Ravi Patel's Pursuit of Happiness (2020)
Actor, humanitarian, and documentarian Ravi Patel takes a trip around the world to investigate societal norms in search of answers to some of life’s most pressing questions.
Seasons & Episode
With his mother Champa approaching her 65th birthday and his father Vasant settling into retirement, Ravi begins to realize they may have very different ideas about the future of their multigenerational family. Traveling to Mérida, Mexico - a hotspot for international retirees - Ravi and his parents take a tour of the “good life” with the help of local retired expats who prompt them to reimagine the decades to come.
Ravi and his wife Mahaley visit Japan in hopes of finding that elusive balance between parenting and over-parenting so they can be better equipped to raise their young daughter. In a country that goes to extreme measures to ensure children’s independence, Ravi and Mahaley begin to question how their own upbringings have influenced their parenting styles - and if there really is such a thing as the “perfect child.
Ravi and his entrepreneur friend Matt Pohlson travel to South Korea to see if workaholism is a mindset that can be changed, or something they’ll have to contend with forever. As the friends eat their way through Seoul’s spiciest foods - the country’s way of “de-stressing through stress” - a trip to a “death café” puts one of life’s most important commodities into perspective.
Determined to leave his daughter with a country as welcoming and encouraging of the “American dream” as it was for his parents, Ravi travels to Denmark, where attitudes toward immigration are as divided as they are in the States. In Copenhagen, Ravi and his journalist friend Abdullah Saeed meet with local refugees and politicians who preach hygge and hope to squash anti-immigrant sentiments before they destroy their democracy.