0:15

Pushkin. It's

0:20

October fifth, eighteen thirty three.

0:22

An inventor, William Henry fox Talbot

0:25

is annoyed. After months of

0:27

delays, Fox Talbot was finally

0:29

able to take his new bride on their long

0:31

awaited honeymoon to the beautiful

0:33

shores of Lake Como, one of the prettiest

0:35

vacation spots in Italy. Think

0:38

shimmering blue waters, statue

0:40

filled gardens. Everyone from Lord

0:42

Byron to George Clooney has vacation

0:45

there, and that's why Fox

0:47

Talbot was annoyed, because he didn't

0:49

want to just see this lovely scene himself. He

0:51

wanted all his friends to see how pretty

0:53

the lake was too. The problem,

0:56

of course, was that this was eighteen thirty three,

0:58

no smartphone cameras. If Fox

1:00

Talbot wanted to share this beautiful scene with

1:02

his friends back home, he had to draw

1:05

it. Fox

1:07

Talbot tried sketching the lakeside with

1:09

the help of a camera Lucida, the nineteenth

1:11

century equivalent of the best smartphone

1:13

camera, but his result wasn't all

1:15

that great. It was so bad, in fact, that

1:17

he called it a melancholy to behold.

1:20

It was in this moment of vacation disappointment

1:23

that fox Talbot had some inspiration, how

1:25

charming it would be. He later wrote, if

1:28

these natural images could imprint themselves

1:30

durably upon the paper, within

1:32

just two years, fox Talbot would

1:35

invent an early way to do this. He

1:37

developed the negative positive technique that

1:39

later became photography, just

1:41

because he wanted some honeymoon picks to share

1:44

with the folks back home. Now,

1:49

let's fast forward to a different October

1:51

fifth, exactly one hundred and seventy

1:53

seven years to the day that fox

1:56

Talbot drew that awful picture. On

1:59

this October fifth, twenty ten,

2:01

another inventor, software engineer, Kevin

2:04

Seistroum, is just about to launch the

2:06

new photo sharing app he's developed

2:08

with partner Creaker. It's

2:10

a sleek new tool that lets users take

2:12

interesting photos to share with friends

2:15

what Cystrom called an instant Telegram

2:17

of storts, so they christened it Instagram.

2:21

Sistrom launched the app just after midnight.

2:24

Within hours, Instagram servers

2:26

crashed too many downloads.

2:28

In twenty four hours, Instagram had

2:30

twenty five thousand users. Today,

2:33

the site boasts a thousand new uploaded

2:35

photos every single second.

2:39

When asked why Instagram was so successful,

2:41

Cystrom said that the app gave users a way

2:43

to turn ordinary, everyday scenes

2:46

into magical moments, magical

2:49

moments that were not only captured but

2:51

instantly share. Humankind

2:53

now had the perfect way to satisfy Fox

2:56

Talbot's original urge on the shores

2:58

of Lake Como, the desire

3:00

to share what we're experiencing.

3:03

Now we can do it anytime we want.

3:06

These stories show how far a technology

3:09

can come in less than two hundred years,

3:11

but they also illustrate something more profound,

3:14

the power of a very basic urge

3:16

to record a moment so that we can brag about,

3:19

excuse me, share that experience

3:21

with our friends and family members, everyone

3:24

who wasn't there. Nowadays,

3:26

most of us have devices in our pockets

3:28

powerful enough to record pretty much

3:30

every single experience in vivid detail.

3:33

We also have tools that Fox Talbot probably

3:36

couldn't even imagine, ones that let

3:38

us share those captured images broadly,

3:41

not just with our family and friends, but

3:43

with millions of strangers at the click

3:46

of a button. For the first time

3:48

in human history, our best moments

3:50

in life aren't just preserved, they're

3:52

broadcast for all to see.

3:56

But is all this sharing making us as happy

3:58

as we think our

4:01

minds are constantly telling us what to do to be

4:03

happy. But what if our minds are wrong?

4:06

What if our minds are lying to us, leading

4:08

us away from what would really make us happy.

