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The Science of Happiness Podcast Transcripts

PRX and Greater Good Science Center · 356 episodes with transcripts

Learn research-tested strategies for a happier, more meaningful life, drawing on the science of compassion, gratitude, mindfulness, and awe. Hosted by award-winning psychologist Dacher Keltner. Co-produced by PRX and UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. Follow us on Instagram @HappinessPod.

Spoken has transcripts of 356 The Science of Happiness episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from October 8, 2026.

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curl -s -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
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  | while IFS=' ' read -r id title; do
      slug=$(echo "$title" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -cs 'a-z0-9' '-' | sed 's/-*$//')
      [ -f "${id}-${slug}.md" ] && continue
      curl -sf -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
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        https://spoken.md/transcripts/$id || rm -f "${id}-${slug}.md"
      sleep 0.34
    done

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Latest The Science of Happiness transcripts

How to Breathe Away Anxiety

October 8, 2026

Sarah Gerhardt (0:05)

I started out growing up on the beaches in part in Hawaii and being left to myself to figure out how to get out of the water, and I survived, so that's good.

When I wanted to start surfing bigger waves, I did encounter the problem of not being able to hold my breath and of getting almost to that panic state. So, it was really important to do breath hold training. So, I needed to train my body to not freak out, to not go into that, like if you hold your breath for a long…

Dacher Keltner (1:42)

Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner.

This week is our first episode in a series on science-backed ways to breathe away anxiety. We're starting with a controlled breathing technique called cyclic sighing. It's a simple and powerful way to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. It's quite different from the type of breathing our guest today, professional…

David Spiegel (2:37)

We were trying to see whether people, by just practicing a brief daily breathwork exercise, could demonstrate some significant improvement in mood and physical arousal and tension.

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