The Joy Experiments: A New Season of Psychologically Speaking
Welcome to Season 3 of Psychologically Speaking, hosted by psychologist and researcher Leila Ainge. This season, we explore joy not as a feeling to define, but as an experience that moves us, connects us, and shapes how we live and work. In this short teaser episode, Leila shares the story behind choosing joy as her word of the year, the psychology of positive emotions, and why joy matters more than ever in a world that often dismisses it as a distraction.
We’ll explore:
- The science behind joy, including Broaden-and-Build Theory
- How joy supports identity, motivation, and social connection
Real stories, guest interviews, and solo episodes that dig into joy’s role in creativity, leadership, and everyday life
If you're curious about the psychology of joy, identity, and the subtle ways we shape our lives this season is for you.
🎧 Listen now and subscribe to get weekly episodes on joy, work, creativity, and human behaviour.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Leela Ainge, psychologist, researcher and someone who's been thinking a lot lately
about what it really feels like.
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:Hi, I'm Leela Ainge, psychologist, researcher, and someone who's been thinking a lot
lately about what really makes life feel good.
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:Welcome back to Psychologically Speaking, a podcast all about human behaviour, bringing
together fascinating research, insights and real life experiences.
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:This is season three, The Joy Experiments.
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:This season, we're...
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:exploring joy and not just the theory of it although yes we'll get into that but how joy
actually moves through our lives how it shifts us and what it makes us do.
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:Before we go into definitions and frameworks though I want to tell you about a moment
earlier this month.
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:I was running with a friend around Rutland reservoir.
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:I'd wedged little pouches of water into my running vest swashing them
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:in to stop them sloshing.
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:I've got sun cream slicked on my arms, my running visor was pulled low.
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:We certainly weren't out to break any records because it was 25 degrees Celsius and
rising.
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:So we jogged those flats and we walked up the inclines and kept an eye on each other as we
went.
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:We talked about life and we talked about work and what had changed since the last time we
ran together and we remembered.
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:another hot run on the chalky South Downs Way during an ultra marathon in 2019.
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:We hadn't gone that far since, but something about this loop around Rutland felt very
familiar and good.
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:And that's the thing, that moment, the sweating, the chatting, the moving forward, that
was joy.
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:And a medal would have been awesome.
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:But this was something more grounded because joy was carrying us.
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:And as I've come to understand it, joy doesn't sit still.
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:Yes, it helps us reconnect with each other.
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:And perhaps with a version of ourselves we like the best, sometimes with something that we
thought that we'd lost.
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:This season is called the Joy Experiments because I wanted to treat joy with curiosity and
a lot of kind of personal honesty.
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:I chose joy as my word of the year because I've been missing it, not in every moment, but
in places that had once felt very energizing.
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:So in my running, in my work, and sometimes in the PhD journey.
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:Joy is very tricky.
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:and to pin down and psychologists think that because it's so subjective but there's some
really interesting research emerging and one of those suggests that joy might act like a
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:kind of signal you know it helps to show us what matters and helps us to stay connected to
our sense of identity even in the middle of change or difficulty.
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:So in that study the author
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:In that study, the authors are arguing that joy isn't just a nice to have emotion.
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:It's actually something that's helping to regulate or shape the direction that we're in,
or it helps us to create that sense of who we are.
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:It links nicely to something called the Broaden and Build Theory, developed by Barbara
Frederiksen.
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:So this proposes that things like positive emotions don't just make us feel better in the
moment.
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:They're actually there to help expand our thinking and strengthen our social ties.
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:And they're helping us to build psychological resources we can draw on later.
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:So rather than asking what is joy in season three,
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:I'm going to explore what joy does when it shows up, how it moves through different kinds
of work and relationships and creative spaces, and sometimes why it gets dismissed,
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:especially something that is quite frivolous when actually it might be one of the most
intelligent and resilient forces that we've got.
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:We're going to start the joy experiments with a wonderful conversation.
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:And in episode one, I'm talking to brand strategist, Anne Friesen.
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:who shares her journey and experiment to move temporarily from London to the countryside.
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:We talk about rituals, place and memory.
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:I can't wait for you to hear it.
