Technologies of the Self

‘Technologies of the self’ is a phrase from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe things people might do to shape the people they are, like dieting, exercise, journaling, or in an earlier age perhaps like prayer, or confession. Shahidha Bari hosts Radio 4's roundtable discussion programme asking how this idea might help us make sense of the age of social media influencers and lifestyle trends. Her guests are: Elizabeth Oldfield, host of The Sacred podcast, author of Fully Alive: Tending The Soul In Turbulent Times Anouchka Grose, psychotherapist and author of The Revolution Will Be Internalised Tiffany Watt Smith, historian of emotions whose most recent book is Bad Friend: On Joyous Imperfect love Heather Widows, philosopher and author of Perfect Me: Beauty As An Ethical Ideal and Daniele Lorenzini, philosopher and Foucault scholar Producer: Luke Mulhall Show less

You can listen to Technologies of the Self online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Technologies of the Self is an episode from Arts and Ideas by BBC.

This episode is 57:02 long.

This episode was published on May 15, 2026.

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