We may be living in the best of all possible worlds, as Dr Pangloss suggests, but is the secret to happiness the willingness to imagine the worst? Oliver Burkeman and Jules Evans join us in the studio to examine the merits of the glass half-empty. For Burkeman, a contented life must embrace uncertainty and get friendly with failure. But could the active pursuit of happiness be part of the problem? Evans takes a more can-do approach, looking back to the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers and tracking it through to the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy of today, which helped him to escape depression in his early 20s.
Novelist Joanna Kavenna has a habit of putting her characters through the mill, and the narrator of her satire, Come to the Edge, is no exception: she has abandoned her husband, her house and her job before the end of the first chapter and fled north to a remote farmstead, where she quickly finds herself drawn into a scheme to hit back at the glaring inequalities of rural life. Kavenna tells us how the seeds for this rollicking attack on the super-rich were sown while she was living in the Duddon Valley, and considers whether happiness can be found in a retreat to nature.
Reading list
The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman (Canongate)
Philosophy for Life by Jules Evans (Rider)
Come to the Edge by Joanna Kavenna (Quercus)
