Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3: Today on the show, we'll talk happiness. Why are people
Speaker 3: in Finland so fucking happy?
Speaker 1: It's because fucking and Cleland both start with enough. You
Speaker 1: heard it here first, folks.
Speaker 3: I am going We're gonna rely on a combination of
Speaker 3: actual survey data and mildly politically incorrect antecdata from Nate's
Speaker 3: travels around the world, but do some serious analysis of
Speaker 3: like can you really tell which countries are happier?
Speaker 2: You know, there's just that a meaningful thing, and so
Speaker 2: what tends to predict it?
Speaker 1: All right, let's let's do it. The World Happiness Report
Speaker 1: came out a few months ago. It's not, you know,
Speaker 1: not recent news, but the underlying issues are eternal, right,
Speaker 1: because happiness and what makes people happy and how how
Speaker 1: you can even have a happiness ranking? Those are things
Speaker 1: that you know, those are perennial questions in psychology from
Speaker 1: your standpoint, Nate, you know, statistics are very interesting here,
Speaker 1: like how the hell do you rank how happy people are?
Speaker 1: But anyhow so, according to this report, Finland has been
Speaker 1: the happiest country in the world for a while now,
Speaker 1: from multiple years. And I've never been to Finland, but
Speaker 1: you are something of a Finland expert.
Speaker 2: I bacently. You know.
Speaker 3: Look, my partner and I have a joke about like
Speaker 3: European American man travels to Europe and is now expert
Speaker 3: on Europe, right, and with like, yeah, I guess the
Speaker 3: European I don't think i've any Nordic ancestry.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I went to Finland and to Norway back over Labor
Speaker 3: Day and had a great time. And those are both
Speaker 3: countries that are rated near the top, particularly Finland. And
Speaker 3: I guess the question is, like, when you're on the
Speaker 3: ground in Finland, do you notice outward signs of happiness?
Speaker 2: I noticed a lot of drinking.
Speaker 3: You go to the restaurant and you're offered a drink
Speaker 3: faster than anywhere I've ever been. I don't know where
Speaker 3: that fits into this, right. And notice the sauna I went,
Speaker 3: like the nice like tourists sauna seems kind of chilly.
Speaker 2: Just chill out.
Speaker 3: You can like actually basically grab more coals, get like
Speaker 3: a little shovel and grab more coals and put them
Speaker 3: in a burner and it makes a strong higher that
Speaker 3: seems very fun, Like that's gotta be worth like alone,
Speaker 3: like point two points of the on the ten point scale.
Speaker 3: I think good design and architecture. I notice good like
Speaker 3: accommodations for children and like disabled and elderly people more
Speaker 3: than you find elsewhere in the world. The food was
Speaker 3: surprisingly good. We had excellent Georgian food. We had wow,
Speaker 3: excellent kind of Sicilian food that has like finished flourishes
Speaker 3: with the Sicilian food, and.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, yeah, nice city, hell Sinky not actually
Speaker 3: as populous as it seems. And then Norway they just
Speaker 3: have the fucking like most beautiful landscapes.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, but you know, I haven't been to Norway either,
Speaker 1: but I really want to go, like the I want
Speaker 1: to go to Finland as well, So I don't want
Speaker 1: the fence to take this amiss. But the Fjords in Norway,
Speaker 1: I mean, man, their reputation just precedes them, and I
Speaker 1: would really love to see that.
Speaker 3: The first day we were there, my partner like kind
Speaker 3: of drove out to like some little little mini fjords, right,
Speaker 3: and we're like, this is like Maine, It's pretty fucking nice, right,
Speaker 3: And then we took a cruise to the real It's like,
Speaker 3: that's not nice. That's nice.
Speaker 2: It's nice.
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: That's not a field. That's a fuel. By the way,
Speaker 2: do you know do you know that the Hudson River
Speaker 2: Valley is a fjord?
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Actually I think I did
Speaker 1: know that at some point in time, but I forgot
Speaker 1: from now I ree large it. Yeah, I think you've
Speaker 1: probably told me this in the past, but thank you
Speaker 1: for retelling me, because I've effectively forgotten.
Speaker 3: So as a fjord expert, I have to tell you
Speaker 3: that these fucking fiords were like, you know, Macha Peach
Speaker 3: is pretty amazing and like Hawaii, like.
Speaker 2: This is probably the top three. I guess that I've
Speaker 2: been too.
