The Science of Happiness

What does it mean to be happy? What's going on biologically, and how can we improve humanity's overall happiness in the future?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, either everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, what the
heck doesn't mean to feel like a room without a roof.

(00:20):
I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Volcabon, and we're going
to get happy in this episode. We are not only
because our third co host, Joe is out on vacation. No, No,
we're upset that he's out on vacation and terrible. We're
upset because he's on vacation in an amazing landscape, having
wonderful adventures and we're in a podcast studio. But that's

(00:42):
all right, Joe. We look forward to hearing about your
saga when you come back. Yes, he's an Iceland, by
the way, Yeah, that's that's the saga. And so we're
going to take the opportunity to really look at happiness
as everything from a biological function or a collection of function,
to how we might try and pursue happiness in the future,

(01:04):
and really to understand where we're coming from. I thought
it'd be fun to look back in the past, because,
as it turns out, the English word happy in its
original context meant lucky or favored by fortune. So it
didn't necessarily mean that you were filled with joy and
contentment and you had great life satisfaction. It meant that

(01:25):
you had fortune smiling on you, and good things were happening,
and you were less likely to die. Right, right, Because
for a lot of history, it wasn't really about finding happiness.
It was about getting a bye. Yeah exactly. Yeah. You
might be that your crop has come in uh more
plentiful than you had expected, and so it was a
happy accident. It was lucky fortune that smiled on you. Uh.

(01:49):
And in fact, according to at least one source, I've
looked at almost every European language, the word for happy
traces its roots back to the word for lucky in
that particular culture, except with one exception. The Welsh. Their
word for happy traces back to their word for wise.
That's that's very sweet. It's cool, isn't it. I thought

(02:10):
it was so neat. Uh So if you, if you
are Welsh and you think it's wise to be happy,
I agree, yeah I I. However, of course, being English,
I think it's just lucky to be happy. But no,
one of the things that has changed over time is
that we have as a species gotten better and better

(02:30):
at achieving our basic needs, particularly in the developed world
when we saw the various revolutions, the agricultural revolution, the
industrial revolution. These things allowed us to get those those
necessities more easily, and as we were able to get
better access to them, we could spend more time seeking
There's gotta be more to life than this, right, Where's

(02:53):
got to be something that will make me content and
joyful and feel fulfilled with my life. Now now that
I no longer have to spend nearly every waking hour
making sure I don't die, what can I do with
all this time? And that's where we kind of get
our modern concept of happiness, this idea of being content

(03:15):
and joyful and fulfilled. And uh so we wanted to
kind of concentrate on what it is that's going on
when we have this this feeling, right, because it's more
than just an emotion. It's there, there's a biology to this. Yeah,
we we aren't like a hollow shell with various emotions
that once sometimes one of them rises to the top

(03:36):
and that's our dominant emotion. We're not We're not that,
We're not a collection of humors, although that was certainly
an idea that held sway for a very long time time.
We are very complicated electrochemical machines and meating meating machines. Yeah,
and part of that means that we we there's a

(03:56):
lot of complex chemical processes that are going on for
any given state of being, not just happiness, but anything, right,
if you're stressed, or if you're afraid, or if you
are feeling hungry. I mean, all of these different things
have different um biological processes that are associated with them,
and we don't understand all of them for any given

(04:20):
state of being. We're we're in the learning phase, yes,
especially where I mean we've said this on the show
a million times. At this juncture. Um anything having to
do with the brain is very complicated, and we are
really only beginning to figure out how it does. Yeah.
So if you're hoping that we're going to tell you
where the happy switches, we don't have that information. We

(04:42):
can talk a lot about some of the areas of
the brain that are important. Yes, there are many happy switches. Yeah,
with our question mark at the end. In fact, there
are a lot of scientists who don't really like to
talk about happiness as a concept because it's it's so broad,
it's also vague in encompasses so much that two people

(05:02):
can talk about happiness and have very different ideas about
what they're saying, and they're trying to have a common conversation. So,
for example, there's a psychologist named Martin Seligman who authored
Authentic Happiness, who wrote this book, and he says, I
don't really like the word happiness. I wrote this book
called Authentic Happiness. Don't really care for that that I

(05:24):
I like to think in terms of things like well
being or love, or growth or meaning or flourishing satisfaction.
These are concepts that are easier to define. You could
say they play a part in the overall concept achievement.
It's the happiness umbrella, which I like to think has
smiley faces on it, but doesn't necessarily have to. I

(05:46):
like to think it's lined with cupcakes, a cupcake lined umbrella.
I didn't have enough for lunch today, so um yeah,
it's it's it's difficult to even deal with this concept
on a scientific basis, because again, if you have a
large term that is not not precisely defined, it's hard
to get really empirical with it. Oh sure, and anything

(06:08):
emotional is necessarily going to be a little bit difficult
to empirically defined. Right. By breaking it down into these
kind of subcategories of happiness, you can really start isolating
chemicals and brain bits that have more to do with them. Yea.
So we're going to look at some, uh, some of
the neurotransmitters and hormones as well as some of the
regions of the brain that are associated with happiness. So

(06:31):
let's start off with some of these neurotransmitters and hormones
that we're talking about, because these are the chemicals that
we associate with various responses that are part of feeling happy. Uh.
And we're launching off with dopamine and nora pa nephrin uh. Now,
these are hormones that do lots of things. Actually, in fact,
all the ones we're gonna be talking about have more.

