New Year, New Recs! 2023

Around the water cooler 📰

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The Science of Happiness 🔬

The Harvard Study of Adult Development is one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever conducted. The study which began in the '30s, followed the lives of two groups of men: 724 men who grew up in the Boston area and 456 men who graduated from Harvard College between 1939 and 1944. Dr. Robert Waldinger, whose led the study for decades, says it's a study of what makes people "thrive." So what's the #1 thing you can do to improve your happiness? Invest in Relationships with Other People. According to their findings, the best indicator for maintaining happiness over the course of a subject's life was whether they described their relationships as having satisfying levels of quality and warmth.  These qualities aren't only ascribed to romantic partners and close friends either, you can reap these benefits across all kinds of daily interactions, from coworkers to baristas. In an interview with NPR, Waldinger says, "we get little hits of well-being in all these different kinds of relationships." Your task should you choose to accept it: Take the initiative and text a friend you haven't heard from in a while.

Other conversation starters to break the January ice đŸ„¶
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Recommendations

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To Watch:
  • The Last of Us: HBO's post-apocalyptic video game adaptation starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

  • White Noise: Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) directs Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig in this disaster comedy about a suburban family upended by an "airborne toxic event."

  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the newest entry in the Shrek franchise that is being lauded as its best since the seminal Shrek 2, and is quickly ascending the Letterboxd charts.

  • Pressure Cooker: What happens when Big Brother meets Chopped? Or, alternatively, what happens when Netflix doesn't want to pay for a celebrity host for their new cooking competition?

  • Stutz: Jonah Hill goes to therapy and takes the viewer along with him.

  • Atsuko Okatsuka: The Intruder: Atsuko's first one-hour comedy special is as offbeat and colorful as the comedian is herself.

  • M3GAN: a robot-doll sci-fi horror that balances horror and comedy. Starring Allison Williams.

To Read:
To Listen: 
To Try: 
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