Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast where we discuss cutting-edge science,

the wisdom of the ages, lessons from pop culture, and our own experiences about

how to be happier. This week we'll talk about why you should do something badly

and talk to the brilliant Adam Grant about a podcast he's launching.

I'm Gretchen Reuben at Writer Who Studies, Happiness, Good Habits in Human Nature.

I'm in New York City and with me is Elizabeth Kraft, my sister, and sometimes my happiness

Guinea Pig. That's me Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer living in LA and Gretchen,

usually your experiments make me happy. So I'm good to be your Guinea Pig.

Well Elizabeth, quick update before we launch in to the episode on what we talked about in episode

155, the idea of choosing a signature scent. In that episode we mentioned the fact that many

people do have a bad reaction to perfumes and scents and boy we heard from a lot of people.

Many many many listeners wrote and called to urge people not to wear scents. A lot of people

had issues with that. Yeah and taking into account that a lot of people have a problem with

scents in the workplace especially. We had a solution to that which was that a signature scent

could be instead of something that you wear it could be a smell that you just love to find in

the world. Yes exactly could this be something that you're searching for that you identify with

and we get a beautiful email from Judy about this. Yeah she said your section on a signature

smell reminded me of my grand. Her signature smell is lavender. She'd always snap off a bit of

lavender when she saw it and put it down her cleavage. I now live 5,000 miles from her so don't

see her very often but there is a corner on one of my favorite bike routes where loads of lavender

grows. Each time I cycle around that corner I get a breeze of wonderful grand memories.

It's such a beautiful idea so it's not that she's putting on lavender perfume but just that she's

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