Finland is renowned for its natural beauty, From its Baltic islands, to an extensive national park system.

Including green belts throughout its cities.

It boasts temperate summers and the beauty of the aurora borealis during its harsh, frigid winters.

But it is also renowned for its manmade attributes, how it cares for its citizens, choices it has made during recent decades, said.

According to international studies, ranked Finland number one in education for the past 18 years.

Number six in prenatal and maternal care and number one in governmental transparency.

We like to see ourselves as highly developed, high tech oriented, open democracy.

It is in the top ten for business startups and its business environment.

It is not the wealthiest nation by far and yet it tops the polls in so many critical areas.

The result?

For the past five years, Finland has been ranked the happiest country on earth.

We set out to find out why, and see if Finland's succes could be transferred to other countries and cultures.

I think this happiness studies, they don't really measure whether you laugh all the time or if you're dancing all the time or if you're like super cheerful.

They really measure whether you feel like you have some measure of control over your life, whether you feel like perhaps your children can do better than you can.

Whether you feel like you have a good quality of life, I think that's what they really measure.

The backbone for the quality of life that is key to Finnish happiness may just lie in its education system.

Good listening.

It's a very, very important base of happiness, education.

And it's an equalizer.

In Helsinki, we have this stragedy now that all schools are good.

So we aim to that.

Everything from preschool through university is free and in a way more relaxed in that they are not focused on or reliant on timelines and national testing.

The children that they are in the center of their learning and it's not just given from the teacher.

They are learning skills for learning and skills of grouping and skills of working with others (indistinct chatter) So we're doing yoga in the class because I want the children to be able to focus, but also sort of to lose any anxiety that they might have when it comes to being in school.

And I've also found it's a really good way to to set the mood for starting the lesson so that it's calm and they're able to start their work straight away instead of the teacher going and tell them, like, come on, calm down.

you do not need to write them down.

You need to find the information.

Is that clear for this group?

Is that clear for this group?

Yes, you may go.

Where would you go?

(indistinct chatter) that how you look on the computer at home.

The topic is the Stone Age and why I split them into groups is so that they get to practice their self-regulation to start with, which is something that this group is still practicing.

Okay, to take responsibility over their own studies so that the teacher is not telling them what to do, but they has to look at the instruction set for themselves and also to practice different roles working in a home.

So for example, being a leader or taking care of the materials or taking care of the time and such.

One of the extraordinary things is that the children are engaged.

They're not being lectured at lecture to, they're being encouraged to discover things themselves and the very process itself is rewarding and educational.

The cornerstone of Finnish society is education and it starts with investing into the teacher education.

No teacher has less than a master's degree, so they are experts in the role that they play in this society.

It's up to you how you teach it and in what format and when.

We do have the books to help us and to guide us if we want to use them.

Usually we do, but we can add our own things or ask the children what are the things that they are interested in.

For example, if we are studying Europe, what are the things they would like to know?

And then we can slide them in on.

On primary level.

We don't have standardized tests, we have national tests on maths and on on Finnish language, for example.

But it's the decision of the school, for example, to do the tests.

And most of the schools, they do it to see how it goes on, but it's not compared to anybody.

This is our class tree that we did at the beginning of the school year.

So over here that the children's opinions are the most important foreign values that they have.

For example, for some of the most important value was kindness or family values.

And of these values, what kind of actions?

What you have to do if you want to follow your values, in the leaves, we have help others or be kind.

And then the apples are the outcome.

If we follow our values and we do the actions according to our values, what is the result?

Happiness.

The children are happy to come to school because there is a good range of things that they do during the day.

Arts, music, sports, handicrafts.

It's very important of the of the whole of a person.

It's not just your academic, it's everything.

And it says if you own your own point of view, if you deserve sewing machines, driver's license put a cross here.

It's not just the range of activities that provides a ripe environment for learning.

It's also the food in their cafeteria.

school lunches offer a variety of healthy food options.

They consist of typical Finnish foods, a warm main course with whole foods, sides of vegetables, sprouts and bread and lunch breaks are long enough to allow students to enjoy their meals in a calm, unhurried manner.

Then they have a half an hour break again.

Everybody goes out to the schoolyard.

What is important is to learn how to be with others, how to move and to play with other children, and to get along with others.

And so these social skills is very, very important.

One of the things I deeply value, especially for my kids, is the emphasis on recess and the emphasis on taking breaks between learning.

So their learning periods are max 45 minutes before they need a break outside to go play.

Education is certainly a key element in Finnish success, but it's also ranked at the top in UNICEF's most recent report card for World Around the Child that looks directly at interaction between children and their surrounding environment.

They need to get their free time to play, to run, to exercise their bodies and their minds.

They meet their friends, they talk with them.

It's not time, which is not organized by the adults, but the children may do what they want to do with their friends.

They they get a good break because we need break to be able to concentrate again.

And if you translate that into the work environment, our kids here learn better because they got a chance to play.

And then you look and you ask, why do workers here get five weeks of vacation?

It's because you are more productive when you get a chance to play.

In a sense, this work play balance works for Markus, who's far more advanced studies, working on his master's thesis, take him into remote areas of Finland, which he enjoys, but he also understands the importance of keeping his professors in the loop.

So this is my first meeting back with my professors or my supervisors for my thesis.

After being two weeks in the field working on or doing the survey for the data set that I'm actually using for my master's thesis.

This one is important because this is right before my classes start and I have to make sure that both of them know that I'm on the right track with my thesis and that I'm still working on it.

Who felt sorry for being late?

Fred and I actually did get accepted into the ECJS O24 which is the drone class at Lambie.

Yeah.

And so there I'll be there now starting next week for two weeks I think.

And but then after that I'll be back.

Okay.

I think it's Monday through Thursday like full days.

Yeah.

We have planned to do first simulations end of this month, which means we need to do this a bit later.

Which is, which will be I guess during October.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had to mention to Fred that I got into the scientific drone course, which means that I'll be gone for the next two weeks, which pushes back my thesis just a little bit, but thankfully that's okay.

He's busy with teaching courses, so we'll be able to work around that and I'm just excited to get to learn how to fly drones for science and I will see you then.

At the beginning of October.

Markus holds joint U.S. Finnish citizenship.

Although he pursued his undergraduate studies in Washington state, he opted to move to Helsinki for his masters.

A big part of me wanting to come here was motivated in part by finances, or me being a citizen means that I don't have to pay tuition.

Being a citizen, I'm afforded free education here in Finland.

I even get a stipend from the government and there was a program that fit well with my studies, and so it really just felt like a perfect fit.

I believe that still, education is free of charge to everyone who's living here.

That's also part of the happiness.

So it's not only, of course, the school system is the base giving everyone their equal opportunities.

I get a stipend of almost 300 a month, and then I also get a very, very low interest rate loan for the two years that I'm here.

If the debt I will have will be mostly actually less than 7,000.

Having no tuition and being able to have subsidized housing as well as the the lunches on campus being 2.70.

It lets me do more of what I want to do.

And it also lets me focus on my masters a lot more.

Despite a top notch education system, Finnish society is not without its challenges.

For a country like Finland, there's two things that have made life very hard for us as a society.

One is the weather, the climate.

We're high up north.

It's very dark, it's rainy, it's often very cloudy.

And that is just for, I think, any human being biologically tough.

The second is that we've had very traumatizing wars.

Finland had a brutal civil war in 1917, 1918, when Finland became independent from the Soviet Union.

After that, during World War Two, Finland fought the Soviet Union for its independence.

So two brutal wars.

And I think the Finnish society, the way people handled the emotional toll of the war, was basically to shut down, not talk about it.

And that has come from generation to generation, I really think, and studies have shown contributed to depression difficulties in family relations and expressing your feelings, alcoholism.

so that tradition is still there.

Interestingly, even though Finns drink a lot of alcohol and, you know, tend to get rowdy and the typical Finnish homicide is a drunken middle aged man killing another drunken, middle aged man.

That's kind of the prototypical Finnish homicide.

Around 80% of homicides in this country, either the perpetrator or the victim is intoxicated.

But in even in those situations, since it's very seldom firearms, guns are involved in a very, very small percentage of violent crime, even though we have a number of firearms I'm not sure if this is the latest statistic, but Finland has the third highest weapon per capita density in the world.

So we have a lot of guns.

Finns, too, must deal with crime and punishment, though their approach differs in key ways from what you'll find in the U.S. there is no death penalty.

Even life sentences rarely last more than a couple of dozen years in the prison system.

I mean, you've seen them all over the world, including the United States.

Tell me what is different about the Finnish system Comparison point is our length of the life sentence.

The average life sentence is 14.5 years.

So it's quite short compared to other systems.

For example, I met in San Quentin.

Some inmates were told that they they had a 40 year sentence, which was, what?

For 40 years?

I think it's impossible to avoid institutionalization.

In that case, it's impossible.

We need to make our best in our prison service to help these people, to be able to go back to a normal life and also to prevent recidivism, reoffending.

Inmates are held in either open or closed prisons, depending on their risk, with the ability to earn their way from a very restricted setting to the openness of a country setting.

The goal is to eventually move them smoothly back into society.

(indistinct chatter) So this is my room, or cell.

I'm been here for like the majority of the day, like 20 hours, 19 hours anyway.

So of course this TV, my bed, I cannot say that it's very comfortable.

But, you know, I get by, I get by and here, I have toilets that slide myself.

It's a little bit smaller than the others, but it's okay.

You can get this place comfortable, I feel like.

So we have to put up some.

And so I've been painting too.

I got that from the special director They can give you like paint and brushes and everything so you can spend the time.

This your count down to getting to getting out?

No, I don't want to count the days because that's just going to get really depressed, you know, I just put like when I'm going to work out and, I see.

Yeah, I've, I have a vacation coming Sunday.

I'm going to get like 24 hours.

Go home to my wife.

Yes, home to his wife.

Even those in the closed prison system are able to visit home with the goal of maintaining family structures so prisoners have a home to turn to when they serve their sentence.

So that's our main goal, to prevent reoffending.

And at the same time to treat individual so.

Humanely as possible, as normal as possible.

The only sentence and only punishment there should be the loss of the liberty.

The person has taken away, his freedom to move around freely.

That's the punishment.

It's not bad food or bad treatment.

Finnish society's punishment is loss of their freedom.

Society's goal successful reintegration once their debt is paid.

They were street clothes, not uniforms.

They often choose and cook their own meals and they are given occasional leave to go home to visit their loved ones.

I'm applying for a school.

I'm going to study car mechanics.

drugs, crime came into my life and I stopped.

So I want to finish it now when I'm sober.

Do believe in that, that you have a debt to society?

I feel like this is the right way to pay it.

You know, like after this, I shouldn't have any more debt And I think, like when I'm done with this, I'll be a man.

It's like a ritual,you know?

How did you learn English so well?

Watching movies here?

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In here, you don't have anything else to do, you know, You watch movies.

We have a gradual system.

You start from a closed prison into in closed ward?

And if everything goes ok, you go to a more open ward, and then little by little, you are a you are allowed to go to open prison where you have much more liberties.

An open prison like this one in the countryside, which houses far fewer inmates.

It's rural, quiet, built in many ways on trust, a trust that goes both ways.

Thank you.

So this is your campus?

No walls, no walls.

And the men can come and go, but they need to check in here with.

Yes.

And they have also electrical supervision on their leg.

This band.

This electrical band.

How often do they go beyond the boundaries, too?

Have you had many people?

Because it's so open and free here?

Very seldom.

Because?

They trust and they like to be here in because this is very free.

I want to say hello to my mother and the (indistinct chatter) And that freedom, even in the closed prison, includes weekly access to an important part of Finnish culture.

The sauna.

Every Finnish prison must have sauna.

And in the Finnish system, the idea is that the only punishment is to loss of liberty.

Otherwise you live normally and you cannot be normal Finn without Sauna we have counted that we have 46 saunas in the use of prisoners.

Finnish prison system, that makes one sauna per 25 prisoners.

Everything should be as normal as possible in Finnish prisons.

Is this partly because just understanding they're going to get out?

Yes.

How can we expect them to act normal if we do not treat them normally?

Learning how to cook is important.

There is that catering schooling here.

And also the prisoners can go to to outside to the school to learn about cooking.

What's surprising is there is no canteen or cafeteria.

They don't serve meals here.

The men can go to town.

They shop with money provided by the prison.

They come back here.

And then with this set up, they cook their own meals.

Now I come in one month ago.

How do you like it here?

Yes.

I like it.

So did you have to earn your way?

Yes, of course.

Yes.

You have to earn your way.

How?

Be nice.

Are you cooking your own lunch?

Yes.

What are you having today?

I don't know, we got to to the market at about 1 oclock with the bus and buy food for one week.

So you can get what you want in the prison But what do you need here?

The television, X-Box, video games, Look, movies.

You were two years in the closed.

Yeah.

And you've just come here.

What do you think about this?

You're cannot want much more from prison.

You go to work, you get normal salary, you have nothing to pay.

You just save all your money.

Many inmates have jobs in the nearby town, helping them earn money and build up resumés that will help them pursue employment when they're released.

One setting is in the middle of a national park where they're helping improve the park experience for visitors.

Not a bad place to work.

So this is a beautiful national park.

Yes.

And your crew is out here.

What are they doing out here?

They are doing this Forest job here, make better and make also new.

So is that part of how your prison is part of the community?

Yes.

And and we have many these places.

This is not the only one.

What do you think the men get out of being here and doing this?

I think it's very good because many of them are from cities.

And here they see nature and this very calm.

Here, the prisoners learn carpentry skills while building a lakeside deck for visitors to enjoy.

When you came into the system, you started in the closed prison.

How long were you there?

Nine months.

And then you came here how many months ago?

About one month.

So it's very new for you here?

Yeah.

What do you like about here?

We can order pizza.

We can go to the store once a week.

We even get money from this.

So I like it.

They don't treat us like animals.

What would you like people to know about the prison system?

Because you've experienced the closed and the open.

This is a better option.

Open prison.

Because when you get released from a closed prison, you only have your clothes and maybe 50 euros and you start thinking, what do I do?

You go back to the same thing here.

You think it will be different?

Yeah, when I get released from here one day, I probably be a chef or something like that.

Your English is very good from school?

No, no, I watch South Park.

Yeah.

I love it.

Okay.

And the work you're doing, is it satisfying to know that people will use this?

Yeah.

It's nice to do something good.

You feel like your alive.

Should be finished next week.

The Finns also work to keep people out of the prison system.

They have programs both public and private, to help those in need with food, housing, education and more.

St Matthew's Church is one such resource.

We want to assist those people most in need.

If you are homeless, if you are hungry, if you have your children are in trouble, if you have mental health problems, if you are elderly, cannot any more hear, cannot any more read you have problems accessing the digital society.

Those people most in need.

For those we want to give assistance.

That is why this community center exists, Im a chef here and a supervisor I do a, home food out of food supplies.

We get our grocery every day and we have this co working with Helsinki City.

We have usually here four or five young young people here.

They work every day, 6 hours and every weekday.

And it's very rewarding to teach them what I know about making food.

Do you know what you'll have to cook that day?

No.

Each day when I come at 7:00 here, first go to the refrigerators.

Get them open.

And get everything out.

And then I look at, okay, what do I have here?

After that, I know what we'll do So we have no menus before I decided what to do.

Usually it's about 50 or 100 portions per day.

This program has reduced homelessness.

There are homeless people in Finland.

Probably you can't see them on the streets, but they are more hidden, of course, because of the climate.

There is a UN study that has shown Finland to be the happiest country in the world.

What's your response to that?

Well, maybe my response is the same as what many people think in Finland.

there must be some kind of mistake.

Or I the only unhappy person here.

I know it is not a happy life for everybody.

From your experience now living as a Finn, do you feel included yet?

I should say I feel included because I've been living here now for pretty many years, and if it wasn't working so well or feeling good with it, I think I should be back in Cameroon.

But I'm feeling good here.

I have kids.

They go to the daycare and they have friends.

They feel happy.

So I just ate there now.

I didn't have to spend so much.

It's just about gathering the relevant information and then you navigate easily into the society.

You know, we have a long winter here that can be difficult.

But when it comes to looking at people's wellbeing and those things, Finland is really super good in those things.

Smaller non-governmental organizations like Monik ease the path for immigrants as they become Finns.

Visible diversity is to some extent a new thing.

As a country we need to promote equality, access to the benefits and strengths of our system to all population groups.

We have immigrants who have difficulties speaking Finnish language and using like online services.

That is basically what we what we do here.

We help them fill out applications and help them understand Finnish society.

Many or most of your clients are people of color.

Do you find that that gets in the way of either job placement or finding places to live?

Yes, definitely it is.

It is more difficult then it's not just like work.

It's also apartments and everything.

It is it is well studied this subject that if you have foreign name, especially if you have like Somali or some sort of like maybe Middle Eastern or that type of name, it is more difficult for you to get an apartment.

Immigration is sort of young still in Finland.

So many, many services are sort of lagging.

We have sort of like expectation of average, like many, many services.

They expect that you are an average level speaker of Finnish and you have average skills in like I.T.

Many people they tried to study so that they can help their kids in their studies and they are hoping that it would be easier for them.

And I'm sure it will be because like, like kids these days in Finland they, they, they are raised in school and they start with which are multi-ethnic and they've grown up realizing that we just look different.

But we are we are very much the same.

I was born in Afghanistan, in Kabul, so in ‘92 we came as a refugee and and since then I've been living here.

I still remember very clearly my first day at school, thinking with myself that I have to learn at least one word.

And that's moi.

So it means in Finnish, hi.

So I was thinking that one word the whole night.

And then I went to school and then I went to in front of the whole school room and I forgot that one word.

That one word.

And I was so disappointed in myself, that how am I able to learn this language?

How am I able to find new friends?

And after a while, a girl named Charlotte came very quickly and said that, you have to come with us.

I didn't know any Finnish, I didn't understand, but I saw what she was trying to do, you know, just come with us and play with us.

So since then I felt like I'm part of this society and it was from the day one at school.

And many of the young people new to Finland hold big dreams Faizi came here three years ago to offer a brighter future to his daughter and son than they could have hoped for in their native Afghanistan.

He paved the way for his family, who just arrived one month ago and are already savoring their new possibilities.

(Indistinct chatter) You are very smart.

I come from Afghanistan because not I was not allowed to go to school for three years.

My dream is to become a medical doctor and help people.

Is very good for me.

For us.

We all work here.

I am working, my wife and my daughter and my son and this is very good life for us.

And right now that good life includes subsidized housing, though you would not know they receive assistance unless they tell you their home is in a regular apartment building, beautifully situated near a tram line with green space across the street, easily enjoyed from their airy apartment.

A lot of immigrant backgrounds who have come here and they are working and they are having careers and and they want to buy their own house.

So so it's important to mix all kind of people in the areas and I think that's one of the success stories that Helsinki, especially, as a city we have.

So we believe that it's really important in areas to mix.

So then it means also that our schools are mixed.

The taxes here very high, and you have earned a nice living, so you have paid taxes.

How do you feel about that?

Well, I'm a happy tax payer because that is what ensures the security and safety in the society.

So that's kind of the guarantee that we take care of everybody.

And that care includes health care from conception throughout one's lifetime, something that really helps this young mother feel more confident.

Emmi has been coming to this local clinic since before her daughter was born.

Every visit is carefully planned and personal.

They stay you of the new time when I come here on computer and then I have an app where the time shows.

It's so easy.

I can call here too.

These apps are integrated to their patient record systems and you can actually engage with your public health nurse via that app.

How do you feel about having this facility for you?

I think it's good to come here because I get to know everything is fine with her.

Do you think about going back to work?

Yes, I think when she's two years old, I go back to work.

In the meantime, are you getting support from the government while you're home?

Yes, we get.

Tell me a little bit.

about that.

Right now.

I get a money that I stay home with her.

You get that until she's three years old.

Your partner still works?

Yes.

Does his work allow him to be home?

He works for four days and then he have six free days.

I think it's very good.

So he really has time?

Yes.

You have that time to take.

When a woman finds out they're pregnant, they will call our maternal health services.

Then they will enter the services, the whole family will have visits at maternal health services during that pregnancy.

And when the baby is born, they will carry on visiting the same public health nurse that they visited all the time during their pregnancy.

Up until the child is seven years old.

So the infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world, and this is due to their care continuity and also the high education that our public health nurses and our physicians have here in Finland.

Combined that with generous parental leave, including eight weeks of paid maternity leave.

And you have more ways to understand Finns contentment with the society in which they live.

So Emmi leaves with a clean bill of health for her daughter and no out-of-pocket costs.

And in the minds of most of the Finns with whom we talked, they see the benefits of their tax dollars, helping everyone live a quality life.

You have shelter when you lose your job and and that your health care is never beholden to your job.

I got asked lot after my book came out whether I think that the only reason that the Nordic countries have the kinds of universal social policies they have and I'm talking about universal health care or affordable public daycare that's available to everyone, or very good public schools for everyone or free college.

Those kinds of universal public services.

