May 3, 2025 • 16 mins
Flourishing or Floundering? Gary and Shannon dive into the science of human well-being with a quirky bio-statistician who's trying to put numbers to happiness! Discover why community matters more than your smartphone, why young adults are struggling, and why Indonesians might just have the secret to stress-free living. Packed with laughs, pop culture references, and surprising insights, this weekend fix will make you rethink what it means to truly thrive.
Love the show? Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review! Stay dry everyone, blessings!
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Love the show? Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review! Stay dry everyone, blessings!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Hey, here we go for a nice another weekend edition
of the Gary and Shannon Weekend Fix.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Comfy and here.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
Beautiful on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
My gosh, the sun is shining? Is it shining? Where
you are shining? In my heart?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
It is now?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You're already upset about what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
No, I'm not. I am not. So this is we're
doing the Weekend Fix.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So this is an episode of the podcast basically that
you do not hear throughout the course of the week.
I mean, twenty hours of sitting in a room and
talking to each other is apparently not enough. We still
have other things that we could say to each other.
So you found this your face? Sorry, sorry, we.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Still have other things you can say to each other.
I'm just going to say that out loud and then
it will be true.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
There is a bio statistician. He's fun at parties, but
he's from the University of Chicago, and Tyler Vanderweel has
talked about how scientists define and measure well being, human
well being? Like, what does it mean for us to
be well? How do we measure it? Can you put
(01:21):
a number on it? Can you judge it by scale?
Can you group you break it down by different demographics
and figure out who is the most well off of
all of us?
Speaker 4 (01:30):
And not financially.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Necessarily, but just we're just we're just good, We're well,
We're everything is in the green.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What's his name again?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Jacob Tyler?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Jay Van I knew there was a Jay involved somewhere well.
His first job at the University of Chicago involved him
looking into studies that measured human well being, and he
was very dissatisfied with this. He thumbed through all of
those studies on specific measures of clinical symptoms like depression
(02:03):
or happiness, anxiety. He had seen that researchers had tracked
objective markers health, blood pressure, things like that sleep, how
well you sleep, economic conditions as well.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And what's his name again?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Tyler?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
JV Tyler J Tyler Tyler Tyler Tyler. There's a president Tyler.
Wasn't there there was back in the day?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Anyway, Maybe that's next week. We'll just go through the
president's names. There's there's one name Calvin.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Wait Tyler was the last name, though, wasn't it John Tyler? Okay?
Where was he in the lineup? Like seventh?
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Or I never learned that that.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You didn't learn that song.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I did not learn that song either. What did we learn?
Absolutely nothing? A lot of nothing. I do have a
book that has a bunch of fun facts, like on
each president, and it's fascinating and I read it from
time to time. I think I've read it about ninety
seven times, but it.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Doesn't have anything about the order that they came in.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It might, it might, but it's more like anecdotes, you know,
like people who broke the toilet and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Anyway, what's his name again? Tyler?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Tyler felt that these studies that he flipped through when
he got to the University of Chicago that they missed
a holistic picture, that they were just looking at measurable
data right when it comes to the meaning and purpose
in life, and measurable data is very important. But he
has defined a more holistic approach to seeing how well
(03:35):
people are doing. And they're not calling it happiness or
well being or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
They're calling it. Flourishing, flourishing, flourishing, it's.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Understood as a state in which all aspects of a
person's life are good, to which I say, when is
that one hundred percent the case? Like when are you
firing on all cylinders when it comes to work, relationship,
physical stuff? You know, eating, drinking, smoking, whatever it is
(04:08):
you enjoy doing all of the things.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
You can never be at one hundred on all those categories, can't. Well,
it seems like having gone through this and remembering this
guy is a biostatistician. So you're talking about a guy
who tries to take some sometimes squishy topics like human
well being and put numbers to it or squish it
into a box and then try to describe what you've got.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And that's his struggle, Tyler's struggle. Now that I've learned
his name, Tyler J.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Tyler J.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Vander Walden, vander Wheel, vander Wheel, I.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Knew there was a W.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
There always is after vander But anyway, he is trying
to science his way.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Through what you can't science your way through.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And I think he's that quantify something that is more
qualitative in nature exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So he and his team have decided that.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
They would look at the non measurable elements of perfect
a person's life, and just to just get it down
to what it is. It is what we talk about
all the time on this show, and it's contact with people.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, he teamed up with another professor at Baylor University,
Byron Johnson, and they wanted to calibrate the measure of flourishing,
human flourishing in order to study it more deeply. And
their big takeaway, big takeaway in a new report that
just came out was community is crucial. That when we
(05:45):
get something wrong, especially here in the United States or
Western culture, there's a push towards you deal with it,
You rub some dirt on it, You get back in
the game, take care of whatever mistakes you make yourself,
and get back in there.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
We've been set up for the fat past five you
can argue ten years. We have been set up to isolate.
