- [April Hepikoski] Would you like to go meet some of the preschoolers out in the bog?

- I've never been in a bog.

It's very squishy.

(children laughing) This is happiness.

- Americans may seem divided, but we're united in the pursuit of at least one thing, happiness.

My name is Amanda Brinkman.

I've spent years traveling across the country, uncovering some of the mystery and meaning behind this elusive thing we all want.

Hey guys!

Join me as I meet Americans on their own incredible pursuits, discovering happiness in some seriously unexpected places.

(cheering) (upbeat music) - We hold these truths to be self-evident.

- That all men are created equal.

- That everyone is created equal.

- That they're endowed by their creator.

- With certain unalienable rights.

- Certain alien bites.

- Certain unalienable rights.

- Que todos estos son.

- That among these are, - Life, - Liberty, - and the pursuit of happiness.

(cheerful music) Alright, I am on my way to meet with April, who can fit her entire month's garbage into one mason jar.

This is my garbage for two hours worth.

So it is not going well yet.

I don't know.

She's not going to be happy with me.

- We live in a highly consumer-driven society, and we always seem to want more.

Ooh, you made it!

That's not really the key to happiness.

Zero-waste advocate and nature preschool teacher April Hepikoski is on a personal mission that puts a modern spin on Benjamin Franklin's old adage, "Waste not, want not."

She's teaching others that a pursuit of less is possible, one small change at a time.

Hi, April!

- Good to see you.

- Alright, I did it!

- Awesome, you did mason jar challenge!

- Yeah, I think I might need some help.

- (laughs) We'll take a look at all of it.

- We just started composting, which I'm really excited about.

- [April] Oh, awesome.

- It's just like one small habit shift, and it's interesting how little things like that can help a person feel like they're contributing contributing to the overall good in some way.

Are you proud of me?

I need you to say you're proud of me.

- I am proud of you.

(laughing) Way to go.

- I really jammed them in here.

How did you spend a whole month in one of these things?

Oh my gosh.

Napkin, protein shake.

- [April] So you got gum wrappers, straw wrapper, cup.

- [Amanda] This is a pretty typical like drive.

- Yep, and you made all of this on your drive here.

Okay.

Yeah.

There was a little like, huh.

- All right, so you can absolutely compost these.

You said you had got coffee in this, so you could just have a reusable coffee cup and fill it at the gas station there.

- I can take it inside with me.

- Just bring it in and ask.

- Okay, let me have it with the straw.

I don't know.

- It's hard in the car.

Granola bar.

You could buy your own granola bars in bulk.

So this is how we buy our granola bars.

- These are good.

These feel very natural.

- They're so good.

- So this is kind of your zero waste shelf.

Look at this, all these different items are ones that you bought in bulk.

It's not all perfection.

Like you also have some items that are packaged.

I could do that.

I could start buying more items in bulk.

- When I first started out in my journey of zero waste, I was struggling deeply with endometriosis.

And once I found out that endometriosis can be affected by the chemicals in plastic, um because it can mimic the hormone estrogen.

I was like, how do you buy things without plastic?

I started living, you know, more of the zero waste lifestyle, trying to reduce my waste.

- [Amanda] So now what am I looking at here?

What is this?

So when we cook eggs, which we do every morning, we put them in here and then I bake them in the oven and then I crumble them up for the chickens and they eat these for a good source of calcium.

- [April] Zero waste is such an absolute term.

- It's so intimidating.

- Yeah, so really what we're doing is just trying to take the guilt off and try to have fun instead with this 'cause that's how you're gonna make it more of a sustainable journey 'cause you don't have to do things perfectly.

It's not the goal.

- Okay, did you forage these from the land?

- [April] Yes, we got catnip, goldenrod, valerian.

Some people think it smells like dirty socks.

- Oh, I can't wait.

Like dirty socks like that have been marinating in pickle juice.

(laughing) - What do you use that for?

- Um, a tea.

- April's forage tea is very different from the tea that the Sons of Liberty famously tossed into the Boston Harbor.