(06:51):
They pull multi job duty, as at most everything does.
The body is not filled with unitaskers exactly, so a
lot of these hormones are not even just regulating stuff
in the brain. They may have important roles throughout the
entire body. And one of those happens to be something
that goes on inside our noggins, but not necessarily the
only thing. So umin and Nora beneffn are important in

(07:15):
the reward center of the brain. So rewards are reinforcers
which indicate that the thing you just did was a
good thing and you should do more of that. So,
in other words, like if you were to uh do
a physical task that ends up achieving the goal that
you were aiming at. Let's say that you were throwing
a spear at a wooly mammoth and you hit it

(07:38):
just the right spot and the wooly mammoth dies. The
reward center in your brain is gonna go, that was awesome, dude,
you rule. You know, We're gonna eat for days on this.
Make sure you do that again. At the situation ever
pops up. It's like a chemical high five. Yeah. And
so it's something that is certainly associated with happiness, particularly
as far as it goes as being fulfilled or satisfaction.

(08:00):
This idea that our own brain rewards us. It's it's intrinsic.
It's not dependent upon any kind of external gift. Um.
It can be associated with an external gift. If you
get that promotion that you've been hoping for you might
have that reward feeling. But it may also just just
by doing something nice for someone, you may have that
reward feeling as you see that the actions you have

(08:21):
taken have benefited someone else. Yeah, or getting an answer
correct on a test, or any number of stimuli, so
very important. Yes, then we've got endorphins, these things we
all do, their hormones that act as pain killers when
we're injured and can also induce a kind of sense
of euphoria. Yeah. So if you if you're a runner

(08:41):
and you've heard of the runners hide, Yeah, the runner side,
that's endorphins. That's a that's a big part of it,
where you know, you you just kind of get this
this happy sensation, this this pleasant, pleasant sensation, even though
just moments ago your body was saying, for for goodness
sakes to stop. Yeah. Yeah, it's because you've you've pushed
yourself to a point where ear body is like, noah,

(09:01):
we need some pain killers. Yea, we have got to.
We got to jump to action because otherwise, uh, this
person's own spleen is going to rush up to their
neck and strangle them. So I might be getting a
little loose with the medical technology and terminology here. But
you know this is my own personal understanding. I don't
run unless something's chasing me. Yeah, I feel about the

(09:22):
same way about it personally. Then we have serotonin, which
is a neurotransmitter that is biochemically derived from trip to fan.
You may have heard that eating turkey makes you sleepy.
That's not really true technically true. Well, I mean you'd
have to have a lot of turkey, like a crazy
overdose level of turkey. I'm pretty sure you would make
yourself sick with turkey before you would actually get sleepy. Yeah,

(09:43):
you would probably end up being at least thirty turkey
by that time right now. But trip to fan is
in fact where we derive uh saratonin. And again we
don't fully understand all of serotonin's functions within the body,
but we do believe it contributes to feeling of happiness
and well being and it helps regulate our sleep cycles.

(10:04):
So it also plays a very important role in regulating
our gastro intestinal tract, which again shows how these hormones
do lots of different stuff in our bodies. And serotonin
also plays a role in our appetites, so when we
feel hungry, so like I said, it does a lot
of stuff, but again we're not We're just getting started.

(10:25):
We still have more to go through. There's melotonin, so
we got serotonin than melatonin. These are two different things. Melantonin, though,
also helps regulate our sleep wake cycle and establishes the
daily cycle of various systems are circadian rhythm, if you will.
So it's largely in charge of making sure that our
our various rhythms throughout the day coincide with our when

(10:49):
we're awake and when we're asleep. This is the stuff
that uh, you know, you you kind of need to
be in a dark place to really start generating the melotonin.
You don't want to have lots of around you all
the time. It can really mess with your sleep wake cycle.
Uh So people who have insomnia can have issues with
that as well. So anyway, very important obviously if you

(11:10):
don't get enough sleep, that's going to affect your satisfaction,
your happiness, as well as your health in general. And generally, Yes,
and all of these systems are very much tied into
each other. Um, there's also cortisol, and this is a
stress hormone. Actually it makes you feel unhappy relatively, it's
really it's a hormone that is released in response to
stressors by the adrenal gland. And it's important because increases

(11:32):
the amount of sugar in your blood and makes more
available to your brain. Plus makes more like tissue repair
stuff available to your cells. So basically it primes your
body to get stuff done. Um and along with adrenaline,
it makes you ready for fight or flight, but it
can also decrease the functions of your other systems. Uh

(11:52):
and basically says to your brain like be afraid, be
very afraid. Um. These these mnicles are your body's equivalent
of like red alert, divert full power to the engines,
um and and you know, so that's really good in
some circumstances, but overall, that's not a great feeling. Yeah,
you don't want to have that be your your baseline,

(12:15):
right No, no, no, no, not not at all. The
amount of stress. And we've talked in the past about
how stress can have an actual effect on your health.
It's not just you know, you're feeling tense and you're
you're not feeling great. I mean it can really have
a really uh negative impact absolutely, yeah. Yeah, and so
not just the happy inducing chemicals but also the sad

(12:40):
or stress inducing chemicals can have a big impact on
how happy your overall being is. Right, and there are
there are those who argue, obviously that the negative ones
do play an important rock part because it it alerts
you to potential danger, helps you stay out of that
kind of danger, get out of a danger situation. But

(13:01):
then a lot of people also point out that we're
many of us are now living in a world where those, um,
realistically dangerous situations are few and far between, and yet
our body will still react in a negative way when
it perceives danger, even if there's no physical threat that's
facing us. Oh absolutely, you know, like like when you
get nervous about going on a date um, which you know,

(13:26):
historically speaking, is slightly less useful than getting nervous about,
you know, a bear chasing you, right exactly, but you
end up having the same sort of physiological response because
your body doesn't have Oh, let's initiate the date hormone.
It's it's not like that, No, it's more like, well, uh,
you know this this the thought processes. This is scary,

