Tiffany, tell me more.

Yeah, I think that's right, that a lot of it is to do with hierarchies and status.

And I think one of the reasons why schadenfreude might be shameful is, of course, it sort of reveals this very unpleasant response rather than empathy.

But it also might be embarrassing because it kind of reveals our own inadequacies and inferiorities.

I mean, we don't tend to feel schadenfreude towards people who are less worse off than us.

It's definitely an emotion that punches up rather than punches down.

So if I feel a secret stab of glee because my successful friend has gone on a fancy holiday and it's rained, then that probably reveals quite a lot about me, doesn't it? That I haven't got to go on a fancy holiday, that I'm a bit envious and that I've enjoyed the sense of the playing field being So that's certainly one of the reasons why we feel schadenfreude is that it gives us a little boost and it makes us feel better about ourselves.

So what happens when Mr Bean falls over or makes such a fool of himself?

Tiffany's the new, new Montaigne.

And then [laughs], and then, and then in the nineteenth century, this completely-- Well, beginning in the eighteenth and then in the nineteenth century, this reversal happened to the situation that we're in now, where female friendships started to really be celebrated, mainly as an example of or as an indication of how good women were at caring for their children and being such nice wives.

So if they sort of had the capacity to care for others, that also meant that they were able to have close friendships.

So female friendship became really a sort of emblem of femininity, a sort of successful female life.

So if you were a good woman, then you were married, you had children, and you had your group of female friends.

And I think we can all recognize [laughs] that today as being part of the expectations of female life today, is that you've got this group of friends.

Another thing that happened, uh, by the end of the nineteenth century is that female friendship became linked to new ideas about independence.

Mm.

Oh.

You know, this was a lifelong friendship.

You loved each other.

You were one soul in two bodies.

And then you had these, he said, lesser forms of friendship.

So these were the friendships were based in just having fun together.

So, you know, you might like to go to the same sports match or whatever.

Tell us about friendships and health 'cause it seems like something that's sort of important for our health, but if you have close friendships, it's maybe not your day-to-day experience that these are good for your health.