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In The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner set out to visit the happiest places on the planet. As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, he'd covered a multitude of catastrophes and maladies from more than 30 countries over the past two decades, and he decided it was time to investigate the other side of the story.
Using the ancient philosophers and the much more recent "science of happiness" as his guide, Mr. Weiner traveled the world in search of the happiest places.
He made his way from Iceland (one of the world's happiest countries) to Bhutan (where the king has made Gross National Happiness a national priority) to Moldova (not a happy place). He traveled to Switzerland, where he discovered the hidden virtues of boredom; to the tiny—and extremely wealthy—Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, where the relationship between money and happiness is laid bare; to India, where Westerners seek their bliss at the feet of gurus; to Thailand, where not thinking is a way of life; to a small town outside London where happiness experts attempt to "change the psychological climate."
Mr. Weiner was online earlier to take your questions about his experience writing The Geography of Bliss. Your questions and Mr. Weiner's replies appear at the bottom of this page.
Eric Weiner
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In 1993, NPR dispatched Eric Weiner to India as the network's first full-time correspondent in that country. Weiner spent two of the best years of his life based in New Delhi, covering everything from an outbreak of bubonic plague to India's economic reforms, before moving on to other postings in Jerusalem and Tokyo.
Over the past decade, he's reported from more than 30 countries, most of them profoundly unhappy. He traveled to Iraq several times during the reign of Saddam Hussein. He was in Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban regime fell.
He's also served as a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and, currently, Washington, D.C. Weiner is a former reporter for The New York Times and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He was part of a team of NPR reporters that won a 1994 Peabody award for a series of investigative reports about the U.S. tobacco industry.
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Rasha Mourtada, Globe Life web editor: Welcome, Eric, and thanks for joining us today. Can you start by telling us a little about the premise of your book? How did you decide where to go? What were your favourite, and least favourite, places in terms of "happiness"?
Eric Weiner: *Happy* to join you. The premise of my book, simply put, is that we are creatures of geography. Place matters, and nowhere more so than when it comes to happiness. Some nations do a better job of producing happy citizens than others. My itinerary was based partly on the findings from the emerging "science of happiness" and partly on my own hunches about where the happiest places lie. My favourite places were Iceland and Bhutan. Least favourite were Qatar and Moldova.
Jake Thek, Vancouver: You've been all over the world from India to Japan to Switzerland to Iraq. My question is, what is your definition of happiness and how does that reflect on the countries you picked as being the happiest places?
