E21 - Optimism in the Face of Adversity: Alvin's Story of Midlife Crisis (and is Jack too optimistic?)

This episode was inspired by a revelation that Alvin recently made to Jack in an offline discussion, and Alvin was convinced to share this story to help us do a more thorough evaluation of where we fall on the continuum of the classic midlife crisis. Given that the theme of this episode is "optimism in the face of adversity" we decided to open with a segment in which we evaluate whether or not Jack might be too optimistic at times, and then we briefly revisit the question of whether moral progress is real or an illusion. In our main segment (24:00) Alvin describes a series of events in his life that precipitated a midlife crisis, how he came out the other side of that difficult time, and how this inspired him to think about doing a podcast on this topic. We end the episode by comparing and contrasting our different life circumstances and how these have resulted in us experiencing different levels of midlife crisis. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @midlifepod2023 Fungi Adventures (guided outdoor camping excursions in Asheville, NC): https://www.andresfungiadventures.com/