Speaker 1: Pushkin pick up location, SF picked up time twelve thirty.
Speaker 1: If there's one car you absolutely have to rent when
Speaker 1: you go to San Francisco, it has to be compact,
Speaker 1: two four door forward focus or similar. I'm not really
Speaker 1: a car person. Automatic transmission, Yes, air con Yes. My
Speaker 1: regular ride is a slightly scruffy twenty eleven Nissan CenTra
Speaker 1: dual air back awesome. If you can't picture that in
Speaker 1: your head, that's okay. I'm not sure anyone can. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a dull silver color and relatively anonymous, lost
Speaker 1: damage weaver. No child seat. Now, when I travel for work,
Speaker 1: I usually rent the cheapest, boxiest and most ordinary car
Speaker 1: on the lot, prepaid guess, no confirm rental done. But
Speaker 1: when my producer Ryan and I arrived at the San
Speaker 1: Francisco airport last fall, we were in for a bit
Speaker 1: of a surprise. The woman at the car rental place
Speaker 1: apologized profusely they'd run out of normal, boxy compact cars
Speaker 1: and intermediates and full sizes. Would it be okay, she
Speaker 1: asked if instead of the car I booked, we accepted
Speaker 1: at no extra cost, a bright red Mustang convertible. We
Speaker 1: in our amazing car took San Francisco by storm. We
Speaker 1: crossed and recrossed the Golden Gate Bridge and soaked up
Speaker 1: envious glances from teenage boys at crosswalks, and blasted eighties
Speaker 1: cent pop on repeat the entire time. Instead of adult
Speaker 1: trip into the city for work, Ryan and I had
Speaker 1: the time of our lives, laughing like idiots and making memories,
Speaker 1: all because of the car. That Mustang experience got Ryan
Speaker 1: thinking he's always kind of hated my CenTra. He wants
Speaker 1: me to get a newer, safer car, especially since my
Speaker 1: Nisan does have a few body work issues. I kind
Speaker 1: of hit a huge rock, so Ryan started texting to
Speaker 1: make his case. Get a Mustang, Get a Mustang, Get
Speaker 1: a Mustang. This carried on and on and on. One
Speaker 1: text contained a single word, all caps with an exclamation point, Mustang.
Speaker 1: I know Ryan only wants what's best for me, but
Speaker 1: I have a mostly working car now, and the science
Speaker 1: suggests that giving in and buying a newer, more expensive
Speaker 1: vehicle would have a surprising effect on my well being.
Speaker 1: It might hurt my happiness rather than help it. Our
Speaker 1: minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy,
Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong. What if our
Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what
Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that
Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all
Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: Is doctor Laurie Santos. I've had a lifelong fascination with
Speaker 1: the supernatural. I wrote a book about that when my
Speaker 1: first book was about why we Believe in the supernatural.
Speaker 1: This is Bruce Hood, a professor of psychology at the
Speaker 1: University of Bristol in the UK. Like me, Bruce is
Speaker 1: intrigued by some of the weirder, more irrational parts of
Speaker 1: the human mind. But I didn't realize how personal that
Speaker 1: interest was until I visited his house for the first time.
Speaker 1: You see, Bruce lives in a lovely converted barn in
Speaker 1: a quaint, quiet part of the English countryside, and so
Speaker 1: I was expecting the inside of his house to look
Speaker 1: rather cozy. But that wasn't what I saw when I
Speaker 1: first opened the door. Everywhere I looked there was blood,
Speaker 1: claws and fangs, which is just the way Bruce likes it.
Speaker 1: I've loved horror movies and the sort of genre from
Speaker 1: a very early age. I became obsessional about buying vintage
Speaker 1: movie posters with werewolves and vampires and all that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Bruce was able to actualize his childhood horror
Speaker 1: obsession once he finally got a professor level salary. That
Speaker 1: was when he discovered the miracle of online auctions. I
Speaker 1: have over a hundred posters now, and there's no way.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's going a house small, not unless
Speaker 1: you're very wealthy. I've got a house so you can
Speaker 1: easily accommodate them all. So a lot of them. I
Speaker 1: am afraid to just store it away. But I have
Speaker 1: framed most of them as many as I can, and
Speaker 1: they're all over the walls. You've over a hundred of these,
Speaker 1: I have over a hundred. Yeah, and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: meter by is bag. So they're not little things. They're
Speaker 1: big posters. Why would anyone buy more movie posters than
Speaker 1: they could possibly display? Bruce realized that it wasn't really
Speaker 1: the posters he loved so much, it was the pursuit.
