The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Is There a Gen Z Happiness Crisis? Dr Laurie Meets the US Surgeon General

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Have we created a culture where young people prioritize good grades, social media likes and constant hustling over the important wellbeing pillars of sleep, friendships and free time? Dr Laurie Santos joins the US Surgeon General on his podcast House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy to ask how we got here and what Gen Z can do to get out of this happiness crisis. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome to House Calls. I'm Vivek Murthy and I have the honour of serving as US Surgeon General. I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Laurie Santos, professor at Yale University and the creator of the revolutionary class, Psychology and the Good Life, better known as the Happiness Class. Today, we'll be talking about happiness in the context of the mental health crisis among youth. This episode includes lessons on stress, burnout, and the practice of happiness. Hi, Lori, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks so much for having me on the show. I have so much I want to talk to you about today. But I first just want to ask just about your personal story, which is I find so fascinating that you went from working on non-human primates to becoming an expert on unhappiness.

And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how that happened. Yeah, it's a kind of strange path. And so, yeah, I've been an academic psychologist for a very, very embarrassingly long time. Most of the time, I was really interested in this question of what makes humans unique, what makes us special? What are some of the ways that we make sense of the world that no other creature does? And I studied that question using monkeys, using non-human primates. But it was around this time, like, you know, about 10 years ago that I started getting more and more involved in undergraduate student life. And I took on this new role on campus. I became a head of college on Yale's campus, which is this position where faculty get to live with students in one of these undergraduate houses. And it was just an amazing opportunity, right? I got to see student life up close and personal.

But what was surprising was that I didn't like what I was seeing. You know, I assumed college student life was like what college life was like back, you know, when I went to school in the 90s. And it was just completely different. You know, so many students were reporting feeling depressed and anxious and lonely, as you know so well from your work. And it just kind of wasn't what I was expecting. And so I kind of wanted to do something about it, right? I'm like living in this community with my students.

I'm like this benevolent faculty aunt who's supposed to take care of them. And I realized like we weren't addressing this crisis of student mental health. So I kind of did this sort of retraining in positive psychology and sort of science of wellbeing, all these evidence-based strategies you can use to feel better. And so I kind of packaged it all together to develop a new class for students. I thought, you know, 40 or so students would take it. But the first time I taught it back in 2018, a quarter of the entire Yale student body decided to take the class. Over a thousand students showed up. And that was sort of, you know, a logistical nightmare, but it was also kind of humbling and cool. And it showed me that students were voting with their feet. They don't like this culture of feeling lonely and stressed and anxious. And I think they really

wanted some evidence-based ways that they could address some of these problems. They were looking for solutions, and they wanted those solutions to come from science and public health. Well, Laurie, you and I both, I know, are deeply concerned about what's happening with young people and their mental health these days in the country. And I'm curious, I think for people out there who may have seen the headlines, but for whom it's not quite tangible, they're not sure, like, what does this actually look like for kids to be in crisis? Can you paint a picture of what you've been seeing on the campus and what you're observing in the lives of students in terms of how this mental health crisis is manifesting

in their lives? Yeah, I mean, I'll start with some of the statistics, because I think the statistics are pretty dire, right? You know, according to these national college health surveys, so these aren't just students at Ivy League schools, like Yale, these are students around the country in all kinds of different schools. Right now, or at least in 2019, which is the last kind of pre-COVID data we had, you know, over 40% of college students report being too depressed to function most days. Over 60% say that they're overwhelmingly anxious. More than 50% say that they're very lonely most of the time. And more than one in 10 has seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months. You know, and so this is what is happening nationally.

And the way I would just see it on the ground, which is students are just overwhelmed. You know, they're overwhelmed by academics. They're overwhelmed by social stuff. I'd see a student in the dining hall and be like, hey, how's it going? Be like, oh, if only I could get to the end of the week or if only I could get to midterms. You know, they're kind of fast forwarding this rare and precious time they have as young people. And those are the students who aren't in crisis, right? You know, crisis really looks like students who are unable to get out of

bed because they have panic attacks or who are acutely suicidal or who have everything going, you know, especially in a school like Yale, there are students who are academically achieving, but in terms of their mental health, they're falling apart. And so I think, you know, we really need to, as you know, well, and as you've discussed yourself, I mean, I think we really need to think seriously about addressing this crisis, not just because our young people's mental health matters, but as educators, we're not really doing our job when these are the statistics on the ground. Like as a college educator, if I'm trying to teach a psychology class or some pre-med class, like my students aren't learning if 40% of them are too depressed to function most days and 60% are experiencing overwhelming anxiety, right? They're just not learning in the way I think we

