We spend our lives chasing happiness, measuring ourselves against it, and wondering why it can be so hard to find or keep. But happiness can mean many different things: pleasure, peace, contentment, success, love, meaning, freedom, comfort, purpose, or delight. 

Together, we will slow the question down. What do we mistake for happiness? What kinds of happiness can be trusted? What happens when getting what we want does not satisfy us? What does happiness have to do with other people, with suffering, with goodness? Can we happy in a broken world? Should we try?

The goal of this Pod is not to arrive at one definition of happiness. The goal is to leave with a clearer sense of what we are really after, and what kind of life we want to build around that.

Preparation between sessions is designed to take under two hours. 

For this Pod, we will draw our conversation catalysts from the range of sources below, including poems, essays, short stories, memoir excerpts, visual art, and film or television. The final selections may shift slightly in response to the interests, questions, and energy of the group. 

The first session readings will be shared three weeks before the start of the Pod. 

Sources we'll draw from: 

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I selections (philosophy) 

• Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus” (philosophy) Seneca, “On a Happy Life” (philosophy) 

• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, selected passages (philosophy) 

• Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, selected verses (wisdom literature) 

• The Dhammapada, selected passages on desire and suffering (wisdom literature) 

• The Book of Ecclesiastes, selected passages (scripture/wisdom literature) 

• Zhuangzi, “The Happiness of Fish” (philosophical parable) 

• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, selections on higher and lower pleasures (philosophy) 

• Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, selections (essay/philosophy) 

• Simone Weil, “Attention and Will,” selections (essay/philosophy) 

• Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, selections (philosophy/social theory) 

• Viktor Frankl, “The Case for Tragic Optimism” from Man’s Search for Meaning (essay/book excerpt) 

• David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water” (speech/essay)

• Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, selections (essay/book excerpt) 

• Zadie Smith, “Joy” (essay) 

• Ross Gay, The Book of Delights, selected essays (essay/micro-essay) 

• Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, selections (essay/book excerpt) 

• Arthur C. Brooks, “To Get Happier, Make Yourself Smaller” (research-informed essay) 

• Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks, selections (book excerpt) 

• Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided, selections (essay/book excerpt) 

• Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book, selections on pleasing things (essay/list) 

• Virginia Woolf, “Moments of Being,” selections (essay/memoir) 

• Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese” (poem) 

• Jane Kenyon, “Happiness” (poem) 

• Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” (poem) 

• Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in Possibility” (poem) 

• Anton Chekhov, “The Lottery Ticket” (short story) 

• Anton Chekhov, “Gooseberries” (short story) 

• Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss” (short story) 

• Leo Tolstoy, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (short story) 

• Grace Paley, “Wants” (short story) 

• Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing” (short story) 

• Yiyun Li, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” (short story) 

• George Saunders, “Victory Lap” (short story) 

• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, the Controller and the Savage excerpt (novel excerpt) 

• Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, selections (psychology book excerpt) 

• Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness, selections (psychology book excerpt) 

• Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, The Good Life, selections (psychology/social science book excerpt)

• Happy, Roko Belic (documentary) 

• Henri Matisse, The Joy of Life (visual art) 

• Nina Simone, “Feeling Good” (song)