Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast where we talk about cutting edge

science, the wisdom of the ages, and our own experiences in trying to be

happier. We're sisters so we don't let ourselves get away with much. This

week our try this at home is about photographs and we'll also revisit an old

story.

I'm Gretchen Ruben, a writer whose studies happiness, good habits, and human nature.

I'm in New York City and with me is my sister Elizabeth Kraft, who's a big

source of happiness for me. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer

living in LA and Gretchen, I am definitely a work in progress. In episode 17 we

talked about my precious art term for the things that we love that are bad for us.

It gets its name from Gollum, the character in the Lord of the Rings, who

refers to the ring that he carries as his precious. It's precious but it's

killing him. We talked about our preciouses, Elizabeth said her precious was

reality TV. My precious, unconventionally, is Greek yogurt.

It was great Gretchen. A lot of people wrote in and called in with their

preciouses. Somebody's was the iPhone 6 Plus, very specific, and I'm sure a

lot of people share that. Netflix was somebody's precious. She actually canceled

her subscription and then the next month started it up again because she

decided she didn't want to give up her precious. Beer was someone's precious.

This was interesting. Somebody loves her Mondays and doesn't want anyone

intruding in her Mondays and this was actually a bit of a theme. A bunch of

people let us know that they really jealously guard their time and don't want

...