Alain De Botton

speaker

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 · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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Making Sense with Sam Harris · #483 — The Knots We Tie Ourselves Into · 1 Jul 2026 podcast

And then, you know, you mentioned self-exploration.

Well, exactly.

I mean, the Freudians, bless them, and I'm very indebted to the Freudian tradition, they understand that one of the main obstacles to thinking about yourself is fear.

That there are resistance based on a fear of all sorts of deeply uncomfortable things about oneself, like...

You know, one's sexuality may be more complicated, one may have aggressive urges where one's supposed to be merely, inverted commas, nice, etc.

And that a substance like MDMA might lower the defenses, enabling one to achieve insight.

And again, you know, what a serious mission for something which for too long languished in the lane called fun.

I don't know if I'm going to be arrested for saying so.

I don't know.

But yes, I have.

I have taken MDMA and psilocybin in sort of clinical or pseudo-clinical settings.

In other words, for therapy.

for these ends of self-exploration more than so-called fun.

And they've been tremendously helpful in essentially, you know, my problem with drugs and alcohol was always that these things were not being used seriously.

It's not the substance itself that I've had any problem with.

And again, religions have been wonderful at reminding us.

I mean, you know, what is Dionysus responsible for?

He's responsible for the god of wine.

He's the god of wine.

And how interesting to put wine

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