Dan Harris

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Friendship might not necessarily be something you've considered to be an urgent psychological and physiological issue. One thing we explore a lot on the show is that the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life, and sadly, in many ways, it's harder than ever to make and keep friends. With loneliness and disconnection on the rise, our society just wasn't constructed for social connection, and recent data suggests we're in a friendship crisis, with many of us reporting that we have fewer close friendships than ever.

Our guest today is Robin Dunbar, an Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University and the author of numerous books on the development of homo sapiens. Dunbar is perhaps best known for formulating "Dunbar's number," which is a measurement of the number of relationships our brain is capable of maintaining at any one time. He is a world-renowned expert on human relationships, and has a ton of fascinating research findings and practical tips for upping your friendship game.

In this conversation, we dive into the science behind human relationships, the upsides and downsides of maintaining friendships on social media, the viability of friendships across gender lines, and what science says you can do to compensate if you feel you are currently lacking in close friendships.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/robin-dunbar-372-rerun

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Relationships can be tricky. Especially if you find yourself upset with someone, and instead of talking it through, you let it fester until one moment you completely lose it and end up having to apologize. If you've ever felt like you had friction with the people in your life, or that you've been taken for granted, today's episode offers you solid strategies to cope.

Sister True Dedication is a Zen Buddhist nun and teacher ordained by the great meditation teacher and author, Thich Nhat Hanh. She edited several of Thich Nhat Hanh's books, including The Art of Living and Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. She was born in the United Kingdom, studied history and political thought at Cambridge University, and worked for BBC News before ordaining as a nun at the age of 27.

In this episode we talk about:

• The six phrases – or mantras – that Thich Nhat Hanh recommended people use in their relationships
• Keeping misunderstandings "dust free"
• Taking action to make sure anger doesn't fester
• The importance of recognizing that our understanding of the world is always partial
• Bringing mantras to work
• How Sister True Dedication went from journalism to the monastery

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sister-true-dedication-514

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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You may remember hearing a massively viral story from a few years ago about a school in Baltimore that gave students meditation, instead of detention.

Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez founded the Holistic Life Foundation and are the authors of Let Your Light Shine, which recounts the story of their work helping traumatized children in one of America's most underserved cities, and how mindfulness tools can help children and communities not only survive, but thrive.

In this episode we talk about:

• The story behind their meditation-instead-of-detention initiative
• Their experience asking principals to give them the most challenging students
• What it's like working in one of the most violent cities in the world
• The results from teaching students yoga and meditation
• How we can apply the lessons they've learned to meditation and life

Content Warning: Explicit language. For a clean version of this episode, please listen on the Ten Percent Happier app or at tenpercent.com

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/ali-smith-atman-smith-andres-gonzalez-513

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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One of the great perils and problems of our age is that we sometimes become too entrenched in our views and attached to being right.

According to guest George Saunders, the antidote is something he calls "holy befuddlement."

George Saunders is the author of eleven books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English. His most recent book, Liberation Day, is a collection of short stories that explore the ideas of power, ethics, and justice, cutting to the heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans.

In this episode we talk about:

• How George Saunders creates "holy befuddlement" in himself and in his readers
• How shaving down dogmatism can help us be, in his words, less of a "turd"
• How to deal with heightened expectations we might have of ourselves
• Healthy ways to enjoy praise
• What it looks like to cultivate a relationship with our self, to the extent that the self exists
• The importance of moral ambiguity in his work
• The impact of meditating – or not meditating – on our creative work
• And forgiveness and coming up short

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/george-saunders-511

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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It might be hard to find a more annoying cliché than self-love; it can seem empty and inactionable. And even if you could make it work, I think many of us suspect it would lead to complacent resignation or unbridled narcissism. But there is an enormous amount of evidence that self-love, or as the scientists call it, self-compassion, can make you more effective in reaching your goals as well as lead to better relationships with everybody around you.

On today's show, the great meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg will walk us through the idea that love— both self-love and other love— is a skill that can be cultivated with massively positive impacts.

Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is one of the first to bring mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. Sharon is co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, and her seminal work, Lovingkindness. Her forthcoming release, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom, is set for release in April of 2023 from Flatiron Books. Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has amassed five million downloads and features interviews with thought leaders from the mindfulness movement and beyond.

