How to Lead the Richest Life Possible

How to Lead the Richest Life Possible

Author: Pushkin Industries February 17, 2025 Duration: 38:03

To improve your life you might decide to prioritize your own personal happiness, or find meaning in helping the people around you. Few of us consider pushing ourselves well beyond our comfort zones. It might take a lot of effort and risks pain or disappointment.   

University of Chicago professor Shige Oishi thinks to live fully we all need to push ourselves to find "psychological richness". He tells Dr Laurie that we should look for daily opportunities to explore, get lost, mess around and have random encounters that challenge our routines and expectations.   

Read more about Shige's work in Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.


We often chase after things we believe will bring us joy-the next promotion, a perfect vacation photo, a bigger house-only to find the feeling is fleeting. The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos digs into the surprising psychology behind why our instincts about happiness are so frequently wrong. Dr. Santos, a Yale professor, doesn't just offer vague self-help advice; she translates the rigorous research from her record-breaking university course into practical, actionable science. Each episode feels like a personal conversation, where she breaks down complex studies and shares stories from people who've applied these lessons, revealing how counterintuitive changes in our daily routines and mindset can have a profound impact. This Pushkin Industries podcast moves beyond the surface of wellness trends, offering a grounded look at what genuinely improves our well-being across our social lives, personal health, and cultural expectations. Tuning in, you'll hear not just theory, but the tangible steps you can take to rewire your habits, backed by evidence that often contradicts our modern chase for more. It’s a refreshing take that makes the science of a better life accessible and genuinely useful, episode by episode.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Podcast Episodes
How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:57
Halloween isn't just costumes and candy. It's also a time when we indulge our interest in the scary and macabre. But there's also a taboo about gory horror movies and gruesome true crime shows - we often feel that being…
Make Vulnerability Your Superpower (with NBA star Kevin Love) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:07
Not many elite athletes talk openly about mental health, but five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love is changing that. After a very public panic attack on the basketball court he was told to "snap out of it". But Kevin decided…
How to Make Better Choices (with Barry Schwartz) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:48
Every choice you make shapes your wellbeing - and the bigger the decision, the greater the impact. So when it comes to life-changing questions like where to live, who to marry, or which career to pursue, how can you tell…
Take a Three-Day Weekend Without Losing Any Pay (with Juliet Schor) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:51
Many of us toil for long hours - and even take work home at the end of the day. That's bad for us in so many ways - but extensive research shows that it just doesn't have to be this way. Many of us could work a four-day…
Eat Like the People Who Live Happily to 100 (with Dan Buettner) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:21
Your eating habits could be cutting years off the end of your life. But there's a simple solution - eat like the people who live happily and healthily into their 80s, 90s and beyond. Dan Buettner studies the inhabitants…
Why Having the Courage to Defy Makes us Happier (with Dr Sunita Sah) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:53
We all go along with things we don't want to do... or worse, things that make us feel uncomfortable or morally uneasy. We comply for lots of reasons. We don't want to make trouble, or upset our friends, our bosses or peo…
“Can You Train Your Mind to Be Happier?” (with Dr Tal Ben-Shahar) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:27:14
How do you train your mind to be happier? That was the question posed to Dr Laurie by Dr Tal Ben-Shahar at a live webinar for his Happiness Studies Academy. Tal is a leading expert in positive psychology and co-founded t…