“I’ll Be Happy When I’m X Pounds” and Other Happiness Myths ft. Laurie Santos
"I'll be happy when..." How many times have you found yourself saying that? It could be a goal income, a goal relationship, or a goal body, but the message is the same: I need to wait to get THIS thing before I can be happy. So what happens when you actually do get THAT thing—get that house, see that number on the scale, reach that income level? It turns out, not what you think. In this episode we talk to Professor Laurie Santos from Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast about what really makes us happy and what actually matters. Get ready because whatever we think is the answer is often the furthest thing from it.
-
Juna: Hello, everyone. We're back. Whew.
Eddie: Long time no see.
Juna: I think you mean long time. No. Here. Okay, we're on a podcast, so I know everyone's been asking when the next season is coming. And, guys, we hear you. But even though it's been quiet on the feed, I swear to you, it's been insanity behind the scenes.
Eddie: You know, between the book. Yeah, the podcast, Yeah. And being a physician, I feel like every day is a race to see if I can actually take our own advice that we had in the Sleep episode and get to bed on time.
Juna: I know guys yesterday and I were on the phone until like 10 p.m.. Go you over podcast love if you could hear this man. I said, Yeah. And he's like, What? What is he.
Eddie: Saying?
Juna: I mean, yeah.
Eddie: Shutdown mode is.
Juna: Literally he talks in slow motion. It's actually hilarious. Anyways, we have so much going on, including we're going to be having a live episode coming up in July. So on July 13th, mark your calendars. We will post more details as it comes up. But we are going to be seeing you guys in person in Boston. We're going to be breathing.
Eddie: On each other in the same room.
Juna: Whoa, whoa. That's so exciting. So if you want to coming out, make sure you market on your calendars. And on today's inaugural episode of the season, we have a very, very special guest.
Eddie: You know, I am so excited for this collaboration because we are talking to Professor Laurie Santos, who is the host of The Happiness Lab and wears a million other hats.
Juna: Okay, so Lori might be the coolest person I've ever met. I have a career crush on Lori. I don't leave ever so impressed. I was like, Oh, she's so.
Eddie: Cool, you know that.
Juna: I don't know, don't tell you guys. But she was so lovely. She was so interesting and a fountain of knowledge. And she teaches the most popular class at Yale, which is on the science of happiness. And we had planned to talk about food and body image and exercise and all these things. And guys, we just didn't even get to it because we got so like deep into these other topics. And that's how, you know, it's a good conversation unit.
Eddie: There are so many nuggets of wisdom I got from this episode, and one of I think the biggest overarching themes was the idea that we really don't seem to know what will make us happy. In fact, our idea of what will make us happy is actually wrong.
Juna: So on today's episode, we're talking all things science of happiness. What actually makes us happy? What are the wrong things that we're focusing on that we think will make us happy? And what are the little things we can do to day to be happy?
Eddie: I'm Yuna Jara, and I'm Dr. Eddie Philips, associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Juna: And you're listening to Food We Need to Talk. The only podcast that has been scientifically proven to make you happier just by listening. Food We Need to Talk is funded by a grant from the Ardmore Institute of Health. Home. A full plate living.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I'm Dr. Laurie Santos. I'm a professor of psychology at Yale and host of the Happiness Lab podcast. And I'm really interested in the science of happiness. I started studying that when I took on a new role in my job at Yale. I've been teaching psychology for a long time over two decades, which makes me feel a little bit. But in just the last couple of years, I took on this new role on campus. I became a head of college, which means I'm a faculty member who lives on campus with students, and that means I like, eat with them in the dining hall and I hang out with them. And I was seeing this college student mental health crisis up close and personal, where like just so many of the students I work with were experiencing depression or anxiety or in some cases suicidality, like it just wasn't college in the way I remember it, you know, back in the nineties. And so being a trained psychologist, I thought, oh, I should figure out what my field has to say about this. I should give my students some strategies. And so I kind of embarked on developing this new class that I christened Psychology in the Good Life. So it's kind of pop out of the course catalog. You sound a little sexy, but it was all about strategies that we could use to feel happier or to engage more with life, to flourish more. You know, it was a new class on campus. So I thought, you know, 30, 40 students, maybe if I'm lucky, I would roll through. I was shocked to see that a quarter of the entire Yale student body was trying to take the class first.
Juna: So it was offered.
Laurie: But we had to teach the class in a concert hall because that, oh.
Juna: My gosh, wow.
Laurie: Students visit other than the stadium.
Eddie: And this is the largest course in Yale's history.
Laurie: Yeah. So in 300 years, I became. Yeah, well, I guess class. Yeah. So, so yeah. So that was the beginning. And in the class, I mean, you know that as the story suggests, that means the classroom really went viral on campus. What was even more shocking was the class kind of went viral off campus like we had early on in the class. We had this New York Times article that came out basically saying, you know, these students at Yale, they're an Ivy League. They really have it made. But, you know, a thousand more than a thousand of them want to take this class on happiness, like what's what's going on and kind of what does this mean for the rest of us who aren't, you know, 19 and have our lives made as an Ivy League student and so on. And so we just got tons and tons of attention, people saying, oh, you know, we need this more broadly, not just at Yale. And so we put the class online, and that was when I developed my podcast, The Happiness Lab, which is sort of a fun narrative version of teaching all this scientific work on happiness.
Eddie: So this begs a few questions. One, these students at Yale need to be taught how to be happy. Is that is that the thesis that they.
Laurie: Yeah, I mean, I think I mean I think it's not just the students at Yale, frankly. I think we all need to be taught how to be happy. I think, you know, we have so many cultural narratives about the kinds of things we need to do to have a successful life. Right. Like, you need money and we need accolades and we need all these material possessions. We need to be beautiful, these things. And I think if you look at what really makes people happy, it's really honestly none of that stuff. It's different behaviors and mindsets. And so I think we kind of do need to be taught how to do this, in part because our culture, our upbringing right now is not is not teaching us. I look at my Yale students today and they're just obsessed with academic performance, obsessed with what's going to happen afterwards, you know, And really, we know that none of that stuff predicts their happiness. Your college grades are significantly correlated with your well-being, but it's a negative correlation only to it. As your grades go, oh, your well-being goes down. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you're just you know, you've recently graduated, right? You probably saw it, right? Like the students who are most obsessed with their grades or kind of at least happier. That's also inversely correlated with self esteem and inversely correlated with optimism. Right.
Eddie: And so so the better you do, the less optimistic you are.
Laurie: That's the correlation. And so, again, this is not what we predict, but it's what the data really show. And yeah.
