10% Happier With Dan Harris

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- We also cover: What to do when you're feeling stuck, the difference between authenticity and sincerity, and his approach to work/life balance. Rick Rubin is a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer and a New York Times number one best selling author of the book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time and the most successful producer in any genre by Rolling Stone. He has collaborated with artists from Tom Petty to Adele, Johnny Cash to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys to Slayer, Kanye West to the Strokes, and System of a Down to Jay-Z. In this episode we talk about: Rick’s meditation practice The connection between meditation and creativity Why creativity is a birthright for all of us How good habits help facilitate the making of good art The benefits of accepting the magical and mysterious aspects of creativity His

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The great meditation teacher Sebene Selassie said this about today’s guests: “I think their work is going to revolutionize mindfulness.”  The guests in question are Jake Eagle, a licensed mental health counselor, and Dr. Michael Amster, a physician with a specialty in pain management who is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher. Together, they’re out with a new book called The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day. In it, they lay out a simple technique for “microdosing mindfulness” that just about anybody can work into their daily lives. Plus: Dan’s wife, Bianca, joins Dan as co-interviewer. In this episode we talk about: How Jake and Michael stumbled upon this method (the story involves pancakes) Why Bianca has had trouble booting up a meditation habit (and why Jake says he’s “a terrible medit

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The hidden influence that your surroundings can have on your happiness. And how to tweak things in subtle but powerful ways. Today’s guest is Ingrid Fetell Lee, the author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness. She is the former design director at IDEO and the founder of the website The Aesthetics of Joy. She holds a Master’s in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University.  This is the second installment in a three part series we’re running called, Mundane Glory about learning not to overlook the little things in your daily life that can be powerful and evidence-based levers for increased happiness.  For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7: https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/ In this episode we talk about: The physiological and psychologic

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Did you know that just 20 minutes of art a day is as beneficial as exercise and mindfulness? Or that participating in one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years?  Our guests Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen talk about their new book, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Together they explore the new science of neuroaesthetics, which explains how the arts can measurably change the body, brain, and our behaviors.  This is the first installment in a three part series we’re running called, Mundane Glory about learning not to overlook the little things in your daily life that can be powerful and evidence-based levers for increased happiness.  In this episode we talk about: Their definition of the arts and aesthetic experiences How they see nature as, “the highest form of art” How simple actions like humming in the shower & gardening can be categorized as art

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Our guests today trained an AI on the world’s most beloved texts, from the Bible to the Koran to the words of Marcus Aurelius, Maya Angelou, and Leonard Cohen. Then, they asked the AI life’s hardest questions. The AI’s answers ranged from strange to surprising to transcendent. Jasmine Wang, a technologist, and Iain S. Thomas, a poet, join us to talk about not only the answers they received from the robot, but also why they are deeply concerned about where AI might be headed. In this episode we talk about: The origins of the book The definitions of some basic AI terminology The biggest takeaways of their conversation with AI—some of the answers they got back were fascinating and beautiful The perils and promise of AI (we spend a lot of time here) The ways in which AI may force us to rethink fundamental aspects of our own nature   And what we all can do to increase the odds that our AI f

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Jennifer Egan is not only a novelist, she's also written short stories and award-winning magazine journalism. She's one of those writers who can both spin a fascinating yarn and load it up with insights into everything from human nature to the future of technology, all while pulling off bewitching turns of phrase; what the writer Jonathan Franzen has called “micro felicities.”  Egan is as funny, fascinating, and open IRL as she is on the page although it’s not clear she feels that way given she talks about how much smarter she feels in writing than in speaking! In this episode we talk about: Egan’s writing process  The power of writing by hand  The shocking, relentless, ruthless discipline that she imposes on herself to never do the same thing twice as she’s writing Curiosity, awe, and panic attacks How she handles feedback Her feelings of insubstantiality  Our cultures fetishization

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Today’s episode is a wide-ranging Interview with Zach Braff, one of those rare famous people who’s really willing to go there.  You may know Braff from the TV show Scrubs or the movie Garden State but Braff is actually a genuine multi-hyphenate; a true triple threat. He acts, writes and directs his own movies and other people’s TV shows including Ted Lasso on Apple TV. Relatively recently he put out a new movie that he both wrote and directed called A Good Person starring Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman.   In this episode we talked about anxiety, depression, insomnia, addiction, grief, social media usage, and what he means by “learning to love your fate”—a notion that is literally tattooed on his wrist.  This Interview was conducted in person at the TED conference in Vancouver this past April.  Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/zach-braff

