this is bbc news. the headlines... the world health organization has warned against jumping to conclusions about the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines. if after a south african study suggested that the astrazeneca jab is left effective against local variants —— less effective. expert said the vaccine is still an important tool. donald trump's lawyers have asked to dismiss charges against his —— and his impeachment trial. he's been charged for inciting insurrection. myanmar�*s military ruler has addressed the nation for the first time since the army sees power last week. the general said civilian leaders failed to hold a proper election and promised fresh polls later on this year.

now on bbc news, it's time for a precinct dose of hardtalk. —— bracing dose. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. no—one would pretend the world was a perfectly happy place before the covid pandemic, but the virus has undoubtedly worsened the mental health of many of us. lockdown isolation, economic insecurity, the absence of family, friends and intimacy, all are taking their toll. increasingly, it seems, we are rethinking what it means to be happy. my guest is laurie santos, a psychologist at yale university, whose work on the science of happiness has reached millions thanks to her podcast and free online courses. can we, even now, be taught to be happy?

professor laurie santos in new haven, connecticut, welcome to hardtalk. thanks so much for having me. it is a great pleasure to have you. would it be right for me to say that you have made it your mission, particularly in this time of covid, your mission to teach us all how to be happier? yeah, i think that's one way to put it. one of the things we learn from the research is that we have pretty bad intuitions when it comes to the kinds of things that will make us happy. and that means that, even in challenging times like this, a lot of us are working on our own happiness or working on our own mental health. but we're kind of doing it the wrong way. we're going after the wrong things. what are we going

after that's wrong? well, one of the biggest misconceptions is that we need to change our circumstances. we need to get more money, or change ourjob, or buy something, right? and i think what the research really shows is that if you look at people who are going through tough times, it's not always the case that tough times mean unhappiness. you can look to people who've had, like, really devastating circumstances, like loss of their limbs, losing theirjobs, you know, just like the kinds of things that many of us would think if that happened to me, it would break me. and those folks not only self—report feeling happier, but they often report that these traumatic events give them meaning in life. they've shaped their purpose. they've strengthened their social connection. and i think the idea that we have to change something about our circumstances to be happierjust doesn't fit with the research. and that's often the thing we go to when we think about what we should do to become happier. now, that's interesting and it takes us directly into, sort of, personal circumstance and anecdote. but i feel i ought to backtrack a little bit. i mean, are you regarding this as a scientific enterprise, and a scientific study you're undertaking? because i know you've

set up something called the happiness lab, which makes me think of, sort of, experiments and test tubes, and all that sort of stuff. is this science? yeah. i mean, it's often funny to think about happiness science as a word, because it feels like the kind of thing that should be relegated to, i don't know, philosophy or religion. but there is a way to take a scientific approach to happiness and to mental health generally. and this is what this field that i study, this field of positive psychology tends to do. it's pretty straightforward. you know, researchers go out and they find happy people. they're out there even in the middle of covid. you can find folks who self—report being happy. and then you do some quick anthropology. how do these folks spend their time? what are they doing that's different than the rest of us are doing? and that's when you get into the experiments. now you take people who self—report being not so happy. you have them try out the habits and behaviours of the people who are happier and you test empirically whether or not that improves their wellbeing. we now have three decades�* worth of work that's done this and found, you know, simple habits done this and found simple habits that will actually

make folks happier. but i'm already seeing some problems here because you're talking about empirical evidence and data gathering and all that sort of stuff. and it does sound very scientific, but, the truth is, the very concept of happiness itself is so subjective and means different things to different people. so, when you go out and do your field work and you ask mrjones if he's happy, he may say, "yeah, i really am." and mrsjones may say she's not. and it's very hard to be scientific about one's feeling as against the others. how are you defining happiness? yeah, well, i totally agree with you. i mean, i came to the work in happiness from work in animal behaviour. we had these like, incredibly careful measures, often involving hormones and things that feeljust much more objective than, like, a subjective self—report of whether or not you're feeling happy. but i've come around to the work in this field for a couple of reasons. one is that the self—report measures that researchers use have been validated over, now, decades to try to get really accurate answers and really accurate information about how people are feeling. we also know that these self—report measures correlate with all the stuff we expect

them to correlate. so, if mrjones says "i'm feeling "happy today," that will correlate with if i pulled all his social media tweets or i pulled hisjournals and did a detailed textual analysis about the emotional words he's using. it'll correlate with, say, if i interview mrsjones and say, "hey, how's mrjones doing?" and do a kind of detailed memory recollection with the people in mrjones�* life, his self—reports will correlate with that. and in cases where we have good hormonal measures of happiness and wellbeing — we don't often — but, in cases where we do, those kinds of self—reports correlate with those other, kind of, more objective measures. and, so, what seems like a kind of cheesy...my students call it, like, a buzzfeed quiz, like, is actually a real, scientific instrument that we're using. but i've actually come around to it for a different reason, which is this question of — what are we trying to maximise with all these interventions? i'm sure on this show, we'll talk about different habits you can use to boost your wellbeing. but what am i trying to do when i boost your wellbeing? well, honestly, what i'm trying to do, at least me, personally, feeling happier now.

