← The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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Hi, this is Zoe Deutsch.
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And this is Nick Robinson. Check out our new movie Voicemails for
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Isabel, exclusively on Netflix.
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Sign up now to watch.
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Pushkin. Hey, how's it going?
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Good, how are you?
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Good, good. Thanks so much for taking the time. This is such a treat. I've been a big fan for a while, so one of the coolest things about hosting this podcast is having the chance to meet people I've admired since I was a kid. People like today's guest who was kind enough to join us on location in Ireland. There's this meme that's going around that says nobody understands the bond between a millennial and the random VHS tape that their parents owned when they were 12. And for me, that random VHS tape was mannequin. Mannequin for listeners who did not own this Random VHS Tape is a 1987 film about a time traveling Egyptian princess whose spirit has spent the last few centuries inhabiting works of art. In the 1980s, she's taken the form of a department store mannequin who comes to life after hours and falls in love with a dreamy artist who builds her window displays. The mannequin character was played by a pre Sex and the City Kim Cattrall, who 12 year old Laurie thought was the absolute coolest in her huge 80s shoulder pads. But kid Laurie was also smitten with the actor who starred as her dreamy love interest. The same guy that adult podcast host Laurie gets to chat with for today's episode, actor Andrew McCarthy.
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Mannequin actually is a lovely movie. It's the most innocent and open hearted movie. It shouldn't work at all and it just does.
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I feel like there was something about the 80s movies that were open hearted in that way and we just don't. We don't get plots like that anymore. Mannequin was more than a quirky love story. Andrew's character, Jonathan also strikes up a touching friendship with another department store employee named Hollywood. The two Characters couldn't have been more different. Hollywood was a flamboyant gay black man, while Andrew was straight and white and relatively basic apart from his mannequin come to life girlfriend.
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Great. I want you to meet somebody. This is Emmett. Oh, very nice.
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Maybe I can get GI Joe and
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we can double sometime.
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There was no mention in any way about sexuality being involved or race or anything. They were just best friends. I thought there was such a lovely quality of the movie that it was just unspoken in any way. None of that mattered. It just mattered. They were good friends.
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Andrew had a knack for portraying touching male friendships on screen. His acting career blossomed in the age of the John Hughes movie, that moment in the 1980s when teen relationships were being featured on the big screen for the first time. Guys my age grew up thinking about their own friendships in light of the intimate bonds they saw actors like Andrew portraying in iconic movies like St. Elmo's Fire and Weekend at Bernie's. Guys my age also got to see actors like Andrew taking part in iconic real life friendships. Along with other 80s heartthrobs like Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Judd Nelson, Andrew was a member of the infamous Brat Pack, a group of young actors who socialized like best buds in all the coolest Hollywood clubs. In all these different ways, Andrew has played a part in literally defining what so many people my age thought male friendships were supposed to be like. And that's why I was so excited to have him join me to discuss this week's happiness hot take. Because this week's hot take concerns something that worries me about men's connection these days. We hear a lot about how men today are lonely and lack social support. But for men to have the best chance at feeling happy, they need more than surface level connections, more than a random work buddy or the dude they see at the gym every morning. Today's happiness hot take is men don't just need casual friendships. They need bromance. In this episode, I'll make the case that we need to bring back the kind of close, emotionally rich male friendships that seemed commonplace in Brat Pack movies before they vanished for good. Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? 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.
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When I told my wife I was writing a book about friendship, she Was like, you are writing a book about friendship because, you know, in many ways, I'm the least likely person.
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Rat pack member Andrew McCarthy was known for his iconic depictions of friendship back in the 1980s. But decades later, in the 2000s, things weren't going as well for Andrew in the friendship department. Like many middle aged men today, Andrew spent much of his time focused on family and work, including his new career as a travel writer. Close relationships with male friends just weren't a priority. Andrew hadn't given much thought to what he might be missing out on until one afternoon when he was chatting with his son, Sam.
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I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea, and Sam was sitting on the floor strumming his guitar. And he was telling me a silly story about one of his friends, some dating disaster. And we were laughing and then he just kind of looked at me and he said, you don't really have any friends, do you, dad? And I knew he had a nerve because I told myself not to react. So I adopted a sort of parental height of, well, Sam, you know, I do have friends. I just don't see them, but I know they're there and that's enough. And he kind of, you know, bought that line. And then when he left, I sat with myself and I thought, you know what? It's not enough. I had these friends who were very instrumental in my life when I was a young man and instrumental in me becoming who I've become, you know, and I, through life and families and careers and all that, I had to see some of these dear friends in decades.
