Happy You Asked: The Podcast That Explores Joy, One Awkward Conversation at a Time

Judy Moskowitz has spent decades studying an uncomfortable but useful question: what role can positive emotion play when the stress is real, severe, and not going away? Dr. Moskowitz is a Professor and Vice Chair for Scientific and Faculty Development in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her research focuses on a positive emotion regu...

Today’s guest is Dr. Suzanne Segerstrom, the Jo Anne Leonard Petersen Endowed Chair for Gerontology and Family Studies at Oregon State University, where she is a professor and director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research. Her work examines when psychological factors such as personality, optimism, and self-regulation affect the immune system, how those effects change across adulthood, and how...

In this episode I talk with Dr. Kent Berridge, who is the James Olds Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. His research examines the brain mechanisms of pleasure, desire, motivation, emotion, reward, and addiction, and shows us why dopamine is not a simple pleasure chemical.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. She is the Fahmy and Donna Attallah Professor of Humanistic Psychology at the University of Southern California, where she is a professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience and the founding director of the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education, or CANDLE. A former public school science teacher, she...

Today’s guest is Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist, the Pam R. Rollins Professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and Medical Director of Emory Executive Health. She is a board-certified internal-medicine physician whose clinical and research work focuses on healthy aging, prevention, lifestyle medicine, and the ways daily behavior interacts with resilience. Her book, The Stress Parado...

My guest in this episode is Kimberly Malone, Assistant Director of Prison Education at Northeastern University in New York. For more than a decade, she has taught incarcerated students and helped lead college programs in men's and women's prisons across medium- and maximum-security settings. She is also president of Rising Hope, a nonprofit providing postsecondary education in New York pri...

What changes when wellbeing is treated as a dynamic system rather than a personal checklist? How can we measure flourishing without flattening out how a human life actually works? My guest in this episode, Dr. Peggy Kern, is a professor at the Centre for Wellbeing Science at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Education in Australia. Her research focuses on questions like these and draws on a...

In this episode I talk with Dr. Matthew Zawadzki, a health psychologist and professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Merced. His work examines how everyday experiences shape our health and well-being. That includes stress, loneliness, and even the ways we spend our free time. One of the central questions in his research is why a stressful event can be over while our min...

This episode's guest is Dr. Matthew Johnson. Since 2004, he's played a role in the revival of psychedelic research, publishing on psychedelics in relation to mystical experience, personality change, risk and safety, ethics, and the treatment of tobacco addiction, cancer distress, and depression. He's also known for his expertise in behavioral economics, addiction, sexual risk behavior,...

Dr. Tim Lomas is a Psychology Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who studies why most happiness research is too Western, too narrow, and too focused on positive states to capture how people actually flourish across the full diversity of human cultures. He joins me in this episode for a conversation about untranslatable well-being words, the case for negative emotio...

With me in this episode is Dr. Catherine Sanderson. She is the Poler Family Professor of Psychology at Amherst College, with degrees from Princeton and Stanford, and a sought-after keynote speaker whose talks translate the science of happiness, mindset, emotional intelligence, and moral courage into practical strategies for thriving at work and in life. Dr. Sanderson is the author of The Positive...

Dr. Kathleen Mackenzie is an award-winning Clinical Social Worker who recently retired from a multicultural urban school district after 27 years of service. She drew on this and her 33 years of clinical experience to write her new book, Exit Plan: Mapping a Way Out of the Youth Mental Health Crisis . Her recommendations are worth giving a listen by any parent, educator, or policy maker.

Life has taken Mark Winters from designing rocket parts in Houston to sharing uplifting stories as a songwriter. As he says, “My background in math and physics keeps me grounded, but it’s the haiku and wisdom I’ve traded with my grandmother that push me to see optimism everywhere.” His focus these days is on sharing messages that help others push through their own scientific, creative, or personal...

Eranda Jayawickreme is Harold W. Tribble Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Fellow at the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on post-traumatic growth, character, and well-being. He has been featured on NPR’s Hidden Brain, in the New York Times, BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Scientific American, and Slate.

With me in this episode is Dr. Selin A. Malkoc, who is the FCOB Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Psychology at The Ohio State University. She has spent her career asking a deceptively simple question: why are we so bad at making choices that maximizes our productivity, happiness and well-being? Dr. Malkoc has long been fascinated by how differently people across cultures think about time —...

Mackenzie McGehee is the founder of Dear Humanity, I Love You (dearhumanityily.com), a mission-driven apparel brand built around the idea that small, visible reminders of love and connection can ripple outward in meaningful ways. Both her work as a personal coach and her brand share the same core philosophy: that people often need a gentle nudge back to what they already know about themselves.

With me in this episode is Dr. Lara Aknin, who is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. She is also an editor of the World Happiness Report, a former Fellow with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and recent Chair of The Lancet’s COVID-19 Mental Health Task Force. She talks with me about research that shows giving substantially increases o...

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas. She is the Science Director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley and a neuroscientist who studies compassion, gratitude, and awe. She co-teaches The Science of Happiness, one of the most popular online classes in the world with over 850,000 students. She also runs the Big Joy Project and has presented on the science of happiness...

With me in this episode is Dr. Aaron B. Daniels, Associate Teaching Professor of Psychology and a Senior Mindfulness Fellow at Northeastern University. He is a former psychotherapist and a Certified Spiritual Director who has published six academic books. We talk about how his work on Dante, Jung, aliens, and mindfulness led him to see spiritual direction as a key to a content life.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Kostadin Kushlev, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University who runs the Happy Tech Lab. He studies how smartphones, social media, email, and constant digital connectivity affect our happiness and health. It’s not all doom and gloom, though! There’s also practical advice for how to use digital devices to enhance our lives rather than make them...

This episode features Ray Raghunathan, author of If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? and the creator of a Coursera course on happiness that's one of the most popular MOOCs ever made. We discuss why happiness and success often do not go hand in hand, because we so often chase the wrong things.

Dr. Earlene Avalon joins me for this episode to discuss the self-care practices she’s developed over time that incorporate beloved aspects of her family’s background. We also reflect on how self-compassion has looked differently for both of us during different eras of our lives, which is a testament to the human ability to adapt.

In this episode I am joined by Dr. Jay Post, a professor of outdoor recreation and tourism. We discuss the history of the outdoors in the U.S., from European explorers mapping the “unknown” wilderness, to the Transcendentalists finding divinity within nature, to the creation of modern outdoor trails for different experiences. This episode reminded me of one of my favorite quotations from Thoreau’s...

In this episode I am joined by the Cleveland-based community leader, entertainer, and entrepreneur Ryan “Shug” Gilkerson. We discuss how a meandering career path is, for many of us, the way a life should be.

Dr. Latasha Holt--a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette--joins me to discuss finding joy amongst the stress and challenges of caring for a loved one with medical needs.