4:12

The good news is that understanding the science

4:14

of the mind can point us all back in

4:16

the right direction. You're listening

4:18

to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie

4:21

Santas. I

4:27

moved to New York City when I was sixteen, and I

4:30

was dropped on Union Square in a dorm, and

4:32

I had no one. Marie Ellis

4:34

bun Is a young entrepreneur that many have

4:36

called the millennial Walt Disney, but

4:39

long before she earned it that nickname, she was

4:41

just another college student and younger than

4:43

most alone in New York

4:45

City. So I would sit most days

4:47

in the parking Union Square, and I played

4:49

chess, and I kind of just watched people. Marie

4:52

Ellis wanted to connect with people in a huge,

4:54

unknown city, so she turned to something

4:56

she loved, ice cream shops. And

4:58

I would go on map Quest and I would start finding

5:01

places in the Bronx and in Brooklyn and Queen's

5:03

and these ice cream shops felt to me as the places

5:06

that were safe. They held accessible,

5:09

and my understanding of the city was by

5:11

way of ice cream shops. Mapping

5:13

the city in terms of the most delicious ice

5:15

cream helped Mary Ellis learn about

5:17

her new urban home, but it also brought

5:19

her something more important, real

5:22

human connection. Everyone's happy and ice cream

5:24

shops people aren't depressed, and ice cream

5:26

was able to just for me, like, undress

5:28

my social anxieties and put me in a place

5:31

where I feel like I can converse and be my best

5:33

social self. Mary Ellis

5:36

Is foy into New York ice cream shops

5:38

made her realize how powerful shared

5:40

experiences can be. Doing

5:42

something with other people, it

5:45

just makes us feel good. People

5:47

share experiences with other people all the time

5:49

in their daily life. This is Cornell University

5:51

researcher Erica Boothby. When you

5:54

watch a movie with somebody or a TV

5:56

show, or if you are

5:59

at a concert, or even just in your house

6:01

and you have the radio on, or you're listening

6:03

to music or looking at

6:05

visual stimuli such as paintings

6:08

or photographs, things like that. Erica

6:10

is an expert on the psychology behind

6:13

all these tiny shared moments. People

6:15

are naturally drawn to share experiences

6:17

in this way. I think you know, even if

6:19

you look at infants, you

6:21

know under a year old are

6:23

already trying to basically

6:26

co opt their carriver's gaze

6:29

and share moments with them. If

6:31

you have a young child, or have ever hung out

6:33

with one, you probably know this phenomenon.

6:35

Well, mommy, look, mommy,

6:38

mommy, come on, look. What's

6:40

amazing is that babies don't need to be taught

6:43

to do this. Research shows that our

6:45

human motivation to share is an instinct,

6:48

one that kicks in automatically during

6:50

the first year of life. In one study,

6:53

psychologist Mike Thomasello and his colleagues

6:55

brought parents and young toddlers into the lab

6:57

and staged weird events, like having

6:59

a strange looking puppet pop out of a

7:01

wall unexpectedly. The kids

7:03

notice the puppet naturally, but the parents

7:06

pretended not to see it, and so

7:08

the kids did what they'd normally do. They

7:10

pointed at the weird thing. But what

7:12

were they trying to achieve? Did

7:14

they just want their parents to see the puppet or

7:17

did they want to share the experience to

7:20

see it at the same time together.

7:23

To test this, thomas Ella varied

7:25

how parents reacted. Some parents

7:27

looked both at the child and what they pointed

7:29

at, but other parents only

7:31

looked at the objects they did what

7:34

the kids were asking. They looked, but

7:36

they didn't really share the experience with their

7:38

child. What happened Thomas

7:40

Ella found that babies whose parents didn't

7:42

share stopped pointing over time.

7:45

Getting the parents to look wasn't the objective.

7:48

It was about the act of sharing. I

7:50

think that we go through life

7:52

doing this, and it's something we may not be

7:54

thinking about all the time, but it's something

7:57

that is playing an underlying

8:00

role in how we situate

8:02

ourselves with others and how we go about all of

8:04

our daily life. The fact that we're

8:07

so sensitive to that is something that really

8:09

sets us a part as a species. Erica

8:11

became interested in why I shared experience

8:14

is so powerful? What are we getting

8:16

out of it? She hypothesized that

8:18

sharing an event with someone else might

8:20

change the way we ourselves experience

8:22

that event, even if we don't realize

8:25

it. You're just simply attending to the same

8:27

thing at the same time as this person, and just

8:29

knowing that their mind is also full

8:32

of the same contents as your mind changes

8:34

that experience for you both. Erica

8:36

devised a cool way to test this new idea

8:38

with a chocolate tasting. So we had

8:41

people come in. They sat

8:43

down at a table side by side with another person

8:45

who actually happened to be a Confederate

8:47

who was working for us. We

8:50

told people that they were going to be experiencing

8:52

several different kinds of experiences.

8:54

We rigged it so that we could

8:56

assign people to share

8:59

an experience or not share an experience.

9:02

They were either both tasting chocolate

9:04

at the same time, or the

9:06

participant was tasting chocolate while

9:08

we had the confederate instead do something

9:11

else. So the Confederate, for example, looked

9:13

at some paintings while the participant ate

9:15

chocolate, and then we had them evaluate these

9:18

chocolates. We had them report how

9:20

much they liked the chocolate, how flavorful it tasted.

9:23

People thought they were trying different kinds of chocolates,

9:25

but they were actually identical. This way,

9:27

we could tell if they raided the chocolates differently,

9:30

if they experienced them differently, if they thought

9:32

that one tasted better than the other, for example,

9:35

that it had to be because of whether the experience

9:37

was shared or not. The only thing Erica

9:39

varied was whether subjects tasted the chocolate

9:42

at the same time as another person or not, it

9:44

shouldn't have mattered, but in the end

9:46

it did a lot. So

9:48

what we found is that when

9:51

people tasted a pleasant chocolate simultaneously

9:53

with somebody else, they liked

9:55

that chocolate more and thought it tasted more

9:57

flavorful than when they ate that same chocolate

10:00

while the other person was doing something different instead.

10:02

And what you're not realizing is that what

10:04

the other person sitting next to you happens to

10:07

be doing is affecting your own experience

10:09

of the chocolate. It actually is tasting

10:12

different to you when the other person

10:14

happens to also be tasting it versus

10:16

not, and you just aren't at all aware of that.

10:19

Then Erica did another experiment. She

10:21

was the same setup as before, but this time

10:24

people tasted yucky, unsweetened

10:26

baking chocolates. What happened, Sharing

10:29

the experience made it worse. A

10:31

bad chocolate tastes more awful when

10:34

someone else is tasting it too. What

10:36

this tells us is that experiences

10:39

aren't necessarily always enhanced or improved

10:41

when you're experiencing them together with somebody else.

10:44

They're actually amplified.

10:46

They get more intense. Researchers

10:48

have found similar effects with other kinds

10:50

of sensations. Scientist at McGill

10:52

University had subjects stick their hand

10:55

in super cold water, which hurts a ton,

10:57

but the cold hurts even worse if

11:00

a second subject was standing there going

11:02

through the same event at the same time.

11:04

So misery doesn't really love company? Is

11:06

that what this work is suggested? One

11:09

sense? That's true, these negative

11:11

experiences get more intense

11:13

when they're shared, but that might actually

11:16

not be all

11:18

that bad because it could actually help

11:20

to serve a function of bonding people together.

11:23

Feeling more pain when someone else is hurting

11:25

isn't the best experience at the time, but

11:28

it might allow us to empathize with that other

11:30

person, to bond in the face

11:32

of a shared trauma. That's kind of the

11:34

other interesting side of shared

11:37

experiences. What is it doing to our

11:39

interpersonal relationships? But

11:42

what about experiences we can't ever

11:44

share. Some amazing event

11:46

like having the chance to travel to space alone

11:49

or getting to sample some super expensive

11:51

but really rare food. Does

11:53

the uniqueness of an experience make it

11:55

feel worse? Erica

11:57

told me about a study by another Coronell

11:59

researcher, Gus Cooney, who also happens

12:02

to be her partner. He

12:04

set up a study where a bunch of people came

12:06

to the lab to have a relatively orinary

12:09

experience. They got to watch a movie.

12:12

One of the subjects, however, got picked

12:14

to have an extraordinary experience. He

12:16

got to watch a really special viral

12:19

video involving a magician doing incredible

12:21

tricks. Gus had subjects predict

12:24

which type of event they'd enjoy more, the

12:26

extraordinary one or the boring one. People

12:29

thought the extraordinary movie would make them happier,

12:32

but what happened when subjects actually experienced

12:34

the different events. The boring events

12:36

were fine, but the extraordinary events

12:38

experienced alone made people feel

12:41

kind of isolated. They even felt

12:43

a little guilty. That could have been an awesome

12:45

experience when they read it really highly. But

12:48

then it has this other social cost of well,

12:50

they haven't shared this with other people. Other people can't relate,

12:52

they can't really talk about it. They feel like they're bragging, right.

12:55

They just have difficulty expressing that to

12:57

other people, and so that

12:59

detracts from the social bonding potential

13:01

that there is there, And that might

13:03

be one of the reasons that so many of us have

13:05

that Fox Talbot urge. When we experienced

13:08

something incredible, we want other people

13:10

to experience it too. We want to

13:12

share all the awesome moments that we're not

13:14

able to share at the time. That's

13:17

why there's so many vacation posts with

13:19

hashtag OMG, hashtag incredible,

13:22

hashtag yacht, and so on. Erica

13:25

says these findings have changed her. They've

13:28

made her more conscious of how her own behavior

13:30

affects other people. It's

13:32

even changed her family life, like how

13:34

she and Gus share experiences together

13:37

as a couple. For watching TV at night

13:40

and I'm distracted looking at something

13:42

else, right, maybe I'm on my phone, I'm responding to

13:44

a text or whatever. I realize

13:46

now that that is actually going to affect my

13:48

partner's experience of the show we're watching and

13:51

cause him to pay less attention

13:53

to it. I'm just more aware of this constant

13:56

interpersonal dynamic where we're affecting one

13:58

another in all kinds of ways. Just even

14:00

being aware of it makes life a little more interesting.