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And research shows Andrew is not alone. Studies like the American Time Use Survey have found that people of all ages are spending far less time in person with friends than they did a few decades ago. But that decline is much worse for men than it is for women. Social connection exists on a spectrum. On one end, you have what academics call weak ties. People you have positive interactions with but don't know all that well. Think a neighbor, the barista who makes your coffee every morning, your apartment's doorman. Calling these connections weak ties might make them sound unimportant. But psychologists have found that these relationships can have a surprisingly powerful effect on our well being. I'm not so worried about guys today when it comes to weak ties. But what men today are increasingly lacking is what researchers call strong ties. Those ride or die close friendships with people who really see you. Bromances, so to speak. And research shows that bromances are on the decline. Thirty years ago, most Men reported having at least six close friends. Today that percentage of men has dropped by half. Half and 15% of men report having no close friendships at all. This rapid decline in men's social connection has a whole host of bad consequences for guys health and their happiness. Psychologists have long argued that social connection is a necessary condition for a happy life. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest running study of happiness ever, found that close relationships were essential not just for your psychological well being as you move into old age, but also for your physical well being. Strong social support is associated with less stress, less and a lower risk of heart disease, dementia and inflammation. Having more friends is linked to stronger immune function and better resistance to diseases. And one famous study by the psychologist Julian Holt Lundstadt found that people with strong social bonds were 50% less likely to die over a set period of time than those who had fewer social connections. Results like these show just how dangerous this decrease in close meal friendships is for guys today.
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It's a muscle, isn't it? Friendship a muscle. And it's a commitment that we don't make.
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So what happened? Why aren't guys today making this commitment? To find out, let's do a deeper dive into the history of bromances. If you rewind the VHS tape of male friendship about a thousand or so years, you would find that bromances were everywhere. It was super common for middle aged guys to have lots of friends, ones with whom they openly expressed affection and love. Take ancient Greece. Back then, close male friendships were considered the cornerstone of civic life. Super close bonds between guys were also considered badass. They were common in the warrior class and on the battlefield. Think for example, of the famously tragic bromance between Achilles and Patroclus that the poet Homer wrote about in the Iliad. After Patroclus was killed in battle, Achilles was so devastated that his grief became the basis for the entire epic. Homer reminds us that it was manly for ancient dudes like Achilles to openly show deep love and affection for their friends. And this celebration of male closeness continued for thousands more years. Fast forward to the 16th century and you'll find many scholars extolling the importance of male companionship. Famed philosophers like Montaigne even argued that women were simply incapable of the idyllic close that men regularly had with one another. Fast forward again to the 18th century and the start of our own country and you'd see that bromances were still alive and well. Our American forefathers often walked down the street arm in arm. They even wrote effusive Poetry to one another. Things in the male friendship department only started to shift in the latter half of the 19th century. That's when we begin to see new cultural ideas about the differences between men and women, including the notion that women were the empathic ones, not men. It was also around this time that gay culture became more visible, which made straight men more self conscious about being intimate with one another. These changes continued into the 20th century and later cemented into the so called traditional male gender norms that we have today. These norms pushed the idea that maleness is synonymous with characteristics like self reliance, physical toughness, and emotional restraint. Of course, not every guy experiences these traditional male gender norms in the same way, but they're still super influential in shaping the way that many heterosexual guys in the US think they're supposed to behave.
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That whole sort of post John Wayne, carry your own water, be stoic, you know, is such nonsense. And it is so ingrained in that I was never a kind of macho dude, and yet I have that.
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Andrew says that traditional male gender norms were everywhere when he was growing up.
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You know, I had three brothers, so I come from a male world and my older brother Peter was my protector and I was a shy, kind of small kid and he was big and he was the star of the family and a big athlete. And so that was my dynamic when I was young.
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This dynamic was also championed by Andrew's insurance salesman father, who seemed almost ashamed to have a son who was introverted and sensitive and interested in acting of all things.
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I was afraid of my dad. He was a very volatile guy and I was terrified of him.
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Andrew remembers one conversation in which his dad actually told him, I love you because I'm your father, but I don't like you. Ouch. But Andrew did have some healthy experiences with male closeness in his teens and early twenties. It was around this time that he met Matthew, a lifelong partner in crime who shared Andrew's acting bug, and Sevy, who, who Andrew has long considered a surrogate big brother. Even when Andrew thinks about the people he cares most about today, Matthew and Sevy's names are at the top of his list. In other words, despite all the cultural messages telling him to keep his feelings to himself, Andrew managed to build exactly the kind of strong ties that psychologists say matter most. And that's in part, Andrew says, because he developed these two friendships before he landed his first big acting role. After the film St. Elmo's Fire came out, almost everything about Andrew's life changed. Being a movie star meant that everyone wanted a piece of the 20something actor, which was terrifying for a shy introvert.
