Pod Insights The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos Happy Birthday, Happiness Lab: Dr Laurie's Top 5 Shows About this episode The Happiness Lab debuted back in fall 2019. To celebrate our fifth birthday, we're revisiting Dr Laurie's favorite shows. We kick off with one from way back.
Technology allows us to bank, shop and dine without talking to another human, but what toll is this taking on our happiness? So in this episode, the inventor of the ATM and the Talking Heads singer David Byrne joined Dr Laurie to explore the ways in which talking to strangers can bring us all genuine joy.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:32 Laurie Santos? The holidays have a way of reminding us what matters most: our health, our loved ones, and making memories together. That's why MassMutual's Living Well Rider is now included with eligible MassMutual Whole Life Insurance as part of their commitment to supporting policy owners' total wellbeing. It's about helping people live well so they can live on. Learn more at massmutual.com/wellness. That's massmutual.com/wellness. Flu season is here, and it's a great time to take a simple step to help protect yourself and your family. That's why I'm headed to CVS Pharmacy to get my flu shot. And honestly, scheduling my appointment was a breeze. With CVS, you can schedule appointments for up to four family members at once
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1:55 Laurie Santos? Pushkin.
2:03 Laurie Santos? The Happiness Lab has just turned five years old. It's hard to believe, but our first series went out in the fall of 2019. Since then, we've made a couple hundred episodes, and thanks to all of you out there, we've racked up more than 130 million downloads. We don't have much data on how much happiness this has sparked, but I think it's probably a ton. We've certainly tackled a lot of topics and talked to some amazing people. But to celebrate these five years, I've picked five episodes from the archive that holds a special place in my heart.
2:34 Laurie Santos? My producer, Ryan Dilly, has been with me every step of this half-decade journey. So, Ryan, tell me what the first show out of the archive is.
2:41 Speaker 03 So, it's an episode called "Mistakenly Seeking Solitude." It's from our very first season. So, why did you have me grab this particular episode?
2:48 Laurie Santos? I picked this episode because it's one of my favorite episodes. I mean, which is always hard for me to say. I love all my episodes. They're like children to me, and so you have to love all of them. So, "Mistakenly Seeking Solitude" is an episode about what we get wrong when it comes to human connection. And in particular, our assumption that solitude, not chatting with people, enjoying our space by ourselves, is maybe the right path to happiness, when all of the research seems to suggest that we'd be much happier if we reached out to other people. But this is genuinely one of my favorite. When I get asked, you know, what are some of my favorite ones? This one comes up at the top. And I think it's for a couple of reasons. I really love the science part. It includes one of my favorite overall scientific guests, Nick Epley. But it was also one of the first episodes that we've recorded. I think the first episode that we recorded together, right?
3:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I guess it was also the first time you went on a solo recording journey out in the field. You met the inventor of the ATM, didn't you? And you found out immediately, as I recall, you found the woes of being an audio producer, right?
3:44 Laurie Santos? Yes, that was a trip that I got to take to Texas to meet Don Wetzel, the inventor of the ATM. And he had a lovely house. He actually let me journey to his house so that I could record with him at his house live. But his house had lots of clocks, like he collected cuckoo clocks that all kind of seemed to go off at really random times, which was lovely. It sounded beautiful, but it did not make for very If I recall.
4:10 Speaker 03 We made the best of it. I think it was really lovely, though. But yeah, there was lots and lots of clocks going off. Since we've recorded this, you know, five years ago, society seems to have gone in the wrong direction since the episode aired. Whenever I get on a train, I always lament the fact that there were quiet cars still, but there were no chatty cars, which is something we talk about. The chatty car is where you can go to meet your fellow commuters and actually get to know them.
4:30 Laurie Santos? Yeah, it's all a little bit depressing. I mean, when we made the episode, I'd hoped the idea for the chatty car would resonate and some company would take it on and we'd all have like, you know, trains now that everyone was chatting and stuff. But it didn't seem to happen. And so I think that's another one of the reasons that I love this episode so much is that I think it matters now just as much as it did five years ago when we first put the episode out. So given all of that, here is possibly my favorite ever Happiness Lab episode, mistakenly seeking solitude.
4:58 Speaker 04 The fighting in the streets of Saigon during the New Year or Tet Offensive made the war too real.
5:03 Speaker 05 Tonight, I have ordered our aircraft and our naval vessels to make no attacks on North Vietnam.
