Want to ‘Optimize’ Your Happiness? This Happiness Expert Says: Don’t.
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Kevin Roos. I'm Casey Newton. And we're the hosts of Hard Fork, a show from the New York Times about technology and the future. About the future that's already here, Kevin. Every week on the show, we bring you news from the front lines of tech, interviews with key newsmakers, wacky experiments that we get up to, and we just generally have a lot of fun.
Yeah, so whether you're curious about developments in AI or just what's happening on TikTok, we are here for you. So that's Hard Fork.
You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. Are you happy? It's a deceptively simple question, right? But for me at least, it's a really difficult one to answer. Another tough question. Why is it so hard to be happy for so many people? Despite a culture of wellness influencers with their happiness hacks and mindset tricks, all of the indicators show that we Americans are less happy than ever. What is going on and what can we do about it? I put those questions to Dr. Lori Santos. Santos is a cognitive scientist whose class on happiness quickly became the most popular in Yale's history. And through her podcast, The Happiness Lab, and her free online course called The Science of Well-Being, Santos' reach has extended well beyond the classroom.
I wanted to understand what the science says happiness really is, how our understanding of what it takes to be happy has changed over time, and why, with the pandemic in our rearview mirror, it's still been so hard for me, and many others, to do the things that will actually make us happier. And what she told me was surprising. Here's my conversation with Dr. Lori Santos.
Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad you could join me. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I am going to start in a bit of a strange place because like so many people in the world, I was really obsessed with the story of Punch the Monkey, that little monkey in Japan whose mother sort of rejected him and he had no one to socialize with. So he adopted that Ikea monkey toy. Yes. And I have a theory about punch that connects to happiness. And I wanted to put it to you because apart from being a happiness expert, you also study animal cognition and you started your work with monkeys. Literally everyone that I know sent me information about punch. I was like getting in real time what was happening with punch.
I was really thinking about why so many people around the world connected with punch's inability to form relationships. And you've long said that the bonds with other people are one of the building blocks of happiness. It's one of the most important things that we can do. But especially here in the U.S., those bonds are fraying. And I think we just saw some of ourselves in punch. Do you think I may be right?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it was fascinating to see just how much emotion people showed about punch, which I think is funny because sometimes we see news stories about the pain of other actual humans and we don't show that much compassion, right? But I think talking about the loneliness crisis through a monkey, like through this poor little monkey that didn't do anything, it wasn't really his fault.
Why is happiness a complex question for many people?
I think that really allowed us a way to talk about the loneliness crisis and to feel it and admit it in ourselves in a way that wasn't as shameful.
You know, I spent a lot of time in advance of this conversation really thinking about the nature of happiness. And I want to start by digging into just what happiness is and maybe do some basic defining of terms because I went down a few rabbit holes. You can. It's very easy to do with this term in particular.
Yeah.
And so as I discovered, lots of philosophers have tackled the question of happiness going back to ancient Greece. And there's two main types of happiness, according to ancient Greek philosophers, as far as I could tell. And one is hedonic and the other one is eudaimonic. Can you explain what that is, what the difference is, what they were looking at back then?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:23
2
Why is happiness a complex question for many people?
3:23–6:23
3
What does Dr. Laurie Santos say about the science of happiness?
6:23–16:11
4
How do hedonic and eudaimonic happiness differ?
16:11–23:08
5
What role do genetics play in our happiness levels?
23:08–49:25
Speakers
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