“Mind-expanding . . . The Score is so exuberant and readable that the depth and seriousness of its insights almost sneak up on you.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “Brilliant and wildly original . . . The Score is socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post “I give this excellent book five stars.” — Stuart Jeffries, Financial Times A philosophy of games to help us win back control over what we value The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen—one of the leading experts on the philosophy of games and the philosophy of data—takes us deep into the heart of games, and into the depths of bureaucracy, to see how scoring systems shape our desires. Games are the most important art form of our era. They embody the spirit of free play. They show us the subtle beauty of action everywhere in life in video games, sports, and boardgames—but also cooking, gardening, fly-fishing, and running. They remind us that it isn’t always about outcomes, but about how glorious it feels to be doing the thing. And the scoring systems help get us there, by giving us new goals to try on. Scoring systems are also at the center of our corporations and bureaucracies—in the form of metrics and rankings. They tell us exactly how to measure our success. They encourage us to outsource our values to an external authority. And they push on us to value simple, countable things. Metrics don’t capture what really matters; they only capture what’s easy to measure. The price of that clarity is our independence. The Score asks us is this the game you really want to be playing?

Recommended on 1 episode:

The Week the World Admitted the Truth About America

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada announced last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was one of the most significant foreign policy speeches in years, sending shockwaves through the international community. He was describing a dynamic that’s been building for decades — what the scholars Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman call “weaponized interdependence” — that has now reached a tipping point. I asked Farrell on the show to explain this dynamic, why this is a “rupture” moment and how other countries are responding. He is an international-affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University, is an author of the book “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy” and writes an excellent Substack, Programmable Mutter. Note: This episode touches on the clashes over immigration enforcement in Minneapolis and the killing of Renee Good, but it was recorded on Friday, before the killing of Alex Pretti.

Books recommended:

• 📕  Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower (America in the World) by Professor Mary Bridges
• 📘  Nonesuch: A Novel by Francis Spufford
• 📗  The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game by C. Thi Nguyen

Henry Farrell Jan. 27, 2026 3 books recommended

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