Juna: So I wonder sometimes like this is something I really struggle with. I feel like the times that I'm like the most unhappy, I'm the most hard on myself, I achieve the most. And so and the times that I'm like the most happy, I kind of get lazy because I'm like, happy. So I'm like, Oh, I don't need to like, you know, do so good on this, that another. And so sometimes, like when bad things happen, I'm kind of like, Oh yeah, like this, I'll get my butt back in the year, you know what I'm saying? So does that make sense? Yeah, No, it's very overachiever. Like, Oh, yeah, I kind of like when I'm miserable because I, like, I.
Laurie: Can do better stuff down. Yeah, y you know, Harvard students and Yalies like to go to school on the East Coast where it's raining and snowy and, you know, none of that Stanford of going Florida thing. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, this this is our theory, right? The theory that many of us have. Right. That to get anything done, we have to be this horrid drill sergeant that screams at ourselves. Right. And that's where our good performance comes from. But if you look at the research, what it often shows is that for for most of us, that kind of attitude, that self-criticism, it might work for a while, but ultimately it's not going to work forever. It's going to lead to burnout. It's going to lead to you not enjoying your work. And that's going to lead to a dip in your performance, in your work. There's lots of evidence that a voice that's a little bit more self compassionate can really increase our. Performance, but also kind of make us feel better, like we're not screaming at ourselves all the time. But I think this is like classic perfectionist mindset, right? It's like, I will scream at myself, I will push myself and I'll get stuff done. I'll be miserable, but I'll accomplish something.
Juna: At least I'll be successful. Like, that's all that matters, right?
Laurie: But but the definition of success, I think, is a tricky one. I think we totally, you know, for for Ivy League students, it's success in terms of, you know, grades and academic performance and what internships you get. But I think there's a real question of like, is that ultimately the success we want? Is that going to give us meaning and purpose? Is it going to give us positive emotion? Are we going to flourish that way?
Juna: Well, because I know so many people that have like amazing jobs, good jobs, everybody fights for when you're graduating and they're like so miserable and they make so much money, but they're so miserable. And I'm like, what is the point? What was all of this for? It's just it's so confusing. Especially, I think in your mid-twenties, it's so confusing because everybody does what they think they're supposed to do and like it doesn't make anybody happy.
Laurie: I think we're constantly climbing up ladders that we don't even know if it's a ladder to a place that we want to go. We're like, Oh my gosh, this is the ladder I'm going up in. But then you're not asking the question, Is that actually what I want to do? And I think we have these kind of go to off the shelf ideas of where flourishing and success come from. Right? You mentioned money, like, oh, more money is going to make us happy. And now it's worth noting that there's a complicated relationship between money and happiness. If you don't have any money, if you're living below the poverty line, for sure, getting more money would make you happy for sure. Structural changes that give people universal incomes, you know, we know that that's going to promote well-being broadly. But for a lot of the people listening to this, if you're making a decent middle class income, you know, the data kind of suggests that more money won't make you as happy. Or even if it does, it definitely won't make you as happy as you think. There are many other interventions that have a bigger effect on our well-being than doubling or tripling your income. So, you know, we kind of get off kilter on what what really matters.
Eddie: Can we step back a little bit and just maybe define happiness? Because I think we're working towards a definition.
Laurie: But yeah, I mean, we can have a very long podcast episode with that definition. But yeah, but I mean, the way social scientists like me tend to define happiness is we think of it as sort of being happy in two different ways. So there's kind of being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So being happy in your life is sort of having a decent ratio of positive to negative emotions. It's not having no negative emotions. We might talk about this and a bit negative emotions are normative. We're supposed to have them, but you want them to be kind of paired off with joy and laughter and all the good stuff, right? That's being happy in your life. But being happy with your life is having a sense that your life has meaning, that it has purpose. You're satisfied with life. It's kind of like how you feel in your life and how you think your life is going. You want to kind of maximize both of them. And I think, you know, the things we've been talking about, like success, like, you know, more money, there's evidence. It doesn't really let you feel as good in your life. It doesn't sort of boost that ratio at least as much as we think for people who have a decent amount of money. And I think it doesn't give us the meaning and the satisfaction. I think that's the spot where more money and more success makes us feel really empty. It's like you're just get good at chasing the next carrot or climbing the next rung of that ladder. Even if the ladder is not bringing you to any sense of purpose.
Eddie: And the higher you get up the ladder, the more the fear of falling we could become.
Laurie: Totally. And this this is a psychological phenomena that researchers call heat. Ionic adaptation is just a fancy way of saying we get used to stuff.
Juna: Like you're on a treadmill. Is that the idea? Exactly.
Laurie: So when you know, if you're on a treadmill and you're running really fast, you.
Eddie: Have one of those, you know? Yeah, I.
Laurie: Think we all have our own personal head on a treadmill, right? But if you're running really fast, you kind of don't, you know, notice how fast you're going. You kind of get used to it over time. And that's adaptation, right? The more you get, the more you're used to. One of the surveys I present in class, it was from a little while ago, so the numbers are a little off now, but they asked folks at different incomes, how much money would you need to be happy? Like you wouldn't need another penny to be happy. And so they ask folks in the U.S. currently earning $30,000, how much do you need to be happy? Those folks say, Oh, if I could only get $50,000 a year, I'd be happy. But then you ask folks who are earning 100,000, you know, are you happy? And they say no. What do you need to be happy? Those folks say, I need $250,000 to be how many?
Eddie: So the treadmill is ramping up.
Laurie: Is ramping up, right? Yeah. If you pay attention to the ratio it gets, it gets it's not just we get closer. As we get more, we want more. We feel further away from what our goals are as we get more. And that sucks for our happiness.
Eddie: So on the flip side, the patients that I take care of who have like extremely limited means, but enough to take care of their housing and and their health care, no correlation. And I met some of the happiest people I know and I'm and I'm elevated by talking to them, even though they're seeing me because they're in pain. They just they've got rich, full lives. And it's just like, what do you do to keep this? And they go like, I got my garden, I got my birds, I got my music.
Laurie: They have enough, right? They have enough.
Juna: I was talking. When I went on a ten day silent meditation retreat. I've done this twice. Can you imagine me not talking for ten days? It's honestly like you're insane.
Eddie: You're still making up for it. Literally.
