We’ve all heard the saying “seize the day.” But what does it really mean–and how can we use it to jumpstart our lives? In the age of distraction, carpe diem is more essential than ever, and yet many of us simply don’t employ it in our lives.
In this thought-provoking and empowering audiobook, cultural writer Roman Krznaric unpacks the history, philosophy, and modern-day applications of “seizing the day” and delivers a rousing call to action for anyone who wants to improve their lives–or our world.
Carpe Diem is a far-ranging audio, drawing on everything from the neuropsychology of regret to the anthropology of play, from medieval carnival rites to religious conceptions of the afterlife and early Japanese cinema. Offering food for thought as well as inspiring takeaways, the book examines not just the contributions of great thinkers throughout history, but also reveals insights from the lives of great seize-the-day practitioners including nightclub dancers, war photographers, bored housewives, and committed revolutionaries–offering a wide range of solutions to the daunting challenge of leading a meaningful life.

A practical and inspirational guide to examining your career and deciding whether it truly makes you happy–this book will show you the steps it takes to find a job that truly makes you thrive.

The desire for fulfilling work is one of the great aspirations of our age. This book reveals explores the competing claims we face for money, status, and meaning in our lives. Drawing on wisdom from a variety of disciplines, cultural thinker Roman Krznaric sets out a practical guide to negotiating the labyrinth of choices, overcoming fear of change, and finding a career in which you thrive. Overturning a century of traditional thought about career change, Krznaric reveals just what it takes to find life-enhancing work.

The School of Life is dedicated to exploring life’s big questions in highly-portable paperbacks, featuring French flaps and deckle edges, that the New York Times calls “damnably cute.” We don’t have all the answers, but we will direct you towards a variety of useful ideas that are guaranteed to stimulate, provoke, and console.

A call to save ourselves and our planet by targeting the root of our inaction: extreme short-sightedness

“The most important question we must ask ourselves is: Are we being good ancestors?” So said Jonas Salk, who cured polio in 1953. Salk saved millions of lives, but he refused to patent his cure or make any money from it. His radical rethinking of what we owe future generations should be an inspiration to us all, but it has hardly taken hold: Businesses can barely see past the next quarter; politicians can’t see past the next election. Markets spike, then they crash in speculative bubbles. We rarely stop to consider whether we’re being good ancestors … but the future depends on it.

Here, leading public intellectual, philosopher, and bestselling author Roman Krznaric explains six practical ways we can retrain our brains to save our future–such as adopting Deep Time Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to inspire a “time rebellion”–to shift our allegiance from our generation only to all humanity, present and future.