This episode comes out in conjunction with Dan Harris' recent TED Talk on self-love. You can watch the full talk here.

In this episode we talk about:

• The definition of self-hatred and its predominance in the West
• The real practical benefits of self-compassion
• Whether there is a difference between self-compassion and self-love
• Why many people resist the idea of self-love
• The distinction between empathy and compassion and how they work together in Buddhism
• How to have lovingkindness for somebody who doesn't feel we have the right to exist
• Reclaiming words like love and happiness
• And how generosity makes us more whole

Full Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sharon-salzberg-510

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Are you interested in suffering less? Today's guest, Dharma teacher Pascal Auclair, is going to talk about seven very specific and practical ways to train your mind for reduced suffering by exploring a Buddhist list called the seven factors of awakening, which is a part of the fourth foundation of mindfulness. We've talked about a bunch of Buddhist lists on the show before, but this is one of the happiest of all the lists to explore.

Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, who have both been previous guests on this show. Pascal is now a core teacher at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts. He is also a co-founder of True North Insight and one of its guiding teachers.

This episode is the fifth and final installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.

In this episode we talk about:

• The movement from difficult states of mind to more beneficial and helpful states of mind
• How the 7 factors can help you create your "best mind"
• The difference between the "energizing" and "calming" factors
• How to practically apply these factors to your daily life
• And specifically how the seven factors can improve your relationships

Full Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/pascal-auclair-508

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Thoughts are not your enemy in meditation. If you're getting distracted while you meditate, that's not necessarily a problem. Thoughts are natural. They're always going to come. The point is not to clear the mind and to magically eradicate all thinking, the point is to have a different relationship to your thoughts.

When we're not mindful of our thoughts, they march into the room, tell us what to do, and we act them out, reflexively, habitually and automatically— like puppets on a string. Our guest today, Dharma teacher Tuere Sala, is going to talk about how to cut the strings of what can often be a malevolent puppeteer.

Sala is a Guiding Teacher at Seattle Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Retreat Center. She's a former prosecutor who has practiced Vipassana meditation for over 30 years and is especially focused on bringing the dharma to nontraditional places. She is a strong advocate for practitioners living with high stress, past trauma and difficulties sitting still.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why we get caught in our thinking
• Understanding that our thoughts are not who we are
• How to direct our attention away from negative thoughts
• How the idea of permanency causes suffering
• Using thinking itself as the object of our meditation
• Noticing mind states
• Relative reality vs. ultimate reality
• The eight states of mind and their felt sense in the body
• And Sala's definition of true liberation

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/tuere-sala-510

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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The Buddha was an inveterate list-maker who gave us easy to remember checklists to help us do life better. One of the handiest lists the Buddha made was called the five hindrances, which is a part of the fourth foundation of mindfulness. This list outlines the five things that mess us up when we're trying to meditate — or, in fact, when we're trying to do anything. If you've got issues right now, odds are pretty high that you are in the throes of one of the hindrances. The excellent news is that the Buddha not only made a taxonomy of the hindrances but also a long list of antidotes. We're going to run through all of this today with Bonnie Duran, a great dharma teacher who is making her second appearance on the show.

Duran is a teacher and member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and Director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research at the University of Washington's Indigenous Wellness Research Institute. She combines extensive research and practice of Buddhism with her deep understanding of indigenous spiritual practices.

This episode is the fourth installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.

In this episode we talk about:

• How the five hindrances manifest in our daily lives
• Using the RAIN technique to investigate the 5 hindrances
• Whether there is any type of desire that is helpful
• Cultivating a sky-like attitude
• How to not water the seeds of negativity
• The similarities between Indigenous beliefs and what the Buddha taught
• How body scans can be an antidote to sleepiness
• And whether you can ever uproot the hindrances entirely

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/bonnie-duran-505

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Most of us come into the world with the suspicion that we are the center of the universe. This self-preoccupation is natural, but it can often lead to unhappiness in the form of rumination, wallowing, comparison, etc.