had assumed for a very long time that they were. Yeah, I mean, those stats and stories are so powerful and so disturbing, Laurie. I mean, that tells, I think, anyone out there who's listening and is wondering, is this more the exception or, you know, only something that affects a small group of people? The answer is no. I mean, this is sadly becoming the norm, you know, if anything, and affecting in some cases a majority of young people out there. So this is a profound crisis and it's affecting our kids. You know, as you think about this journey, obviously we're in a bad place now, but how did we get here? What's your sense of the road that led to the current moment. Yeah. I mean, I think there's no, it'd be nice if there was like a, you know, a red herring of one thing we could point to and be like, oh, this is the factor. Like, let's get rid of it. I think it's a variety of things. I mean, I think, you know, we have a very different relationship with technology than we did when you and I were in college, right? This is a generation of students who really can't shut off. You know, I told this, this funny story to students. One of my students was in their dorm room and they're like, you know, my, my title is Hawk Santos, head of college Santos.

They'd be like, Hawk Santos, there's this weird number on my wall. Like, what is that? And I was like, oh, that that's the phone number. You know, people used to call your phone in your room. And the students said, well, how could they call me when I wasn't in the room? And I was like, well, they couldn't, like, you could just leave, like you could walk away from your social expectations. And I think when you think about that difference, that students feel like they're on all the time, onto their friend group, onto the people they're performing with on social media, onto just being connected to all the scary stuff in the news all the time, right? That alone is a recipe for anxiety. It's a recipe for kind of not feeling like you can ever shut

off, right? And so I think we really need to take a solid look at our relationship with technology. And it's partly social media, but I think it's broader than that. Even a student who's not really on TikTok or on Instagram or so on, they're connected to their parents who could text them at a moment's notice. They're connected to WhatsApp when they're kind of connecting with their, you know, friend group and things like that. So I think that's a big change. And if you plot just the number of smartphones that students tended to have alongside these, you know, awful mental health statistics, you see a really robust correlation. And we know correlation isn't causation, but my sense is that there's something there we need to analyze. I think there's also been some interesting and important structural changes to the way childhood and education works.

You know, I think childhood has become much more of an achievement culture, you know, in the years since you and I were in college, where, you know, even from grade school, students are starting to worry about grades. You know, we have words like college readiness and things like that. And those things are important. You know, we want students to learn, but I think we've moved much more away from internal rewards like learning and the benefits you get from education to things like getting into a perfect school and the scores you get on exams and so on. And I think that focus on external rewards has set students up for competing in really individualistic ways that lead them astray from the things that really matter for their mental health, things like

social connection, things like helping others, things like having a sense of meaning and purpose that's beyond yourself. And so I think those structural changes in the way we think about education and what students are trying to achieve, those things actually matter a lot. And we need to look at those really carefully if we're going to think about addressing this mental health crisis. So let's dig into that for a second, because I like what you're talking about regarding internal versus external rewards, or more so as priorities that we ask young people to train their minds on and then to chase for years and years and years, in some cases, the rest of their life. And I think this is where I think it's so interesting

that, you know, people talk about you as the happiness professor. And I know that happiness has been your focus. But a lot of these priorities are part of a narrative that tells us that if you achieve those external markers, right, whether it is, you know, winning certain competitions, getting certain grades, getting to certain school, getting fancy jobs, making a certain amount of money, becoming famous, whatever the external markers are. The story goes that if you achieve those, you will be happy. But what does the data actually tell us about whether that's true or not? Yeah. I mean, the data are really clear on this one, which is that our circumstances don't necessarily make us happy.

I think the one caveat to that is that if you're in really dire circumstances, right, if you don't have enough money to put food on the table, if your health is terrible, you know, those are circumstances that if you change those, of course, they'll positively affect your well-being. But, you know, if you're not living in poverty, the results seem to suggest that getting more money isn't necessarily going to help you, or it's definitely not going to help as much as we predict it will. The same is true for grades and accolades. One of the statistics I share with my students is that there is a correlation between high school grade point average and well-being, but it's a negative correlation. What does that mean? That means as high school GPA goes up, your overall well-being goes down.

You also see a negative correlation between high school GPA goes up, your overall well-being goes down. You also see a negative correlation between high school GPA and self-esteem and high school GPA and optimism, right? It's not what we predict, but, you know, just student achievement is not leading to the kind of well-being effects we expect. And you might say, well, you know, that might be true in school, but maybe, you know, once they graduate from college, once they get into the good school, you know, in the future, they'll be much better off. But the data don't seem to bear that out either. In cases where we have good data, again, people's great circumstances don't tend to lead to these well-being effects. The things that matter for well-being are the things that our

students are often not prioritizing. They're the kind of things that get lost in this sort of opportunity cost struggle that we're sort of setting students up for. They're the kind of things that get lost in this sort of opportunity cost struggle that we're sort of setting students up for. There are things like social connection, things like just getting enough sleep and healthy habits like exercise. There are things like doing things for others and having a sense of purpose, not just kind of individually competing for yourself, but really having some bigger goal that you're doing something for your community. Again, these, I think, are things that we've lost out on in the norms that we set students up for today. They're things that have kind of gone by the wayside in the structures we've set up in our kind of early educational system. But those are the things that the research suggests really matter for happiness. Yeah, and that's incredibly powerful to hear,

because I do think that young people, when I talk to them across the country, a lot of them have actually really impressive and profound insight into the structure in which they're operating, a structure and a culture that are asking them to chase certain benchmarks, if you will, of achievement with the promise, even if it's an illusory promise of happiness that comes thereafter. But they're not happy necessarily doing that. And so, you know, I think about this from two respects. One is if they're not happy, if they don't want it, where is it coming from? Is it coming from parents? Is it coming from media? Is it coming from, you know, some other, you know,

sort of messaging element in society that's telling people this is what you have to do? But what's your sense of what is driving that culture of achievement, even if it's at the expense of happiness? I mean, I think there are a couple of factors. It's interesting to look at this historically. There's a former Stanford gene, Julie Lithgott-Hames, who's looked at this in a lot of detail. And what she talks about is like a lot of changes that happened to education in the kind of 80s and 90s that might have led to this. One of the big ones was the changes to this sort of US News and World Report kind of scoring of different colleges, right?

Before it was kind of like, you know, go to college, that's great. Now there's like rankings, you can kind of win or lose the college game. And I think parents pick up on that, students pick up on that, right? You know, there's this idea that there are the kind of haves and the have-nots when it comes to education now. And that feels really different. I think there's also been changes in terms of who can go to college in incredibly positive ways, right? You know, any amazing student, you know, can go to Yale right now. You know, Yale will provide a massive financial aid package. It's just fantastic. But the meritocracy means that like the spoils of the war become large.

You know, this is where I kind of tie back to my roots studying animals. You know, you see in animals, these impressive games that when, you know, the spoils go up, the competition rises, you see this kind of arms race in terms of how they invest and how much they compete. And I think we've, we've kind of stuck our students into this arms race of competing for these things. And the competition begins really early. And what they're sacrificing is all the stuff that we know matters for into this arms race of competing for these things. And the competition begins really early. And what they're sacrificing is all the stuff that we know matters for happiness. Again, sleep, social connection, being present, being mindful, taking breaks, what social

scientists call time affluence, just the sense that you have some free time. Think of our poor, overscheduled kids and just all the stuff we pack in for them. And I think, again, I think parents did this. Parents kind of focused on these things out of love for their children, right? They want their children to succeed. They want their children ultimately to be happy. But we have these misconceptions about the kinds of things that really matter for happiness. And we set up our structures using those misconceptions.

And I think now that we understand the signs of this stuff better, I think we can start questioning some of those structures and trying to think about whether there are some changes we need to make. It's time to take a short break, but there'll be more of my conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy in a moment. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Welcome back to my chat with the U.S. Surgeon General, Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Welcome back to my chat with the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. You know, in your course on happiness, I feel like you're, it seems like there are two elements to the course, right? You're teaching people about the science of happiness, what leads to and influences our

happiness, but you're also teaching them about the science and art of behavior change, right? Like once we understand that, how would we actually change our behaviors, which is, gosh, one of the toughest things to do, right? But so important. And I'm curious, like for folks out there who are listening, who recognize that there may be a happiness gap in their life, a gap that they want to close, how should they think about what kind of activities may in fact help them increase happiness? And then how can they change their lives to actually make those activities part of their life?