Speaker 1: I would search on eBay and you can see the
Speaker 1: bidding line, and you can offer a bid, and then
Speaker 1: you see someone's outbid you, and then you get frustrated.
Speaker 1: He's like, I really buzzed, and the thrill of I'd
Speaker 1: got it in a complete desperation and disappointment of I'd
Speaker 1: lost out to some other guy. And of course the
Speaker 1: post would turn up weeks later, and it was great
Speaker 1: getting them, but nothing compared to the kind of exhilaration
Speaker 1: of winning. The auction that thrill we get from buying
Speaker 1: a new prize on eBay is well understood by science.
Speaker 1: It's caused by a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Whenever we buy
Speaker 1: something exciting, the reward areas of our brain release a
Speaker 1: bunch of dopamine, which not only triggers a pleasurable sensation,
Speaker 1: but also makes it more likely that we'll repeat the behavior.
Speaker 1: Evolutionarily speaking, dopamine is there to ensure that we keep
Speaker 1: doing all the important things like eating and having sex.
Speaker 1: But now nowadays dopamine can just as easily make us
Speaker 1: chase after things that we don't really need for our survival, like,
Speaker 1: for example, more vintage horror movie posters than can actually
Speaker 1: fit your house. Of course, Bruce understands the science of dopamine.
Speaker 1: Knowledge is not enough. You can know these things very
Speaker 1: objectively and yet still be a victim to the same
Speaker 1: sort of mechanisms, so at least I kind of understood
Speaker 1: what was driving it. But I got to a point
Speaker 1: where I literally could not buy or put up anymore.
Speaker 1: And after that I kind of started to realize, well,
Speaker 1: this overconsumption thing, this possession thing, is really interesting. Bruce
Speaker 1: began to study the science of why we like to
Speaker 1: accumulate so much stuff. This research became the basis of
Speaker 1: his recent book Possessed. Why we want more than we
Speaker 1: need We buy for a number of reasons. There's a
Speaker 1: whole area of evolutionary theory called signaling. The poster child
Speaker 1: for signaling, of course, is the peacock. Why does it
Speaker 1: have such a silly tail? It costs so much in
Speaker 1: terms of energy, it's not very efficient, it makes them
Speaker 1: very vulnerable to attack, and yet these animals have evolved
Speaker 1: this elaborate because it signals to potential mates that they
Speaker 1: have good genes. So rather than fighting or learning to
Speaker 1: run away or whatever, they've developed these signing behaviors, like
Speaker 1: peacocks strutting their stuff. We humans are naturally drawn to
Speaker 1: shiny cars, fancy clothes, and other status symbols. These things
Speaker 1: act as outward signs how awesome we are on the inside.
Speaker 1: And so our species really likes to accumulate stuff so
Speaker 1: much so that we've gone beyond just filling our shelves
Speaker 1: and closets and attics and garages. We've fueled a whole
Speaker 1: new growth industry self storage rentals. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: more storage units than the McDonald's. It's just ridiculously a
Speaker 1: symptom of a culture which has become obsessed with possessions.
Speaker 1: So that's why I called the book Possessed, because it's
Speaker 1: like this demon, is this little inp in our mind
Speaker 1: telling us to buy things and don't throw it away
Speaker 1: because it might be valuable one day. But is all
Speaker 1: this purchasing really making us happier at least beyond the
Speaker 1: initial pursuit. I mean, it doesn't really seem like it,
Speaker 1: which poses a bit of a paradox, since many scholars
Speaker 1: initially assumed that increased material wealth would lead to happiness.
Speaker 1: The Eeselin paradox was identified by Richard Estlin back in
Speaker 1: the early seventies, and he noted that if you look
Speaker 1: at the gross national product of the US, in particular,
Speaker 1: as it's been rising, it doesn't seem to have a
Speaker 1: corresponding change and increased happiness, and said, he said, that's
Speaker 1: the paradox. We should be happier. You may have heard
Speaker 1: the term retail therapy, and there's a sort of bit
Speaker 1: of truth in that people do enjoy the process of shopping.
Speaker 1: But just like me and my poster is that initial
Speaker 1: buzz I get from doing it doesn't last very long.
