Bonus: We Tried a New Tool to Grow Closer—Here’s What Happened

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Strong relationships are essential for happiness—but they can be hard to maintain. In this bonus episode, we try something totally new: a live experiment using LG’s “Radio Optimism” platform. Can a simple creative gesture actually make us feel closer? We wanted to find out.

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Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada. Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast that gives you strategies and tips for how to build happier
0:16.9	habits into your daily life. This week is a bonus episode brought to you by LG. We're going to
0:23.2	talk about why relationships are so important to happiness, why so many people are struggling to feel
0:29.1	strong bonds with other people these days, and how LG is tackling this problem with its latest
0:35.4	endeavor, radio optimism.
0:38.3	Plus, we'll be trying a music-related happiness experiment to see whether we end up feeling more connected.
0:44.3	I'm Gretchen Rubin, writer studies happiness, good habits, and human nature.
0:48.3	I'm in my little home office in New York City, and joining me today from Los Angeles is my sister Elizabeth Kraft,
0:54.8	my sister the sage. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer living in LA. And speaking
1:01.4	of music, this is my yacht rock summer, Gretch, and you and I listen to my yacht rock playlist
1:09.4	on the way to and from a recent reading retreat. So I brought you
1:13.5	into my yacht rock summer. Yes, you did. And it definitely added a whole element to that experience,
1:19.1	which was delightful. And sharing that music was part of what made the trip such a terrific
1:24.7	sisterly adventure. Indeed.
1:36.0	Well, Gretchen, a sobering statistic in a recent survey from LG is that two-thirds, that's 68% of people,
1:40.7	are finding it hard to make authentic friendships and meaningful connections.
1:44.7	Of course, connecting is something we talk about all the time.
1:50.8	One contributing factor is living in the age of social media. It can distract us from the work of relationships, and it can also mean that we have many shallow relationships,
1:55.2	but not the deep ones we really crave and need. And this issue is very, very significant when it comes to happiness because there is one thing that it is clear, and that is that deep and meaningful relationships are a key and maybe the key to happiness.
2:12.6	Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists show us that over and over, our happiness depends on
2:19.8	our relationships with other people. To be happy, we need to feel a sense of intimate connection.
2:27.2	We need to be able to get the support that we need, and perhaps surprisingly, just as important
	...

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