A happy life is built on pleasures such as sex and food, but also company and variety

Pleasure, despite being central to human experience and evolution, is quite hard to define. Aristotle argued that what we call pleasure is comprised of at least two distinct aspects, hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (human flourishing or a life well-lived). However, as Morten Kringelbach, professor at the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford in the UK and at the Centre for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University in Denmark, points out this instalment of Aeon’s In Sight series: ‘It’s surprisingly difficult to show that somebody who is happy is also somebody who has had a lot of pleasure.’

Kringelbach’s research into how pleasure works in the brain seeks to find the connections between experiencing hedonistic pleasure – food, sex, drugs – and living an eudaimonic life. When all is well, he discovered, there is a system of give and take between different regions of the brain that yields experiences of pleasure that cumulatively contribute to feelings of wellbeing. However, imperfections in the mechanisms that govern pleasure in the brain leave us susceptible to conditions such as addiction, an unhealthy fixation on the pursuit of pleasure, or depression, in which both the desire for pleasure and pleasure itself are significantly diminished. A common characteristic of these and other affective disorders is that they take people away from what Kringelbach argues are the two key – often overlooked – aspects of pleasure: variety and community. Ultimately, he thinks, variation in pleasure, together with sharing that enjoyment with others, is what’s needed for a well-balanced, eudaimonic life.

Grab bags, café raids and booze – how Tour de France cyclists refuelled in the 1960s

The 3,500-kilometre, 23-day cycling competition known as the Tour de France has long been considered one of the most prestigious and gruelling athletic events in the world. But, as this excerpt from the celebrated French director Louis Malle’s documentary Vive La Tour (1962) demonstrates, even the most intense competitions have their more comical and lighthearted moments. The entertaining clip traces the clumsy yet pivotal practicalities of grabbing meals and refreshments amid the heat of competition. First, slowing as little as possible, the cyclists nab musettes, personalised bags full of food. Later, they drop into cafés on the route, demanding refreshments – the more calories the better, even if that means some wine, champagne or beer. While the musette tradition continues today, the booze raids have been replaced by sugary energy drinks.

‘Maybe it’s a memory that I’ve made up’ – when grief washes over childhood memories

The Brazilian filmmaker Nara Normande grew up on the breezy, sandswept beaches of Guaxuma in northeast Brazil, in something of a hippie commune, co-established by her parents and their friends. As she recalls in her animated short Guaxuma, she enjoyed an idyllic childhood, with an extraordinary freedom to play and explore alongside her best friend Tayra. But as adolescence and adulthood brought its inevitable complexities, Nara began a new life beyond the beach, while Guaxuma and Tayra lived on in fading Polaroids and hazy memories. With its evocative stop-motion animation, including remarkable creations in sand, Normande’s poignant autobiographical short won dozens of honours on the film-festival circuit, including Best Animated Short at the 2019 South by Southwest Film Festival and Best International Short at the 2019 Palm Springs Film Festival.

Cut, paste and remix your way through this century-spanning history of collage

The term collage – the artistic technique of gluing different elements together – has its origins in the early modernist movement, especially in Cubist works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. But before such combining of disparate source materials became a mode of the artistic avant garde, collage had eclectic manifestations through history and across cultures – as a method of decorating, a tool for enriching scientific texts, and a means for women to engage with areas of enquiry typically reserved for men. Created to accompany the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s exhibition ‘Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage’ in 2019, this video traces the rich roots of the technique, from the invention of paper in China in 105 CE, to its rebirth as an elevated style of modern art in the 20th century.

When home is two sisters, a houseful of vulnerable men, and a lot of tough love

After she was widowed at age 32, Grażyna Sochacka founded the Panakeja Foundation – a social-assistance centre for homeless men on Sobieszewo Island in Gdańsk, Poland. Alongside her sister Wioletta Sienkiewicz, Sochacka has dedicated her life to caring for men living on the fringes of society, and often in need of intensive care due to alcoholism and other health problems. The Polish filmmaker Filip Jacobson’s observational short Home (Dom) traces the unending daily pressures the sisters face running the centre. These include changing bed sheets, providing medical assistance, keeping up with bills, and the ever-important business of doling out cigarettes. Imbued with a deep humanity and inflections of humour, the film explores the human need for a balance between structure, freedom and respect – as well as, from time to time, heavy doses of tough love.