The Happiness Lab: Dr. Laurie Santos On The Science Of How To Be Happy

All systems, are go, ladies and gentlemen,

Curtis, please.

Here we go again. Welcome back to another audio Adventure on inside. I'm Chris family. Thank you so much for being with us on this episode. And on every single episode take a second right now to make sure you're subscribed on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening right now, wherever you're filling your earholes with this.

Right now we've got a back catalogue of more than 250 episodes for you to dive into as soon as this one is over. And this is a conversation that I did want to add. Dr. Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale University. She's also the host of the incredibly popular podcast called the happiness, lab, which I can't recommend enough. Happiness is something that we all struggle with and her podcast gets down to the science of what actually

Makes us happy and why it makes us happy. And there's some incredible interviews on there and some amazing stories. Big fan of dr. Laurie Santos, and the podcast, take a screenshot. Let us know that you're listening right now. Tag us on social media. She's just at dr. Laurie Santos, and I'm just at for his family. It's that easy. Let's dive right into it. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome. Dr. Laurie Santos.

Lori. Thank you so much for joining

us. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I have been listening to your

podcast, basically, since you started, and I just think it's so brilliant. It daily actually takes me back to my time being in college. I feel like I'm in your class as I'm doing

this. Mhm. I've got that a lot of me. I think that's one of the reasons so many people kind of resonate with the happiness lab is they feel like they're getting this yell education for free, you know, SATs no exams, right? Like is kind of the easy narrative filled version of that. Yeah,

the majority of us can't afford to go.

Yale. So, thank you for bringing us this for free, every week in, listening to it. I'm just so curious. Do you think happiness is a science or is it an

I mean, I think in some ways it's both. I mean, the reason I are on the scientific side is in part because we have so much scientific work, studying the kinds of things that make us a little bit happier, right? Which you might not think is a scientific topic, right? Even like how do you study happiness? But you know and when you start to think about it, it's kind of an easy thing to do. Basically researchers bring folks into the lab who are happy and then they kind of reverse engineer what they're doing. You know, how are they spending their time? What are their doing? And then you can bring other folks into the

You aren't feeling so happy, make them engage with the practices that happy people are doing in a really controlled way, you know, do your randomized control design and then you can see if those practices significantly improve people's well-being, and this, these are the kinds of studies that have been done for like the last few decades. And so, we know, literally, from an empirical perspective, the kinds of things that really can make you happier.

All right. So, what kinds of things are we talking about? In fact, like, what are three things we could do today to make ourselves happier.

Yeah. Well, they're not

The things we think it's not like, hit the lottery. Are you like your job or something like that? You know, I think the fastest thing you can do to improve your happiness, is to get in a little social connection, you know, even really simple studies show, you know, if you chat with the Barista at the coffee shop, if you talk to somebody on your commute, you know, those quick moments of social connection, even with a stranger can boost your positive mood, you know, and that's what the stranger let alone, you know, pick up the phone and connect with your best friend. You are talk to someone, you know, in college even smoke.

To in a while or something like that. We forget the sheer power of social connection for boosting our mood, you know, that's kind of, you know, tip number one, social connection. Second one is, you know, something we can conjure up at any moment, you know, that because social connection requires another person to talk to you. Yeah, but the second tip gratitude is something that all of us can do, you know, right now you're talking right now and I see in the background, you have this wonderful quote be great, be grateful and I think it could just as easily say, be happy be grateful because there's so much evidence that shifting.

Our mindset to one that just focuses on the blessings rather than the griping, you know is something we can do to feel happier. And I think this is another one where we get it wrong. We just assume I'll feel better. If you know I go out with my friend and I just kind of complain about everything that's happening at work and gripe about you know, all the nasty stuff but the studies show that you just instead just talked about a few things that we're going well, talked about a few things, you are grateful for you show, significant improvements in your well-being. So that's kind of number two, and I think know

Three would be just presence, like being present with whatever is going on in your body, what it feels like to be breathing right now or to be sitting in the seat, wherever you're listening to this podcast, or even present with the negative emotions. That's that was a shocker for me. When I got interested in this research was to realize that the simple Act of being present. Even if you're not feeling good, whether it's sadness or anxiety, just being with that, can be a way to improve our well-being. And this odd way,

three, three great tips here.