Speaker 1: That's great. Well, this is this is all good. We've
Speaker 1: got some local color. Now let's step back a little
Speaker 1: bit and talk just a little bit about how this
Speaker 1: World Happiness Report, how the ranking is created. So they
Speaker 1: actually based the ranking on one single question called the
Speaker 1: Cantrell Ladder. And this is the question. So, Nate, you
Speaker 1: have to imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero
Speaker 1: at the bottom to ten at the top. The top
Speaker 1: of the ladder is the best possible life for you,
Speaker 1: The bottom of the ladder is the worst possible life
Speaker 1: for you. On which step of the ladder would you
Speaker 1: say you personally feel you stand at this time? So
Speaker 1: that is the one question that they use.
Speaker 2: Are you are you asking me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Go ahead? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Nine?
Speaker 2: Nice?
Speaker 3: I'm trying to be realistic, right, like best possible versus
Speaker 3: like do I think I got a pretty good draw
Speaker 3: for a lot of things?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sure? And so the data for this are collected actually
Speaker 1: by the Gallop World Pole And so you know, insofar
Speaker 1: as you know you have any kind of thoughts about
Speaker 1: the quality of the data, that's that's where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: So they're not doing a poll of their own. They're
Speaker 1: just taking that one question from Gallop, which has been
Speaker 1: conducted since two thousand and five, and every single year
Speaker 1: it's about a little bit over one hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: in one hundred and forty thousand countries and territories that
Speaker 1: participate in the poll, and so it's about a thousand
Speaker 1: people per country that are contacted either face to face
Speaker 1: or by phone. And what this report does is they
Speaker 1: take the rankings from the last three years for each country,
Speaker 1: and they average them so that they get a higher
Speaker 1: size of respondents. So, for instance, their two thousand and
Speaker 1: five rankings are actually two thousand and two to two
Speaker 1: thousand four, so that they get at least three thousand
Speaker 1: people per country that they include. If countries have significantly
Speaker 1: fewer than this, they exclude them from the rankings. So
Speaker 1: just first, like, in terms of statistics, how does this
Speaker 1: strike you in terms of sample size, In terms of
Speaker 1: how the Gallup pole does its sampling, Gallup tends to
Speaker 1: be one of the more reliable poles.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Look, I think there can always be sampling
Speaker 3: biases and who's surveyed and who's not right. You know,
Speaker 3: in general, people who are disadvantaged in various ways are
Speaker 3: harder to reach via pole. I think the bigger question
Speaker 3: is like how universal is this?
Speaker 1: Yeah question right, Yeah, that is a huge question. And
Speaker 1: the reason they tried to do this ladder is because
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the more universal ways that
Speaker 1: you can ask it, right, that it doesn't have any
Speaker 1: sort of cultural baggage or any other things that might
Speaker 1: you know, in some countries, factor X might be something
Speaker 1: that you associate with happiness, whereas in others that might
Speaker 1: you know, that might tell you something totally different. So
Speaker 1: they've tried to get this universal question. Now, I will
Speaker 1: caveat this by saying, in psychology research, like self report
Speaker 1: it's kind of like democracy, it's the best possible system
Speaker 1: of governess out of a lot of bad ones, right
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's not perfect, and there are
Speaker 1: lots and lots of issues with self report data, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of the best we have, right in the
Speaker 1: sense of, like, well, how else are you going to
Speaker 1: ask something that's so internal. We're not asking about like
Speaker 1: something that we can measure as in like your exact income,
Speaker 1: quality of life, et cetera, et cetera. We're asking about
Speaker 1: how happy you personally are, and so the best thing
Speaker 1: we can do is just ask you directly. But we
Speaker 1: know that those sorts of data are problematic, right, that
Speaker 1: asking people is not always well, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: best we have. It's the best we have.
Speaker 3: It's probably better than experts presuming oh yeah, tell me
Speaker 3: you're happy, Maria. But there's a whole debate about like
Speaker 3: whether conservatives or liberals are more happy or basically liberal
Speaker 3: self report lower happiness. There's a debate about like how
Speaker 3: literally that should be interpreted. We can circle back to
Speaker 3: that maybe. I mean, you know, one other things it
Speaker 3: seems certainly about this latter formulation is it might encourage
Speaker 3: you to like look around at your neighborhood, at nearby
Speaker 3: examples approximate examples of people who are better off than you.
Speaker 3: Right in the United States, in the Middle East, we
Speaker 3: have very prominent examples of extreme wealth and extreme excess
Speaker 3: and or excellence and or achievement and or privilege right
Speaker 3: in everything pretty much right, the US seems to be
Speaker 3: I've actually run some numbers on this stuff, relatively like
Speaker 3: pretty happy country, right, but like we're a little lower
Speaker 3: than you'd think given how rich we are overall. So
Speaker 3: you know, what do countries like Finland have in common?
