Top 5: Love the Past, But Don't Live There AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

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Episode: Top 5: Love the Past, But Don't Live There

Author: Pushkin Industries
Duration: 00:35:21

Episode Shownotes

Happiness Lab is five years old. To mark our birthday, Dr Laurie has picked her favorite five episodes from the archive. The show Why Nostalgia Ain't So Rosy was certainly a memorable one for her. Actor Rob Lowe LOVES the 1980s. And who can blame him? He was one of

the most famous men on the planet. But, as he tells Dr Laurie, he's careful not to wallow in nostalgia for the music, fashions and events of his youth too much - and happiness science backs him up on this. Research suggests that our memories of the past can be very selective and highly unreliable - causing us to misremember events and cast them in a rosy glow. Sadly, this also causes us to make very bad decisions about what will make us happy in the future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Summary

In this episode of 'The Happiness Lab,' Dr. Laurie Santos and actor Rob Lowe discuss the bittersweet nature of nostalgia, particularly reflecting on the 1980s. They explore how nostalgia can evoke joy while also potentially distorting memories and leading to poor decision-making about future happiness. The discussion includes insights from Duke University professor Felipe and Leigh Thompson on how human memory is often selective and can create an idealized view of the past, impacting present happiness and future expectations. The episode emphasizes the importance of appreciating the present moment.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Top 5: Love the Past, But Don't Live There) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

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00:02:43 Speaker_09
It's birthday season here at the Happiness Lab. We are celebrating our fifth year anniversary. And it's prompted us to go back into the archive to pull out five of my most memorable and meaningful episodes from the hundreds that we've made.

00:02:56 Speaker_09
My producer Ryan has number three on the list, which is... So it's a show from season three called Why Nostalgia Ain't So Rosy.

00:03:02 Speaker_07
And I think I know why you had me grab this one out, but why don't you tell the listeners?

00:03:06 Speaker_09
Is it because of our main guest who we start with, my heartthrob? Yes. So this is an episode where I got to interview the actor Rob Lowe, who definitely was one of my 80s heartthrobs.

00:03:17 Speaker_09
I believe you made fun of me for a smile on my face in the Zoom interview. Yes, I looked a little cheesy.

00:03:23 Speaker_07
And this was the first big season we made during the COVID lockdown. So I remember sitting with you on Zoom and with Rob Lowe. He told so many funny stories and did all the accents. We couldn't fit them all in.

00:03:32 Speaker_09
Yeah. I mean, and aside from all his Hollywood anecdotes, Rob also really helped us understand the psychology of nostalgia, both the parts of nostalgia that we get right that help us and the parts of nostalgia that lead us astray.

00:03:43 Speaker_07
Because Rob's very nostalgic. I mean, there's lots of things in his youth he remembers fondly. But as I remember, he's also careful not to get caught up in them. What are the things you get nostalgic about?

00:03:52 Speaker_09
Well, Rob and 80s movies, obviously. You know, really cheesy music from the 90s. I mean, there's so many things I get nostalgic about. And I think that's the beauty of our understanding of nostalgia, right, is that nostalgia can kind of bring us joy.

00:04:05 Speaker_09
But as we'll see in this episode, it's something that we don't want to get caught up in. We want to be nostalgic without falling prey to the pitfalls of nostalgia. And that is what I think you'll learn today. So here is Why Nostalgia Ain't So Rosie.

00:04:33 Speaker_09
When you hear the word nostalgia, where do your thoughts go?

00:04:37 Speaker_04
Oh boy. You know, it gets triggered usually by music or a smell, like hot air and pines, that combination.

00:04:48 Speaker_04
And then if you throw in a little bit of saltwater, reminds me of the very first time I ever saw California in 1976 when I first set foot out here and started my journey to where I am today. So that really gets me nostalgic.

00:05:03 Speaker_09
you're listening to one of the most surreal conversations of my life. I'm talking about nostalgia with the actor who personifies some of my fondest 80s memories, Rob Lowe. If you're a child of the 80s like me, Rob is an icon.

00:05:17 Speaker_09
He was part of pretty much everything I'm embarrassed to love about that decade. He was in ABC after-school specials. He starred in classic 80s movies like St. Elmo's Fire and The Outsiders. He was a member of the infamous Brat Pack.

00:05:31 Speaker_09
He was on the cover of Teen Beat magazine week after week. He dated all my teen girl idols from Demi Moore to Winona Ryder. He played the saxophone. Or at least I thought he did. Do you actually play the sax or was that just for the movie?

00:05:46 Speaker_04
Let me tell you something. I am a longtime actor. I can fake do almost anything. I can fake shoot a gun. I can fake rappel. I can fake play the saxophone like no other. And I have fooled many a person with it.

00:06:02 Speaker_09
And let's not even get started on his hair.

00:06:05 Speaker_04
I used more hair mousse than any human being should ever use.

00:06:10 Speaker_09
All this goes to say that even though I was trying to be my smoothest professional podcast Yale professor self when I chatted with Rob, I was finding it really hard to hold it together.

