Geoff Mulgan is the CEO of NESTA, former director of the Number 10 policy unit, co-founder of Demos, co-founder of Action for Happiness, and a key figure in the British 'politics of well-being'. We discussed the history of this movement, its successes and failures, and what Britain's new 'minister for loneliness' can do to combat this problem. We also discussed why academics on the left tend to be so suspicious of the politics of well-being, what universities can do to support wellbeing in their local communities, and why Geoff is so coy about discussing that time he trained as a Buddhist monk.