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. In The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, 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”

The Washington Post — Becca Rothfeld, “A philosopher’s case for living playfully without keeping score”

The Guardian — Tim Clare, “A brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday life”

The New Yorker — Joshua Rothman, “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.

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 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 Us Fools (2024), discusses her new collection of short stories, Day Care, with Erin Beeghly (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, 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 at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

In anticipation of our symposium on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on April 10, 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 and Founder and Executive Director of Amplify Utah.

See also:

• Receipts, Proof, Timeline: How We Watch the RHOSLC symposium program
• Heather L. King, “Tanner Humanities Center presents a scholarly deep dive into ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’” @ the U
• Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”

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 at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.