00:06:20 Speaker_04
When the carpenters come on the radio and you're like immediately next to your grandpa co-driving his station wagon, and you're nine or 11 years old, it's awesome. It's magic. You're in a time machine. You're literally in a time machine.

00:06:40 Speaker_09
But I love that the time machine point, because, you know, in some sense, you've created that time machine for other people.

00:06:47 Speaker_09
You know, even for me, like just talking with you on the Zoom call, I hear your voice and I hear certain ways that you express things and certain parts of your smile.

00:06:54 Speaker_09
And I'm taking back to, you know, movies I watched in grade school and with friends and fun times in college. And, you know, what does it feel like to be creating the time machine for other people?

00:07:03 Speaker_04
That is amazing. It makes me feel so good. It really does because I can put the shoe on the other foot so easily. When I meet my heroes or whatever and go, hey man, that song you wrote, I played it at my wedding. To me, hearing feedback like that,

00:07:20 Speaker_04
At the end of the day, it's the real reason I think that I became an actor and got into this business, was to move people and create memories for them. Because memories are all you got. That's all you got.

00:07:37 Speaker_09
Rob is right here. When we look back at our lives, our memories are all we've got. And reliving all those nostalgic moments often feels really fun. But nostalgia can also cause pain.

00:07:47 Speaker_09
Research shows that if we're not careful, our happiest memories have a way of messing with our future well-being, making us downplay bad experiences or totally misremember the past, which can set us up for some potentially damaging choices.

00:08:01 Speaker_09
So how can we experience the benefits of nostalgia in a way that doesn't hurt our happiness? How can we relive our fond past memories in a way that doesn't hurt our future selves? Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.

00:08:21 Speaker_09
But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction.

00:08:33 Speaker_09
You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. So full disclosure, I am a nostalgia junkie. When I have a tough day at work, I rewatch old movies or play the classic songs that I loved in high school.

00:08:53 Speaker_09
So you can imagine my total glee when I learned that I share a fondness for all things old school with my 80s heartthrob, Rob Lowe.

00:09:00 Speaker_04
I love nostalgia. I love that I'm on this podcast right now because I'm very big on it.

00:09:05 Speaker_09
The science shows that Rob and I are not alone here. Nostalgia is an incredibly common experience. In fact, one study found that around 80% of participants reported feeling nostalgic at least once a week.

00:09:17 Speaker_04
If you were to look over my shoulder at night when I'm going down my YouTube wormhole, it's all nostalgia. It's all history, nostalgia related, behind the scenes of 70s music, all of that stuff.

00:09:31 Speaker_09
Like me, Rob loves thinking back to the songs of his youth and the concerts he enjoyed when he was young. For him, a big one was seeing his idol Bruce Springsteen live for the first time.

00:09:42 Speaker_04
One of the things I remember about crazy time was going to see him at Giants Stadium. And it's the Born in the USA tour. Talk about nostalgia.

00:09:51 Speaker_09
But Rob's concert memories are also a bit different than many of ours.

00:09:55 Speaker_04
The stadium's full. It's just before showtime. And I walk in and people start noticing and saying hello and wanting an autograph. And the next thing I know, the entire stadium is chanting my name. I get really, like, embarrassed.

00:10:15 Speaker_04
But the good news is that led the Springsteen people to get me the hell out of the stadium and backstage. And that's how I finally met Bruce.

00:10:22 Speaker_09
The same is true for his memories of 80s television. Rob also loves to get nostalgic about bad old-school TV. I told him stories of how I used to run off the school bus to catch my favorite afternoon shows.

00:10:33 Speaker_09
But Rob's childhood TV-watching stories are a bit more over-the-top than mine. Because Rob wasn't just watching those ABC afternoon specials. He was also starring in them.

00:10:43 Speaker_04
And I used that as an excuse to go up to the cutest girl in the school and kind of try to chat her up. Her name was Jennifer, and one thing led to another, and she invited me to come to her house and watch the After School Special.

00:10:54 Speaker_04
And she was like, you know, my dad's in acting, so that'll be great. So I roll up to her house. It's a mansion in Beverly Hills, first time I've ever seen a mansion. And I open the door, and it's Cary Grant in a bathrobe.

00:11:09 Speaker_04
And so we watched my little stupid after school special with Cary Grant. And afterwards, he was like, you remind me, son of a young Lauren Beatty, which I took as a huge compliment.

00:11:22 Speaker_09
As I heard more and more about Rob's incredible stories, I realized that he might not be the best starting point for understanding the average person's connection between nostalgia and happiness.

00:11:32 Speaker_04
I love the 80s, but I had obviously a very, very, very unique seat at the 80s.

00:11:39 Speaker_09
So to get a more scientific sense of why we love thinking about the past, I decided to turn to someone else I thought could help. My friend and colleague, Felipe de Brigarde.

00:11:48 Speaker_08
I'm an addict to nostalgia. Yes, I love it.

00:11:51 Speaker_09
I relish that feeling. Felipe is an academic triple threat. He's a professor of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy at Duke University.

00:12:01 Speaker_08
Full disclosure, there are times in which I feel that I was born in the wrong time. I love the 1920s. I love hats. I love, like, dressing up nicely. You know, like chatting with Virginia Woolf. I have a very nostalgic feeling about that.

