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The Shakespeare Mindset: Calm Your Anxiety In This Stress-Filled World With Help From The Writer You Hated In School
The Shakespeare Mindset: Calm Your Anxiety In This Stress-Filled World With Help From The Writer You Hated In School
Comedian and Horrible Histories songwriter Dave Cohen presents a podcast that looks at William Shakespeare's plays and sonnets as a source of advice for modern anxiety and stress. Framing the Bard as a kind of early self-help writer, he explores how themes of fear, change, difficult people and self-improvement appear in works like Hamlet. With humor and accessible references, Cohen aims to make Shakespeare useful for listeners who feel stuck or overwhelmed, asking whether the playwright's wisdom is the answer to life's problems.
Episodes
Feeling Anxious? I've Got A Mind To Relieve Your Stress
“Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.”Have you ever waited for a reply to your email and panicked after five minutes that the person hasn't got back to you because they've been made so angry by it they're never going to talk to you again, ever? Or been ever so slightly concerned when someone leaves an AI company because he&#
Don't Feel Anxious About Money - You Owe It To Yourself
"Whiles I am a beggar, I will say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, shall say there is no vice but beggary." Why don't we ever talk about money? Especially if we're struggling with it. It's because we feel guilty, embarrassed, ashamed. We're made to feel bad for wanting to borrow a few quid while giant American corporations are literally throwing billions of dollars at a bunch of mid
How Do We Stop Feeling Anxious about The World?
“O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!” Do you ever find yourself scrolling down your phone and stopping only when something truly terrifying grabs your attention? (You do know that's the economic model for these platforms don't you? You know they're not deliberately trying to scare you, it's just they know your old brain is wired to read the grim stuff so that
It’s Okay To Disagree
“O I have suffered with those that I saw suffer.’We’re all only trying to be reasonable aren’t we, and yet the whole direction of discourse over the last decade has been steered by half a dozen social media dudes and their platforms towards certainty about our own beliefs and hostility towards anyone who disagrees with us.In this episode I'm looking at empathy. What is it? Should we have more? Or
How You Can Become Great
"I have touched the highest point of all my greatness."Have you ever thought about how great it would be to be great? Who among us doesn't at the very least aspire to being the best at what we do?You may be familiar with the Shakespeare line "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 'em". Its popularity has been helped because it chimes with everything we rea
Are You A People Pleaser? And Is That A Bad Thing?
"Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting."Have you ever agreed to do something for someone while your whole body was screaming NO! Are you scared of the consequences of disappointing the people closest to you?Well hello there friend, come and join me here at SOPPY - the Society Of People Pleasing Yes-men. I've always been a people-pleaser and you know what, there've been a fe
How to Tame The Green Eyed Monster of Jealousy
"So full of artless jealousy is guilt,It spills itself in fearing to be spilt."Jealousy can take many different forms, nearly all of which can be found in a single Shakespeare play, how we can spot it in others and heaven forbid, even in ourselves - and together we’re going to come clean about our resentful feelings in this department, and see if we can find a way, if not to avoid it completely at
Why You Should Read More And Scroll Less
"Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom."Do you love to read, but only on your phone? Reading books is a key way to making us less anxious. If only we could spend more time with our heads buried in a good book - then again there's always a danger people will think we're a skinny little swot who should stop reading and go out and d
Why You Sometimes Feel Sad For No Reason
"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak / knits up the o-er-wrought heart and bids it break."Do you sometimes find yourself feeling sad without realising why? You're not alone, like many people there's a chance you're dealing with melancholy. In today's episode I'll be looking at the reasons we sometimes feel this way, why we indulge the feeling and how to make a few small adjustments to
Why You Should Develop A Healthy Attitude To Gratitude
"I can no other answer make, but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks."There's nothing wrong with gratitude, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm starting to get a bit fed up with privileged middle class people like me walking around expressing gratitude for the universe as though that's going to make everything okay. If I'm sounding a bit grumpy I suppose it's because I always had a bit of a bad attit
We're All Going On A Summer Odyssey
"To unpathed waters, undreamed shores."Every story has a beginning a middle and an end. This chestnut is so ingrained into our psyche and from such an early age that we might wonder if it’s included with eyes, legs, arms and the rest under ‘stuff we’re born with’. Long before we learned how to write things down homo sapiens were telling stories through pictures and sounds to teach survival and mor
Let's Talk About The Weather