Juna: This is why I come back like this. This is why I never stop talking anyways. And we were in the car. We were like carpooling a bunch of the students or whatever. And there was this guy who he had, like, been in America for ten years or something, doing his, like, a Ph.D. or something in engineering. And he was going back to live in India, where he was from. And I said, Oh, like, are you excited to be going back to India? He's like, Yeah. I mean, the people in India are just so much happier than the people here, even though they're so poor. And I was like, What do you mean? He's like, Well, where I live? Like, we're just taking care of, like, the farm animals and basically, like they have a farm and they are self-sufficient and they, like, create their own food or whatever. And he said, everybody is so happy. There's like no depression. There's like nothing that people, like, want outside of their lives. Whereas here he said, everybody is so rich and miserable. It was like, Oh God, it just sounds horrible.
Laurie: Yeah, I mean, you can look you can look historically, for example, when people's at least material wealth was much smaller, like, you know, even go back to the 1950s or 19 tens and, you know, you don't see any corresponding increase in happiness as we all got wealthier. If anything, you see a corresponding a mild corresponding decrease and definitely a huge increase in all the associated stuff. You were just talking about depression, anxiety and so on. And so material wealth isn't doing for our happiness what we assumed. Well, again, with the caveat that like, you know, when when everybody's doing okay to put food on their table, a roof over their head more just doesn't give us what we assume.
Eddie: So you go back to the Declaration of Independence. If I have this right, we always like to put a little history into our podcast and we talk about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What were these rich white men like slave owning man thinking when they wrote that?
Laurie: Yeah. Again, you know, we can get to the structural issues as well. But, you know, I mean, I think one reason I like this idea of the pursuit of happiness is that it's the research really suggests it's constantly a journey. There's there's not some happiness that we arrive at. It wasn't like getting happiness. There was a life, liberty and getting happiness because, you know.
Juna: You never get.
Laurie: It. You never get it. Dan Gilbert, a colleague at Harvard, is fond of saying this idea of happily ever after doesn't work happily ever after only works if you have 3 minutes to live. Because it's.
Juna: Like my.
Laurie: Happiness is kind of constantly changing and it's sort of like a leaky tire. It sort of requires this kind of constant work and constant sets of behaviors and mindset changes to get there.
Juna: And I don't know if this is like prove it in research. I think I heard something about this, but I was telling my roommate once, I feel like in my life, no matter what's happening, good or bad, I'm the same level of happy. It's like if something really bad happens, it'll dip down. But it's like then I'm back to whatever I was. And the same thing. If something really good happens, I'll be happy for like a day and then I'm back to my normal. Now is like, does anything actually matter? Because literally I'm like the same no matter what happens. I don't know if that's been shown in research or if that's just like.
Eddie: Are you healthy or not? Is there is there a question?
Laurie: Yeah, no, I mean, you know, two things here. One is that there there is some evidence that we kind of have this sort of set point for happiness. But functionally, what you're describing is just the outcome of chronic adaptation, which we've been talking about. Right. You know, you get a great grade on a paper if you're one of my students or, you know, something really fun happens, you go on vacation, you might go up for a little bit, but then you kind of get used to it and you back the baseline. You know, you hear some bad news, some things that happens, you go down a little bit, but then you get used to that too, and you sort of go back to baseline. The key, though, is that we don't predict that. We assume that the good events and the great circumstances will boost our happiness forever. That will hit kind of happily ever after, especially with big things when I get married, when I graduate from college, when I get that promotion at work. But in practice, even the best things in life, you're going to get used to.
Juna: This idea of like when I have my dream body is something that we talk about all the time on the podcast because that's like something that our audience, I think the podcast started because I had this idea just like ingrained into my head that the reason I was unhappy in college was because I wasn't skinnier. It was like everything I did in college was to get skinnier, and I.
Laurie: Bet that was just you. I'm sure no other college student has ever had that.
Juna: Exactly. Yeah. That's why we have so many listeners on the podcast now. And so that's how the podcast started. That's why we wrote the book. The book we wrote is like basically a book for my 18 year old self that was like my best effort to try to convince this person that it's not your weight. That is the problem, You know what I mean? Can you kind of talk about like how people put all this pressure on basically, like, I guess it's the same thing as with, you know, jobs and whatever. But I think when it's your body, it's like it's so personal because it's like your physical being every day and it can lead to such like, I don't know, self-loathing, I think, because it's like, so part of you, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Laurie: I think one of the biggest happily ever after is in our culture is I'll be happier when I lose, you know, X number of pounds, like put put, you know, put whatever number of pounds in there. Or for individuals who are aging, you know, if I change my body in some way when I get my neck to look good again, or if you know, I can, you know, get my my. To look better after pregnancy or something like that. You know, there's research on this about body changes and happiness. And often what you find is that it doesn't necessarily have the effects that we expect. Again, we predict you're going to be so much happier if I lose £15, £10. But when you look at people to whom they've kind of achieve those goals, first of all, you know, weight loss is pretty scarce. Like when you actually look at the research, most most diets end up failing, right? People don't actually lose the weight that they want. But even in the cases where people do make those changes, they're often not really as happy as they expect. They just often find some other part of their body to feel dysmorphic about. Right. Or are they going to go back to baseline? Right. And so I think when you see the research, what you recognize is that these things, again, these are what we often call affective forecasts, were predicting something about our affect, our emotions and our our sense of self after some change. And those forecasts are often really wrong, especially for our bodies.
Eddie: And this isn't the flip side. Also true that the bad thing that you fear is just not as bad as you expect?
Laurie: Yeah, so, so we make these affective forecasts about positive things. You know, I'll do, I'll get this promotion, I'll lose weight. But we also make affective forecasts about bad things. You know what? If I put on so much weight during my pregnancy, what if I find out I have cancer? What if you know someone I really that's really dear, near and dear to me passes away unexpectedly. Right? These are terrible. I mean, you know, gaining weight isn't so bad, But the other things I've talked about, terrible things. But when you look at people to whom these things have actually happened, they won't say like, that was great. You know, I wish that I was so happy. I have that. Now they'll say, you know, that sucked. But more good than bad came from, you know, even in these extreme cases. And this is what's often called the the kind of impact bias that like we kind of mess up the impact of these bad events, like the duration that will kind of feel bad, but also the overall impact, the kind of amount of bad we all feel. And we're worse at predicting negative events than we are positive events. You know, if I predict something could happen, I pray I'll be super happy. But with the bad things were like my life will be devastated. It will be over and time and again when these bad things actually happen to people, they say, Yeah, you know, it was bad, but I got through it. You get used to the bad stuff too.
Juna: But do you think that's like an evolutionary thing, just so that we didn't just stop, like we didn't become morbidly depressed anytime something bad happened? Because I think to myself to like, well, I can find the lesson in anything that happens or whatever, But I'm like, I feel like that's me kind of trying to make something good out of something that's like, just obviously not good. But I wonder if that's just like human nature to do that, just so that like you can get through life because obviously bad things are going to happen all throughout your life or whatever.