We have been set up to isolate with our phones.
Who do you need? You don't need anybody. You don't
need to go talk to anybody at the store, or
you don't need to talk to anybody at the takeout
place or at the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You just need your phone to order that.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Hey, leave it at the door. You don't need anybody.
The world's telling you you don't need anybody anymore. That's
exactly what they're telling you. COVID told us you don't
need anyone. In fact, other people are bad you. Not
only do not need them, they'll kill you.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
They will kill you.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I afraid you can swear on this pod. But but
we have been told to isolate. Everything is isolating. Do
you want entertainment? You don't need to go talk to
other people or have fun with other people. You can
just be on your phone. You know, the difference between
facetiming a friend and actually being in the room and
falling into giggle fits is huge. And so that and
(07:03):
it's hard because it's comfortable to isolate. It's so comfortable.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Just get into your bed and be comfy. And I
do it all the time, and I freaking love it,
and I think that it's making me happy, and it
might make me happy, but it's not the totality of happiness.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So you need other people for the totality.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That same that same feeling is echoed in.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
In alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
A lot of times you think to yourself, this is
a great feeling, I really like this feeling, whatever it is,
but you know doing it is not helping you. It's
not it's not healthy for you to do it on
a regular basis, or to only do that, or to
only do that, or to use that as the way
to make yourself happy again as opposed to doing something
that's that's uh creative or healthier whatever.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Only As we all learned in Star Wars, happiness comes
from within is where the light is.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Did we learn that? I don't know. I made that
up to get interested.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
The Global Flourish Study is what they say is the
gauge how people from different countries have flourished over the
course of five years. And they focus on six key
areas happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning
and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and then
financial immaterial security, and then answers to questioning. Each of
(08:19):
these areas tallied up, you get a snapshot, you add,
you put a number to it, and then you generally
determine how well people in those countries or locations or
demographics how they're flourishing. They found something that I thought
was kind of interesting that in general, people between the
ages of eighteen and twenty nine are not flourishing because
(08:41):
they talk about anxiety. The implications of this raise questions
about what we're doing to prioritize the well being of
our younger Lisa.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
It's not flourishing from eighteen to twenty nine because you're
worried about what am I going to end up doing?
Who am I going to end up with? How am
I going to make money? Am I gonna make enough
of it? Am I gonna be happy? I mean, it's
a constant cycle of those thoughts over and over again,
and to where you don't have any time to just
like relax and think everything's going to be fine.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
But you you specifically didn't then sink into unhappiness you didn't.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Let go of. But I still have work to do.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I may not be flourishing, but all of these questions
that are rattling around my head about the future or
how I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Motivates me to do something right. And I don't That's
the part that I think we're not doing for anybody else.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
To go back to finding Nemo, you know what I mean,
and keep swimming.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
It's okay, Well that's a movie reference that actually works.
I will acceps.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I've got another reference.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Okay, is it a movie reference.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It's a show reference.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
A documentary, all right, the documentary about Scamanda. Remember Scamanda's
I didn't see.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
It was a.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Podcast and a documentary. It's worth a watch if you're
isolating this weekend.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
But you're not.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You're not flourishing if you choose not to flourish anyway.
So I was watching with my girlfriends, not isolating, and
there was this one scene of this one. It's in
the beginning. I'm not ruining anything here, but there. To
make a long story short, Amanda is this woman who
gets involved in a megachurch up in the Bay Area
(10:21):
in San Francisco Bay Area, and she lies to everyone
and says that she has cancer because she loves the
attention that she gets and it's awful.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
One of the women who she.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Who was entrenched in this big lie, said she didn't
have money to give to Amanda. So what she would
do is she would donate platelets and like to the
point where she couldn't donate platelets anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
And my girlfriend goes, oh, she just wanted community.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And it was funny at the time because I was like,
that's exactly what that girl wanted, and she's like out
of platelets now because she wanted community. But it's true,
it's like this intrinsic need were born with to want community, right,
and we have been cut off from community in so
many ways, whether it's through the phones or post COVID
(11:12):
or lack of religion or any sort of you know group.
