That at that time didn't have the name that it has today. But essentially research that falls under or within the field of positive psychology. Positive psychology, studying it.

Applying the ideas to my life has made me significantly happier. It continues to make me happier. And it was when I realized the impact that it had on me that I decided to share it with others.

That's when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher and teach in this field. So this is positive psychology, psychology 1504.

And we'll be exploring this new, relatively new and fascinating field. And hopefully, we will be exploring more than the field ourselves.

When I first taught this class that was back in 2002, I taught it at a seminar and had eight students. Two dropped out.

That left me with six. The year after, the class became slightly larger.

I had over three hundred students. And then third year when I taught it which was the last time, I had 850 students in the class,

Making it at that point the largest course at Harvard. And that's when the media became interested. Because they wanted to understand why.

They wanted to understand this phenomenon that "here you have a class, that's larger than Introduction to Economics". How could that be?

So I was invited by the media for interviews, whether it was newspapers, radio, television. And I started to notice a pattern during those interviews.

So I would walk into the interview. We would have the interview. And afterwards, the producer or the interviewer would walk me out

And say something to the effects of "well thank you Tal for the interview. But you know I expected you to be different". And I would ask, as nonchalant as I could of course.