Laurie: Yeah, I mean, I think there's two ways to think about it, you know? One is like, Oh, we're just kind of rationalizing, right? You know, it's like, it really does suck and we should be miserable. But but actually, that doesn't seem to be what happened. You know, psychologists liken this process to the immune system that we have, right? Like when you get sick, your immune system kicks in to try to fight it and make you feel better. The claim is that we have what researchers often call a psychological immune system. Like, you know, when things are bad, we do stuff to cheer our selves up. You know, we we connect with friends. We we find some growth in it. We look for patterns where we can learn something. Right. And that's not just like rationalization or pretending we're fine. We are genuinely happier. We are genuinely fine, you know, just like the immune system fixes us, our psychological immune system genuinely fixes us. Sometimes what you find in traumatic events isn't just like you kind of go back to baseline. Sometimes people report that overall they are better. And this is something that researchers have been really interested in lately. They call it post-traumatic growth. Yeah, I've heard of post-traumatic stress. Like, you know, you get worse. But actually, if you look often, there are a number of people, a decent percentage of people who go through trauma and say they grow from it. They say, I'm more resilient. Now. I know what I can handle. I know I can handle anything. They're more connected. They kind of are better off after going through something bad.
Eddie: So to follow the psychological immunity as you're talking about, is that a vaccination? Is that okay?
Laurie: Okay. That's a great way to think about it. It's it's because you go through something bad. You've learned how to deal with it. Right. And and you've learned really how to deal with the small stuff. Right. You know, if people are listening, if you're a cancer survivor, if you've gone through real grief over the death of a loved one, you have you've had a terrible career setback and lost your job, that, you know, again, it sucks at the time, but afterwards you're like, I've learned I can handle this stuff, right? If I can get through that, I can get through anything. And so just like a vaccine, you know, maybe protects you from like, the light stuff, you know, a little cold or something. Your immune system stronger afterwards to get through the tougher stuff.
Juna: I feel like it's like, you know, when you go through your first heartbreak and it's like the most painful, like, horrible thing, and then you think back and you're like, Jesus, I was in literally high school. How could I literally have even cared about this person and know them all? But it felt so like, viscerally painful to like compared to things that, you know, happen later on just because you, I guess, were more used to it or like, knew what to expect or how to get over it or whatever.
Laurie: Yeah. And that's one of the scenarios I think of. Because so many researchers study college students. It's one of the scenarios that a lot of this affective forecasting research is about as like your predictions about breakup. So I have so far I have students, you know, who had just been through a breakup, predict, you know, how how upset will you be and how long will you be upset? But then they ask your roommate, you know, how upset, how long is she going to be upset? And then they ask, you know, other people in your life. And then those people know, like she's upset now, but it's not going to you know, it's not going be as bad as she thinks when this happens and it's not going to last as long. And usually the other people are right.
Eddie: So they should also ask parents of college students just to calm them down, realize that your kids disappointments are learning opportunities.
Laurie: And this is, I think, something we forget and a change I think we need to see in our culture. We were kind of asking, you know, do you do we need to learn about happiness? Mm hmm. And I think remembering that failure and falling apart and all these glorious F words as the researcher Julie with Scott him talks about them, these glorious F words are good for us, Like we need them to grow and get better and to form resilience over time. And I think as parenting strategies have moved towards getting kids not to fail, I think is we ourselves are so terrified of failure, like we kind of don't let ourselves screw up enough. And that means we don't ever learn the power of our psychological immune system. And we don't we don't get that power. We don't get to grow after bad events.
Eddie: We'll continue our conversation with Dr.. Laurie Santos right after this break. Food We Need to Talk is funded by a grant from the Ardmore Institute of Health, the home of full plate Living. Full plate living helps you add more whole plant based foods to meals you're already eating. These are foods you're already familiar with apples being strawberries and avocados. It's a small step approach that can lead to big health outcomes. Full plate living includes weekly recipes and programs for weight loss, meal makeovers, and better blood sugar management. Best of all, full Plate Living is a free service of the Ardmore Institute of Health. Sign up for free at full plate living, dawg. And we're back and we're talking to Professor Laurie Santos from Yale University. So so I'm kind of stuck in my head here. How do you grade the students in the Yale Happiness Court? And and what's twisting around my brain is that those that are striving for an A should not get in a position to be on top.
Laurie: Oh, no, no. This is come up a lot, right? I mean, partly was. Yeah we we do a lot of homework activities that are, you know, these practices that we know are good for happiness, you know, engaging in social connection, being present, you know, meditating, sleeping more. You know, we didn't really grade them on that, but they had been normal, you know, in midterms and finals. But I spend a lot of the class talking about how grades don't matter, how as we were just talking about grades are maybe bad for well-being. They they don't help you. And one of the students, you know, these days, students make a lot of memes. There's like a big meme culture of students, you know, make these images and put them online and some student put a meme of like, I think it was like The Matrix, but it was kind of like, you know, Laurie's going to give everybody CS to teach them that grades don't matter. And I put this, you know, I watched the memes that came up in class to see how students were talking about the class. So I put this meme up, you know, in my PowerPoint, and I was like, Oh, you guys figured out my, you know, secret plan as a joke. That night, the deans at the school got calls from parents who are like, How dare she do this experiment and destroy my kids? Great parents home three parent calls. And not just the students complaining, but the parents have heard about this and are complaining. And so, you know, I got to bring that up to be like, this is proving my point that like, you know, we are we are not you know, I just told you that it actually wouldn't affect your happiness, your future salary, which is something else I talk about. Grades actually don't matter for salary as much as we think like yet you're still you're still clinging to this. And the people who are kind of mentoring you and instructing to you are still clinging to this to what.
Juna: Is like how do you bridge the gap between like somebody reading something on a slide cognitively, probably understanding it and like truly not understanding what's going on. Like.