00:12:16 Speaker_09
But Felipe isn't just a fan of nostalgia. He's also an academic expert on the topic.

00:12:21 Speaker_08
The term nostalgia was coined in the 1600s and it was originally considered a neurological condition, which is very interesting because neurology and psychiatry were, well, there was no such a thing as psychiatry back then, but it was very clearly considered a condition of the body.

00:12:35 Speaker_08
And it was thought to mainly affect army personnel. It was described in Germany and it was mostly thought of to affect Swiss soldiers. And then there were all sorts of very interesting origin stories as to why people felt nostalgia.

00:12:51 Speaker_08
One of them had to do with eardrum damage due to the incessant clunking of the cowbells in Switzerland. There were stories about atmospheric pressure and so on and so forth. But it was always considered a malady.

00:13:04 Speaker_08
It was considered an illness of the body, mainly a neurological illness, and also that it was associated with depression, anxiety, lack of appetite, and so on. It wasn't until much later

00:13:17 Speaker_08
where people started to think that there might be something positive about nostalgia."

00:13:22 Speaker_09
It's kind of amazing that it took hundreds of years for scholars to realize that nostalgia actually felt good. But these days, scientists are learning that the effects of this bittersweet emotion are often more sweet than bitter.

00:13:34 Speaker_09
In fact, psychologists have observed that thinking wistfully about the past can make us feel really good.

00:13:40 Speaker_08
We use memories just as we use imagination to make us feel better now. So nostalgia is a very good way of going on a little mental vacation without leaving your home. And when you cannot leave your home, that's the best way you can do it, right?

00:13:57 Speaker_09
One of the times that our brains especially seek out old memories is when we're feeling more alone than usual.

00:14:02 Speaker_08
There's been a lot of research on making people feel kind of lonely, isolated and stuff like that. That tends to elicit a little bit more feelings of nostalgia.

00:14:11 Speaker_08
So it looks as though it is when you're in a negative situation that you're more likely to generate this sense of nostalgia.

00:14:19 Speaker_09
If you've listened to other episodes of the Happiness Lab, you probably know that feeling socially connected is an important condition for happiness.

00:14:27 Speaker_09
But it's not just the right now social connection we get from seeing friends in the present that makes us happy.

00:14:32 Speaker_09
Research shows we also get a happiness boost from merely thinking about past social times, especially if we're feeling lonely in the present. As one scientific paper nicely put it, during nostalgic reverie, the mind is peopled.

00:14:47 Speaker_09
But science has found another way that nostalgia can boost our well-being.

00:14:51 Speaker_09
Re-experiencing the past can help us feel better about how things went back in the day, which is important, because let's face it, our past selves weren't always our best selves.

00:15:01 Speaker_09
Past us's didn't always make the smartest choices, something my 80s idol Rob Lowe knows all too well.

00:15:08 Speaker_04
Look, there are people who live through the 80s, and there are people who live through the 80s.

00:15:14 Speaker_09
If you've read Rob's memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, you know that Rob had some pretty rough times early in his career. And that's one of the reasons he personally loves nostalgia so much.

00:15:24 Speaker_09
When we look back at some of the bad choices of our youth, we often do so with a bit more clarity than we had when we were living through those events.

00:15:33 Speaker_04
And I don't think nostalgia is nostalgia without that underpinning. You know, and also looking back on anything, you have 20-20 hindsight. So if you're being nostalgic and you're looking back, implicit in that is, what would I have done differently?

00:15:50 Speaker_09
This redemptive lens through which we naturally view the past means that we remember even the worst events with a positive spin. We recall the good parts and neglect the not-so-good or even embarrassing parts.

00:16:03 Speaker_04
beer pong game you ever played.

00:16:13 Speaker_09
When we get back from the break, we'll look in more detail at why we tend to distort the past so badly, or to paraphrase Rob, how it is that our brains get all the great beer pong of the past without any of the vomit.

00:16:25 Speaker_09
When the Happiness Lab returns, we'll see that our rosy, redemptive view of the past stems from an unfortunate design feature of our minds, one that comes with a huge happiness cost that we don't often recognize.

00:16:37 Speaker_09
we'll learn that what seems like a harmless bit of rosy nostalgia can sometimes cause us to make bad decisions in the present. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This month is all about gratitude.

00:16:54 Speaker_09
And so today, I wanted to give a shout out to my mom. Mom, thanks for everything you do. I get to give a nice shout out to my mom, but there's someone else we should all be giving a shout out to, ourselves.

00:17:05 Speaker_09
It's sometimes hard to remind ourselves that we're all trying our best, and in this crazy world, that's not always easy. So here's a reminder to send some thanks to the people in your life that you love, including yourself.

00:17:17 Speaker_09
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00:18:03 Speaker_11
This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. So we are, we're sitting in what?

00:18:10 Speaker_02
We're sitting in a 1988 BMW 325is. and describe the way in which it's been modified. It has no interior. That's where it begins. Not even a steering wheel. Yeah, right now there's no steering wheel, although I can fix that in a second.

