The New Happy

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I don’t have to tell you that people are scared right now. You can feel it in the air, in the way people move, in the way their voices tighten when they talk about the future—if they dare talk about it at all. Anxiety isn’t just a passing state anymore; it’s the wallpaper of modern life. The headlines scream, the sirens wail, and somehow, we’re all supposed to just go about our business like nothing’s on fire.

Last week’s Cary Harrison Files made that crystal clear. I heard it in your voices—the exhaustion, the uncertainty, the quiet plea hidden beneath the words: What do we do? Where do we go from here? It wasn’t just about the economy, or the politics, or the news cycle that seems hell-bent on making sure nobody ever gets a full night’s sleep again. It was deeper than that. It was the creeping sense that we’re more divided, more isolated, more… alone than ever before.

And that’s why we have to talk about this. Because if we’re not careful, fear will do what it always does—it’ll turn us against each other. It’ll make us suspicious, cynical, convinced that we’re on our own. And that’s the real danger. Not just what’s happening out there, but what it’s doing to us in here.

So tonight, let’s push back. Let’s talk about what actually holds us together. About what we can do—right now, today—to make sure fear doesn’t win. Because if last week proved anything, it’s that none of us are as alone as we think.

Cary Harrison: And Stephanie, let's just cut to the chase.

Cary Harrison: Why are so many people miserable when we've never had more ways to, let's say, optimize happiness?

Stephanie Harrison: I think because we have lost sight of the fact that happiness comes from our relationships.

Stephanie Harrison: As you mentioned in your introduction, we are deeply disconnected from one another.

Stephanie Harrison: And connection is the pathway to happiness.

Stephanie Harrison: And unfortunately, this sort of truth has been really lost in the ways in which our society has warped this idea that happiness comes from, as you said, optimizing yourselves, pursuing more and more, getting certain possessions or achievements.

Stephanie Harrison: And I think that in order for us to find our way out of this moment, we need to remember that true happiness comes from being connected to other people.

Cary Harrison: You know, we talk about old happy versus new happy.

Cary Harrison: You do a book.

Cary Harrison: Is it just another way of saying that we've been doing it wrong all along?

Stephanie Harrison: Yeah.

Stephanie Harrison: It's, you know, old happy is my term to try to collect a bunch of different ideas together into one to make it easier to talk about.

Stephanie Harrison: And essentially, old happy teaches us that happiness is something that we get through perfecting ourselves, achieving more and more and isolating ourselves from other people.

Stephanie Harrison: And these messages are incredibly pervasive and have been conditioned into us through things like institutions and the media and our relationships with our families and ultimately what i'm striving to help people to do is realize that old happy doesn't work we have reams and reams of scientific data that show that these pursuits don't make us feel good they actually make us feel bad and ultimately they end up contributing to a lot of the bigger problems that our society is facing as well

Cary Harrison: Ray, on the phone and some others, we're gonna go to you in just a minute.

Cary Harrison