The world continued to get bigger and smaller in 2014. And the curious have mountains of information at their fingertips – that’s a doubled-edged sword. But amidst the big earth-shattering events, I found smaller moments that sparked my imagination and sated my curiousness. Here’s hoping your 2014 brought new discoveries, and an ever-increasing curious mind.

Defining happiness is evolutionary. So proves a new study on happiness that considers age in the mix. Check out the extraordinary and ordinary factors on the happiness continuum and how they are measured differently for different generations.

I fended off posting about selfies (except as the Word of the Year) and Obamacare, and many other top stories of 2013, and opted for the more offbeat and down-to-earth. Find out if I brought something new to some familiar and not-so-familiar topics in my 2013 year end wrap.

Another happiness study, another convoluted definition. There are an abundance of studies into what makes us happy, but even they can’t agree on how happiness is defined. I’m weeding through them for clues.

Happiness is more than a state of mind. It’s places – cities and countries around the world. Find out where the happy people are, and where the happy people go in this compilation of recent happiness studies.

What piqued my curiosity in 2012? Check out my top 12 year-end highlights.

“THIS EXHIBITION WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPIER … or WHY LOW EXPECTATIONS ARE A GOOD STRATEGY.” From a terrific exhibit on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania: The Happy Show, by the prolific and ever-über designer/artist Stefan Sagmeister.

Is life really getting better? According to the many world indices, it is. Check them out, and decide for yourself.

TweetA new month, and a good time to release my latest examination on measuring happiness. As the curious g readers know, I’m fascinated by happiness studies. Last month, the United Nations released a huge report on global happiness, which I covered in Oh, how happy you have made me. But what if we could easily […]

TweetI’m so excited. Finally, the United Nations has gotten in on this happiness thing. I’ve been writing about the culture of happiness for over three years now: The world has gone happy, Smile when you say that, The happiness quest ~ overrated?, and lastly in Locanomies, locazens + locavores unite. Where has the UN been? […]