Even when it comes down to streaming shows and not
watching them at the same time anymore, there's community there. Hey,
did you see Seinfeld last night or what have you?
There's a forty year old reference. But you know what
I mean, Like, we used to do more things together
all the time, and now we don't do anything together.
(11:35):
Everything is on your own, and it seems so attractive
and so easy and so easy to stick to that well.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
And the other thing about it being younger people saying
they're not flourishing. It seems like you have to not
flourish in order to know that you are flourishing when
it does happen in your life.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You know, I know the people that have calmed the
f down and have flourished, right, I mean, they because
they're okay with not being go getters and driven people.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Like they're half where they are.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They're happy people just naturally, but you have to.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
It's similar to money.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
If you have any amount of money, you don't appreciate
it unless you've not had the amount of if you
grew up like my kids grew up, I had a
stable job.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Since they've been alive, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
You should have hit the crack pipe and showed those
kids what true happiness is.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Well, but they don't remember because they weren't around. They
don't remember my wife and I scraping by and barely
making mortgage payments and trying to figure out which bills
you pay first, so that the you don't get the
power turned off or you don't get the gas from
They don't remember any.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Your wife remembers the crack days.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
She does.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
She in fact, those were the salad days, as we
refer to them, because we don't say crack in our house.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
You don't say cracking your We don't like to bring
not even when you're talking.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
About ass Uh.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Hey, honey, let me see some of that fine crack.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
You know we say that, We say double hams.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Double hams. I didn't need to know that. I'm not
even gonna ask a.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Follow up speaking of money, though, one of the things
they found out is that.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I feel that's true.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You're getting a little too close to the nerve there, lady.
They said that one of the findings is that meaning
in life and flourishing is inversely or seems to be
inversely correlated with a nation's gross domestic product per capita.
The richer the country is, the less likely you are
to feel like you're flourishing. And if you if you
(13:29):
just use the context of the United States, a lot
of people see the only way to flourish is with money,
with you know, all of this expendable income. That's the
only way you flourish. At least that's what they perceive.
When we know, I mean, like you we said at
the beginning, most of the time, community is what allows
you to flourish. Community is what gives you the feeling
(13:51):
of flourishing. You have friends, you have things to do,
you have people to help out, You have others. We've
said this before as well, you have others to do
things for. You know, serving somebody else in a time
of need, or even just to be nice to them
makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So easy to say now but like the twenty three
year old that went to a check cashing place and
had half of her paycheck taken away because I couldn't
make rent.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Is like, go f right off with all this flourishing bullshit.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah, and I don't.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Care that one day I will be happy.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Stuff sucks right now, but I don't want to go
hang out with my friends.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I want to be in bed.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
And you have.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Because you have that memory, the flourishing that you feel
today is probably probably that much more.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yes, uh makes you feel happy?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It does. It does because that was a shady ass neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
They also described, and this what I think is funny,
Indonesia specifically. They say they don't experience stress because Indonesians
in general, not me granted, they live in one of
the most beautiful corners of the earth. Yes, right, and
you can have an entire two thousand square foot house
on stilts over the ocean.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Such a cultural thing it is, and in many ways
uniquely American.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
It's a badge of honor for dress.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I'm so busy, I have so much to do. Look
at me, good lord.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Okay, So as you get old as you are now
in your winter of your years, I'm not in the winter.
What would you say then late summer Indian summer. Maybe
I have to pee? Like I said, you are, you're
that old you can't sit for fifteen minutes without bladder urgency.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
All right, this has been the Weekend Fix for the Gary.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And Shians Urgency.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yes, it's better than fecal urgency, unless that's what you're
trying to hide.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I don't. I'm good with that.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast where you're
listening to it, leave a rating, leave a comment, and
if you have any questions or you want a topic
discussed on the Weekend Fix or any part of the show,
you can always leave us a talk back on the
iHeart app or through your you know, Alexa enabled device.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Just say hey Alexa, leave a message for KFI.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Have fun with all your hams. Double hams, double hams.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Only two?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Only two?