Speaker 3: Number one, they have relatively low wealth and incommun inequality
Speaker 3: relatively low. Where floor is high, the ceiling is also
Speaker 3: high ish, right, but like relatively low compared to US, China,
Speaker 3: Middle East.
Speaker 2: Latin America.
Speaker 1: And by the way, let me just caveat that with
Speaker 1: saying that a lot of the countries that are at
Speaker 1: the top of these polls tend to be smaller, and
Speaker 1: I think that goes hand in.
Speaker 2: Hand, you know, I mean, it's not true for all
Speaker 2: small countries, right, like Finland. Also like Greece.
Speaker 3: We had a very nice time in Athens a few
Speaker 3: years ago, and we thought we're going to go around
Speaker 3: Athle's going to be born. We just loved Athens so
Speaker 3: much we just stayed there. Right, But Greece has been
Speaker 3: through a lot in terms of economic distress and bailouts.
Speaker 3: Greece has a lot of history, a lot of baggage
Speaker 3: with that history. One of my good friends is Greek
Speaker 3: American and it's a little bit of an angstier kind
Speaker 3: of culture.
Speaker 2: I think I get a lot you know Reeks.
Speaker 3: In the Russians and the Jews that kind of very happy.
Speaker 3: They kind of have some similar stories, right.
Speaker 2: You know Italy.
Speaker 3: I went to Italy on a Booktoria, and like you know,
Speaker 3: the guy who transit book, he's like, yeah, all Italians
Speaker 3: were still living in the shadow of like our our
Speaker 3: history in Italy is a country it's like not super happy.
Speaker 3: So like a country that's like content with its place
Speaker 3: in the world and or which teaches contentment, it seems
Speaker 3: like it's going to excel on this survey, which is
Speaker 3: not to say it's not a valid measure, but like
Speaker 3: that context I think is important, and the small thing
Speaker 3: is important to almost all the countries that rank highly
Speaker 3: are are small. They are not necessarily someone. Thing I
Speaker 3: looked at is is there a correlation because we can
Speaker 3: be on PC on the show Maria, Sure, is there
Speaker 3: a correlation and either direction between the number of foreign
Speaker 3: born residents and happiness controlling for their factors.
Speaker 1: That's a super important question, Like let's it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: whether we're PC or not. Like this is actually yeah important, is.
Speaker 3: No, Actually, if anything, there's a positive correlation because countries
Speaker 3: that are more successful tend to attract more immigrants if
Speaker 3: they should let them in.
Speaker 2: Right now, what do.
Speaker 3: You think some people would say is that in these
Speaker 3: smaller countries that you're able to incorporate the other cultures
Speaker 3: more organically, right.
Speaker 2: I don't if if that's true.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you go to Finland, there is a
Speaker 3: you know, there are tons of ethnic quote unquote restaurants everywhere,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure that you know, the spice level is
Speaker 3: probably a little bit done down, but like but you know,
Speaker 3: but like it's a it's a pretty multicultural place. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, Norway, The impression I get is that Nori's
Speaker 3: little stricter about certain types of things, right, so it
Speaker 3: might very more from place to place, or you know, if.
Speaker 2: You're too strict.
Speaker 3: I mean, Italy and Japan are places where israelis have been, right,
Speaker 3: where it's thought to be a little bit harder to
Speaker 3: integrate potentially, right, you know, whereas South Korea is a
Speaker 3: little more open minded. But like, so there's lots of
Speaker 3: different factors happening here. I think also, you know, so
Speaker 3: South Korea is a country that like is both according
Speaker 3: to the survey and according to some measures, like mental
Speaker 3: health measures. You know, I could argue that fertility rate
Speaker 3: might be an indicator of something, right, Like South Korea
Speaker 3: is kind of unhappy, but like it grew prodigiously from
Speaker 3: like being in the lower end of developing countries right
Speaker 3: forty years ago to higher per GDP per capitive in
Speaker 3: Japan and all but a handful of countries in the
Speaker 3: world now, right, And like, you know, I wonder if
Speaker 3: that growing up too fast show leads to some angst,
Speaker 3: the sense of like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some dislocation, yeah yeah. So when I think these
Speaker 1: are all really really important considerations, and the World Happiness
Speaker 1: Report team did try to kind of do some economic
Speaker 1: modeling to look at the variation as well, and they
Speaker 1: found that there are six variables that from two thousand
Speaker 1: and five onwards account for about three quarters of the
Speaker 1: variation and happiness. And those variables are having somebody to
Speaker 1: count on, so kind of social support, which makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: and that dovetails with a lot of research on happiness.
Speaker 1: We can talk more about that community support, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Log GDP per capita, Nate, You'll have to break that
Speaker 1: down a little bit for people, because log GDP per
Speaker 1: capita is not like something that rolls off the tongue.
