happiness

Psychologist Dan Gilbert argues in this TED talk that our psychological immune system lets us become happy even when things do not go as planned. He challenges the idea that we will be miserable if we do not get what we want.

Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk on how Howard Moskowitz found that there is no single perfect spaghetti sauce. He draws a larger point about choice, preference and happiness.

The first part of Adam Curtis' documentary series on Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who invented public relations. It shows how Bernays used Freud's ideas to link mass-produced goods to unconscious desires and create modern consumer persuasion.

Steve Cutts' dark animated short follows a rat chasing happiness through consumerism and endless work. It satirizes materialism and the rat race.

A two-minute Big Think clip of Slavoj Zizek arguing that happiness is a conformist, even unethical goal. He asks why one would want to be happy when one could be interesting.

In this TED talk, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman distinguishes the experiencing self from the remembering self, using examples such as vacations and colonoscopies. He explains how the two perceive happiness differently and what that means for economics, policy and self-awareness.

Alain de Botton's 2004 documentary based on his book Status Anxiety, running over two hours. It asks why people in rich societies are still unhappy, and examines how worries about success, snobbery and meritocracy drive that anxiety.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz argues in this TED talk that abundant choice makes people more paralyzed and dissatisfied rather than freer and happier.

A two-minute animation of an Alan Watts talk arguing that life is like music: it is meant to be danced to in the moment, not rushed toward a final goal. It is a short, accessible take on living in the present.

Joe Rogan interviews entrepreneur and angel investor Naval Ravikant on happiness, work, technology platforms, AI and society. Naval revisits ideas from his well-known tweets.

A roughly 2.5-hour Toronto debate between Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek on happiness under Marxism versus capitalism. This is the official upload from April 2019.

The opening lecture of Robert Sapolsky's Stanford course on Human Behavioral Biology, explaining the course premise and how to avoid categorical thinking. It starts a roughly 25-lecture series on how biology, genes, hormones and environment shape behavior.

Dr. Russell Barkley's roughly three-hour lecture on ADHD for parents of affected children. It explains what ADHD is and how the ADHD brain differs.

Adam Curtis' multi-part documentary on how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays' public relations shaped consumer culture and political control. It argues that business and government learned to manufacture desires.

Randy Pausch's 2007 last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, given as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He reflects on achieving childhood dreams, overcoming obstacles and helping others reach theirs.

Andrew Huberman's long Huberman Lab episode is a masterclass on dopamine. It covers the neural circuits, peaks and baselines, dopamine depletion, and 14 tools for motivation, focus and avoiding addiction.

An RSA Animate whiteboard adaptation of Dan Pink's talk on what motivates people at work. It argues that beyond simple tasks, autonomy, mastery and purpose drive performance more than money.

Veritasium examines the role of luck in success, with simulations and examples showing how small advantages and chance can compound. It argues that top outcomes are disproportionately luck-driven while still crediting effort.

A short excerpt from Dr Russell Barkley's 2012 Burnett Lecture on ADHD, focused on treatment. He argues ADHD is a disorder of executive function and self-regulation, and that environments should be designed to compensate.

CGP Grey's sarcastic animated video adapted from the book How to Be Miserable, listing habits that reliably make people unhappy. By inverting the advice, it shows what to avoid and prompts reflection on goals and routines.

ContraPoints' 35-minute video essay on incels, examining the community, its worldview and how people get radicalized. It is delivered with theatrical style and an empathetic tone.

The first lecture of Jordan Peterson's 2017 Maps of Meaning course, setting out the Cold War context for his theory of belief and culture. He introduces the narrative structure of culture and archetypal characters for the individual, the known and the unknown.

A roughly three-hour San Francisco workshop by Marshall Rosenberg on Nonviolent Communication, with full English subtitles added by a fan. He teaches the model with his jackal and giraffe language examples.

An episode of the Norwegian documentary series Brainwash, in which a comedian interviews academics from different sides about gender differences and gender equality. It looks at why more equal societies can still show unequal career choices.

Audio of Charlie Munger's 1995 Harvard speech on the psychology of human misjudgment, laying out a framework of cognitive biases and mental models for decision making. It covers factors like incentives, social proof and denial.

Psychologist Melanie Joy's TEDxMunchen talk introduces carnism, the invisible belief system that conditions people to eat some animals but not others, and how it shapes reactions to food choices.

Robert Sapolsky's lecture on how the body's stress response, evolved for short-term physical emergencies, harms long-term health when triggered by psychological stressors. It was given as the inaugural Fenton-Rhodes Lecture.

A long Tim Ferriss podcast interview with physician Gabor Mate on trauma, addiction, depression, ADHD and ayahuasca. Mate explains how childhood stress and emotional pain underlie many addictions and illnesses.

CGP Grey explains how ideas spread like germs, and why content that triggers outrage spreads fastest, using a study on what makes online content viral. He argues that opposing outrage-driven memes feed each other.

Veritasium debunks the idea of learning styles, such as being a visual learner, with an interview with Daniel Willingham and a memory experiment. It argues that a multimodal approach helps everyone.

Veritasium examines which experts have real expertise, drawing on chess research and work by Klein and Kahneman. It explains that expertise comes from pattern recognition built through deliberate practice in valid, feedback-rich environments.

CGP Grey explains how traffic jams come from human driving behavior such as tailgating and reaction delays, and how leaving gaps and smoothing speed would reduce congestion. It also touches on self-driving cars.

Jonathan Haidt's Hayek Lecture at Duke argues American universities pursue two potentially incompatible sacred values, truth and social justice. He discusses campus conflict, honor, dignity and victimhood cultures, and viewpoint diversity.

Tim Urban's TED talk on why people procrastinate, covering YouTube binges and Wikipedia rabbit holes. It ends with the life-calendar idea as a nudge to act before time runs out.

An excerpt of Simon Sinek on Inside Quest discussing millennials in the workplace. He covers parenting, technology, social media dopamine and what that means for managers.

A SXSW talk by W Watson that uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, with nods to Zizek, to critique popular programming languages. It argues that people choose and defend languages for emotional and ideological reasons rather than rational ones.

A four-minute TED talk in which Derek Sivers argues that announcing your goals can make you less likely to achieve them. He cites psychology research going back to the 1920s.

Black musician Daryl Davis tells how a chance encounter led him to befriend Ku Klux Klan members and seek the source of racial hate. He argues that sitting down and talking with people can change them.

An excerpt from the 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine in which Richard Feynman describes how he and a mathematician friend counted in their heads in different ways, one verbally and one visually. It shows that people can reach the same goal through quite different mental methods.

An animated short film of Tanya Davis's spoken-word poem 'How To Be Alone', illustrated by Andrea Dorfman. It gently argues that being alone can be embraced and enjoyed.