It's Friday, June 1st, and you're listening to up to date, our weekly recap of science news.

I'm Kishwar Hari. This week, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to have a

mini interview on something that is near and dear to my heart, being happy. I feel like the news is

inundated with all sorts of gloom and doom these days.

And that's why it's more important than ever to have a smile on your face. And that's exactly what I get

when I think about our mini interview this week, which is what Dean Burnett. He has a new book out

called The Happy Brain. Dean is a neuroscientist turned stand-up comic who

rose to some acclaim a few years ago when he wrote the book, The Idiot Brain, but all the

ways that we seem to lose battles with people that aren't as smart as us and or parts of our

brain that seem to be less smart than others.

It's a pretty humorous look, and his follow-up, the happy brain takes that humorous

slant to the next level, examining all the reasons that people are supposed to be happy,

and then putting that up against the science that we know.

So I hope you enjoy our mini interview this week with Dean Burnett. Dean Burnett, welcome to inquiring minds.

Thank you, having me. And very nice to be here. So I guess in a way, happy brain is a natural

follow up to your first book, Idiot Brain. But I want to go backwards just for a second. What motivated you to

take this humorous look and scientific look at the brain in the first place? I was doing

stand-up comedy and the car is seen very, very small, seen only about four or five gigs, but I had a lot

to say about a lot of material I wanted to get through trying to make science funny. Like it became a bit of a bug made of mine because people

kept telling me you can't, you can either do science or comedy. You can't do both. They don't

mix. And I've also a bit of a problem with this reverence that the brain is treated with in the

mainstream media, the whole thing of, it's amazing, it's spectacular, it's so mysterious, we don't know anything about it.

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