Chapter 1: What societal impact do movies have on our perception of happiness?
I've often thought one of the worst things that happened to society was a series of movies, whether it was kids' movies or adult movies, rom-coms, but that were happily ever after. They ended at the moment where the people met. And I always wondered what that did to people's brains growing up in a world where they went like, oh, if you meet the person you love, that's the end.
And then it's like, this is it. What is that? That is the same idea. I never finished Pac-Man.
Remember? They meet and then... Yeah, but I've never seen the end of Pac-Man.
I saw Junior Pac-Man, so I know what they did, but I don't know... But there's Junior Pac-Man? Yeah, Junior Pac-Man. Junior Pac-Man. There was Junior Pac-Man. Junior Pac-Man? Yeah, Junior Pac-Man. Like baby Pac-Man? Yeah, like a tiny little Pac-Man had a little bow and then... But like a tiny little Pac-Man. So there was a girl Pac-Man? Yeah, there was a boy and a girl. Miss Pac-Man.
No, there was Miss Pac-Man, but then there was also Junior Pac-Man. Junior Pac-Man. Yeah, no, no, they... The whole family. Yeah, Pac-Man had... I like these family values in video games like this.
Yeah, no, Pac-Man did it, bro. I was like, okay. Yeah, Mario and Luigi did it well. They were brothers, bro.
I think you're mixing up the story.
They were family members.
Oh, yeah, they were. My kids are, you know, they'd be like, what are these guys? Pac-Man?
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Chapter 2: How does the discussion of personal failures relate to happiness?
Completely different conversation. And you and I would have had, you know, these sort of parallel.
This is what, I mean, look at this connection. The other day I was at Carnegie Hall and I was thinking you fell off the stage at Carnegie Hall.
You heard about that?
Yeah.
Yeah, I did. What happened? That was my Carnegie Hall debut. It was beautiful. I was 22.
What happened?
I was doing my Carnegie Hall debut in chamber music. I was like a professional French horn player. You? All through my 20s. I left college at 19. I dropped out. Just to confirm, which one is the French horn? The round one.
Yeah.
The one you put under you and then you... It's the round one and then it has the bell in the back that you put your hand in. And so the bell is going backwards. And I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player since I was eight years old.
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Chapter 3: What are the macronutrients of a happy life?
And it came time and I was really nervous and I walked to the front of the stage and I wasn't looking at my feet and I fell off the front of the stage.
I've always wondered about- Six feet.
Very torn in hand. Oh yeah.
Yeah, and that's what I've always wanted to ask somebody about falling off of a stage. It's the worst. Yeah, because you watch videos of people who do it all the time, whether it's a catwalk, whether it's a performance, they just disappear. You know, they do their thing. It's like one minute they're there, one minute then it's like gone.
How painful is it? Well, it's about six feet. I landed on my elbow. So it was very painful. And I did a lot of damage to my instrument as well. And of course, I did what anybody would do, any 22-year-old man would do. I jumped up and said, I'm okay, folks. My instrument's mangled. I'm clearly in pain. And there's a gasp from the audience. Oh, man.
It's so funny that humans do that. Why are we more concerned with assuaging the... Everyone out there is having their own fear. Everyone out there is going, are you okay? And we're like, no, no, no. I am okay. Do not worry about the arm that's dangling in the wrong direction.
Clearly something broken. You do not worry. Yeah.
I also think- Let's move on.
A group, Are You Okay, is not about you. It's about them. But that's what I'm saying. Why do we care about- You've just fallen off a stage. No, it's just about them. Is this concert going to continue? Is he still gonna be able to do this thing for us at some point? What do we need to get involved?
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Chapter 4: How do our childhood experiences shape our pursuit of happiness?
Oh, yeah, yeah, right. And if it's too little, it's a pun. And you're like, ugh.
You see? But it's because it's basically, is that part of the brain responsible for predicting something though? Yes. What is happening there?
So what it does is it sorts out cognitive dissonance.
Got it.
