Jaakko Piipponen grew up in Finland, the birthplace of sauna. He has never seen a Finnish house without a sauna, nor has he ever heard of one. There are more saunas in Finland than households. A lounge at Helsinki Airport has a sauna. There is no Christmas Eve without a Christmas sauna. Wherever Finland sends its Olympians, diplomats or soldiers, a sauna goes too.

The heart-health studies Americans like to cite were done in Finland, yet Finns live about as long as Germans, and not as long as Swedes or Norwegians, who sauna far less. So what are all those saunas for?

Nobody in Finland goes to sauna because it is good for them, any more than Americans go to a baseball game because it is good for them. Finns go because someone else is going, or because nobody is.

Jaakko admires the American enthusiasm for sauna and finds the seriousness funny. He’ll talk about what the sauna actually does for Finns, and what that has to do with Finland’s nine straight years as the happiest country in the world. Bring questions. He has a ranking of sauna types and is prepared to defend it.