My guest today, Dan Gilbert, is a Harvard psychologist, author of the blockbuster bestseller

Stumbling on Happiness, and co-writer and host of the PBS television series This Emotional

Life.

I do suspect that many, many people would be much happier if they did less better.

Welcome to people I mostly admire, with Steve Levitt.

Dan Gilbert and I have followed remarkably similar career paths.

We both had lots of early success in academics leading to a bestselling popular book which opened

up all sorts of opportunities, and once we had a taste of these non-academic activities,

traditional academics no longer seem so inspiring.

But we're also different in one notable way.

Dan is one of the most irrepressibly positive, enthusiastic, and jovial people you will

ever meet and me, who you know me, I'm just me.

So at the end of last year, we put together a podcast episode that captured the highlights

and the lowlights of the podcast in 2021.

And as part of that, I had to pick the single best idea that I had heard from a guest

in the entire year, and I suspect that it will surprise you, especially since you weren't

even a guest on the show in 2021, that it's one of your ideas that won the prize.

Well, I'm absolutely delighted that other people are talking about my ideas and saving

me the trouble of doing it.

The idea is what you call the end of history illusion, and our friend, economist Sendo

Molinaten, described it.

So could you explain that idea to listeners from the mouth of the creator?

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