Speaker 1: Healthy life expectancy obviously important, freedom to make life choices, generosity,
Speaker 1: and freedom from corruption. So those are the six factors
Speaker 1: that they found correlate most highly with that overall ranking.
Speaker 1: So log GDP per capita, can you just unpack that
Speaker 1: for a second and then we'll talk about everything else.
Speaker 3: Uh, that just means that you're taking the natural logarithm,
Speaker 3: So it depends on which base you're using. But like
Speaker 3: you know, if you have, like what's the per capita
Speaker 3: income of Mexico is twenty thousand, night that might be wrong,
Speaker 3: eighteen thousand. I have no idea, right, whereas in like Norway,
Speaker 3: it's like one hundred thousand. Right, the day to day
Speaker 3: life is not five times better in Norway than in Mexico. Right,
Speaker 3: kind of practical realized wealth, even if you use kind
Speaker 3: of purchasing powered, parody adjusted.
Speaker 2: Versions of it. Right, So long as you just saying there's
Speaker 2: diminishing returns to.
Speaker 1: Wealth, great and fourteen thousand Mexico is thirteen thousand, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like four thousand dollars like sid really work huntry
Speaker 1: in Africa versus fourteen thousand is a bigger difference than
Speaker 1: four two hundred thousand are similar at least, right.
Speaker 2: And like a large scale will at least at least
Speaker 2: compress that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that actually makes a lot of sense because
Speaker 1: what we know about happiness from kind of the happiness
Speaker 1: research outside of this particular measure or anything like that,
Speaker 1: is that the old takeaway that, oh, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't buy happiness as bullshit, that's not true. Money does matter,
Speaker 1: and you do have to have a certain amount of money,
Speaker 1: and with more money you do get happier, but there
Speaker 1: are diminishing returns, right, So that's true up to a
Speaker 1: certain point. And that it kind of flattens out, so
Speaker 1: there it's much more nuanced. But yes, after a certain rate,
Speaker 1: like those returns are so high at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: then once you're kind of comfortable and are able to
Speaker 1: like have some sort of certainty, right, some sort of stability,
Speaker 1: after that, the returns are still there, right, but they
Speaker 1: are lower than they were at the beginning when you
Speaker 1: had to do that. You know, as you say, like
Speaker 1: from four thousand to fourteen thousand, like that is huge,
Speaker 1: like that and kind of standard of living.
Speaker 3: You've seen a lot of, I mean, you can argue
Speaker 3: that like Western Europe is taking a little bit of
Speaker 3: it off ramp from further growth in GDP.
Speaker 2: Right, if you have, like if every.
Speaker 3: Person has access to their own home, access to healthcare,
Speaker 3: access to purchase meals and necessities at least, and then
Speaker 3: to have some small little luxuries and to have like
Speaker 3: a workday that doesn't work require them to work in
Speaker 3: adverse conditions or excessive numbers of hours, right, like you know,
Speaker 3: and some family or friends support networks.
Speaker 2: Right though that's done easy list of things. It's a
Speaker 2: small list of whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Right, But like you know, maybe when you get to that,
Speaker 3: then people have rationally less incentive for further gains, and
Speaker 3: to the extent you do have gains, it might be
Speaker 3: from the financialization of different sectors, and or it might
Speaker 3: be from people who do what really want to take risks, right,
Speaker 3: people who are playing the game and like that. You know, America, China,
Speaker 3: Middle East, these more dynamic quote unquote places have more
Speaker 3: of that than than Europe, where you talk to Europeans like,
Speaker 3: what are the front of your AI labs in Europe? Like, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't have any, you know, I mean literally, So
Speaker 3: that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I suppose that's really interesting. And most of the top
Speaker 1: rated countries are in Europe, right for in terms of happiness,
Speaker 1: which is yeah.
Speaker 2: They're most of them almost all. I think Canada is
Speaker 2: pretty well, right yeah, I mean there are culture you know,
Speaker 2: in general relative to.
Speaker 3: Relative to GDP, the Americas are like, you know, Latin
Speaker 3: America is a happier region than Asia controlling for GDP and.
