Podcast
On Being with Krista Tippett
The essay, later published as a chapbook, was cited as a highly popular New York Times article and a focal point of the podcast episode, driving a discussion about the complexities of love and relationships. The article's popularity was highlighted in the introduction, with the podcast episode framed as expanding on its core ideas.
Alain de Botton's essay, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, is one of the most read articles in the New York Times of recent years, and this is one of the most popular episodes we've ever created.
— Episode: Alain de Botton — The True Hard Work of...
Episode: Alain de Botton — The True Hard Work of Love and R...
The essay, later published as a chapbook, was cited as a highly popular New York Times article and a focal point of the podcast episode, driving a discussion about the complexities of love and relationships. The article's popularity was highlighted in the introduction, with the podcast episode framed as expanding on its core ideas.
Alain de Botton's essay, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, is one of the most read articles in the New York Times of recent years, and this is one of the most popular episodes we've ever created.
I happened to see your tweet at the end of 2016 when the New York Times released its most read articles of the year and your Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person was number one, which is really extraordinary.
Episode: [Unedited] Alain de Botton with Krista Tippett
This essay, later published as a chapbook, was described as one of the most popular episodes ever created by the podcast. It explores the unrealistic views of love and marriage prevalent in society, arguing that most people will inevitably marry someone imperfect and that this is normal.
Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over knowledge.
a wiser culture than ours would recognize that the start of a relationship is not the high point that romantic art assumes. It is merely the first step of a far longer, more ambivalent and yet quietly audacious journey on which we should direct our intelligence and scrutiny.
Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating.
the person you'll marry will not be Mr. or Mrs. Right, as defined by romantic culture. And that the idea of rightness is in fact the error.
the wrong person is okay. And in fact, it's the right person who's the trouble one, the vision of the right person is the one that gives us so much grief and sets us off on all sorts of, you know, chimerical journeys that lead nowhere.