A short history of sadness

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do humans cope with sadness? Is it something to be avoided at all costs or part of the human condition? Should we dwell on our sadness, or flee from it? Author Helen Russell explores humanity's history of gloom, and the cultural differences in our approach to tackling it. Helen goes to Lisbon to explore their relationship with melancholy, communicated through a uniquely mournful genre of music called Fado, and an untranslatable word "saudade". She learns about the service which sends a handsome man to wipe away tears in Japan, and hears about joy, sadness and mourning with a Ghanian poet.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love, Genessa, a brand new true crime podcast from the BBC World Service and
0:05.3	CBC podcasts. It's a story about love, deceit and survival and it's available now.
0:11.8	Find out more at the end of this podcast.
0:23.9	How do you cope with sadness? Do you sit within its melancholy walls or fill your
0:29.8	diary until it's chased away under a sea of appointments, hobbies and noise?
0:35.0	What about small you? What did your parents say when you felt sad? Were you allowed to be sad?
0:44.2	The answer to that is probably nuanced and perhaps painful and it may come down to where you are from.
0:52.9	I'm Helen Russell and in a short history of sadness, I'll be exploring how humans all over the
0:58.5	world and throughout history experienced sadness. I'll travel to Portugal to learn about
1:04.9	Sodaade. I think all love songs have to have potential for grief and pain.
1:11.2	Find out about some of the most interesting takes on sadness around the world.
1:15.2	There was a guy from Nagoya who claimed he hadn't cried for 30 years.
1:21.2	He said he hasn't cried since he was a child and told me to make him cry.
1:27.1	And take a look at the legacy of Britain's stiff upper lip.
1:30.4	It fits with the era of empire, of white British men going around the world,
1:35.9	conquering it and having a stiff upper lip and ruling over the people.
1:50.0	I am sitting on a bench in Lisbon in the sort of half-light looking out
1:54.1	over the beautiful pinks and oranges and whites and fertrees and really thinking about
2:02.8	how I got here and why I am making a documentary about sadness.
2:10.0	Because it seems quite bleak on the surface and I do get that.
2:13.5	But I think having lost my sister at a really young age, she died of cot death and I was just about
2:20.5	to turn three and at that time in the early 80s nobody really knew what to do about it.
	...

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