Speaker 1: When the buzz of buying wears off. When that dobamine
Speaker 1: rush in our brain subsides, those new possessions can make
Speaker 1: us feel even sadder than we did before. The trouble is,
Speaker 1: as soon as you get something with outstanding quality, it
Speaker 1: makes all your other possessions look pretty rubbish. So this
Speaker 1: is called the deter Or effect. After the French philosopher,
Speaker 1: he really wanted an addressing gown, and he spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money on it, and he really commented it,
Speaker 1: and he got it and he loved and he looked
Speaker 1: around everything else looked a bit shabby. So then he
Speaker 1: realized he had to go and change everything else in
Speaker 1: this household. And he started to spend more money than
Speaker 1: he had and he realized that, you know, in the
Speaker 1: past he had control of all his possessions, but as
Speaker 1: soon as he took on board this new thing of
Speaker 1: high status that changed it almost controlled him. I experienced
Speaker 1: a hint of the Dido effect when we rented that
Speaker 1: swanky Mustangs. The valet at our hotel did look at
Speaker 1: me and Ryan a little oddly, like he was surprised
Speaker 1: that the people who dropped off of that kind of
Speaker 1: car had the crumpled clothes and crappy luggage that we did.
Speaker 1: As we rode the elevated to our rooms, I thought
Speaker 1: back to my beat up Nissan with the squeaky windshield
Speaker 1: wipers and sticky coffee cup holders. None of that had
Speaker 1: really bothered me when I drove it in earlier that morning,
Speaker 1: But now my own car seemed well pretty crappy. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, the Mustang was super fun to
Speaker 1: ride around in, But if it entered into my life
Speaker 1: on a more permanent basis, I might fall prey to
Speaker 1: that row effect even more. I might wind up changing
Speaker 1: the other things in my life to fit with the
Speaker 1: fact that I now owned a swanky car. As the
Speaker 1: name of Bruce's book suggests, my new ride might end
Speaker 1: up possessing me far more than I possessed it. The
Speaker 1: good news is that there is a way to enjoy
Speaker 1: the happiness boost that Ryan and I got from the
Speaker 1: Mustang ride without ending up on a treadmill of buying
Speaker 1: a new car every few years. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that science back strategy when the Happiness Lab returns in
Speaker 1: a moment. So maybe they make us happy for a
Speaker 1: little while, but over time we just stop deriving as
Speaker 1: much satisfaction from them. I wanted to find some evidence
Speaker 1: based strategies to help me decide about this car situation,
Speaker 1: and so I decided to call a world expert on
Speaker 1: happier purchasing. I'm a'm At Kumar. I'm an assistant professor
Speaker 1: of marketing and psychology at the University of Texas at
Speaker 1: Austin m It studies the way our minds mispredict the
Speaker 1: pleasure we get from what we buy, and so I
Speaker 1: told him about my car dilemma. Based on his research,
Speaker 1: he predicted that any happiness boost I'd drive from buying
Speaker 1: that Mustang wouldn't last much longer than the new car smell.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to other episodes of The Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: you might know the reason why. A phenomenon that psychologists
Speaker 1: have christened hedonic adaptation. We just get used to stuff
Speaker 1: far quicker than we think. What seemed kind of new
Speaker 1: and exciting at first, that excitement tends to fade. I
Speaker 1: guess the other thing is that it's always there in
Speaker 1: front of you, so when it malfunctions or if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong, you're just kind of bothered by that. But
Speaker 1: there's a second reason that our possessions don't make us
Speaker 1: as happy as we think that green eyed monster is
Speaker 1: always with us. People are often kind of peeved when
Speaker 1: they find out that someone else has a nicer TV
Speaker 1: than they do, or if they have a fancier wardrobe.