So that we can all do literally right now. Well, maybe wait till the episodes done but then start doing it. I feel like at the core, every single human on earth just wants to be happy. Why is this something that's a difficult for some people?

Yeah. I think it was probably difficult because I don't think we were built to be happy, you know natural selection Evolution. It had a plan for us, but it wasn't to be happy. It was just like survive pop out some kids like that's good. It didn't care. Whether we were anxious and horrendously sad the whole time. We were popping out kids. It just wanted us to get the job done. So

Not necessarily built for it. But I think a bigger issue is that, you know, many of us are really trying to be happy. You know, we're sort of defying Natural Selections goals for us, really trying to focus on our well-being, but we wind up doing it wrong. Because we have these incorrect theories about what we should be doing. We're focused on the accolades and the achievements, and the money and the next step and the buying stuff, and the research shows that none of it. None of that really makes us happy. And even if it makes us happy, briefly, it doesn't do. So, for very long and we,

Through all those things at an opportunity cost of some of the things that really would make us happy. And so I think I think that's where we get raw. It's not that we're not trying, or not putting effort and we are putting effort in, but we're doing it the wrong way.

Lori. How much do you think? There's a link between happiness and

I think there's a really big link there and I think, you know that question, kind of underscores. Another thing we get wrong, which is what happiness really is, you know, I think we think happiness is hedonic Pursuits, you know, like hot fudge sundaes and orgasms all the time. Like that's all happiness is. But, you know, real happiness is being satisfied with your life. In addition, to all that other being satisfied, kind of, in your life, with these local pleasures, and the being satisfied with your life part is really about finding her.

Purpose, finding meaning finding fulfillment. And that doesn't necessarily come with all the, you know, unicorns and rainbows of hedonic, Pursuits, oftentimes, that sort of meaning requires doing hard work, you know, putting yourself out there, you know, trying things that you might fail at, but that is really the path to True fulfillment. Just sort of part of an important part of

happens. All right. So let's talk about your path. Where did this begin for you? When did you start studying the science of Happiness?

Yeah. Well, I was I've been a

Is basically forever. Like I'm interested in Psychology, broadly for a long time, but the specific interest in happiness, came for me. When I took on this new role on yells campus. I've taught at Yale, you know, now for embarrassingly long time, but in just the last couple years I took on a new role as ahead of college on campus. And so yells, one of these strange schools like Harry Potter's where there's like schools within a school, you know, kind of like, Gryffindor and Slytherin Hannah. I'm the head of Silliman College, which is one of the residential

All colleges, but it sounds like it's from Harry Potter to. It's totally Hogwarts here at its. Yeah, but this new role meant that I was living on campus, like a faculty member who lived with students. And when I signed up for the role, I assumed, you know, be just great, you know, it's like, happy college students and young people and curious minds running around, and it's that, but it's that embedded in the context of this college student Mental Health crisis. You're right now, nationally over 40 percent of college students report being too depressed to function. Most days.

Is over, 60% report, feeling overwhelmingly anxious and more than one in ten college students. Right now has seriously considered suicide in the last year. Like these are dire dire statistics. And I didn't know this stuff till I kind of started interacting with students. And you know, we have students who are in those Dire Straits, but even just, you know, the run-of-the-mill student who's like so stressed out, you ask them. How's it going? It's like oh if I could just get two midterms, or if I could just get to the weekend and I was watching these students fast-forward this brief.

Wonderful time in college when they're young and can study anything they want. And, you know, I just felt for them. I just really realized that we hadn't given them, good strategies. And so, the my interest in the science of Happiness started because I wanted to help my students. I knew there was scientific work on this topic and I decided to like, kind of pull it all together to teach students this stuff in the context of a class. Because that's, you know, what I did. I was a professor. I like taught y'all student classes. Yeah. I didn't expect the class to go as viral as it. Did it turned into the largest.