00:18:28 Speaker_02
And what's the appeal of a late 80s BMW 325?

00:18:32 Speaker_02
Well, it's almost like the perfection of a recipe that BMW began in the 60s, which is to take, you know, a really beautifully made inline six engine, rear wheel drive, and just like an incredibly balanced and fun to drive car. Yeah. Yeah.

00:18:48 Speaker_02
Let me give a little sneak peek. I need to connect the battery. The battery is disconnected. Wait, the battery is in the back of it. The battery is actually under the rear seat. Oh, I see.

00:19:02 Speaker_03
So it has an absolutely perfect balance between front and rear way. Exactly. Yeah. So, yes, turn it on. Let's hear it.

00:19:13 Speaker_05
Oh, yes.

00:19:21 Speaker_12
And this is your first BMW? My second.

00:19:24 Speaker_13
Oh no, Lucas, you can't say that. Wait, what was your second?

00:19:27 Speaker_02
What was your first? It was a 1989 535i. Oh yes, but you owned that with a bunch of other people. Yeah, yeah. So this is my first, my first, you know, sole BMW. Solely owned. Solely owned BMW.

00:19:43 Speaker_11
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00:21:30 Speaker_06
I mean, there's nothing like being on a bike and suffering with people, rejoicing with people. You know, to me, it's a real shared experience.

00:21:46 Speaker_09
This is Leigh Thompson, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She's an expert on the ways that our memories can play tricks on us. But Leigh is also a world champion cyclist.

00:21:57 Speaker_09
She took up the sport late in life, encouraged by a very devoted teacher, her fiancé Bob.

00:22:03 Speaker_06
You know, he was a cyclist. And, you know, my response was like any normal person's response who doesn't ride a bike, which is, well, anybody can ride a bike. Like, what's the big deal?

00:22:13 Speaker_06
But then he said, well, do you know what it's like to go 25 miles an hour on a bike? And can you do that for an hour? And it's like, OK, well, is this a challenge or what? And Lee was up for that challenge.

00:22:25 Speaker_09
After she and Bob got married, they headed not for a beach vacation honeymoon, but for the San Juan Islands and daylong grueling bike rides.

00:22:34 Speaker_06
I didn't know that my husband's secret plan was to get me to write up Mount Constitution. If I would have read anything about that, I think I would have freaked myself out, said, are you kidding me? There's no way we're doing this.

00:22:47 Speaker_06
But it was only when we were like a quarter of the way up that he said, this is gonna be a pretty serious climb. But by that time, I was already kind of one quarter into it.

00:23:00 Speaker_09
A painful bike ride that's so steep you don't even think you can finish it. That doesn't sound like most people's idea of a good honeymoon. But Leigh gets nostalgic whenever she thinks about it.

00:23:10 Speaker_06
There was one time in my life where I could go back to. It would probably be that because it was just epic, you know, epic fun.

00:23:19 Speaker_06
But I know enough as a psychologist in my own research to know that on any given day, there was a sunburn, there wasn't enough food, somebody ran out of water. So not every moment was glorious.

00:23:35 Speaker_09
Lee recognizes that our minds lie to us, and one of our minds' biggest misconceptions is that our recollections of the past are totally accurate.

00:23:44 Speaker_06
Our memories are pretty fallible. That seems like a judgy word, but our memories are not necessarily like a video recorder.

00:23:54 Speaker_09
Human memory doesn't have the hard drive space to videotape life in its entirety, so our brains play fast and loose with the footage. The first thing we do is delete most of the boring parts.

00:24:05 Speaker_09
The half hour of your vacation that you spent in traffic, or the part where you had to wait for dinner to show up, or the 10 minutes you spent going through airport security, all those filler moments get dropped.

00:24:15 Speaker_09
But dropping those boring bits means that our memories are skewed in a very systematic way. The past seems to have a higher ratio of interesting moments to boring stuff than real life does. But that's not the only way our minds are biased.

00:24:28 Speaker_09
Our brains also don't like to recall the bad stuff. The sunburns and the rainy beach days and lost luggage. And so our brains cook the data. Lee has argued that we simply tend to forget the parts of an event that weren't positive.

00:24:41 Speaker_06
For example, I know on my honeymoon, there was a day where both of us didn't wear sunscreen and there were very, very uncomfortable burns. I choose not to dwell on that.

00:24:52 Speaker_06
I choose not to make that the most important aspect, but anybody who's had a pretty bad sunburn knows that can be a deal breaker as far as your ability to enjoy the rest of the vacation.

00:25:09 Speaker_09
Our minds are also wannabe movie directors. They really like a good story, the kind that has a happy ending. And that means that our brains unconsciously rewrite past events so that they seem more entertaining. That sunset becomes even more beautiful.

00:25:24 Speaker_09
That fish we caught becomes not just reasonably sized, but really, really huge. That beer pong game becomes more fun and less vomit-filled.

00:25:33 Speaker_09
And when we do manage to remember those annoying moments, they somehow magically transform into life lessons that provide a nice narrative arc.