Because from everything you've written before and spoken before that I've listened to, you're very realistic about telling people that this isn't a simple, you know, flip of the switch. This isn't just an app that you sign up for. It's not a one-time activity. But this is, it's hard work, you know, to build a life that truly contributes to and supports happiness. Yeah, I mean, I think the first important insight is to recognize that it's possible. I mean, there's just tons of data that if you can change your behaviors, if you can change your mindsets, you will see significant increases in happiness, right? And again, I think it's worth kind of qualifying that. That doesn't mean you go from like zero on a happiness scale to 10. But if you really take seriously these kinds of strategies and you

engage with it, you know, you can go from a six to a seven, you know, on average students who take my course, for example, go up about a point on a standard 10 point well-being scale. And that's significant, right? Like that matters a lot that can get you out of a dark place if you're feeling in a dark place. So I think that's thing number one is to recognize that it works. The second is to try to figure out the kinds of strategies that really do positively affect your happiness. And again, it's not what we think. We think we have to change our job or, you know, make some incredible change in our finances or things like that. And for many people, it's not that. For many people, it's, for example, getting in more social connection, you know, something I know you've talked about a lot. You know, I really wish that, you know,

your office, in addition to kind of having the, you know, recommendations for how much exercise people should get in a day and, you know, how many, you know, whole grains or whatever, like how many minutes of meaningful conversation we should have, you know, every single day, right? You know, how many people we should reach out to, right? Just kind of like standard ways that we can, in really simple forms, just get a little bit more connection in our lives. That's, I think, honestly, if you really want to increase your happiness, that's like one of the fastest ways to do it is just to reach out to other people and connect. Another behavior that we know matters for happiness, you know, dovetails with our physical health, which is just getting a little bit more sleep, right? Getting a little bit more sleep and a little bit of exercise. I mean, one of my favorite studies that I share

with students shows that you get a half hour of cardio exercise a day that's as effective at treating depression as some anti-depression medications, you know, just a half hour every day of cardio, right? If you're not doing that normally. And so I think we need to just kind of remember that these behaviors are powerful. And one of the behaviors that can be powerful for happiness is also not doing anything, you know, this idea of time affluence, right, like not scheduling, actually getting rest in. It can be a powerful way to kind of free our schedule and give ourselves a little bit of a break. So those are behaviors we can engage in. But happiness also can come from our mindsets, right? Like literally shifting our mindset. You know, we talked about this a little bit about, you know, maybe parents shifting their forms of anxiety. I think you can also shift your mindset in terms of paying attention to the positives out there. Lots of evidence that paying attention to the things you're thankful for or getting a kind of mindset of gratitude can matter. Hard to do in this day and age where we have, you know, 24-7 news cycles and algorithms that point us to the most outrageous, most negative thing. You know, it's harder to train your brain towards things that are positive, but the evidence suggests that gratitude can make us not just improve our overall happiness levels, but it can also improve our physical health.

You know, there's evidence that grateful people sleep better, for example, right? And so mindsets of gratitude are powerful, but then also a mindset of, I think, compassion, right? I think we believe that the right but it might be the path towards getting you towards those other goals that you have otherwise, because it means you're not beating yourself up as much. And so, yeah, I think finding ways to get in these behaviors and these mindsets are important. The evidence suggests it really will improve your happiness. But like all behavioral changes, it's going to take, you know, some work, right? And I think recognizing that it's work, recognizing that it's the kind of thing you need to do every day, you know, just like exercise, just like eating healthy. I think that's the framing of happiness that we need to sort of take on. I think, you know, too often we fall for the, maybe it's Disney

messed us up, this notion of like happily ever after that we'll, you know, get this one thing and then we'll be happily ever after. But that but that's, that's not how it works. My Harvard colleague, Dan Gilbert is fond of saying, happiness, happily ever after only works if you have three more minutes to live, you know, just, it's just not how happiness works. Well, it is a constant effort. But as you mentioned, it can be a fruitful effort, and one that can really return dividends. And what struck me about some of the measures you were speaking to was the relative simplicity of these measures. You didn't say go out and buy an expensive service. You didn't say go out

and buy an expensive product. You talked about things that are within our grasp about sleep, about the power of gratitude, about even a short amount of physical activity on a given day, making an impact on our mood and how we feel. You talked about social connection, about picking up the phone to call a friend or picking up the phone when someone calls, even if it's for two minutes, but just to hear their voice. These are incredibly powerful. When you mentioned them, it strikes me that these are kind of the original building blocks of what allowed humans to thrive, right? And in some ways, what you're speaking to, I think, so eloquently in what you've been modeling, I think, in your own life and your coursework is that this is not an effort to

