Hey, I'm Flor Lichten, and this is Science Friday. Winter has just started, and I'm already in the doldrum. So I wanted to pull an episode out of the vault today that I personally need to revisit to help me get through these cold, dark days. It's an episode where I talk to a wintertime expert of sorts. She's a researcher

who's traveled to some of the coldest, darkest places on Earth to learn how people there

don't just survive, but thrive in winter. Apparently, one of the key ingredients is something

I do not possess at the moment, which is a positive wintertime

mindset. Here to tell us more is Dr. Carrie Liebowitz, health psychologist and author of

How to Winter, harness your mindset to thrive on cold, dark, or difficult days. She's based

in Amsterdam and the Netherlands. Carrie, welcome to Science Friday. Oh, thanks so much for

having me.

Have you always been a winter lover?

No, I'm here with you today as a reformed winter hater, actually.

That's a relief.

Yeah.

Right.

So there is, you know, I think hope out there for you out there if you're feeling like this can never be you because I thought it could never be me for a long time. I grew up at the Jersey Shore, which is a beach town. And, you know, summer rain supreme and winter was the season that you just have to get through in between the best times of the year. And I really struggled with the winter growing up, really did not like the feeling of being cold,

really had a hard time getting up, especially for school in the winter, in the darkness.

But also really feel like I was steeped in a culture that was

very celebratory of summer and where sort of the general assumption was like, yeah, winter is

depressing. Yeah, there is a bias. Totally. Huge bias. So you were converted by your own research.

I was converted by my own research and by my experience moving to northern Norway,

which was a thing that I did mostly on purpose, but also, you know,

sort of like applied to do a research study in the Arctic to

understand how people there make it through these very long, dark winters with relatively

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