It sorts it out. The parahippocampal gyrus is like you're going in one direction and then you say, what happened? Oh, that. And that makes you laugh. That's what makes you laugh. That's why surprise is funny. It's inherently, and not the kind of surprise like the lawyers on the phone, not that kind of surprise. Yeah. It's, and so that's how all humor works, right?
And so that's what you did at six. You have a nose for it. You basically said, I'm going to come around the other time and I'm going to surprise them. Because the last thing that they're expecting is that Trevor trips a second time. Yes. And that's why they cracked up. But honestly, the first time they mocked you, the second time they actually laughed. Yeah, no, no.
The second time I had taken control of the thing.
Yeah.
But you did it to flick their little pair of hippocampal gyruses. When you control the pair of hippocampal gyruses, you control the world. Actually, maybe that's a little bit too- The gyroscope, does it have anything to do with the gyroscope?
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Chapter 5: What insights does Arthur C. Brooks share about social media and happiness?
Twitter? No, no, no. News, news from here. Information, information. Did you know this about that? Very political.
Any information, it's got you.
And then Instagram. Ah, got you, got you, got you. It doesn't matter what. Got you, got you, got you. So you took the apps off your phone. Yeah, I deleted them. And then now what I do is I log in on a browser, which is painful. It doesn't render correctly. The images are off. Sometimes it doesn't load.
Chapter 6: How does Arthur C. Brooks describe his journey to understanding happiness?
Just that block. You're trying to actually increase the transaction cost.
Yeah, that's all I do, genuinely. Because I don't believe, I've tried many times to go like, I can handle this. I even put a block on my phone, like 10 minutes, 20 minutes. I was like, I got this. And then my phone will be like, you've reached your limit. And I'll be like, shut up, phone. And I'll just go back in.
One good way to do this, by the way, is put your phone on black and white. because it'll actually make your brain work differently as you interact with social media.
Like when you change the color scale, gray scale on the phone. Yeah, gray scale on the phone.
Chapter 7: What role does failure play in the pursuit of happiness?
That actually works.
You'll be significantly less addicted. That actually, wait, how does that work? So it's basically like drinking 3-2 beer. I don't know what that means. That means 3.2% alcohol. Oh, okay, got it. Right, and you'll be like bloated and peeing and you'll be like, I'm gonna stop drinking beer. It just doesn't have enough alcohol in it too. Oh, to keep you buzzing. Yeah, yeah.
To keep you buzzing, you have to do something that's way beyond your level of boredom. And so my oldest son, for example, has, I mean, my two, I have three kids, 27, 25, and 22. My 25 and 22 year old, they're in the military. Yeah. So no, I mean, they're not active on social media. They can't be. My oldest son, he figured out that it wasn't going to be good for his life.
So he put it- What, the army? No, Marines. I'm saying- I got two Marines.
What was not going to be good for his life?
Social media or the military? No, no, no, no.
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Chapter 8: How can we balance individualism with community for greater happiness?
My oldest son who isn't in the military, he put grayscale on his phone for social media a long time ago and he's never been addicted. He's never been addicted.
What is that doing to the brain?
Explain that. So your brain interacts visually with social media and the stimuli with social media in a lot of ways. So anything that you get addicted to is involving dopamine. Dopamine is the neuromodulator of liking, learning, wanting, craving. And we have it because we need to learn. We need to be more effective as a species. So when something comes along, you get a little reward from it.
And the next time you think about it, you get a minor reward, which will send you in search of doing that thing again. But if it's just like it was the day before, it's not going to be as much. And you want to get a little bit more spritz of dopamine from the locus coeruleus in your brain. So you've got to get more of it. Fuel injectors to the engine. That's how this works, right? Yeah.
And the stimulus, the more visually stimulating something actually is, the more beautiful, the more animated it is, the more it looks kind of like real life, the more dopamine you get. is what it comes down to. So my son, my oldest son, very wise, he just gets less dopamine from this thing. And since he's getting less dopamine from it, it's less rewarding. And so he does it less.
Were you always happy?
I'm not happy at all. That's why I study happiness.
Oh, well, there we go, folks. Now we're getting to the crux of it. Tell us more.
I'm much happier than I used to be because I study it. because knowledge is power.
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