5:10 Laurie Santos? It's 1968, a pretty tumultuous year.
5:13 Speaker 05 Head wrapped in a combat bandage, being helped across the road now. Officers also reportedly chased and fired on a radio-equipped car containing two. American Air Chief Negotiator is certainly not optimistic. About 100 feet from me. That one, two more, two more wounded. Three, four.
5:28 Laurie Santos? But there was one event in 1968 that didn't make the headlines, even though it's still having a huge effect on your well-being.
5:36 Speaker 06 I had to wait, wait, wait. And I really got a little bit aggravated because I knew I had the money there. So all I had to do is, you know, cash a check and get out of there.
5:47 Laurie Santos? This is Don Wetzel. He's recalling a fateful day in November of that year when he was trying to do something simple. He just wanted to withdraw some cash at his bank.
5:56 Speaker 06 I was scheduled to take a trip on a Monday morning. So on Friday, on lunch hour, I went to my bank to get some money. I would say maybe eight to 10 people in line. My guess is, you know, maybe I was in that line for like 18 to 20 minutes just to cash a check.
6:18 Laurie Santos? Don's time was really valuable. He was a talented engineer and vice president of a technology company that was on the hunt for a new business. But instead of problem solving at his desk at work, he was stuck in a bank lobby.
6:30 Speaker 06 So my job was to come up with one or more new products, and I was getting nowhere.
6:36 Laurie Santos? Half a century later, we still share Don's misery. We're stuck in lines all the time. When we wait for coffee in a cafe, when we stand on a crowded train platform, when we get stuck for hours in airport security, we know exactly what he was feeling, watching time slip through his fingers. My brother Aaron wrote a book called How Many Licks?
7:00 Speaker 05 Hey.
7:01 Laurie Santos? Hey Santos, how's it going? Or how to estimate damn near anything. I asked him to calculate for us how much time we're likely to spend waiting in line over our entire lifetimes.
7:11 Speaker 05 Yes, so I think the number we came up with was 7,000 hours.
7:17 Laurie Santos? 7,000 hours waiting in line. That's more than six months of our life stuck in some queue. That's crazy, right? With 7,000 hours, you could take a massive vacation. You could learn a new instrument, or a new language, or a new sport. But you're not doing any of that. You're just waiting, staring at the back of someone's head, and it sucks. We tell ourselves that standing in line is an awful, annoying, happiness-draining waste of time. But what if we could see that line, not as a huge pain in the butt, but as an opportunity to be happier? Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong?
7:58 Laurie Santos? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.
8:19 Laurie Santos? Hey, Don.
8:20 Speaker 06 Hi, Laurie.
8:21 Laurie Santos? Great to meet you. Don Wetzel doesn't have the same name recognition as Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs. But he's an inventor, too. And it turns out, his irritation with waiting in line led to a creation that revolutionized the financial sector. It has also completely changed the daily routines of ordinary people around the world. Before I met Don, I had a certain image of him in my mind. I rang the doorbell expecting to meet a slick, self-important inventor guy. But then, 90-year-old Don welcomed me into the cozy Dallas home that he shares with his wife Eleanor. And I realized, Don wasn't the Elon Musk type I had imagined.
8:58 Speaker 06 Well, I'm delighted you're here.
9:01 Laurie Santos? Thank you so much. Don was like the friendliest grandpa you've ever met. I sat with Don and Eleanor in their living room, which was filled with comfy pillows, smiling photos of their 12 children, and clocks, lots of clocks. They were lovely, but clocks are kind of the nemesis of the podcaster. I'm gonna wait till this stops at a second, and then I'll finish up.
9:25 Speaker 06 I can stop that.
9:26 Laurie Santos? No, that's okay. The clocks are kind of fitting, though, because Don understands the value of time. In fact, it was that feeling of wasted time back in 1968 that led to his life-changing idea.
9:40 Speaker 06 So while I was in line, I thought, seems to me, a teller's job mostly is cashing checks and taking deposits. So I just got the idea that, hmm, I think a machine could do that.
9:58 Laurie Santos? That's right. Don had just dreamed up the ATM, the automated teller machine that millions upon millions of busy people use every day. Nowadays, the idea of an ATM seems really obvious. But Don faced a lot of resistance when he first pitched the idea.
10:14 Speaker 06 On the board of our company...
