Zena Hitz, "Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life" (Princeton UP, 2020)
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What cultural attitudes toward thinking and learning does the host introduce?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps. So I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the best education podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author, Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share. A map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast at occulehyphenmundi.com while you listen.
Jerry's guests include Zakya Suewell, who's an English broadcaster, and writer on Finding Albion, Josh Schmidt, who's the Head of maps at the Zurich Central Library, Pat Seed, a US historian on Ptolemy's World Map, John Romero, who's a legendary video game producer on the Doom Game Creator, Elif Sharak, a well known Turkish British novelist, and Chet Van Duzer, a historian who will tell you about Martin Valdsey Mueller's Carter Marina of sixteen forty five. I highly encourage you to subscribe to What's Your Map. It's available on Apple, Spotify, and all major Podcast platforms. Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I host the program with Carrie Figder, Alexis McLeod, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Zina Hitts. Zina is tutor in the Great Books Program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. She teaches across the liberal arts, but her specialty is in ancient philosophy. In particular, she works on friendship, love, and the law in Plato and Aristotle. Her new book has just been published by Princeton University Press. Its title is Lost in Thought The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. We live in a culture that tends to view thought with a degree of suspicion.
Thinking is frequently associated with loot with a kind of uselessness or idleness, sometimes even laziness. These suspicions can be somewhat allayed. When thinking can be directly tied to some kind of purpose or tangible result. Accordingly, we tend to conceptualize thinking of the useful sort of In terms of learning. And we think of learning largely as a matter of acquiring skills that are marketable. However When overtly attached to its products and outcomes, thinking and learning can become just another mode of commerce. They thus can become constrained and indeed corrupted by worldly ambitions. The idea that learning can be a mode of escape from those ambitions or way of rising above them, and thus a kind of liberation from the world seems to have been lost on us.
However, in the book Lost in Thought, Xena Hitz provides a vision of how learning, often by way of solitary reflection on the deepest and largest things, is a characteristically human activity, an activity that's essential for a fulfilled life. So as usual, there's a lot to talk about. And we're gonna begin as we usually do with our guest. I see, huh?
Hi Bob. Thanks so much for prompting the inva conversation. I'm doing very well.
Great, great, great. Um so you know, the new books and philosophy interviews typically begin with me um asking the author to provide some biographical background to the book. And it's often characterized as, oh, before we begin talking about your book, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? But Lost in Thought, your new book, begins with a really absorbing prologue that is largely autobiographical. So we've got the biographical sort of background to the book as part of the book. So let's start there. The book is the product of, and a further step in, a pretty fascinating intellectual journey. Yeah. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how washing dishes restored your intellectual life?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What cultural attitudes toward thinking and learning does the host introduce?
0:00–10:19
2
How does Zena Hitz describe her personal journey into an intellectual life?
10:19–19:55
3
What is the story behind the title *Lost in Thought* and the Socrates image?
19:55–29:49
4
How does Hitz define the “virtue of seriousness” and its role in learning?
29:49–37:24
5
What examples does Hitz give of “hidden pleasures” of learning in everyday life?
37:24–43:48
6
How can learning become corrupted by politics or instrumental goals?
43:48–50:22
7
Why does Hitz argue that learning for its own sake protects dignity and freedom?
50:22–57:19
8
What practical ways does Hitz suggest for cultivating intellectual leisure today?
57:19–59:12
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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