He is the author of the international bestseller Stumbling on Happiness, which has been translated into more than 30 languages and won the 2007 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books.

He is the co-writer and host of the 6-hour Nova television series "This Emotional Life"[2] which aired on PBS in January, 2010, and won several Telly Awards.

[3] Beginning in 2013, Gilbert appeared in a series of Prudential Financial television commercials that used data visualization to get Americans to think about the importance of saving for their retirements.

For example, in one advertisement, people were asked to put stickers on a time-line to indicate the age of the oldest person they knew to illustrate the recent increase in life expectancy.

In another, Gilbert started a chain-reaction and set a Guinness World Record[4] by toppling a 30-foot (9 m) domino to illustrate the power of compound interest.