Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my ' about' page Nicks books can be purchased via the below links: You can read more about Nick via his website and follow him on Twitter

We mention philosopher Kieran Setiya, here you can listen to Kieran’s Wild episode featuring his take on how to love living a hard life.

To flesh it all out we draw on sporting analogies, the poetry of Mary Oliver and each other’s really rather near-death experiences. Nick’s theses on these cliched expressions ultimately lead to a wonderfully wild answer to the quandary of what makes life worth living in such a fraught era. In this chat, we delve into the philosophical significance of awesomeness (and its antonym, suckiness), the existential imperative of YOLO (!) and the aetiology of the high five. An accessible and entertaining lens for navigating the ethics of our time, On Being Awesome provides a new and inspiring framework for understanding ourselves and creating meaningful connections in our everyday lives.Nick Riggle (Ex-pro skater, philosophy professor at the University of California, YOLO expert) has become known for dissecting contemporary phenomena in a distinctly Socratic manner. Put more simply: You suck.įrom street art to folk singers, Proust to the great etiquette writer Emily Post, President Obama to former Los Angeles Dodger Glenn Burke, Riggle draws on pop culture, politics, history, and sports to explore the origins of awesome, and delves into the nuances of what it means to suck and why it’s so important to strive for awesomeness. And if you’re a cheapskate, self-promoter, killjoy, or douchebag, you’re the type of person who shuts social openings down. Awesome people excel at creating social openings that encourage expressions of individuality and create community. We all know people who are awesome and people who suck, but what do we really mean by these terms? Have you ever been chill or game? Do you rock or rule? If so, then you’re tapped into the ethics of awesomeness. But don’t miss its profound ambition, which is to show how philosophy unearths the structure of ordinary language, defines the meaning of life in routine business, and poses the question of how best to live.” -Aaron James, author of Assholes: A Theory “Nick Riggle’s fun book is ‘awesome’ by its own definition.

In this lively treatise, pro-skater-turned-philosopher Nick Riggle presents a theory of awesomeness (and its opposite, suckiness) that’s both sharply illuminating and more timely than ever

Nick riggle on being awesome