(13:46):
so let's enact the scary stuff. Uh So, anyway, that
the balance here is really important, and again we don't
understand all of them in which all of these things work. Now,
let's move on to some some brain anatomy. Yeah, some
of the hardware. Where so we talked about reward system

(14:07):
and the hormones like dopamine that play a part in it.
There are reward pathways in the brain. They involved the
frontal cortex, which has the highest concentration of dopamine sensitive neurons.
Then you have the nucleus accumbus, which plays an important
part in our sense of pleasure as well as other emotions.
It can also play a part with things like fear
and aggression. You can kind of think of that as

(14:28):
almost like the reptile brain in a way. And then
you've got the ventral tegmental area, which is the release
site for dopamine. Yeah, the left prefrontal cortex in particular
is more active when you're happy, as opposed to the
right prefrontal cortex, which is more active when you're unhappy
or stressed out. Interesting, and that's really cool. I did

(14:51):
not realize that. Then you have the neo cortex, which
is the part of our brain that's responsible for a
lot of the the higher thinking functions like conscious thought.
That's the mammalian brain. Yes, sometimes here uh here it
referred to in literature, right, because it is not something
that is found in all animals. In fact, the reason
why it's called neo cortex is because it's a relatively

(15:12):
new development, as in late in the evolutionary uh pathway
of animals in general. I mean, you know, it's it's
only a few million years ago as opposed to a
few Is that correct? Is it only a million? Yeah, yeah,
you know it's I mean, you know, things have a
longer shelf life in the evolutionary time scale. So, uh.

(15:34):
One of the important things about happiness is consciousness. It's
the ability to be aware that you are happy. It's
the ability to be aware of the difference between happiness
and unhappiness. And there are many who argue that if
we did not have that ability, this would be largely Yeah,
well we wouldn't be having this conversation, be incapable of it.

(15:54):
But but the the consciousness is in fact a necessary
item as far as being able to to be happy.
And I like Shakespeare's take on this. He was not
saying anything new, and this was in fact something that
character Hamlet said. And you always have to remember. A
character saying something does not necessarily mean the author means it. No,

(16:15):
but he says there's nothing good or bad, but thinking
makes it so, which of course is to say there's
nothing innately good or bad in anything that's going on.
It's our interpretation of it that makes it good or bad. Uh.
Thus the consciousness is the thing that allows us to
differentiate happy versus unhappy. This becomes more important in a

(16:37):
later part of our discussion in this episode, but it
just shows that these ideas have been around, and again,
Shakespeare didn't come up with that. He was voicing something
that the ancient Greeks had talked about ages before Shakespeare
came along. Uh. Then there's the hippocampus, which helps us
attach context to memories um. And furthermore, it gets damaged
by the release of large amounts of cortisol. So that's

(17:01):
really interesting as well, because that means that in a
in a heightened situation where cortisol is being released because
you are getting ready for fight or flight type of thing,
then presumably you might have difficulty recalling that situation well
in the future. Thus, or while it's going on, you

(17:22):
might have difficulty contextualizing what is what's really going on?
You might have it. It's part of why you sort
of freak out a little bit in those situations. Yeah,
it's also it's another good example of why eyewitness testimony
is something that we should be careful about, because memories
are weird things. A lot of times we end up
forming what we think was the actual memory of the

(17:43):
event that happened while it was happening afterward. Our brains
are not digital cameras, and every time we recall a memory,
we are changing it. Yeah. So I think that's a
little bit of a tangent, but important, I think Jonathan
rant time, Yes, exactly. So. Yeah, and it gets even
more complicated, right, This is just a tiny glimpse of

(18:04):
parts of the brain that are involved with our our
concept at least our modern concepts. These are kind of
referred to as the big ones, I think. But but
we don't know, Yeah, we don't. We don't even know
what we don't know, right, That's the that's the crazy
part of it, is that we don't know how far
away we are from getting a full understanding of the
workings of the brain. We know that it's far more

(18:26):
complex than what we are capable of explaining right now.
And when I say we, I mean humans as a whole,
not just not just two of us sitting at this
podcast table. That's already been clear from our previous episodes.
But no, people as a whole. We don't really know everything.
And so since we're just fearing all this out, uh,
it's it's impossible for us to say right now that

(18:49):
we could come up with a system that could manufacture
synthetic happiness on demand. But that is something that we've
you know, thought about. It's something that's in science fiction.
It's something that's there's their experiments with uh stimulating the
pleasure centers of the brain, granted, and we're about to
just talk about specific ways of doing that with humans.

(19:10):
But you know, we don't have that that ability, And
the question is if we ever come up with it,
would it really be meaningful. So in order to get
to that question, we should look at some ways that
we've kind of explored stimulating different parts of the brain
that are associated at least in some part with happiness.
UM so far, because this is absolutely a science that

(19:33):
is going on right now. In fact, in fact, there's
the first one we're talking about is the science that's
been around for a while in various formats, and we've
talked about on this show before, electrical stimulation of the brain.
You know, like we said, the brain is an electrochemical
organ and so the electro part means that if you
use some electricity, yeah, yeah, don't touch that, you never

(19:54):
know what's attached to. But uh so, we we are
seeing some people use electricity to treat depression. This is
not a new idea. It is the basis for electro
convulsive therapy, which is actually used for multiple types of therapy,
not just for depression. Um. And there's also deep brain stimulation,
which uses electrodes to deliver electricity to areas in the

(20:16):
brain believed to be associated with moods, specifically for depression. Again,
it can also be used for other types of treatments. UM. Now,
the big difference between the two is that deep brain stimulation,
as you would imagine, is invasive involve surgery. So you're
talking about drilling holes into a person's head, inserting wires
into their brain so that the wires terminate at the

