Season 3 #3 Ingrid Fetell Lee

How To Be Sad with Helen Russell

Many of us these days are getting the memo that a meaningful, fulfilled life comes only from letting go of our attachments to worldly things, but my guest today has other ideas. Ingrid Fetell Lee is a designer and writer whose spent ten years studying the relationship between design and joy. The author of Joyful, and the blog, Aesthetics of Joy, Ingrid argues that a few moments of joy can lift us and help us to be sad, well. She says: “I don’t need to be happy to feel joy…I don’t have to worry about making everything awesome in my life.”

Here, we talk about out:

• how many of us find joy in the material world
• why colour, bubbles and tree houses matter
• risk and the vulnerability in pursuing joy
• how many of the aesthetics of joy have been traditionally viewed as ‘feminine’ – which does all of us a disservice
• diversity in aesthetics

Find out more about Ingrid at aestheticsofjoy.com, follow her @ingridfetell on Twitter or @ingridfetell on Instagram Follow Helen on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook @MsHelenRussell Read more about Helen’s new book, How To Be Sad (Waterstones , Amazon UK or anywhere you like to buy books) Get in touch with the show at [e-mail] And as ever, BIG thanks to Joel Grove for production and to Matt Clacher at HarperCollins for making this podcast happen.