10:18 Speaker 06 There was a banker. He thought it was the dumbest idea he had ever heard. He said, "We have tellers to do that. Has anybody told you that yet? You know, we do have tellers that do exactly what you're saying your machine can do. So why you think anybody would buy this?"
10:34 Laurie Santos? That board member wasn't entirely crazy. There had been earlier attempts at automated bank machines, and they'd all failed, including one that took deposits. Its inventor, Luther Simgeon, lamented, "The only people using the machine were prostitutes and gamblers who didn't want to deal with a teller face to face." The genius of Don's ATM is that it won the trust of millions of regular customers who loved its convenience.
10:57 Speaker 06 You know, everybody prefers to get things done quicker. And, you know, the ATM was a quick and easy way. Anybody could use an ATM, really, because it's very simple. Stick the card in, key in your PIN number, and bingo, here comes the money, if you got it in the bank, of course.
11:15 Laurie Santos? But now, in hindsight, can you see that this started, in some ways, a revolution of convenience?
11:20 Speaker 06 Well, I never thought of it that way, really, Laurie. Now, I'll tell you a story about that. You know, I had to come up with a forecast as to how many of these ATMs we were going to sell. And I felt like we could sell 4,000 of these machines.
11:38 Laurie Santos? I think there might have been 4,000 just in the airport where I was just at DFW today.
11:43 Speaker 06 Well, at the latest report that I heard, throughout the world, they estimated there is 1.3 million ATMs installed nowadays.
11:54 Laurie Santos? But the real success of the ATM, according to Don, is that it improves people's well-being. It gets them out of those annoying lines.
12:01 Speaker 06 It just made sense that nobody wanted to wait in the teller line like I did. So it makes every bank customer happy to get in and get out and do some other things.
12:14 Laurie Santos? A bit more free time is something we all need. And Don's simple idea has probably freed up millions, possibly billions, of hours the world over. But it turns out, there's an awful downside to all this convenience and save time, one that our lying minds don't even realize.
12:32 Laurie Santos? Don Wetzel's intuition was that most people want a bit of extra free time, that it'll make us happier. And the science backs him up. Simply put, we all feel way too busy. Today, many of us experience what scientists call "time famine." We're literally starving for time. And that famished feeling has a negative effect on our well-being. In fact, people who report feeling short on time are more likely to be depressed, anxious, and less happy than people who feel like they have lots of free time. Psychologists have even come up with a term for that amazing feeling you get when, say, "a meeting is canceled and you suddenly have a free hour you didn't expect." We call it "time affluence."
13:14 Laurie Santos? And those rare moments when we feel wealthy in time can make us feel amazing. It's one of the reasons that every once in a while, I sometimes surprise my Yale students by canceling my happiness class. And their reactions show just how important a little unexpected time off can be. One student even burst into tears. She said it was the first time she'd had an hour off all semester. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to have some free time. So adding even a few extra minutes to our perceived time banks can feel really good. But recent studies also suggest something rather counterintuitive. That is, we misestimate just how busy we really are. While there's lots of work showing that we feel busier than ever before,
13:58 Laurie Santos? there's very little evidence showing that we actually are busier, which is kind of weird. It's as though our minds tell us we're super busy all the time, but in reality, it's not as bad as we think. But there's another even more insidious way our mind leads us astray when we try to save some time. It turns out, there's an opportunity cost that comes from avoiding those bank lines, and the cost is a social one. Long lines are frustrating, but they're also an opportunity to be around other people. And the sheer amount of time we spend around other people actually predicts how happy we are. Take one famous study by positive psychologists Ed Deener and Marty Seligman. They looked at people who scored in the highest 10th percentile on happiness surveys and
14:43 Laurie Santos? tried to figure out what makes them so much happier than the rest of us. The researchers discovered that these happy people didn't spend any more time exercising or doing religious activities. What did these happy folks do differently? They were more social. They spent more time around other humans than people with average levels of happiness. The results were so strong that these researchers deemed being around other people as a necessary condition for very high happiness. Another study by Nobel Prize winning psychologist Danny Kahneman confirmed this. He and his colleagues tested which daily activities make us feel best. The winner? Socializing with others. It's better than eating, shopping, relaxing, or even watching TV.
15:26 Laurie Santos? Just being with other people makes us feel good, even if those people are strangers.
15:32 Speaker 01 There are lots of sources of well-being standing around you. You just have to tap into them.