14:03

I love Eric's work because it shows the

14:05

power of sharing, how it intensifies

14:08

our lives. It makes the good

14:10

things better, and even though it makes

14:12

the bad things a little worse, they're more bearable

14:15

since someone is by our side. Experiencing

14:18

stuff together can be a powerful tool

14:21

for shaping our happiness. This

14:23

same insight led mary Alice Bun,

14:26

the woman we met earlier, to develop

14:28

a million dollar new concept. There's

14:31

just this line down the street. I was like, Wow,

14:33

what are they waiting for it? And lo and behold there's an ice cream

14:35

shop. And that was kind of the moment where it

14:37

was like, I need to start building places in the

14:39

world that people actually want to be

14:41

in and spend time with, and places

14:43

where people can come together. How do I

14:45

build something that people just want to go to? The

14:48

Happiness Lab will be right back. I

14:56

would walk around the city and the

14:58

spaces around me just weren't offering

15:01

or afforded me a place that I really wanted to go.

15:03

Even after finding rich social connections

15:06

sharing a cone in those New York ice cream shops,

15:08

may Ellis was searching for something more. Where

15:11

do people Where are my peers, where are they

15:13

spending their time, and what is actually filling them

15:15

up? Mary Ellis realized that

15:17

the modern world doesn't give her generation

15:19

many opportunities to share events together.

15:22

My peer groups weren't going to church my

15:24

peer groups weren't going to other community

15:27

focused spaces. I was like, how do

15:29

I build something that people just want to go to.

15:32

What could possibly bring people together? Ice

15:35

cream? Ice Cream is made to be shared.

15:38

And this was the realization that led Mary

15:40

Ellis to develop a completely new kind

15:42

of venue for people to gather together,

15:45

one that gave her a rather unconventional

15:47

job title. I am the founder and CEO

15:49

of the Museum of ice Cream. Just in

15:52

case you're not lucky enough to already

15:54

be familiar with the Museum of ice Cream.

15:56

I asked Mary Ellis to explain what it was. It

15:59

wasn't easy. Great question. At Museum

16:01

of ice Cream, we have one goal mission and that

16:03

is to bring people outside together

16:06

under one single piece, which is ice

16:08

cream. Visitor enters a Museum of ice Cream.

16:11

They're going to go through a series of journeys and stories,

16:13

all celebrating the acts of ice cream. And

16:16

so there's a lot of both world building

16:18

and story building that is built into the

16:21

experience, and of course you get

16:23

to eat a bunch of my favorite food, which is ice

16:25

cream. It sounds really interesting,

16:27

but despite Mary Ellis's best efforts,

16:30

I was still confused about what exactly

16:32

the Museum of ice Cream is. So

16:34

I decided to go check it out in person with

16:37

my friend from college, Sandy Stringfellow.

16:40

We headed to a pop up location in San Francisco.

16:42

Together. We have just entered

16:44

the Museum of ice Cream. First thing,

16:47

it's not actually a museum. It's

16:50

kind of like a pepto bismol has exploded

16:52

in this building and like covered all surfaces

16:55

with this incredibly bright

16:57

pink color. And I'm really into the

16:59

sprinkles up there. The neon life, you are

17:01

about to answer a completely new world, not

17:04

the world you're used to, not the one you grew up in, something

17:07

different. Okay. That became pretty

17:09

clear when we had to enter the first exhibit

17:11

by jumping into a huge fusia

17:13

hole in the wall, one that led to a

17:16

pink plastic slide winding two

17:18

stories down. So if

17:20

you take O, you

17:22

have gone to yell scoop, scoop when you reach

17:24

the bottom. Okay, scoop, scoop, scool, scoop,

17:27

let's do it. Okay, all right, let's go first. I

17:29

was the host, which meant I had to

17:31

go first. Scoop

17:33

scoop, All right, you

17:39

can do it. Okay, Jesus,

17:46

all right, but

17:49

screaming Scoop scoop while sliding down

17:51

a huge pink slide was nothing

17:53

compared to the rest of the museum. Sandy

17:55

and I spent an entire hour taking

17:57

in a completely surreal sensory experience.

18:00

There was a fifties diner that served French

18:02

fries and ketchup made of ice cream, an

18:05

entire room filled with pink refrigerator

18:07

magnets where you could write your a

18:10

stable filled with life size glittery

18:12

unicorns. Each room was

18:14

more over the top than the last. We're

18:17

now in a room filled with animal

18:21

cracker carousels

18:24

that people can ride

18:27

a Sandy,

18:31

how does it feel to be on a large pink animal cracker?

18:36

And then there's the piece to resistance,

18:38

a four foot deep swimming pool filled

18:41

with rainbow sprinkles. Ideas

18:48

like these are why Mary Ellis is constantly

18:51

compared to Walt Disney. She's designing

18:53

incredible, fantasy filled spaces

18:56

for the next generation. But unlike

18:58

Disneyland, the Museum of ice Cream didn't

19:00

start out with hundreds of staff members and a

19:02

huge team of designers. In the beginning,

19:05

it was really a two person labor of love. For

19:07

Mary Ellis and her co founder Manish

19:09

Vora. I built the pool with my two

19:11

hands. I painted every wall, I worked

19:14

the door. Miniche and I were serving

19:16

ice cream and it was twenty two hours

19:18

a day, seven days a week. Their

19:20

first New York City museum sold out instantly

19:23

for months. Then Mary Ellis started

19:25

making similar museums in other cities.

