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

And it's wonderful.

It's created wonders of the world.

However, psychically, my goodness, the toll has been enormous.

Enormous because it forces everybody in that society to measure themselves against an ideal, which is so punishing.

So the secret sorrows of the American heart is a volume without end.

It's a very big volume because this is a society that puts its people under unbelievable psychic stress.

It's the paradox of meritocracy, isn't it?

We hear a lot about this idea of trying to build a society where everybody gets to where they merit to be.

And it's a wonderful idea, a beautiful idea.

But if you really think that you can create a society where everyone deserves to be where they are,

my goodness, you're going to have a problem explaining why you failed in that society.

Because not only is success merited, but so is failure, which is why failure is so crushing if you really believe in meritocracy.

In certain European countries, this sort of tragic idea, no one thinks it's a meritocracy.

Everyone thinks the whole system is random, it's rigged.

The ancient Greeks were obsessed by the idea of the arbitrary nature of fate because the gods are in control of human destiny.

Not humans.

Humans can't control their destiny.

But in the modern American view, of course you control your destiny and you are responsible, which is why the American word for someone who hasn't succeeded is a loser.

The loser is somebody who's played a game which had fair rules.

And they've messed up.

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