somehow transform us into something that's just totally unfamiliar and foreign to us. This is a return to who we've been for thousands of years. And we've perhaps in recent history forgotten that as we've allowed other influences to shift what we pursue and how we live. But this is our chance and I think our opportunity to really get back to living a life that truly nourishes us and helps us thrive. There's one thing you mentioned also that struck me too. You know, it made me think about my conversations I've had with patients over the years about behavior change, often around diet

and physical activity, which are challenging. If you are like me, you probably started gym routines many times in your life or diets various times and have fallen off the wagon somehow. And one thing I always found powerful with patients was to recommend to them that they have somebody else in their life that they can either pair up with and make a commitment to do something together, whether it's start a new diet or a new exercise pattern, or at least somebody who can hold them accountable in a kind but firm way. A good friend they may check in with every couple of days to say, hey, here's how I'm doing on my diet. And that external partnership, accountability, it's felt, I've just noticed with patients and with myself that it helps, you know, make behavior change stick, it increases the longevity. But I'm curious what you've seen

in your research as well. Yeah, I mean, definitely. I think one of the reasons that students do so well in my class that we do see these actual well-being gains when we measure before and after is that students are doing it in the context of this big group, right? You know, there's a quarter of the entire Yale student body who's, you know, engaging with these things at the same time. For my online class that we put online for free on Coursera, you know, there's millions of learners who are doing the same thing at the same time that you can connect with on message boards and things like that. And, you know, that's, you know, a big extreme version. But I think, you know, just partner up with a friend and try to do these kinds of practices together. I think this is a spot where parents can really get something out of kids, right? You know, all the practices we just talked about are ones that you can explain, you know, to your six-year-old, you know, in five minutes and they get it. And they'll, you know, if you commit to doing this

stuff together with your kids, they'll hold you accountable. You know, if you're supposed to be getting time affluence, and you're not your kid would be like, Dad, like, you know, like, you said we should get time affluence, you know, like, you said you should work out the day you didn't work out today, like, they love calling you out on that stuff. And, and so I think that that this idea of connecting with other people allows you to have the social connection, but it also allows you to have some social support, right? You feel worse if you're not engaging in these things because you're letting somebody else down. So it's a powerful way to do these things. But getting back to your other point, I mean, I agree it's, you know, in some ways when I give the list of

all these, you know, evidence-based things that, you know, like people are getting, you know, social scientists are getting money to study and it's like, look, the list is like social connection and exercise more and sleep. You know, people will say, you know, that's what my grandmother told me. You know, like this is, you know, like this is common wisdom. And I think ironically, it's long been common wisdom, but at least in the modern day, it's not common practice, right? It's the kind of thing we need to build into our lives to live a healthy life. And so I think coming up with structures, whether it's social support or, you know, putting it in your calendar, anything you can do to build these things in is important. The final caveat I'll say with that though, is that, you know, I think whenever we

hear this stuff, you know, we as humans, you know, being these like reward driven, you know, especially my kind of type A Yale students, like there can be this move where you're like, all right, and now I will begin beating myself up for not being this like perfectly happy creature or not achieving all these behaviors and mindsets. And I think it's important to remember the power of baby steps, right? You know, if you're feeling really lonely and you're not getting in any social connection, you know, just texting a friend once is going to do some work. If you're really the type of person that focuses on the negative, then thinking of one thing that you might be grateful for every night could be a powerful shift in your attention. And so I think if you're hearing these things, you're feeling like, oh, gosh, I got to do all of them. That's a moment to maybe take a step back.

Give yourself some grace. Pick one thing to focus on and start small. We know behavior change works best if people are picking small things to start with and giving themselves grace when things don't work out perfectly. Laurie, that makes great sense. And if I think if we could pursue some of these pathways for action that you're talking about, especially when we're feeling, you know, run down or burned out, I think they may help a lot. But I want to ask you about two technology-related pathways that many of us, myself included, sometimes feel ourselves walking down when we're feeling tired or exhausted or burned out. One is social media, which sometimes we can feel

like, gosh, if I'm lonely or if I'm just not feeling connected to people, let me just log on to my social media app and then I'll see what other folks are doing and I'll feel connected to them. But then there's the other tech piece I want to talk to you about, which is streaming TV shows and movies, right? Which is, you know, once, you know, I remember growing up, we had to like wait a week,