19:27

Her creation has now been visited by

19:29

millions of people around the world.

19:32

It's also become a darling of celebrities

19:35

and Instagram influencers. I

19:37

saw Beyonce's feed and she posted like nine

19:39

posts and that was like, I mean,

19:41

it's Queen Bee, It's Beyonce. That was

19:44

a big deal. But the product, if you'll call

19:46

it, that has selled itself. We've had I don't know, almost

19:48

two million people and they've all swam through these pools

19:51

of sprinkles, which sounds sounds

19:53

ridiculous, but it brings so much joy and

19:56

it takes people out of a place of you

19:58

know, we're also serious, and it brings them to a place

20:00

where you just have to you have to

20:02

have fun. But it's also a

20:04

place where people get to be social,

20:07

to connect with others. The everything

20:09

Mary Ellis was missing when she first moved

20:11

to the city. And so what happens a Zaou's

20:14

interactions start to become more and more easy

20:17

or comfortable is people start to open

20:19

up and they leave with an understanding of other people.

20:21

And that's when the connections start to happen. It really starts to

20:23

happen outside of our doors. I couldn't tell

20:25

you how many people leave and go grab a drink

20:27

together, just as a response to them talking

20:30

about that they both love vanilla ice cream.

20:32

Sandy and I saw this firsthand during our visit.

20:35

We chatted for a while with a local ten year old

20:37

birthday girl and her mom, as well as a group

20:39

of dressed to the nine twenty some things who had traveled

20:41

all the way from North Carolina to celebrate

20:44

their college graduation. It's

20:46

the social aspect of the museum experience

20:48

that has made Mary Ellis most proud, the way

20:50

people from all walks of life get to share

20:52

this surreal, ice cream filled experience

20:55

together. One of the best

20:57

parts of her job is eavesdropping

20:59

on these tiny new encounters people have sharing

21:02

her incredible space. There was an

21:04

older fellow and there was a mom and a son, and

21:07

they were talking about how they all love chocolate chip ice and

21:09

then they continue to talk, and then they both couldn't do

21:11

to talk that they both live on fifty seventh Street,

21:14

and in any other circumstance,

21:16

I couldn't imagine these, you know, this

21:18

mom and his son and this older gentleman coming

21:21

together and having conversation. We were able to

21:23

like start to break down these barriers. And

21:25

I think they continued on and they took the sun Way

21:27

back uptown together, and it was this beautiful moment.

21:29

And I was like, why don't we have more of these moments?

21:32

Why aren't we able to break down? And the answer

21:35

is because no one's getting us the opportunity

21:37

to get off our phones or like to look up,

21:40

ah, yes, our phones. Even

21:42

back when she was a sixteen year old of visiting ice

21:45

cream shops, Mary Ellis noticed that

21:47

phones made it harder for people to actually

21:49

connect with one another. It was one of the

21:51

reasons she tried to make the Museum of ice Cream

21:54

so over the top for me or

21:56

our mission is how do we build the world

21:58

that is so compelling that it outshines

22:01

the world that we're able to live within within

22:03

our devices. You need to build something

22:06

that visually stimulates you

22:08

know, I need to go see this because it looks so

22:10

fantastic. The problem, though,

22:13

is that when you build something that fantastic,

22:15

something as incredibly cool looking and crazy

22:18

as the Museum of ice Cream, people

22:20

don't just want to share it with the people who happen

22:22

to be around them at the time. People

22:25

get that old foxtailberge, they

22:28

also want to hold on to that experience to

22:30

share it with other people after the fact,

22:32

which means phones,

22:35

lots of phones. It's a double edged

22:37

sword. That was what hit me

22:39

most while I was at the museum. Every

22:42

single person in the museum had their phone

22:44

out, including me and Sandy. Sandy

22:48

and I left with so many ridiculous

22:50

photos. Picks of us riding strange

22:52

fictional animals, posing with our thumbs

22:54

up in a tiny room filled with glittery mirrors,

22:57

Photos of us buried up to the neck in sprinkles.

22:59

But all those photos meant I was paying

23:02

more attention to the small window in my phone

23:04

than to the actual lived experience,

23:07

the one I was supposed to be sharing with sand who

23:09

I hadn't seen in months, the one Mary

23:12

Ellis wanted me to be sharing with, the

23:14

other patrons too. The tragic

23:16

irony is that the very human urge to

23:18

capture and share was causing people

23:20

to miss the best aspect of the Museum

23:23

of ice Cream experience, the social

23:25

part. But there was a second dark

23:27

side to all this photo taking at the Museum of ice

23:29

Cream. It made the place hard to navigate.

