The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: The Anger of Achilles

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Achilles has anger issues. The great Greek warrior sits out most of the Trojan War because he's angrily sulking. When he finally enters battle, he does so in a fit of rage that causes him to commit atrocities and bring dishonor on himself.   So what can we learn from this angry character in Homer's epic poem, The Iliad? With the help of Harvard classics expert Greg Nagy and anger counsellor Dr Faith Harper, we look at how anger can creep up on us and what we can do to defuse this sometimes explosive emotion.      See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Wait, weren't you supposed to tell me when you started recording? No. I've started recording. Okay. One of the most fun things about hosting this podcast is that I get to share stuff that I absolutely love with my listeners. I, of course, get to tell you about all my favorite findings from psychology and cognitive science on how we can all feel happier. But I also get to tell you about other topics that I adore, academic subjects that go beyond the science of well-being, especially in this new Happiness Lessons of the Ancients series.

I get to share stories about my favorite thinkers and the insights that I've learned from reading all their classic texts. But this series means that I also get to introduce you to some of the people that I love, too. So we have for the podcast to say your name and your title. I am associate professor of literature at MIT. And your name is? Stephanie Frampton. This is my friend Stephanie. Stephanie and I met over a decade ago when she first started dating a friend of mine.

At first, I was a little skeptical of this new girlfriend that had joined our social circle. But she quickly won me over when I learned that she served as a graduate teaching assistant for my favorite class when I was in college. It wasn't a course about happiness or anything having to do with psychology. It was Literature and Arts C14, Concepts of the Hero in Greek Civilization, taught by famed Harvard professor Greg Nagy. If you want, you can check out a version of the course for free on Harvard's edX platform. Back when I was in college, Greg Nagy and his class were legendary. Every year, hundreds and hundreds of students would try to sign up for the course, which was lovingly known on campus as Heroes.

Because of such high demand, Heroes had to be taught in a huge amphitheater. Twice a week, Nagy would stand up front on a giant stage and regale his students with stories of the classic Greek heroes. In class, Nagy explained that Greek heroes weren't like modern superheroes, like Superman or Wonder Woman or Captain America. Characters who generally do morally good things that lead to a happy life. Greek heroes were more like cautionary tales. They got a lot of stuff wrong, but in doing so, gave us some important hints about the kinds of things we should be going for in our own lives to be happier, better people. I loved hearing about all of Nagy's tales of heroes, but my favorite part of the class was when he covered the Greek poet Homer and his masterful epic saga known as the Iliad. The Iliad is Homer's classic story of

the Trojan War, the famous battle between the Greeks, or the Achaeans as they were known back then, and the Trojans. The poem is divided into 24 chapters, or rhapsodies, which tell the story of the mighty but volatile Greek warrior Achilles. Achilles is pretty much the textbook case of what not to do when you're dealing with strong emotions. But the Iliad also gives us some surprisingly science-backed hints about how we can regulate our rage and feel better. So as we began planning this new series on happiness lessons of the ancients, I knew I really wanted to include Homer in the Iliad in my list of classic

texts to share with you. And so I asked my friend Stephanie, a former teaching assistant for my beloved Heroes class, if she'd be my guest for the episode. But Stephanie thought that I should go a little bigger with my guest choice this week. She thought I should ask the man himself, Greg Nagy. And I told Stephanie, no way. Greg Nagy, not gonna happen. He's far too important. Plus, I'd be way too nervous.

Hi, Greg. I hope this note finds you well. One of your former heroes students, Lori Santos, is host of a podcast called The Happiness Lab. We'll be doing a series of chats about the psychology of the ancients for the podcast. And I wondered if you might be interested in joining us to discuss happiness in the Iliad. Do let us know. All the best, Stephanie. A few hours later, Greg Nagy emailed back and said he'd love to join the two of us for a conversation.

I was thrilled and kind of terrified. I mean, Greg Nagy, my Harvard professor legend. I demanded that Stephanie sit in on our conversation just to give me some moral support. Because Nagy is, well, Nagy. I remember him being kind of scary. Greg! Hello.

Hello, hello. Hi, Greg. Nause. I remember him being kind of scary. Greg! Hello! Hello, hello! Hi, Greg! I'm so happy to see this merry group, Stephanie, reunited, and it feels so good. I know, it's been a long time. Turns out Greg wasn't as scary as I remembered. Ditto for you, dear Lori. Oh my goodness, it's been too long. Seeing my old teacher turned me right back to the keener student I was back in the 90s, wanting to impress the professor.