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I had been kind of invisible before that, so that changed my place in the world because people come at you in a different way than if you're just a regular person. And I felt very separate from everyone.
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It was surprising for a fan like me to hear just how isolated Andrew felt during his movie heyday. I remember Andrew taking part in all the close friendships he portrayed on screen during that time. I think of him hanging out with all the other 80s actors at the cool clubs. But Andrew says that the guys in the Brat Pack weren't as close in reality as they seemed from the outside.
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It was ironic that I became sort of known for being part of a group when I felt very, very separate.
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Andrew soon began retreating more and more, ghosting even friends like Sevy and Matthew that he'd made before becoming a movie star. And without close relationships to buffer the stress of fame, Andrew turned to substances to feel better. I was horrified to learn that during the time he was filming my beloved mannequin, Andrew was addicted to cocaine and drank to excess nearly every day.
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I think Mother Teresa once said the worst suffering she'd ever seen was the loneliness of an alcoholic.
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Andrew checked into rehab at age 29. He's proud to say that he's been clean ever since. He used his early sobriety to pivot from acting to directing, and then later to a career as a travel journalist. He eventually met his wife, Dolores, and settled down to raise a family. All this newfound stability was great. He had the intimacy that comes with a loving partner and children. But it didn't include lots of time for the close bromances he had become famous for in his movies and the kind that he'd cherished earlier in real life with friends like Matthew and Sevy.
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I looked up at a certain point, so I'd gotten into a position where my son could say, dad, you don't really have any friends. And from his perspective, that was true. You know, I did consider my friends still my friends in my mind, like I did. I thought, I know they're there, but really, were they? You know, we occasionally call and chat on the phone and it was like, as all friends say, like it was yesterday. But, you know, were those just fumes of the past or was there anything still there?
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Sam's comment helped Andrew realize that an occasional once in a decade phone chat wasn't enough to get all the health and happiness benefits of true friendship.
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And I just thought, you know, I need to go see these people.
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Sevee was living In Baltimore, over 100 miles from Andrew's current home in New York City. Matthew was all the way off in Kentucky. Other good friends that Andrew had met during his travel writing gigs were all the way out on the West Coast. But Andrew wanted to make a grand romantic gesture. He was ready to put in the time and mileage needed to resurrect all these neglected relationships.
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So I called up my friends and said, I want to come see you. And they all said, great, love to you. And then they all invariably canceled on me.
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Andrew worried that, like him, his friends feared what would happen when they finally met up after so long, when they were forced to face those awkward fumes of the past. As he put it earlier, I think
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men are so much more fearful than we acknowledge. And again, fear is weakness. A man, a man can't be that. So you just, instead of acknowledging fear, you're just going to, I don't want to do that. And it's going to make me feel afraid, and I'm not going to admit feeling afraid. So I just don't want to do that. The connection that I'm not interested in is really the fear that I don't want to feel. It's just easy to say no. You know what I mean? It's just safer, easier to say no and to just wall in.
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But Andrew didn't want to just wall in. He was ready to rebuild the friendships he'd put on the back burner, whether his friends seemed up for it or not. How did Andrew's quest to get his bromances back on track go? And how can we learn from Andrew's example to rebuild our own friendships? Well, we'll find out when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. The best summer pieces are the ones you end up wearing on repeat. For me, that means clothes that feel comfortable, versatile, and somehow look right for every occasion. That's why I love Quince. They make elevated essentials using premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, and washable silk without the traditional retail markup. This summer, I've been obsessed with Quince's washable stretch silk tiered maxi dress. It's made of silk with just enough stretch to actually move with you. It looks just as perfect at a posh summer dinner party as it does on a beach walk. Plus, it has pockets, which I love, but that's just the beginning. Quince has denim that's broken in and soft, and their 14 karat gold jewelry think hoops and delicate chains are the kind of finishing touches that Make a five minute outfit look completely intentional. Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quint.comhappiness for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.comhappiness for free shipping and 365 day returns.
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Quints.comhappiness Evening buyer's remorse Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started.
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Sorry, I think there's been a mistake.
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I bought it from Carvana.
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You what?
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Yeah, Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no, no, no Buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.
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I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.
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Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com Actor and author Andrew McCarthy was on a quest to reconnect with old friends. He wanted to rebuild the kinds of bromances that he had portrayed in so many iconic 80s films. And he chose to start that quest with one of his oldest friends, Sevy.
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He was only four hours away, for God's sake, and I still hadn't seen him in years and years.
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Andrew called Sevy and demanded that they set a date for Andrew to drive down to Baltimore to see him. The day before Andrew was set to visit, Sevy called to cancel. Apparently he had forgotten about some big doctor's appointment, so Andrew rescheduled. And the day before that rescheduled visit, Sevy called to cancel again. After several more cancellations, Andrew was tired of Sevy's excuses. Four hours later, Andrew was knocking on the door of Sevy's condo. Sevy seemed shocked and a little upset, greeting Andrew with a confused dude, what are you doing here already? Andrew's romantic gesture seemed to be off to an awkward start. But things got worse when Sevy sheepishly let Andrew inside his condo.
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I walked in and I just went, holy cow.
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Andrew quickly realized why Seve had been so reluctant to have visitors. His apartment was filled floor to ceiling with stuff. Clothes, delivery boxes, papers, just stuff everywhere.
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He kept ordering from Amazon. He's up in the middle of the night and he's ordering and he's ordering and ordering. And I was like, why is he doing that? He doesn't need any of the junk he's ordering.
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Andrew had no idea that Sevy had developed a shopping addiction. But that was probably because Andrew and Sevy hadn't actually connected in a real way in a very long time.
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What happened to my friend here. What kind of friend have I been here?
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But a few hours into the visit, after they got to really talking, all of the awkwardness just disappeared. By the end of the night, Sevy seemed much lighter than he'd been when he first answered the door. Hours later, Andrew took his long drive home feeling more like himself than he had in ages. Turns out reconnecting with a close friend can do that.
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I didn't anticipate that, but that was profound to me. And consequently then I felt this safety net underneath me, the safety net of friendship that I had forgotten I needed and forgotten that I missed.
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Andrew decided to make the four hour trek to visit Sevy more often. And as he did, something unexpected happened. Reconnecting with one old friend seemed to make it easier to open up to other people too. Plus, long drives to Baltimore met chance meetings with random people at rest stops.
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And then along the way, I started talking to all these other men who I would just randomly approach in a gas station or at a restaurant. One time I stopped in Philadelphia. I was in a coffee shop and I started chatting to a guy and I said, I'm going down to see an old friend of mine. He said, oh, that's great, because guys don't really. We don't do that enough. And so I started talking about friendship with him and I thought that would have been an interesting conversation. And I started talking to another guy. And then once I started talking to a few other guys, I started to go, wait a minute, there's something here.
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Andrew realized he could turn his quest to reconnect into a bigger project. He decided that his next book would document not just his own attempt at reconnection, but also the puzzle of what's really going on with male friendship today.
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And knowing I was doing a book made it certainly a lot easier. I certainly wouldn't have approached most strangers and asked them about their friends if I wasn't writing a book.
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That book is now out in the world. It's called who Needs An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America. His attempt to reconnect with his neglected buddies took him on a journey of over 10,000 miles and across 22 different states. Are you a big fan of long drives?
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I hate driving. I'm a terrible. I don't like driving at all. I hate the freeways, and I'm afraid trucks are going to just crash me all the time. So I rode back roads. But no, I hate driving.
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Weeks and weeks of driving those backcountry roads meant lots of chance Conversations with guys from all walks of life. And Andrew's typical conversation involved walking up to a random stranger and bluntly asking, would you mind telling me about your male friends?
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And they all looked at me like I was nuts. And invariably, though interestingly, no one said no to me. Everyone said yes. Almost all of them, by the end of our conversation said, you know what? I've never talked about this before.
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It turns out Andrew wasn't alone when it came to neglecting the buddies he was closest to. He saw the sad stats about the state of male friendship today borne out in every town he visited.
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And I encountered lots of men. I encountered guys when I started talking about it with them. I don't have any friends. I didn't have much use for friendship. I'm old now. It doesn't matter anymore. And that was one of the saddest things I ever heard.
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He also learned about the many factors that prevent men from prioritizing close relationships.
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Every man to a one that I spoke to along the way, and I spoke a dozen, you know, Wyoming cowboys, Texas oil rig workers, police, musicians, cops, you know, everyone I talked to, without exception, felt the burden of providing this need and the weight of obligation of providing. And the degree to which we are able to meet our own expectation of whatever providing means for us is, the degree to which we have a sense of self esteem and happiness. And so I think it's a massive issue for men.
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Many of the men he met across the country seemed to embrace those John Wayne ideals of self reliance. They seemed almost proud to be lonely, as though that was what modern maleness was supposed to involve.
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That's what strength is. It's like that's not strength, that's just isolation.
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Conversations like these made Andrew worry about the next generation of men if his own generation didn't make some big changes.
