Laura: Most self-help books treat happiness like a mystical fog. Something you hope for, something you might stumble upon, but can never really pin down. Sophia: Right, it’s all about ‘finding your bliss’ or ‘manifesting joy,’ which sounds lovely but is completely unhelpful on a Tuesday afternoon when you’re stuck in traffic. Laura: Exactly. But what if it's not a fog? What if happiness could be engineered, almost like a bridge, with a few core principles from evolutionary psychology? That's the provocative idea we're tackling today. Sophia: I love that. Taking the abstract and making it concrete. It’s a much more empowering way to think about it. Laura: It’s the entire premise of the book we’re diving into: The Saad Truth About Happiness by Gad Saad. Sophia: And Saad is such a fascinating and, frankly, polarizing figure. He's a Lebanese-Canadian evolutionary psychologist at Concordia University, and he brings this really unique, no-nonsense scientific lens to everything. His work often sparks debate because he directly challenges a lot of modern thinking with biological arguments. Laura: He definitely does. He argues that our brains are running on ancient software, and if we don't understand the code, we’re bound to be unhappy. He starts with two decisions he claims are ninety percent of the battle. Sophia: Only two? Okay, I’m listening. That already simplifies things.

Laura: He argues that the two most monumental decisions for your long-term happiness are choosing the right life partner and finding the ideal job. Not just any partner or any job, but the right ones. Sophia: That makes intuitive sense. It’s where we spend the vast majority of our time and emotional energy. But how does he define ‘right’? Is it just about finding someone hot and a job that pays well? Laura: Not at all. For a life partner, he says it's a "matching process" based on core values. It's less about fleeting passion and more about deep compatibility. He tells this incredibly vivid personal story to illustrate the point. Sophia: Oh, a story. Let’s hear it. Laura: Back in the 90s, when he was a young professor, he was introduced to a beautiful Syrian woman. Her parents were thrilled he was a professor, but the entire date consisted of her trying to figure out his religion. Saad, being of Lebanese-Jewish heritage, knew this was a non-starter. Sophia: Oh boy, I can feel the awkward tension from here. Laura: He finally just came out and told her, and the date ended on the spot. His point is that no amount of physical attraction or surface-level charm could overcome that fundamental gap in values and cultural background. You don't just marry a person; you marry their entire worldview and, to some extent, their family's. Sophia: That is such a crucial point. It’s easy to get swept up in the romance and ignore the big, glaring signs of incompatibility. But wait, this sounds so calculated! What about chemistry and just falling in love? It sounds a bit like a business merger. Laura: He wouldn't say to ignore chemistry. He’d say chemistry—or lust—is the first phase. But for a lifelong union, you need the other two phases: attraction and deep attachment. And that attachment is built on a foundation of friendship and shared values. There's a great quote he uses from political scientist Charles Murray: "Marry someone who is your very best friend to whom you are also sexually attracted." Sophia: Okay, that framing feels much better. It’s not a cold calculation, but a recognition that a long-term partnership needs more than just initial sparks to survive. It needs friendship. Laura: Precisely. And that same logic of finding the right 'fit' applies to the second pillar: your job. It’s not just about the money. He points to a ton of research showing that job control and autonomy are massive predictors of happiness and even health. Sophia: What do you mean by health? Like, stress-related issues? Laura: Much more than that. He cites the famous Whitehall studies, which followed British civil servants for decades. They found that employees in lower-ranking jobs with little to no control over their work had significantly higher rates of mortality. Not just from stress, but from all causes. Sophia: Whoa. So a lack of autonomy at work can literally kill you. That’s terrifying. Laura: It is. It shows that having a sense of purpose and control over your professional life is a fundamental human need. It’s not a luxury. Sophia: That really puts the modern conversations around the ‘Great Resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’ into a new light. Maybe people aren't just lazy or entitled. Maybe they’re desperately seeking a sense of agency that their jobs have stripped away from them. They’re not just quitting a boss; they’re quitting a feeling of powerlessness. Laura: I think that’s exactly what Saad would argue. And once you have those two pillars—a partner who is your best friend and a job that gives you purpose and control—he says you need an 'operating system' to maintain that happiness day-to-day. Sophia: An operating system for life. I like that. What’s the first rule?

