The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest

The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest

Research shows that honesty is the single most important characteristic a person can possess when it comes to liking them, respecting them, and understanding them. But honesty is eroding in many areas of society today, as we are confronted with honesty crises in politics, education, relationships, religion, celebrity culture, and technology. Over the past 50 years, no single philosopher has offered a comprehensive exploration of honesty—how we define it, how it diverges in private and public spaces, and how it depends on shared perceptions of reality. Dr. Christian Miller addresses this gap, while showing how modern life increasingly rewards dishonesty, with profound consequences for our relationships, institutions and culture—a phenomenon he names The Honesty Crisis [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780197840801] (Oxford UP, 2026). From cases such as sermon plagiarism to AI-assisted cheating to the rise of fake news, Dr. Miller explores how dishonesty has become easier, more pervasive and even normalized in our society. Yet The Honesty Crisis does more than diagnose the problem: it proposes concrete, practical steps to preserve honesty where it matters most. Guest: Dr. Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. The author of numerous articles and books, he also directed The Honesty Project, one of the largest research initiatives ever undertaken on honesty. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler [https://christinagessler.com/] is an academic writing coach and editor. She holds a Ph.D. in history which she uses to explore which stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: * Understanding Disinformation [https://newbooksnetwork.com/understanding-disinformation] * When Your Professor Asks You To Cheat [https://newbooksnetwork.com/when-your-professor-asks-you-to-cheat-a-conversation-with-dr-joel-heng-hartse] * The Last Human Job [https://newbooksnetwork.com/when-we-prioritize-data-and-metrics-what-happens-to-human-connections] * Who Gets Believed [https://newbooksnetwork.com/who-gets-believed] * The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-ai-mirror-how-to-reclaim-our-humanity-in-an-age-of-machine-thinking] * What Do You Want Out of Life [https://newbooksnetwork.com/what-do-you-want-out-of-life-2] * The Museum of Failure [https://newbooksnetwork.com/samuel-west-on-the-museum-of-failure] * The Well-Gardened Mind [https://newbooksnetwork.com/exploring-new-paths-to-mental-health-a-discussion-with-sue-stuart-smith] * A Meaningful Life [https://newbooksnetwork.com/how-to-stop-chasing-happiness-and-make-a-meaningful-life-instead] * The Good- Enough Life [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-good-enough-life] * Tell Me What You Want [https://newbooksnetwork.com/tell-me-what-you-want] Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/academic-life] And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory]

Charles J. Stivale, "Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars, 1970–1987: Summaries and Commentary" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

From the inside flap: “A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing * Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessions available in transcripts and recordings * Summaries are based on research for the Deleuze Seminars project (co-directed by Charles J. Stivale and Daniel W. Smith), where full transcripts and translations, to which readers will have access for simultaneous or subsequent consultation, have been developed by an international team of scholar-translators * Alongside summaries, an attached critical apparatus provides references to corresponding links within Deleuze’s writings, seminars, and other sources to facilitate additional research The texts in this volume - summaries of the 216 seminars taught by Gilles Deleuze - provide unique insight into the latter half of Deleuze’s teaching career. Deleuze understood his seminars as a laboratory for developing his ongoing research, and this volume is a guide to the creative becomings in the development of his philosophical works through teaching. From Anti-Oedipus (1972) to The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1987), Deleuze examined a wide range of philosophical perspectives in pursuit of successive thematic topics. These summaries and commentaries serve as incitement for further research, allowing readers familiar with Deleuze’s work to find new angles of approach and providing greater access to readers coming to his work for the first time." New Books Network: * Stivale, Charles J., and Daniel W. Smith. (2025-10-21). "Gilles Deleuze, On Painting" [https://newbooksnetwork.com/on-painting#entry:419840@1:url] Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour: * Stivale, Charles J., Taylor Adkins, and Cooper Cherry. (2025-08-12). "Deleuze and Guattari – How Do You Make Yourself A Body Without Organs" [https://www.patreon.com/posts/deleuze-and-how-138243795] * Stivale, Charles J., Daniel W. Smith. (2023-06-29). "Deleuze on Painting and Cinema" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kjwJHcZXjs]. The Deleuze Seminars: here [https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/] Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu [nathan.smith@yale.edu] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory]

Valerie Tiberius, "What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)

What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money―or work for justice? To have children―or travel the world? The things we care about in life―family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals―often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us. Even worse, we don’t always know what we really want, or how to define success. This insightful book offers invaluable advice about living well by understanding your values and resolving the conflicts that frustrate their fulfillment. What Do You Want Out of Life?: A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780691241395] (Princeton University Press, 2024) is an essential guide to helping you understand what really matters to you and how you can thoughtfully pursue it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory]

Hilary R. Buxton, "Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780226847542] (U Chicago Press, 2026) examines how imperial precedents and racial ideologies shaped the medical treatments that the British state offered to several million Black and brown servicemen during World War I. In recovering the voices and experiences of these soldiers, Hilary R. Buxton illustrates how they navigated the institutional culture of the imperial military and how they helped to shape health and welfare systems well beyond the interwar period. The Great War was the first time that troops and volunteers from nearly all reaches of the Empire participated in the war effort side-by-side. Despite official attempts at segregation, colonial troops met in trenches, mobile camps, casualty clearing stations, hospital ships, and convalescent homes. Just as importantly, those organizing treatment encountered men of different ethnicities, religions, and cultures from across and beyond the British Empire. For British officials, this moment offered an opportunity to remake colonial efficiency and medical knowledge. Yet, as Buxton shows, colonial servicemen were not passive subjects in a wartime laboratory: they were vocal participants who demanded a say in the therapies prescribed to them, the rations they required, the psychiatric care they received, and the prosthetics with which they were fitted. Together, these encounters profoundly remade colonial relations, reshaping imperial science, administration, and colonial understandings of subjecthood. Disabled Empire pushes literature on the war and medicine outside its national, Eurocentric focus to confront the colonial logic of global health inequity. Hilary R. Buxton is assistant professor of history at Kenyon College. Morteza Hajizadeh [https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos] is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here [https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory]

Robin Dembroff, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality" (Oxford UP, 2026)

In Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780190052560](Oxford University Press, 2026), Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child. These categories are presented as natural truths, but Dembroff reveals them as man-made myths--ones that construct a reality in which being characterized as Woman, Animal, or Child marks moral degradation. By no coincidence, feminization, dehumanization, and infantilization are the very degradations used to make a man 'less of a man'. But this book is more than critique; it's also a guide to transformation especially for those grappling with what it means to be a man under patriarchy. Patriarchy's myths celebrate the identity Man, but these myths are no friend to most men. Promising strength and superiority, they instead fuel isolation, emotional repression, and relentless pressure to prove oneself while propping up systems that enrich the powerful few. Rather than deliver freedom and prosperity, these myths entrap and impoverish. Real Men on Top invites readers to see through them and, in so doing, to find new possibilities for living, relating, and becoming human. Sharp, daring, and deeply felt, Real Men on Top is a book for anyone who senses that something is deeply wrong with the way we live and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality. Robin Dembroff is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale University Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory]