On air: How do you measure happiness?

Florida updates: videos here / photos here and tweets here. Afghans are happier than they were a year ago according to the latest poll released yesterday.

One of the main reasons for this rise is an improvement in living conditions, with over half being happier as a result of more electricity. And the troop surge has also proved popular. Do these results surprise you?

The results have clearly made governments and NATO more positive, but not all Afghans share the optimism. 

This got us thinking. How do you define  and measure happiness?

What’s happening to women’s happiness?

Well, according to Marcus Buckingham, women are just getting more and more miserable. His new book suggests that women have been on a downward trend since the 1970s. Men on the other hand are getting happier. The book, Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, lays out the argument that that women just can’t handle choice. Have a read of  Ruth Sutherland’s take on this, he doesn’t seem to have won many fans. Here’s Bonnie Fuller.  Are women too afraid to admit that life was simpler when they didn’t have as much choice?

Stories for Tuesday 11 March

A number of subjects to mull over as possible talking points on the programme today.

Why are our kids so unhappy, arranged marriages are they a good thing, and citizenship – what does it take to be a good citizen?

What makes you happy?

A book by a man called Eric Weiner and the reaction it’s received has caught our attention. Put simply, he has travelled the world trying to understand what makes us happy. If he’d met you, what would you have told him?

Stories for Monday 10 March

Hi there from a rainy and wind swept London.. A number of things have caught our eye today.  Do Americans have the rights to keep out people they consider a threat; do we have a right to happiness; more doom and gloom from Iraq and an old British comedy about France under Nazi occupattion is to be screened on German TV.