The Wellcome Collection Podcast - Hello Happiness: Resolve

Hello Happiness: Resolve

09/29/21 • 45 min

Hello Happiness is the first series of The Wellcome Collection Podcast. In this episode, Bidisha chats to her guests about their personal experiences of resolve, and considers its complicated relationship to happiness.

Psychotherapist Susie Orbach and broadcaster Jeff Brazier discuss the power and limitations of resolve in managing grief and mental health.

Hear about the hurdles faced by champion athlete Yasmin Miller and how she works with coach Leah Dunthorne to overcome them.

Artist and writer Scottee reads his specially commissioned text asking whether resolve is all it’s cut out to be.

Storytellers and activists Elif Shafak and Hassan Akkad talk about individual and collective responsibility in a world of conflict and injustice. Hassan recounts his journey from Syria to a Covid ward in a London hospital, while Elif reflects on the power of stories and the positives of pessimism.

This episode contains references to torture, sexual assault and suicidal thoughts.

Presented by Bidisha Produced by Debbie Kilbride Sound design by Micky Curling Music by Sola

Psychotherapist Susie Orbach and broadcaster Jeff Brazier discuss the power and limitations of resolve in managing grief and mental health.

Hear about the hurdles faced by champion athlete Yasmin Miller and how she works with coach Leah Dunthorne to overcome them.

Artist and writer Scottee reads his specially commissioned text asking whether resolve is all it’s cut out to be.

This episode contains references to torture, sexual assault and suicidal thoughts.

Presented by Bidisha Produced by Debbie Kilbride Sound design by Micky Curling Music by Sola

Previous Episode

Hello Happiness: Hope

Hello Happiness is the first series of The Wellcome Collection Podcast. In this episode, Bidisha asks: What are our emotions and how are they made? She then attempts to pin down the purpose and uses of hope.

Listen to historian Tiffany Watt Smith explain how our understanding of emotion has been shaped throughout time, from the ancient Greeks to our present-day obsession with wellbeing and productivity.

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett speaks with anthropologist Kit Davies about how emotions are made by our brains and society.

Black Lives Matter activist Ndumiso Peter Ndlovu (“Dee”) and climate change activist Daze Aghaji discuss how they hold on to hope for a future that is far more brilliant than our present-day reality.

Artist and performer Selina Thompson reads a specially commissioned text where she explores hope, interdependence, trust and time travel.

Presented by Bidisha Produced by Debbie Kilbride Sound design by Micky Curling Music by Sola Researched by Priya Jay Executive producer Emily Wiles

Next Episode

Hello Happiness: Tranquillity

When was the last time you felt utterly tranquil?

Moya Lothian-McLean searches for an oasis of calm, taking Wellcome Collection’s ‘Tranquillity’ exhibition as a point of inspiration.

She visits St Bartholomew’s Hospital to experience the installation ‘Regarding Forests’ by Chrystel Lebas. Hear tips from staff and visitors as they share how they find a moment of peace in the middle of a bustling hospital.

Moya speaks with three young people from RawMinds, Fawaz Sajid, Malika Sandover and Tahmina Sayfi and they talk about whether phones can ever help us to find calm in our busy, modern lives.

Brain injury survivor and gardener Keith Emmanuel and environmental psychologist Dr Eleanor Ratcliffe talk with Moya about the importance of being in nature for our health and wellbeing. They meet in the garden at Homerton Hospital Mothers and Babies Ward where Keith volunteers.

Even if you can’t escape to a green oasis, you have the right to rest wherever you are. Artist Rhiannon Armstrong has created a meditation to help you do just that. The meditation is part of a larger work called Public Selfcare System, shaped by Rhiannon’s lived experience as a disabled artist with chronic debilitating conditions that mean she has become an expert at resting in public.

Presented by Moya Lothian-McLean

Produced by Debbie Kilbride

Sound design by Micky Curling

Music by Sola

Executive producer Emily Wiles

Meditation by Rhiannon Armstrong

@mlothianmclean @HeadwayELondon @el_ratcliffe @armstrongtactic