I even showed him my course notes that I'd kept for decades. So this is my notebook from like 1993. You can see. Oh, that's so beautiful. Oh, my God. I still have all my... It just warms my old heart. I'm so happy to be reunited with you. With that somewhat cringeworthy reintroduction to my former professor out of the way, welcome to the latest in our Happiness Lessons of the Ancient series, where the Happiness Lab explores what we can learn about regulating our anger from Homer's famous epic, The Iliad. what we can learn about regulating our anger from Homer's famous epic, The Iliad.

I wanted Naj to begin by explaining the ways that Greek heroes differ from the sorts of all-powerful, Marvel-type superstars that we know in modern times. What I think is most interestingly different about ancient Greek heroes is that we expect a hero to be 100% admirable, but actually there's that, I'm going to be 100% admirable. But actually, there's that, I'm going to make up this percentage, there's 5% or 10%, sometimes even more,

in the hero's behavior, whether it's a he or a she, that is so shockingly bad, so shockingly dysfunctional, that you say to yourself, as a modern or postmodern, how can I admire somebody like that? But heroes weren't there to be admired. Heroes were larger than life humans who experienced things that are kind of ordinary for us in a larger than life way. So even when they're dysfunctional, they're more dysfunctional than we can ever be. And that larger-than-life dysfunction definitely comes out when Greek heroes experience emotions.

So much so that the ancients had a different word for extreme, hero-level feelings. When you and I talk about our emotions, love, hate, anger, the ordinary word is pathos, P-A-T-H-O-S, just pathos. And for us, that's an emotion. When a larger-than-life hero experiences these larger-than-life passions, you call them passion. Pathos for a larger-than-life hero is the passion of the hero. And Homer's Iliad is a cautionary tale about the dysfunctional passions of one hero in particular, Achilles, the most glorious of all Greek warriors. Achilles' story begins towards the end of the Trojan War.

The Greeks had been attacking the Trojans on their home turf for a long time, trying to lay siege to that great city. But the fighting had to stop because a terrible plague had taken over the Greek camps. It turns out that the Greeks had offended the god Apollo because Agamemnon, a sort of uber king on the Greek side, took one of Apollo's beloved priestesses as a war prize. To stop the plague, Agamemnon was forced to give that priestess back. But Agamemnon was pretty bummed that he lost his war bride. So he decides to use his uber-kingly power and pull rank and take someone else's war prize instead.

And who does he choose to steal from? Achilles. So the overking insults Achilles in a horrible way and doesn't take it back. And Achilles was understandably really pissed. And Achilles was understandably really pissed. He feels betrayed not just by the overking, but by the fact that all the Achaeans go along with the insult by not standing up to the king. And so basically he is so hurt that he sits out the Trojan War during most of the 24 performance units of the Iliad called rhapsodies. Even after getting pleas from many of the other Greek kings, Achilles refuses to head back to the battle and help his fellow comrades, who were dying in droves. And so, for example, you never see him in his glory days as a chariot fighter, and he

was the best of chariot fighters, but he doesn't get to do any of that because he's sitting it out for a lot of the Iliad. The fact that Achilles spends most of the poem sitting out the war means that there's a chance he'll also lose something much more important than some lost war prize. If Achilles doesn't return to the fight, he stands to lose out on what the Greeks called kleos, the fame and the glory that heroes achieve after they die. In contrast to people today, the ancient Greeks really cared a lot about how they'd be viewed after death. They wanted to be immortalized for the virtue and brave deeds that they showed in life, and especially in battle. They were hyper aware of their legacies. And at

least some modern thinkers have argued that we might be a bit happier ourselves if we followed the ancient Greeks' lead here. The journalist David Brooks has this kind of contrast that he talks about between resume virtues and eulogy virtues. Like resume virtues are the skills, you know, all our college students are building up, but we shouldn't care about, you know,

what people are going to say about us, what our legacy is going to look like after the fact. Yes, that's so true. And there's this question of what is permanence? And Laurie, you and I sit down and read the Iliad, and we're still experiencing it. We're still witnesses of the kleos that Achilles got into. But achieving immortal Greek kleos involved a difficult trade-off. Most Greeks only got kleos when they risked their lives to achieve glory in war. It was a deadly bargain that really bothered Achilles. So much so that he talked about it in a pivotal part of the poem in Rhapsody 9. He's sitting there on the shores of the water,