Just class ever and Yale University's three hundred plus year history with or over a quarter of the entire campus, taking the class the same time. It was one of those like, when the class ended like the Super Bowl where everybody flushes the toilet at the same time. It's one of those were like, you know, everybody's running to the dining hall at the same time. But yeah, I mean, I think that was exciting. It was also just telling right students are voting with their feet. They don't like this culture of feeling depressed and anxious. They really wanted evidence-based strategies. They could use to feel

Better,

how much of this unhappiness, especially, Yale is just the pressure that the students are putting on themselves. Like, look, when you get into a school, like, Yale, you feel like, all right, I've gotten in. That was a lot of work to get in. Now. I've got to achieve great grades volunteer.

Exactly. And I think, you know, just do all the things students had to do to get here, right? You know, I mean, obviously these are incredibly bright incredibly driven students, but you know, I watch them excel at the opportunity cost of their sleep, you know, there are social connections there like,

Time. Affluence. Another thing. If I'd a fourth tip for something we could do to be happy right? Having free time, you know, this idea of just feeling wealthy and time is another big booster to happiness. If you the studies show that if you self-report being time famished, like, you're just strapped for time and you can't fit anything in your schedule. That's as bad for you. While being statistically as if you self-report being unemployed, right, you know, like it's a huge hit to your well-being and I was watching students do this to themselves all the time. So I think part of it.

You know, the pressure of being at a place like this, but you know, those scary statistics, I quoted you. That's not yell. That's nationally that students at, you know, State schools community colleges all over. It's really a generation that's facing this kind of Mental Health crisis, I think in part because we've kind of sold them a bad bill of goods. We'd say hey to get ahead in life. You gotta make a lot of money. You get to get it to the perfect College. You got to achieve achieve achieve. We haven't necessarily said, hey, maybe prioritize presents or gratitude. Maybe you don't need the money.

Buy stuff because you can just be thankful with what you have. Right? That's not really the capitalist way. We digital and so yeah, so I think I think it's particular to yell students, but it really is a generational thing.

Finally. We live in a world right now where it's hustle hustle hustle. If you open up social media, it's it's not 24/7. It's 25/8 and the harder you work. The more that you will get out of that, which I don't necessarily think is true. You need that free time that you're talking about in like sleep. Sleep is so important.

Sleep is so important. I show students, one study where, you know, these evil psychologists do the sleep deprivation study and they make college students for a week. Only sleep five hours a night. And I put up this, this PowerPoint slide and my students burst into laughter because they're like, five hours a night. That's, that's awesome. I didn't really good me. Like, I didn't even go on that all week and then I go on to show them the data which shows that within a few days of doing that your blood levels, drop to the point that you look like, you could be clinically depressed.

I honestly think we could solve a lot of the college student and young teen Mental Health crisis by just getting them to sleep more realistic.

So, your class is called psychology and the good life is this in person, like, as a quarter of the campus in like, how big is this lecture hall?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the first time I taught it was in 2018. So creepy covid, you know, very prescient to be thinking about happiness. I think pre covid and because of kind of some sabbaticals and podcast stuff. I'm teaching it again this coming

Spring. So this will be the first time back teaching it again, since I first taught it and I don't know TBD on so far classes are in person, but we'll see how covid place

like, are you gonna have to start teaching these at the football stadium?

Right now. We have a concert hall on campus. Very large ceilings. And you know, with everyone in masks, we should be safe.

All right. So, if I were to attend your class, what would it look like? And what are like, what do they, what do you grading us on, or their exams? How does this work?

Yeah, so, you know, you'd walk into this big concert hall with a quarter of

See our campus friend, you're like a quarter of the entire campus. Was that like 10,000 people? No yells small. So, it's just over a thousand students, which, you know, for those who are went to State schools and stuff for listening. I feel like just a thousand students were for our campus. That is that is pretty big. We you know, the class really is a class like it's a psychology class. They are hearing about specific studies, you know, there are exams and grades and no problem sets and things like that and that's in part because one of the hints I have seen,

With these students is, you know, it's one thing to tell students like, hey, you should be, you know, grateful, you know, it's great to be grateful. Are you should get more sleep, but then I put up that graph, that shows what your average would score looks like after only 5 hours of sleep and students see that. And they're like, wait a minute. I don't want to be there on the graph. I want to be somewhere else. So I think there's something really powerful about seeing the scientific effects, you know, this is true for so many other things in nutrition and exercise, right? I think for our well-being, when we see what really matters when

See what really works and what doesn't it can kind of help us supercharged changing. Our behaviors Behavior. Change is always hard. I think if we see some evidence that it will work, it can motivate us a bit more.

