What if joy isn’t a reward for when life goes well, but the thing that helps us survive when it doesn’t?

Psychologist and Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal reveals that joy is not the same as happiness, and that many of us quietly push it away without realizing it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why happiness needs everything to be good, while joy needs just one thing
• Why so many of us protect ourselves from joy, and why anxiety can feel safer
• How power and success can make connection, and joy, harder to reach
• Why people in war zones, hospitals and hospice understand joy best
• How to follow the news without being consumed by outrage and fear
• The simple practice of “meeting joy with joy”

Joy is not something you wait for.

It is something you can create for yourself and for others.

Kelly McGonigal is the author of Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking.

As Arctic ice melts, the struggle for the frozen north is beginning to resemble a new Cold War.

Russian submarine activity is rising. China is mapping the seabed and expanding its icebreaker fleet. And Greenland sits at the center of a growing contest over shipping routes, critical minerals, energy, and missiles.

Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and one of America’s leading experts on the Arctic, Europe, and transatlantic security, spent years warning that this region would become critical to America’s defense.

What did she see that America and its allies were missing and how much time is left to prepare?

She discusses:

• How much of what Trump wanted in the recent Greenland deal was already possible
• Why Russia sees the Arctic as central to its military and economic future
• Why the United States secretly offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland after WWII
• Why Greenland’s location makes it critical to America’s missile defenses
• How the Arctic shortens distances for missiles, submarines, ships, and undersea cables
• Why China’s Arctic science will also have military applications
• What Greenland’s mineral wealth means for U.S. interests
• Why America cannot adequately defend the Arctic without its allies

The next decade in the Arctic could determine whether America and its allies are ready for when the Cold War in the Arctic gets hot.

The world map we grew up with makes Greenland and Africa look the same size. The problem? Africa is actually an astonishing 14 times larger.

The even larger problem? There's no such thing as an accurate map. They all distort how we see the world.

Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones are comedians, writers, and YouTubers with millions of followers where they are better known as Map Men. Their new book, This Way Up, explores how maps shape our understanding of the world and what happens when they inevitably get it wrong.

They discuss:

• Why a 500-year-old deeply-flawed map became our standard picture of the world
• Why Greenland and other northern regions appear much larger than they really are
• Why creating a completely accurate flat map is impossible
• Why north being “up” is simply a convention
• How a country’s apparent size and position may shape how important we believe it is
• Why Google Maps can display different borders depending on where it is viewed
• What London taxi drivers reveal about navigation, memory, and the brain
• How relying on GPS is weakening abilities we once took for granted
• What GPS and AI have in common

Maps look objective, but they're actually very subjective and flawed. Where and how are they misleading us?

And if you're looking for a more topical take on Greenland, Trump, and the recent security deal -- be sure to tune in next week for my conversation with security expert Heather Conley.