and he's singing about the klea andron, the deeds and the fame of the heroes. All of Achilles' friends come to him and say, you better come back to the fight. And he sort of makes this bargain with himself. He says, I'll have a short life, but I'll have that undying kleios. So what Achilles is saying is, okay, and I'm willing to die young if I can get a kleos. And if I do that, that will be a consolation. And that will be for me like a beautiful flower that never loses its aroma, never loses its luster. The vibrant colors even stay because it's not just kleos, it's kleos aftiton. Flowers live and die, but this flower will live forever, unwilting.

But in order to get that unwilting flower of kleos and fame, Achilles needed to actually show bravery in battle, which he wasn't doing for most of the book because he was still pissed at Agamemnon and refusing to fight. for most of the book because he was still pissed to Agamemnon and refusing to fight. So that's why eventually Patroclus, who is the kind of kinder, gentler version of Achilles, Patroclus, Achilles' best friend, says, look, you can't let your people be slaughtered like this. Let me at least take your place. Achilles' right-hand man decides to perpetrate a bit of a ruse. Patroclus sneaks into battle against the Trojans, using Achilles' armor. For a while, the Trojans are fooled and freaked out that the great warrior Achilles was finally back. But the ruse didn't last long.

Patroclus' helmet falls off, and he's revealed. And since Patroclus is not as good of a fighter as Achilles, he quickly gets killed by the Trojans. Draculis is not as good of a fighter as Achilles, he quickly gets killed by the Trojans. He dies at the hands of Hector, who is then the one Trojan hero that Achilles hates more than anyone else in humanity. And when Achilles finds out that the guy he hates most in the world killed his best friend, he absolutely loses it. The rage he was feeling before goes from bad to worse. Achilles doesn't just go back into battle. He goes full-on berserker on the Trojans.

He tracks down his mortal enemy Hector and kills him on the spot. But he doesn't stop there. His anger causes him to go off the moral deep end. He attaches Hector's dead body to the back of his chariot and drags him around the walls of the city in front of Hector's entire family. He wants to mutilate the corpse of Hector and the cruelty he inflicts, which includes things like executing prisoners of war, slaughtering enemy without mercy. And then, Laurie, this is the worst part. After the slaughter is over and he and his men come back to the headquarters, there's going to be a feast.

And he says, don't bother washing up. So he thinks that his own men can just start eating while they haven't washed off the human blood. Achilles' rage meant that he was violating all known standards of virtue and decorum. His extreme anger meant that he was yet again on the of virtue and decorum. His extreme anger meant that he was yet again on the verge of losing his kleos, of being remembered not for his bravery and virtue or for his wrath and debauchery. And then the question is, how does the Iliad resolve

all this anger, all this hatred? When we get back from the break, we'll see that the answer involves understanding how anger actually works psychologically so that we can successfully regulate it during times of frustration and rage. To help us down that path, we'll meet a psychologist who will explain how strong emotions operate. She'll share some evidence-based tips we can use to deal with anger, strategies that we'll see the great Greek heroes use to control their own passions, and ones that can help us out when we're having a frustrating day too. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Ugh, we're so done with new year, new you.

This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you.

Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. The wrath. Sing goddess of Peleus' son Achilles. That destructive wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes. One of the reasons I love Homer's famous poem is because there aren't many books that start with the word wrath, or manis as it's written in Greek. But that's how Homer begins the Iliad. He asks the muse to sing about the wrath of Achilles and how it could cause so much destruction. To better understand the psychology of anger for this episode, I decided to take a page out of Homer's book. I decided to call upon my own muse, a therapist

who's an expert on the science of anger and who can help us make sense of where Achilles went wrong with his rage. I got angry last night because I'm trying to pull into a parking spot and somebody opens their car door and then leaves it open while they're digging around in their truck. I don't know what they're doing. Move! I'm trying to park. I'm trying to go grocery shopping. This is psychologist Faith Harper. You may remember Faith from a previous episode that we did on negative emotions. She's written several fantastic books on strategies we can use to control all forms of emotional pathos, including our anger. It just feels like there's this idea of how things should be. And when people break the contract, we get mad.