(20:40):
point near the neurons you want to stimulate, and then
directing a charge at that specific area. All right, but
that's obviously a pretty high buy in for treating something. Ye.
Usually it's for people who are suffering from very serious ailments.
I mean, it might be something like Parkinson's. It's not

(21:00):
for treating moods. But I did read a study where
it was used to treat UM, someone who had a
very serious case of depression, to the point where, uh,
of course this could have been hyperbole, but it was
in popular science, and the author mentioned that after they
turned on the electrodes and delivered electricity to the um

(21:24):
two specific neurons in this woman's brain, she smiled. She
said that the room got brighter and that she could
actually recognize emotions on faces, and she said it was
the first time she had smiled in twenty years. Yeah,
it's a pretty powerful story. Whether or not there was
any embellishment there, I cannot say. But you know, again,
it's one of those things that says, hey, you know,

(21:44):
there is this this power in electricity to have a
fundamental effect on our brains. Yeah, and right, we we
have talked a little bit about the other one electric
convulsive therapy before that episode was augmenting the brain part
to the tech, and it published an aug if you'd
like to check it out. But just to summarize real quick,
it's currently considered a really a safe and effective way

(22:07):
to manage cases of severe depression where drugs haven't helped.
And it's it's not like in the movies. Okay, your
ear doc is gonna put you under general anesthesia and
give you muscle relaxers, So it's not traumatic the way
that you've probably seen it portray. It's not like such
or where it's used as the threatening American horror story.

(22:29):
Nothing like that. No. Um, I mean, you know, the
thing is is that we're not even sure why it
works like this. Theories range from that it changes blood
flow or or changes the brain's metabolism, to changing the
chemical release and uptake of stuff to the stimulation of
nerve cells and pathway growth. Um. But but but right,

(22:52):
it's it's definitely a therapy that is good in these
extreme cases. It does tend to affect patients memory, so
it's really only a last sorts, right. We are talking
about really severe cases here. But it shows that there
may be a way for us to find a means
of electrically stimulating the brain in a safe manner that

(23:12):
can dramatically change someone's life who might be suffering from depression. Now,
this is not the same as saying we're going to
end up with chips in our heads that will make
us perpetually happy. I don't know, i'd kind of take that. Yeah, well,
I mean there's there's always the story about the the
experiment where uh, scientists hooked up electrodes to the pleasure

(23:34):
center of monkey's brains and gave him access to a
button and they just kept on pressing the until they
basically died. Yeah, but we'll we'll get into a little
bit more of the science fiction ee kind of uh
philosophy behind the idea of synthetic happiness. But there is
another way of getting synthetic happiness, right, Yeah, we just
talked about the electro portion of electrochemicals, So let's talk

(23:55):
about the chemical Yeah, we're talking drugs. So drugs, doesn't
we we don't just mean illicit drugs, although clearly those
leap to mind when you're talking about mind altering or
mood altering substances. Uh So, some of them they alter
moods by stimulating dopamine production, like cocaine. I looked at
a chart that showed dopamine production from something like having

(24:19):
seeing an old relative for the first time in ages,
someone you really love, and then comparing that to the
amount of dopamine someone on cocaine would experience, and it
was a dramatic difference, I would imagine. So otherwise we
would just look at pictures of our loved ones whenever
wanted to get high. Right, yeah, that would be like that.
That's what all the SNL writers were doing back in
the seventies, is just flipping through photo books. But they

(24:42):
also there are drugs that introduced the sense of euphoria,
like endorphins, right right, Ope, it's like morphine do this
by connecting to the same receptors that accept your body's
natural endorphins, so they just work along the same Pathwaysically speaking,
these these effects are real. I mean, they really will
have these mood altering effects on people, but they also

(25:04):
are temporary, meaning that when the drug wears off, then
you're back to where you were. Uh. They can be addictive,
and I didn't mention this in the in the note,
but I mean it's something that we all know. And
not only can they be addictive, but you can build
up resistance to them. And thus you end up having
to take more and probably getting more of those negative
side effects and possibly reaching levels of toxicity. Uh. There

(25:26):
are a lot of reasons why it's not the best
way of trying to achieve happiness. UH. Correct, it could
be very important for treating very serious illnesses. Oh, certainly, certainly. UM.
Also note that really any substances you take into your body,
including foods, contain chemicals that can impact your brain. UM.

(25:47):
Some foods help your body produce more of these happy chemicals,
like spinach turkey we mentioned earlier, or bananas um, because
stuff like follate and tripped to fan go into creating seratonin. UM.
Also caffeine contain an alcohol, which are a relatively common use.
Drugs all do have effects on a the central nervous system,
and be can stimulate the release of stuff like serotonin

(26:09):
and dopamine. Right. And then we have psychiatric drugs right right.
These are the regulated chemicals that usually require prescription from
a certified health professional of one kind or another, and
they're used to treat diagnosed conditions like depression and anxiety. Uh.
They're going to be interacting with your brain and its chemicals,
sometimes frequently in ways that we haven't really figured out

(26:31):
yet to basically just improve your mood. Yeah, Um, lots
of them, like tricyclics and s s r s that
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors will help serotonin find the post
snaptic receptors where they'll help you feel happy. Um, at
least partially by preventing the serotonin from being absorbed by

(26:52):
other cells. So again, these are really useful tools for
patients who are suffering from depression. Not meant to be
something too like a happy pill. It's still not an
on switch, I mean, you know, they although they do.
Recent research is indicated that even a single dose of
some of these drugs can start affecting the way that

(27:13):
your brain works, but usually it takes a couple of
weeks to build them up in your system. They're usually
recommended along with a course of therapy of one kind
or another, more emotional behavioral therapy, and and they're they're
absolutely not a cure all for unhappiness, right. Yeah, it
always makes me think of um, the Kids in the Hall.
They had a feature length film called Brain Candy, where

