#196 — The Science of Happiness

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2020

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Laurie Santos about the scientific study of happiness. They discuss people’s expectations about happiness, the experiencing self vs the remembered self, framing effects, the importance of social connections, the effect of focusing on the happiness of others, introversion and extroversion, the influence of technology on social life, our relationship to time, the connection between happiness and ethics, hedonic adaptation, the power of mindfulness, resilience, the often illusory significance of reaching goals, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
0:14.2	hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed and we'll only be hearing
0:18.5	partial episodes of the podcast. If you'd like access to full episodes, you'll need to
0:23.3	subscribe at samherris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite
0:28.5	podcast, along with other subscriber-only content. And as always, I never want money to be
0:34.0	the reason why someone can't listen to the podcast. So if you can't afford a subscription,
0:38.3	there's an option at samherris.org to request a free account. And we grant 100% of those
0:43.2	requests. No questions asked.
0:46.5	Today I'm speaking with Laurie Santos. Laurie is a professor of psychology at Yale University.
0:53.0	And she hosts the very popular podcast, The Happiness Lab. And she teaches the most popular
0:58.3	course at Yale, which is on the scientific understanding of happiness. She also runs
1:03.2	the Comparative Cognition Laboratory in the Canine Cognition Center at Yale. And here we
1:09.0	get into what we know or at least have good reason to believe scientifically about the
1:16.0	causes and conditions of happiness at this point. We talk about the role of expectations
1:22.6	and the experiencing self versus the remembered self. We talk about framing effects and the
1:28.8	importance of social connections, the effect of focusing on the happiness of others, as
1:34.1	opposed to one's own, introversion versus extroversion, the influence of technology on our social
1:40.7	lives, our relationship to time, the connection between happiness and ethics, hedonic adaptation,
1:48.7	the power of mindfulness, resilience, the often elucery significance of reaching one's
1:55.0	goals and other topics. Anyway, I really enjoyed this. I hope you find it useful. I now
2:03.0	bring you Laurie Santos.
2:09.5	I am here with Laurie Santos. Laurie, thanks for joining me.
	...

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