I wish this class existed, like, I'm from Canada, so, I went to a great school just outside of Toronto in Waterloo, Ontario. I wish this class existed where I went to school, but there is a, the opportunity to take this or version of this class online,

right? Yeah, so, when you know, the class went so viral on campus, but what was more surreal was that the class went viral off campus?

Is you had these National and international news, media Outlets coming like film the class and talk about it. We realized, you know, I was so taken by the Mental Health crisis in Yale students, but you know, it's not just yell students write like people like college students everywhere, need this but adults everywhere. Need this, write, the emails. I was getting was like, you know, let these 19 year. Olds are at Yale and have their whole life ahead of them. You know, let them deal with themselves, like, help me, you know, coming, I'm working, you know, super hard or whatever it was. And so, yeah, so we put the class.

Online on coursera.org., It's totally free there. It's called the science of well-being but you can log on and sign on and try it for yourself and get the kind of short, Yale version totally for free, kind of, but the same sorts of tips that my Yale students learn

free Gale class. It's amazing. How did it start to go viral?

I think it was really, you know, that I think on campus really students were looking for a solution, right. Again, they just don't like this culture of being so stressed and anxious all the time.

And I think, you know, off campus. It's a kind of an interesting question. I think people were really taken with the story of, you know, again, Yale students write, like, they've gotten into one of the best universities in the world. They're young. They, you know, they have everything going for them yet. So many of them were depressed and anxious that they rushed to a class on happiness. Not a class on like Game Theory or computer science or whatever like they all were worried about their well-being. And I think, you know, that puts stuff in perspective for us. You know, I think one of

Other misconceptions about happiness is we think happiness comes from our circumstances, you know, if you're young and an Ivy League school and achieving like you're going to be happy. And when we see examples of people who are achieving anyway, these classic ways that don't seem so happy, you know, that kind of jars us. It kind of catches our attention as I think, that's part of why I went viral sort of off campus as well. It was there. One particular

article or news coverage that really started to spike the

interest. Yeah, the first, the first one was

An article in the New York Times, which incidentally, was by the editor of the Yale Daily News who was taking my class in time. I think he'd gotten a new job at the times or an internship there. I'm sure the times editor was like pick something cool and he is article about my class. But I think that in the picture is that went with it, you know, this like Norm is Concert Hall filled with students wanting to learn about their own well-being and I think it's just kind of captivated people and kind of got people talking about the

class. So how did this turn into an amazing?

Podcast called the happiness lab, which everyone can find whether they're listening to this right now. But how did this springboard into your own podcast?

Yeah. I think that also came from, you know, so many of the emails I was getting, you know, some of the emails was like, you, I'm just this random hotel or I'm going through this issue. I need this too and we put the clasp on coursera.org, which is great, you know. Now, 3.5 million people have taken it, which is incredible. But I also got lots of emails from people who are like, I'm time famished. I'm like, you know, anxious and depressed. I do not have time.

Time to take an Ivy League class. Thank you very much. Like, nice of you to put it on for free. Like I'm really busy. Like can I get the like Cliff Notes version? Yeah, and what we realize is, you know, as you know, you know, from running this podcast like podcasts are a wonderful, Cliff Notes version for so many things, you know, it's a way in your head to your these interesting people talking about cool ideas and to learn something in especially in the happiness domain, you know, one of the things we do a lot on our podcast is share people's narrative stories, you know, you meet Olympian

You are going through their own tough times, you know, people who've lost loved ones, but now report that they're happier than ever, right? You hear the as narrative stories of people who've put the science into practice in their own way. And I think that goes a long way, you know, beyond just the scientific effects to show you a path for how you can feel better

for the great thing about podcasts is this is learning by osmosis. You, put it on, you hit play and it's like people are eavesdropping on our conversation right now. You can take notes if you want to but you don't necessarily

We need to take notes, maybe one or two points here will stick with you and may end up changing your life.

