Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life)

By: John Kaag

Narrated by: John Kaag

How much of your time do you spend pissed off, bored, frustrated, or anxious? If you’re like most Americans, the answer is more than you’d like. But what if there were a discipline—a way of thinking—that could help you cut that time in half or maybe even down to zero? Well, good news: There is. And it’s not cheesy self-help or futile biohacking. It’s philosophy.

In Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life), memoirist and intellectual historian John Kaag introduces listeners to the forefathers of American philosophy: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who created the field of transcendentalism, and William James, the father of American psychology who also invented the philosophical school known as pragmatism.

What can you learn from these three long-dead white guys? A great deal, says Kaag.

Emerson, Thoreau, and James lived through a unique moment in the history of the West, a time when traditional institutions like the church and the state lost their grip on the hearts and minds of average citizens. These citizens were cut loose, tasked with living meaningful lives without formal guidance, tasked with sorting out the jumble of human experiences on their own—and these wanderers turned to Emerson, Thoreau, and James.

Maybe you feel this way sometimes. Unmoored. Lost. In Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life), you’ll learn from the masters how to live vibrantly, work meaningfully, and embrace transcendence as the ever-present possibility of human experience.

John Kaag is chair and professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including American Philosophy: A Love Story, Hiking with Nietzsche, and the forthcoming American Bloods.

©2024 Heleo, Inc. (P)2024 Heleo, Inc. & John Kaag