(27:37):
the main part of the story is the development of
an antidepressant called gleiman necks, which just induces happiness, eventually
inducing catatonia. So not exactly a perfect example. Um, but yeah,
it actually does play into the same warning that we're giving,
is that that this is something that is important, but

(27:58):
isn't the the happy hill. Uh well, then then there's
other stuff that can actually make a real improvement to
your mood that doesn't involve shocking your brain or taking drugs.
Oh sure, just exercise, I mean, okay, of course it's
good for you. We all learned that at the Apple
six Apple iPhone six releases. Um, now that I know

(28:19):
I can strap an Apple product to my wrist and
move around, I'll be happy. Uh huh um No, No,
but exercise does genuinely help make you happier in a
few different ways. Um. First of all, it increases your
body's production of antibodies and t cells, which help fight
off bodily invaders like bacteria viruses that can make you sick. Uh.

(28:39):
Not being sick is pretty cool. Yeah, being sick is
a real detriment to happiness. Yes. Um, it lowers the
levels of cortisol in your bloodstream, that stress hormone that
we've mentioned a couple of times. Before here um. And
also it stimulates the production of endorphins, as we talked
about at the top of the show. Right, So, out
of the three of these, the exercise is the one

(29:02):
that I can heartily recommend because it certainly has a
suite of benefits and so it's one of those things
that can contribute to your overall happiness without having the
detriment of requiring surgery, I mean, or or your memory
or eating a lot of spinach. Right, yeah, I mean

(29:23):
I love spinach, but yeah, yeah, no, I mean I'm
no Popeye, but at any rate, So with these synthetic ways,
not not the exercise one, but the drugs and electricity,
where we're artificially introducing happiness, would they work. And this
kind of ends up getting to the question of what

(29:45):
is happiness? Right? So in the video I mentioned we
could talk about a world where let's say you have
a very tough existence. Uh, you know, day to day
life is hard, and maybe there's very few things that
are rewarding to you in your life, but you have
access to the happy switch and you can turn on
the switch and you feel genuine joy and euphoria, but

(30:07):
your life doesn't change at all. So you still have
this tough existence. Does is that true happiness? And that's
a question that I think is subjective. It depends upon
someone's view of what happiness really is. Yeah. Yeah, we're
ranging into the slightly less scientific concept philosophy and morality

(30:29):
and all of that. So for me, this is my
own personal point of view. I would want to try
and have a life where I am putting all the
things I can in order so that I can pursue
a happy lifestyle as opposed to having a switch that
just makes me feel happy. Even if objectively, if I
were able to remove myself from that situation, I would think, Wow,

(30:49):
that's one miserable guide down there. But that's me personally,
because it goes beyond the chemical. For me, I tend
to be very pragmatic in most cases, and this one case,
I think, now I kind of want the what would
feel like genuine happiness to me because to me, this
does not feel like it would be genuine. Um. But again,
it's all depends on your definition. Well. Yeah, and and

(31:11):
you know, there there are everyone I think on the
planet is going to have a slightly different answer to
that question. Um. But there are certainly many people who
are pursuing that kind of thought, especially through the field
of positive psychology. Yeah, this is an interesting approach to psychology.
It is an attempt to have an empirical study of happiness,

(31:32):
but not the biological side that we've already talked about,
rather the elements of life that would make someone feel
happy by kicking into gear those biological processes. So the
biological processes are important, but really what the positive psychology
is looking at is what are the things in life
that give us these feelings? Um, you know, what sort

(31:54):
of activities do we need to do, what sort of
experiences do we need to have? What kind of life
can we sue to have a happier existence? Sure? So, well,
I mean, you know, for for example, I'm sure that
that exercise plays a part in positive psychology. I mean,
even though it is a chemical process in your body,
but it's it's ranging into that well, help your help,
help your brain help itself exactly. Yeah, it's it's one

(32:17):
of the things identified as this makes you feel better, right,
So that falls right into the sort of stuff they
You know that the studies look at people who have
different lifestyles and kind of judge happiness, not obviously Taking
an empirical approach to any kind of social science is difficult.
It's challenging. It's not impossible, but it is really challenging

(32:39):
because it largely relies upon things like surveys, which require
people to give honest answers and generally cooperate. Yeah. Yeah,
and it's it's a little it's a little trickier than saying, Uh,
you know, what is the force of gravity on this planet? Well,
we dropped this thing. It felt at this rate the
acceleration was such. Thus it is this Like, that's something
you can pirically described through an observation. Uh, what makes

(33:03):
people happy gets a little more fuzzy, and it is
by a large subjective. Now, there are large broad categories
that some researchers in positive psychology have identified as being
important for the pursuit of happiness. And I should say
that I'm going to talk about three different types of uh,
lifestyles or life pursuits that some people in positive psychology. Yes,

(33:28):
of course, as in any scientific field, especially the softer
scientific fields, there is disagreement on on exactly what these
should be and what they mean. But but but what
are these basic three things? Okay, you've got the pleasant life. Now,
this is the idea that you are spending your time
seeking experiences and relationships to trigger your sense of satisfaction.