Laurie: Yeah, I mean, this came up a lot in the class, you know, especially, you know, at a place like Yale when I presented all the work on money and happiness. Right. That, you know, going off into finance and consulting is not going to make you as happy as you think. And yeah, I would often get kind of a line of students after who are like, but but really but what if you spend it differently? Or what if you're from a low income family? Or what if what if what if I'm like, now dude, I showed you the graphs. Like, you know, you got to. But I think that's our instinct, right? I mean, we can hear the data on post-traumatic growth, like we can hear the data that says, you know, tomorrow if you find out you have a terrible cancer diagnosis, more good than bad will come from it. And I don't think any of us are like, all right, you know, give me that terrible cancer diagnosis. This will be great, right? Like we can hear these findings and still really not believe them, including me. Right. I think one of the ways I frame this to my students is I talk a lot about the fact that our minds lie to us when it comes to happiness. We have these strong intuitions about the stuff that really matters for feeling good, but many of those intuitions are wrong and they don't update as soon as you hear the data. Like all the listeners right now, you're going to hear all these things and none of your none of your intuitions will change, but hopefully how you decide to behave will change.
Juna: So something that I think I, I feel like this is an intuition that is probably correct is having people that you are close to in your life. So I've been reading a lot about like the loneliness epidemic and Vivek Murthy and stuff like that, and I feel like it is like the last thing on my mind, honestly, when I'm like thinking about like, things I need to do to improve my life. I'm like, I have to get better sleep. I have to go to the gym more. I have to like, do better and I got to be more organized, have to clean my stuff. That added all these things right? And it's like investing in relationships is like the last thing on my mind, truly. And then when you look at the research of, like, the happiest people, it's like they it's like people, of course, relationships, right? And like today it's so many less people have close relationships and it's harder and harder for people to have close relationships. So can we kind of like talk about that a little bit? Because I think a lot of us just kind of ignore it for some reason.
Laurie: Yeah, totally. I mean, if you had to sum up most of the work in positive psychology in one finding, it's that social connection makes us happy and it's probably the fastest in the most effective hack for feeling happier. Happy people tend to spend more time around other humans, like they're just with people more often. Happy people tend to prioritize time with their close friends and family members. And if you're not happy and I force you somehow to hang out with other people, whether it's people you care about or just having conversations with strangers, your positive emotion will increase. All that said, oftentimes our social relationships in life are what gets the dregs right. Like we get through work, we clean house, we do all these things. And it's like when that's all done, I'll call my friend and connect, right? And I think it's getting worse where we have, you know, these days in the modern society, we have ways of entertaining ourselves that don't involve other people. Like we can just pop on Netflix. And when we're kind of feeling a little bit bored, you know, we can just be on our phones. And basically all levels of social connections seem to be going down, including sex. This is one of my one of the most interesting. Findings is like people in general are not having as much sex, and especially young people are having way less sex. You know, like sex clearly, and more happiness. Right. And we're just kind of not engaging. And I think it really is like we just put that last on our priority list. If it's on our priority list at all, just any form of social connection.
Eddie: So when patients come to see me and I have an agenda I need to get through, they have a complaint. But so often and I'm more clued into this in part from what you're saying, that sometimes they're there for the connection that, Oh my.
Juna: God, that's what Vivek Murthy said. Sorry. Go on. No, no, no. He said that like his patients that come to him for a certain pain or something, but like, he felt like the reason they were there were to talk to somebody or to, like, have a connection, because a lot of time they were older and like, they didn't get any social interaction. So sorry to interrupt.
Eddie: But so, so so one of the my favorite maneuvers is when I had the screen up on a movable arm hanging from the wall. I would with great motion, like push it aside and move in. Need a knee. You know, this is a little bit before the pandemic. I knew when they needed me, like nose to nose to set and just like, look at them and just listen and realize that that's what they're there for. And when I start offering a follow up appointment, they're nodding yes. You know, next week is fine. Dr. Meier, We'll get together in a month or two, but I mean, we'll find it where we need it or.
Laurie: I mean, I think the problem is many of us are not finding it where we need it. I mean, I think if you look at rates of loneliness, it's just going up kind of almost astronomically over time. And again, not just during COVID. I think COVID exacerbated a lot of this, but these curves were were terrible. And it's in domains that have never historically been lonely. You know, I think older adults have often been, you know, a little bit lonelier because it's harder to find community and so on. But like college students who are pretty rarely lonely, right? They have this built in community of like minded people like them. And these days, rates of loneliness in college students are upwards of 67. 70% of students report being very lonely most of the time. Oh, my God. And yeah, and it's just kind of striking. And so so I think it's like we do kind of need more of this simple connection.
Juna: Obviously, I'm not asking this question out of a personal interest, obviously.
Eddie: For a friend or.
Juna: A friend, but do you think that dating apps exacerbate the problem?
Laurie: I mean, I think dating apps for sure, but I think all apps exacerbate the problem. Right? Like, you know, when I used to want music in the nineties, I would have to go to a physical record store. And I went, there would be people around and I would see what they're, you know, I would talk to someone. People would come to my house and see a big wall of CDs, and we'd talk about what I was interested in. Now music is just in my Spotify mix and I can hear I got no diss to Spotify, but like, but these are kind of like.
Juna: Sort of iPod.
Laurie: Yeah, sorry, sorry. But these are apps that like we, we kind of our private now when I want a car before, when I used to want a cab, I would have to go hail one and talk to the driver and explain where I'm going. Now I can get from place to place without literally speaking to anyone. I just get in the car with the right license plate and that's it. And I think, you know, we're slowly offloading a lot of our social connection into these apps that prevent us from really getting social connection. And that's that's not even to say things like about social media, right. Where I think it's worse, where we're kind of getting like almost like a NutraSweet of social connection. I can scroll through my Instagram feed and feel like I've talked to people about their days and their meals and so on. But psychologically speaking, I've gotten like no nutrition from that.
Juna: So interesting thing. It's like artificial sweeteners.
Laurie: I totally because, you know, when you're feeling a little lonely and socially deprived, it's a real low cost way to do it. You know, there's there's no friction. Raj, pull out my phone. And it's not like calling somebody or texting somebody. You have to set it up. No, I just pull it out and I can I kind of feel like I'm interacting. So I think we get none of the like, psychological social nutrition.
Juna: Okay, That's so funny because I tell my friends this all the time. So most my friends, like, just aren't on social media. They're just like all like Ph.D. students. I don't know, like they just like, don't use it, you know? I'm like the only one. And I tell them all the time like, Oh, guys, if I haven't been on TikTok for a few days and like, I have to check in on what all my friends are doing, and I'm like, Go on stage. I'm like, Oh, what's this person doing? Oh, what's this written? I'm like, I feel so like I'm catching up with all my friends. And then I'm like, You know, they don't know you. They don't about, you know what I mean? Like, it's so funny because I really feel like this connection to them. And then I have to remind myself, like, I don't actually know them. Mm hmm.
Laurie: And you didn't really get the psychological benefit of it. I mean, I think you got kind of, you know, one of the rewards, which is like a dopamine hit about information, but you didn't actually get, like, the real psychological benefit of connecting with somebody.