is i'm trying to get you to say, "hey, i'm feeling happier now. "i'm experiencing more positive emotion. "i'm feeling more joy." if you tell me that, then whatever intervention i was doing is probably working. we will get to that and i promise we'll get to it very quickly. but, before we get there, there's one other interesting aspect of your research work that intrigues me. we've talked so far in the context of covid and all the challenges and difficulties that presents to people and their mental health. but i am very aware that you began this work long before the covid pandemic. and i think what really motivated you was your realisation, as a senior professor, at one of the best universities, ivy league universities in the united states, that a lot of the students you were meeting and working with, the student body itself, was getting more miserable. there was more signs of stress, anxiety and even chronic depression. so, why, in yourview, are these kids in one of america's elite universities showing such signs of unhappiness and depression? yeah, again, all of these are self—report measures, right? and so we have to,

with all the caveats that come with that, but when you ask college students today about their depression levels, their anxiety levels, and so on, and you compare that with what was happening five years ago, ten years ago, what you find is that today the rates have just gone through the roof. rates of depression, for example, have doubled since 2009, just over ten years. what we're seeing is double the rate of depression. right now, college students report being overwhelmingly anxious at rates of, like, 65%. so, almost two thirds of college students are saying they're overwhelmingly anxious. and this maps on to some really scary mental health behaviour. right now, nationally in the us, 12% of college students report having seriously considered suicide in the last year. so, this is not a couple of students reporting they're feeling unhappy or, kind of, snowflakes, as people talk about them. this is a really serious mental health issue. why? what is going on? i mean, that is the million dollar question, right? i mean, there's a lot of finger—pointing, right? we finger—point towards technology, and phones, and things like social media. we finger—point to the fact that college, and the act

of getting into college is such a professional business for students now, where we even have, like, day—care centres reporting their college statistics for li—year—olds, about whether or not that day—care is going to help students get in. and so i think there's a lot more pressure on students that folks have never faced. but the real, what's the smoking gun of where those statistics are coming from, like, why we're seeing such change so quickly, i think we're still trying to figure that out. and is it too early to add on to that bedrock of rising unhappiness, any sort of assessment of how much more damage is being done by covid, and all that comes with it — the isolation, the economic insecurity, the uncertainty about what the future holds, of course, as well, the health worries about friends and family. what extra level of stress, anxiety, depression is being added by covid—i9? can you assess that? yeah, well, i mean, this is the kind of thing researchers are looking at now with current surveys of college students, adults, all over the place.

and the results there are pretty grim, too. i mean, if you had designed a disease that was specifically figured out to wreck our mental health, covid would be it, right? it destroys our social connection. it makes it hard to connect with the friends and family members that we care about. it destroys our very routines. we are creatures of habit. part of our safety and wellbeing comes from the, sort of, daily routines. those are all upended and we don't know when it's going to end. you know, humans hate uncertainty, right? and we've created this disease where it's, like, we're in lockdown, it's only two weeks and we're out. nope, we're back in lockdown. like, those continued changes, that continued uncertainty, all of that is awful for our anxiety and general mental health. do you think it's getting worse? i mean, of course, in the background, we have the great hope that comes with vaccines. but, in the meantime, there's talk of new mutant variants. there's fear that the vaccines may not be the panacea we all hope they'll be. do you get a sense that in sort of the second wave and the second lockdown and maybe the third in some countries that we're

experiencing, that mental health problems are getting significantly worse over time? i mean, that's what a lot of people are self—reporting. i think when this first started, at least in the us, when we first went into lockdown, it was, "oh, this is kind of cool. "i'm with my family, i'm baking bread." you know, people kind of came up with new hobbies and things. i think on lockdown number three orfour, like, we're getting sick of this. i think, especially in the us right now, we're coming up on this anniversary of march, when everyone started taking this really seriously. and i think that's a really scary anniversary because people thought, "ok, i can handle this for a month," but trying to handle it for a year and an indefinite amount of time after this year, i think that, you know, it's a real, significant challenge. now, professor santos, i may be a little unfair to you now, but i'm going to try very briefly in hopefully less than a minute to try and give a real, reduced version of what your key pointers are to being happier. it is about, you say, being more social, being grateful and giving thanks, living in the moment,

