The holidays are supposed to be a time of joy. But all too often, the darker, colder days of winter, and even the stress of preparing for the holidays themselves, can lead people to feel something else: rushed, stressed, lonely, or even hopeless. How can you make sure this year is bright? Science shows that there's a wisdom to parts of traditional winter celebrations – a wisdom that's been honed over centuries to help us all find light, joy, and connection during the darkest and coldest time of the year.

Join Dave as he chats with Laurie Santos about how to unpack the psychological secrets of celebrations from Christmas, to Hanukkah, to Yule, and more. They’ll also discuss how we can put that wisdom into practice, whatever our beliefs, to make this season a happier and healthier one for all.

Laurie Santos hosts the podcast The Happiness Lab and is a Professor of Psychology at Yale, where she teaches the most popular class in the university’s history. Learn more about her work at her website.

This episode from 2023 is one of our all-time listener favorites. We're sharing it again for anyone who may have missed it, or could do with a refresher, especially at the holiday season!

Surveys show feelings of sadness and despair peaked in 2023. So as we look to the new year, it’s understandable why any of us might be feeling pessimistic, even hopeless. But these feelings aren’t written in stone. We always have a choice. It’s in these darkest of times, when all feels lost, that hope helps us find our way … not just to heal ourselves, but also the world around us.

On this episode, we’ll talk with the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, about how he remains motivated and hopeful, even while covering some of the most tragic events in recent history. And he’ll offer a little advice for ways we can all rise above despair.

And we’ll talk with Roshi Joan Halifax — ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and founder of the Upaya Zen Center — about the Buddhist-informed notion of wise hope, the equanimity it can bring, and the fierce compassion it can unleash.

Nicholas Kristof is the author of the book Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life. Read his NYT columns here, and find out more about the cider he makes here.

Roshi Joan Halifax leads the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Learn more about her work on her website.

Lots of religions embrace the idea of hell – a place of eternal punishment for wrong doers. But where did that idea come from? How has it changed through time? And how does a belief in it (or not) affect us while we’re alive?

We’ll talk with Bart Ehrman about the history of beliefs in hell from ancient Mesopotamia through modern Christianity. And with Shadi Hamid about why he thinks it can be a good thing for people to believe in hell, and how that belief shapes our political and social lives.

Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the author of Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife and Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Tradition. Find out more about Bart’s work, including his many other writings about the New Testament and early Christianity, at his website.

Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post, a research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary, and the author, most recently, of The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea.