“The world is in a dire state at present,” the author Alexander McCall Smith tells me. “The challenge is not to allow it to sap one’s enthusiasm for life. And that is a major philosophical problem all of us face: how do we respond to this brief moment we find ourselves on this Earth?

“One way is to spend it worrying and bemoaning the difficulties, and the other is to try to make the most of it. I don’t think you want to be a Pollyanna who’s beaming all the time and saying: ‘Isn’t this wonderful,’ because it plainly isn’t. But I think you can cultivate an attitude to the world that isn’t defeatist and that recognises there is great joy in the world, as well as the opposite.”

Positivity, philosophy and finding comfort in the everyday are arguably the defining features of McCall Smith’s extensive literary back catalogue of more than 100 novels, including the global bestselling series featuring the indefatigable Mma Precious Ramotswe.

Now, the 77-year-old has taken his message of hope to the medium of podcasting, with the launch of . Described as “an antidote to the stresses of everyday life”, each weekly episode has McCall Smith narrating one of his gently humorous short stories to “help the listener feel a bit better about the world”.

“I think the podcast format really lends itself to the short story, which can encapsulate a whole life or world,” he says. “I rather like audio books, but they tend to be at least three hours long and sometimes 17 hours. A podcast can be just five minutes.”

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, McCall Smith moved to Edinburgh to study law at 17, becoming a professor in the subject. After becoming an expert in medical law and bioethics, and serving on several national and international committees, he decided to focus on his writing career in the mid-Noughties and has continued to write and publish books at a prolific rate, producing five or six books per year and penning 1,500 words before breakfast most days. He was knighted for services to literature, academia and charity in 2024.

“I love writing – it’s a fundamental urge,” he replies when I ask what keeps him coming back to the desk each day. “I was up at 5am this morning preparing some new stories for the next podcast. If I don’t write at some stage of the day, I feel a bit jumpy.”

Similarly to his podcast, his books tend to focus on good lives, a quality that has been used to criticise his work. “When I first started writing the books, I was accused of viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles – and I really disagreed with that,” he says.

“Human life is a broad spectrum. At one end, we have harmony, co-operation, collaboration, courtesy – all the virtues. At the other, we have hatred, distrust, war and suffering. I think the initial criticism of those books was focused on the fact that I was looking at that end of the spectrum – I was writing about good lives.

“We’ve rather got used to the idea that fiction and film should wallow in the negative – and we entertain ourselves with violence to a tremendous degree. If kids grow up playing destructive games where they’re shooting people and then some horrible incident occurs, we tend to throw up our hands and say: ‘Where did this come from?’ I think that dealing with the positive is no disgrace. ‘Feel-good’ can be used in a pejorative sense – ‘This is a feel-good story, therefore it’s beneath our consideration’ – which is a very snobbish attitude.”

In addition to good lives, friendship lies at the heart of almost all McCall Smith books and it is a subject he is passionate about. “Friendship is absolutely central to our lives – we need other people,” he says. “Loneliness is becoming more widespread because of the electronic cocoons people put themselves into. You go to a restaurant and see four people at a table, each with their phone out. Why bother to leave the house?”

He cites the disappearing art of conversation with strangers as one of many factors contributing to our collective loneliness. “People don’t talk to one another when travelling by train or plane like they used to,” he laments. “Many years ago, the idea that you wouldn’t share things with a person you were spending five or six hours with on a plane was strange, but it rarely happens any longer. If you make the effort to do it, you might be rewarded.”

And, he adds, men have a particular problem with loneliness. “I think a lot of men are more lonely today than they used to be because of changes in social habits,” he begins. “In the past, male friendships tended to require some sort of institutional or structural support. But a lot of those institutional structures have disappeared.

“People aren’t going to the pub in the same way they used to, for example – and the pub was a very important social element. And then they had work friendships which have been turned upside-down with remote working and the casualisation of labour, so those deep, important friendships are different.”

He mentions a former miner who now helps in McCall Smith’s garden who has spoken about the loss of camaraderie in the mines. “This isn’t to comment on the disappearance of the old economy, but I think a consequence of that is we’ve lost a great sense of community in various trades and occupations – and I think this has particularly affected young men, which is why we get these very high suicide rates among them,” he says. “It’s a real problem. I saw one survey from the US that said an extraordinary percentage of men said they had no friends at all, apart from their partner.”

I ask whether he thinks we’ve lost the confidence to strike up conversations with strangers and initiate friendships or whether we’ve forgotten the value of them. “Probably a bit of both. I think that we’re inhibited in some respects from talking freely to strangers. One of the reasons is that we’re worried we might say something that will offend.

“And we’ve been encouraged to be suspicious of other people. I think that policing people’s language too closely has the consequence of inhibiting them. People say things like: ‘Oh, I’m not meant to say that,’ which is quite interesting. But I think the danger is when people feel they’re going to suffer in some way from inadvertently giving offence.”

It’s not all bad, however. “It’s a fairly positive thing that people have been made aware that we shouldn’t make casually cruel remarks,” he says. “We’ve made terrific progress in so many areas,” he says. “The way we treat one another has, in many ways, become better. We are more sensitive to others’ feelings than we used to be.”

Kindness is also a quality that features throughout much of McCall Smith’s work. “It’s not often talked about and probably a bit underrated,” he says. “When I see an instance of kindness, I can become tearful very quickly– it can be very moving. It’s so important to be kind.”

In addition to his home in Edinburgh, McCall Smith and his wife own a home in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland, describing it as a place where “the concerns of our trying times seem very far away”.

Do more of us need permission to step away from the world’s noise? “Yes, I think so, because we’re bombarded with images and news and information stimuli of various sorts,” he says. “I’ve just read a book by Professor Kate McLoughlin about the value of silence. She talks about how important periods of silence are for us. There are many people who feel that we need to set aside a part of the day in which we are silent – but it’s quite difficult to do, because we’re so distracted.”

As he approaches his 78th birthday this month, what has he learnt from his seventies? “I think – I hope – you become much more accepting and tolerant as you go through life,” he says. “Though there is a tendency to become less patient with things you have no time for. When I hear inane wallpaper music – muzak in restaurants and things like that… in earlier life, you’d just accept it, but now, you think: ‘Oh, my goodness – isn’t this awful?’ You have to remind yourself to be understanding and accepting.

“But I think what one should try to do through life is to cultivate understanding – you don’t want to remain static,” he continues. “There can be a real temptation to switch off and say: ‘Well, I don’t care,’ but you have to remain involved in the world while accepting it’s not yours to change.”

Life-long learning is also a priority for a good life, he maintains. “Throughout life, you want to continue to educate yourself – that’s why I think things like the University of the Third Age are absolutely terrific. “Curiosity plays a big role in a happy life. If you aren’t interested in the world, it must be quite boring.”

And in terms of distilling happiness into one daily habit, he is reflective. “Finding a time to sit still and meditate for a short time is really important. That, or Marmite on toast.” He erupts into laughter.

McCall Smith has also spoken about his love of tea, calling it “one of the great subjects”. Does he still travel with a teapot and some loose tea? “Yes. When my wife and I travel together, she takes the teapot and the loose tea. I’m going to the US for a tour next month. I won’t take tea, but I will take Marmite. It’s something which is completely alien to Americans – they think you should put it on a bicycle chain.”

The ‘Positive Distraction‘ podcast is available to listen to and watch on all major platforms. ‘The Prime of Bertie Pollock‘ by Alexander McCall Smith (Polygon, £17.99) is out now