Speaker 2: These other fastors. Right, yes, why is it true? I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: It's easy to kind of backfit. You know, you go
Speaker 3: to Mexico or Peru and.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, people just kind of the culture is
Speaker 2: sunnier and people see, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Know, for sure, but there are I mean something that
Speaker 1: this kind of type of ranking doesn't measure that I think,
Speaker 1: you know, might partially explain what we're seeing with South
Speaker 1: America versus Asia, is that there are cultural differences in
Speaker 1: how people just kind of their baseline how they experience life. Right,
Speaker 1: it's the way that they kind of grew up, the
Speaker 1: language that they grew up using, kind of the things
Speaker 1: that have been socialized from early childhood in terms of
Speaker 1: like what's your attitude? Right, are you an optimist? Are
Speaker 1: you a pessimist? Like this sounds kind of crazy, but
Speaker 1: there are some cultures that are actually like just inherently
Speaker 1: more optimistic cultures. There are some cultures that are just
Speaker 1: inherently more pessimistic cultures. And that kind of stuff matters, right,
Speaker 1: because those kinds of mindsets, those kinds of psychological shifts,
Speaker 1: can actually affect how you feel on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis. And so there are these just like baseline
Speaker 1: factors that exist that you've just learned from, you know,
Speaker 1: from day one, right, that's just the way that you
Speaker 1: were raised. And none of these surveys capture that.
Speaker 3: Stoicism is kind of another after view this is a
Speaker 3: big difference between men and women and conservatives and liberals.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So now working the story in right, if you look
Speaker 3: at data and if you ask people are you mentally healthy? Right,
Speaker 3: conservatives and men are considered the more likely to say yes,
Speaker 3: Liberals and women Right, If you ask people did you
Speaker 3: have a good day to day, the difference kind of evaporates.
Speaker 3: So the Libs will say, well, that proves that there's
Speaker 3: a stigma over mental health. And I might say there's
Speaker 3: a liberal bit of men. Right, I might say, look, no, actually,
Speaker 3: men are more stoic and they're able to say it's
Speaker 3: okay sometimes to not have every day be the most exciting,
Speaker 3: or I not have everything go your way. Right. We
Speaker 3: don't have to be as expressive about it. And actually
Speaker 3: that's a sign of better mental health.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You don't have to you know, turn us all into
Speaker 2: therapy patients or whatever else.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And if I were to stereotype.
Speaker 3: I would say that Mexico is a more expressive culture
Speaker 3: than Japan or Korea.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If the woke police want to beat me down for that,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I think most people would agree
Speaker 3: with that, probably, right, And so that can get you know,
Speaker 3: whenever a human is acting of the human on a
Speaker 3: survey are connecting survey, you know that that becomes a
Speaker 3: little bit loaded, potentially.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And like we said at the beginning, you know,
Speaker 1: they really have tried with this ladder kind of question
Speaker 1: to cut through a lot of the cultural noise, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't in the sense that those mental frameworks that
Speaker 1: kind of those things that are acceptable not acceptable. Just
Speaker 1: the way that you perceive life in general is going
Speaker 1: to be influenced by by those things, and your answer
Speaker 1: to that ladder is going to differ based on those
Speaker 1: early life slash social kind of pressures no matter what.
Speaker 1: And I also want to add a factor that so
Speaker 1: talking about you know, unpc things to say, like another
Speaker 1: big thing in happiness, like genetics is actually a factor here,
Speaker 1: like some levels of life satisfaction and kind of how
Speaker 1: you perceive life. There's a degree of heritability to that,
Speaker 1: right where like for whatever reason, right, whether it's kind
Speaker 1: of your overall mental health, how your brain processes information,
Speaker 1: whatever combination of genes you have that can affect how
Speaker 1: you see the world to a certain extent. Right, it's
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent heritability or anything close to that,
Speaker 1: but there is a heritability element to that. And then
Speaker 1: if we actually go even further out to like nations
Speaker 1: like Finland, places that have been more kind of smaller,
Speaker 1: more homogeneous, like there is that genetic factor actually is
Speaker 1: part of it, I think, and you start realizing that, oh,
Speaker 1: we have like a population that you know, might be
Speaker 1: genetically more predisposed to a certain way of experiencing the world,
Speaker 1: a certain way of expressing themselves in the world. Like
Speaker 1: I said, small piece of it, but a piece of
Speaker 1: it all the same. And when we're talking about something
Speaker 1: as huge as happiness, all those small pieces matter. We'll
Speaker 1: be back right after this.
Speaker 2: One that you do notice in like the Nordics is like.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of reinvestment into like kind of public
Speaker 3: spaces and social services, right like they you know, they
Speaker 3: have time to have a little bit more refinement in
Speaker 3: everything from like museums to parks, to restaurants, airports, right
Speaker 3: things like that. Is that downstream from being having lower
Speaker 3: inequality or is it downstream from being more democratic? I
Speaker 3: think a lot of the research finds that like democracies
Speaker 3: are happier, right. I find that my own work too.
Speaker 3: The US, by the way, as it has become on
Speaker 3: a spectrum less democratic has also become less happy for
Speaker 3: what it's worth, right, absolutely, But then you still of
Speaker 3: know what the cause and effect are, right, Maybe it's
Speaker 3: that Okay, this is kind of a liberal I think
Speaker 3: overly generous in some way interpretation of Trump.