15:38 Laurie Santos? My friend Nick Epley is a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
15:44 Speaker 01 Happiness isn't about the intensity of experiences that we have. It's about the frequency of them. Happiness is like a leaky tire on your car. You don't have a nice conversation with somebody and then are happy forever, but if you're having a nice conversation with somebody on a plane, that plane ride is more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. But then, you know, once you're off the plane ride, you know, your tire goes flat a little bit, you got to do something else to pump it back up. And so I find a lot of these conversations are like air compressors for my tires.
16:18 Laurie Santos? Nick studies why we're so resistant to being more social. Why don't we take more time to fill up our leaky happiness tires with a quick conversation?
16:26 Speaker 01 People get the consequences of social interaction wrong. Particularly with strangers. Not engaging in a conversation with somebody else gives you a cost somewhere else. And people don't always seem to recognize that.
16:38 Laurie Santos? It turns out the cost of not being social, not taking enough time to connect with other people, is that it makes us feel pretty awful.
16:46 Speaker 01 Feeling lonely or isolated just kind of stinks.
16:49 Laurie Santos? Loneliness is now a growing epidemic around the world. People today report feeling lonely at double the rate they did in the 1980s. Take college campuses, like where I work at Yale. Nationally in the US right now, over 60% of college students report feeling very lonely most of the time. This is higher than in any other previous generation.
17:12 Speaker 01 A stressor like that impairs your well-being, and it impairs your health.
17:17 Laurie Santos? Recent research shows that the physical consequences of our increased loneliness are staggering. Feeling isolated is said to be as bad for our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. If loneliness had a health warning, it would sound like this. May cause increased risk of inflammation, disrupted sleep, abnormal immune responses, depression, anxiety, higher stress levels, early cognitive decline, alcoholism, cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes, suicide, and even early death.
17:44 Laurie Santos? So what can we do to fight this loneliness epidemic? Well, you can get a few hints from people who don't feel all that lonely. People like Eleanor Wettzel.
17:53 Speaker 05 I'm half extrovert and half introvert. And so that part of my personality enjoys the connection with people.
18:02 Laurie Santos? From the moment Dawn Wettzel's wife welcomed me into her home, it was obvious that this old-fashioned grandmother was the opposite of lonely. She was one of the most sociable people I had met in a while. She had a story for everything, including how she met Dawn.
18:17 Speaker 05 It was a blind date, so we were starting at zero. And I think there was just a chemistry there.
18:23 Laurie Santos? I had planned to spend only 30 minutes or so on this interview, but I ended up chatting with Eleanor for over two hours. We talked about our families, what her life was like growing up, how she was able to raise so many children, and other stuff, too. I asked what her secret was. How did she connect with people so easily? It turns out she just chats with strangers whenever she can.
18:46 Speaker 05 I have no problem with direct eye contact and smile. You know, that's who we are. That's how you relate to people. But I can see a lot of downers with the technology that we have available. The ATM doesn't smile back at you or show me their pretty eyes or whatever. So we don't want to lose all of that.
19:10 Laurie Santos? It's true that Dawn's ATMs have given us back time, but they've also robbed us of an important opportunity to connect with human tellers and our fellow bank customers. They steal one of the small chances we have each day to fill up our leaky happiness tires with a quick conversation, which is why Eleanor has taken a relatively shocking stance on ATMs.
19:31 Speaker 05 Well, I've actually never used one, period.
19:35 Laurie Santos? That's right. Eleanor has never used an ATM, even though her husband is the guy that invented them. She just prefers to chat with the teller.
19:44 Speaker 05 I don't think we even know yet how much is being lost without that interaction of human beings. The whole, there's just so, there's so many components. I wouldn't even have time to go into all of them, and I'm sure I haven't even thought of all of them.
19:58 Laurie Santos? Eleanor's right here. We're automating the humans out of everything. Take music, for example. Back in 1968, if Eleanor wanted to hear a new song, she'd have to interact with a bunch of people. She'd have to find a record store, ask the clerk where to find that new song, stand in line with other folks to buy it, and only then could she drive home with her kids to throw it on her record player. But today, it's different.
20:23 Speaker 05 Who is this Alexa that you can have do everything for you?
20:29 Laurie Santos? Every new automated convenience we introduce into our lives has a cost, and that cost, all too often, is a social one. The problem is, it's not often a cost we even realize. The question is why?
20:46 Laurie Santos? But first, we need some music to send us into the break, so let's tease what's coming up next. Alexa, play anything by the talking heads.