"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!"Or as King Lear might have said to you at the time if you'd been standing next to him at the bus stop "Awful weather for the time of year wouldn't you say?" Why are we Brits so obsessed with the weather? Partly because of where we sit on the planet combined
Why Laughter Is Even Better Than The Best Medicine Part Two
"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. And let my liver rather heat with wine, than my heart cool with mortifying groans."In the second part of this conversation with my former Sitcom Geeks co-host James Cary (pictured) we talk about how it's possible to use humour to explore the most difficult subjects. James is one of the most successful audience sitcom writers in the UK, having worked
Here's The Knight In Shining Armour Come To Save Us
"That tragedy from which she rescues him gratuitously for the sake of their mutual welfare."Once upon a time there was a bad man who ruled the kingdom, and the people were unhappy. Just when everything seemed lost a knight in shining armour arrived, the kingdom was saved and we all lived… well most of us did. Who is this mysterious new character in our lives? What are the chances that in the wake
Why Laughter Is Even Better Than The Best Medicine
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."... "They laugh that win"In this episode I talk to my former Sitcom Geeks co-host James Cary. James is one of the most successful audience sitcom writers in the UK, having worked on a host of TV and radio audience shows including Miranda, My Hero, Think The Unthinkable and My Family. His own show Bluestone 42 ran for thr
Why Is There So Much Rage?
"I understand a fury in your words, / But not the words."Why is there so much rage in the world? Since I started making this podcast I have forced myself back to social media, in case you’re wondering why I reached that earth shattering conclusion. I left because I’d been wondering why my mental health seemed to have been deteriorating slightly and as soon as I stopped, it got better. Simplest exp
Enjoy A Good Night's Sleep
"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast." Today’s episode is all about sleep.Did you know that we’re currently going through a global sleep crisis. Up to 30% of the adult population in developed nations live with sleep disorders and chronic insomnia. And it
Life's Not As Bad As You Think
"Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither."In this episode I suggest if you could define Shakespeare in one word that word might possibly be – stoic. I think the philosophy comes closest to what guides the plays is because of the most famous phrase associated with stoicism – memento mori: remember you must die. At this point I make a joke about memento mori that’s my favourit
Get Off Your Backsides And Say The Words
"My love is thine to teach; teach it but how"Top podcaster Tim McIntosh, host of The Play's The Thing, talks about how we can all learn to love Shakespeare, especially after bad experiences at school. We both admit we initially found Shakespeare dull and inaccessible when taught as literature in classrooms. Our lightbulb moments came through performance. Tim says watching film versions such as Ham
How To Fall In Love
"Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service..."Shakespeare understood the irrational nature of love centuries before modern neuroscience explained it. Using examples from Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It, we see how falling in love makes people behave foolishly because powerful brain chemicals temporarily over
If You Can't Escape The Bullies, You Can Find A Way To Avoid Them
"And live a coward in thine own self-esteem".Is your life being made miserable by a bully? One that you can't easily escape from - for the time being?Shakespeare, writing in the dangerous and politically volatile world of Elizabethan London, understood bullying both as personal cruelty and institutional oppression. Fellow playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd suffered persecution,
The Joy of Texts
"To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first." For long periods of time I actively disliked Shakespeare. Especially when I was at school. they really didn't know how to teach it proper when I were a lad. The thing about school is that it’s rarely the subject that’s the problem, more the way it was taught. The reason I didn’t fully give up on Shakespeare was that having struggled with Richar
You Can Sometimes Get What You Want
"Can one desire too much of a good thing?" Shakespeare asks in As You Like It, and in this episode I explore how to navigate this complex emotional state with Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University and author of the delightfully accessible This Is Shakespeare. That's a fab book which offers simple bite size chapters on 20 of the most well-known plays, and if that gives y
Here's Why You Shouldn't Plan Revenge
"The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge." Why can't we humans just get over ourselves? How can we deal with revenge the bard way? In this episode I look at that dish best served cold, or not at all.Revenge is a primal human impulse, a desire to close a perceived circle of wrongdoing that exists in every culture. While justice aims to restore balance impersonally, revenge is a personal, emotion
The Joy of Boredom
"Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." It's okay to be bored, Shakespeare shows us how to live without our phones - not yet, you have to listen to the episode first. We're all looking for excitement, almost all of the time, stimulation in whatever form. Almost every one of us is carrying the equivalent of a packet of cigarettes in our pocket, only there isn
Feeling Uncertain? Listen To This...
