If happiness science had a celebrity, it'd be Yale Professor Laurie Santos, Axios' Natalie Daher writes.

• 📚 Santos' class on well-being was Yale's most popular in 300 years when she introduced it in 2018.
• She's since launched her own podcast and appeared in dozens of interviews, proving demand for her work extends far beyond the classroom.

🔭 The big picture: Santos' core belief is that you can't optimize your way to happiness — but there are steps you can take to see your emotions and your life in new ways. She notes that Americans are uniquely compelled to find silver linings, even in grief, in ways other cultures simply aren't.

• For Santos, happiness has two parts: how you feel and how you think your life is going. Chasing "good vibes only" won't get you there.
• "Happiness isn't about getting rid of your negative emotions. That's toxic positivity," she told The New York Times' Lulu Garcia-Navarro in a recent appearance on "The Interview" podcast.
• Instead, "you have a sense of meaning. You have a sense of purpose. It feels good to be you because of how you think it's going."

Zoom in: For students glued to screens instead of talking to each other, Santos has a reframe: Negative emotions are signals, not failures.

• Loneliness means: Seek connection. Overwhelm means: You've taken on too much.

📱 Between the lines: Santos argues technology, including AI, will make isolation worse. The desire to connect with a real person — over a flattering, always-available chatbot — will only get harder to sustain.

• As she puts it, technological advancement has always made us less social:
• "We go to the ATM now — we don't have to talk to a teller. We don't go to a record store and talk with people about records to get our music — we just have an algorithm deliver it to us."

💡 More takeaways from Santos' research:

1. Social connection is the clearest driver of happiness. When small talk presents itself, take it.
2. Time famine is real, but it's also a perception problem. We have more free time than humans did even 20 years ago, but it's fragmented into "time confetti" that we fill with scrolling instead of connection.
3. Solo time isn't automatically bad. Contemplation and solitude can have real value. The problem is the self-judgment that creeps in when we think we should be connecting instead.

💭 Natalie's thought bubble: I interviewed Santos back in 2019 — which feels like ancient history after living through the pandemic. Her advice is even more essential now.

• 🎧 Watch Santos on "The Interview" ... Listen to her podcast "The Happiness Lab."

During a morning stroll through a Montreal neighborhood, Finish Line reader Steve Ward and his wife came across this striking mural of Leonard Cohen — a towering tribute to one of the city's most beloved artists.