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- In today’s episode, Dr. Donn Posner proposes a whole new way of thinking about sleep. First, he normalizes the sleep problems many of us experience. If you’re sleeping poorly right now, he says, don’t freak out; it’s natural and normal. Second, he has a bunch of tips for how to deal with insomnia, some of which you may have never heard before.  Dr. Donn Posner is one of the leaders in the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia. Dr. Posner is the Founder and President of Sleepwell Consultants, and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.  In this episode we talk about: The difference between chronic and acute insomnia How we can adapt to things that can mess up our sleep, like remote work Sub-chronic sleep conditions  What to do if we're experiencing acute insomnia so that it does

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- If you're not sleeping well, it's harder to do anything you care about. It's harder to get healthier, to be more focused and productive, to be happier, to be more successful, to have good relationships—all of it.  Sleep may be the apex predator of healthy habits, and yet so many of us are getting terrible sleep because we don't prioritize it or because we've told ourselves a whole story about how we're just not people who sleep well, and so we just live with it. In this episode, you’re going to meet somebody who decided she was not going to live with it any longer, and she launched an extremely detailed personal investigation in order to fix it. And luckily for us, she is a journalist, so she documented the whole thing and gathered extremely useful, heavily vetted information and insights we can all use. Diane Macedo the author of the book, The Sleep Fix: Practical, Proven and Surprisi

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Every year, Joseph Goldstein does a three month silent meditation retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. In this conversation you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one such retreat with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies or three papañca to use the ancient Pali term.  These are three ways in which we perpetuate an unhealthy sense of self. Joseph has explained that you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. You're about to get a masterclass in doing just that.  For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. His co-founders are two other meditation titans, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has been a teacher at IMS since it was founded in the seventies and he continues to be th

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- These days, the word mindfulness has become a buzz phrase but very often people don’t know what the word actually means, much less how to practice it. One simple definition of mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening in your mind without getting carried away by it. The benefits of doing so are vast and profound— from decreased emotional reactivity to being more awake to what’s actually happening in your life.   Today's guest Joseph Goldstein talks about a classic Buddhist list called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which lays out various techniques for developing mindfulness within your practice.   Goldstein is one of the premier western proponents of Mindfulness. He co-founded the legendary Insight Meditation Society alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. He also wrote a book called Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening.   In this episode we talk about:   The

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- This is a fun, weird, extremely interesting and inspiring episode. It’s about lucid dreaming, something that people might perceive as hippie nonsense, but is actually deeply woven into ancient and time-tested Buddhist traditions.  Our guest today has been studying and practicing Buddhism and what he calls nocturnal meditations for more than four decades. And he has remarkably simple and down to earth tips for doing this in your own life. He argues anybody can do this. And the proposition is pretty compelling. We’re asleep for a huge percentage of our life, and from a perspective of contemplative development, or training your mind, that’s a huge stretch of land that is lying fallow.  Andrew Holecek is an expert on lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep and dream. He is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and the author of scientific papers on lucid dreaming. He ha

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- There seems to be one clear bug in the human operating system — most of us do not like talking about death. Yet when we do talk about it, it can genuinely upgrade the quality of our lives. Our guest today is Alua Arthur, a former attorney who is now what’s called a death doula, which is someone who helps guide people through the end of their lives. Through this work, she has learned some extraordinary stuff about how to live life right now.  Alua is also the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. She is working on her debut memoir, which will be coming out next year called, Briefly Perfectly Human. This conversation took place at the 2023 TED Conference in Vancouver, immediately after Alua delivered her triumphant talk, which is out now. Special thanks to the TED Audio Collective. You can listen to Alua's talk and other TED talks on