"Present fears are less than horrible imaginings." Only one thing is certain about this world - uncertainty. True 425 years ago. True now.Remember Covid? How the planet stopped. Everything in the world was uncertain. Nobody knew what would happen next. Now imagine it coming back tomorrow. And again in 2030. That’s how it was with the plague in Shakespeare’s time. When we’re living in a world that’
Find A Way To Live With Your Grief
"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." There's no right or wrong way to deal with grief, but as the man says if we want to move forward we need to acknowledge it.Medicine and science have helped to remove a lot of physical pain from our lives, and overall we live healthier and for longer, but eventually we all gotta go, that fact hasn’
My Country Right And Wrong
"This England never did nor never shall Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself." As a teenager in the 1970s battling racism I'd always thought of Shakespeare as the embodiment of English nationalism. In this delightful episode Michael Dobson, head of the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon, explains why I couldn't have been more wrong. He immediat
Why Do You Think Your Thoughts Are Facts?
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" Today we look at the fuss around who wrote Shakespeare and how his works can help us uncover the truth. Actually if you're hoping that this is one of those episodes that asks the question 'did Shakespeare actually write the plays or was it someone else?' I'm afraid I'm not even beginning to deal with that. First of all we already know
Meet The New Boss
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Time and again when I’ve wondered how and why it is that almost every person I’ve ever voted for fails to live up to my expectations, it turns out there’s nearly always an answer somewhere in Shakespeare.Where does it all go wrong?If you want to be a leader at work or in your community, beware the pitfalls.In this episode I look at all the reasons why w
Take Control of Your Life
"Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast." You've assassinated the supreme leader. Now what? Today I'm looking at Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and why if you're going to be bold you need to consider the consequences ahead of acting. Loads of Shakespeare's plays are about kings and leaders from hundreds of years ago, what might any of their lives have to do with you? Well for most of our lives
The Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition
"Dreams, indeed, are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream." This week I talk to the writer Stefan Stern about how to get on in the world without resorting to murder most foul. And he's very well qualified to discuss this - he has, after all written The Lady Macbeth Guide To Ambition, a book that offers guidance with the help of Shakespeare's most celebr
If Only I Had Time To Listen To This Podcast
"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me."Why are we so obsessed with time? And why do we think we have so little of it? Shakespeare has an answer or two. This week I try and make sense of time with the help of a few of Shakespeare's characters. And to look at how it dominates so much of our lives. Why? I think it's because there's one thing which most of us will never have any control over - ou
What Are You Afraid Of?
"Our doubts are traitors, And makes us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt." What's holding you back in life? Shakespeare knows, and I'm here to tell you how to fix it. The man himself was no stranger to fear, the 1590s were an exciting time to be a playwright, but also a scary one. Two of his colleagues died in mysterious circumstances while another was sent to prison, nice not
The Shakespeare Mindset
Welcome to The Shakespeare Mindset, where modern day problems are solved by the world's greatest ever writer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