resting, that is, sleeping, and exercising in the way that your body needs you to. and, lastly, being kind. now, all of those things i can totally relate to. they sound deeply positive and sensible, but, frankly, they also sound like plain old common sense. do you need a science lab to come up with all of that? well, i think yes and no. i mean, no, in the sense that these kinds of practices are part of ancient traditions. you know, these were the things that aristotle was suggesting. these are the things that many of our world's religious traditions were suggesting, things like gratitude and taking time for presents and prayer, doing kind things for others. so, in that sense, these practices are thousands of years old. you might not have needed my class to figure them out, but how many of us are doing them? how many of your listeners right now got the amount of sleep that they needed last night or bought something for someone else instead of something for themselves, or really tried to take a moment to think of what they're grateful

for in this challenging time or took ten minutes to meditate and be present? i mean, ourtraditions have been telling us this for a long time, but i think two things have happened. one is these practices are hard. we need the sort of habits and the rituals to allow us to do them. but the second thing is our intuitions tell us other stuff is going to work. yeah, my religion might have told me to take some time to be grateful, but i want to buy that new phone. like, that'll be what really makes me happy. so, i think we're constantly pushing against our intuitions which lead us astray. but i'm just thinking to myself, even as you talk, telling people that they should sleep eight hours a night, and they've got to find ways of doing that, for those who struggle with that, it's probablyjust going to make them feel even worse. you know, there is something about this sort of science of happiness and the whole sort of happiness industry, which seems to me teeters on the brink of making everybody feel a little bit inadequate. and actually, the more they read, the more unhappy they become. well, it's not i mean, it's not what we're seeing in our classes. i mean, we definitely in our classes are seeing that over time as you learn

the evidence for this, and as you learn how to put these practices into effect in effective ways. and those effective ways involve taking baby steps, it involves some self—compassion. it's not kind of turning yourself into your own happiness project, like, that's going to be probably a recipe for unhappiness. but essentially, that's what i'm trying to say, that aren't you part of a happiness industry which thrives on the sort of the truth that actually most of us have discontents and dissatisfactions in our life, and if we didn't, your industry would no longer exist? i think it's a bit of a character, a caricature, in the sense that one of the things that this type of approach is doing, taking a scientific approach — i can't speak for the woo and the wellness industry, the happiness complex is very large — what we're trying to do with a scientific approach is to ask empirically what works, and what we see, what works is, again, not kind of doing a million of these different strategies at once. when you give the kind of big list, it feels like, ok, i've got to sleep, give gratitude and so on. when you actually engage in these practices

when you take the class, what you see is we try to break it down into baby steps. we try to allow you to have some self—compassion. so, ok, you didn't sleep great last night. what can you do today in the five minutes you have, the ten minutes you have, to do a little bit better. and i think that sort of approach is so important in the context of the pandemic. this is not a great time. this is not a time where we're going to start massive self—improvements in the middle of us feeling so burnt—out and so busy and so anxious. but there are little things that each of us can do on the edges to improve. let me quote to you david robson, he's a well—known science writer who's also addressed this issue of how to feel better. he says, "over the past ten years, numerous studies have "shown that our growing obsession with happiness "and high personal confidence may be making us less content "in our lives and less effective at reaching "our actual goals. indeed," he says, "we may often be happier "when we stop "focusing on happiness altogether." has he got a bit of a point there? i think so. again, it kind of gets back to what we were talking about earlier, which is this definition of happiness.

i think in the lay public, you get this idea that happiness is like happiness emojis, these yellow smiley faces, perfect emotions all the time. and none of us are going to achieve that. you know, i'm the professor who teaches this stuff, and i don't achieve that pretty much 99% of the time. well, i do have to ask you, how happy are you? i mean, really? because if this isn'tjust about fleeting moments ofjoy, but about achieving a sort of plateau, a level of real satisfaction and contentment with your life, are you there? there's always room for improvement, but i'm much better than i was. i mean, again, these kinds of standard self—report surveys that i make my students do and that my subjects do, i take them myself. so, i kind of try to monitor and stay abreast of how things are going. and on average, since before i started this work on a sort of ten—point happiness scale, my happiness is up about a point, a point or two. now am i perfectly happy, am i 100% all the time? no, because that's not what you'd want to be, actually. and i think this is what we get wrong about happiness. we think happiness has to be perfect emotion all the time.