Speaker 2: But they say inequality triggered backlash, and backlash triggered Trump,
Speaker 2: and now Trump is dismantling democratic institutions, right, So like
Speaker 2: the root cause is actually inequality. Right. Those kind of
Speaker 2: things are very difficult to entangle or disentangle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, they absolutely are. And by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: since you mentioned the United States and kind of the
Speaker 1: fallen happiness with the lessening democratic norms, I think that
Speaker 1: actually dovetails with two of the other things that we
Speaker 1: see on the list, which is freedom to make life choices, right,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of part of democracy and freedom from corruption.
Speaker 1: And we know that actually the US has just plummeted
Speaker 1: on the corruption index, right, So I do think that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. But yeah, we don't know, especially with things
Speaker 1: like generosity, like cause and effect. Man, that's really really hard,
Speaker 1: but generosity does kind of there is a reciprocal relationship there,
Speaker 1: and I don't know with something like happiness. How one
Speaker 1: even does a statistical analysis to try to disambiguate cause
Speaker 1: and effect, like in a data set like this, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, if you read.
Speaker 3: Anecdotal like accounts of people who live, you know, expats
Speaker 3: living in countries like India where maybe the rule of
Speaker 3: law is relatively weak, it's like, well, every.
Speaker 2: Single thing is a negotiation.
Speaker 3: A contract is not necessarily a contract, right, And like,
Speaker 3: you know, if you look at kind of like what
Speaker 3: are the different pillars of like the Industrial Revolution in
Speaker 3: the European Enlightenment, one of the ones, it's like kind
Speaker 3: of less sexy, is like just contract law and like
Speaker 3: property rights and things like that, right, I mean, think
Speaker 3: about how many things you do, Maria that rely on
Speaker 3: high trust, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, By the way it happens in the poker world too,
Speaker 3: Oh you know, I forgot my wire?
Speaker 2: Can you lend X to play in this tournament? Yep,
Speaker 2: I'm entering this high stakes betting pool.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's just lots of stuff that like, and
Speaker 3: I'm much more comfort care about that than ninety percent
Speaker 3: of poker players. But like, just the things are a
Speaker 3: lot smoother if not, everything is like fucking scratching your
Speaker 3: nails on a chalkboard, trying to prove, trying to ensure
Speaker 3: that what's supposed to happen happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's like the underlying point there,
Speaker 1: which is a really important one, is that we don't
Speaker 1: want to constantly be expending all of these resources on
Speaker 1: whatever it is, whether it's pure survival, right that's like
Speaker 1: the money thing, or just like trying to go through
Speaker 1: life on a day to day basis. And we do
Speaker 1: have data that show that societies with higher levels of
Speaker 1: generalized trust tend to be much more successful, right, they
Speaker 1: tend to I'm not talking about happiness right now. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about just like economically successful, because the fewer resources
Speaker 1: you have to expend on that, the more you can
Speaker 1: actually use to pay attention to things that are important
Speaker 1: to you in that matter to you, you know, your
Speaker 1: own well being, your family, your friends, things that you
Speaker 1: want to be doing. And if everything is a struggle, right,
Speaker 1: then it's really really tough to get out from that
Speaker 1: cognitive load and to try to have the mental space
Speaker 1: that you need to think, to relax, to create, to
Speaker 1: actually be you know, be a successful human being and
Speaker 1: not just a human being who's surviving. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you think about your answers to different questions right
Speaker 1: such as like the more global how happy are you?
Speaker 1: Versus like, how's your day going right? How are things
Speaker 1: going right now, you will end up getting very different
Speaker 1: answers quite often because people, and this actually goes back
Speaker 1: to what I was saying about genetics and about different societies,
Speaker 1: people do often have like a set happiness level, you know,
Speaker 1: after a certain point, and the data that shows that,
Speaker 1: you know, people after they win the law tend to
Speaker 1: like fall back to where they were before, or people
Speaker 1: who become quadriplegic also tend to kind of level out
Speaker 1: to where they were before. I think that and those
Speaker 1: studies have held up, and those are very interesting data
Speaker 1: points that show that you have this day to day
Speaker 1: fluctuation and then you have these baseline set rates. And
Speaker 1: yet even with all of those things, you do have
Speaker 1: societies that tend to be overall happier versus other societies.
Speaker 1: So they're all of these different factors playing at the
Speaker 1: same time. And that's I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why happiness research is so fascinating and why I try
Speaker 1: to be one of those people who tries to be happier, right,
Speaker 1: and tries to use the research that I know about
Speaker 1: those mental frameworks, those mental feedback loops to push myself
Speaker 1: to be happier because there is, you know, mind body connection.
