1. Tell us something we don’t know. (Anything!)
I love old school hip-hop — anything from the 90s, but especially Public Enemy, Digital Underground, and RUN-DMC.
2. Which fiction book would you recommend to researchers and innovators in healthcare, and why?
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut— a wonderful treatise on the human condition and one of my favorite books.
3. What are you working on right now that you’re excited about?
Season 2 and the COVID-19 special bonus season of my new podcast The Happiness Lab.
4. Who’s doing something that you admire in healthcare today, and why is it so cool?
Everyone on the front lines of this COVID-19 crisis. THANK YOU!!
5. What’s the biggest barrier to getting things done in your line of work?
Not enough free time.
6. Imagine you win an award for impacting healthcare. What did you do?
I helped people learn about interventions they could do to improve their mental health.
7. What advice would you give innovators in healthcare?
Be evidence-based. Share your results widely and freely!
About Dr. Laurie Santos:
Dr. Laurie Santos is Professor of Psychology and Head of Silliman College at Yale University. Dr. Santos is an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices. Her course, “Psychology and the Good Life,” teaches students how the science of psychology can provide important hints about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. It recently became Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years, and has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, GQ Magazine, Slate, and O! Magazine.
A winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching, she was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” young minds, and was named in Time Magazine as a “Leading Campus Celebrity.”
Dr. Santos hosts the popular podcast, The Happiness Lab. Additionally, she is the director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory and the Canine Cognition Center at Yale. She received her BA. in Psychology and Biology from Harvard University in 1997, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard in 2003.
