The opening scene: choose a door. Image: pudding.cool.

You begin by choosing a door, and then you are in a room with 1,500 people who each answered the same question differently.

The doors read no, not sure and yes. Choose one and you walk into a room of survey respondents. Alvin Chang’s piece for The Pudding lets you walk among them and sort them by who they are. Narration is available, and the page asks you to turn it on. The two songs, “Sunday” and “Monday”, are original compositions made in Ableton Live.

The people come from the Global Flourishing Study, a survey of nearly 130,000 respondents in 23 countries who completed both waves, in 2022-23 and 2024. The room holds a representative sample of 1,500 of them. The broader historical and generational findings come from the Integrated Values Surveys, which combine the World Values Survey and the European Values Study.

The piece’s own notes make a point worth keeping. Chang says the percentages are there, but the story is in the broad comparisons and the direction of change. He also flags something the piece leaves out: worldwide belief and religiosity have stayed relatively steady. Researchers Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart explain that two forces cut against each other. In wealthier countries, fewer existential threats have meant less religiosity and lower fertility. In poorer countries, religion still offers security and predictability, and fertility stays high. So belief within countries has changed quickly while the global picture has barely moved.

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