Colonial America had a booming consumer culture filled with luxury imports, but the reliance on British goods was costing them in more ways than one.

The revolution was so much more than a boycott.

It was a radical upending of middle-class life, returning Americans to the ethics of thrift.

This resourceful approach redefined wealth, something April knows a thing or two about.

The way you think about wealth is so different than the average American.

Like, how would you define wealth?

- It's not about the things, it's about having a slow, content life.

I guess my version of wealth is kind of specific, it's about being more connected to nature and the community and to God.

All of those things bring wealth.

I mean, if you just look out in nature, it provides what you need.

- Mm-hm.

Mn-hm (cheerful music) - [Amanda] Is that a Christmas tree?

- Yes, every year after Christmas, I give it to the goats and they can nibble on it.

- Good fiber, I guess.

[Amanada] On the birch trees, are these tapping bags?

- Yep.

- I didn't know you can tap birch.

- So we can tap the birch trees as well as maple trees.

This is one of the foods that I forage.

Get your spoon under there and catch a drip.

- Look at me.

I don't have to be anywhere.

I'm cool.

I can go slow.

No, I can't.

Come on!

(April laughing) Drip, okay.

It's good.

I can see how people would just drink it like that.

Thank you, birch tree.

[April] Would you like to go meet some of the preschoolers out in the bog?

- Yes, Please!

I've never been in a bog.

- We love it so much.

- It's so soft!

- It's a lot of puddles.

- It's very squishy.

(water splashes) (kids laughing) - This is prime childhood right here.

- Yes, oh my gosh!

Hey guys!

You're just hanging out in the bog.

- This is happiness.

[April] There's research that's found that people who have more experiences in natural wild spaces as a young child are more sustainably minded as an adult.

So I love that I can be part of that in their childhood.

Did you guys see these cool plants?

It's really soft.

- Being happy really has a lot to do with being present and in the moment.

Its like you don't even have to explain that to children.

When do you think we loose that?

- Once all the background chatter starts, it distracts you from everything that's happening around you and you're always in your head.

(calm music) - [April] Sometimes I'll sit out here for an hour by myself just to find that sense of calm, release any sort of stress because those are the things that separate us from our happiness and contentment.

- My entire right foot is like completely submerged in water.

(April laughing) - Mine too.

- Like, oh my gosh.

[Amanda] I appreciate you navigating me through.

This is very helpful.

You're professional bog walkers.

[April] Can you guys each feed a little treat to the goats?

- I didn't know I was gonna feed goats.

This is a great delight.

- I think we're meant to be connected to nature.

We're meant to be walking outside barefoot.

We're not meant to be this disconnected.

Oh, show her the baby chicken.

When we have so much excess in our homes, in our lives, and in our mental thoughts, we are disconnected.

- How am I doing?

Do I sound like a chicken?

- I think we're being sold this narrative right now in this country that we're all so divided, and we disagree on so many things.

And I just don't think it's true.

I think everybody wants a sense of connection.

They want to provide for their families.

Everyone is kind of in a pursuit of happiness that looks fairly similar.

- Have a seat.

- And that community and nature reminds us of that all the time.

- Yes, all the animals, all the trees and the plants, like all of the food that I forage, you build a relationship with every single plant.

So there's not just community with people, but there's community out in nature too.

- They're not toys.

- That is a good thing to remember.

- My favorite animals are bunnies.

They like to hop and I like to hop.

- If I had a past life, I'd be like an animal in the forest.

- Happiness is cats.

- When I was, I would say, seven or eight years old, we lived in an area where there was a little creek and it had all these little yellow flowers.

I would go down and just dance among them.

- My most favorite animal is wolves.

(howling) - I got to see 10 mountain goats.

I was so excited.

My daughter thought I was about eight years old.

(laughing) - I just love like when we go exploring you just feel the breeze on your face.

- What better way to feel free than just walking outside and enjoying the outdoors.

- Well, it engages your whole being.

- Happiness is nature.

(upbeat big band music) - I thought that happiness was a life of abundance.

Having been tested by adversity, what it means to pursue happiness has changed significantly.

[Amanda] Sarah Gad raznks among the nation's top defense attorneys under 40, fighting every day for her clients' civil liberties.

So she could definitely hold her own against the signers of the declaration, almost half of whom were lawyers.

But Sarah has also experience with justice system from the other side of the law.

- Come on in.

- So I hear you have a home improvement project.

- Yes.

- I'm a terrible choice, but I will try to be helpful.

- Well, this should be pretty easy.

I have this wallpaper that was here when I moved in, and I don't really like it here.

- All right, so we're just going to pull from the bottom?

- Yep.

- This feels like more fun than installing.

- Yeah, this would be much harder to do alone, so thank you for helping.

(laughing) - Don't tell my husband.

I don't want him thinking I'm actually good at this stuff.

- This is a Phillips, but I need a flat head.

Is that a Phillips?

- Yes, you've got it.

(sighs) (upbeat music) [Amanda] How long have you owned the home?

- I bought this home in August of 2022.

As soon as I got admitted to the bar and started my own practice, I'd always dreamed of having my own home, but because of my criminal history, I never thought I was gonna be able to even rent an apartment, let alone own a home.

So it means everything to me.

- It's crazy when you think about like the founding fathers like original definition of the pursuit of happiness often included like the right to property, which wouldn't have been a reality for us as women to own property at the time.

But wasn't it life, liberty and the pursuit of property at one point?

[Amanda] It's true.

The famous triad was borrowed by Thomas Jefferson from English philosopher, John Locke, who believed that the three natural rights included life, liberty, and property.

But he wasn't just talking about one's estate.

Locke proposed that property represented the output of one's hard labor and was quite radically a concept for bodily autonomy.

In Locke's own words, "Every man has a property in his own person."

For Sarah, freedom and home ownership go hand in hand.

[Sarah] I think that my home means a lot to me because it's the grind that went into getting to this place.

I didn't just graduate college, go to law school, get a job.

I went to medical school, then because of a car accident, ended up in the hospital for months, then the addiction, then the rehab centers that I flunked out of, and then in and out of jail.

When I was in the Cook County jail, I was sexually and physically assaulted.

I was kicked in the face so many times that my nose had literally collapsed, and then I had to have surgery to get a portion of my rib cage taken out to rebuild the bridge of my nose.

My sisters saw what I looked like, and they started raising hell, and they reached out to newspapers, attorneys.

So I met Kathleen Zellner because of what happened to me in the Cook County Jail, and she said she was gonna file a lawsuit, and she did.

And we grew quite close.

After I was released from jail, she said, "We're going to give you something to do, and then you can figure out what you're gonna do from here, but this is a starting point for you."

And the only condition was, I had to take my recovery seriously.

And it wasn't hard when I finally had a purpose again.

She truly saved, she saved my life in so many ways.

Everything is on the line when you are in the criminal justice system.

And so I think the one thing that I'm kind of known for is being very aggressive when it comes to advocating for liberty.

You can't really pursue happiness when you don't have your liberty.

(soft music) (blender whirring) When I was incarcerated, you could not buy ice cream from commissary.

And I just dreamed of ice cream.

Growing up, my family's from Egypt.

We would spend every summer in Egypt and they had the best ice cream.

And so when I got out, I decided to start making it.

It's very healing.

You did such a great job.

You're a natural.

[Amanda] If you were to talk to at your most hopeless state, like, what would she think of what your life has become?

- I don't think she would believe it.

I can't even describe in words how hopeless that time of my life was.

Being in the criminal justice system just strips you of anything that even makes any semblance of joy possible.

You're pursuing survival.

Every day I work with people who are also going through one of the roughest points of their life.

I find solace in knowing they're going to have an advocate.

- Do you ever eat it just like right out of the machine?

- Of course.

- Great.

- Thank you.

- I think my dog is waiting for that.

- Totally (laughs) Oh my gosh, it's so good.

(laughing) - Just one more piece of cookie here.

So I'll just take that out of there.

- I have a client, Asha, who's having surgery tomorrow.

So I was thinking of bringing her some ice cream.

- Hello, how are you?

- Hey, darling.

- Hi, I'm Amanda.

- Asha, nice to meet you.

- Thank you for having us.

- Your hair is fantastic.

- Thank you.

- I brought you this, homemade ice cream.

- Oh, thank you.

(laughing) [Asha] So this is my parents' house.

Definitely been a place of some relaxation and calming energy.

The sound of the water helps.

I got arrested on my mom's birthday.

I had five charges originally, all drug felonies.

If I would have been convicted of all of them, then 30 years.

So, a lot on the line.

[Amanda] So you ended up taking plea, but through character reference letters and your own letter to the judge, you ended up serving no time.

- Right.

I'm not sure what it was in my letter that moved her the way it did, but I'm glad it worked out.

[Sarah] The judge said it was the best letter she'd read in her 18 years on the bench.

I'd seen in Asha elements of myself.

Asha was her own best advocate.

She was really good at it.

(laughs) And so when I found out that she had plans to go to law school, I was like, well, that explains a lot of this.

I thought it would be such a waste of potential, such a waste of a life to send her to prison.

I could tell this was a wake-up call.

And if she was given a second chance, the judge did not have to worry about her.

- How do you think about happiness now on the other side of that?

- Kind of even more the little things, I think.

Just being able to pursue what I want to pursue.

I ideally would love to be doing the exact same thing that Sarah's doing, helping people.

[Sarah] For me, the pursuit of happiness isn't necessarily like seeking pleasure.

It's reclaiming your sense of agency and being able to live a life that has meaning and value.

Having experienced adversity, everything is so much sweeter when you have that second chance.

[Interviewer] Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, I think that works.

[Interviewer] Have you ever made a mistake?

- Definitely.

- Everybody makes mistakes.

- If you make a mistake, that means your brain is just learning.

[Interviewer] What does being free mean to you?

- Um, everything.

- Summer.

- Eating ice cream.

- Freedom of speech or something.

- We have to define freedom for ourselves instead of people telling us what it is.

When I think of freedom, I think that is being in a state of relief from anything that's holding you down.

and I can just feel freedomness.

(soft music) [Andrew Dayton] There's so much involved in life.

I was the product of two wealthy families, and there's a lot of data now that suggests that your zip code across America where you're born has a lot to say about your long-term trajectory.

And that just doesn't seem like the type of America that we should be living in.

- [Narrator] Our founders had different views on finance, but they agreed on one thing, the dangers of excessive wealth.

John Adams feared it could lead to consolidated power and would inevitably erode American life.

Andrew Dayton may have ancestors with names like Rockefeller, but he's putting his influence to work, giving philanthropy a 21st century twist.

His nonprofit, the Constellation Fund, analyzes data to help close the poverty gap.

[Amanda] Hi.

[Andrew] Hey, welcome.

Take a seat.

Constellation is designed to make sure that my opinion doesn't matter.

You know, I've never experienced poverty, so I'm the last person anyone should be asking what's working on this issue.

Yet philanthropy has been really built around preferences of people like me.

You know, we live in a modern information age where we're using data and analytics in just about every other part of our lives, and yet it hasn't really found its way into philanthropy.

And so part of our role is to try to create a more, I would say, equitable approach to funding.

- It's incredible.

- Happiness is not the absence of problems.

We all have problems.

It's how able you are with the resources that you have, you feel that you can overcome any obstacle that life throws at you.

Our grantees receive unrestricted grants.

They are the experts, not us.

[Amanda] Yes.

- It's so patronizing sometimes from the funding perspective.

Assume that we know better than people on the ground doing the job.

- [Amanda] Yes.

(upbeat music) [Amanda] Philadelphia may have b America's one-time capital and the site of the signing of the Declaration, but it was also the philanthropic heart of the country.

There, the Quakers established schools for the poor, homes for the elderly, relief funds for widows, and even founded the nation's first anti-slavery society, led by America's philanthropic pioneer, Benjamin Franklin.

(upbeat music) - This is a really special organization.

We've always been proud to support them, but especially with all that's been going on in the Twin Cities.

- Welcome.

- Okay, who, what is, tell me.

(laughing) - Pancho is our emotional support specialist.

- I think Pancho's trying to steal your necklace, sir.

- He does.

I buy it specifically for him.

(laughing) (upbeat music) (crowd chatters) - Centro is this cultural home for all ages within Latina community.

We've been here for almost 53 years.

We have the only Latine Spanish immersion Montessori school in the entire state.

[Andrew] They say it takes a village, right?

And you've created one here.

- Exactly, that is Centro.

is the gran casa, the big casa, the big home for the Latina community.

(crowd chatters) [Amanda] This is an extraordinarily difficult time for this city and for your community.

What do you want people to know about the impact that Metro Surge had and what the real experience of it was?

[Ena] In just one word, traumatic.

If you look Latine, if you speak with an accent, if you look like an immigrant, you're a target.

It doesn't matter if you have your documentation.

That's the reality.

I had to come to work hiding, like I was a criminal in a car.

We're talking here about big things.

We were getting medications for tuberculosis, for cancer.

All of our volunteers were mostly white American Caucasian people, Black people, Indigenous people, they came all together.

They still continue to show up.

[Andrew] We knew that Centro was really at the center of so much of this.

I think 80% of those who were deported in our community were Latin American, 88% of those were working age men.

So families being torn apart and philanthropy had not just an opportunity, but I think an obligation to support organizations like yours that were so well positioned to move the needle during this time.

(applause) Hola!

Hola, hola!

These are our wonderful, wonderful volunteers.

It's joy for every family that gets this food, knowing we are not that alone.

So thank you.

When Consolation Fund came, it appears this little light of hope, right?

But when you're alone, isolated, you lose hope.

You think nothing can change, only for the worst.

- Hope is everything in those moments.

- So hope was what got us through.

[Andrew] Someone put a billboard downtown that says neighbor is a verb here.

I think Centro is an example of that.

Being a neighbor is a lot more than living next to someone.

It's being part of their life and lifting them up when they need a hand.

- Yeah.

(soft music) [Andrew] You know, I think it's easy to confuse net worth and self worth.

Something that I learned early on was that the resources that I'd been given wasn't something that I should draw happiness from, it's what I was able to do with what I'd been given.

And what Constellation is focused on doing is giving people that baseline level of support to be able to define what happiness means for them.

'Cause I think it's hard to undertake any type of pursuit, including a pursuit of happiness, without that foundation.

- Yeah.

- You know, I grew up in a political family, and my dad's best friend when I was growing up was Paul Wellstone.

You know, Paul's famous quote, "We all do better when we all do better."

And I think that extends to happiness as well.

There's absolutely a community effort when it comes to the pursuit of happiness.

You know, we all do better when we all do better.

- If I had a million dollars, - Uh - Right now?

I'll just give it to my mom.

[Interviewer] Do you think wealth can buy you happiness?

- I'd sure like to find out.

- Well, I can say I'm rich right now.

I may not show it in dollars.

(laughs) - If you go looking for happiness, you're not gonna find it.

- A good life is sharing with other people.

- Share.

- Share.

- Be nice.

(child screeching) [Amanda] I think we have taken some liberties with this phrase, "pursuit of happiness."

We've made it a very individual quest.

And the Founding Fathers originally intended it to be one of virtue, hearing about the collective happiness in the community around us.

- I like being useful, doing something that makes a difference.

(laughing) [Interviewer] What do you like to do when you're happy?

- Hug people.

- We don't want other people to be sad.

- Happiness is ... really just something... - Jump!

- ...everybody should have no matter what.

- Oh!

(laughing) (upbeat music) ♪