Unless you're a sociopath, it's normal to feel like there are some duties you owe others and to the world around you. We feel compelled to clean up after ourselves when we make a mess or to check in Mom when she isn't feeling well. But when we think about the full scope of the duties that might oblige us – should we do something about climate change or global poverty? – we can quickly find ourselves feeling overwhelmed. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores how we should think about our duties to others and how we can manage the trade-offs among our moral priorities. He also investigates how we can strike a balance between being a good person and a sane one, as well.

As children, the way our parents look at us often gives us the impression that we are the most important person in the world. Yet as we grow older, we often find that we've gone from being the center of the universe to a tiny cog in a corporate machine. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up why we often feel that companies don't care about us. As he explains, it's not personal, rather, they simply can't afford to.

There is a group of young men online who spend a lot of time talking about what they call "productivity hacks." They are obsessed with how to make their days more productive, but their advice seems more consistent making a promising individual more like a robot than a fully formed human being. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores this productivity fad and ties it to a longer tale about the connection between Christian beliefs about work and the rise of capitalism in the West. He shows us how we became so devoted to utility – and stayed so devoted – even as religious imperatives receded from public life and we forgot the reason why we cared so much in the first place.