23:32

The most instagrammable spots were

23:34

often blocked by a big group of people standing

23:36

around and trying to get the perfect photo, taking

23:39

pics over and over again to get one that looked

23:42

just right. Sandy and I ended

23:44

up bypassing entire displays because

23:46

there were too many people posing nearby. It

23:49

was pretty frustrating, and I realized

23:52

that the frustration was a familiar

23:54

one because I didn't just have this experience

23:56

at the Museum of ice Cream. I've felt

23:58

the same thing at concerts I've been too recently, where

24:01

I couldn't see the band behind a sea of smartphone

24:03

lights, and at a national park

24:06

where I couldn't even get near a gorgeous waterfall

24:08

because too many people we're taking selfies.

24:11

It even happens at weddings and graduations.

24:14

Our obsession with capturing moments means

24:17

not just missing them. Ourselves, but

24:19

causing other people to miss them too.

24:22

Mary Ellis has a complicated relationship

24:24

with the fact that her creation is one of the

24:26

most instagrammed places in the world.

24:29

It's difficult because so much what you see are

24:31

these perfectly curated, edited

24:34

photographs that appear

24:37

on your feed. You're not going

24:39

to be able to understand or translate the feeling,

24:42

the emotion, the experience far surpasses

24:44

the things that you can capture on a you

24:47

know, a small square. She stall

24:49

her staff members all kinds of techniques for

24:52

getting people to put their phones down, but

24:54

as I learned in the museum, they don't

24:56

always work. Is it frustrating to see how many

24:58

people are like just looking at their phones a whole time. We

25:00

try to engage with the guests who come through.

25:02

We have like little games obviously if you want you to

25:04

interact into space. But

25:09

you know, when

25:11

I first heard about Fox Talbot's story, the

25:14

one I started this episode with, I

25:16

thought about it from his perspective, how

25:18

he was one of the first in human history to

25:20

satisfy that urge to document and

25:22

share. But as I did more research about

25:24

the science of sharing for this episode, I

25:27

started to think about the Fox Talbot tale from

25:29

a different perspective, that of

25:32

Missus Fox Talbot. Imagine

25:34

arriving at the most beautiful lake in the world,

25:37

a young newlywed hoping for a

25:39

bit of romance with your overworked husband.

25:41

Imagine how annoying it must have been

25:44

to watch him spend hours on his damn camera

25:46

Lucida trying to get the perfect sketch.

25:50

Missus Fox Talbot was perhaps the first

25:52

of thousands upon thousands of spouses

25:55

to watch their partners stare at their own

25:57

honeymoon through a camera. Len's She

25:59

was probably one of the first to feel that special

26:02

frustration you experience when someone

26:04

you care about is missing the opportunity

26:07

to actually share a moment with you because

26:09

they're so worried about being able

26:11

to capture it. When we're

26:13

about to take a bite of our food, or we're saying

26:16

something really deep and the person

26:19

takes out their phone to capture

26:21

a photo of the food before we eat

26:23

it, those things can be disruptive,

26:25

and they can decrease enjoyment

26:28

of our experience. The

26:30

Happiness Lab will be back in a second. There's

26:40

an urge. We all have an urge to capture

26:43

special moments I'm talking with Alex

26:45

Barrish, a professor at NYU. Alex

26:48

is an expert on how photography affects

26:50

our well being. I decided

26:52

to meet with her to get to the bottom of all this sharing.

26:55

Is it helping us or hurting us? But we

26:57

also have that intuition

27:00

that when we do that, we're taking

27:02

something away from the other individual

27:04

in the interaction. Alex got

27:06

interested in the topic while she was pursuing a pH

27:09

abroad. She was taking a lot

27:11

of pictures while exploring her new home.

27:13

It was really beneficial in

27:16

some ways because I was taking

27:18

in more aspects of the environment or noticing

27:20

things that I might not otherwise have noticed

27:22

because I was capturing these

27:24

aspects with a camera. But

27:27

the other side of the equation was that I was

27:29

sometimes feeling like the camera took

27:31

me out of an experience, that I was focusing

27:34

too much on getting the perfect photo.

27:37

Alex started looking into the empirical work

27:39

on how phototaking affects our experience

27:41

of an event. Does taking photos

27:43

make us feel better? Does it help our memory

27:45

for the event. Despite the ubiquity

27:48

of phototaking in our daily lives, surprisingly

27:51

little scientific work had actually addressed

27:53

any of this. So Alex decided

27:55

to study these questions. Starting with memory,

27:58

She recruited a group of subjects to take

28:00

part in a real world, photo worthy experience.

28:03

We had them go through the Etruscan exhibit

28:06

inside the Pen Museum in Philadelphia.

28:10

So they are going through, they're looking at the

28:12

artifacts or listening to their audio guide,

28:15

just like they would if they were visiting a museum

28:17

on their own. What she varied was

28:20

whether or not her subjects were able to take photos.