20:55 Speaker 05 I'm having trouble connecting to the internet.
20:58 Laurie Santos? Oh, I'm so sorry. Give me a moment. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
21:06 Laurie Santos? There's nothing quite like having pieces in your closet you love and know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that same feeling. And I have to tell you, when it comes to my go-to gift this season, I think this might be the year of the hoodie. Specifically, Quince's Mongolian Cashmere Full Zip Hoodie, which I bought for myself and absolutely love. You know when you get something that's so comfortable, so soft, and so easy to throw on that you suddenly want to wear every day? That's where I am with this hoodie. And I started to think that instead of agonizing over what to get everyone on my holiday list, I might just buy them all one of these. I mean, who on my list wouldn't love a gift of perfect coziness? But it's not just hoodies. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere and organic cotton.
21:51 Laurie Santos? And if a cashmere hoodie isn't quite right for someone on your list, Quince has so much more. From leather bags and jewelry to cozy scarves, down outerwear, and even hotel quality bedding. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was the Happiness Lab. It's the best way to support the show. Research shows that a good night's sleep can put a smile on your face. And that's because sleep is essential for happiness. Enter Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray, a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural
22:35 Laurie Santos? Dead Sea salt to help you get ready for bedtime. When you need a reset after a long day, make Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to relax your body and your mind. Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray comes in a lightweight, fast-drying formula. Just shake it up, generously spritz on the soles of your feet, and massage until absorbed. I've long been a fan of Dr. Teal's, so I was excited when I learned that they had a new product to help me unwind. I tried out Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray after a particularly hard week. It was the perfect ritual to end my day and signal to my brain that the work week was over and it was time to rest. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray online and in your local bath aisle. Dr. Teal's, yep, you needed that.
23:21 Laurie Santos? The holidays have a way of reminding us what matters most: our health, our loved ones, and making memories together. That's why MassMutual's Living Well Rider is now included with eligible MassMutual Whole Life Insurance as part of their commitment to supporting policy owners' total well-being. It's about helping people live well so they can live on. Learn more at massmutual.com/wellness. That's massmutual.com/wellness.
23:54 Speaker 01 I ride the train into Chicago every day to my office in Hyde Park from one of the far-southern suburbs. And every day I get on the train and I was seeing exactly the same kind of phenomenon. I'd seen it for years.
24:07 Laurie Santos? Science begins with observation. And Nick Epley observes something on his daily commute that is so commonplace, yet so odd when you really think about it.
24:16 Speaker 01 Where people would get on, sit down next to their neighbors, perfectly decent, lovely people going into Chicago to work for the day. They would sit down cheek to jowl next to somebody else and they would then ignore each other for 45 minutes.
24:33 Laurie Santos? Most train cars are full of people, which means they're also full of knowledge, stories, and jokes. But most are also deathly quiet.
24:41 Speaker 01 I mean, almost nobody ever talks on the train. The question is why?
24:45 Laurie Santos? Nick decided to test this. He recruited passengers sharing his commute to work, dividing them into three different groups, or "conditions" as we researchers call them. He asked each group to act in a certain way while they were on the train.
24:59 Speaker 01 The one condition, we told them, to keep to themselves. Just focus on their day ahead. Don't engage others around you in conversation this morning. The second condition, we asked them to do whatever they normally do, which is typically the same as what happens in the solitude condition. Almost nobody talks to strangers on the train. And in the third condition, we asked them to do something radical. We asked them to try to make a connection with the person who sits down next to you this morning on the train. Try to get to know something about him or her. So they were going to have a conversation.
25:30 Laurie Santos? Let's think about these different groups for a second. Which one would you be happiest in? The groups in which you could enjoy your solitude? Or the one that forced you to talk to a complete stranger? You might naturally have a pretty strong intuition here, but I bet that intuition is wrong.
25:47 Speaker 01 People reported the most positive commute in the connection condition, less positive in the control condition, and least positive in the solitude condition, where they kept to themselves.
25:58 Laurie Santos? Being forced to talk with a stranger was far and away the most pleasurable experience. Simply making a connection with someone we don't know makes us feel really good. Nick's now done this very same study in a number of different contexts: on city buses, in cabs at the airport, in waiting rooms. They all find the same result: people are happiest when they're being social with someone. But what about that other person?