but if you look at what happy, "happy people" really do, people who self—report being happy most of the time, they experience negative emotions. they allow them. they have room for anxiety and stress and anger and frustration sometimes, right? but they have the right strategies to either allow those emotions or to find other more positive emotions. that is a very interesting point, because i was reflecting, you know, preparing for our chat. i was reflecting on my own life and the life of friends and family. and it seems to me that sadness and also deep frustrations in life and wrong turns taken, and regret, all of these things are actually not only part of the human condition, but they're also in many ways positive drivers of ourselves to change, to do things better, to learn. when you take a scientific approach, you want those negative emotions. those negative emotions are what cause growth. are what causes you to recognise what's meaningful in life or cause you to sort of increase your

social connection. there's a lot of new work on what's called post—traumatic growth. you know, we've all heard of post—traumatic stress, but the researchers show that sometimes going through the awful events make you more resilient in life. we wouldn't want to get rid of those, because part of the true resilience we have, part of the true joy and gratitude we have for good circumstances has to come from the dark times, too. let me ask you about our online lives, because you alluded to it earlier, talking about young people, but it's notjust young people, it's all of us. i'm ashamed to say i got a report on my phonejust today, telling me that i, over the last week, had spent an average of almost four hours a day on my screen. i mean, ifeel like putting myself in the sin bin as a result, but that's the reality of so many of our lives, particularly during the pandemic and during lockdowns, which affect so many countries. do you think online, on—screen life is a negative factor when we talk about collective happiness today? yeah, you know,

we can't sort of think in black—and—white terms. it's not like our technology use is negative or it's good. it's kind of how it's affecting us and what we're doing with it. and that is one of the messages that we teach in the course that people need to pay attention to. in that big list of online hours that you were spending on your phone, i could ask you, ok, which of those were good? some of those you might have been talking to your family members or your friends who you can't see during lockdown. that was probably pretty positive. maybe scrolling through a social media site or, you know, just looking at dumb stuff on the internet, maybe that didn't feel so good. and one of the things i teach my students comes from a journalist, catherine price. she has a wonderful book called how to break up with your phone. and she uses this www acronym where she asks, when you're interacting with your phone, ask yourself these three w questions. what for? why now? and what else? what did you pick up your phone for? if it was to call your mom, great. you know, that was a specific purpose. if it was because you were just kind of anxious and bored and it was sort of rote, maybe not as good. and why now? did you need to pick up your phone?

was there something specific or was itjust kind of habit that may or may not be good? and what else? i think that's the question that we need to be asking ourselves right now. before the pandemic times, i would remember going to restaurants and seeing whole families sitting round the table together, looking at their phones. even during the pandemic times, ithink, sometimes i'm doing zoom calls with friends, but i could be, hanging out with my husband who lives with me, really connecting, right, and so what of the real—life social connections are we giving up with our technology? but if you're using it for good and when you pay attention mindfully, it feels good, it's building you up, great. but those behaviours that you're doing that aren't feeling so good, maybe you can replace them with something better. now, i'm mindful that you're talking to me from what looks, if i may say so, like a library or an office or perhaps your home office in new haven, connecticut. as i said, one of the best universities in the united states is yale. everything we've discussed over the last few minutes, some might say, you know, this is just such a classic first world problem, first world discussion. you know, in so many parts of the world, they're not sort

of sitting around wondering about how they can be happier. they are just actually getting on with life, putting bread on the table, worrying about whether they'll have a job next week. and that overrides and is so much more important than any of the stuff you and me have talked about today. yeah, ithink, you know, this actually i think is another common misconception about happiness. actually, one of my first lectures to my students is the question, is happiness a first world problem? and one of the things we look at is just, what's the causal arrow of happiness? again, we sometimes think good circumstances happen, we're making a lot of money, and then all of a sudden we get happy. but actually, if you look at the research, there's evidence that the causal arrow points the other way, too, that happiness, whether it's defined as cheerfulness, a positive outlook on life, a sense of meaning, actually contributes to some of those better circumstances. one of the most striking findings is if you look at an individual�*s cheerfulness at 18, that actually predicts their salary at age 27. it predicts theirjob performance and it also predicts something about their, like, the way they like their

job and their sort ofjob expectations and how happy they are with theirjobs. there's also evidence that if you look at people's level of positive attitude or positive outlook, that actually predicts in some senses their immune function. so, you can expose people... one study actually exposed folks to rhinoviruses. these days, we're always talking about coronaviruses. rhinoviruses are the virus that causes the common cold. and they looked at after being exposed who got infected. and what they find is a small but significant effect of your positive outlook on life. if you tend to be kind of somebody with a high positive outlook, you feeljoy and laughter all the time, you're less likely to catch these colds than folks with a lower positive outlook on life, right? again, small but significant effects. but the key here is to say that, like, we think that all these good things happen and you're happier, but it could be that we have the causal arrow backwards. maybe if we focused on wellbeing and resilience and positive outlook on life, some of the things we really care about, likejob obtainment, health, and things like that, maybe those things would fall into line better than we think. as a psychologist, do

