Think about the last time you were really happy — where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? And, most importantly, how can you recreate that feeling?

Happiness can feel like lightning in a bottle — beautiful in the moment, but hard to find and harder yet to sustain. So what is it that makes for a happy life? And how do we engineer our lives for greater contentment, fulfillment, and joy?

On this episode: the science of happiness and how we can experience more of it every day. We talk with psychologist Eric Zillmer about why certain places bring us joy, and how to engineer happiness in our lives. We hear about one reporter’s experiment to bring more moments of serendipity in her life. And, writer Daniel Coyle explains why community is at the heart of what it means to flourish.

• Drexel University psychologist Eric Zillmer created a “happiness map” of Philadelphia with the help of his students. He says it holds greater lessons on why certain places bring us joy, and how we can reverse-engineer happiness into our days. Zillmer directs the happiness lab at Drexel University.

• Writer Daniel Coyle built his career on exploring what it is that makes people successful — but when both of his parents died a few years ago, Coyle found himself unmoored, questioning what makes for a happy and meaningful life. The resulting journey led to his newest book, “Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment.” We talk with Coyle why he says community is at the heart of flourishing, how to create the right conditions for happiness, and why he says life isn’t a treasure hunt — it’s the process of treasure creation.

For a lot of us, noise is a constant factor — an inescapable soundtrack playing on loop in the background. Kids screaming, sirens blaring, the roar of traffic, the sounds of music, lawn mowers, construction, and so much more.

We ignore it when we can, or wear headphones to block out the racket. But all that noise can actually damage our hearing and, subsequently, our overall health. 

On this encore episode, we explore what researchers are learning about the connections between noise, hearing loss, and our well-being. We find out whether constant headphone listening could put our hearing at risk, and why live concerts are so loud, along with how to protect your ears. Also, why stigma remains around hearing aids, even though so many people need them.

SHOW NOTES:

• We talk with exposure scientist Rick Neitzel about the long-neglected topic of noise pollution and its effects on our health. He explains the physiological effects of noise, theories on how it causes harm, and some of the most common sources of damaging sound exposure.

• Meg Wallhagen — a geriatric nurse practitioner and hearing loss researcher — explains age-related hearing loss, and why there still remains a stigma against hearing aids.

Twenty-five years ago, President Bill Clinton stood before a podium in the East Room of the White House, and, in front of an all-star lineup of researchers and dignitaries, made a historic announcement: After years of painstaking work, scientists had created “the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind” — the first-ever survey of the human genome.

In his remarks, Clinton compared the achievement to the maps created by Lewis and Clark’s expedition into the American West — but maybe a comparison to the space race would have been more accurate. Because, behind the scenes, the journey leading up to that day’s announcement had been defined by nerve-wracking, cut-throat competition — a competition where every minute counted, and the future of scientific inquiry was at stake.

On this encore episode, we look back at how what started as a scientific collaboration fractured into a bitter race to finish decoding the human genome. On one side was the federally funded Human Genome Project; on the other, a private start-up called Celera; and, in between, a raucous mashup of conflicting personalities, values, and ideas that would eventually help to transform science and medicine.

As patients, we often wonder what our role should be when it comes to getting better. Should we research options, get second opinions, and ask lots of questions? Or should we sit back, and let the health care professionals take charge? When does it make sense to push, and when is it best to do less?

On this episode, we examine our role as patients, the choices we make, and charting our path toward better health. A reporter gets a wake-up call while looking into diabetes rates among Latinos in Oklahoma, we hear about one woman’s choice to forgo cancer treatment — and how her family and doctors responded, and we explore a controversial proposed diagnosis for severe, long-term anorexia. 

SHOW NOTES:

In 1973, Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan published a bombshell paper called “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” In the paper, Rosenhan described faking symptoms to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and recruiting several other pseudo patients to do the same. Could staff tell they were faking? What was it like to be a patient in an institution? The “Rosenhan experiment,” as it came to be known, created a major stir, sparking public debates over the validity of psychiatric diagnoses and contributing to a shift away from institutionalization. Decades later, when journalist Susannah Cahalan began looking into the experiment, she made a startling discovery about Rosenhan’s famous research; he had made up most of it.

On this episode, we explore what happens when long-held narratives are upended. For the first time, we hear the voices of the pseudo patients who participated in the famous study, and find out why Cahalan was so passionate about finding them. We’ll also hear a story about one woman’s decades-long search to investigate the Oklahoma City bombing that killed her two grandsons.

SHOW NOTES:

Over the course of 20 years, writer Neil Shea explored the awe-inspiring landscape of the Arctic. He saw narwhals poking their tusks above the water, herds of caribou moving across the tundra, and majestic white wolves raising their young. He documents this fragile beauty in his new book, “Frostlines.” We talk to Shea about his adventures, and how climate change is transforming the region.

So often, our relationships take a backseat to everything else on our to-do lists — but new research shows that nurturing personal connections plays a central role in our health and well-being. On this episode, we explore the science of connection, from why it’s important, to how we can make it a priority in our lives.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, we do a deep dive into what we actually know about diet, and what we should and shouldn’t be eating. We talk with a nutrition and metabolism scientist about recent diet trends and how they affect our health, hear from several chefs about how they balance nutrition and taste, and find out how the avian flu outbreak could be affecting this year’s turkeys.

How do our dreams connect to health, and how could “dream engineering” help people get over nightmares? Researcher Michelle Carr writes about that in her new book “Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind.” We talk with Carr about why we dream, the benefits of lucid dreaming, and what she’s learning about our ability to “engineer” our dreams.

Chatbots don’t have feelings of their own, but they’ve been stirring plenty of emotions in us humans. On this episode, we explore how AI is making us feel, and what those feelings say about us. We hear about using ChatGPT for DIY therapy, what kinds of personalities we prefer in our chatbots, and how both the market and online culture is responding to the spike in AI-generated content.