Speaker 1: It can be similarly annoying to find out that someone
Speaker 1: who has the same thing that you do, like the
Speaker 1: same gadget that you have, or something like that, paid
Speaker 1: substantially less for it. So these sorts of destructive comparisons
Speaker 1: can stand in the way of happiness. So if I
Speaker 1: caved in and splurged on a new car, not only
Speaker 1: would every scratch indent make me sadder, but I'd also
Speaker 1: unwittingly enter an arms race with my friends and neighbors
Speaker 1: comparing my purchase to whatever car they had in their driveways,
Speaker 1: And even a new Mustang would look crappy next to
Speaker 1: my colleagues brand new tesla, but on its research shows
Speaker 1: that there's an alternative kind of purchase we can make
Speaker 1: that can bring us some lasting joy. Money could make
Speaker 1: us happier if we made different decisions or choices with
Speaker 1: what we did with it. To get the most happiness
Speaker 1: bank for our buck, we should make purchases that are
Speaker 1: experiential rather than material. So experiential purchases are essentially something
Speaker 1: that you spend money on that's an event or a
Speaker 1: series of events that you live through. So basically it's
Speaker 1: money that you spend on doing things like travel, vacations,
Speaker 1: dining out, going to concert sporting events. If you're anything
Speaker 1: like me, you might feel a bit bad about spending
Speaker 1: more of your money on meals and trips. It can
Speaker 1: feel a little frivolous. So in some sense they might
Speaker 1: seem fleeting, But in a way this is actually a
Speaker 1: benefit of experiences compared to possessions. So people do tend
Speaker 1: to habituate, to get used to things and derive less
Speaker 1: value from them over time. With an experience that's already
Speaker 1: over that doesn't seem to happen. But experiences don't just
Speaker 1: make us feel better after we finish them. Experiential purchases
Speaker 1: can also make us happier than material possessions, even before
Speaker 1: we get to enjoy them. One thing that's interesting about
Speaker 1: waiting is that waiting can also sometimes feel good. So
Speaker 1: when it comes to material possessions, it feels more like
Speaker 1: impatience or anxiety or frustration, But with respect to experiential purchases,
Speaker 1: waiting is just a more positive st We tend to
Speaker 1: look forward to what's to come with great excitement and delight.
Speaker 1: We look at restaurant menus, and we go through our
Speaker 1: travel plans in advance. That tends to feel good instead
Speaker 1: of bad. But Ama has found that the biggest reason
Speaker 1: experiences bring us more joy is that they aren't normally
Speaker 1: a solitary activity. So if your purchases are promoting social interaction,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the things that you've done, or
Speaker 1: if you're doing them with other people, that's one reason
Speaker 1: they're going to make you happier than some material items
Speaker 1: that you might buy. And experiential purchases don't just keep
Speaker 1: us social while we're doing them, they also let us
Speaker 1: connect with people afterwards too, So if you go on
Speaker 1: a vacation, somewhere. There's all sorts of things that you
Speaker 1: can talk about, what you did, what you saw, who
Speaker 1: you were with, what you ate. There's just lots of
Speaker 1: directions to go. It's a bit harder with material goods
Speaker 1: and sharing stories about things you've done. We're just reliving
Speaker 1: the memories. Also has another happiness boosting effect. Turns out
Speaker 1: that sort of generally speaking, reflecting on experiential purchases inspires
Speaker 1: more gratitude than reflecting on material purchases, So people are
Speaker 1: more grateful for what they've done than for what they have.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason that this is particularly interesting is
Speaker 1: because of what gratitude tends to predict. So researchers have
Speaker 1: found that feeling grateful is associated with a whole host
Speaker 1: of positive outcomes. So in some fun studies we've done,
Speaker 1: for instance, we found that when people think about their
Speaker 1: experiences rather than possessions they've bought, they end up being
Speaker 1: more generous to others. They end up treating other people
Speaker 1: better as a result of reflecting on their experiential purchases.
Speaker 1: All this goes to say, experiences, be they big or small,
Speaker 1: they beat material purchases on literally every happiness metric AMH
Speaker 1: has study, and yet we still can't seem to break
Speaker 1: our habit of filling our closets and addicts and garages
Speaker 1: with so much stuff. So after the break, I'll introduce
Speaker 1: you to a person who has taken this research to heart,
Speaker 1: someone who became so weighed down by her possessions that
Speaker 1: she decided to get rid of nearly all of them
Speaker 1: and became a lot happier as a result. If I'm
Speaker 1: really honest, if I didn't love it or use it,
Speaker 1: it was gone. The Happiness lab will be right back.
Speaker 1: In some ways, I'm like, who was she who was
Speaker 1: old school Kate? I would say that I was someone
Speaker 1: who basically spent every penny that I earned. I caught
Speaker 1: up with author and blogger Kate Flanders via zoom. If
Speaker 1: her bedroom sounds a little echoy, it's because there's virtually
Speaker 1: nothing in it. But it wasn't always like that. I
Speaker 1: definitely bought things whenever I wasn't feeling great. But then
Speaker 1: when you feel your home with stuff that you don't
Speaker 1: even use, it actually also feels worse. I would always
Speaker 1: text my best friend Emma and tell her whatever silly
Speaker 1: thing I was thinking of buying. Like Emma, I think
Speaker 1: I need all new betting, and she's like, but do
Speaker 1: you like do you need new betting? And I would
Speaker 1: just have this idea in my head that somehow that
Speaker 1: was the thing that was going to fix me that day,
Speaker 1: Like if I somehow made my bedroom look different or whatever,
Speaker 1: that that was somehow going to fix whatever was going on.
