The Perfect Home

In this three part programme, Alain de Botton goes in search of answers to our housing crisis and comes up with some suggestions for the perfect home: a kind of architecture that can make us happy.

In PART ONE he went in search of answers to our housing crisis, and came up with some suggestions for the perfect home: a kind of architecture that can make us happy as our environments determine how we feel. Watch on Tudou,  Veoh or YouTube playlist.

In PART TWO he suggests that most new houses are built in appalling taste – and that, with a housing deficit of around a million homes, this country urgently needs to wake up to the merits of good design. Watch on Tudou, Veoh or YouTube playlist.

In PART THREE he travels to Holland and Japan, to see how different our homes could look. He argues for houses that help us to see the world as a place to feel at home in, rather than to fear. Watch on Tudou, Veoh or YouTube playlist.

Status Anxiety

We care about our status for a simple reason: because most people tend to be nice to us according to the amount of status we have (it is no coincidence that the first question we tend to be asked by new acquaintances is ‘ What do you do?’). With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, the book examines the origins of status anxiety (ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends), before revealing ingenious ways in which people have learnt to overcome their worries in their search for happiness. Status Anxiety aims not only to be entertaining, but wise and helpful. Watch via this YouTube playlist, below, or Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

This six part series, presented by popular British philosopher Alain de Botton, features six thinkers who influenced history and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.

Episode 1: Socrates on Self-Confidence Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people’s opinions and partly because they don’t know when to have confidence in their own.

Episode 2: Epicurus on Happiness British philosopher Alain De Botton discusses the personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist,but an advocate of “friends, freedom and thought” as the path to happiness.

Episode 3: Seneca on Anger Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. He thought anger arose from certain rationally held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic. Certain things are a predictable feature of life, and to get angry about them is to have unrealistic expectations.

Episode 4: Montaigne on Self-Esteem looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself – sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority – and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.

Episode 5: Schopenhauer on Love Alain De Botton surveys the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards ‘the will-to-life’.

Episode 6: Nietzsche on Hardship explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.