What stresses you out over the festive season? Happiness Lab listeners sent in their holiday woes so Dr Laurie and guest Rainn Wilson (The Office star and host of ) could weigh in with some science-backed advice.

In the first part of our Holiday Survival Guide, Dr Laurie and Rainn discuss ways to defuse family arguments, why it's ok to feel sad at Christmas, and how to beat festive FOMO.

And find Nick Epley's "deep questions" conversation guide at drlauriesantos.com/deepquestions.

According to the science, it really is better to give than receive. Donating a dollar; sharing a kind word or lending someone a hand changes lives, but can also hugely boost your happiness. So we’re teaming up with other podcasts from Hidden Brain to Revisionist History to ask you to give to a charity helping some of the poorest people around. We’re calling it #PodsFightPoverty.

Go to givedirectly.org/happinesslab right now and give whatever you can.

Even a small donation will make you feel good and have a much larger impact on the world than you thought possible. To help inspire you, this special episode examines the science of giving and shares stories of heartwarming and impactful acts of kindness.

Halloween isn’t just costumes and candy. It’s also a time when we indulge our interest in the scary and macabre. But there’s also a taboo about gory horror movies and gruesome true crime shows – we often feel that being interested in blood and violence is unhealthy. The opposite is possibly true.

Psychologist Coltan Scrivner (author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away) says that watching a scary movie or listening to a murder podcast is perfectly natural and in fact teaches us valuable lessons to enhance our emotional resilience.

Not many elite athletes talk openly about mental health, but five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love is changing that. After a very public panic attack on the basketball court he was told to "snap out of it". But Kevin decided to discuss his "dark moments" of anxiety and depression and show that vulnerability is actually a strength.

The sports star joins Dr. Laurie to talk about overcoming generational trauma, the pressures of toxic masculinity, and how speaking up can change the game for all of us.

Every choice you make shapes your wellbeing - and the bigger the decision, the greater the impact. So when it comes to life-changing questions like where to live, who to marry, or which career to pursue, how can you tell if you’re making the best decision for your long-term happiness?

Economists might argue that you should weigh up every single option carefully - like a gambler in a casino figuring out the odds of winning. But psychologist Barry Schwartz says you can't apply a formula to happiness. In this episode, he shares insights from his new book, Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making (co-authored with philosopher Richard Schuldenfrei), offering a more thoughtful and human approach to making life’s hardest choices.

We all behave irrationally. We pay for expensive gym memberships and only go once. We spend windfall cash on things we’d never buy with our salaries. We plan to do nice things in the distant future, but don’t actually write them down in our calendars. These things can be bad for our happiness, so why do we do them?

Economist Richard Thaler won a Nobel Prize for studying human irrationality – and explains why we all do odd things sometimes and how we can guard against being so irrational. Richard is joined by fellow behavioral economist Alex Imas to explain the updated insights from the classic book The Winner’s Curse: Behavioral Economics Anomalies Then and Now.

Your eating habits could be cutting years off the end of your life. But there’s a simple solution – eat like the people who live happily and healthily into their 80s, 90s and beyond. Dan Buettner studies the inhabitants of so-called “Blue Zones” – where people live long lives. Food and eating culture seem to play an important role this longevity.

Dan talks to Dr Laurie about Blue Zones and explains the idea behind his cookbook One Pot Meals: 100 Recipes to Live to 100

And to hear more from Dan check out The Dan Buettner Podcast.