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I was talking to these guys in Austin. I remember exactly when it was, and we're talking about kids. And I realized my greatest failings as a parent is that I did not model friendship for my children, you know, because kids don't listen. We tell them all sorts of stuff, but they don't listen. They just see our behavior and they learn from our behavior. And I did not actively cultivate and nurture my friendships for them to see. And I think that was a, a great failing of mine as a parent. And that really hit me hard when I realized that.
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But committing to such a long journey meant that Andrew now was putting in the time needed to nurture his friendships.
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Part of me arriving from driving this Distance to meet people. They would go, I can't believe you drove all the way to see me. And I was, you know, you're important to me. You're valued me. You've been important in my life. And I just need to come say hey and just like hang out for a minute and go have dinner. And by each of us owning how important we were to each other, that altered the friendship.
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The more Andrew connected with old friends, the more he realized how much of their lives he'd been missing.
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My friend Matthew in Kentucky mentioned he was taking some pills. I said, what are you taking? Last pills I've seen you take with cranial lubes, you know, in the 80s. What are you. What are you taking there? And he said, I've been taking these since my heart attack. And I was like, when did you have a heart attack? How could I not have known? You had a heart attack 13 years ago. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean, like, this person's important. Why am I not showing up for this? Yeah, yeah, I'm busy. I've got this, I've got that. But these are all just excuses. You need to get over yourself here, Andrew.
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Andrew's time with Matthew also helped him remember all the tiny joys that romance can bring. Take the go to ritual that Andrew and Matthew returned to when they heard their favorite 80s song together.
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It was a Bruce Springsteen song called Glory Days. And then one of the lines in the and say, back in school she would turn all the boys heads. Back in school she could turn all the boys heads. And Matthew and I used to drive around LA together all the time. And whenever that someone come on the radio, we would both snap our heads to the left as if our heads had been turned by a pretty girl. And you know, 30 years later he brings me out to his car and the line is queued up and back in school can turn all the boys heads. And we snap our heads and we were instantly 22 years old again. And it's the stupidest thing. I'm embarrassed now. Thank you. We just felt so received by each other and that goes such a long way.
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Andrew's little Bruce Springsteen ritual might sound silly, but the science backs Andrew up here. Psychologists have found that shared rituals can play an important role in maintaining close relationships. Studies by researcher Mike Norton suggested that even arbitrary rituals can strengthen social bonds. And psychologist Sara Algo has found that shared laughter can act as a catalyst for connection, helping friends feel closer and more satisfied with their relationships. Little rituals remind us of our shared History and of how much we matter to one another. And of course, shared laughter with a good friend is a great way to just feel good. Something Andrew admits he'd been missing in his life.
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I called my wife and she said, well, how's Matthew? What are you guys doing? I go, just stupid stuff. And she said, you don't do enough stupid stuff. I go, God, I think I do so much stupid stuff. She goes, yeah, but you need to do more stupid stuff that doesn't mean anything. So you don't do the stupid stuff that really matters. And I thought that was a really wise thing to say. And so, I mean, laughing kind of catapults you deeper into yourself quicker than anything else, doesn't it? You laugh and just suddenly everything can be released. All that anger, that fear, all that stuff. Laughing is an extraordinary tool in friendship. I think so many of us guys, we just lose a sense of joy and playfulness that is really to our own detriment.
- [27:23]
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Andrew's journey shows that it's relatively easy to resurrect a dormant bromance if you just put in some overdue effort. And the recipe is simple. Ingredient number one is just time, whether that's putting in the hours needed to visit face to face or prioritizing more consistent phone calls in your calendar. And when you do make the time to connect, don't be afraid to get a little silly. Cue up that dumb tune you loved in high school or the stupid inside joke that evokes a shared history. Activities like these will rebuild any social glue that may have dried out over the years. And finally remember that everyone feels a little awkward when they first reach out after a long hiatus. Our distant buddies are usually much more excited to reconnect than it might seem. And conversations that feel uncomfortable at first can become the foundation for genuine intimacy. That's the good news when it comes to this week's happiness. Hot take. But let's be real here. Not every guy listening right now is going to have the time or ability to drop everything to take a 10,000 mile journey to rekindle their dormant friendships. And lots of guys may not even realize that deep connection is actually missing from their life. Which raises a question. Are there other low lift ways that we can help guys today keep their close connections alive? Are there structural ways to nudge lonely guys towards more connection and deeper friendships without adding more things to their calendar? When we get back from the break, we'll meet a social scientist who's begun to dig into these questions. He's found a low Effort strategy for building bromances, one that may have been hiding in plain sight. We'll hear what he's learned so far when the Happiness Lab returns. In a moment.
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I grew up in Philadelphia, which as many people know is the home to the NFL's best team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
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This is my friend Todd Rogers, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Growing up, we watched Eagles games. My family watched Eagles games. I watched with friends. Everyone talked about it.
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Ever since he was a kid, Todd has used being part of the so called Bird gang to connect with the other people and particularly the other dudes in his life. The connective power of being an Eagles fan was especially important during Todd's early teens. It was around this time that the Rogers family experienced a tragic event.
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When I was in eighth grade, rising into ninth grade, my older brother died. I spent every Sunday in Mimi and pop Up's basement, my grandparents basement, that entire season of 9th grade, watching games in the dueling reclining chairs. My grandfather who didn't talk much, but every week we would get Skolnick's bagels. I would eat three or four of them and pass out by halftime on the chair. But looking back, I realized my grandparents wanted to be around and there was no other way to be around a 14 year old in that really challenging time where I, like, needed family.
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Todd continues to use the connective power of Eagles fandom today. Having moved from Philly to Boston for his current academic position, Todd often turns to the Eagles to stay connected with buddies back home.
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My high school friends and I, they're all over the place. But every year we go to an Eagles game together and it's been 15 years now that we all go to a game and then we've all had, many of us have had kids, so now we have two games every year that we go to. One is the family game where we bring all our teams, we tailgate for like three or four hours and then we all go to the game and the other one is just the guys. And it's become this incredible way to stay connected to my friends from high school, but also to connect with everybody in this more extended family we have.
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And even though Todd now resides in Enemy Patriots territory, he still wears his Eagles insignia, which helps him connect with all the other Philly expats living in the area.
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I was in line and the guy in front of me was wearing an Eagle's hat. So naturally I said, go Birds. The guy said, go Birds. We started talking. He watches all the games with his kids. And I was like, you should come watch with us. I host a party of Eagles fans here in Boston every game with my kids and my wife and randos that we've met on the street who are Eagles fans and colleagues and people who are in town. And it has become this, like, centerpiece of our social life.
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Todd has long used football fandom to make his own life more social, but recently he's begun turning to this same strategy academically. Because in addition to being a huge Eagles fan, Todd is also a professional fixer. As a behavioral scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School, Todd's job is to use social science to solve big societal problems. And the big societal problem he's most interested in fixing these days is the challenge underlying this week's happiness. Hot take the male connection crisis.
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It's hard to imagine it does not contribute to everything that's wrong with our society today.
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Before the break, actor Andrew McCarthy and I talked about lots of ways that guys can rebuild their bromances at the individual level. Strategies like simply reaching out to friends you haven't talked to in a while or making time for shared rituals. But Todd wants to take a behavioral insights approach to the male connection crisis. And that means finding an easy structural fix, one that goes beyond individual level solutions, but still doesn't require a lot of money or large scale interventions.
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I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit on ways that we can leverage preexisting infrastructure to help people make and maintain relationships.
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And Todd believes that one of the most promising tools for rebuilding social connection has been hiding in plain sight sports.
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75% of American adults say that they are fans of a team in one of the three big leagues. 75% of Americans, that's more people than I think identify with either of the big parties. 63% of Americans say that they are passionate about their teams. There is just a lot of people who are fans of games.
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Todd says that sports also has the right temporal cadence for building stronger ties.
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One thing that's cool about sports is that they are recurring and they are seasonal. And so they keep coming back. It's three hours of time with someone in a football game or two hours of the basketball game or potentially infinite hours of the baseball game. But like, it's got this structure where it's not like staring face to face.
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Psychologists have made the distinction between what they call face to face friends versus shoulder to shoulder friends. Face to face friends enjoy facing one another during their interactions. Think grabbing a coffee together or chatting emotionally. Eye to eye shoulder to Shoulder relationships, in contrast, take place over more structured activities. Think going fishing, working on a car together, playing your favorite board game, or watching football. Researchers have argued that men today tend to be more comfortable when taking part in shoulder to shoulder activities versus the face to face ones.
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We don't have to talk when it gets awkward. If we don't want to, we can go back to talking about what's on the game. We can sit in silence.
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Todd says that sports fandom also introduces one of the strongest behavioral nudges for building connection, a sense of shared belonging and experience.
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Lori, are you a fan?
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I'm a Red Sox fan.
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Good. There you go. So you get it. Other Red Sox fans and you have a like, completely not sensible connection, right? So like, you meet another Red Sox fan, especially if you're in New Haven,
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because you know there's a lot of
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Yankees fans, too many Yankees fans. One is too many. So you're in New Haven and you run into a Red Sox fan, you might chat with them. It's an invitation. Their hat is an invitation saying, talk to me about the Red Sox. You know exactly where you were in 2004 when they won their first World Series. So you have these like, histories, history of shared experience. And what's also cool is they're synchronized. You were experiencing the same thing wherever these other people were at exactly the same time. So it is like really deep synchronizing experience that makes people feel like they're part of the same tribe. I love that. It is so misunderstood and it is so deep.
