Yoda wasn‘t chill all the time, with Alain de Botton

Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

Pandora Sykes

Society & Culture

4.6 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alain de Botton is a philosopher who has written on work, sex, leisure, architecture - and every other subject in between. I first discovered Alain's work in the early noughties, when I inhaled his debut novel, Essays in Love, which he wrote aged just 23 and which sold over 2 million copies. Whether you're a fellow fangirl, or new to his philosophy, you're in for his treat - Alain's pragmatism (and his vast bank of wisdom) are so extremely comforting and clarifying in these muddling times. We discuss the difference between interior and exterior progress, the perils of instant gratification and why no-one is Yoda, all of the time. Not even Alain.How Do We Know We're Doing It Right is out now in both hardback and audiobook, narrated by Pandora.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody is fragile, everybody's human.
0:02.5	Even a bomber, I'm sure, is, you know, real pain to deal with at home.
0:06.2	So there are no secular saints, and there are definitely no religious saints.
0:10.7	There are only human beings.
0:12.2	And rather than this being a depressing realization, it is the beginning of kind of friendship and a more humane world.
0:20.3	Music of kind of friendship and a more humane world.
0:33.0	You're listening to Doing It Right with me, Pandora Sykes,
0:39.4	a podcast where I talk to experts about the myths, anxieties, trivialities and trends of modern life.
0:44.2	There's no such thing as the right life, but what might we be getting wrong?
0:51.2	In this series, I'll be exploring outrage culture, arrival fallacy, and the perils of instant gratification, and lobbing some pretty big questions at my guests,
0:55.5	like, why do human beings find change so hard?
1:00.0	What would a more inclusive society look like?
1:03.0	And what is the difference between optimism and hope?
1:06.0	This is a podcast that looks at the little things and the big things and asks,
1:10.0	what can we do to live life better?
1:13.0	Not just for ourselves, but for everyone.
1:17.4	Alan de Botton is a philosopher, writer and the founder of the School of Life.
1:22.9	The author of 11 books, including Essays in Love, which he published age just 23 and which went on to sell 2 million copies,
1:31.0	the consolations of philosophy and how to talk more about sex, he has written about almost every subject under the sun.
1:39.3	Love, sex, work, social status, leisure time, money, architecture, art, you name it, Alan's got
1:47.9	something thoughtful to say about it. I have long been a fan of Alan's philosophy-infused life
1:53.8	lessons, which managed to contextualise so much of what feels totally nebulous and terrifying
	...

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