Quick Take
- Narration: The full-cast production featuring Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, D’Arcy Carden, and other Good Place cast members alongside Schur himself makes this one of the more distinctive audio experiences in the philosophy-adjacent nonfiction space.
- Themes: Moral philosophy made accessible, the practical difficulty of ethical decision-making, the ethics of ordinary life
- Mood: Funny and genuinely thoughtful, with the warmth of The Good Place embedded in the DNA
- Verdict: A rare book that makes ethical philosophy both entertaining and useful, the audio format, with its full-cast production, is the definitive way to experience it.
I started listening to How to Be Perfect on a Thursday morning, partly because I had a decision to make that was not clearly right or wrong, the kind of ethical grey area that most people resolve by doing whatever is more convenient and then justifying it afterward. I wanted something that would help me think about it more carefully. Michael Schur’s book gave me that, and also made me laugh at a chapter about shopping cart etiquette, which I did not expect to find as morally clarifying as I did.
Schur is the creator of The Good Place and co-creator of Parks and Recreation, and this book is in many ways The Good Place continued by other means, the same argument that moral philosophy is not only for academics, that ordinary people face genuinely hard ethical choices, and that thinking carefully about those choices is both possible and worthwhile. The difference is that here, Schur has the space to cover the actual philosophical traditions that informed the show, and to do so with the depth that a nine-hour audiobook allows rather than the compression of a twenty-two-minute network television episode.
Our Take on How to Be Perfect
The book works through the major frameworks of Western moral philosophy, deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, contractualism, as well as reaching toward ubuntu and other non-Western traditions. Schur’s method is to introduce each framework through the simplest possible case (should you punch your friend in the face for no reason?), establish its core logic, and then complicate it progressively until you are dealing with genuinely difficult questions: whether you can still enjoy art made by morally compromised people, how much of your income you are obligated to give to charity, what you owe strangers versus people you love.
That escalating structure is pedagogically sound and keeps the book moving. The chapters on consequentialism and trolley problems have been covered elsewhere, but Schur’s framing, which consistently locates the problem inside specific human situations rather than abstract philosophical thought experiments, makes familiar material feel fresh. The shopping cart chapter is a genuine discovery: the question of whether returning your shopping cart is morally obligatory turns out to be a near-perfect test case for multiple ethical frameworks simultaneously, and Schur uses it to illuminate differences between utilitarian and virtue ethics reasoning in ways that stick.
Why Listen to How to Be Perfect
The audio format is the best way to engage with this book, and not only because Schur narrates it himself. The production includes guest appearances from the cast of The Good Place, Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, D’Arcy Carden, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto, Marc Evan Jackson, and Jameela Jamil, alongside philosopher Todd May, who served as the show’s philosophical consultant. These are not brief cameos. The cast members engage with the material, and the effect is that the book retains the communal feeling of The Good Place’s best episodes: a group of people trying, with varying success and a great deal of humor, to figure out how to be good.
One reviewer who encountered the book through Schur’s appearance on the LeBatard podcast describes his style as super insightful and knowledgeable while making digestible philosophical quandaries relatable and poignant for the average reader, which is as accurate a one-sentence description of the book’s method as I have come across. The humor is not decorative. It is load-bearing: it makes the harder philosophical questions approachable without deflating them.
What to Watch For in How to Be Perfect
The book is strong overall, but one reviewer notes that a few chapters feel less fully developed than others, that certain philosophical positions could have been fleshed out more. That is a fair observation. The coverage of non-Western ethical traditions, while present, is relatively brief compared to the space given to the canonical Western frameworks. Whether that is a limitation or an appropriate scope decision depends on your expectations going in.
At nine hours and thirteen minutes, this is the longest sustained engagement with moral philosophy that most audiobook listeners will have had, and a few sections in the middle third, particularly those dealing with existentialism, are denser than the surrounding material. The humor thins slightly there, which is not a fatal problem but is noticeable.
Who Should Listen to How to Be Perfect
Fans of The Good Place who want the philosophical framework behind the show handled with appropriate depth. Anyone who has been curious about moral philosophy but found academic treatments alienating. Listeners who want to think more carefully about everyday ethical decisions, the shopping cart problem, charitable giving, whether to confront a friend, will find specific, useful tools here. The full-cast audio production makes this the format of choice over print.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have watched The Good Place to get the most from this book?
No, the book stands entirely on its own as an introduction to moral philosophy. Familiarity with The Good Place adds some texture (Schur occasionally draws on examples from the show), and hearing Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, and the rest of the cast in the audio adds a dimension of warmth for fans. But the philosophical content is fully accessible without any prior knowledge of the series.
How seriously does the book engage with the philosophy, or is it mostly jokes?
Both, genuinely. Schur takes the philosophical frameworks seriously and explains them accurately, including their limitations and internal tensions. The humor is woven through rather than sitting on top of the substance. One reviewer purchased the physical book to highlight and annotate after listening on Audible, which suggests the intellectual content is real.
What is the shopping cart chapter about, and why do reviewers single it out?
Schur uses the question of whether you are morally obligated to return your shopping cart as a test case for multiple ethical frameworks. It works so well because the stakes are low enough to be funny and the philosophical implications are surprisingly rich, different ethical theories give genuinely different answers about why (and whether) the right thing to do is to return the cart.
Is the full-cast narration available on all audiobook platforms, or only Audible?
The Simon and Schuster Audio production with the full Good Place cast is the version available through Audible and major audiobook retailers. The cast participation is part of the original audio production rather than an Audible exclusive, check availability on your preferred platform.
