The Surprising Truth About Happiness with Professor Laurie Santos | Feel Better Live More Podcast

She argues that people often chase money, possessions, and status believing these will bring lasting happiness, but the evidence suggests they don’t work the way we expect; meanwhile, evidence-backed habits like social connection, gratitude, sleep, exercise, and presence have larger effects but are undervalued by our intuitions.

She teaches a social-science definition that separates how you feel day-to-day (positive vs. negative emotions) from your broader evaluation of your life (satisfaction, meaning, purpose), noting these can diverge (e.g., being satisfied with life but stressed in daily experience).

She says researchers validate self-report happiness measures by checking links to other indicators like language patterns in writing or social media and biological measures such as cortisol, and also notes that if the goal is to help people feel happier, their self-reports matter directly.

She describes research suggesting wellbeing rises with income up to a point and then levels off, and emphasizes that social comparison drives dissatisfaction at higher incomes because people keep comparing to richer reference points and believing “a little more” will finally deliver happiness.

She calls social connection one of the strongest predictors/interventions for wellbeing, including “weak ties” like brief chats with baristas or strangers; she highlights studies where commuters predict solitude will feel best but actually feel happier after talking to strangers.