- Comic
- Comic
Happiness
If happiness had a flavour, what would it taste like?
- Article
- Article
Happiness in time
Trying to define happiness is like trying to grasp water: it evades us, constantly changing and becoming evident only in retrospect.
- Article
- Article
Happy Joy Smile
Drawn from real-life experiences, this short story depicts a character negotiating the UK’s current mental health system. Discover what happens as they encounter waiting lists, sketchy healthcare and punitive government bureaucracy.
- Comic
- Comic
Fake happy
A fake smile can lead to feelings of happiness… and exhaustion.
- Comic
- Comic
The happiness cycle
Can you buy happiness?
- Book extract
- Book extract
The meaning of happiness
What is happiness? Tiffany Watt Smith charts how its definition has changed over time, from chance emotion to something that can be measured and controlled.
- Podcast
- Podcast
Ecstasy
In the final episode of our podcast, Bidisha takes us on a journey through the highest of highs, from nightclubbing and the ecstasies of religion and drugs to mania.
- Podcast
- Podcast
Joy
Bidisha explores joy, from the psychology of our earliest laughs to collective and solitary pleasures like comedy, food and performance.
- Podcast
- Podcast
Tranquillity
Moya Lothian-McLean asks: when was the last time you felt utterly tranquil?
- Podcast
- Podcast
Resolve
Bidisha chats to her guests about their personal experiences of resolve, and considers its complicated relationship to happiness.
- Podcast
- Podcast
Hope
In the first episode of our podcast series ‘Hello Happiness’, Bidisha explores our emotions – focusing on hope – with a diverse range of scientists, historians, artists and activists.
- Article
- Article
How to be poor and happy
Money, security, self-sufficiency and charitable giving have long been linked to happiness. But what if you’re working class?
- Article
- Article
What happy endings teach us in childhood
Kate Wilkinson explores why, in quest fiction, good must triumph over evil, and what that means both for childhood dreams and adult realities.
- Article
- Article
Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high
The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Solving the mystery of how to be happy
Crime writer Sophie Hannah thinks she might be too happy. Worried she’s using her happiness as an excuse to avoid a big work problem, she turns to a life coach for help.
- Comic
- Comic
Lazy
Are you being lazy… or just finding your peace?
- Comic
- Comic
Blowing bubbles
Is happiness as fragile as a bubble?
- Comic
- Comic
Affirmations of joy
What positive reminders do you need to find your happy place?
- Comic
- Comic
Pet therapy
Pets can help us stay healthy and happy… if we’re allowed to have them.
- Comic
- Comic
Ignorance is bliss
Switching off to reality isn't always as easy as breathing in and out.
- Comic
- Comic
Dancing in the dark
Joy is… dancing like the world isn’t watching.
- Comic
- Comic
A safety net
Money can’t buy you happiness… or can it?
- Comic
- Comic
Right to protest
Is the right to protest really the right to pursue happiness?
- Article
- Article
Active pensioners, blooming gardens
To reach your 70s with over 300,000 Twitter followers or running a music festival is not the stereotypical image of retirement. But does this energetic engagement with life equal happiness?
- Comic
- Comic
Green spaces
Green spaces can help us stay healthy and happy… if we can access them.