The Consolations of Philosophy

How to Think More About Sex: The School of Life

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 21 mins)
• By Alain de Botton
• Narrated By David Thorpe

We don't think too much about sex; we're merely thinking about it in the wrong way.

So asserts Alain de Botton in this rigorous and supremely honest book designed to help us navigate the intimate and exciting - yet often confusing and difficult - experience that is sex. Few of us tend to feel we're entirely normal when it comes to sex, and what we’re supposed to be feeling rarely matches up with the reality. This audiobook argues that 21st-century sex is ultimately fated to be a balancing act between love and desire, and adventure and commitment.

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Vol. 1

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 8 mins)
• By Seneca
• Narrated By John A. Robinson

This audiobook contains the first 65 letters of Seneca's series of Stoic philosophic explorations, covering subjects as far reaching as fame, death, travel, and asthma. Heavily referenced and quoted by many, the full text is read for you, unabridged.

The Architecture of Happiness

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Alain de Botton
• Narrated By Simon Vance
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of chairs, walls, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet, a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Sarah Bakewell
• Narrated By Davina Porter
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the religious wars....

The Art of Travel

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 22 mins)
• By Alain de Botton
• Narrated By Nicholas Bell

Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.