The Pursuit (w/ Laurie Santos)

About this Episode

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Psychologist Laurie Santos offered a course on well-being in 2018, and it became the most popular course ever offered at Yale University. Her online course also developed a strong following. Now she had a podcast called The Happiness Lab. I had a chance to talk with her about human happiness, and the ways in which our intuitions about what promotes happiness are often wrong. Our discussion includes a discussion of happiness in a time of a pandemic and of physical distancing, but also about happiness and race.

LINKS
Laurie Santos, Yale University
The Happiness Lab podcast
Jeff Simmermon's Why You Should Be Happy (on Apple Music)
Ashley Whillans, Harvard Business School
Sonja Lyubomirsky, UC-Riverside
Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All
Dan Ariely, "Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don't Realize It)" in The Atlantic
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, by Barry Schwartz
Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, by Danielle Allen
The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest, by Dan Buettner
The Enchiridion, by Epictetus