Our guest today, author Karen Armstrong, has a clear proposal for how we can stop living what she calls "artificial" lives and shave down our inborn self-centeredness. Not for nothing, she believes her proposal has the added benefit of perhaps helping to save the planet.

Armstrong is a former nun who has become one of the world's leading thinkers on religion (particularly the monotheistic ones). She has written such bestsellers as: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, The Battle for God, Islam: A Short History, and Buddha. Her latest book is called Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World.

In this episode we talk about:

• Practices you can try for using nature as a way to make yourself happier
• How Armstrong conceives of God at this point in her life
• The benefits of the Confucian practice of "quiet sitting"
• How her time as a nun paradoxically made her more self-preoccupied rather than less
• And her definition of holiness

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/karen-armstrong-504

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers

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Ever have that experience where you catch yourself in a moment of anger, judgmentalism or fear? And, with a wince, immediately tell yourself a whole story about what kind of person you are? How do you stop this from happening or cut it short once it's already begun?

The answer? Mindfulness or having the basic self-awareness to see what kind of mental states are arising so that you are not owned them. To use a technical Buddhist term this is called, "mindfulness of mind." It's the ability to see your mind states without taking them personally and it comes from one of the Buddha's most famous lists called the four foundations of mindfulness.

Today we are going to learn about the whys and wherefores of mindfulness of mind from one of the most esteemed living Buddhist scholars, Bhikkhu Bodhi. Bodhi is a monk, originally from NYC. He is a prolific translator, scholar, and author of books on the Buddha's teachings. He is also President of the Buddhist Association of the United States and co-founder and Chairperson of the Board of Buddhist Global Relief.

This episode is the third installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.

In this episode we talk about:

• The historical backdrop of the four foundations of mindfulness
• What exactly the Buddha meant by "mindfulness of mind"
• How we can know whether or not we are being mindful
• How not to let our mindfulness become a sort of compulsive internal nanny state
• Practical instructions for the third foundation (given that the Buddha never actually gave them)
• And Bhikkhu Bodhi's view that we should not be mindfulness zealots

Photo Credit: Hsiao Ying Chang (史曉瑛）

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/bhikkhu-bodhi-502

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Today we're talking about an often overlooked source of suffering— housework. There are so many ways in which housework can be a bummer. Maybe we're feeling guilty about the fact that our place is always a mess. Maybe we're driving ourselves crazy with obsessive cleaning. Maybe we have relatives who are overly critical about the state of affairs in our home. Maybe gender politics with our spouses and partners is a source of strife.

Our guest today, KC Davis, helps deconstruct these often rigid and daunting cultural norms that surround the concept of domestic bliss. As a self-styled anti-perfectionist, Davis has garnered a huge audience on TikTok with more than 1 million followers. She has also written the book, How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing. On today's show, she offers a ton of practical tips that are rooted in self compassion and the dogged determination not to use shame as a motivator when it comes to our domestic lives.

In this episode we talk about:

• One of KC's slogans,"You don't exist to serve your space, your space exists to serve you"
• The difference between what's "normal" and what's "functional". For example, why that pile of laundry on the floor is just fine if it works for you
• Why it's important to think of house work as morally neutral. For example, why doing dishes has nothing to do with you being a good or bad person
• Why she doesn't believe laziness exists
• The power of what she calls "category cleaning"
• Breaking the clean/not clean binary
• And achieving equitable division of labor around the house

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kc-davis-501

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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In this previously released episode, Malcolm Gladwell responds to backlash he received over his belief that working in an office—and the collaborative creative environment it can offer—is in your best interest (and in the interest of others). We also dive deep into some of the important themes featured in the seventh season of his podcast Revisionist History, including: kindness, generosity, and sacrifice. And, Dan and Gladwell share their biggest mistakes as journalists.

Malcolm Gladwell is the president and co-founder of Pushkin Industries, and the author of six New York Times bestselling books including The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and Talking to Strangers. He's also the host of the new Pushkin podcast Legacy of Speed.

