‘[W]hat is going on and what can we do about it? I put these questions to Laurie Santos. Santos is a cognitive scientist and professor whose class on happiness quickly became the most popular in Yale’s history. And through her podcast “The Happiness Lab” and her free online course called “The Science of Well-Being,” Santos’s reach has extended far beyond the classroom.

I wanted to understand what history and science say happiness really is, how that connects to loneliness and American ideas about productivity and why, with so many happiness tips flooding our feeds, it has still been so hard for me, and many others, to do the things that will actually make us truly, deeply happy.…’ (Lulu Garcia-Navarro via The New York Times)