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Well there's two for me, two for her, four.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Hams in that house. That's cool.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
A lot of hams.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
HM, go pee, I used to like ham.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You
can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty
nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio lap
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Hey, here we go for a nice another weekend edition
of the Gary and Shannon Weekend Fix.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Comfy and here.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
Beautiful on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
My gosh, the sun is shining? Is it shining? Where
you are shining? In my heart?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
It is now?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You're already upset about what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
No, I'm not. I am not. So this is we're
doing the Weekend Fix.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So this is an episode of the podcast basically that
you do not hear throughout the course of the week.
I mean, twenty hours of sitting in a room and
talking to each other is apparently not enough. We still
have other things that we could say to each other.
So you found this your face? Sorry, sorry, we.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Still have other things you can say to each other.
I'm just going to say that out loud and then
it will be true.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
There is a bio statistician. He's fun at parties, but
he's from the University of Chicago, and Tyler Vanderweel has
talked about how scientists define and measure well being, human
well being? Like, what does it mean for us to
be well? How do we measure it? Can you put
(01:21):
a number on it? Can you judge it by scale?
Can you group you break it down by different demographics
and figure out who is the most well off of
all of us?
Speaker 4 (01:30):
And not financially.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Necessarily, but just we're just we're just good, We're well,
We're everything is in the green.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What's his name again?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Jacob Tyler?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Jay Van I knew there was a Jay involved somewhere well.
His first job at the University of Chicago involved him
looking into studies that measured human well being, and he
was very dissatisfied with this. He thumbed through all of
those studies on specific measures of clinical symptoms like depression
(02:03):
or happiness, anxiety. He had seen that researchers had tracked
objective markers health, blood pressure, things like that sleep, how
well you sleep, economic conditions as well.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And what's his name again?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Tyler?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
JV Tyler J Tyler Tyler Tyler Tyler. There's a president Tyler.
Wasn't there there was back in the day?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Anyway, Maybe that's next week. We'll just go through the
president's names. There's there's one name Calvin.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Wait Tyler was the last name, though, wasn't it John Tyler? Okay?
Where was he in the lineup? Like seventh?
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Or I never learned that that.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You didn't learn that song.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I did not learn that song either. What did we learn?
Absolutely nothing? A lot of nothing. I do have a
book that has a bunch of fun facts, like on
each president, and it's fascinating and I read it from
time to time. I think I've read it about ninety
seven times, but it.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Doesn't have anything about the order that they came in.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It might, it might, but it's more like anecdotes, you know,
like people who broke the toilet and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Anyway, what's his name again? Tyler?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Tyler felt that these studies that he flipped through when
he got to the University of Chicago that they missed
a holistic picture, that they were just looking at measurable
data right when it comes to the meaning and purpose
in life, and measurable data is very important. But he
has defined a more holistic approach to seeing how well
(03:35):
people are doing. And they're not calling it happiness or
well being or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
They're calling it. Flourishing, flourishing, flourishing, it's.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Understood as a state in which all aspects of a
person's life are good, to which I say, when is
that one hundred percent the case? Like when are you
firing on all cylinders when it comes to work, relationship,
physical stuff? You know, eating, drinking, smoking, whatever it is
(04:08):
you enjoy doing all of the things.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
You can never be at one hundred on all those categories, can't. Well,
it seems like having gone through this and remembering this
guy is a biostatistician. So you're talking about a guy
who tries to take some sometimes squishy topics like human
well being and put numbers to it or squish it
into a box and then try to describe what you've got.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And that's his struggle, Tyler's struggle. Now that I've learned
his name, Tyler J.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Tyler J.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Vander Walden, vander Wheel, vander Wheel, I.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Knew there was a W.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
There always is after vander But anyway, he is trying
to science his way.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Through what you can't science your way through.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And I think he's that quantify something that is more
qualitative in nature exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So he and his team have decided that.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
They would look at the non measurable elements of perfect
a person's life, and just to just get it down
to what it is. It is what we talk about
all the time on this show, and it's contact with people.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, he teamed up with another professor at Baylor University,
Byron Johnson, and they wanted to calibrate the measure of flourishing,
human flourishing in order to study it more deeply. And
their big takeaway, big takeaway in a new report that
just came out was community is crucial. That when we
(05:45):
get something wrong, especially here in the United States or
Western culture, there's a push towards you deal with it,
You rub some dirt on it, You get back in
the game, take care of whatever mistakes you make yourself,
and get back in there.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
We've been set up for the fat past five you
can argue ten years. We have been set up to isolate.