(33:50):
So this would be the people who, uh, you know,
they go on an adventure holiday so they can go
to someplace they've never been before and experience the the
local wildlife, for the local cultures, to really immerse themselves
in something new, and they get satisfaction from that. Or
they like to go out and make friends. They take
time to get to know people, and they gain satisfaction

(34:12):
from forming these sort of relationships. It also falls into
the same category as people who buy stuff, you know,
the retail therapy where they they see something really cool
and they buy it, and there's that reward center again,
the fact that you get something cool that you think
is really neat. You do feel a sense of pleasure
from this. Uh, this tends to be the one that

(34:34):
most people are Most of the researchers I've read have
said is the most fleeting. The idea that once you
do achieve whatever it is you're doing, whether it's buying
a brand new toy or going on that great vacation
or getting that achievement unlocked. Yes, yeah, the gradually it
wears off and you have to do it again in
order to you know, you can't just do one amazing

(34:57):
thing and then you're happy all the rest of your life.
You have to continue with. So then it becomes your
life becomes Forrest Gump, where you're just constantly of course
with him. It just happened by luck, which goes back
to that earlier definition of happy. But you know, you
would be pursuing this all right, or your your level
grinding basically, and and also beyond that, there are people

(35:18):
who have said, well, and it's it's not even as
simple as this, because you would need to seek out
experiences that, uh, that reflect who you are as a person.
So Lauren, for example, let's say that you despise travel.
Let's just say that you hate the idea of travel.
Then pushing yourself to go and travel and have these
experiences might not result in you being happy, even if

(35:41):
the experience is legitimately amazing. Your feelings about travel might
be so negative, right, I might be so stressed out
about flying or about um, you know, getting places on time,
or about interacting with a new environment I'm unfamiliar, or
leaving behind people that you really like and you know
that's that's where you really place or exactly. So that

(36:01):
sort of thing could mean that you don't come away
with this happy feeling. However, if you indulge in things
that you really do enjoy. Let's say that you just
love reading a new book as often as possible, then
something as simple as going out and finding a book
you haven't read before could bring you true joy. So
you're petting kittens, just going on a quest to pet

(36:22):
every pet all the kittens that could be that could
be it. And that's the thing is that it all
depends upon you picking the right sort of experiences. It's
not just to have experiences, it's to have the right
kind based upon who you are. Then you have the
good life. Now, the good life is a great song
by Wheezer, but it's also when you are feeling really

(36:44):
engaged in the activities that you're doing. Oh, I'm serious,
it's a great song, shaking booty, it's a great song anyway.
So good life is all about being really engaged with
the things you do, whether that's hobbies you do or
if it's your job. It's fantastic because it means you
get real satisfaction and you feel a sense of well

(37:04):
being about the work you do. So for those of
us who are fortunate to have jobs that give us
a lot of this, I mean, I'm not saying that
my job is free of stress, y'all, because because it
comes with a whole, big old pile of it, but
it does. Know what, our amazing dream jobs are are amazing, amazing,
and the fact that we're able to do it is
something that gives me a real sense of satisfaction. This

(37:26):
tends to be viewed as being more sustainable than the
pleasant life because if you land something or you find
something that gives you pleasure whenever you engage in it,
whether it's a hobby or a job or whatever, then
that tends to be something. Unless it's something that is
reliant upon a depleted resource, it's something that you can
repeatedly continue to doing. Right, um, you know, maybe being

(37:49):
part of an improv group or gardening or other activities
like that that that have a larger arc of work
to pay off. Yeah, and that's one of those things
that uh, you know, it's it's easy to say is attainable,
but I realized that, I mean, I worked for seven
years in a job that did not give me that

(38:09):
kind of reward. So it's it's something that again tends
to you know, you might go back to that lucky
definition of happy, sure, but it's it's also highly individual
and and a thing that you can work towards. Yes, yes,
so certainly don't take any discouragement from what I'm saying.
I would love to hear that all of our listeners
have found amazing either hobbies or jobs or both that

(38:33):
really give them that kind of satisfaction. The third life
is the meaningful life. And all of these names sound
pretty pretentious. I will admit a meaningful life is all
about participating in and contributing to something larger than yourself.
So that might be your community, or it might be
a cause that you really believe in. Maybe you get
involved in, like a nonprofit organization that you really feel

(38:55):
is doing good work, and you gain satisfaction and well
being from that. Sure, maybe raising children or adopting those
kittens that you like petting so well, yeah, although there
are some studies that suggests that the whole raising of
children thing contributes more to unhappiness than happiness, I'm serious.
I think that the two singles well, that the two
childless people sending in front of these microphones should maybe

(39:18):
not comment to I'm just saying what the studies say.
I don't make any I don't make any guesses on
my own. Um. They do say that marriage married people
tend to be happier than single people, but people without
kids tend to be less unhappy than people with kids.
And I think a large part of that is just
that when you're a parent, you have a lot of
responsibilities and things to that that weigh on you. It

(39:41):
doesn't mean that children can't be a joy. Obviously they
can be, but there are a lot of I take
a lot of joy from other people's children. I do too,
especially when they take their children away. I take a
lot of joy at that point. No, no, no, you
hang out, you have a great time, and then you
give them back, right, yeah, You load them up on
sugar and give them some loud toys, and then you
hand them back to mom and dad. Uh uh yeah.
I hope my sister is not listening to this podcast.

(40:04):
She knows what my plans are. It's okay, so at
any rate, Um, there these are three broad categories, and again,
not all positive psychology researchers and scientists really fall into
the saying that these are like the three big ones.
In fact, some of them break it down into more
some of them dismiss the idea entirely, but thought it
was an interesting approach because it does kind of help

(40:25):
define happiness uh and the the things that give us
pleasure into different uh, different categories that we can easily
talk about. So again, it's really hard to talk about
happiness in an empirical, scientific way. What gives me a
meaningful experience may not apply to anyone else. Maybe when

(40:46):
I travel to a destination that seems completely mundane to
everyone else, for some reason, it has an attachment to me.
Maybe it reminds me of something from my childhood, or
there's just something there that I really get attached to.
But someone else could go to that same location and
feel nothing. There's nothing wrong with either of those scenarios,
but it does make it hard to talk about empirically.