Yeah, I mean we get so many emails from the happiness live podcast of people who literally write and say that this is life-changing or they've put these things into effect in their own life. And it's so powerful. Then one other example of being a practices you can use to feel happier that we didn't mention is this idea of doing for others, right? Random acts of kindness like really doubling down and thinking about how can you benefit others and on my

Cast, I shared a kind of extreme story about this. A researcher who studies altruistic kidney donors. So these are healthy individuals who are just like taken with the plight of people who need a kidney and decide to donate a kidney to a stranger. And it turns out that there's some of the, you know, the happiest people out there, you know, we kind of talked about this kind of using this as an example of like, well, you know, you don't have to donate a kidney, but you could do some random act of kindness in your life. And what's incredible is we've gotten emails from people who said, you know, hearing that episode I decided

To donate a kidney. I'm like, literally saved a life with this podcast said,

wow, so did Malcolm Gladwell himself reach out to you about this.

Sorry. I'm choking not because Malcolm Gladwell because I

and I say this because I am a huge fan of his work as a fellow Canadian, but I've also I love his books and he now has this great podcast Network.

Yeah. I know Malcolm is great and you know, pushkin's really been fantastic. You know, I think, you know, so many

Their podcast come from. I think, you know what I consider to be like the Malcolm Gladwell School of entertainment, which is you really can learn something at the same time, as you're being entertained and Malcolm's been, you know, incredibly great to work with, you know, as the kind of you know, this is like the runner of the company that I work in, you know, he's been super great about kind of his support for the happiness lab, too.

Shopify is the all-in-one Commerce platform to start run and grow your business. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources that were once reserved for big business. So upstarts, startups and established businesses alike. Can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in-person sales and effortlessly, stay informed scaling. Your business is a journey of endless possibility. Believe me my fishing company that I started five years.

Years ago, with my best friend, Aaron called Wooten system. Actually, it's pronounced. Whoo, tungsten because that's the sound you make. When you catch a giant fish. Whoo, we started this company. Five years ago, November of 2016 and we've been on Shopify since day. One. We sell tungsten fishing weights and our business would be nowhere. Close to where it is today if it wasn't for Shopify, making things so incredibly easy and like mine.

Shopify Powers, over 1.7 million businesses from first sale to full scale. You can reach customers online, and across social networks, with an ever-growing Suite of Channel, Integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Tick-Tock Pinterest, and more. You can gain insights, as you grow and nip detailed reporting and conversion rates profit margins and Beyond more than a store. Shopify grows with you. This

It's possibility, powered by Shopify, go to Shopify.com, blue one that's all lower case for a free 14-day trial and get full access to shopify's, entire Suite, of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com blue wire right now. That's Shopify.com /bl UE W, IR e, Shopify.com /.

Blue wire.

No team can afford to overpay for talent, build a championship team with indeed, the Smart Way by only paying for Quality candidates that meet your must-have requirements get started right now with a $75. Sponsored job credit to upgrade, your job post at indeed.com, blue wire. When hiring gets hard, you need indeed. The job site, that makes hiring incredibly simple. Just attract interview and hire.

In fact, with indeed, you can do all of your hiring in one place even interviewing get a $75 credit at indeed.com / blue wire indeed knows how important it is to make the most of your recruiting hours and dollars with indeed. You can save time and money by setting. Your must have qualifications and only paying for the quality candidates that meet them indeed.com /, blue wire offer valid through October, 31st terms.

Additions apply.

Someone sends you an email and says, we think that this might be a great podcast and is your immediate reaction. Absolutely. I've got nothing but time to make a podcast. Well,

honestly, it really was, you know, thinking about ways that I can share this stuff and you know, one of the reasons that this what made you, my podcast makes me happy. Is that I get to do it really closely with my producer and very good friend Ryan Dilly. I had Ryan who's a producer for my podcast was working on other things, at the time producing, these really other fantastic podcast. And so,

When we had the opportunity, this one, I was like me. I could work with this person who I think is, you know, creative and fantastic and amazing professionally, but it's also like one of my best friends and so, you know, it's a real way that like I can be bringing my by social connection to my work with the

amount of exposure that you've got through your class going viral. Now with your podcast being, you know on the top charts. Imagine. There's a you're being pulled in a lot of different directions now, so how do you focus on your own personal happiness?

You only have 24 hours in a day.

