How Exploring New Places Can Make You Feel Happier
The Science of Happiness
PRX and Greater Good Science Center
4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Exploring novel places and having diverse experiences is important to our well-being and can make us feel happier. This week, Ike Sriskandarajah, a producer for This American Life, takes us with him as he explores new parts of New York City.
Link to episode transcript: https://tinyurl.com/seystc6c
Episode summary:
Shaking yourself out of your normal routine can be hard–but studies show it’s worth it. Creating space for variety, novelty, and awe in our lives is essential for our well-being. Exploring new and diverse environments in our daily life can lead to better stress resilience and can make us feel better. In this episode, investigative journalist Ike Sriskandarajah, shares his experience exploring new places with his family in New York City. Then, we hear from Aaron Heller, a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Miami's Department of Psychology, who studies how exposure to novel places can make us happier.
Practice:
Break out of your usual daily routine–take a route to work you have never taken before, or visit a park you’ve never gone to. Explore a place you have never been to.
Today’s guests: Ike Sriskandarajah is an investigative journalist and Producer at This American Life.
Aaron Heller is a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Miami's Department of Psychology.
- Learn more about Ike’s work: https://tinyurl.com/4auuk7pd
- Learn about Ike’s work at Reveal: https://tinyurl.com/serhuyt5
- Follow Ike on X: https://tinyurl.com/ycxz6xbr
- Connect with Ike on LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/ydwztavw
- Learn more about Aaron’s research: https://tinyurl.com/yxrpm944
- Follow Aaron on X: https://tinyurl.com/rr3ac6jw
- Connect with Aaron on LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/36trsaux
Science of Happiness Episodes like this one
- How Awe Brings Us Together: https://tinyurl.com/bddavvbv
- Can You Find Wonder in the Ordinary? https://tinyurl.com/4j8h4dzk
Happiness Break Related Episodes
- Feeling the Awe of Nature From Anywhere, With Dacher: https://tinyurl.com/y4mm4wu9
- Feeling the Awe of Nature From Anywhere, With Dacher https://tinyurl.com/y4mm4wu9
Tell us about your experience exploring new places!
Leave a comment on Instagram @scienceofhappinesspod, or e-mail us at [email protected] or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness!
Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I've got a nine-month-old baby and a four-year-old toddler, freshly four-year-old toddler, and while I've been on |
| 0:10.9 | family leave I've been picking him up from school and asking him if he wants to go to the playground that he usually goes to to see his friends, or if he wants to go on an adventure. I really try to sell it and |
| 0:26.8 | sometimes I have to give him a nudge if I really want him to go on the adventure but a couple |
| 0:32.2 | weeks ago I thought he'd really get a kick out of |
| 0:34.3 | Washington Square Park so after I picked him up from 3k we walked to the train |
| 0:40.8 | station and we took the train to Washington Square Park. |
| 0:47.0 | All I told them is it's just like the biggest weirdest party that's always happening in the middle of Manhattan and then the train |
| 0:59.4 | goes over the bridge and you see the expanse of the city in the distance and you get to |
| 1:04.9 | Washington Square Park and it's just an incredibly lively like the Commons of New York City. |
| 1:17.0 | It's a marvel of |
| 1:22.0 | it's a marvel of humanity all in Washington Square Park, just like one of the |
| 1:28.0 | most dynamically acoustic environments. It's like playing the whole dial of the FM radio just all at once. |
| 1:37.9 | There's the mashup of Haray Krishna and MIA and a live rock band playing in the distance. |
| 1:50.0 | It feels great to share something that you appreciate the throng of humanity and, you know, |
| 2:00.0 | parachuting into the middle of it and not being sure of like what you'll find or what's like playful fun or what's threatening fun and trying to figure it out together and it was really affirming that he was really into that too. |
| 2:17.8 | And I don't know what door flew open in his brain for the first time, but you think, yeah, I'm glad we didn't go to the playground today. |
| 2:30.8 | Welcome to the science of happiness I'm Deltner. And this week we're going to see what |
| 2:35.8 | happens when we have a variety of experiences and visit new places without traveling far. |
| 2:42.9 | We know from research that people feel happier with more variety in their routines. |
| 2:48.9 | So for our show, investigative journalist Ike Sreskandaraah visited new places in New York City where he lives and he brought his little kids along. |
| 2:58.0 | We'll travel through some of the city's boroughs with Ike and we'll also hear from psychologist Aaron Heller about how he used |
| 3:05.8 | GPS trackers to test how people's moods were affected by their daily travels. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PRX and Greater Good Science Center, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PRX and Greater Good Science Center and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.