Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today works in a field of

academic research which arouses interest far beyond the campus lecture theatre. Professor Laurie Santos is a

psychologist at Yale University and her special subject in recent years has been happiness.

Back in 2018, she noticed that mental health

issues, stress, anxiety, depression, even suicidal thoughts seemed to be on the rise among students

at Yale. She decided to develop a course on the science of happiness. It proved to be the most

popular elective course in Yale's

history, and that was before the impact of the COVID pandemic made discussion of mental health

and even hotter topic around the world. Now Professor Santos reaches an audience of millions

with her free online course on the science of well-being and her

podcast on the same subject. Ultimately, all of us surely hope for a good and meaningful life,

but is happiness something we can learn? Well, Laurie Santos joins me now from New Haven,

Connecticut. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thanks so much for having me. Would it be right for me to say that you have made it your mission,

particularly in this time of COVID, your mission to teach us all how to be happier?

Yeah, I think that's one way to put it. I mean, one of the things we learn from the research is that we have pretty bad intuitions when it comes to the kinds of things that will make us happy. And that means that even in challenging times like this, a lot of us are working on our own happiness. We're working on our own mental health, but we're kind of doing it the wrong way. We're going after the wrong things. What are we going after that's wrong? Well, one of the biggest misconceptions

is that we need to change our circumstances, right? We need to get more money or change our job

or buy something, right? And I think what the research really shows is that if you look at people

who are going through tough times, it's not always the case that tough times mean unhappiness.

You can look to people who've had like really devastating circumstances, you know, like loss of their limbs, you know, losing their jobs, you know, just like the kinds of things that many of us would think, if that happened to me, it would break me. And those folks not only self-report feeling happier, but they often report that these traumatic events give them meaning in life. They've shaped the purpose. They've strengthened

their social connection. And so I think the idea that we have to change something about our

circumstances to be happier, it just doesn't fit with the research. And that's often the thing we go

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