00:25:40 Speaker_06
So what was an absolute disaster trip could turn out to be a hilarious story after the fact. Kind of like, oh, look at me. I managed to survive. That's kind of an extreme example of what we call story construction or sense making.

00:25:57 Speaker_06
It becomes kind of a funny story to tell.

00:26:00 Speaker_09
After all these edits, our memories are no longer accurate recordings of real life events. They're unconsciously spin-doctored highlight reels. It's a bias that Lee and her colleagues have referred to as rosy retrospection.

00:26:12 Speaker_06
Which technically means that our memory for this bounded event in time is a lot more favorable and positive and fulfilling than was the actual experience of the event itself.

00:26:27 Speaker_09
But rosy retrospections aren't just memories we think back on passively. We also use them to predict what we will enjoy and won't enjoy in the future. And that leads to a second bias, what Lee and her colleagues call rosy prospection.

00:26:41 Speaker_09
When we think about a future event, like a dinner with friends or a vacation, We predict that it's going to be great, just like similar events are in our biased positive memories.

00:26:52 Speaker_06
Anticipating that event, I probably wouldn't be thinking about the stress of going through an international airport and the stress of, I don't know, packing or not getting my bag. I'd just be thinking about, oh, the arrival and the perfect weather.

00:27:08 Speaker_09
The idea of rosy prospection and retrospection fit well with what Lee experienced in her own honeymoon. But did Lee's hypothesis match what real people actually experience?

00:27:17 Speaker_09
Lee wanted to test this empirically, but she had to locate a pretty special population of subjects. She had to find a group of people who were about to undergo a positive experience in their lives, some sort of event that would make for a good memory.

00:27:30 Speaker_09
But those people also had to be willing to fill out a bunch of boring surveys during the event. What Li didn't realize at the time was that her scientific solution to these problems would come, oddly enough, from the biking world.

00:27:42 Speaker_09
Her colleague Randy Kronk was organizing a bike trip down the coast of California for his students.

00:27:48 Speaker_06
And so we thought, oh my gosh, this is fantastic. It's like our perfect dream study.

00:27:54 Speaker_09
Lee first had the students predict how much they'd enjoy the bike trip before it started. They were asked, how much do you agree with these statements? I'm going to enjoy this trip. I'm going to think this vacation is fun.

00:28:06 Speaker_09
I'm going to feel good during this trip, and so on. Subjects were also asked the same questions again when they were on the trip itself, and after the trip when they were on their flight back home. So what did Lee find?

00:28:18 Speaker_09
Well, before the bike trip, subjects thought their enjoyment would be at a 27 out of 28 total points on Lee's measure. They thought the trip was going to be awesome. But by the second day, Subject had dropped to only a 20 out of 28.

00:28:31 Speaker_09
The bikers' enjoyment stayed lower than they had initially predicted for the entire week. But what happened a single day after the bike tour ended? Subjects remembered their trip much better than it was. They said their experience was a 26 out of 28.

00:28:47 Speaker_09
On average, the bikers' final post-trip rating was higher than their enjoyment had actually been at any single point during the trip. Now that the trip was over, it was awesome.

00:28:58 Speaker_06
When you ask people, oh, you have this event coming up, how are you feeling? Oh, my gosh, it's going to be fantastic. I'm so excited. This is going to be so pleasurable. And then during the event, oh, my socks are wet.

00:29:11 Speaker_06
I forgot to bring mosquito repellent, you know, like so yucky, you know, the food they ran out of, whatever. So there's a dampening, as we called it during the event. And then after the event,

00:29:23 Speaker_06
boom, all of a sudden, the rosy retrospection kicks in where people are remembering the event as much more pleasurable than they reported during the event itself.

00:29:39 Speaker_09
Now, at first glance, the positive biases Lee identified may seem like a great design feature of the mind. ROSI Retrospection allows our memory banks to be filled with extra positive, less boring recordings of the past.

00:29:52 Speaker_09
And remembering all those positively edited memories makes us feel happier, less lonely, and even more redeemed in the present. All good stuff, really. But Li's research also reveals a major dark side to these biases.

00:30:05 Speaker_09
Our positively skewed recollections aren't just passive recordings that we go back to when we're feeling nostalgic. We also use our memories in the present to make predictions about how we ought to be spending our time.

00:30:16 Speaker_09
So if our overly rosy memories are getting our past realities really wrong, what does that mean for the accuracy with which we're making the decisions of today?

00:30:26 Speaker_06
I remember distinctly having the time of my life at, I don't know, what do you call them? Kind of small town kind of carnival things that you go to at night. They have these like rides and you eat cotton candy.

00:30:38 Speaker_06
And I just remember thinking, this is my thing. I want to go do that.

00:30:42 Speaker_09
Even though she's a world expert on memory biases, Lee still sometimes falls prey to the problems of her own nostalgia.

00:30:49 Speaker_06
Well, I made the mistake of doing that not so long ago, and I was dizzy. I got a migraine headache. The cotton candy was terrible. Like, how does anybody eat that stuff?

00:31:04 Speaker_09
Lee naturally assumed that her fond memories of carnivals would accurately predict how positively her present self would feel if she jumped on a roller coaster or took that first bite of cotton candy.

