Alain De Botton

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1,037 appearances 5 recordings 5 series first heard Jan 2024 last heard 1 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 — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Conversations · Special Collection: Alain de Botton on the true hardwork of love and relationships · 22 May 2026 podcast

And what do you do as a romantic lover?

You get into a sulk.

And a sulk is a commitment to not explaining something to your lover because you feel you could do it, but you're not going to do it because you feel that if they really loved you, they wouldn't need you to explain because true love is understanding without words.

And that's why after the party, when they've caused you the offence, you go up to the bathroom, you bolt yourself in.

The partner's knocking at the door going, look,

what's wrong?

And you go, you don't want to explain.

And they go, come on, what is it?

And you go, because you basically, as a romantic, expecting them to kind of read your soul through the bathroom panel and into the innards of your thing.

And this is catastrophic.

We have to use words.

But romantic culture, which is kind of what I'm taking an aim at in the novel, is kind of not giving us the good preparation for this.

Again, romantics are very keen on crushes.

A crush is a momentary glimpse maybe of another person, perhaps you've never spoken to them, that is accompanied by an absolute certainty that this is the one and that this person you have encountered a perfection, an angel shorn of their wings but walking among humans.

You know, romanticism, it was accompanied by the spread of the railways in 19th century Europe.

And there are so many stories where people get a crush on a train.

So like you're sitting across the aisle, you see somebody and they look just so wonderful.

And off you go.

It's charming, but it's deeply dangerous because the truth is that everybody from close up is trouble.

And you don't need to know anyone very much to know that there will be something.

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