Speaker 1: There's a research that shows that if you smile more,
Speaker 1: you're actually going to start feeling a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Like if you can trick yourself, if you can trick
Speaker 1: your mind by kind of acting in a happier way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poker rewires your brain, or I guess for the
Speaker 2: matter of other gambling kind of rewires your brain in
Speaker 2: slightly weird ways. Who was this interview with?
Speaker 3: Was it Stephen Schipwicker's I forget who it was, right,
Speaker 3: it was some player who was asked why he didn't
Speaker 3: appear happier when he's doing really well in a tournament, right,
Speaker 3: And it's like, well, anyone who's been in a tournament
Speaker 3: knows that until you actually finish the tournament, there's absolutely
Speaker 3: nothing guaranteed about it, Right, So you kind of train
Speaker 3: yourself like not to celebrate these like interrow successes and
Speaker 3: like and you pick, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I have to say that I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: But I always like feel a perverse pleasure in watching
Speaker 1: those videos when someone celebrates too early, like when there's
Speaker 1: still one card to come and they're like doing this
Speaker 1: victory dance like yes I won and going absolutely crazy,
Speaker 1: and then they lose. I'm like, huh, serves you right, Like,
Speaker 1: do not celebrate too early. And one of the other
Speaker 1: things we were talking about is in terms of trust,
Speaker 1: Like I do think that that is something that is
Speaker 1: very and we've talked about this before. It's something that's
Speaker 1: so funny in the poker world, right where you can,
Speaker 1: like you take things on trust and end up trusting
Speaker 1: people with vast amounts of money, where other people, people
Speaker 1: who aren't poker players, would be like, what in the
Speaker 1: world are you doing? Right, you just gave that person
Speaker 1: like ten grand or whatever it is, and you and
Speaker 1: I have actually given each other money that way. But
Speaker 1: I'm very careful, like I will only actually do that
Speaker 1: with few people because I'm not a poker player, and
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I'm someone who has
Speaker 1: studied con artists, breaches of trust, all of these things,
Speaker 1: and I know that, you know, you just never want
Speaker 1: to put yourself in a situation where you'll be out
Speaker 1: that money absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I like I I unless you're covered with gone, right,
Speaker 2: let's get yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Well that's the other thing, Yeah, unless you're absolutely comfortable
Speaker 1: with it being totally gone. And there's some very funny
Speaker 1: stories about that. In the poker world. Phil Ivy is
Speaker 1: known for giving very very generous tips. There's a funny
Speaker 1: massage story where someone didn't have cash and asked Phil
Speaker 1: Ivy to tip for him and I think Phil through
Speaker 1: like a five K tip or something to the missus.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that was with Nick Schulman. It's a very
Speaker 1: funny story that Nick Schulman tells, And yeah, that was.
Speaker 1: That's not a death that you wanted to incur in
Speaker 1: the moment. I think Nick was probably waiting for like
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars tip or something something a little bit smaller.
Speaker 3: And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we haven't talked about too much,
Speaker 1: which I think we should at least a little bit,
Speaker 1: is the fact that the one factor that's been shown
Speaker 1: over and over to correlate with both life expectancy and happiness,
Speaker 1: and it's something that this Happiness Court has pointed out.
Speaker 1: They say having someone to count on. But the one
Speaker 1: factor that we see in all sorts of longitudinal studies
Speaker 1: are just community, right, social connection, having friends, being being
Speaker 1: a part of something. And that doesn't need to mean religion,
Speaker 1: although that's one of the reasons that's a confounding variable
Speaker 1: why people who are religious often tend to be happier
Speaker 1: because they have that inbuilt community. But it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be that. It could actually be absolutely anything. It
Speaker 1: could be poker night, it could be you know, your
Speaker 1: community of poker friends. But it's having people that you
Speaker 1: actually see in real life, that you have a rapport with,
Speaker 1: that you spend time with, that you have kind of
Speaker 1: this support network. And yes, kind of having a spouse
Speaker 1: can be great too, although that is a double edged
Speaker 1: sword because if you're unhappy in your marriage, that detracts
Speaker 1: from happiness. But in general, like that, social connection is
Speaker 1: absolutely huge, and that's something that we also haven't talked
Speaker 1: about in terms of you know, different countries and different
Speaker 1: ways of treating family. Right, does your extended family live
Speaker 1: with you? How do you kind of look at that?
Speaker 1: Do you have an inbuilt social connection and inbuilt community?
