Watch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We … Continue reading
Here’s a 15-minute podcast I made about non-verbal ecstasy in rock & roll, with clips from some of my favourite ecstatic performers – Little Richard, James Brown, The Beatles, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and others. It’s part of … Continue reading
The documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and … Continue reading
Peter Fonagy is is Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and head of the department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London. He has been instrumental in bringing in a new form of psychoanalytic therapy called Dynamic Interpersonal … Continue reading
I’m researching the history of ecstasy and ecstatic experiences in modern western culture, how spiritual ecstasy got pathologised from the Enlightenment to the present day, and how people found new ways to get out of their heads. An important part … Continue reading
John-Henry Carter is the most successful captain of Oxford rugby team ever, the only captain to lead the team to three successive victories in the Varsity match. The former flanker attributes that success not to his speed or his 6ft … Continue reading
One of the things I want to argue in my next book is that ecstatic experiences have been pathologised in the secular west, to our detriment. People still experience ecstasy – by which I mean moments where we go beyond … Continue reading
The physicist Lawrence Krauss recently argued that education should teach all children the central tenet of science – ‘nothing is sacred’. Not God, not human rights, not democracy, not the environment. Nothing. Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of … Continue reading
Last month I interviewed Sir Gus O’Donnell for a forthcoming Radio 4 programme about the revival of Aristotle’s idea of flourishing in public policy. Sir Gus is one of the pioneers of a new movement called the politics of well-being, … Continue reading
Paul Dieppe is professor of health and well-being at Exeter Medical School. Having spent a distinguished career researching rheumatism and specifically knee pain, he shifted his focus onto the placebo effect and, most recently, humans’ natural ability to heal themselves, … Continue reading