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The editing must have been a nightmare. The first episode of Robin Ince's three-part documentary Heal Thyself: A History of Self Help is rammed with voices and research trying to make sense of all the books that are trying to make sense of our lives. It's an ambitious task. Ince is a self-confessed cynic and new to the genre that is "selling you the idea that you should be happy", when his default position seems to be "you shouldn't be".
But, as self help's founding father Socrates would have it, the unexamined life isn't one worth living and so Ince gamely dives in to explore a $13bn industry that has gifted us Motivational Books to Transform Your Life from Timeless Sages and Inspirational Gurus. But is it true that thinking more about your life makes it better?
Well, yes, pretty definitely, says Jules Evans, from the Centre for the History of the Emotions. "Philosophy helped me through a difficult period in my life. When I was a teenager, I did lots of drugs and a couple of bad trips on LSD left me with post-traumatic stress disorder, which I had for six years. I was helped through that by a self-help group."
One internet bootleg of a cognitive behavioural therapy course later, and Evans emerged with a new-found obsession in ancient philosophy – because, as he points out, modern self help is largely the mass recycling of ideas from a very small number of very wise people who lived 2,000 years ago. It's at this point that Ince steers listeners through a micro-primer of Greek, Roman and Stoic philosophers that doesn't so much deliver a clear, digestible narrative as it does indulge Natalie Haynes's segment on ancient myths and tragedy. Which is all well and good – it is Radio 4; where else would a discussion on the downfall of Oedipus and his happy death be used to help listeners navigate their own anxieties? And yet, for a rapid history of a subject that is all about communicating big ideas in a simple, accessible way, listeners were treated to an unnecessarily convoluted route.
Just enough room for a shout-out for Radio 1's residency on Live from Ibiza: it's been a big, silly, Balearic week. Special mentions go to Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw for making their shows as fun to listen to as they surely were to make.
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