Frog and Toad

Stop Doing Things the Hard Way with Dr. Angela Duckworth

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, 7 September 2026. The book comes up at 17 min 12 sec in.

Angela Duckworth describes reading Arnold Lobel's children's series to her daughters while in graduate school, calling it the most psychologically wise children's series ever written, with every story worthy of a standalone academic publication. She highlights the cookies story—in which Frog and Toad try to resist eating a batch of cookies—as a vivid demonstration of willpower's limits and the case for situational change.

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