Yeah. Well, one of the things is you know, it is nice to be a happiness expert in the sense that you kind of have to start practicing What You Preach, or people will start of call you out on it. Especially your students write like I live with students on campus. I'm griping about things and not being grateful, or if they see me, you know, not sleeping and things like that. They'll call me out on. It are the term for me is ahead of college. So they call me hockey Josie. So be like, look, Santo is like, you know, you look like you haven't slept or you look like you're really stressed.

So I'll get called out, you know, if I don't if I don't follow the things. But being another great reason is that, you know, it's like I have to practice what I preach right? You know, I have to be the person who's kind of trying these strategies out and that's been huge for navigating this strange change in my life where there's so many new things on my plate. You know, I'm sure you might remember trying to schedule this podcast is tricky because I say no to lots of things and I do not because I'm like, disinterested or they don't sound fun. I say no, because I'm trying

To protect my time affluence. I have this really over-the-top away message. That's like look, I got to practice what I preach and you might have asked that something really cool that I actually want to do. But if I say yes to that, then I can't say yes to, you know, some down time with my husband tonight or seen my family this weekend, or or that's going to make me frazzled. When I deal with my students and, you know, I have to just kind of shut off those opportunities to make sure I'm more present and that's hard. You know, it goes against the hustle culture, that's been built into me and Maya

Ringing for so long, but I think ultimately it's made me a lot

happier. Yeah, I do. I do want to talk about this away message. So when you send Lori an email, you get this auto response that basically says in a nutshell like I'm busy. And like it's really nice of you to reach out and thank you, but there's a pretty good chance. I'm not going to respond to you. When did this start? And why did it

start? Yeah, it started because I was realizing that, you know, I inadvertently might not be explaining why I might not be able to get back to people.

Well, I mean, you know, we've millions of people taking my class. I get, you know, literally hundreds of emails a day. And this is the problem with being an academic rather than a different kind of celebrity. You know, if I was like Beyonce, no one could find my email but you know, as Yale Professor. You just Google. You'll press your email and it's pretty obvious what these hide them. And so what that means is, I just get tons of people reaching off. And the first thing they say, in the emails. I can't believe it was so easy to find during your help.

You're like, damn,

you know, these are people who, you know, have been moved by my

To a question. Interesting questions about the course have these cool opportunities. They want to follow up on who want to share something really personal and important with me. I wish I could triple my time so that I had time to answer all these in detail. But since I don't, I wanted to find a way to reach out to folks and say, Hey, you know, I read every one of these. But if I added up all the time, it would take to literally answer all of them back again, like, the the sacrifice for me, are the things that really matter for my happiness and their router, but the happiness of the people around me because I won't have time for

Them either. And so, you know, I'm doing the hard thing where I'm not going to write back. It's not that. I don't appreciate. I promise you I read it. I promise you I'm cherishing it but like don't have time to write back

necessarily. Is this a practice you would recommend for other people who maybe have a time

crunch? I think so, I think we don't realize that time is as valuable for our happiness as we think again, because we have this opportunity cost. We think money is valuable for our happiness. If we double or triple our salary through this hustle, you know, somehow that will make us happier we

Be not money, but increase our accolades, you know, get a promotion at work or something like that. And again, like pretty slim evidence that that's going to work. I mean again, you know, if you are completely not able to put food on the table or don't have a roof over your head. Yes, improving your salary and your wealth level will help. But for I'm guessing a lot of people listening to this podcast, like more money is just not going to increase your happiness. It definitely as much as you think. But all the evidence suggests that more time will like taking

Thing off your plate. Canceling something canceling, a meeting that could have been an email. All of these things can have measurable effects on your happiness. And so, you know, I think prioritizing time Athletics is a really critical way an underutilized way in the modern society of improving our happiness. So much more effective than buying. Something is like, like a meeting and getting a free hour.

Yeah, you did an episode recently which focused on dogs and how much happiness they may or may not bring to us. And you talked about

Out the canine cognition laboratory during this episode and I was like, so this sounds like an amazing magical place. So tell me more about what the canine cognition laboratory

is. Yeah. I mentioned that I had, you know, been a psychologist, you know, for longer than I care to discuss. But but most of my research before I get interested in the science of Happiness, was focused on this question of what makes the human mind special right? You know, why are we sitting here having podcast? And, you know, squids and, you know, bonobos and dogs aren't doing the same thing.