Speaker 1: Kate's material purchases followed a pattern that's familiar to many
Speaker 1: of us. She bought things in the hope that they
Speaker 1: would make her a better, more interesting person. She filled
Speaker 1: her small apartment with unread books and clothes, and then
Speaker 1: added cameras, paints, brushes, and other art supplies. I had
Speaker 1: purchased things thinking I would like to be the kind
Speaker 1: of person who does X, Y or Z, but I
Speaker 1: never ended up doing any of it. At the time,
Speaker 1: Kate wasn't all that bothered by her shopping habits, but
Speaker 1: she did want to fix her financial situation by spending
Speaker 1: way more than she earned, she'd run up over thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in debt. I decided that for a year
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't buy anything unless it was absolutely essential.
Speaker 1: The things I could buy were like groceries or put
Speaker 1: gas in my car. If I needed it. It had
Speaker 1: to be essential, otherwise it just was off the list.
Speaker 1: Kate's shopping band was just supposed to reduce her debt,
Speaker 1: but it ended up teaching her a lot more about
Speaker 1: happiness than she expected. As the flow of books and
Speaker 1: clothes and a gazillion other material purchases was cut off,
Speaker 1: Kate started to realize just how cluttered her life had been.
Speaker 1: I was kind of sick of my drawers always being full,
Speaker 1: or my closet being full. Like I've always been someone
Speaker 1: who only wears the same two or three outfits, So
Speaker 1: why did I have a closet full of clothes or
Speaker 1: a dresser full of clothes? It just didn't really make sense.
Speaker 1: And so I think as I started decluttering, especially because
Speaker 1: I was really aggressive in the beginning, I got rid
Speaker 1: of something like fifty percent of my stuff in the
Speaker 1: first six months. And I do remember after that just
Speaker 1: noticing like when I walked into a room, not only
Speaker 1: did it feel like lighter is a good word for it,
Speaker 1: but it also actually just felt more inviting. Kate's yearlong
Speaker 1: shopping band and radical decluttering made her realize that she
Speaker 1: didn't need as many material things as she thought. Her
Speaker 1: project also led to a new book, The Year of Less,
Speaker 1: How I stopped shopping, gave away my belongings, and discovered
Speaker 1: life is worth more than anything you can buy in
Speaker 1: a store. Kate had always wanted to become a professional writer,
Speaker 1: but her financial situation made that impossible. Having learned to
Speaker 1: live with less stuff, she finally got the freedom she
Speaker 1: needed to dive into her dream career. Her new found
Speaker 1: savings also gave her the funds she needed for something else,
Speaker 1: the opportunity to experience the wider world. I didn't travel
Speaker 1: as a kid. We didn't do that, but I always
Speaker 1: wanted to. Like I knew by the time I was
Speaker 1: a teenager that that was something I was interested in.
Speaker 1: I felt like I sort of started slow, you know.
Speaker 1: I would book three nights away with a friend somewhere,
Speaker 1: went away to a wedding to a friend that, like
Speaker 1: I never would have been able to afford to go
Speaker 1: to her wedding. Since Kate can write from anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world, she decided to continue traveling. She gave up
Speaker 1: her apartment and now spends her time visiting friends and
Speaker 1: experiencing new countries and cultures. Traveling made sense to me,
Speaker 1: like it it made me feel more like myself than
Speaker 1: anything else, and just as I'm its work would suggest,
Speaker 1: these new experiential purchases have given Kate far more joyful
Speaker 1: memories than any of her old material things. I don't
Speaker 1: remember the majority of what I decluttered and got rid of,
Speaker 1: and even just being able to recall things like the
Speaker 1: hotel that I stayed up for my friend's wedding or
Speaker 1: the house party that I went to with her and
Speaker 1: her friends, like the people I met in the conversations
Speaker 1: that we had, and I think I had never really
Speaker 1: stopped to savor moments like that before, Like really, I
Speaker 1: can remember the experiences because of how I felt or
Speaker 1: how the air smelt in certain cities, And I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't remember anything like that of what I decluttered
Speaker 1: or even what I've purchased in the past. When she's
Speaker 1: not traveling, Kate uses a single room at her dad's
Speaker 1: house as her base camp. That was where she met
Speaker 1: me over zoom. It was pretty spartan. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's cool about doing this interview is I'm able
Speaker 1: on zoom to look to your room and I see
Speaker 1: a coat rack with the hat and a coat, but
Speaker 1: maybe a chair, but like that's it. Yes, I have
Speaker 1: a painting. Yes, I see the painting. It's a lovely painting.