We have been set up to isolate with our phones.
Who do you need? You don't need anybody. You don't
need to go talk to anybody at the store, or
you don't need to talk to anybody at the takeout
place or at the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You just need your phone to order that.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Hey, leave it at the door. You don't need anybody.
The world's telling you you don't need anybody anymore. That's
exactly what they're telling you. COVID told us you don't
need anyone. In fact, other people are bad you. Not
only do not need them, they'll kill you.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
They will kill you.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I afraid you can swear on this pod. But but
we have been told to isolate. Everything is isolating. Do
you want entertainment? You don't need to go talk to
other people or have fun with other people. You can
just be on your phone. You know, the difference between
facetiming a friend and actually being in the room and
falling into giggle fits is huge. And so that and
(07:03):
it's hard because it's comfortable to isolate. It's so comfortable.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Just get into your bed and be comfy. And I
do it all the time, and I freaking love it,
and I think that it's making me happy, and it
might make me happy, but it's not the totality of happiness.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So you need other people for the totality.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That same that same feeling is echoed in.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
In alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
A lot of times you think to yourself, this is
a great feeling, I really like this feeling, whatever it is,
but you know doing it is not helping you. It's
not it's not healthy for you to do it on
a regular basis, or to only do that, or to
only do that, or to use that as the way
to make yourself happy again as opposed to doing something
that's that's uh creative or healthier whatever.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Only As we all learned in Star Wars, happiness comes
from within is where the light is.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Did we learn that? I don't know. I made that
up to get interested.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
The Global Flourish Study is what they say is the
gauge how people from different countries have flourished over the
course of five years. And they focus on six key
areas happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning
and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and then
financial immaterial security, and then answers to questioning. Each of
(08:19):
these areas tallied up, you get a snapshot, you add,
you put a number to it, and then you generally
determine how well people in those countries or locations or
demographics how they're flourishing. They found something that I thought
was kind of interesting that in general, people between the
ages of eighteen and twenty nine are not flourishing because
(08:41):
they talk about anxiety. The implications of this raise questions
about what we're doing to prioritize the well being of
our younger Lisa.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
It's not flourishing from eighteen to twenty nine because you're
worried about what am I going to end up doing?
Who am I going to end up with? How am
I going to make money? Am I gonna make enough
of it? Am I gonna be happy? I mean, it's
a constant cycle of those thoughts over and over again,
and to where you don't have any time to just
like relax and think everything's going to be fine.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
But you you specifically didn't then sink into unhappiness you didn't.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Let go of. But I still have work to do.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I may not be flourishing, but all of these questions
that are rattling around my head about the future or
how I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Motivates me to do something right. And I don't That's
the part that I think we're not doing for anybody else.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
To go back to finding Nemo, you know what I mean,
and keep swimming.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
It's okay, Well that's a movie reference that actually works.
I will acceps.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I've got another reference.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Okay, is it a movie reference.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It's a show reference.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
A documentary, all right, the documentary about Scamanda. Remember Scamanda's
I didn't see.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
It was a.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Podcast and a documentary. It's worth a watch if you're
isolating this weekend.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
But you're not.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You're not flourishing if you choose not to flourish anyway.
So I was watching with my girlfriends, not isolating, and
there was this one scene of this one. It's in
the beginning. I'm not ruining anything here, but there. To
make a long story short, Amanda is this woman who
gets involved in a megachurch up in the Bay Area
(10:21):
in San Francisco Bay Area, and she lies to everyone
and says that she has cancer because she loves the
attention that she gets and it's awful.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
One of the women who she.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Who was entrenched in this big lie, said she didn't
have money to give to Amanda. So what she would
do is she would donate platelets and like to the
point where she couldn't donate platelets anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
And my girlfriend goes, oh, she just wanted community.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And it was funny at the time because I was like,
that's exactly what that girl wanted, and she's like out
of platelets now because she wanted community. But it's true,
it's like this intrinsic need were born with to want community, right,
and we have been cut off from community in so
many ways, whether it's through the phones or post COVID
(11:12):
or lack of religion or any sort of you know group.