00:31:15 Speaker_09
She assumed all the great things she remembered about fairs of the past would feel just as good today as they seemed in her nostalgic memories.

00:31:23 Speaker_09
But Lee's overly glossy memories of the past wound up reducing her current happiness and making her a little nauseous.

00:31:30 Speaker_09
Constantly rewriting the past in a favorable light may make us happier when we look back, but it also means we don't correctly adjust to the demands of the future.

00:31:38 Speaker_09
For instance, focusing on the highlights of a marriage or a job might cause us to stay in relationships or work environments that aren't good for us, where the bad times, in reality, outweigh the good.

00:31:49 Speaker_09
But it's not just our personal choices that are led astray by our biased memories.

00:31:53 Speaker_09
When we get back from the break, we'll see that there are also societal costs to all these rosy retrospections, ones that can be used against us when we least expect it.

00:32:04 Speaker_00
We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together, we will make America great again.

00:32:15 Speaker_09
We'll explore this dark side of nostalgia when The Happiness Lab returns in a moment.

00:32:25 Speaker_11
This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. So we are, we're sitting in what?

00:32:33 Speaker_02
We're sitting in a 1988 BMW 325is. And describe the way in which it's been modified. It has no interior. That's where it begins. Not even a steering wheel, as far as I can tell.

00:32:46 Speaker_02
Yeah, right now there's no steering wheel, although I can fix that in a second. And what's the appeal of a late 80s BMW 325?

00:32:54 Speaker_02
Well, it's almost like the perfection of a recipe that BMW began in the 60s, which is to take, you know, a really beautifully made inline six engine, rear wheel drive, and just like an incredibly balanced and fun to drive car. Yeah. Yeah.

00:33:11 Speaker_02
Let me give a little sneak peek. I need to connect the battery. The battery is disconnected. Wait, the battery is in the back of it. The battery is actually under the rear seat. Oh, I see. Just that's it.

00:33:26 Speaker_03
That's so it has an absolutely perfect balance between front and rear, rear, rear way. Exactly. Yeah. So, yes, turn it on. Let's hear it.

00:33:36 Speaker_05
Oh, yes.

00:33:43 Speaker_12
And this is you. This is your first BMW. My second.

00:33:47 Speaker_13
Oh no, Lucas, you can't say that. Wait, what was your second?

00:33:50 Speaker_02
What was your first? It was a 1989 535i. Oh, yes. This is, but you own that with a bunch of other people. Yeah, yeah. So this is my first, my true, my first, you know, sole BMW. Solely owned. Solely owned BMW.

00:34:06 Speaker_11
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00:34:26 Speaker_11
With innovative technology, intelligent driver assistance systems, and bold design inside and out, the 3 Series makes every journey unforgettable. Learn more at bmwusa.com.

00:34:45 Speaker_09
This is the favorite time of year for many. It's everything. From staying up late to wrap gifts, to getting up early to put the turkey in the oven. From decorating the tree in matching pajamas, to icing sugar cookies with extra sprinkles.

00:34:59 Speaker_09
From attending holiday parties in the ugliest sweaters, to cuddling up on the couch to watch festive movies with loved ones.

00:35:06 Speaker_09
The joy of the season resides in these cherished traditions with family and friends, and the Chinette brand is there to share in it all.

00:35:13 Speaker_09
The Chinette crystal collection features plates, cups, and cutlery, ensuring that holiday tables are perfectly coordinated. This allows for an elegant table setting with less cleanup, letting everyone focus on what truly matters.

00:35:26 Speaker_09
Here's to the traditions that bring us together year after year. Here's to us, all of us. Find a local retailer at mychinette.com.

00:35:35 Speaker_09
My favorite kind of holiday present is when you get someone a gift that they wouldn't necessarily get for themselves, that little bit of luxury they can really savor.

00:35:43 Speaker_09
Quince lets you treat your loved ones and yourself to everyday luxury at an affordable price. Like Quince's iconic Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at $50, all Quince's items are priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. How do they do that?

00:35:59 Speaker_09
By partnering with top factories and cutting out the cost of the middleman, which passes the savings on to you. Quince is on the nice list. They only work with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices.

00:36:11 Speaker_09
And they use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. And believe me, I know. I've pretty much spent the entire chili season living in Quince's Mongolian cashmere full zip hoodie. Anyone on your list would absolutely love it.

00:36:26 Speaker_09
Gift luxury this holiday season without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com slash happiness for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash happiness to get free shipping and 365 day returns.

00:36:42 Speaker_09
Quince.com slash happiness.

00:36:51 Speaker_08
I'm from Colombia and that's where I grew up until I moved to the States 18 years ago.

00:36:58 Speaker_09
Nostalgia expert Felipe de Bregard's immigrant experience explains why he relates so much to one of his favorite literary heroes, Juvenal Urbino, a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous book, Love in the Time of Cholera.

00:37:13 Speaker_09
Like Felipe, Juvenal made the tough decision to leave Colombia to study abroad. But unlike Felipe, Juvenal's ignorance of his own rosy retrospections never let him properly process that decision.

