Ted Audio Collective

Hello there, I'm Chris Anderson, welcome to the Ted interview, the podcast series that

starts where a Ted talk ends.

Today, in this period dominated by COVID-19, there's a basic question that matters more

than ever.

What does it take to be a happy person?

The science of happiness is full of surprises, actually.

Our instincts about what will make us happy and the actions we take in pursuit of happiness

often end up disappointing us.

Our guest is Professor Elizabeth Dunn.

She's been researching happiness for years and has a long list of delicious insights into

what really creates it and the difference between fleeting pleasure and deeper, long-alastie

happiness.

She gave a beautiful Ted talk last year.

So I have a pretty fun job which is to figure out what makes people happy.

It's so fun, it might almost seem a little frivolous, especially at a time where we're

being confronted with some pretty depressing headlines.

But it turns out that studying happiness might provide a key to solving some of the toughest

problems we're facing.

Now during that talk Liz told a truly inspiring story about how her community of friends and

neighbors found happiness together and she gave a lovely update to that story in this interview.

But first let's start with some of her latest psychological research and how we can make

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