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Why is America punching below its weight on happiness?
It's a good time to be alive in America. The wealthiest nation on earth, though, is full of unhappy people, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker points out on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer.
"The United States is the anomaly because it's rich. It's more or less democratic, but it has lower life expectancy. It has poor scores on math tests, has more obesity, more drug addiction, more violence," Pinker tells Ian Bremmer. So you'd think Americans would be fat and happy, but it turns out they are fat and unhappy.
Compared to its wealthy counterparts, the United States punches well below its weight in terms of happiness and quality of life given its wealth. Pinker offers many reasons for that anomaly, seen through the lens of his approach to measuring the state of human progress.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Is life better than ever for the human race?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
Can sports fans save America?
You already know that America is getting more polarized by the day. Democrats and Republicans hardly live together, work together, or hang out together the way they used to.
But a new book called Fans Have More Friends argues that highly-engaged sports fans are less politically polarized, have greater trust in institutions, and generally live happier lives.
To learn more, GZERO's Alex Kliment met up with one of the book's authors, Dave Sikorjak, a marketing consultant who studies the motivations of sports fans. Where'd Alex and Dave link up? Where else -- at a tailgate in Philadelphia ahead of a game between the Giants and the Eagles. It all went great until Alex got taped to the front of a bus, but you'll get to that...