Americans tend to often think that those are only possible in the Nordic countries because they're very homogenous countries.

Coming back to the the assumption that everybody is like one big family in the Nordics, and I think that's the assumption.

It's not based on altruism at all.

It's based on people's self-interest.

The way that universal social policies work is that everybody in the Nordic countries are expected to work.

Not everybody can.

There's no country in the world with full employment.

But if you look at statistics in the Nordic countries, being a part of the working age population is actually working and employed than in the United States.

So everybody is expected to work, everybody pays taxes and everybody gets these universal social services in return.

So when I'm paying taxes, I am really paying for me and my family, for my child's daycare, for my child's college, for my own health insurance, for my parents, elderly care.

I don't think of it as giving money away.

And I think most people in the Nordics support the system because they feel like it works for them.

Tax dollars, helping everyone live a quality life and that includes proximity to the vast national forest reserves, one of which is just a half hour from the center of Helsinki.

So we are in the Nuuksio national park and this is the most beautiful, beautiful part in southern Finland.

There are some beautiful lakes there.

And if you look at the forest behind us, that that looks like what we call a troll forest.

It's a fairytale looking forest.

It's beautiful.

It is magical.

Nuuksio has always been my my dream place to be.

So this is a place that it's actually only half an hour from Helsinki and still it's in the middle of nowhere.

The idea is to be in in the nature.

Being a Finn, I'm a techie and I wanted to have place to have privacy.

So in the middle of nowhere inside a national park.

So for Antti, his dream place is both personal and professional.

Since his technological work involves helping our planet become more ecologically balanced while helping people take advantage of the mental balance they find in nature.

We leave less marks here, so when there can be thousands of people walking there, but at the same thousand people walking here and then it's visible that the study is showing that nature lowers stress, increases creativity, it is happening.

I feel much more relaxed and thinking about complex things, working better with others.

It happens much more effectively here.

And one of the reasons why why it's so important to have this kind of paths is like, look, look at the ants and that that's a nest or nest of ants they built on the south side of a tree.

Or if there's no tree there, then the structure is built in a way that it maximizes the sun.

So they are one of the means for orientation And if you get lost.

That shows you that that south.

South is there because they do like the warmer temperature.

The nature makes us relaxed.

It makes us feel that this is where we should be.

And the combination of of a high standards of living, combination of high education and then working hard, we we, we are the techies, the Finnish people are the techies.

But then coming here and like personally, I'm managing a company, global organization and from the middle of nowhere and that kind of balanced life.

I think that that is what makes us one of the things that makes us happy.

I think our goal as societies has been to use technologies, use our innovation skills to work less.

Isn't that for all of us?

Like who is the most productive, the people who work the most or the people who work the least and get the most done?

I think that should be the goal for any society.

So that harmony nothing happens here except the real nature.

If you look at the earth, there are some some buried.

Like up in here.

Too.

Yeah.

So we have quite many of these here and they are delicious.

I think happiness here, how we define it, its not so much about the what we own.

It's not so material.

So to say, so it's not defined of how big of a car or how big of a house you have.

It's more of the the deeper contentment.

And somewhat, even that I'm a city girl, I still have a deep connection with the nature.

And that, in many ways is how the sauna fits into the lives of virtually every Finn throughout their lives.

It's not just the direct benefits of the warmth and muscle relaxation.

It's the balance they find there.

How long do you stay in here?

Ten minutes?

A half hour?

2 hours?

In sauna half an hour, an hour in the middle of nowhere, going to sauna you sleep like a baby.

I would say.

That is the time to forget everything else.

Just relax, enjoy your life, kind of stop everything and just enjoy your life together with your family and and friends and sometimes also alone.

Somehow it suits for Finnish people to be in the sauna.

We are not very talkative, talkative people, and that sauna is a good place for that.

And a Birch leaves And this is something that cleans your body and your soul, makes you relaxed.

Yeah, there are about 3 million saunas for 5 million people here in Finland, so it's very saunas everywhere, all sorts of saunas.

And I think that one part of why sauna so important is that it's a warm place.

It's been quite a recent research about the health benefits of sauna, and it reduces the risks of arterial diseases.

Saunas are integral to Finnish life and a topic of research to try to quantify its benefits.

I think sauna is part of our nature relation and that it has very, very long traditions that when people were living in the forest or not in in city centers.

And so it was a place to sit down and relax.

You are always relaxing and having a calm situation when you are having a sauna bath, you can't argue in sauna.

In a sauna, silence can speak volumes.

Yeah, this was a whole life circle.

People, they were born in sauna and before they were buried, they were cleaned.

The dead bodies were cleaned in sauna.

And through sauna, the Finns can have an experience that they are in nature and they are part of nature.

For somebody living in a city like Helsinki and they're just going to a neighbor sauna, do they remember past experiences or?

Almost all the Finns have some connection to that kind of sauna you were in.

Sauna in the nature, near nearby lake or in the forest.

And those experiences and memories are so strong.

Having a sauna in an urban landscape, they can feel the same feelings.

Sauna is so multi sensitive experience, feeling the heat and sweat and the sounds are very similar as they have been thousands of years ago.

When you throw water to the hot stones, you have all the senses in that experience.

And it's not just the sauna and the birch branches and the relaxation and the warmth.

It's also the contrast experienced by those who take part in the full sauna experience.

Now the lake is there, the water is at this time of the year, it's very cold and relaxing.

So I definitely wake up and then back to sauna after that.

So now it's time to go swimming.

This this is one of those things that makes Finns happy.

A possibility to jump into a very clean water.

So we made this as wet as possible so we can put the Salmon here next to a fire and make beautiful good tasting dinner for us.

And to finish this very Finnish experience, dinner, salmon cooked in a traditional kota.

It's time to put the salmon by the fire.

So we're going to get that plank and get it right next to the fire.

And one of the challenges is to not to make the fire too big.

Theres something about the fire that's also relaxing.

So for me, it's always been something.

I built fires all my life, but I've never seen this way of cooking.

I've seen it on the fire.

In the fire.

The center one is most well done and these two on this end are not that well done.

Some of us like myself, think that it should be pretty raw.

Just test like a smoked.

Antti, it is delicious.

Absolutely wonderful.

That's good.

Happy to hear.

There's no doubt that our experience at Polku has provided us with a deep sense of calm.

But more importantly, what have we learned as a whole from our journey to Finland?

Is it that education is the cornerstone of Finland's culture, that perhaps by having a well-educated society, Finland's people are better equipped to solve problems and work together?

Is it that people who have taken the wrong path and landed in prison can be reintegrated successfully into society?

Is it that society must do everything it can to keep people out of prison in the first place by providing basic human services?

Is it that free and accessible health care helps reduce stress, lowers infant mortality rates and increases longevity?

Is it that sauna and proximity to nature are critical to mental health and well-being?

What if we learned about happiness in general?

Finnish happiness is all about a feeling of contentment.

Do you feel fulfilled in your job?

Do you have enough time to do self-care?

Keep yourself, you know, eat healthy, work out, meet your friends, and if you can say yes to all of those things, or even just to more than 50% of them, you have a general feeling of well-being, of contentment.

And to Finns, that is happiness.

In many cultures, people are trying to achieve the best places in the best universities and the best financial companies and so on.

And I think it's not very typical in our culture, just normal life is enough to Finnish people We know that we have good quality services for us and for our families.

What's at the heart of it is this whole sense of trust.

Institutions like our defense forces, our government, our police force is there to provide me the security I need to live my life with freedom.

In return, I respect these institutions.

So when you have all of this, I think that's the base for happiness so that you can you don't need to worry about the infrastructure that you you can always trust that this will work for me.

The tram will come on time.

I can take my child to a daycare.

I'm sure that my children will have the best education in the world free of charge.

And one of the things I most admired about the United States was how much people put emphasis on freedom, that that we want freedom of speech, but we also want freedom to decide for ourselves how we build our life, what kind of path we create, what kind of health insurance we buy.

And I think that's really important and really admirable.

But people want that freedom and they're willing to take the responsibility that comes with that freedom.

But if you really think of government as something that we, the people, really build for ourselves, and the government's purpose is to give us the the services that we need so that we can truly have freedom from anxiety, from logistical issues.

The hours that Americans spend on trying to arrange and research and figure out everybody for themselves services that should be basic and for everyone and just be there.

I think that really curbs your freedom.

Finland does offer us a successful model of how to create a happy life.

Although it would be challenging to replicate Finland's approach to happiness in larger, more diverse countries, specific aspects could be adapted to meet specific country's unique needs.

After all, isn't happiness, or contentment, what we all seek?