Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi Explains Why the Source of Happiness Lies in Creativity and Flow, Not Money

in Psychology | October 26th, 2008

Speak­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, famed psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi asks what’s the source of hap­pi­ness? And his answer comes down to this: Beyond a cer­tain point (and it’s not very far), mon­ey does­n’t affect hap­pi­ness too much. Rather, as his research shows, we tend to be most hap­py when we get immersed, almost lost in, being cre­ative and per­form­ing at our best. It’s an ecsta­t­ic state that he calls “flow.” The video runs about 19 min­utes, and is well worth your time. Some book titles worth check­ing out include: Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence or Find­ing Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Engage­ment with Every­day Life.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Amy Tan: The Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Ali G and Noam “Norman” Chomsky Talk Linguistics

in Comedy | October 25th, 2008

Here it goes, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist.

From Washington to Lincoln — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Uncategorized | October 23rd, 2008

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Ninth Circuit Judge on The Dating Game Way Back When

in Law, Random | October 23rd, 2008

The name Alex Kozin­s­ki prob­a­bly won’t mean much to many of you. But if you’re a lawyer, or a Supreme Court watch­er, you’ll know that he’s the Chief Judge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir­cuit (a real­ly pres­ti­gious posi­tion). Rather recent­ly, he’s been asso­ci­at­ed with a high­ly vis­i­ble pornog­ra­phy scan­dal relat­ed to one of his cas­es, and now this. A video doc­u­ment­ing his appear­ance long ago on The Dat­ing Game, a won­der­ful piece of Amer­i­cana. And the best part is that he beat Squig­gy from the oth­er slice of Amer­i­cana, Lav­erne & Shirley. Oh, the end­less wealth of YouTube:

Harold Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter” Animated

in Theatre, Video - Arts & Culture | October 22nd, 2008

and con­densed…

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Paul Krugman On The Financial Crisis And the Coming Recession

in Business, Current Affairs | October 22nd, 2008

How does the new win­ner of the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics think the US gov­ern­ment should man­age the big loom­ing reces­sion? And does the New Deal offer a mod­el for con­fronting this new jam? Have a lis­ten: iTunes — Rss Feed — MP3.

Electing a US President in Plain English

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 21st, 2008

We’re less than two weeks away (final­ly, at long last) from the next US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and that means that it’s a good time to deci­pher Amer­i­ca’s con­vo­lut­ed elec­toral sys­tem. So here’s a piece from The Com­mon Craft Show, which does it in a fair­ly cre­ative way:

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Your Digital Magazine Rack

in Web/Tech | October 21st, 2008

A quick fyi: All­top is a new web ser­vice (cre­at­ed by Guy Kawasa­ki) that aggre­gates RSS feeds about pop­u­lar top­ics. Name a top­ic and they bring you sto­ries from “the best web­sites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about, you can take a look at the area where All­top was kind enough to list Open Cul­ture. We’re in their col­lege sec­tion. But you can also find hun­dreds of oth­er top­ic areas here — art, books, health, writ­ing, cof­fee, human rights, you get the pic­ture.

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The Sun and Its Magnetic Beauty

in Science | October 21st, 2008

In case you missed them, I want­ed to flag some pho­tos that made their way around the blo­gos­phere yes­ter­day, thanks in part to Boing­Bo­ing. The Swedish 1‑m Solar Tele­scope, oper­at­ed by the Insti­tute for Solar Physics, has cap­tured images that let you see the sun in an entire­ly new way. Below, you’ll find a detailed view of the mag­net­ic struc­ture of the Sun’s sur­face. Rather beau­ti­ful. For more pho­tos, def­i­nite­ly have a look here. 

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin — Round #4

in Comedy | October 20th, 2008

This one fea­tures a guest appear­ance by Palin her­self. Video starts after the brief, but unavoid­able com­mer­cial. Let ‘er roll:

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