‘1985, first year, second semester: Professor Ed Diener walks into the lecture hall and asks, “what do people want in life?” “Love, sex, money, happiness, a new boat, rock and roll, drugs”, the chalkboard fills up. He circles “happiness” and says, “I believe that all the other wants are about this one. I am studying the nature of happiness, and here’s my research.” I learned something life-changing in his class. He’d found two variables that mattered most in the pursuit of happiness: the quality of your relationship with others, and with yourself.

SQUID is such a simple but powerful concept that improves quality of life so quickly. So it has become the focus of my life to put on a costume and teach it full-time in the streets, instead of being a traditional professor.'

For years, Dr Mel Ganus, doctorate in education with a focus on applied psychology, has put on street shows in a squid costume to teach kids how to not get triggered by situations, and has co-authored a book about it with Dr Philip Zimbardo who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment.

Dr Mel starts by asking who I am, why I’m here, where am I going and what do I want. Then she shares her life story and her experience of attention deficit disorder and neurodivergence, about how she was introduced to positive psychology, and the origins of her lifelong work on Quality of Life Experiments. We end with talking about psychedelic mushrooms and the connectedness of mycelium.