Oxford University

Is Happiness Overrated?

Education EN ↓ 5 episodes

This podcast aims to explore what happiness is and what lies beyond it, in 5 small bite-size pieces. Spoiler alert, it’s not all about happiness, but living fully with purpose and meaning. Happiness is transient and fickle. The podcast is exploratory in nature, providing a playful curiosity rather than instruction or advice. It uses concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is a type of therapeutic modality, although the most important aspect is reflecting on the common human experience. Humans don’t seem to be engineered for happiness, but they are engineered for experience...

Author

Oxford University

Episodes

Part 5: Why be happy when you can be real? 08.01.2026 4:08

Here we pull everything together. Living fully and meaningfully is greater than happiness. At what cost do we chase and try to own happiness?

Part 4: The Matryoshka Doll - is it really happiness or something else? 08.01.2026 5:45

Tim tries to unpack the word happiness using the metaphor of the Matryoshka Doll, and wonders how it connects to the state of our world and the transience of experience. The mind introduces things simply but when we stop and reflect, things soon get more complicated.

Part 3: I’m a tourist in my own life 08.01.2026 15:43

We think about moving from spectator to actor in our own lives, away from autopilot using values and goals. We then connect this with life-dilemmas which can bring challenges in the form of multiple choices, how do we know which way to go? 

Part 2: How do we even define happiness? Stories of the mind and the secret director 08.01.2026 18:10

Tim tries to define happiness and fails badly doing so. Sometimes definitions are confusing and need to be treated flexibly. Happiness as a label might not be so useful and is very contextual. The secret director is introduced, and the podcast explores social comparison and labels. This part begins to unpack primary and secondary pain.

Part 1: Introduction 08.01.2026 2:46

This part sets the scene and manages expectations. It introduces attention to the mind and mindset. There’s a warning about multi-tasking and treadmills.