you know, for the next show to come on and it was like maddening. Like, oh, I want to know what happens in the next episode. Now, of course, we can, you can binge watch, you know, an entire series, you know, like in a night or weekend if you want. And I've certainly found myself at moments, you know, over the years, you know, when I felt, you know, just exhausted or burned out, you know, let me just sit down and watch a few episodes of my favorite show. But tell me, how do you think about these types of technology platforms? How

can they be helpful to us? When are they actually not helping us? Yeah. I mean, I think the problem with some of these technology platforms, I mean, there might be lots of challenges with them, but I think one particular challenge comes from yet another way that our mind lies to us, which is that our mind really lies to us when it comes to leisure, right? You know, I have a super busy week at work. You know, I finally get some downtime. My instinct is that the best thing to do will be to plop down and watch Netflix or scroll through Reddit or do something that feels like vegging out. That's my instinct of what I'm motivated to do. But in practice, if you look at the emotions that happen when I do that, I kind of feel apathy. I'm kind of bored, like I'm kind of not challenged, right? Whereas if I did something that was a little bit more challenging, right? Like I had

a little bit of a startup cost, like call a friend or engage with something, you know, learn a new hobby or something like that, right? Like that ultimately would be a better boost in happiness. Even something like, you know, doing like a quick yoga, you know, like, you know, class or like a little Pilates or just like a couple of jumping jacks, I'd feel better. But my instinct is that I wouldn't. And, and this. And this is something that I think I see with leisure a lot. Companies aren't making these things to hurt us. They're giving us what we want. We want these quick dopamine hits that feel kind of relaxing. But once we get them, it means it becomes easier and easier to avoid the thing that has a little bit of startup cost,

but ultimately for our happiness would feel better. And so for me, what helps with that is just recognizing that that's true, right? Like knowing the science of that, because even though I'm like, you know, like I teach this class at Yale and I've become an expert on some of these things, I still fall prey to all these intuitions, right? You know, tonight we'll have this conversation. I'll have a very busy day with all these Zoom calls and I will immediately be like, whoa, I'm going to pick up my phone and scroll Reddit. I won't be like, oh, let me call a friend who I haven't talked to, or let me pull out my yoga mat and do a hard Pilates. I know that I'm supposed to do that, but my instinct is like, oh, anything but, right? But I think sometimes knowing this stuff can allow you to recognize it, right? It can help you mindfully realize that

engaging in those activities isn't going to give you the fun that you expect. We talked a lot, you and I, about the culture piece here, about how part of what we need to do is shift our culture from the kind of hustle culture that's leading young people to pursue and chase the kind of achievement that doesn't always lead to happiness, to refocusing on the things that truly do bring us happiness and joy, our relationships, our physical health, our sleep, focusing on what we're grateful for. How does that culture shift? What do you see is necessary to happen that's going to ensure that our kids and future generations are guided by a set of incentives that actually truly maximize their happiness? I think there are a couple of spots to shift. I mean, one is changing the kinds of structures that are making that difficult. You know, whether that looks like tech companies realizing that, you know, they don't want to be cigarettes and they should, you know,

fix themselves before regulators decide to regulate them. That's one possibility. I think universities need to do the same thing. I mean, I think, you know, in some ways I worry that admissions offices at big universities like mine are like cigarette pushers that are setting up structures that they need to worry that they're, you know, dismantling the very generation that they want to be educating and want to be bringing up. And I think, you know, careful decisions and maybe kind of coordinated decisions across universities about what counts as admissions kind of coordinated decisions across universities about what counts

as admissions kind of stuff will matter a lot. I'm not sure universities will get there, who knows, but I think that that helps a lot. But I actually think, and one of the reasons I'm so excited to teach young people and to try to get this content out to even younger learners, is I actually think a lot of the change is going to come from our young people. You know, I look at the kinds of things that students and young people are doing well with social media. You know, look at the kind of outreach that happened after an awful incident like Parkland, right? Like, look at the kind of social justice movements that students are engaging in online, right? They are able to use these tools for powerful collective action.

