A Garden Collection
The Theory of Happiness
Happiness: is it a science, or is it an art? To help us all get through the deepest and darkest part of January, we're exploring what researchers and deep thinkers have to say about what makes us happy.3 talks in this Collection
Are our hormones being hijacked by technology?
Dopamine is our feel-good hormone: the one that encourages us to seek out pleasure. But the relentless pursuit of pleasure can lead to pain too. How can we find contentment in an age of instant gratification and overindulgence?
Why does comedy make us happy?
Humans have created art to provoke laughter for millennia. Why does comedy work, and what does it reveal about the counterintuitive biology of the human brain?
Is happiness a modern invention?
Today, we tend to think about happiness as a right: a natural goal all humans strive towards. How could it be possible that this idea came into being just two hundred years ago?
