Living With Feeling

Do wellbeing apps and emotional mood trackers make you feel nervous, furious, or happy? In this episode, historian of emotions and author Richard Firth-Godbehere goes in search of the science, technology, ethics, and feelings behind emotional AI. Fellow historian Thomas Dixon acts a guinea pig for Richard, trying out some emotion-tracking apps. with emotionally mixed results, while Richard speaks to historians, ethicists, and others about the theory of “basic emotions” that hampers a lot of emotional AI, and also the ethical dilemmas posed by the ability of big tech companies to harvest and store increasingly intimate information about our feelings and our bodies. Along the way, Richard reflects on the long history of emotional objects - and how bits of technology, old and new, can conjure up strong feelings, as well as encountering a award-winning app designed for children who have lost a loved one, and thinking about how he might have responded to it when he lost his own father. Dr Charley Baker is an a