Even when it comes down to streaming shows and not
watching them at the same time anymore, there's community there. Hey,
did you see Seinfeld last night or what have you?
There's a forty year old reference. But you know what
I mean, Like, we used to do more things together
all the time, and now we don't do anything together.
(11:35):
Everything is on your own, and it seems so attractive
and so easy and so easy to stick to that well.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
And the other thing about it being younger people saying
they're not flourishing. It seems like you have to not
flourish in order to know that you are flourishing when
it does happen in your life.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You know, I know the people that have calmed the
f down and have flourished, right, I mean, they because
they're okay with not being go getters and driven people.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Like they're half where they are.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They're happy people just naturally, but you have to.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
It's similar to money.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
If you have any amount of money, you don't appreciate
it unless you've not had the amount of if you
grew up like my kids grew up, I had a
stable job.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Since they've been alive, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
You should have hit the crack pipe and showed those
kids what true happiness is.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Well, but they don't remember because they weren't around. They
don't remember my wife and I scraping by and barely
making mortgage payments and trying to figure out which bills
you pay first, so that the you don't get the
power turned off or you don't get the gas from
They don't remember any.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Your wife remembers the crack days.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
She does.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
She in fact, those were the salad days, as we
refer to them, because we don't say crack in our house.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
You don't say cracking your We don't like to bring
not even when you're talking.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
About ass Uh.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Hey, honey, let me see some of that fine crack.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
You know we say that, We say double hams.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Double hams. I didn't need to know that. I'm not
even gonna ask a.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Follow up speaking of money, though, one of the things
they found out is that.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I feel that's true.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You're getting a little too close to the nerve there, lady.
They said that one of the findings is that meaning
in life and flourishing is inversely or seems to be
inversely correlated with a nation's gross domestic product per capita.
The richer the country is, the less likely you are
to feel like you're flourishing. And if you if you
(13:29):
just use the context of the United States, a lot
of people see the only way to flourish is with money,
with you know, all of this expendable income. That's the
only way you flourish. At least that's what they perceive.
When we know, I mean, like you we said at
the beginning, most of the time, community is what allows
you to flourish. Community is what gives you the feeling
(13:51):
of flourishing. You have friends, you have things to do,
you have people to help out, You have others. We've
said this before as well, you have others to do
things for. You know, serving somebody else in a time
of need, or even just to be nice to them
makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So easy to say now but like the twenty three
year old that went to a check cashing place and
had half of her paycheck taken away because I couldn't
make rent.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Is like, go f right off with all this flourishing bullshit.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah, and I don't.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Care that one day I will be happy.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Stuff sucks right now, but I don't want to go
hang out with my friends.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I want to be in bed.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
And you have.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Because you have that memory, the flourishing that you feel
today is probably probably that much more.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yes, uh makes you feel happy?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It does. It does because that was a shady ass neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
They also described, and this what I think is funny,
Indonesia specifically. They say they don't experience stress because Indonesians
in general, not me granted, they live in one of
the most beautiful corners of the earth. Yes, right, and
you can have an entire two thousand square foot house
on stilts over the ocean.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Such a cultural thing it is, and in many ways
uniquely American.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
It's a badge of honor for dress.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I'm so busy, I have so much to do. Look
at me, good lord.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Okay, So as you get old as you are now
in your winter of your years, I'm not in the winter.
What would you say then late summer Indian summer. Maybe
I have to pee? Like I said, you are, you're
that old you can't sit for fifteen minutes without bladder urgency.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
All right, this has been the Weekend Fix for the Gary.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And Shians Urgency.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yes, it's better than fecal urgency, unless that's what you're
trying to hide.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I don't. I'm good with that.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast where you're
listening to it, leave a rating, leave a comment, and
if you have any questions or you want a topic
discussed on the Weekend Fix or any part of the show,
you can always leave us a talk back on the
iHeart app or through your you know, Alexa enabled device.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Just say hey Alexa, leave a message for KFI.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Have fun with all your hams. Double hams, double hams.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Only two?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Only two?
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Well there's two for me, two for her, four.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Hams in that house. That's cool.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
A lot of hams.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
HM, go pee, I used to like ham.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You
can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty
nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio lap
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