you believe that it's time for countries around the world to stop being so obsessed with gdp, gross domestic product, and be much more concerned, as they are in the country of bhutan, with gross national happiness? i ask that, mindful that the united states, where you live and work, the most powerful economy in the world, is slowly sinking down the un's world happiness index. i think it's now at number 19. and the top countries are north european — finland, denmark, switzerland, iceland and norway. is there a message here about how governments and public policy are designed to best deliver collective happiness? i think there's something important there. i think implicit in a lot of the ways we design capitalist structures and governments and these things are these intuitions we have about what's going to mean for a good life, a well—lived life. my hope is that that's what governments

are going for, right? the maximal number of people getting a well—lived life. and those intuitions, the research suggests, might be wrong. they're much more money—bound than the actual evidence suggests. and so, yes, i think countries do need to focus on gdp if they have a lot of people living below the poverty line, like, we know if you can't put a roof over your head or food on your table, that level of financial insecurity is definitely going to affect your wellbeing. but above a certain point, just focusing on money isn't going to affect your happiness in the way we assume. there's lots of evidence that once you get to a certain level, you don't necessarily need any more money, you need other things. and i think this is a spot where governments can really take effect. there's a lot of evidence that when governments invest in things like spaces for social connection, spaces for exercise, when governments invest in protecting people's time a little bit, so people can get some free time back, all of those kinds of things can actually improve people's wellbeing over time. and that's what some of these nordic countries are doing really quite successfully. well, professor laurie santos, we have to end there, but it has made me very happy

that you could join me on hardtalk today. thank you very much indeed. thanks so much for having me. hello. very cold out there at the moment, with ice around and of course further snow flurries, particularly in eastern areas. the heaviest of those snow flurries as we go through tuesday, covered by a met office amber weather warning across parts of central scotland. travel, power, communication disruption possible, as those snow levels start to mount up. but it's notjust that, it's the extent of the chill this morning. may be as low as around “14, —15 through some parts of central scotland. all starting the day sub—zero.

you can see where those snow showers line up through central areas of scotland. there'll be others around northern and eastern parts of scotland, and we'll see little snow corridors again across parts of england and wales, just focusing some of those snow showers to give a further covering in some places. either side of it, we will see just that light flurry most of you saw through tuesday, but a better chance of some sunshine in between. you saw the winds, another windy day across the board. in the thermometers, temperatures barely above freezing — it's going to feel much, much colder than that. and with some of the strongest of the winds to be found down toward south—west england and the channel islands, it's here where the coldest wind chill values will be found, as cold as —10 through —8 through the afternoon. also the chance of some sleet and snow very close to cornwall and the channel islands to end the day. that will gradually pull away as we go through the night and into wednesday. a subtle shift in wind direction means snow showers pushing through southern scotland into northern england in particular, and a few lines further south. another icy night, temperatures could get even colder, —15, —16.

now, the big picture to start wednesday has low pressure out in the atlantic trying to get towards us, but high pressure is holding on. and with the isobars opening out a little bit, the good news is it's not going to be quite as windy on wednesday. those winds more north—easterly, so it will be parts of south—east scotland, north—east england, the focus of showers. a few down east anglia, the south—east too, but more of you dry on wednesday, more of you see the sunshine. it's not going to do much to the temperatures, still struggling to get above freezing in some spots. another widespread, harsh frost, then, to take us into thursday. plenty of sunshine around for many, but increasing cloud into the west. signs of weather fronts trying to push in as the breeze picks up. signs of something milder trying to edge in as well, but do not underestimate the power of cold air across europe. it could hold off that charge of milder air from the west and could stay cold for many of us right the way through into next week. bye for now.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. my name is mike embley. the world health organization insists the astrazeneca vaccine is still a vital tool in the global fight against coronavirus, after concerns in south africa about its efficacy. on the eve of his second impeachment trial, lawyers for donald trump ask the us senate to dismiss the charges against him as unconstitutional. myanmar�*s military flexes its muscles — water cannons are used on those protesting last week's coup, but the unrest does prompt promises of a fresh election. a change in policy on yemen the us calls for an end to the war. we get rare access to see

the damage inflicted in the six years of conflict.