Anything that doesn't align with how we expect the world to work can create these feelings of distress, but this need for movement to create change. Faith's work can help us learn from Achilles' cautionary tale of wrath, and perhaps can help us apply the lessons of ancient Troy in the modern grocery store parking lot. I wanted to start with Faith's definition of anger. It comes from the Latin root meaning to outmove. It's creating energy to propel action. It's the nervous system getting wound up enough to do something with it.

Anger is your body directing you to create change. And I think that's a good neutral definition because we have these ideas about anger being very negative and something that we shouldn't have versus paying attention to my body is wanting me to make some kind of correction and protect itself. But Faith has argued that really understanding how anger works also requires a better grasp of what causes our wrath to unleash in the first place. So Faith has come up with a handy acronym, A-H-E-N, that she uses with her patients to help them understand the kinds of things that tend to

piss people off. The A stands for anger. And the idea is it comes from one, two, or three of the following variables, which is H, hurt, E, expectations not met. Or N, needs not met. Or any combination thereof. And so unpacking it very simply, you know, were your feelings hurt? Are you angry at your partner because they were supposed to be home for dinner and you had planned a nice dinner and then they had gone out drinking after work and whoopsie daisy? You're hurt. Your anger is coming from being very hurt by somebody and wanting, you know, and your body reacting in a way to express that. Did you have an expectation for them to show up? It's a really good and simple tool for parsing out what's the underlying emotion. But that helps us figure out our patterns of responses.

Faith's AHAAN acronym seems to fit Achilles' situation perfectly. acronym seems to fit Achilles' situation perfectly. As classicist Greg Nagy explained before, when overking Agamemnon takes Achilles' war prize, it violates his expectations and his needs as a decorated war hero. He's really hurt. He experiences a really severe loss of honor. Faith thinks that this is one of the features of anger that we often forget. It's a social emotion. Anger happens not just in life or death situations, but when we feel like we're not getting what we need from the people around us. And I think a lot of that goes back in the fact that we are hardwired for connection, and we are hardwired to be protective of our people. And so insult to that or disrespect of

that is a threat, right? I am also a human being to be respected and you're not. And we're going to have a problem if you can't correct yourself is what the body is doing. And that's where the anger is coming from. But even when anger comes from a big personal slight like Achilles received, it often occurs in different degrees of severity. You know, there's multiple layers to any strong emotion. We can be like content or we can be completely blissed out, right? They can be irritated.

It can be like, you know, going back to like parking lot lady. Was I angry? Like, was I pissed off? No, I was irritated. But it'd be very easy for me to continue to feed that and it turn into a rage-a-thon. And Homer definitely recognized

this feature of our emotional psychology. As Classics professor Greg Nagy explains, Homer used different words for different levels and kinds of anger. So one of them is manis, that's the first word of the Iliad, and that's a cosmic anger. So when you have that, well only Achilles and superhumans like that have it. It has cosmic repercussions. Then there's that slower burn kind of anger that the Greeks called kotos. You have a bad interaction at work, which is followed by lots of traffic on your commute. And then you finally get home and see that no one did the dishes and your emotions go boom. Andothos is like a time bomb, tick, tick, tick. Doesn't necessarily go off at the right time.

And finally, there's the worst kind of anger a hero or any person can experience, which Homer called holos. Which is what happens when, for example, Achilles goes on a rampage and just kills everything. He's a killing machine. He reacts in a way that damages his own people and damages himself. Just horrifying, right? So that's holos, which is imagined as bile, explosions of bile. It's an explosion of all the bad humors in the body. Now, I'm guessing that most of you listening

right now may not have gone full on Achilles Berserker mode the last time you hit holos level anger. You probably didn't murder your annoying boss or mutilate the guy who stole your parking place and drag his corpse around the lot. But I'm also guessing that at least some of you probably remember a situation in which you felt that chaotic tick-tick-tick-coto stress bomb about to go off.

Or maybe even times when your angry words towards a spouse or colleague did feel like an explosion of bile. These angry moments are ones that we're not proud of. They make us feel like bad people and lead to decisions that are usually not great for our happiness. Letting our anger run wild can also lead us away from being the kind of people we want to be. So what does the science say about how we can control our pathos before the bile and cotos bombs go off? And what, if anything, can we

learn from the ancients about how to do better? Achilles goes into a rage and does all sorts of morally questionable things that we should be shocked about. And then the question is, how does a person like that ever achieve a happy ending? We'll hear the answer when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. ending? We'll hear the answer when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble.