28:22

Half of the subjects could have their phones with them

28:25

and we're told to take photos as they normally

28:27

would, but the others were told

28:29

to leave their phones at the main desk at

28:32

the end of the exhibit. She gave subjects in

28:34

both groups a surprise memory test.

28:37

Which artifacts had they seen? Could they

28:39

remember all the subtle details. The

28:41

big question was which group did better, the

28:44

folks taking the photos or the ones who

28:46

didn't. The answer is it

28:48

depends. The phototaking condition

28:51

actually does better on the visual

28:54

memory test. They remember

28:56

more of the visual aspects of the experience

28:58

in the museum, the artifacts that

29:01

they saw inside the cases,

29:03

but that is not without a cost.

29:06

And when they are attending

29:08

more to those visual aspects of the museum.

29:12

They weren't able to focus as much on what

29:14

the audio guide was telling them.

29:16

You see that phototaking has a positive

29:19

effect on one aspect and a negative

29:21

effect on the other, and that, of

29:23

course, whether that's good or bad depends

29:26

on your goals as a consumer.

29:29

Alex has now looked at this memory question in a

29:31

bunch of ways, from trips to museums,

29:34

to bus tours to virtual safari's

29:36

taken on an experimental computer screen. She

29:39

finds the same thing time and again. If

29:42

your goal is to really see all the visual

29:44

aspects of a scene, then taking photos

29:47

is a really good way to boost your memory. But

29:49

if you want to remember something that's not visual,

29:51

what you heard on the audio tour, or

29:53

that joke your friend said, what the

29:56

amazing neal tasted like, then

29:58

taking photos is a hindrance. You

30:01

don't have the cognitive bandwidth to pay attention

30:03

to all that other stuff, which means

30:05

you don't remember. It makes

30:07

sense, well about our enjoyment

30:10

of the experience. Does taking photos

30:12

make us happier? This

30:14

time the results were less nuanced. People

30:17

in the photo condition they showed significantly

30:20

more enjoyment. You

30:22

imagine going on a bus tour. If you're

30:24

just sort of taking in the sights, that's

30:27

definitely enjoyable. But if you're capturing

30:30

photos, you're noticing new things,

30:32

You're more immersed, and it can make you

30:35

enjoy and experience more. Taking

30:37

photos makes us pay attention, and that

30:39

simple act noticing the details,

30:42

attending to what the experience feels like. That

30:44

can draw us into an experience which

30:46

feels good, but only for

30:48

the visual details, which means

30:51

we have to be careful not to miss all the

30:53

non visual good stuff. What our partners

30:55

said at dinner, what the hot fudge Sunday tasted

30:58

like, what the concert guitar solo sounded

31:00

like. Our enjoyment of the non

31:02

visual stuff doesn't necessarily

31:04

increase when taking photos. But

31:07

Alex discovered a second, even bigger

31:09

caveat when doing this research, because

31:12

phototaking doesn't always draw us

31:14

into the visual aspects of an experience. It

31:17

depends on what those photos are for. People

31:20

take photos for many different

31:22

reasons, and one of those

31:24

is to take photos for yourself

31:27

so that you can remember and kind

31:29

of revisit those experiences

31:31

and photos in the future. And the other, of

31:33

course, as we all know, is to take photos

31:36

so that we can share them with others

31:39

to post on our social media accounts.

31:41

Ah. Yes, that old fox talbot

31:43

urge the reason thousands of photos

31:46

are shared every second on Instagram.

31:49

What effect does that sharing urge have on

31:51

our enjoyment? To test this scientifically,

31:54

Alex varied why people took photos

31:57

for keepsake or to put on social

31:59

media. We actually showed that

32:01

the benefits that you get from capturing

32:04

photos are actually diminished

32:07

or undermined when you take photos to share.

