Happiness—how to find it, what it means, etc.—is hot. Yes, happiness has been a hot topic since Plato, Aristotle, and the Bible, just to name a few classics, but perhaps its contemporary focus should not surprise us as people report shrinking levels of life-satisfaction, hope regarding the future, and trust. In other words, we all want more of the desirable things we feel slipping away, and that is especially true when it comes to happiness. This is even the case on the campuses of the nation’s leading universities, where courses about happiness have been among the most popular offerings for more than a decade.
At Harvard, Tal Ben-Shahar’s undergraduate course on happiness was so popular that he ultimately left to found the Happiness Studies Academy. The appetite for happiness courses has not abated, and is actually growing. The growth end of this field / industry includes the work of Yale’s Laurie Santos, on the science of well-being. Like Ben-Shahar, she is super-popular with students, and is now offering some of her stuff to the general public as well. And like Ben-Shahar’s work, Santos’ uses psychology and biology to guide people to conclusions based on science.
But more recently, I came across something in this space that is qualitatively different and better than anything else I have seen in the domain, even as I admit the other work is genuinely interesting—the new podcast called Happiness and the Pursuit of the Good Life, which is a project of Brown University’s Professor Michael Satlow. I find it more sophisticated, more probing, and intellectually richer, without giving up on genuine accessibility. And perhaps most importantly, it is work that appreciates the limitations of even great answers, and the almost inexhaustible utility of truly great questions, in helping us toward happiness and the good life in all their definitions
Full disclosure: I first met Michael 30 years ago while we studied ancient Judaisms in the same doctoral program, although we were barely in touch until quite recently. It is because of his current work that we reconnected, and my excitement is driven by the quality of the work, not the person doing the work.
Instead of promising to use science to provide answers, Michael shares questions—not to confound us, but to animate us. His podcast offers listeners access to a great map room, one that contains the intellectual and spiritual maps others have used as they charted their own courses to happiness and the good life. It invites us to unroll those maps and consider them for ourselves. Hardly the worst use of 30 to 60 minutes a week.
When I first listened, the podcast reminded me that one can get further with questions than with any one answer or set of answers. That doesn’t mean that answers are bad. They are great, and actually necessary, for all of us. But I appreciate that Satlow is not trying to demonstrate which answers are the right ones, as much of the science-based stuff does, so a wider audience can use it in their lives.
In addition to being quite smart and accomplished in the way that most Ivy League professors are, Satlow is totally unpretentious and genuinely curious about where his audience is—be they his students at Brown or his listeners. In fact, he went so far as to custom-build a chatbot for the podcast—one trained to rely on his work and style—so that people could more easily continue the conversation in light of their own personal wants and needs.
Even more importantly, unlike most people in the happiness field, Professor Satlow offers encouragement, not simplistic answers. He does it by exploring classic wisdom traditions and schools of philosophy, both Western and Eastern, with no bias for or against any of them. He is, to paraphrase his opening episode, “simply” hoping to provide people with the kinds of questions they can keep mulling over during the week, and some interesting tools with which to do so.
This is the most valuable part of his project: it remains question-driven, which is especially important in our answer-saturated world, given that the proliferation of answers isn’t making us all that much happier. If anything, this quantity of answers contributes to our rising anxiety about whether or not we have the “right” answer!
Even the “right answers” come and go. That’s actually a good thing, since the world keeps changing and therefore the right answers must do the same. Questions, however, are different, or at least the really great ones are. Great questions are eternal invitations and we are always on the guest list. We are invited to engage them, use them, and test them against our own experience. They remain useful even as the answers to them change. They are the maps to which we always have access, and the destinations are up to us.
I am especially drawn to that wisdom this week, as Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, runs from Wed night to Thursday night. Eicha, The Book of Lamentations, stands at the center of this observance, and it too appreciates the importance of questions over answers in addressing the critical moments in our lives.
The title, Eicha, is usually translated as a single word, “Alas” or “Woe.” However, it can just as easily be understood as a two-word contraction, “How God?” And this is where we see the value of questions, not only in pursuing good times but in dealing with the bad times as well. That opening question—How God?—is answered in different ways in the book’s five chapters, and in even more ways as the Talmud reflects on the story: The destruction of Jerusalem happened because we sinned. It happened because God was especially harsh and unforgiving. It happened because we failed to treat one another respectfully. Our tradition gives no single answer to that pivotal question. Here too, it is in the ongoing asking that we find what we most need.
And while it is generally true that you get what you pay for (if you’re lucky), when it comes to exploring happiness and the good life, I think it may be the opposite. Because this podcast is free of charge, and no products are being sold, the only currency in play is your time—which is, of course, the most precious currency we have once we have secured life’s physical basics. In other words, this podcast is for you to employ as you may choose, and feeling that kind of agency may be one of the best places any of us can start to explore the happiness we want and the good lives we hope to lead.