Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 14. I didn't think we'd make it this far but this has been a lot of fun so thank you for putting up with it and still being here and listening.

Today's episode is about what makes you happy a very big and broad and ambitious topic.

I'm going to try to poke a couple of holes into and see if we can take it in a direction that hopefully you're not anticipating. I always like to find these oddball stories that have nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make

but they explain human behavior in a way that hopefully you haven't thought about it before.

And I want to start with a story today about Ernest Shackleton's ship, The Endurance. Many of you are familiar with the story. Some of you may not be though. The endurance was a ship run by a guy named Ernest Shackleton in 1916 that was trying to make it across Antarctica.

And the endurance got stuck in the Antarctic, and before long the ship was crushed.

It was ruined by the ice.

And Shackleton and his 27-man crew then spent 19 months, from January of 1915 to August of 1916

rowing 800 miles to safety in tiny little lifeboats and the nighttime temperatures were hitting 10

degrees below zero and they were constantly frozen and soaked and hungry and

sleep deprived.

The crazy thing about the story is that they all survived.

They ate an occasionally captured seal and they foraged seaweed.

It's one of the most astounding survival stories that you'll ever hear.

But for me, the most emotional part of the book, which is called endurance, came at the

very end. When Ernest Shackleton's crew finally made it to a

whaling station on South Georgia Island which is about 1,600 miles east of

Argentina. Author Alfred Lansing writes, quote,

every comfort the Whaling station could provide

was placed at the disposal of Shackleton and his crew.

They first enjoyed the glorious luxury of a long bath, followed by a shave.

Then new clothes were given to them from the station's storehouse.

...