Eddie: And it can be micro connections, correct?
Laurie: Totally. I mean, one of the biggest kind of features of some of this work is it's told us how powerful these weak ties can be, like talking to the barista at the coffee shop. Right. Like just engaging with somebody, like walking up the street and having a smile or a quick, you know, hey, how's it going sort of thing. It doesn't have to be, you know, your your or die. Bestie buddy, that you're connecting with. But we again, assume that that won't necessarily feel good. And most of us are kind of a little weird about talking to strangers. And these apps allow us to offload. I don't talk to the priest at the coffee shop anymore because when I run into Dunkin, I've preordered it as I walk in and I grab it and I go.
Juna: That's so I was just going to I was thinking about that because the funnest parts of my day, at least when I was living at home, was before I moved in with my best friend who, like, it's so fun because you get to hang out with your friends all day. It's awesome. But before that, when I was living at home, it was just my parents. The best parts of my day were basically going to Starbucks saying, Hide all my friends at Starbucks. I hear the baristas and my sisters always joke, you know, they're paid to be your friends. They're not your friends because I, you know, buy a coffee. But it's like, no, guys, they're my friends. And then going to the gym and, like, spending 40 minutes at the front desk, at the gym, talking to the people there and then 40 minutes working out and then like leaving, you know, And that was like, that's the people I saw everyday, you know? So like, that was my, like, social interaction or whatever. And now when you go into new places, like I was going to my favorite bubble tea place and you don't order at the counter, they only have a kiosk where you order and then you pick it up at the counter. And I was like, What on earth? I mean, first of all, I'm visually impaired, so I cannot see the kiosks. I was like, How am I supposed to order? But the second one, I was just like, There's people here. Why am I being at the kiosk? It was crazy.
Laurie: We we you know, again, our theories are like, you know, all make me most happy is efficiency. I'll get in, I'll get I'll be able to get back to work and all my, you know, pursuits that I want to do. We don't realize that we kind of fill up our leaky happiness tire with those little short conversations with the barista. And so we use technology to phase them out. I think apps and these kiosks and screens that we've been talking about, but but we've been developing technology to phase this out, you know, ever since we've been developing technology. One of my favorite ever episodes of my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is one that we call mistakenly Seeking Solitude. And we interview the guy who's now like 80 something who invented the ATM machine, this guy Wetzel. And he invented the ATM machine because he's waiting in line at the to get to the teller to get his bank. And he was like, This is so stupid. Like a machine could do this. And he had like a ha like a machine to do this. And now none of us talk to tellers for the most part because we just go to the ATM. And what was fun about that episode is that, you know, it's kind of a you know, is he right? Is this better to go for efficiency? And we had a kind of built in person who disagreed with him, who was his wife, who had never used an ATM, despite the fact that her husband built it, because she was like, I just think being in the bank and talking to the tellers is so much better.
Eddie: So I was brought up my I'll give a shout out if you can do this to someone who's died, to my dad, who was a salesman in the old sense of the word traveling salesman, and his teaching was, Sure, you talk to strangers, it's okay to talk to strangers, because once you talk to them, they're no longer strangers.
Laurie: And this is something we forget that every best friend in our life, probably unless they're a family member, was at some point a stranger. Right. You know, I think back to like, you know, my my roommates in college who are like, again, my right or die besties. And I was like, there was a day when I knew nothing about them and we had to have conversations. Right. And so every stranger out there, whether it's a barista at a coffee shop or, you know, this person that you see walking down the street, like they could be a person that's really important to you in your life and you just don't know yet. They're ahead walking around with cool stories and interesting facts and just like a conversation that'll be really entertaining and boost people for your positive emotion and we just don't give it a chance.
Eddie: Is it just to give like, one more story about my dad? I remember I was probably eight or nine years old before they had the time of Take Your Kid to work, and I said, Take me to work. He says, All right, get in the car. And we drive 4 hours from New York up to New England. And we start at one point in the old days. For the younger listeners, you'd actually have to pay a toll. And and.
Laurie: There was a person.
Eddie: And there was a person, right? And and my dad would be talking to this person. And after a few people honking behind, we drive away. I would say to my father, Do you know this person who was what now I do? And then we would complete this drive for hours and he would sit there with someone. He was showing the samples of what he was selling to, and the guy would talk about his relationships and his home life. And my father would sit and listen. And after 15, 20 minutes, they would look at each other. They would look at their watches, and my father would hand them a form and he would order and we would walk out. And I go, What just happened? And I would say, it's all about the relationships.
Laurie: And I think it's all about the relationship and it's about how we form those relationships. There's some lovely work by Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago. He does a lot of work on social connection that when we try to connect, you kind of need to do the thing like your father was doing, which is like not talk about the weather, but get a little bit more vulnerable and deeper than you think. There's a lot of evidence that our instinct is when when we are socially connected and we're often not socially connected, but even when we are socially connecting, our instinct is to kind of go for really shallow conversation. We'll talk about the weather, you know, how the Red Sox do or whatever. But actually. Asking these deeper questions, really getting a little vulnerable, having other people get vulnerable is the way that we really connect with others. We end up liking people more when they're vulnerable with us. I think some of us don't want to be vulnerable because we don't want to be this like, you know, messy, like fall apart in front of somebody, overshare. But it turns out that a little bit of vulnerability is good. There's there's this lovely effect in psychology called the beautiful mass Effect. So if you're messy with somebody, they actually like it. They feel like, Oh, I'm special because you shared that.
Juna: With me.
Laurie: And they kind of feel like they can help. And there's also lots of evidence that in addition to social connection, helping other people is a good way to.
Juna: Boost.
Eddie: Their so, so much of this can be context. And what I'm thinking of is regional. But also I'm thinking back to college where everyone was running around getting to classes late for this, late for that. And then I did one term of summer semester and everything's just a little bit slower and the same person on the same library steps, what used to be like a quick hello turned into 15 or 20 minute conversation, if not lunch, right? Just because we have the time. So is are we have we just done this to ourselves and we can undo it?
