On the Wild Card podcast, author John Green fights to be optimistic.

I keep learning again and again that hope is the right response to the human condition.

And I have to learn this over and over again because despair is an incredibly powerful force in my life.

I'm Rachel Martin. Join us for NPR's Wild Card Podcast, the show where cards control the conversation.

Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us,

Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers,

and we're broadcasting this week from the Center for Marital Bliss here at Car Talk Plaza.

Now, get this, there was an article in the paper, in our paper, the Boston Globe recently. It probably was from one of the wires services.

Well, it was actually reprinted from the Los Angeles Times. Okay. And the gist of it is,

here's the title, Marriages Endure when you just do what your wife says. Yeah. That's the

some researcher, a guy named John Gottman from the University of Washington.

Whose wife told him to do the research?

What they were actually doing?

They were studying the effect of what we call active listening.

This is what marriage counselors have been telling people to do for decades.

I'm sorry, what did you say?

Your wife says something, and you say to her,

yes, dear, I understand that,

and I guess what you mean by that is

and then you would have an exchange.

And you would come to some realization, some epiphany, whatever.

They found out that that does nothing to enhance marital bliss.

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