Everyday heroism, with Joshua Fort

What separates a hero from a person who just does good? And if heroism is something you can practice, where do you start when the problems feel far too big for one person?

In this episode, Dr. Gabriel Lowe sits down with Joshua Fort, a nonprofit advocate and TED speaker with a background in philosophy and rhetoric. Josh has spent a long time thinking about heroism, both the kind on the screen and the kind that has no audience at all. He studied Integrative Philosophy and Rhetoric at Wheaton, and he talks about heroes the way some people talk about religious texts: closely, seriously, and with the assumption that they have something to teach us about how to live.

His working definition is deceptively plain. Heroism, he says, is the willingness to consciously and proactively lower your own ignorance and better the lives of other people. Not a cape, not a single dramatic rescue, but an orientation you build over time. The conversation turns on the difference between that orientation and a one-off act of courage, and on why the second is easier to celebrate while the first is what actually changes a life.

They range widely. The two Captain Americas, Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, and what it means to inherit an ideal and make it your own. Spider-Man, Viktor Frankl, and Frieren. The Good Place and its joke about the only truly ethical person being a hermit who did nothing. Whether you can still admire heroes once you know their flaws, and what to do with figures like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr. who were both genuinely good and genuinely harmful. Josh’s answer is to hold both at once, to celebrate the heroic and name the harm without letting either cancel the other.

You don’t have to be perfect to be heroic. You can be flawed and be heroic.

The most useful thing in the conversation may be the smallest. When a problem feels so large it flips you from “I can do something” into “I can do nothing,” Josh borrows a line his spouse gave him: then make it small. Zoom in. The global scale will tell you your contribution is negligible. The interpersonal scale will tell you it reached an actual person. Both can be true, and only one of them is paralyzing.

This is the kind of conversation the show exists for. Not advice, not a clinical framework, just two people following a good question past the obvious answers and seeing what’s underneath. Gabriel happens to be a psychologist, and you can hear it in how he listens, but the subject here is heroism and how a regular person might live a little more of it.

You can reach Josh directly at josh@philanthropy.studio, where he’s open to a conversation, a book recommendation, or a project aimed at making someone’s life better.

Listen to the full episode Spotify Apple Podcasts

Where Did Your Mind Just Go? is a production of Coastal Therapy Group. This episode was edited by Serena Rio.