Check out our friends at How to Be a Better Human podcast, as we take a look within and beyond ourselves. How to Be a Better Human isn’t your average self-improvement podcast. It’s a show that understands that being a human is hard -- because no one tells you how to do it well! Join comedian Chris Duffy as he has conversations with the kind of brilliant experts you see giving TED Talks. Listen as they share how anyone can put big ideas into practice in their own lives, and make them a little less terrible. Because although we do our best to figure out life on our own, we can always use some help. Find How to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Our relationships are the most important variable in our health and happiness, but they may also be the most difficult. This is especially true when those closest to us turn out to be emotionally immature people. Lindsay C. Gibson is a clinical psychologist and bestselling author who specializes in helping people identify and deal with emotionally immature people, or EIP’s. Her first appearance on our show was one of our most popular episodes of 2022. Now she’s back to offer concrete strategies for handling the EIP’s in your life, wherever you may find them. Her new book is called Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People. In this episode we talk about: A primer on the cardinal characteristics of emotionally immature people (EIP’s), how to spot them, and why you might want to What Lindsay means by “disentangling” from EIP’s, and how to do it What often happens to your own sense of

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- “Mindfulness” has become a buzz phrase. There are books on mindful parenting, mindful lawyering, even mindful sex. But what does the word even mean? And how do you actually do it? In one of his most famous and foundational discourses, the Buddha was said to have laid out, in great detail, four ways to establish mindfulness. In today’s episode we’re going to walk through these four “foundations” of mindfulness with Sally Armstrong, who started practicing in 1981, began teaching 15 years later, and now leads retreats all over the world. We posted this episode a few years ago, but thought it might be a good time to drop a good, old-fashioned, meat and potatoes, stick to your ribs dharma episode to help us get back to basics. Because, like Sally says, Guru Google can only get us so far… In this episode we talk about: How Sally got started in meditation – including sitting and in person ret

Have you ever noticed that no matter how much shit you buy, it never really does it for you? There’s always that next purchase.  I’m no anti-capitalist, but I don’t think it hurts to acknowledge the lie—or if you want to be generous, misunderstanding—at the core of the enterprise: that somehow acquisition will lead to lasting satisfaction.  This insight about the limits of materialism is what animates my friends Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who together, are known as the Minimalists. Several years ago, they released a documentary on Netflix. It focuses on how to declutter your stuff and life and how that can lead to decluttering your mind and reduced anxiety.  They actually interviewed me for it—even though I am not really a minimalist—and to this day it is the interview that generated perhaps the most attention of any I have ever done. For years, people stopped me on the street about that one.  Anyway, Joshua and Ryan are now bringing their documentary – aptly entitled “Minimalism” – to You

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- If you want to opt out of diet culture, then what should you actually eat?  Today’s guest is endeavoring to answer this question. Rachel Hartley is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and the author of a book called Gentle Nutrition: A Non-Diet Approach to Healthy Eating.  In this episode we talk about: The basics of intuitive eating Her thoughts on whether or not we should weigh ourselves Whether or not adopting intuitive eating means living with your face in a cookie jar forever How her work has influenced her own body image The eight guidelines of gentle nutrition Her provocative contention that “the healthiest choice isn’t always the most nutritious choice” Her take on some of the critiques of intuitive eating Her thoughts on trendy new weight loss drugs like Ozempic For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7: https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/ Full

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Most of us have an intuitive sense that there’s a pretty serious link between what we eat and how we feel. Today’s guest is here to explain the science behind that relationship. Dr. Uma Naidoo is a pioneer in the field of nutritional psychiatry and an expert on both the gut-brain connection and the food-mood connection. She is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional chef, and a nutrition specialist. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. And she is the author of a book called This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More. In this episode we talk about: What the gut-brain connection is, how it works, and why it’s so important Her contention that “we are in control of how we feel emot

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It’s an urgent question for so many of us: Can we exercise, can we take care of our bodies, without being driven by shame, self-loathing, or noxious comparison to other people? Our guest today has a unique perspective on this. Cara Lai is a former social worker and psychotherapist who is now a Buddhist teacher. She also used to be a marathoner. But in the last few years, her body has undergone some radical changes, leading her to some hard-won, fascinating, and deeply useful insights about how to strike the balance between taking care of your body and staying sane. In this episode we talk about: Practices for that moment when you’re getting out of the shower, see yourself in the mirror, and engage in a festival of self-judgment The surprising things that happened when Cara was forced to stop exercising A counterintuitive mindfulness practice suggestion for those with exercise routines W