32:09

That takes us out of the moment and actually

32:12

ultimately decreases how much

32:15

we get out of the experience in terms of our

32:17

enjoyment if we get obsessed

32:19

with it, if we were thinking about how to

32:21

get the perfect shot to show somebody

32:23

else an impression, manage, and to

32:25

curate or identity online, that's

32:27

where the costs come into play. And that must be

32:29

really tricky because it seems like a lot of our photographing

32:32

right now is to share. I mean to the

32:34

point that people don't just take a photo, they

32:37

photoshop it and you know,

32:39

cut it and edit it after the fact. Like

32:41

the sharing process is not new, but

32:44

what is definitely new is that that's

32:46

active in our minds while we go through

32:48

the experience. Every time

32:50

we take a photo with the intent to share it,

32:53

we lose the positive effects of capturing

32:55

the moment. Every time we get in a oh

32:57

this will be fun to post a mindset, we

33:00

stop paying attention to the right stuff. We're

33:02

thinking about how to get the perfect photo, not

33:05

what the moment feels like, and

33:07

that fox talbot urge in the moment. It's

33:09

an attentional buzzkill, and our

33:11

enjoyment takes a hit. I

33:14

find these scientific findings so ironic

33:17

because the sharing part is good, it intensifies

33:20

the experience, and the taking photos part

33:22

is good. It makes us pay more attention. But

33:24

as soon as we put sharing and the photos

33:27

together, all those positive effects

33:29

go away. Seriously, the way

33:31

our mind works can be so annoying. Sometimes

33:37

Alex who's a business school professor, realizes

33:39

it's getting harder and harder to avoid thinking

33:42

about sharing. Companies are

33:44

pushing us to share all the time now

33:46

they post hashtags on

33:49

their menus. Of course, that has

33:51

a lot of advantages in terms of

33:53

free advertising and word of mouth, but I

33:56

show in this work that there's

33:58

a cost that it's actually

34:00

going to also undermine

34:03

consumers enjoyment if they're really

34:05

thinking a lot during the experience

34:07

about capturing that best photo

34:10

so that they can post it and share it later

34:12

on. Alex's comment made me

34:14

think back to my conversation with Mary Ellis

34:17

bun that double edged sword. She

34:19

mentioned the complicated relationship

34:21

she has with how Instagram the Museum

34:23

of ice Cream has become. Mary

34:26

Ellis knows all those celebrity tweets are

34:28

great for business, but they can also

34:30

ruin her patron's enjoyment of the space,

34:33

and that's why she's now trying something

34:35

radical. She's explicitly redesigning

34:38

the Museum of ice Cream in an effort to

34:40

end all the Instagram posts. She's

34:42

now trying all kinds of new techniques to

34:44

get people to put their phones down, like

34:47

exhibits with hands free eating, so if

34:49

you have no hands to eat, you also have no hands

34:51

to photograph. And she's rearranged the flow

34:53

of experiences inside the museum.

34:56

Previously we ended with the sprinkle pool because

34:58

as oftentimes the most desired

35:00

capture moment, and then by reversing

35:02

it, what happened is that all the anticipation

35:05

and angst to go and capture that photo. Now

35:07

that it happened at the beginning, becomes removed.

35:10

They weren't so involved at having take the photo they

35:12

had already taken it that they could really enjoy the experience.

35:15

Finally, she's beta testing a new idea

35:17

she's especially excited about. The

35:19

first thing that came out of everyone's mouth was it was the best

35:22

experience we've had to date. What was

35:24

that best ever experience? Mary

35:26

Ellis took a page out of Alex Barrish's studies.

35:29

She didn't let her patrons have their phones at

35:31

all. People are able to come for free,

35:34

and I think he asks them to turn in our

35:36

cell phones at the beginning. And the reason

35:38

why it was most successful

35:40

in our minds is there so many details that we

35:43

think about that you're gonna miss.

35:45

It's like, you know, to really think about all the taste and the

35:47

notes and whatnot. But if you're so consumed

35:50

in capturing that those things all go away.

35:52

And they didn't have that clutch of a

35:54

phone to guide them through the experience. So

35:57

what's the takeaway from this episode? Our

35:59

urge to share is an instinct one

36:02

that brings us a lot of joy, but it

36:04

can lead us astray in the modern world.

36:07

Science shows that sharing experience is

36:09

good for our happiness. All the wonderful

36:11

things in life, yummy food, a nice

36:13

view, the warm sunshine, they're

36:16

even more awesome in the company of another

36:18

human being, and it's a two

36:20

way street. Your presence will

36:22

also make other people's moments richer.

36:25

Documenting those awesome moments is also

36:28

good for our happiness. You'll look

36:30

at that scenic vista or that cool museum

36:32

object a bit deeper if you have a camera

36:34

in your hand. Like sharing in the moment,

36:37

photo taking also makes our lives richer.

36:40

But when we put the two urges together, when

36:42

we start thinking about sharing that sunset

36:45

while we're looking at it, when we focus

36:47

on who we'll see our dessert pick when we posted,

36:49

our minds get pulled away. We get

36:52

obsessed with the tiny image in the camera, not

36:54

the moment. So

36:57

to become happier, we need to fight that Instagram

37:00

urge. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't get out

37:02

there and share. We should be sharing the

37:04

wealth of life, but in the moment with

37:06

a live person, If at all possible, get

37:09

out there. Any lunch with a friend not at

37:11

your desk, make the effort to go to the cinema

37:14

rather than watching Netflix alone. You

37:16

could even start up a podcast brunch club, and

37:19

if you do, maybe you could share the

37:21

Happiness Lab with me. Doctor

37:23

Laurie Santos. The

37:37

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by

37:39

Ryan Dilley. The show is mixed and mastered

37:42

by Evan Viola and edited by Julia

37:44

Barton, fact checking by Joseph Friedman,

37:47

and our original music was composed

37:49

by Zachary Silver. Special

37:51

thanks to Mao La Belle, Carl mcgliori,

37:54

Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Maya

37:57

Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The

37:59

Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries

38:01

and me, Doctor Laurie Santos.