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And Todd has found that the connection we get from fandom is powerful enough to overcome some truly big divisions. His work has shown that being a fan of the same team can overcome the political differences that often prevent people from connecting.
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If I learn that you share my fandom, it depolarizes my view of you more than anything else we know. Shared religion, shared race, shared hometown, shared education. Learning that you're also an Eagles fan makes me like you more, be willing to talk to you more, think you're more like me. It is hard for a non fan to understand, but that dimension of similarity seems to be the most powerful for depolarizing of anything we know.
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Connecting through sports also capitalizes on one of the most culturally acceptable ways for guys to hang out.
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We ran one hilarious, I mean hilarious and sad study where we asked men and women who are fans, how likely would you be to text someone you just met saying, I like you. We should be friends. Let's spend a few hours together this weekend. The other condition, I like you. Let's be friends. Let's watch a game this weekend. Women equally, because, like, spend a few hours together, you could do lots of things. Men only watching a game. It is one of the few socially acceptable things that we're like, that's totally normal for dudes to get together and watch a game, but to go for a hike together is less so. To go shopping together, less so.
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And that's why Todd and his colleagues have begun a new project called the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative. The goal of this research initiative is to test whether sports watching could be a solution to the male connection crisis.
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One of the surprised me as we started diving into sports fandom is that 100 million people every week watch an NFL game. Half of them watch by themselves. So it seems like, given that watching a game together is so normal, that maybe we can get people to watch games together and that will make them feel more connected.
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Todd's experiment was simple. He just found people who said they were planning to watch a game by themselves.
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He then told them, hey, why don't you ask somebody to watch with you? Who would you ask? How would you ask them? And so the first finding is that 45% of people in the treatment group end up actually watching with someone relative to the control group, that is, anyone who's done experiments.
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Huge effect in social science.
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It's ridiculous. And then, unsurprisingly, and this is the whole point, they feel much more connected to others while they're watching the game. They enjoy it a lot more than they thought they would. And in future weeks, the treatment group is way more likely than the control group to watch with others, meaning, like, they didn't realize it, but they enjoy the game more when they watch it with others. And so they have recurring social experiences.
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The simple nudge of asking men to watch sports together gets them to keep connecting week after week. And that's why Todd thinks that watching sports together can be the easy hack our society needs for getting men to invest in the strong ties that lead to deeper bromances. Todd also says that sports fandom can provide a natural opportunity to reconnect with
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people you've drifted away from, whether it's family or friends. It's just an excuse to, you know, keep the connections alive. I have these incredible stories of people who are like, I went to college with this person. Lost touch. Twenty years later, the team was in the final four. And so they texted their friend, like, hey, haven't talked to you in a while. Good to see our guys in the final four or our women in the final four. And then it led to this reconnection, like it's. It's an excuse to be in touch with people.
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This is why Todd thinks that fandom can be a nearly universal way to solve men's connection crisis.
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I don't want to say universal because 25% of Americans have not become fans yet, but hopefully we can change that because it's good for them.
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But if you're still not convinced about the connective power of sports, fear not. Because Todd thinks you can embrace the power of fandom even if you have no interest in the Eagles or other professional sports.
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What's cool about sports fandom is it's an entry point for conversation that can lead to bigger things. But that's true of any fandom. It doesn't have to be sports fandom. I have friends who are really into Comic Con in San Diego. They go out there and they dress up and they do it year over year. They make friends there. So, like, just being a fan of something, just engaging with something that has a recurring feature, has a lot of the benefits.
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But Todd also says that if you're not a sports fan yet, it's easy to change that. He thinks you should just pick a random team. Ideally, he would tell you the Philadelphia Eagles, and then just choose to become a fan. He's seen that this technique works better than most people think.
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C
I have a friend who is a nerdy neuroimaging researcher that you might know who lives in Philly. Very good friend. So I can call him nerdy. And he for years resisted becoming an Eagles fan. And I kept being on him like, you can't live in Philly and not be an Eagles fan. It's just not good for you or your kids. Again, he's one of those, it's ridiculous, it's ridiculous, it's ridiculous. So then one year I finally broke through and he's like, I'm going to try it. And he, quote, says it is the most surprisingly positive thing he has done in his entire life, choosing to be an Eagles fan. So now he watches with his kids at Wawa. People approach him when he's wearing his gear. And at work, he's surprised by how many of his fellow nerds, actually, if he's wearing gear, want to talk to him about it. But the thing that he noted to me was he was also surprised at the low barrier to entry.
