Hi, NSQers! We're off this week, so we're sharing one of our favorite questions from the NSQ archive.

We'll be back next week with a brand new episode in the meantime, enjoy this classic conversation.

I think that's a real paradox.

I'm Angela Duckworth.

I'm Stephen Dupner, and you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, is there a formula for good advice?

Hey, this is excellent advice. Why aren't people taking it?

Stephen, I wonder what the very best piece of advice you've ever received was.

Oh, that's so easy. I can't believe you've been asking me that, Angela.

Now I really want to know.

The best advice I've ever received was approximately 1.5 years ago when an angel from heaven

visited me and said, Stephen, life is short, and if you know what's good for you,

you will ask Angela Duckworth to make a podcast with you and call it No Stupid Questions.

That was not the best piece of advice you've ever received.

I think it was an angel from heaven. It might actually just been our executive producer.

Okay, you will have to tell me the second best piece of advice you've ever received then.

The advice that comes to mind is something that happened when I was quite young.

I was maybe 11, 12 years old.

I grew up in upstate New York, kind of middle of nowhere.

And our dad had died when I was about 10.

And so it was rural, but people really did look out for each other.

There came to emerge a pattern where men who were not my father would contact my mom and say,

...