Speaker 1: And this is something that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people either take for granted or don't even realize how
Speaker 1: important it is. And I think it's something that will
Speaker 1: become increasingly more important as more and more of our
Speaker 1: lives are online, and we do see this social fragmentation
Speaker 1: with people not necessarily doing as many things outside the
Speaker 1: home with other people as I have in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Nordics, I tend to associate with bigger, open,
Speaker 3: kind of outdoor spaces. It seem like the Fins of particular,
Speaker 3: you have like a tragnumber of big groups swroaming around.
Speaker 3: Whereas like something very interesting I found in South Korea,
Speaker 3: or in Seoul at least, was that like when you
Speaker 3: go to a restaurant that'sufficiently nice, they will put your
Speaker 3: group in like a private room, and that is seen
Speaker 3: as like the highest prestige thing. As you go with
Speaker 3: a group of four friends, right, and you go to
Speaker 3: a private room or with your family, right, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of like, okay, well, what's the point of you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess like the point of going on
Speaker 3: is that they can cook, of course very well better
Speaker 3: than you can, right, But like the other point of
Speaker 3: being no, we're out in the community and we're out
Speaker 3: in a communal space, right, is like, so, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 1: That goes hand in hand with where we know they
Speaker 1: fall on the global happiness rank.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, I drop in those walls have some community.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Don't we love when anecdotal data actually supports the statistics.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't think it's like the common because
Speaker 2: it seems as a.
Speaker 3: Places that are seen as like having a constraint on space, right,
Speaker 3: that having space is kind of like the luxury right
Speaker 3: if you lol, like like the luxury class and like
Speaker 3: Korean air. Right, it's not that nice, just a lot
Speaker 3: of space because space is rare in these extremely dense
Speaker 3: like Asian countries, right, And it might not be true
Speaker 3: so much in in in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's to wrap up night. If you
Speaker 1: were to nominate your own new happiest country based on
Speaker 1: no data whatsoever, what would what would you say? Or
Speaker 1: do you want to keep Finland?
Speaker 2: People in Hudson, New York seem very happy?
Speaker 1: It's all it's the country, the country of Hudson.
Speaker 3: It could be a communist country practically, yeahs though, all right, cools, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what's the place you've seen that you'd say this place
Speaker 3: is happy?
Speaker 1: I would nominate, Well, I'm going to do a country.
Speaker 1: I'm going to nominate Andra, because people there have a
Speaker 1: lot of money and it's gorgeous, right, you just have
Speaker 1: like just absolutely stunning vistas and they're and it's small, right,
Speaker 1: and there aren't that many people there, and it's a
Speaker 1: tax haven. So yeah, I would I would say that.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing. I don't actually know if Fandora. I'm not
Speaker 1: looking at the rankings anymore. They're not in front of me,
Speaker 1: so I don't know if Fandora is even part of
Speaker 1: this or if it's too small. But yeah, Andra, Monaco, like,
Speaker 1: I would bet that people in countries like that are
Speaker 1: probably pretty.
Speaker 3: They're a little apologies, who are five readers from listeners
Speaker 3: from Monaco are people?
Speaker 2: They're a little soulless in the tax savings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, that's why I said Andorra, not Monaco. But
Speaker 1: but I think that Monaco shares some of the things
Speaker 1: with Andorra. But Andorra, I'm guessing is a happier place
Speaker 1: because in general, like there are a lot of parts
Speaker 1: so and or is its own country. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're talking about close proximity to Spain and the
Speaker 1: you know, the weather there is nice and there are
Speaker 1: by the way, even though we do know that like
Speaker 1: Nordic countries can be obviously the happiest in the world,
Speaker 1: but sunshine and sun exposure is correlated to happiness levels anyway,
Speaker 1: and Spain can be Spain can be a happier country
Speaker 1: if you go like region by region. But there are
Speaker 1: some very poor parts of Spain. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: civil unrest in some parts of it. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got boss country and like the succession stuff, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff keeping Spain from the top. But
Speaker 1: Andorra has a lot of the good things that Spain
Speaker 1: has without a lot of that baggage. So that's that's
Speaker 1: why I nominate and Dora. I wonder if our and
Speaker 1: Dora listeners agree with us or not, but it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: I encourage you to at least look at photographs. And
Speaker 1: on that note, date, let's uh yeah, let's wrap and
Speaker 1: uh go and be happy and and let's go and
Speaker 1: increase the happiness rating of risky business by encouraging more
Speaker 1: reviews that are positive. Let us know what you think
Speaker 1: of the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted by me
Speaker 1: Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3: And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
Speaker 3: production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 3: by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Speaker 3: Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
Speaker 3: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: so other people can find us too, but once again,
Speaker 1: only if you like us. We don't want put those
Speaker 1: bad reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.