And what we'll need to do to fight this kind of arms race of hustle culture that's emerged among our young people is to deescalate. And that takes a kind of coordinated action that these tools might ironically, like allow our young people to do. So I think as young people learn more that, you know, we promised you a bill of goods that's just kind of not going to deliver, you know, they may take collective action to shift these things around. And, you know, as I teach more and more young people in middle school and high school, as they hear some of these results and they're like, wait a minute, hang on, that's not what I was promised from all this hustle. I kind of watch them scaling back and I'm hopeful that they really will use the tools that they have, that their generation is kind of uniquely good at

to do that well. I was going to ask you what makes you hopeful about the future, and you just told me in your prescient way, but I think that, in my mind, makes courses like yours, Laurie, all the more important because I do agree with you. Our greatest chance of shifting culture is going to come from the rising generation of young people who decide that they want to live a different life. And but we need to encourage them. We need to support them as they do it, because it's not always going to be easy to do.

And I think you're giving people the permission, the vocabulary, the structure through which to think about that through your course, which I think is so valuable. I want to end just with a couple of fun questions for you. You recently staged a funtervention, which I love the term, but an intervention to bring fun into your life at a time where you realized you needed to be having more fun. But I'm curious, what did you do in your funtervention? And do you recommend that other people stage funtervention?

Oh, yeah. 10 out of 10 recommend the funtervention. I mean, so the funtervention was just an attempt to get a little bit more socially connected play into my life. And it started, step one was a kind of attitude shift. I went around trying to find delights in the world, sort of trained my brain to notice things that were delightful and then shared them with friends of mine. But then I was trying to do something that was social and fun that I had no external reward for that I knew I'd just be bad at. And so I tried surfing, which you've met me, I'm like a 40 something very uncoordinated person with no athletic skill. And so surfing was going to be I'm never going to be a surfer. And so I had to embrace it in a in a fun way, just like

as something goofy and kind of stupid. And I wasn't really trying to get some external reward out of it. And it was fantastic. It was, as predicted, super fun. I love that. Okay, well, I'm taking away Dr. Santos's prescription for everyone is a funtervention at some point in their life. I'm certainly going to do that. And then finally, you've spent years studying monkeys. Is there something that you've learned from monkeys that we can learn from as humans? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the ironies is that if you talk to people who are really interested in developing

a mindset of mindfulness, right? A mindset of presence. They often curse what's called the monkey mind, this idea that our mind jumps from things to thing and so on. But having spent a lot of time with monkeys, I think this is an unnecessary and unfair insult to monkeys. Like if you look in the monkey mind,

they're just present all the time. When they're eating something, they're just eating something. When they in the monkey mind, they're just present all the time. When they're eating something, they're just eating something. When they're grooming another monkey, they're just grooming. And I often ironically wish I could get back to my monkey mind. I think that's the big happiness insight

that I've gotten from monkeys. That presence is so important. And I think we easily get robbed of that by the distractions in our life, whether it's our phone or our email inbox or other things that are constantly binging and generating alerts in our life. You've shared so much wisdom today. I was taking notes as we were talking, but just so many beautiful things, I think, about one you've helped, I think, me and our listeners just understand that happiness is in fact within our grasp, but it's not something we can take for granted.

We actually have to work to build the activities that generate happiness into our life, whether that's gratitude, social connection, sleep, exercise, or time affluence, as you said. And that second point I want to underscore as well is that free time, unstructured, unscheduled time is a very, very good thing. It is not a bad thing and it's not evidence that you are lazy or unproductive or that you're somehow leaving something on the field. That is actually what we all need to thrive and we've squeezed ourselves too much in that regard. And of the many other lessons you shared, I think the importance of being kind to ourselves and each other really stands out too.

You know, that not beating ourselves up, recognizing that we're in a challenging time right now, not just because of the pandemic, but because of the broader culture that we're growing up in and living in and the demands it's placing on us. But that is all made a bit better whenever we're able to be just a bit more kind to one another as well. And in a world where so many things seem to be pushing us to be more angry at one another or to demonize one another, being kind can be an act of radical opposition, if you will, to those types of cultural elements and technology pieces that are constantly trying to make us angry at one another or turn us against one another. So thank you just for joining, Lori. Thank you for this wonderful conversation, for inspiring me as you always do and teaching me. But most importantly, thank you for the work you do in the world to help create a happier, more fulfilled society. That's what we need.

And we certainly need you out there doing the incredible work that you're doing. So really appreciate you, Lori. Ditto. And thanks for helping me share the message. This concludes our conversation with Lori Santos. Join me for the next episode of House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy. Wishing you all health and happiness.