So, you know, I'm always trying to get my clients and people who read my book to recognize, like, what are those early signs that there's something that needs to happen, you know, that you need to pay attention to, that there's something different that needs to happen. Therapist Faith Harper's first tip for regulating our anger is to take advantage of an important feature of anger. Like many emotions, it often takes place in degrees. of an important feature of anger. Like many emotions, it often takes place in degrees. When we experience a small violation of our needs or expectations, we usually don't jump into full, wholist, vile explosion mode.

And that means we have a chance to do something that Greek hero Achilles failed to. We can nip our frustration in the bud before an anger bomb goes off. Because once we're in this full-blown, big, big emotions, it's far harder to control. Anybody who has, you know, just like seen red anger can attest to that. You know, we can attest to that. And the path to noticing that negative sense early on involves a practice

we talk about a lot on the Happiness Lab. We need to be mindful of how an emotion like anger feels in our bodies. And so paying attention to those early warning signs of like, oh, like I've noticed that my jaw gets tight or I noticed that my shoulders go up, you know, seeing like a body difference. I'm like, okay, so something's going on with your body. What's going on right now? And, you know, really trying to pay attention to it somatically so we can attend to what needs to be attended to before it gets into a full-blown rage fit. Because anybody who has tried to calm themselves down in a full-blown rage fit knows that it's nigh impossible and you just kind of have to let it wear itself out.

We also need to notice whether the emotion we're dealing with is truly anger alone or whether other negative feelings are part of the emotional mix. In her therapeutic practice, Faith finds that many of her clients express other emotions, like fear or overwhelm or sadness, via feelings of rage. We have some cultural narrative issues around anger. Anger is considered appropriate. It's considered powerful. It's considered effective. It's a very masculine emotion and energy.

considered effective. It's very masculine emotion and energy. We really struggle socially to let men have a wide range of emotional experiences. Men aren't supposed to cry. Men aren't supposed to be sad or hurt or disappointed or depressed. They're allowed to be angry. That's macho. So a lot of time the anger is masking that that other stuff going on, is that we're not allowing this free range of expression of emotions and being able to work with them and have them be validated and understood. You're allowed to be angry or you can be a pussy, basically. I mean, we know we can talk about testosterone, but a lot of it is also cultural and what's acceptable and what's not. in what's acceptable and what's not. These modern cultural constraints on which negative emotions are and are not appropriate to express

also came up in ancient Greece. And Harvard professor Greg Nagy thinks that this is one of the big psychological insights that Homer gives us in his famous works. It shows how misguided some people are in thinking that the Homeric Iliad and the Homeric Odyssey are men's entertainment. I just don't see it.

Achilles was pissed when Agamemnon took his war prize, but he only really hit holos-level, bile-spewing anger when he experienced extreme grief, when he learned of the death of the person he cared about most. And that's Patroclus, his best friend who is his alter ego, his other self. They're that close. Achilles winds up expressing the pain that comes with losing his dear friend as rage. To control that anger, Achilles really needed to do what Faith Harper suggested. He needed to find a way to tend to his sadness. He had to cry and mourn the loss of his best friend, which was probably a hard thing for a macho war hero like Achilles to do.

But by the end of The Iliad in Rhapsody 24, Homer does provide a path for Achilles to let out his sadness over the death of Patroclus. I'm so glad you're focusing on 24. That's the Rhapsody where Achilles is rehumanized, where he can start seeing the sufferings of the father of the person he hated and was more angry at than anybody else. That father was Trojan King Priam. If you recall, Achilles had not only killed Priam's son Hector, but had taken his body and mutilated it. In the final rhapsody, Priam, who was working through

his own grief after the tragic death of his son, makes the brave decision to try to get Hector's body back from Achilles. But Priam didn't have a cell phone back then, so in order to contact Achilles and ask for his grace, he and his men had to make a treacherous journey from the citadel in Troy through enemy Greek lines and into Achilles' headquarters. Here's the father of the man that Achilles hated so much that at Hector's dying moment, he said that I would be ready to cut you up and eat your flesh raw. I mean, that's as barbaric, as brutal, not even barbaric, it's just brutal, animal-like. That's how bad the hatred is. But something changes when Achilles sees the old man crying.