Laurie: Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's also a lot of evidence that another factor that boosts our happiness is what social scientists these days called time affluence, which is that just the subjective sense that you have some free time. I can sit on the library steps and, you know, chat with whoever comes by. I'm not in a rush these days. We rarely feel that. I think these days we mostly feel time famine, which is that you're literally starving for time. And, you know, interestingly, I think for this podcast, the physiology of time famine looks a lot like hunger. Famine, right? Where you oh, my God, activating your flight. Our flight has a hugely negative effect on your well-being. In fact, some research by Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whelan shows that if you self-report being time famished, that's as big a hit on your wellbeing as someone who recently became unemployed. So that's like the dip you can expect. Oh, no. But one of the reasons time famine is so bad is that there's lots of evidence that it makes us less social. Like you don't have time to talk to somebody, you're just like rushing off to whatever you're going to do. And there's also evidence that it makes us kind of less good people. There's a super famous psychology study from back, I think, in the 1970s that they did with Princeton Seminary students. You know, so these folks were studying to become priests. And they did this study where they were having these priest go over to give a lecture about the Good Samaritan. So all these priests are like going to go give this lecture. And what they vary was the amount of rush that they were in. Some of these seminary students said, Oh, you get lots of time, you know, just go whenever. And some were like, you got to go right now you're already late. And as the seminary students were rushing over, this was like back in the day where, you know, human subjects approval was a little more class.
Juna: And then good, the.
Laurie: Good old then they sort of staged a person who was having an emergency like who had kind of fallen and looked really hurt. And the question was, were these kind of training to be priests stop to help this person? Oh, my. And they were again, they're going to give a lecture on the Good Samaritan. It's like literally the same scenario. And what you find is that rates of priests who stop are not just much lower, but basically close to zero in the condition where they're in a rush. And I think it's just kind of what we all see, right. Like a forerunner of Rush, we're less likely to do things to help the environment. We're going to find the recycling man. It's like, whatever.
Juna: Oh, try.
Laurie: To help other people. Check in with other people. You know, when I'm just feeling spent and I have a million meetings I don't like text. A friend is often to just check in how they're doing. I don't like stop to chat with the priest. I'm like running in and out of the coffee shop. And so just getting more time is a huge intervention on our happiness, in part because it helps us be more social.
Eddie: So I want to become time affluence, but I don't want to put it on my to do list to get stressed.
Laurie: Well, there are a couple good hacks, right? Because I mean, one way to be time affluent is to get objectively more time, which, you know, I advocate, you know, put put block off some time and just write time affluence. It will feel amazing. In fact, this was one of the interventions I did with my students. So we were going to have a whole lecture on time affluence. But that felt, you know, kind of odd because it's ironic because my students are so time famished that giving them another hour. And so what we did was students came to class like normal, thinking it was going to be a normal lecture. And my teaching assistants were handing out these fliers that said, you know, today's lecture is about time affluence. And to teach you what that is, I'm going to give you some No, no class today.
Juna: Oh, my God.
Laurie: Only rule is that you have to, you know, do something that promotes. You can't go do work. You can't you just, like, do something to promote your well-being. And it just happened to be one of those, you know, super oddly nice days in Connecticut in the spring. You know, kind of like when we're having this conversation, we're like remarkably nice outside and students, like, sat in the courtyard or got a bubble tea or chatted with their friends. Some of them went to like a recording studio and just like, you know, screwed around and made music with their friends. And one of the students, which is sort of, you know, a moment of the class that I remember so well. We're handing out these fliers, burst into tears and she said, This is the first hour that I've had all semester. This is the first free hour like I've had and as long as I can remember. And so, yeah, I think we can all we can, so we can give ourselves some free time, Right? But if you can't do that, there are also hacks you can do. And one of my favorite ones is to make make sure you're making good use of the time you do have. One of the interesting findings is it turns out we do have more free time than we did like 30, 50 years ago. But it's sort of broken up in stupid ways. It's like, you know, 5 minutes when I you know, traffic wasn't so bad and I got to work a little earlier, you know, 10 minutes when your kid falls asleep earlier than you expect and things. Researchers call this time confetti like these little pieces of time that are just, you know, 5 minutes, 10 minutes here and there. And we tend not to use those well, like we blow it off. Like, I'll you know, I'll look on Reddit or I'll check my email or look at something on social media. But if we use that time, well, it would add up, right. And and the research suggests it does add up. We actually have more free time. And so folks who study time affluence recommend making sort of a a time confetti wish list, like not a to do list, but like when I get that 5 minutes, what's my go to? You know, maybe I just do a couple of deep breaths or a quick meditation. Maybe I texted a friend, you know, maybe I just like, now this is a time I pay attention to my senses. Like, let me look around me in the world. It seems silly, but we actually don't make good use of the free time we have because we just kind of jam it with stupid irrelevant stuff.
Juna: I had a quick question on the topic of being time poor, so when I moved into my new apartment, right, I had this idea that like I would be friends with everybody in the apartment and it would be just like college and I would like knock on their doors when I was walking by and or whatever. Right? And so, like, immediately upon moving in and pretending like, hi, I'm, you know, but I just moved, right? And like, I just like, don't think people want to be friends, Like, they don't care. And I've noticed this whenever, like I go on flights, I always talk to the person next to me and, like, figure out where they're going that are all these things. And I feel like when I tell people, they're like, Oh God, you're one of the people that talks to me on the plane, just like, Oh Lord. But if like, then everywhere I go, I mean friendly whenever I go see what they're like, Oh, did you know that person? I'm like, No, I just met them now. And they're like, Oh my God, You talk to everybody like you've, like, known them forever and then like, yeah, because life is more fun when you are like friends with everybody you meet, you know? I mean, do you think that like, people just have a different attitude towards meeting people or is it that they're in a rush? Or like, why? Why do you think some people just have this attitude of like, I don't know, It seems like people are lonelier than ever according to data, but they don't really want to like, talk to people in real life.
