Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. A couple years ago, I got to be good friends with Angela

Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of the book Grit.

We decided to make a podcast together. We called it No Stupid Questions, and it became

the first spin-off in the Freakonomics Radio Network.

So you may ask, how's it going? Yeah, not bad. Today, No Stupid Questions gets more than

a million listens every month. If you are one of those million, thank you. And if you're

not, well, we plainly haven't made our case yet. Perhaps today's episode will change your

mind. You are about to hear a new episode of No Stupid Questions made, especially for

our Freakonomics Radio listeners. Every week on No Stupid Questions, we try to answer

a question like, if everybody hates meetings, why do we have so many of them? Or when is

it okay to tell a lie? Or how can you stop comparing yourself to other people?

Some of these questions come from listeners. Some are just rattling around in Angela's

head or my head. In any case, Angela and I love having these conversations, and if you

enjoy hearing them, I have good news. You can get No Stupid Questions on any podcast

app for free, just like Freakonomics Radio. I hope you'll do that. Thanks for listening

and happy new year. They really want to complain, and all you want to do is dance around

them in a jig of joy. That's exactly what I did last night. So you're saying that was

a bad thing. You're listening to No Stupid Questions, the podcast that explores the weird

and occasionally wonderful ways in which humans behave. Here are your hosts, Steven Dubner

and Angela Duckworth. Angela, question here from a listener named Christina. She writes

to say, as we all know, there are those who see the glass as half empty and those who see

the glass as half full. Then there are those like me who see it not only as half full,

...