Welcome back. Thanks again for being here.

One of my long-term beliefs about the economy. here.

One of my long-term beliefs about the economy

and the psychology of how people think about the economy

is the general idea that the past was not as good as you remember,

the present is not as bad as you think,

and the future will be better than you anticipate. It's just this idea that people have a very hard

time imagining a future that is much better than it is today. They understand when they look back that we had a lot of progress and growth and improvement in the past.

If you compare today's economy with what it was a hundred years ago, they understand how much growth you can have.

But going forward, that seems so hard to imagine a world in which the economy of our grandchildren is going to be, you know, five times greater than it is today.

That seems crazy to think about.

Optimism is very hard to imagine in the future even if you understand how powerful it was in the past.

And I have a little theory about why this is.

It is why I call today's episode compounding optimism.

Let me share with you my little theory that I have about why progress is so easy to

underestimate. I'm going to try to explain it in four different parts.

Last year a crocodile in Costa Rica was found pregnant and she did it all by herself with no help from a male.

The baby crocodile that she gave birth to is 99.99% genetically identical to her, the mother.

It is the first documented case of a crocodile reproducing asexually.

There are a few other animals that have been known to do this. Some birds and snakes can do it. But it's extremely rare for any animal, any species to be able to reproduce asexually.

And there's a very good reason why.

Almost a hundred years ago, an evolutionary biologist named Hermann Mueller

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