(41:08):
We can't say, like, if you go to this place
on the map, you'll be happy. And that's another one
of the issues, right, is that everyone wants to know
the answer of what will make me happy, and that
unfortunately the answer lies inside you. Yes, and don't. That
doesn't mean that, you know, you have to go all
Temple a doom and do the whole callieba thing. That's
I know, it's not not necessarily recommended, although you know,

(41:30):
if you feel like that's your true I'm not going
to tell you. But no, philosophically, we're saying inside of you.
But it's also interesting that a lot of the positive
psychology findings seem to reinforce some folk wisdom like money
can't buy happiness. This is where things get even more complicated.
So money can't buy happiness? What's that about? So again
getting into the idea of using money to buy things

(41:52):
to make you happy, that sort of stuff. It's high. Yeah,
and you have to keep on doing it, and that's
settled for most of us. The limited resource uh and
is not a game you can play indefinitely. Uh. But
it is interesting that money can in fact help stave
off unhappiness, which not a huge surprise. Right. If you're

(42:12):
if you're, if you're, if you can't provide for yourself
and your loved ones, then of course that's going to
make you less happy. Absolutely, you're going to be under
an intense amount of anxiety and stress. Uh, it is
very difficult, difficult to pursue a happy lifestyle when you
cannot provide for yourself or your end or your loved ones.
Um So. Daniel Kaneman wrote that in the United States,

(42:35):
happiness levels off though incomes around seventy dollars per year,
because at that income range, you can pretty much meet
your basic needs that you would. With that you can
buy happiness past. You can at least stave off unhappiness
or stave off the things that would require you to
be worried on a day to day basis about your existence.

(42:57):
Right you you have enough money to provide food, uh,
medical treatment if necessary, house, that kind of thing, or
at least a shelter of some sort. But then found
that if you go beyond the seventy five dollars, it
doesn't contribute to more happiness. It's not that, you know,
the scale continues to go up. So if you add

(43:17):
another hundred thousand to that and you're making a hundred
seventy five thousand dollars a year, you're not suddenly a
hundred thousand dollars happier than the seventy in person. But
I'm sure that there's other studies that would argue with
that finding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think a lot
of it depends upon how you frame the question. And
this is again going back to that fuzzy soft science approach.

(43:38):
It It all really is dependent upon your methodology. And
if you ask a question one way in one study
in another way in another study, you could ask the
same people and get questions different enough to jump to
opposite conclusions. So you can say, we surveyed some of
the wealthiest people in the world, and they are happier
than anyone's. Well, we surveyed those same happiest are met

(44:00):
wealthiest people in the world, and they say they're no
happier one day to the next. And then you get
into this oh yeah yeah. And and there there is,
by the way, an entire branch of scientific study devoted
to figuring out how to ask questions as empirically as
possible in all of these wibbly wobbly kind of fields. Yeah.
So there's a study that Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

(44:24):
did that suggests that the wealthy are more satisfied with
their lives than the rest of us. And when we
say the wealthy, they were talking about people who are
making like, you know, millions of dollars or at least
several hundred thousand dollars. Uh. Then you have Coneman's approach
where he said that it leveled off after seventy five dollars. Uh.

(44:44):
They said the discrepancy may come down to the nature
of those questions. Knomen was focusing on everyday events like
how do you feel from one day to the next,
Are you happier? Are you are you consistently happy? Do
you have your ups and downs? Whereas Stevenson and Wolfers
were looking at broader questions about life satisfaction. Do you
have the ability to pursue the things you want to do? Uh?

(45:05):
And that ability to pursue things that you want to
do is both a blessing and a curse. So researcher
Robert Kenney did a study on really wealthy people. He
has cut off was twenty million dollars of assets. Yeah,
so we're talking about people who have got some cash
to burn, and he found that they had greater temporal
and spatial freedom, meaning that they had the time and

(45:27):
ability to pretty much do whatever they wanted to where
they wanted to. They had the money where they could
if they wanted to travel the world for a full
year without ever you know, eating at the same place
or sleeping at the same place twice. They could totally
do that. But with this freedom came so many options
that a lot of people would become paralyzed by all
the options. They wouldn't know what to do. They the

(45:48):
world was open to them, and with all of that
unending possibility came the intense pressure of well, if I
do this one thing, then I'm not doing all these
other things. So it's the same sort of argument you
get when you have uh Like, let's say that you
are given a choice between three options or a choice
between ten options. It maybe that the people who are

(46:11):
given the choice between three options are happier with their
decision even though they had less variability, because they're only
missing out on two other things and they can feel
reasonably certain that the thing they picked is yes, the
best friend. The more options you have, the more you
start that doubt starts to creep in, like, well what
if I had picked this other thing. I had a

(46:31):
discussion with how Stuff Works editor Scott Benjamin this morning,
where we use the specific example of menus, and that
the more menu items you have, the more you start
to doubt whatever it was you chose. Even if what
you ate was delicious to you, you're still going to
be doubting it. We ended up settling on the Cheesecake
Factory as being the chief. I was about to say,

(46:52):
I sometimes the Cheesecake Factory feels like a circle of
hell to me because I just look at the menu
and I'm like, I can't I can't even handle that.
I brought it up, and Scott immediately said, that's what
I was going to say too, because I we're I
think we're all in agreement. And Scott said that he
had read or he had talked to us server and
was told that if you look at all the items
on the menu, and I think that includes everything, there

(47:14):
are two d choices I don't even understand, right, which
means that anything you pick like even when you're thinking
about drink, appetizer, meal, and dessert, there's still a huge
number of things you weren't able to try. Well. Apparently
the wealthy suffer this terrible hell that you speak of
on a day to day basis because they have the
freedom to do whatever they want, and that paralyzes them

