Arthur Brooks On How To Be Happy

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Dec 26, 2025

Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor and expert on happiness, delves into the science of joy and personal fulfillment. He shares how half of our happiness is genetically determined, while also discussing his own struggles with his mother's mental illness. Brooks reveals his journey from a musician to an academic, and highlights the importance of focusing on local connections to maintain emotional balance amid chaos. He encourages embracing creativity and warns against the pitfalls of screen obsession, advocating for a life of integrity over superficial success.

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ANECDOTE

From Horn Player To Happiness Mission

Arthur C Brooks recounts leaving music, marrying a Catalan woman, and immigrating to the U.S. which reshaped his life trajectory.
He describes walking the Camino at 55 to discover his mission of lifting people through happiness and ideas.

INSIGHT

Half Of Happiness Is Genetic

Arthur C Brooks explains about half of baseline happiness is genetic, based on twin studies.
He links his family's mental illness to a lower inherited happiness set point.

ANECDOTE

Love Without A Shared Language

Arthur tells how he met his future wife at a wine tasting in France despite no shared language and later joined the Barcelona City Orchestra to be with her.
He describes the two-year effort to learn language and persuade her to marry him.

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Arthur is an academic and writer. The former president of the American Enterprise Institute, he’s a professor at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. The author of 13 books — including the 2023 bestseller he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey: Build the Life You Want — his latest is The Happiness Files, a curated collection from his “How to Build a Life” column at The Atlantic. He’s also the host of the “How to Build a Happy Life” podcast.

An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of our convo — how to prevent Trump from wrecking your mood, and how to open up your right brain — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: raised in Seattle by an artist mom and mathematician dad; converting to Catholicism as a teen; his early career as a French horn player; meeting his Spanish wife at a young age — and not speaking the same language; the risks that immigrants take; the British aversion to striving; walking the Camino de Santiago; his mother’s struggle with depression her whole life; how half of your happiness level is genetic; Charles Murray on religion; near-death experiences; Burke; Emerson; Oakeshott; animal impulse vs moral aspiration; Nicomachean Ethics; success as a false siren; Spinoza; our obsession with screens; the AI explosion; time management; the Daily Dish and my burnout in 2015; silent meditation retreats; the happiness of having a dog; Arthur’s work with the Dalai Lama; Buddhist vs Christian suffering; my deepest fear; my HIV test; the importance of failure for strivers; Stoicism; psychedelics; the Sabbath; the denialism over death; and how change is the only thing we can count on.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Laura Field on the intellectuals of Trumpism, Vivek Ramaswamy on the right’s future, Jason Willick on trade and conservatism, and Claire Berlinski on America’s retreat from global hegemony. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.