26:25 Speaker 01 You could imagine that we were potentially spreading misery, that the person who was talked to maybe was unhappy about this. We were polluting the train with all of this unwanted conversation.
26:36 Laurie Santos? So does your conversation make other people miserable? Well, Nick tested that too by creating a fake waiting room in his laboratory.
26:44 Speaker 01 They were also happier when they were talked to than when they were not talked to, and that effect was just as big as the effect on the people who were instructed to talk. So I don't think we're spreading misery on the trains or the buses. Connecting with someone is pleasant, whether you are the one who's initiating it or the one who is receiving it.
27:09 Laurie Santos? Note that Nick's not advocating harassing someone on the train or continuing to try to talk to someone who clearly doesn't want you to speak to them. All Nick's saying is that a quick conversation can make us feel good. The problem is, that's not what we think is going to happen. When Nick asked people to imagine how they'd feel getting into a conversation with a stranger, they wrongly predicted that it wouldn't be fun or uplifting.
27:34 Speaker 01 The reason that's interesting is because our expectations guide our behavior. So if you expect it's going to be freezing cold outside, you'll pick up a jacket and you'll wear it when you go outside. If you expect that it's going to be really warm outside, you won't wear a jacket. If I expect that talking to somebody will be pleasant, I'll do it. If I expect it'll be miserable, I won't.
27:51 Laurie Santos? But I bet you're thinking, what if you're shy around people? Maybe all this talking to strangers stuff works if you're really outgoing, but maybe it sucks for introverts.
28:00 Speaker 05 And we did measure this, and we found actually no difference at all between introverts and extroverts in across these conditions. That is, introverts enjoyed connecting with others as extroverts did. Introverts did not enjoy keeping to themselves in solitude, and extroverts didn't enjoy that either. What tends to vary are people's expectations about how they're going to feel. So, an introvert, because they think they're not going to enjoy a party, is going to choose not to go. Whereas, an extrovert, who enjoys a party, might choose to go. On average, people tend to feel happier when they are connecting with others, and that's true for both extroverts and introverts.
28:43 Laurie Santos? Nick's results are quite challenging for a lot of people to hear. No matter what your personality type is, you will increase your happiness if you interact with people you randomly meet, in stores or on public transport. Creates a social connection. It keeps you connected on the right level. I made this very point on the CBS Morning News recently. Happy people take time for social connection. They try to make connections with the people on the street. And I got some interesting reactions from the viewers. Here's one tweet from someone who says, quote, "Talk to a stranger on the bus. Are you insane? Don't talk to strangers. It's dangerous. Didn't your mama teach you anything?" Here's another one, one of my personal favorites. "If a stranger talks to me on a bus, I will go nuts. People die because of shit like this. Hell, no."
29:28 Laurie Santos? So, do you get, do you get similar reactions where people hear these data and are just like, "Not true, not me"?
29:33 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it all the time. I get a lot of pushback on this because the expectations are so strong. So, what people are imagining, I think, are random people who might come up to you and talk to you. And they imagine sort of the worst-case outcome. So, they're imagining homeless people or mentally ill people or something who are dangerous to them, or psychopaths, whatever. But that's a different situation from what we're asking people to do here. We're just asking you to talk to a person who happens to be sitting next to you, and
30:13 Speaker 05 the person who happens to be sitting next to you is likely to just be a normal person, not a psychopath.
30:22 Laurie Santos? We don't do something that's almost certain to make us happier because we think we'll be preyed upon by some imaginary psycho killer. Actually, we're going into the break again. Alexa, play "Psycho Killer" by The Talking- I'm having trouble connecting to the internet. That's so annoying. I'm so sorry. The show will be back in a moment.
30:45 Laurie Santos? There's nothing quite like having pieces in your closet you love and know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that same feeling. And I have to tell you, when it comes to my go-to gift this season, I think this might be the year of the hoodie. Specifically, Quince's Mongolian Cashmere Full Zip Hoodie, which I bought for myself and absolutely love. You know when you get something that's so comfortable, so soft, and so easy to throw on that you suddenly want to wear it every day? That's where I am with this hoodie. And I started to think that instead of agonizing over what to get everyone on my holiday list, I might just buy them all one of these. I mean, who on my list wouldn't love a gift of perfect coziness? But it's not just hoodies. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere
31:29 Laurie Santos? and organic cotton. And if a cashmere hoodie isn't quite right for someone on your list, Quince has so much more. From leather bags and jewelry to cozy scarves, down outerwear, and even hotel-quality bedding. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was the Happiness Lab. It's the best way to support the show. Research shows that a good night's sleep can put a smile on your face, and that's because sleep is essential for happiness. Enter Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray, a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure
32:13 Laurie Santos? Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt to help you get ready for bedtime. When you need a reset after a long day, make Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to relax your body and your mind. Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula. Just shake it up, generously spritz on the soles of your feet, and massage until absorbed. I've long been a fan of Dr. Teal's, so I was excited when I learned that they had a new product to help me unwind. I tried out Dr. Teal's magnesium spray after a particularly hard week. It was the perfect ritual to end my day and signaled to my brain that the work week was over and it was time to rest. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online and in your local bath aisle.
