain structure? Do we truly have free will or is it an illusion created by neural processes? Will there ever be a cure for dementia? And could artificial intelligence replace neurosurgeons? In this episode of Good Is In The Details , hosts Gwendolyn Dolske, Ph. D., and Rudy Salo sit down with renowned neurosurgeon...

In this episode of Good Is In The Details , hosts Gwendolyn Dolske   and Rudy Salo are joined by philosopher and author Bill Tomlinson to explore the foundations of critical thinking and the practice of philosophy. Drawing from his book Dialogues with Artificial Intelligence: On the Tools of Philosophy , the conversation offers an accessible introduction to how philosophers think — and how anyone...

In this special mini-episode of Good Is In The Details , hosts Gwendolyn Dolske and Rudy Salo step away from their usual expert interview format to pause and reflect on the current cultural and political climate and the emotional weight many of us are carrying right now. Rather than taking a political position, this conversation acknowledges something more fundamental: the news, public discourse,...

On this anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster , Good Is In The Details revisits one of history's most consequential moments in engineering, ethics, and public trust. On January 28, 1986, the Challenger broke apart just 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members and shocking the world. In this encore episode, Gwendolyn Dolske, Rudy Salo, and Engineering Professor Phil R...

What did the Aztecs believe about ethics, virtue, and the good life? How does Aztec philosophy compare to Aristotle's ethics? And what can Aztec moral thought teach us about community, responsibility, and flourishing today? In this episode of Good Is In The Details , we explore the philosophy and ethics of the Aztecs with philosophy professor Sebastian Purcell , author of The Wisdom of the Aztecs...

Who was Socrates, and why does he still matter today? In this short episode of Good Is In The Details , Gwendolyn explore Socrates' understanding of wisdom and virtue through Plato's Apology, and why philosophy sees critical thinking as a path toward the good life. Gwendolyn gives an accessible introduction of what critical thinking is, why it matters beyond the classroom, and how we've practiced...

Gwendolyn and Rudy welcome founder/president of Leaders of Tomorrow Youth Center, Dr. Dermell Brunson.  In this episode we focus on the importance of the arts in education, how it contributes to creative skills, connection with community, and self-esteem. Dr. Brunson debunks the myth that the arts are tangential to a good education.  Quite the opposite!  Students learn the value of discipline thro...

Gwendolyn Dolske and Rudy Salo welcome Psychology Professor Dr. Bruno De Oliveira to unpack the real problems with the modern self-help industry. Why does self-help culture thrive despite offering oversimplified advice? How does it ignore the structural forces that shape mental distress? And what does evidence-based psychology actually say about wellbeing? We discuss the rise of pseudo-psychology...

In this solo episode of Good Is In The Details , Gwendolyn Dolske, PhD explores the lives, ideas, and philosophical impact of four remarkable twentieth-century thinkers: Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley . Drawing inspiration from Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb's The Women Are Up To Something , the episode examines how these philosophers reshaped modern moral philosophy and...