00:37:24 Speaker_08
When he's in Paris, he feels extraordinarily nostalgic about going back to his hometown. And he wants to go back, doesn't enjoy Paris. And then when he goes back, he's not happy. He's like, this is not at all how I imagined it, right?

00:37:38 Speaker_09
Our rosy retrospections mean that we spend the present constantly wishing we could go back to what it was like in the past.

00:37:44 Speaker_09
But in the rare cases where those wishes come true, as they did for Juvenal, we usually find that those past situations aren't as good as we rosily remembered.

00:37:53 Speaker_09
To steal the eloquent words of García Márquez, we become easy victims to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia.

00:38:00 Speaker_09
But the fact that our nostalgic tendencies are so easily deceived also makes us easy marks for people who might want to exploit a rosier past.

00:38:09 Speaker_09
Human minds are so prone to rosy retrospection that it's really simple to feed us a good story about what things were like back in the day, some imagined utopia that was better then than it is now, which is why so many political movements are keen to convince us that everything in life would be peachy if we could just return to the good old days.

00:38:29 Speaker_08
That was the whole Trump campaign, right? Make America great again. And that, again, was clearly an indication that it was good before and that we should strive to do something like that in the past.

00:38:40 Speaker_09
Felipe saw just this pattern in his own country's right-wing propaganda amid attempts to end decades of political violence.

00:38:48 Speaker_08
I left Colombia very unhappy with the political situation. Some of the most horrible acts ever committed by a government, I think, in Colombia happened during that time.

00:38:58 Speaker_08
But what is very surprising to me is that, you know, many of the people that voted against the peace process had an extraordinarily distorted view of how the past was.

00:39:07 Speaker_08
So they were hoping to sort of go back to a kind of life that never occurred in Colombia. Never. This is a situation, again, in which nostalgia is a very bad motivator.

00:39:18 Speaker_09
And that's because the science shows that we don't just experience nostalgia for a past that we actually experienced. Our memories are so biased that we sometimes experience nostalgia for a past that never even occurred.

00:39:30 Speaker_09
for one that we only imagined happening.

00:39:32 Speaker_08
You go like, holy moly, I would be so much better off if I was in that imagined situation that I never lived, I never experienced, but I am very capable of mentally simulating relative to this state that I am in right now.

00:39:48 Speaker_08
It is just the worst possible way of going about making decisions.

00:39:53 Speaker_09
So how can we protect ourselves from the nefarious parts of nostalgia? How can we get the benefits of our rosy past without all those biased memories hurting our current decisions?

00:40:03 Speaker_09
Felipe thinks one path forward is to pay attention to why we're turning to the past in the first place. What do our memories tell us we're missing in the present?

00:40:12 Speaker_08
You might think that what you want is to go back to high school, but really what is going to satisfy the desire is to get new friends.

00:40:22 Speaker_09
But there's also a second way to avoid the problems of nostalgia.

00:40:26 Speaker_08
The funny thing is that it seems kind of counterintuitive because what I think we should do is to improve our memory of the past. We need historians really helping us dispel the delusions that nostalgia create.

00:40:40 Speaker_08
I think universities should hire historians. I think podcasters should interview historians. The best way to sort of minimize the distortions of nostalgia is to actually improve our memory.

00:40:52 Speaker_09
As I heard more of Felipe's strategies for preventing the problems of rosy retrospection, I realized I needed to talk to someone who had special insight into how to use our fond memories productively.

00:41:03 Speaker_09
Not a historian or scholar, but someone whose entire career could have been defined by the past, but wasn't. My 80s idol, Rob Lowe.

00:41:13 Speaker_04
Listen, I love the 80s as much as the next guy, but when people come up to me The thing that I'm most proud of in all my career is that I never know what they're going to want to talk about.

00:41:28 Speaker_04
I love that I'm not anchored to any one era or to any one TV show or to any one movie. The 80s is merely a fantastic chapter that a lot of people like, including me.

00:41:45 Speaker_09
Unlike many stars from the 80s, Rob managed not to get stuck there.

00:41:49 Speaker_09
Despite the fact that Rob is himself very nostalgic, and the fact that he is, for me at least, the absolute epitome of 80s nostalgia, he's seamlessly managed to move beyond that decade.

00:42:00 Speaker_09
Nearly all of Rob's biggest successes — in movies, in TV, as an author, and now even in podcasting with his new show Literally with Rob Lowe — they've all come since the 80s.

00:42:11 Speaker_09
For a self-proclaimed lover of nostalgia, Rob hasn't let his rosy retrospection affect his present success or his current happiness.

00:42:19 Speaker_04
One of my greatest fears was always being a one-hit wonder. four decades in, I still wake up and go, am I a one head wonder?

00:42:27 Speaker_09
So what's Rob's secret? Well, even though he's not a psychologist, Rob seems to have an intuitive sense that our memories are more fallible than we realize.

00:42:35 Speaker_09
His unique cultural seat in the 80s has made him all too aware that we sometimes celebrate parts of the past that were at the time kind of sucky.

00:42:44 Speaker_04
So in the 80s, everybody shit all over the music. It seems shocking now. But like, when did Journeys Can't Stop Believin' become the national anthem? Because I remember the 80s. And people laughed at Journey.