32:57 Laurie Santos? Dr. Teal's, yep, you needed that. The holidays have a way of reminding us what matters most: our health, our loved ones, and making memories together. That's why MassMutual's Living Well Rider is now included with eligible MassMutual Whole Life Insurance as part of their commitment to supporting policy owners' total well-being. It's about helping people live well so they can live on. Learn more at massmutual.com/wellness. That's massmutual.com/wellness.
33:34 Laurie Santos? Nick Epley thinks we're too scared of falling victim to some psycho killer to strike up conversations on a train. Such unfounded fears are part of why we seem to find the automation revolution so alluring. Dawn's ATM was the first step, but now we're killing the human part of so many of our interactions. I want to introduce you to someone who's deeply worried about this new direction. Someone who is making changes in his own life to fight back. David Byrne.
34:02 Speaker 05 We're losing something, and a lot of the efficiency that we think is there is kind of an illusion. This is insane.
34:12 Laurie Santos? You probably know David as the Talking Heads' frontman, but what you may not know is that David also writes brilliant social essays. He recently authored a fantastic article for the MIT Technology Review on the hidden dangers of automation. It's titled, "Eliminating the Human."
34:29 Speaker 05 If these things are becoming so ubiquitous, the elimination of the human interaction, what do you think?
34:37 Speaker 05 What does that mean for us as individuals, as a society, as a community?
34:43 Laurie Santos? David's thesis is that humans have developed over millions of years to work, trade, have fun, and form relationships face to face.
34:51 Speaker 05 You're getting all these different signals. You're getting signals from their body language, their facial expression, what their eyes are doing, the tone of their voice. We are social animals. That's what we are. We're like ants and wolves. And we are an animal that flourishes because we are social. And you wonder what will happen or what is happening when that aspect of our deep makeup starts to be taken away from us. Or not so much taken away, we give it up voluntarily.
35:28 Laurie Santos? David's worried that we're all voluntarily turning our backs on our fellow humans every day, thanks to new products which promise us ease and convenience, be it an ATM, or an app to preorder our groceries, or a film streaming service that saves us a trip to a crowded movie theater.
35:44 Speaker 05 I'm not saying that whoever designed these things had in the front of their mind, can I come up with a technology to eliminate some of the human interaction in my life? But it sure seems to be the result.
35:58 Laurie Santos? No disrespect to inventors like Don Wetzel, who is as social as social can be. But David worries that a relatively small section of society, namely the engineers who design all this stuff, they're creating a world that the rest of us must inhabit. And they are creating it in their own image.
36:15 Speaker 05 My father was an engineer. I enjoy that mindset of looking at things from an engineer's point of view. But I recognize a lot of that in a lot of programmers, coders, engineers, who are designing a lot of the things that kind of envelop us in the contemporary world. You can sense that a lot of these guys, and most of them are guys, Are not comfortable in social situations. So even if they would not vocally say, I want to make a world where I never have to interact with a person, they might unconsciously do that.
37:00 Speaker 05 That's the world that has been made for us. And whether we want to or not, we're living in their world.
37:08 Laurie Santos? Whether or not you completely buy the stereotype that all engineers shun human company, most of us can admit that what they've designed is often pretty tempting. Many of us have moments where we relish opportunities to be by ourselves or just hide away a bit.
37:24 Speaker 05 When I was much younger, I was much shyer. I was much, much, much more uncomfortable in social situations. I would create a kind of facade or character or persona that would be my face for a social interaction. And it was a little bit artificial. In that sense, I can identify and understand that a lot of people feel like, oh, no, if I can figure out a way to navigate the world with as few annoying interactions with the human, then, very good, let's design interfaces that speed things along and help someone
38:09 Speaker 05 who is uncomfortable in social situations, for example, get through them without the pesky human.
