In this episode we take a long look at what the New York Times believes might be “the dominant emotion of 2021.” But what is languishing? And did we really just invent it?

Dr Emma Claussen, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in French at the University of Cambridge and research associate at Peterhouse College, thinks we certainly did not, and that writers and thinkers have been battling with how to ‘beat the blah’ (or at least learn to live with it) for centuries.

So, what can voices from the Early Modern period tell us about living a ‘good’ life in uncertain times? How do the acts of reading and writing help us deal with loss, distance and disappointment? And what do you do when your meticulously documented research term suddenly becomes a media buzzword?

Learn more:

- Follow Emma Claussen on Twitter @eclaussen

- Emma Claussen's new book, discussed in this episode, is available here and from all good bookshops: Politics and ‘Politiques' in Sixteenth-Century France(https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/politics-and-politiques-in-sixteenthcentury-france/1C233A43CF8B287AAB5AB12A2079DDB9)