“The most surprising thing is that age tends to work in favor of happiness, other things being equal. The most strange thing is that midlife slump is often about nothing.” In his new book, The Happiness Curve, Jonathan Rauch argues that life gets better after 50. “Academics have found increasing evidence that happiness through adulthood is U-shaped – life satisfaction falls in our 20s and 30s, then hits a trough in our late 40s before increasing until our 80s.”

+ “Questions of pleasure and desire go right to the core of what being a human in the world is all about. The ability to stimulate selected functional circuits in the brain purposefully and precisely raises some fundamental questions for us. What is happiness? What is a good life?” Nautilus on the science and philosophy of deep brain stimulation: Can You Overdose on Happiness?