The Virtual Jewel Box

Scoring systems, games, and value capture, with Thi Nguyen and Scott Black

How can scoring systems make games feel so joyful, fluid, and alive, yet drain the life from public institutions and everyday work? This is one of the central questions of a new book by University of Utah philosopher C. Thi Nguyen [https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/u6021584/about]. In The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735252/the-score-by-c-thi-nguyen/], published this year by Penguin, Nguyen traces the philosophical and ideological aspects of scoring systems when used outside of play. With Tanner Humanities Center Director Scott Black, Nguyen discusses games as forms of portable agency, the problem of value capture, and the ways gamification and institutional metrics can narrow and impoverish human life. Recent reviews of The Score:  The New York Times — Jennifer Szalai, “Why Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore” [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/books/review/why-keeping-score-isnt-fun-anymore.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EFA.VCKZ.-0kkJrzPfaPL&smid=url-share] The Washington Post — Becca Rothfeld, “A philosopher’s case for living playfully without keeping score” [https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2026/01/08/score-c-thi-nguyen-review/]  The Guardian — Tim Clare, “A brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday life” [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/06/the-score-by-c-thi-nguyen-review-a-brilliant-warning-about-the-gamification-of-everyday-life] The New Yorker — Joshua Rothman, “Is Life a Game?” [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/is-life-a-game]  Episode art: Detail from Georges de La Tour, The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs, c. 1630-34. Kimbell Art Gallery [https://kimbellart.org/collection/ap-198106]. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center [https://tanner.utah.edu/] at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Nora Lange, author of Day Care and Us Fools, with Erin Beeghly

Nora Lange, author of Us Fools [https://www.noralange.com/us-fools] (2024), discusses her new collection of short stories, Day Care [https://www.noralange.com/day-care], with Erin Beeghly [https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/u0977602] (Department of Philosophy). Their conversation touches on female desire, motherhood, mischief, and the strange pressures of contemporary life. They discuss the surreal charge of stories like “Hot Spot,” the autofictional elements of the title story, and Lange’s “careening” prose style, which moves through play, surprise, and sudden transformation without losing emotional depth. Along the way, they talk about siblings, marriage, daycare, deadlines, and the elastic feeling of time in parenting, as well as Lange’s interest in genre, from realism to the snow-globe science fiction of “Dog Star.”  Episode art: Detail from Joris Hoefnagel, Seven Snails (c.1575/1590s), National Gallery of Art [https://www.nga.gov/artworks/69811-plate-63-seven-snails], Washington DC.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center [https://tanner.utah.edu] at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

How we watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City - Marcie Young-Cancio

In anticipation of our symposium on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on April 10 [https://tanner.utah.edu/rhoslc/], Marcie Young-Cancio, Robert Carson, and Scott Black discuss the show from a humanities perspective, examining its treatment of faith, femininity, Utah culture, entrepreneurship, fan loyalty, and camp sensibility.  Marcie Young-Cancio is Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Communication [https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/u0007524] and Founder and Executive Director of Amplify Utah [https://amplifyutah.org/about-amplify/meet-our-board].  See also:  * Receipts, Proof, Timeline: How We Watch the RHOSLC [https://tanner.utah.edu/rhoslc] symposium program  * Heather L. King, “Tanner Humanities Center presents a scholarly deep dive into ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’” [https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/tanner-humanities-center-presents-a-scholarly-deep-dive-into-the-real-housewives-of-salt-lake-city/] @ the U  * Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” [https://archive.org/details/sontag-susan-1964-notes-on-camp_202503]  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center [https://tanner.utah.edu] at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Enshittification, with Cory Doctorow and Matthew Potolsky

In this episode, Matt Potolsky [https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/u0151879] (Professor of English) talks with writer and activist Cory Doctorow about digital privacy, platform decay, and the politics of monopoly. Drawing on his recent book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/], Doctorow argues that the erosion of privacy is inseparable from the rise of unchecked commercial surveillance, and that many people care deeply about privacy without recognizing it as such. They also discuss * the three-stage collapse of digital platforms * Robert Bork and the Chicago School’s influence on antitrust law * the IBM antitrust case * Yanis Varoufakis’s theory of techno-feudalism * algorithmic wage discrimination * effective altruism and longtermism * AI as a fantasy of boss-without-workers  * the surprising global resurgence of anti-monopoly politics as a source of hope. Cory Doctorow is a journalist, blogger, and the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. He is a longtime contributor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation [https://www.eff.org] and blogs at pluralistic.net [https://pluralistic.net].  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center [https://tanner.utah.edu] at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Great Books: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - Jessica Straley and Scott Black

In a new series of episodes, The Virtual Jewel Box will feature conversations about great books. Scott Black and Jessica Straley discuss Mrs. Dalloway as a novel of thresholds: between past and present, sound and silence, intimacy and distance. Reading closely from the opening line through Big Ben’s leaden circles, they show how Woolf’s stream of consciousness turns a single June day, a walk through London, and a party into an inquiry into memory, war, love, and social life. They invite readers to consider how Woolf’s prose, down to its use of the semicolon, reflects on perception, privacy, and what it means to live with other minds. Jessica Straley [https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/u0492069] is Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah.  See also: Jenny Noice, “A Hundred Years of Mrs. Dalloway,” [https://daily.jstor.org/a-hundred-years-of-mrs-dalloway/] JSTOR Daily.  Episode art: Photo of Virginia Woolf, circa 1927. Virginia Woolf Monk's House photographs, Houghton Library [https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/hou02507c00059/catalog], Harvard University. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center [https://tanner.utah.edu] at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.