Alain de Botton

speaker

86 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Alain de Botton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Resilient Mind · The Hidden Reason You Can't Stop Overthinking - Alain de Botton · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

Yeah.

What's wrong with intellectualizing?

Intellectualizing gets a bad name because at some point it ceases to have an accurate relationship to reality.

So in other words, your theory has left behind the facts.

Your map is no longer mapping the territory accurately.

That's what's wrong with it.

There's nothing wrong with having a map, but there's something very wrong with having a misguided map.

And I think when we say intellectualizing is bad, it's when it gives us a rather rigid description of the territory, which no longer sees the actual full complexity of the terrain it's aiming, it's purporting to represent.

And so what do we need to do?

We need to constantly...

check our maps against the territory.

In other words, we need to think, okay, I've got this nice, neat theory.

Maybe I need to blow it up because it's liable to have grown a bit stale.

I need to head out back into the world and assume I know nothing, blow up my theory in order to build a better one.

So it's not about...

I think humans are naturally theory makers.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There's something wrong with clinging to outdated theory.

I think we regularly have to start all over again.

And I think, you know, that old adage, Socrates was asked why he was so wise and he was said that he was so wise because he knew that he wasn't wise.

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