This is an I-Heart podcast.

Family Secrets is a production of IHeart Radio.

I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is a bonus episode of Family Secrets,

the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

Today, my guest is Gretchen Rubin, best-selling author, creator of the podcast, Happier, and Brilliant Student of Human Nature.

Let's dive right in.

So Gretchen, even though this is a bonus episode, I'm still going to begin with the question that I love to begin my episodes of Family Secrets with, which is, tell me about the

landscape of your childhood, because you've spent so much of your life making human nature and

happiness in particular your central subject, I would say, and I'm curious about your childhood and whether the seeds for that

were in there.

Well, probably the seeds of that were in that. I was a huge reader as a child, and like my happiest

memories were going to our local library and checking out the maximum number of books.

And on the rare occasions, when we were going on our day long, car trip to visit our grandparents. We actually got to buy books. And on the rare occasions when we were going on our day long, car trip to visit

our grandparents, we actually got to buy books for the trip, and that was always a highlight.

But the landscape of my child did as I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri with, you know, a mom

and a dad and a little sister and a dog and visiting my grandparents in North Nebraska every summer. So I had a very

kind of comically standardized child that, of course, it didn't feel like that to me at all. It felt

extremely rich and strange and particular. But from the outside, that's what it looked like.

And I would think looking back, that's what it looks like, too, right?

Well, one of the things that's interesting, looking back is my sister, who's the television

writer now. Like, we both are professional writers, and growing up, we had no idea that that was

our fate. We weren't talking about it or seemingly working toward it. Like our whole family

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