00:42:59 Speaker_04
They thought they were a cheesy, hack rock band. Now that's every college campus frat party, raise your beer, start crying and dancing song. It's the end of The Sopranos. If you'd have told me in 1984 that that was the song, I would have said, no way.

00:43:17 Speaker_09
While it's easy for all of us to misremember the past, that's a luxury that people who've lived in the public eye don't always have. Rob's problems with substance addiction and sex scandals are common knowledge.

00:43:29 Speaker_09
And that means that Rob has had to be honest with himself about the harmful actions he engaged in as a young man. It's made him penitent and more clear-eyed about the past.

00:43:39 Speaker_09
Rob's also gotten a newfound perspective on the challenges of teenage life as a father to his own boys, Matthew and John. Rob's kids never became huge teen movie stars like their dad.

00:43:50 Speaker_09
Watching Matthew and John grow up with more run-of-the-mill adolescent milestones has made Rob realize just how odd his own experience was.

00:43:58 Speaker_04
My son is 18, okay, so now he's world famous. That kid right there, 18, world famous. And it just takes my breath away. I'm like, I wouldn't wish that. on that 18 year old kid. He's never home. He's on the road. He's making tons of money.

00:44:18 Speaker_04
And it's like, I can't believe it happened to me.

00:44:20 Speaker_09
But Rob's biggest insight comes from something we talk about a lot on this podcast. To be fully happy, we need to get out of the past long enough to make the most of the present moment.

00:44:30 Speaker_09
When you think about happiness, do you think it's more about looking back, looking forward, a combination of both? Like, how do you think about it in your own life?

00:44:38 Speaker_04
It's not looking forward and not looking back, although we've been talking about nostalgia, which does make me happy, obviously, really happy. True happiness is being present in this moment.

00:44:52 Speaker_04
Your mind's not telling you, hey, you know what you should really be doing? You should be doing X, Y, and Z. Or, hey, you know, you should really go back. None of that.

00:45:00 Speaker_04
That monkey brain part of yourself is shut off and you are fully present in whatever you are doing and content with that. That is the definition of true happiness for me.

00:45:12 Speaker_09
This insight into the importance of making sure he's living in the present moment came from one of the hardest won battles of Rob's life.

00:45:20 Speaker_04
You know, I've been sober now 30 years and it's, you know, it changed my life. And one of the big tenets of recovery is learning to live in the now and learning to be happy with what's in front of you.

00:45:32 Speaker_04
To the extent that I'm able to do that on a daily basis is a direct correlation to how happy I am at any given time.

00:45:40 Speaker_09
Nostalgia can be a pleasant experience, but our memories of the past can also hurt our present selves if we're not careful.

00:45:46 Speaker_09
But when we take a present focus, when we learn to be content with what's in front of us, when we recognize that we want to remember what's going on in the here and now as happily as possible, we can avoid the problems that come with an extra rosy retrospection.

00:46:01 Speaker_09
Rob's living proof that understanding our mind's biases can help us appreciate our past, and even dig into all that yummy and psychologically beneficial nostalgia, without the drawbacks.

00:46:12 Speaker_09
When we notice what we're longing for in the past, we can choose not to go backwards, but decide how to move forward in the future.

00:46:18 Speaker_09
Rob taught me that an accurate sense of the pros and cons of the past can be a helpful way to enjoy and make the most of the present. Which was really good news for me, because I really, really wasn't ready to throw away my 80s playlist just yet.

00:46:32 Speaker_09
In fact, after chatting with Rob, I think it's time for a long classic 80s movie marathon. And maybe some cheesy music videos. Because I definitely still want my MTV. The holiday season is back, which means it's a time for giving.

00:46:55 Speaker_09
Subaru and its retailers believe in giving back to those who need it most. For the past 17 years, Subaru has made the act of buying a Subaru during the holiday season an act of love.

00:47:06 Speaker_09
When you purchase or lease a new Subaru during the Subaru Share the Love event, Subaru and its retailers donate a minimum of $300 to charity.

00:47:14 Speaker_09
By the end of this year's event, Subaru and its retailers will have donated nearly $320 million to national and hometown charities. To learn more, go to Subaru.com slash share. Subaru, more than a car company.

00:47:29 Speaker_09
There are lots of things you can learn from the garden. When it comes to cleaning, it's more fun if it smells like the garden. Mrs. Meyer's clean day has always been inspired by the goodness of the garden.

00:47:39 Speaker_09
Mrs. Meyer's has a collection of household products inspired by flowers and herbs that smell delightful, all while packing a punch against dirt and grime.

00:47:48 Speaker_09
Mrs. Meyer's garden-inspired scents are made with essential oils and other thoughtfully chosen ingredients. Visit mrsmeyers.com.

00:47:56 Speaker_01
For many of us, the holiday season means more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more of your personal information in more places you can't control.

00:48:07 Speaker_01
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00:48:14 Speaker_01
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00:48:26 Speaker_01
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00:48:42 Speaker_01
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00:49:00 Speaker_01
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