Yeah, one of the ways we studied that was to study, you know, a nonhuman creature. So it's not a human but it lives in a really human like environment to 10 a test. Like, you know, how much do you get just by being around other people using tools and talking and these kinds of things? And so the canine cognition lab Willy studies how dogs, think and how they make decisions. And so people bring their pet dogs in for a studies, you know, we don't like have dogs in cages or anything like that. Dogs kind of come in to do studies just like humans come in to do humans.

Is and we serve test how they make sense of the world. And so, you know, I always I'm glad you bought that episode up because I've always wanted to do an episode kind of connecting my old day, job work of studying what's called comparative cognition studying, how dogs think with this work on happiness. And so it was nice to kind of explore. Do dogs, really make us happy. And if so, like, wow, right. How does that work?

Yeah, and I think what was funny about that episode is, people forget that? Yeah, dogs are awesome. And there is a lot of studies that show that they do make us happy.

But when you put it on the episode is like, you forget like that puppy stage. You forget like when the dog pees on the carpet or all these things that dogs do.

Yeah. I mean, I think what, you know with the literature really shows, ironically enough, is that dogs make us happier because they change our Behavior like they get us out to exercise more. They get us to be more socially connected as we've talked about, they get us to be more present because we're noticing stuff because the dogs noticing stuff. But you know, if you're allergic to dogs you can do.

Stuff on your own, really? You can just commit to being more present, commit to be more socially connected, commit to exercising. So dogs, kind of make it easier. But ultimately the behavior change is in us. It's nothing. Magical about

dogs. How much do you think covid has had an effect on people's unhappiness?

Yeah. Well, there's, you know, there's growing evidence on this and I would say that evidence is kind of mixed in this interesting way. So I think, when covid first hit, you know, if you look at people's depression and anxiety scores, right and like

March of 2020 like a huge dip in our depression and anxiety like so awful, but I think everybody expected that, you know, to continue maybe to get worse over time and in practice, not perfectly but for the most part like hasn't been as bad as we thought, like, many people have kind of gone back to Baseline, you know, this thing that, you know, definitely like week three of March when I was like I cannot get used to this. I cannot wear a mask everywhere. We cannot, you know, be socially distance. It's not like it's fun, but you kind of go.

Used to it. And you know, this is another misconception we have about circumstances. We think good circumstances like winning the lottery or, you know, getting some promotion at work will make us happier. But we also think that bad circumstances will make things worse and they do in the short term but it doesn't last for as long as we think we have this incredibly powerful what researchers call the psychological immune system. It kind of kicks in to start of make us feel better, you know, just like our immune system if we get sick would like, you know, jump in and start fight it. And we have these psychological.

Cool mechanisms, we rationalize stuff who come up with coping strategies. We like do stuff to feel better and many of those coping strategies have kicked in during covid, you know, to the point that, you know, this devastating pandemic. It really engineered to affect our mental health, right, you know work breaking our social connections screwing up, our routines people are losing jobs. And so on. Even that horrible thing, didn't negatively impact our mental health, statistically assumes, as much as you would have guessed.

I think the biggest thing that I realized personally out of this pan,

Hammock, was it kind of ties into what you were talking about with your tips? The social connection that my greatest memories are things that are shared experiences with other people. It's a concert. It's a baseball game. It's a party. It's a great dinner and that felt like it was very Stripped Away From Us in March of 2020.

Yeah, and I think it, you know, it was right. I mean, I think we've come up with, you know, some stopgaps, right? You can do the zoom happy hour, you know, a lot of artists are doing like, concerts on Zoom, but like not the same for sure.

Sure, I completely agree. Ya, did ya, usually meet someone like, this is so great to be talking to you right now Lori, but I

would say you really really do together. Yeah, totally. I think you know one one thing though that I think is a positive of it, you know, as you know vaccines are coming on, you know, as we're kind of coming up with mechanisms to deal with the pandemic more and more is I think we're coming back to some of those things. You know, like I remember the first time you even sitting outside that I went back to a restaurant, like I'm at a