Laurie: Yeah, so I think about part of it is that we have these mistaken theories. Again, our minds sort of lie to us, and this is one about which we actually have data. This is again, work from Nick Epley and his colleagues where he studies like, okay, why don't you talk to the barista at the coffee shop? He actually does a lot of this work on commuter trains, like you're on a train, he's in Chicago, you're on a train on the L for 45 minutes. Like you. We know there's data that you would feel happier if you talk to someone else. Why don't you do that? And it's twofold. People predict I won't feel better if I talk to somebody else. And even if they predict, I will feel better. But like the other person, why don't you operate alone? And so he goes out and he test this. He does these lovely studies where he offers people like $10 Starbucks gift cards to either talk to someone on the train or to, like, maintain their silence and talk to no one on the train so you can compare these conditions. And he finds that when you talk to people on the train, you are happier. But then when you check with the person, they are happier too. So we're not they're not like spreading misery by doing this. You're kind of Nick has a funny story about this. You know, he presented data to the train company. It was like, you know, hey, if you could get people to talk, they'd be so much happier. And they're like, Oh, you know, what's what's interesting is, you know, instead of doing that, we're developing all these quiet cars. You know, people people have this theory that they want quiet cars. So we're putting more quiet cars in. And so Nick was like, well, what about like making instead of a quiet car? Maybe you could make like a chatty car, you know, where everybody chats and they're like, you know, that kind of implicitly happened, you know, because that that sort of the the bar car, you know, like there's a few people. And Nick was like, so, so but they're like, but we kind of ended up closing a lot of those down. And Nick was like, Why? And he said, Well, there the train people are like, Well, they're too crowded. And we we just like it was unsafe because too many people want to go there. And so, again, I think, you know, we we just one of the reasons we don't do this is we simulate in our head we have these predictions of like, is that going to feel good? Maybe no person's going to think it's weird, I'll just shut up and do my work. Another prediction we have is we feel we won't be productive. Like I might want to talk, the person might enjoy it, but like, I got to get through this, you know, Excel sheet that I'm working on on the train or something. And one of the really interesting thing Nick, Nick finds is that when people engage with that stuff, they wind up being more productive than they expect anyway. It doesn't actually even take a hit to your product. Because, like, you know, what happens on the train is like, Oh, I'm going to work on this thing. But then I turn around and I find I'm doing this. But like when you have a nice conversation and you're in a pleasant mood, you're like, okay, you really do have to get to work. Now you get through it much more quickly than you expect.
Eddie: When you mentioned trains, I'm thinking or you're talking about commuter trains, but if you've ever had the privilege of being on an overnight train where there's a dining car, one of the for the younger listeners, I'll explain what goes on. You go into the dining car and you might be alone if you're traveling alone. And when they sit you down, you can't be at a table alone. There's just not enough room. So you're sitting facing a stranger. And then there's two other people at this four top there. Everyone is a stranger. And you've got a lot of time on your hands. And the stories that come out and the relationships that are built. And there's also a little bit of this anonymity of I'm probably not going to see this person again, so you can.
Laurie: Get a little deeper. Yeah, don't feel so bad.
Eddie: Yeah, it's really memorable. I mean, decades ago, but memorable experiences and just so funny that even when it's happening, they're saying like, No, it's too crowded. Like, that's so funny.
Juna: So I wonder sometimes because I grew up being legally blind, I always, like, kind of knew that people were kind of like more, I don't want to say afraid to talk to me, but they're more like reluctant or like afraid of offending me or saying the wrong thing or whatever, right? And so I feel like when I was really little, I was actually quite shy. But I learned that, like, if I wanted people to talk to me, like I had to be very outgoing. And then that way, like it's worked. Yes. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. Now I now know Alabama. Shut up. But no, but like, I feel like that's kind of how I learned that if you are vulnerable with people and kind of like treat them like you've known them for a long time, like I treat strangers the way I treat my friend, my personality is exactly the same. And I think that that always makes people like, open up to me more quickly. And then that's why, like whenever I go to the places I always go, it's like I kind of know everybody that's there all the time. And so I wonder if, like I felt that kind of as a coping mechanism. But that's also, I think, one of the greatest things that I got out of being legally blind is that like I'm so much faster at connecting with people because I knew I had to to make people comfortable in connecting with me, if that makes sense. Totally.
Laurie: And I think that this kind of happens to people sometimes, even if it's not your natural instinct to connect, you might either have a disability or have a situation that forces you into connecting more. One of the interview guests that we have in an upcoming season of the podcast is this woman, Jessica Pan, who is a kind of self-proclaimed introvert. She has this book title, which I love, which is I'm sorry I'm late. I didn't want to come on, but she does. But she, during her life, ended up moving to the U.K. She's Americans, moved to UK, you know, to be with her husband. And she just found she didn't have any friends. And she was like, If I'm ever going to get any social connection, I have to overcome my introvert tendencies. I have to overcome, you know, feeling so shy. And so she engaged in this kind of experiment. She talked with Nick Epley about deep conversations. He did all these trainings, and now she kind of describes herself kind of just like the way you were describing yourself, where it's like people come to you, right, Because you are kind of open and asking these questions and being vulnerable and being the first person to speak to someone. Then people speak to you back. Right? She talked to Nick, who had this lovely quote that's like, you know, nobody waves, but everybody waves back. Right? If you try to talk to somebody, it's pretty rare that people just like shut you down. Right. Especially if you're being genuinely interested and interesting to other people.
Eddie: So as someone who loves I love micro Connections and you're.
Juna: So good, Eddie is a wonderful like anybody we meet, he's like instantly.
Laurie: Growing up with that like salesman Dad is probably really.
Eddie: Helpful. So the the weather is turned better. And during lunch I started biking to work and I'd forgotten one of the joys of it, which is that I will pass people on the sidewalk or on other bicycles and they're walking their dogs, they're walking to the train station and I could be the first to say good morning. And now most people will will make eye contact, they'll smile, they'll say good morning back. And then once in a while, a little bit like you're saying sometimes as someone says it to me first, I'm like, Damn, you're you. And I'm really happy. Like, oh, like, you know, this person's into it and there's just such a joy. And I try to get up to ten. Am I my four and a half mile bike ride? That's right. Sometimes they do it.
Juna: So I think that is a fantastic place to end this episode. There's so much that we didn't even get to talk about food or exercise or anything, but it was all just such more important stuff in my opinion, cause it was like your overall happiness. Thank you so much for coming.
Laurie: On the show.
Juna: Thank you. This was so fun. Thank you so much to Professor Laurie Santos. Again, it was an absolute pleasure having her in the studio. We will put all her links on our website. foodweneedtotalk.comincluding her Coursera course and her podcast, The Happiness Lab. You can find us on Instagram @foodweneedtotalk, and you can find me on Instagram @theofficialjuna. You can find Eddie.
Eddie: Seeking happiness, seeking.
Juna: Happiness, talking.
Eddie: And time, affluence.
Juna: And time affluence. Food We Need to Talk is a production of PRX.
Eddie: Our producers are Morgan Flannery and Megan Oftermatt.
Juna: Tom in this area is our mix.
Eddie: Engineer Jocelyn Gonzales is executive producer for PRX Productions.
Juna: Food We Need to Talk was co-created by Carey Goldberg, George Hicks, Edie Phillips and me.
Eddie: For any personal health questions, please consult your personal health provider to find out more. Go to food. We need to talk. ICOM.
Juna: Thanks for listening. He left me alone.
Eddie: Oh, come on.
Juna: It's okay. It's okay. It's fine. It's fine. I'll just do it myself. I just thought cigaret. I'll do the whole thing. I'm just going.