38:17 Laurie Santos? At the end of his MIT Tech Review article, David argues that as we spend less and less time talking and listening to each other, we'll become less tolerant of each other's differences, we'll become more inclined to envy and antagonism. It's a chilling prospect. But can science save us? Can researchers like Nick convince the champions of automation that they're getting the balance between convenience and happiness all wrong? I'm afraid to say it doesn't look promising. Remember Nick's experiment using train passengers? How he found that the people he forced into conversation with their fellow commuters had happier journeys?
38:58 Laurie Santos? Well, Nick reported these findings back to the head of marketing at the railroad company. And here was her response. Nick, you're not going to believe what we're about to do. She said, we're going to roll out a new policy on the trains. We're going to put in place a quiet car.
39:15 Speaker 01 I said, oh, really? And the quiet car is one, she explained, where people are not allowed to engage in conversation. They're not allowed to talk on their cell phones. They're not allowed to talk to somebody sitting next to them. It's supposed to be absolutely quiet.
39:28 Laurie Santos? Nick was surprised why the train company had made a decision that completely contradicted his well-being research.
39:34 Speaker 01 And she said, well, because we asked people on a survey what they wanted, and this is what they said they wanted. Which, of course, I pointed out to her, is exactly what our participants said they wanted too. And it just turned out not quite to be right, at least in terms of their well-being.
39:51 Laurie Santos? Nick, being a good scientist, wanted to know if the railroad people had carried out an experiment with the opposite of a quiet car.
39:58 Speaker 01 Have you ever just put a chatty car on the line? Where people can just get together, you know, maybe you've got snacks or something, and you can get together and you just talk. You just, you know, get to know your neighbors a little bit, get to know your commuters, your chatty car. And she laughed and she said, no, we've never done the chatty car, but we used to have bar cars on the trains where people would get together. And often, they would then connect with each other there. And I asked her, do you still have the bar cars anymore? She said, no, we don't, we don't have them anymore. And I asked, why not? I was imagining, you know, her telling stories about people stumbling off the trains drunk or something. But she said, the real problem was they were too crowded. That is, they were too popular.
40:41 Speaker 01 So there were too many people who wanted to be in there. That's the point at which, as a behavioral scientist, you just sort of sigh and think, it clearly seems they have clear data that people really enjoy being able to connect with each other. And yet, that service doesn't, doesn't get extended. So they canceled it because the chatty car or the equivalent of it was, was too crowded.
41:06 Laurie Santos? So if banks and railroad companies and app designers and store owners aren't going to come to our rescue, what are we to do to stop feeling so isolated? The answer is pretty simple. We just need to connect with other people. And not just our friends and family members. We also need to make the effort to connect more with strangers, the random people around us in lines and on our commute. They matter more than we think.
41:36 Laurie Santos? David Byrne realized this. Despite his natural shyness, he's trying to be part of the cure. He now embraces opportunities to connect with the people who cross his path.
41:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, it happened the other day. The subways were messed up and there was a Chinese guy who was really having a hard... He had some luggage with him and he was really having a hard time. Everything, all, everything has changed. You know, this train's now on this line. This train's now running on this line. This used to be an express, now it's a local. It was all this, so we kind of figured it out together, which was kind of sweet. You have made a connection. And what I discover is very often, they'll smile that you are sharing this acknowledgement with them. They might laugh, you'll laugh. And, and so it kind of, well, it sounds like a good cliche, but it brightens your day
42:28 Speaker 05 for another 15 minutes at least.
42:34 Laurie Santos? So what have we learned in this episode? For one thing, we too readily assume that convenience, efficiency, and near-instant gratification are the roots to happiness. But that assumption is often wrong. Tiny human interactions are the burst of air we need for our happiness tires, to steal Nick's metaphor. Your mind might tell you a quick conversation is going to be awkward, too much time, not worth it. But those intuitions are wrong, even for shy folks. So get out there and make a new connection. Next time you are standing in line, talk to the person next to you. If you can't think of something to say, you could tell them that lines are an opportunity and that the guy who had the inspiration for the ATM machine did so while waiting in
43:19 Laurie Santos? a bank line and that his wife has never used that invention. You could even tell them that you heard that on a podcast, a podcast called The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.
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44:42 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
Next Top 5: Finding Joy in Any Job Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