Laura: The first rule is surprisingly ancient, borrowed straight from Aristotle: moderation in all things. Saad frames this using a scientific concept called the "inverted-U curve." Sophia: The inverted-U curve? Okay, break that down for me. Laura: It’s the idea that for almost anything in life, there’s a sweet spot. Too little is bad, but too much is also bad. The optimal point is somewhere in the middle. The classic example is the Yerkes-Dodson Law in sports. An athlete with zero stress is unmotivated. An athlete with overwhelming stress chokes. But an athlete with just the right amount of pressure enters ‘the zone’ and achieves peak performance. Sophia: Okay, so it's like caffeine! One cup of coffee in the morning makes you sharp and focused. Five cups make you a jittery, unproductive mess. The ‘sweet spot’ is everything. Laura: Exactly! And this applies everywhere. He brings up this fascinating study called the "Facebook Friend Paradox." Researchers created fake profiles with varying numbers of friends and asked people to rate their social attractiveness. Sophia: Let me guess, the profile with the most friends won? Laura: Nope. The profile with around 300 friends was rated as the most attractive. The ones with too few, like 100, seemed unpopular. But the ones with too many, like 900, were seen as trying too hard or being inauthentic. There's a sweet spot even for online friendships. Sophia: That is wild. So even a good thing like having friends can become a negative if you take it to the extreme. This principle seems to be a universal law of life. Laura: It is. And the next part of the operating system is to embrace play. He argues that modern adult life has squeezed out our natural, childlike instinct to be playful, and that’s a huge mistake. Sophia: How does a serious academic like Saad define ‘play’? Is it just about playing board games or sports? Laura: It’s much broader than that. It’s about approaching life with a sense of curiosity, humor, and wonder. He uses the 1988 movie Big as the perfect illustration. Sophia: Oh, with Tom Hanks! The kid who becomes an adult overnight. Laura: Exactly. He gets a job at a toy company, and while all the serious executives are looking at spreadsheets, he’s the one who actually plays with the toys. His childlike, honest enthusiasm is what makes him a genius at his job. He and the CEO have that iconic scene playing "Chopsticks" on the giant floor piano. That’s the spirit Saad is talking about—finding the joy and creativity in what you do. Sophia: I love that. It’s a reminder that seriousness and success are not the same thing. Sometimes the most innovative ideas come from a place of lightness and fun. Laura: And the final piece of the operating system is variety. Humans are wired to seek novelty to avoid boredom. But, true to form, he says this also follows the inverted-U curve. Too much routine is crushing, but too much variety can be chaotic and prevent you from developing deep expertise. Sophia: So we need the right partner, the right job, and this balanced operating system of moderation, play, and variety. But life will inevitably throw curveballs. What happens when one of those pillars collapses or the operating system crashes?

Laura: That’s where the final, and perhaps most important, part of his philosophy comes in. He says you have to build an "anti-fragile" mind. Sophia: Anti-fragile? That’s a term from Nassim Taleb, right? What does it mean in this context? Laura: It means you don't just survive stress or failure; you actually get stronger from it. Fragile things break under pressure. Resilient things withstand pressure. But anti-fragile things thrive on pressure. Think of a muscle: it needs the stress of a workout to grow. Our minds, he argues, are the same. Sophia: That’s a powerful reframe. So instead of avoiding failure, we should see it as a necessary workout for our minds. Laura: Precisely. He lists so many examples of this. J.K. Rowling was rejected by twelve publishers before someone took a chance on Harry Potter. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. These rejections didn't break them; they fueled them. They became anti-fragile. Sophia: That’s incredibly inspiring. But what about the emotional side of it? How do you stop the regret from those failures or missed opportunities from eating you alive? Especially for things you can't change. Laura: That’s the other half of the anti-fragile mindset: eradicating regret. He makes a crucial distinction between regrets of action—things you did—and regrets of inaction—things you didn't do. In the short term, we regret stupid things we did. But over a lifetime, our biggest regrets are almost always the chances we didn't take. Sophia: The career we didn't pursue, the person we didn't ask out, the trip we didn't take. Laura: Exactly. And to combat this, he points to a tool used by Jeff Bezos when he was deciding whether to leave his stable Wall Street job to start some crazy online bookstore. Sophia: Amazon, I presume? Laura: The very same. Bezos called it the "Regret Minimization Framework." He pictured himself at 80 years old, looking back on his life. He asked himself, "In this moment, which path will I regret less?" He knew he wouldn't regret trying and failing. But he knew he would be haunted forever if he didn't even try. Sophia: Wow. That is such a simple yet profound way to make a life-altering decision. Project yourself into the future and look back. Laura: It cuts through all the short-term fear. But my favorite story in the whole book, the one that truly shows it's almost never too late, is about a man named Dagobert Broh. Sophia: Tell me. Laura: Broh was born in Germany in 1904 and had to flee the Nazis, so he never got to pursue higher education. In his sixties, he finally enrolled in university. He got his bachelor's degree. Then his master's. And in 1996, at the age of 91, he successfully defended his Ph.D. in history. Sophia: Ninety-one? That’s unbelievable. It completely shatters the excuse of being ‘too old’ to start something new. What an incredible testament to the human spirit.

Laura: It really is. And it brings all of Saad's ideas together. Happiness isn't a lottery ticket you find. It's a structure you build. You lay the foundation with a compatible partner and a meaningful job. You maintain it with the operating system of moderation, play, and variety. And you make the whole structure earthquake-proof with an anti-fragile mindset that learns from failure instead of fearing it. Sophia: It’s a complete shift from passively waiting for happiness to actively constructing it. It’s about making deliberate choices, both big and small, that are aligned with our evolutionary wiring and our deepest values. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. And that’s a very hopeful message. It makes you wonder, what's one small, 'anti-fragile' step you could take this week? Something you've been putting off because you're afraid of rejection? Laura: That's the perfect question. And we'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Does this scientific, almost engineered, approach to happiness resonate with you, or does it feel too clinical? Find us on our socials and let us know what you think. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.