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Happiness doesn't come to people who seek it too hard. People who try to find happiness

too hard, who chase it, end up unfulfilled. This is an insight that I got from many

people, but no one perhaps more succinctly than today's guest, Oliver Berkman. He's a writer for the

Guardian. He's based in New York City, and his book is fantastic. I read it years ago. It's called

The Antidote, Happiness for people who can't stand

positive thinking. And it looks at, frankly, the upsides of negativity. And he's very comfortable

with uncertainty and failure and imperfection. His Guardian column is well worth checking out.

It's called This Column Will Change Your life. He writes about social psychology and the

culture of self-help and how to be more productive and basically the science behind happiness.

It's counterintuitive. Happiness is one of those things that, and I think I mentioned this in our chat,

that it sort of comes as a byproduct of being useful in other ways. And if you try to, if you try to cling onto it too hard, it's like squeezing a bar of soap.

It just slips out of your hand.

And I felt like a little bit of psychological happiness and psychological advice about the science of well-being might be useful.

I will be talking with the great Oliver Bergkman, which I hope you enjoy.

This is We the People live. Oliver Bergman, thanks for being on the show. It's a pleasure.

Thanks for inviting me. I just want to get a background for people who don't know you about what

it is that you write about and how it came to be that that is your interest.

What do you do?

I usually say I write about psychology, which is the closest I can get to narrowing it down.

I have a column in The Guardian on a weekly basis, which is broadly about psychology, self-help,

...