(47:35):
into not doing anything or to choose something and doubt
their choice. So it's a different type of stress that
they go under, very different from what those of us
who cannot afford this kind of lifestyle. But but that
stress is still real and it's still impacts happiness. Oh sure,
of course. So it maybe that there is a quote
unquote happy medium where we can have this freedom, an

(48:00):
enough freedom to be able to do something interesting without
having all the options in the world open to us, sure,
and also without potentially burning yourself out on buying stuff.
I mean, because there's only so much stuff you can buy.
First of all, even if you're wealthy, like eventually, unless
you're gonna become a hoarder, you're not going to be
able to continuously buy something whenever you're feeling unhappy. Anyone

(48:22):
who has heard of the whole retail therapy thing knows this.
You know, you get this, and it's it's something that's
easy to indulge in. So it's something that a lot
of people turn to. I am guilty of this. Yeah, definitely.
I've gone on like, let's just see what games are
available on Amazon I have I have or Steam Gosh,
Steam is so boy. I've bought games that I've yet

(48:46):
to play on Steam on multiple occasions because I thought, oh,
this will be fun, and then really, what the fun
part was was the acquiring of the game. I haven't
even played the game. So but yeah, wears off and
you can't keep doing it indefinitely. Also, I suspect that
some of the discrepancy between these studies might have something
to do with that that concept of happiness being a

(49:10):
different quality for everyone, of different things making different people happy,
and it being basically impossible to compare one person's idea
of happy to another person. How can you empirically measure
how happy a trip makes you versus a really cool
new Matt lip gloss makes me? I mean, you know,

(49:31):
don't discount the lip gloss for me here, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. Well, how how happy that lip gloss makes you?
Incus me make at my desk? Me too? So say
we all that we work with a video studio and
four K cameras, terrifying that stuff on, Yeah, I work

(49:53):
with that on a regular basis. But now you're exactly right,
you know, without precisely defining what element of happy this
you're looking at, that alone makes the question too complicated, right,
Because it may be what is your overall satisfaction with
your life. For a wealthy person, that might be very high.
But there may be other elements that they associate with

(50:14):
happiness that they do not possess, and so it again.
It's another reason why a lot of people don't like
the term happiness to describe this, because it's it's so
broad and encompassing that you could do really well in
one area and really be really deficient in another, and
thus you come away with it saying I am not happy,
but I am this other thing, like I might be

(50:36):
very healthy. That should be part of it. So very
complicated issue. Uh. Now, the hope is that positive psychology
will help us identify more and more of these factors
and come to an understanding. And it may even be
this one to one understanding where each person comes to
his or her own conclusions about what is important for
them as a person to have a satisfying, fulfilling, uh

(51:00):
and ultimately happy life. And I hope that that is
the case. It is. I actually enrolled in a mook
positive psychology, so I am I'm still following it. It
had just started, so I didn't have a whole lot
of opportunity to read up on it very much yet,
but it is really interesting. The people who teach it

(51:21):
are uh, they are very qualified psychologists. Um, so it's
not coming across as like welcome to the commune, here's
your here's your patch for vegetable sort of thing. But
it is really interesting to see how that that plays out.
And uh uh, I'm my hope is that in the
future we're going to be able to provide for the
basic necessities for as many people as possible and give

(51:44):
us the opportunity to pursue the things that make us happy.
So it's it's one of those things that I think
is pretty far off, and it is an idealistic, optimistic
view of the future. It's kind of that Star Trek
version the Federation kind of concept. But also I think
it'll get easier to mitigate people's unhappiness once we work

(52:05):
out that that science angle of figuring out how the
brain is interacting with the body and all of the
chemicals and all the electricity, and see what we can
do to at the very least in in in the
cases of of diagnosable conditions, really help people out in
the in the best gentlest, least side effective ways possible. Right, Yeah,

(52:27):
this idea of of when we have distilled the things
that really cause distress in people who who should not
be feeling right exactly, the people who are are are
feeling more cute distressed than they otherwise might, right, and
being able to alleviate that. But I absolutely do look
forward to that future as well that I think anything
where we're talking about helping people that always is the

(52:49):
future that I think that is. That's the one I
want to see and it is what keeps me being
an optimist even though you know, again I say being
an optimist doesn't mean that you put blinders on. Being
an optimist to me means that you look out for
the challenges, you acknowledge that they exist, and then you
figure out how to meet them and get beyond them.
So I encourage everyone out there to really critically think

(53:13):
about the things that make you happy, the things that
give you satisfaction, the things that provide for you joy,
and to really you know, embrace that. Yeah. Yeah, and
you know, if if you have any any really great
ones are or any very particular ones that that you
think are are pretty unique to you, then we want
to hear about them and maybe maybe you say nothing

(53:34):
in the world makes me happier than racing my pet
box turtle I want to hear it. Yeah, yeah, definitely,
Or or if you have any life hacks about that
kind of thing, yeah, I mean maybe not relating to
box turtles, right right, just happiness in general. Yes, yeah,
that that clarification is appreciated. Although if you have any
life hacks of box turtle racing out here, that too, definitely.

(53:55):
So in order to get in touch with us, since
you're coming up with all these great ideas for you,
should let us know what you think on Twitter, Facebook,
Google Plus. We have the handle FW thinking over at
Twitter and Google Plus. Just search FW thinking over at Facebook.
Our page will pop right up. Join the conversation, tell
us what makes you happy, and we will be happy

(54:16):
to read every single email. I think you have any
suggestions for future episodes that would also make us happy.
This means we don't have to come up with them.
Let us know your thoughts and we will talk to
you again really sooner. For more on this topic in
the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought

(54:46):
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