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Todd's work has convinced me that sports fandom might be an effective low lift strategy for fighting the male connection crisis by meeting guys where they're at. And so I couldn't help but ask my favorite 80s idol what he thought about Todd's idea. Turns out bromance expert Andrew McCarthy, who by his own admission is not much of an athlete, has also recognized the connective power of sports.
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B
Like, if I meet a dude and I like him and I want to sort of get to know him, I'm never going to say, whereas my wife might, you want to have a cup of coffee sometime? A guy is never going to do that. But if one you want, you play golf. I'm really bad. Oh, me too. You want to go play golf one time. I think there really is something in that.
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Andrew found that sports can even help guys break through one of the biggest barriers to connection that he observed on his journey, those traditional male gender norms. He says that sports seems to allow even the John Wayne iest of guys to connect more vulnerably. He was reminded of this during a touching moment of his road trip when he stopped for lunch at a diner in Kentucky. Above his booth was a big poster of one of Kentucky's most beloved sports heroes, the racehorse Secretariat.
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B
I went instantly flashing back to when I was 10 years old and Secretary had won the Kentucky Derby and then eventually the Triple Crown. And I sit and watched it with my dad, who I was not close with, but for some reason, he was very interested in these horse races. And so I got interested in these horse races. And when Secretariat won the Triple Crown, I just remember us both leaping off the couch and just embracing instead of finding herself in this embrace. I just felt so received by him in a way that I rarely ever did.
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Andrew realized that watching those horse races was one of the only times he ever felt close to his emotionally guarded father. Watching that match together seemed to allow Andrew's dad to break through the usual gender norms so that he could truly bond with his son. Seeing Secretariat's photo in that diner helped Andrew recognize that if he really wanted to complete his journey to reconnect with the men in his life, he should probably include an attempt to feel closer to his late father. Luckily, being in Kentucky gave Andrew a touching way to do that.
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I went out to the farm where Secretariat was buried, and I wanted to go see his gravestone because I wanted to continue this moment. I knew my dad would love to have stood over that gravestone. Secretariat.
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Sports fandom seems to have all the ingredients needed for strong ties. It creates recurring rituals. It gives people a shared history. It offers opportunities for playfulness and joy. Celebrating a game can even give guys permission to touch, hug, and be physically close in a way that traditional male gender norms often discourage. And research shows that these ingredients together can make true vulnerability feel a little less intimidating. Which is why watching sports over time can be such a huge way to not just build casual friendships, but to invest in long term bromances. And speaking of investing in long term bromances, I wanted to make sure we had time to share how Andrew's bromance journey ended up. Before he returned home, Andrew had traveled through 22 different states, had talked to hundreds of strangers, and had learned a ton about male connection. But the true bookend of Andrew's quest happened when he was visiting the final friend on his list, a travel writing buddy who lived all the way across the country in California.
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B
I was in Berkeley with my friend Don, and we were having a coffee after dinner one night. We were just sitting out on a cafe watching the world go by. And my son called and Sammy called me up and he just plays guitar. So he launched in and said, dad, dad, let's do this lick. And he started playing me this lick. And normally with my kids, I will drop the world and listen. You know, whenever they call, I answer the phone. And eventually I cut him off, said sammy, Sammy, that sounds great, but listen, I'm with a friend. Can I call you back tomorrow? And he was just like, really awesome. Okay, talk to you tomorrow. And I thought in that moment that, you know, since the trip had started with him going, she don't have any friends, dad. And him kind of going, you're with your friend, Great, I'll talk to you later. I thought that was a nice sort of. It brought it full circle to me anyway.
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A
And how'd that feel like? Did you feel like you had changed at that moment when you got to
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say that I felt like me. I felt like me. And I didn't realize how much that had been lacking by not having that active connection with my friends.
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So that's this week's happiness. Hot take. Dudes today need to follow Andrew's example and invest in bromance. If you're a guy listening right now, why not take a summer road trip to the friend you haven't seen in a while? Or you can use the connective power of sports and call up a friend to watch your favorite team's next game together. Maybe you can even share an old ritual and some laughter during that hangout. But however you choose to do it, please, please work on reviving bromances before it's too late, because no matter what your gender is, you'll be happier and healthier if you commit to prioritizing the friendships you're currently taking for granted. Next week, I'll continue my Happiness Hot Takes with a return to one of my favorite episodes from the Happiness Lab archives. I'll take on the hot take that gets me in the most hot water with my students. We'll see why money doesn't make us as happy as as we assume.
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If you have an enemy, go buy them a lottery ticket because on the off chance that they win, their life is going to be really messed up.
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That's next week on the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.