Speaker 1: Actually it's done by a friend of mine, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was nice to hang that up. Recently, Kate has
Speaker 1: around forty items of clothing like not including socks and underwear,
Speaker 1: and a few pairs of shoes, hiking boots, kind of
Speaker 1: regular boots, running shoes, and sandals, and that's it. Having
Speaker 1: once been possessed by her material purchases, Kate has now
Speaker 1: broken free. Now. The few things Kate does have all
Speaker 1: serve a purpose or have an important meaning. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I kept was my desk, and that's
Speaker 1: because I built it with my dad. You just have
Speaker 1: more appreciation in general for the things. I think that
Speaker 1: you understand where they came from. It also seems like
Speaker 1: you're keeping material objects that also have this feature of
Speaker 1: they were experiences for you. They were memories for you too,
Speaker 1: right Like the desk is a memory that you have
Speaker 1: with your dad, and so winds of totally special in essence.
Speaker 1: That is something I can't really imagine I would ever
Speaker 1: get rid of those. Kate's onto something really important here.
Speaker 1: The material possessions we do love are usually imbued with
Speaker 1: a certain experiential joy. It got me thinking back to
Speaker 1: what Ahmit Kumar had explained when we chatted before. There's
Speaker 1: this sort of fuzzy boundary between what's an experience and
Speaker 1: what's a possession. Take a bicycle, for example, that's something
Speaker 1: that you keep in your possession, but it's literally a
Speaker 1: vehicle for experiences. If you think about it in terms
Speaker 1: of its features, it's sort of specifications. It's going to
Speaker 1: feel a little more possession e and it can lead
Speaker 1: to some of these problems with comparison, for instance, that
Speaker 1: we've talked about. But if you think about going out
Speaker 1: on the trails, then all of a sudden that particular
Speaker 1: purchase might be something that inspires more happiness within you
Speaker 1: as a result of construing it in terms of its
Speaker 1: experiential nature. After talking with Kate and Amitt, I'm more
Speaker 1: convinced than ever that I don't need a new car.
Speaker 1: I also realize that I can think of my beat
Speaker 1: up Nissan in a different light. I can construe it
Speaker 1: as a giver of new experiences, one that can connect
Speaker 1: me socially with the people I really care about. And so,
Speaker 1: dear podcast listener, welcome, inside my beat up Nissan, which
Speaker 1: has recently become less beat up than it used to
Speaker 1: be since I did, in fact take Ryan's sage advice
Speaker 1: and made some strategic auto body repairs. Thanks Ryan, Making
Speaker 1: this episode has given me some real gratitude for these
Speaker 1: old wheels, and it's helped me reframe how I think
Speaker 1: about my car. Generally, this Nissan is going to be
Speaker 1: my doorway to new experiences. It's going to be the
Speaker 1: car that takes me for nice meals with my husband
Speaker 1: or on trips to see my old friends. And with
Speaker 1: all that money I'll save from not buying a Mustang,
Speaker 1: I'm hopefully I can invest in even more fun experiential
Speaker 1: purchases in the future. I can pay for a cool
Speaker 1: new yoga class online and enjoy the anticipation of a
Speaker 1: fantas plastic future vacation, hopefully one that will involve traveling
Speaker 1: somewhere warm and sunny, and maybe just maybe a small
Speaker 1: rental car splurge too, because I might enjoy just a
Speaker 1: little more muscle car fun sometime soon. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley. Our original
Speaker 1: music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring mixing
Speaker 1: and mastering by Evan Viola. Pete Naton also helped with production.
Speaker 1: Joseph Friedman checked our facts and our editing was done
Speaker 1: by Sophie Crane mciven. Special thanks to mil LaBelle, Carl Niggliori,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, Julia Barton, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kang, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Laurie Santos