You can listen online to a five part series on Radio 4 that examines four of Freud's works 100 years after they were first published. Each programme is only 15 minutes, but if you have to choose only two, then go for the first, 'Sexual Aberrations' and the last, 'Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious'.
The question of why we laugh is one of those enigmas that's always interesting to theorise on, but almost guaranteed never to provide a watertight answer. Still, Freud was one of the first to suggest that laughter was all about sharing our forbidden desires. We laugh because we're hearing the unsayable, the unpalatable. That accounts for 98% of my jokes anyway.
Radio 4: Freudian Slips
How to Be Creative
If we can all be creative, why is it so hard to come up with truly original ideas?
It's because creativity is mysterious. Just ask any scientist, artist, writer or other highly creative person to explain how they come up with brilliant ideas and, if they're honest, they don't really know.
But over the decades psychologists have given ordinary participants countless tests, forms and tasks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. From these emerge the psychological conditions of creativity.
Not what you should do, but how you should be...
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