Are we pursuing happiness, or is the happiness industry pursuing us?
And if our model of hedonism isn’t working, how do we hack our happiness back? Leo Johnson goes on a year-long journey to pick up life lessons of happiness from modern day practitioners of radically different philosophies.
It’s a journey that takes us from Yorkshire’s anti-fracking grannies to the slow footballing Vietnamese monks of Plum Village, from self-cutting poets to the Chief Happiness Officers Convention in Paris, from London’s asexual community to multi-orgasmic Swedish academics, and from World Champion Muay Thai women kick-boxers to Elvis-loving dementia sufferers.
What emerges is a set of starkly competing visions of the good life – ancient philosophies still duking it out to get punched in as the destination in our psychic Sat Navs.
What we meet is a set of individuals who have questioned the default comforts of the IKEA catalogue, defined the shape of the self, and chosen lives that give us a glimpse of how each of us can reclaim peace, reclaim purpose, reclaim pain, and reclaim pleasure – the real pleasure that hedonism promised.
5 x 14 mins series for BBC Radio 4
Episode 1: The Perfect Life
(Monday 16th July at 13.45)
Is hedonism getting hacked? And if it is, how do we hack our happiness back?
Psychotherapist Susie Orbach.
Arnaud Collery, Chief Happiness Officer, Coach, Author, ‘Mister Happiness.
Dr. Will Davies, author ‘The Happiness Industry’, Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Professor Marco Iacoboni, Director of Neuromodulation Lab, UCLA.
Emotional AI.
Plastic Surgery Mobile Apps.
Episode 2: Self-Harm Nation
(Tuesday 17th July at 13.45)
Exploring radical alternatives to hedonism. What if happiness isn’t about pleasure at all?
Poet Clare Shaw.
Stoicon X.
Dr. Liz Gloyn, Stoic Academic, Royal Holloway.
Episode 3: Fight Club of the Soul
(Wednesday 18th July at 13.45)
Forget the moral chatter of the Stoics, is what matters denting the universe, unleashing the biggest you?
Carl Cederstrom & Andre Spicer practice idleness.
Ruqsana Begum.
Ruqsana takes on the Boxing world.
Episode 4: Existential Cool – Buddhism and the art of acceptance
(Thursday 19th July at 13.45)
Does true happiness come not from self-actualisation but from the opposite, dissolving the self?
16 Buddhas, Plum Village.
The Happy Farm, Plum Village.
Sister True Dedication. © Plum Village CBZ
Episode 5: Beyond Happiness
(Friday 20th July at 13.45)
What if happiness isn’t about the self at all.
HOOT Creative Arts, Huddersfield.
Jackie Brooks, Tea for anti-frackers & security alike.
Kirby Misperton Protection Community.
Eddie Thornton, Fracking activist & videographer.
Morten Kringlebach, Neuroscientist & Pleasure Supremo. © Sif Meincke.
Hedonia Pleasure Centre.
