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6 interviews · 10 quotes
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In this interview I speak to Dr. Laurie Santos, one of the world’s foremost experts on happiness and human cognition. Laurie is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology and Head…
What 161 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about resilience and mental strength
In this interview I speak to Professor Bruce Hood, a world-leading psychologist and happiness expert. Grounded in decades of neuroscience, Professor Hood’s recent book The Science of Happiness explores the simple, life-changing…
Roxie Nafousi is a self-development coach, inspirational speaker, manifesting expert and 2 x Sunday Times Bestselling author. Her debut book MANIFEST: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life has become a global…
Suneel Gupta is redefining our understanding of work, ambition, and well-being. He is a tech entrepreneur, visiting scholar at Harvard, and has been featured in NYT, CNBC and TED. He researches and…
Richard E. Grant emigrated from Swaziland to London in 1982, with dreams of making it as an actor, when he unexpectedly met and fell in love with renowned dialect coach Joan Washington.…
From the archive
I often joke that social media is the 'NutraSweet' version—it seems good but doesn't deliver the psychological benefit we expect. In fact, our use of technology can be a big opportunity cost on a lot of the stuff that truly matters for happiness.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
These scorecards just lead us down a path of dissatisfaction, when in reality most things that truly matter for happiness can't be measured in any meaningful way. We should be more mindful of living in the moment rather than keeping tally marks that don't really serve us.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
I think there's a big misconception—sometimes called 'toxic positivity' or 'good vibes only'—that a happy life is one where we only experience positive emotions. But that's just patently false. Evolutionarily speaking, our negative emotions serve a really important purpose: they cue us to take action.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
I think these are all cases where our brains lie to us. It's not because they're doing something insidious or that there's some advantage to messing up our sense of happiness—it's just the normal processes of our brains sometimes go awry, and we end up not appreciating what we have as much as we could.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
So many of the things our culture pushes us to pursue for happiness don't actually work the way we think they will. Material possessions, more money—if you're on social media, you get this strong sense that you should go after more of everything and then you'll feel better.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
All these prongs matter for happiness, and they're all interventions we can try, regardless of our circumstances or genetic background. They're simple changes that can really improve our well-being.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
You get a raise, and for the first week it feels awesome, but then it doesn't have as much impact as you thought it would. Researchers call this the 'impact bias.'
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
We also don't really have cultural mechanisms that emphasize what truly matters—not so much the hustle, but the rest. The social connection. The deeper forms of connection we get from meeting people face-to-face.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
So many of the things our culture pushes us to pursue for happiness don't actually work the way we think they will. Material possessions, more money—if you're on social media, you get this strong sense that you should go after more of everything and then you'll feel better.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
I think social media is a great example of this. It feels a little bit like social connection, but I often joke that it's the 'NutraSweet' version—it seems good but doesn't deliver the psychological benefit we expect.
— Dr. Laurie SantosPsychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale
