Do I seem like an anti-mindfulness person?

Too crotchety to be mindful.

Because all the mindfulness people are like so nice.

I'm Angela Duckworth.

And I'm Stephen Dubner.

I'm a psychologist at Penn, and I run an educational nonprofit called Character Lab.

You also wrote the book Grit.

Yes.

And I am a writer, and I host a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. And you wrote the book Freit. Yes. And I am a writer and I host a podcast called

Freakonomics Radio. And you wrote the book Freakonomics among quite a few others. I did. And you and I

became friends. We did. And we discovered that both of us really like to ask each other questions.

And there's only one rule. The rule is there are no stupid questions.

Today on No Stupid Questions, how do you keep from losing

your temper over things that just don't matter? I have a terrible temper and when it erupts,

it's pretty bad. I'm so angry, I'm going to go read poetry. Also, why do so many of us have

greater sympathy for dogs than humans? I superimpose onto the face of every person who's annoying me, the face of some dog.

This makes you nicer to them?

Suddenly, I'm empathetic toward every person.

Angela Duckworth, I have a question to ask you. May I?

Mm-hmm.

So it strikes me that many people, at least in the U.S., at least in the year 2020, are very

quick to anger, often about relatively trivial things.

...