His brutal rage finally softens. He thinks of how his own father would react if he himself had been killed as dishonorably as Hector had. Oh, that father is crying. My father would be crying. And why is that important? Because then he starts crying, and there's Priam crying for his son, and he's crying for his father because he's thinking of his father, but he's also crying for Patroclus. By feeling compassion for Priam's mourning the loss of his son, Achilles was finally able to let out his own emotions about the death of his best friend. And Laurie, you're going to love this.

Patroclus' name is what a Latinist like Stephanie would call a nomen loquens, a speaking name. So it's a name that actually means what his function is in Homeric poetry. And the name means he who has the kleos of the ancestors, of the fathers. So it's he who has the kleos of the ancestors. That's what Patroclus means. Greg argues that the final message of the Iliad isn't just about seeking glory and kleos through strength in battle. Homer wanted us to realize that kleos comes from achieving other virtues too, especially ones that are necessary for regulating our passions. So what we translate as virtue from Greek, arate, really means striving. It's something that you don't accomplish 100% ever. You just strive towards

a goal. And some people are more successful, some are less. But it's all a matter of trying to reach a balance. And yes, klaus is one of the things you strive for. But another thing is compassion, which is, can you feel the sorrow of somebody else? And in the end, it is compassion. It's figuring out that the father of Hector, Priam, is crying at the loss of his son and is weeping just as much as Achilles' father would be crying for him if he had been the victim. And suddenly, Achilles is transformed from the depths of brutality, which we have to recognize, to the heights of humanity, even humanism. Achilles' wrath is a cautionary tale. It's Homer's way of telling us what not to do when you're feeling pissed off.

But Achilles' epic also shows that there are strategies we can use to regulate our anger. We can use virtues like compassion as a sort of psychological check-in balance in order to feel and act better. All these virtues that have to have a chemistry of their own, and you hope that in the trajectory of a hero, they'll work out right. It's a hope that Greg has experienced time and again, after teaching his heroes class for more than 40 years. Decades on, he still marvels at all the psychological insights he continues to get from Achilles and the other ancient heroes. Well, you know, it gives me a sense of wonder that these emotions, these larger-than-life emotions, and I like the way you describe this kind of psychological checks and balances, and has a life that keeps on living, which amazes me.

I think that would be my lesson for myself in my life. But I think another lesson is to be talking to former students who are now colleagues, is that the story goes on, doesn't it? It doesn't stop. Greg's right here. 30 years after taking Heroes back in college, I'm still learning new insights from the stories of the ancients. And I hope that hearing

about Homer's Iliad has given you some hints about how you can regulate your own anger. When you feel that first twinge of frustration kicking in, take a moment to notice what you're feeling.

Unlike Achilles, you can commit to starting that regulation process early on before you get to holos-level rage. But you should also pay attention to what's causing your anger in the first place. Are you really feeling like your needs have been violated? Or is there another emotion like sadness in there that you also need to address? And can you maybe harness other virtues

like compassion for yourself and others to address all those yucky feelings? I'm so humbled that my favorite college professor, Greg Nagy, was willing to take time out of his busy schedule to share all his insights about the Greek heroes. And I'm super grateful to my friend, MIT professor Stephanie Frampton, for setting up our conversation. But I was also kind of sad that we didn't have time for Stephanie to share all her insights about the ancient heroes. So when the Happiness Lab returns next week, we'll get to hear Stephanie's happiness tips that come from a different old school writer, Virgil, and his famous story of the Latin hero, Aeneas. We'll get to hear what Virgil said

about using the power of stories and narrative to shape happier thoughts and happier decisions. So I hope you'll join me and Stephanie back here again for the next edition of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. If you liked hearing about today's ancient happiness insights, you should make sure you're signed up for Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is our subscription service,

which allows you to enjoy ad-free listening to this and other Pushkin podcasts. And as a special gift to Pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be sharing some of my favorite passages from the original texts that you heard about today. So be sure to sign up today at Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm. The Happiness Lab is co-written by Ryan Dilley

and is produced by Ryan Dilley, Courtney Guarano, and Brittany Brown. The show was mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carly Migliore, Nicole Murano, Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, my agent Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team.

The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, Dr. Laurie Santos.