In this episode we talk about:

• The backlash Malcolm faced from his work from home comments
• Pushing the noise aside when it comes to social media
• Lessons in kindness from a recent Revisionist History episode
• The importance of flow states
• How he personally relaxes
• Why people should have a lifelong pursuit or practice
• What he thinks now about his famous 10,000 hours argument
• Why we need to engage and investigate the views of others to be morally alert as human beings
• His biggest journalistic mistake

Content Warning: Brief mention of eating disorders.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/malcolm-gladwell-486

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Is it possible to be happy no matter what happens? Today we're going right to the source of what makes us unhappy to learn how to disarm and disable potential suffering before it owns us.

Everything that comes up in our mind is either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. In other words, with everything we experience, we either want it, don't want it, or we don't care. In Buddhism, this is called "feeling tones" or "vedana" and it is known as the second foundation of mindfulness in the Buddha's comprehensive list. So why does this matter? Because if you are unaware of the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tones, then you are being controlled by them. Similarly, if you are unaware that certain people or things provoke aversion, then you can unthinkingly avoid or even be aggressive towards them. In this way, we can be like puppets on a string— just yanked around by greed, hatred, and numbness.

Today's guest, dharma teacher Christina Feldman, is going to drill down on this embarkation point for our suffering, zap it with mindfulness and help us understand how we don't have to live like puppets on a string.

Feldman began teaching in the west in the seventies after spending years in Asia studying Buddhist meditation. She is a co-founder of Gaia House, a retreat center in the UK, and has also served as a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Society beginning in its early days. More recently, she is a co-founder of Bodhi College, which is dedicated to the study and practice of the early teachings of the Buddha. She is the author of a book called, Boundless Heart: The Buddha's Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity, and co-author of Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology.

This episode is the second installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why vedana is often called, "the ruler of consciousness" or "the king, or the queen of consciousness"
• How to practice with vedana, and the benefits thereof
• Her lovely description of the Buddha as being very focused on understanding "the architecture of distress and unhappiness"
• Her contention that unhappiness is not a life sentence.
• Her definition of genuine happiness
• What she means by the power of "giving greater authority to intentionality, rather than to mood or story"
• And her personal practice of setting life intentions every year

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/christina-feldman-500

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Jessica Nordell is a science and culture journalist who has written for the Atlantic and the New York Times. She earned a B.A. in physics from Harvard and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her new book is called The End of Bias, A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias.

Photo Credit: Leslie Plesser

In this episode we talk about:

• Why humans have biases
• What happens physiologically when biases are challenged
• Why some of the most popular personal and institutional strategies for confronting biases do not work
• The role that mindfulness and loving-kindness can play in reducing bias

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jessica-nordell-rerun

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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It's such a common desire to get out of our heads — to escape the nonstop, mostly self-referential chatter, the habitual storylines, the ancient resentments and the compulsive self-criticism. Many of us take elaborate and even drastic measures in this regard like self-medication, shopping, tech addiction, and so on. But there's a much healthier option that is readily and perpetually available. In fact, we're dragging it around with us all the time, the body.

The Buddha is said to have laid out four ways to be mindful. In other words, to be awake to whatever is happening right now. The first of these four foundations of mindfulness is mindfulness of the body and todays' guest, meditation teacher Dawn Mauricio, will walk us through the practical applications of this foundation.

Mauricio has been meditating since 2005 and is a graduate of Spirit Rock's four-year teacher training program. She is also the author of the book, Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners: 50 Meditations to Practice Awareness, Acceptance, and Peace. Dawn's been on the show before to talk about how to handle difficult people.

This episode is the first installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.

In this episode we talk about:

• What it actually means to get out of your head and into your body and all of the practical ways to get there
• How strong emotions and seductive technology can work against us
• And what to do when being aware of your body might actually not be the best thing for you

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dawn-mauricio-498

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Emotionally immature people (EIP's) are hard to avoid and most of us, if not all of us, have to deal with them at some point in our lives. These interactions can range from mildly annoying to genuinely traumatic, especially if the emotionally immature people in question are our own parents, which is true for an awful lot of us.

Today's guest, clinical psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson, gives advice for dealing with emotionally immature people, whether they're your parents or not. She has written a sleeper hit book on the subject called, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents.

In this episode we talk about:

• The signs of emotional immaturity
• Whether or not I'm emotionally immature
• What happens to children who are raised by emotionally immature parents, including their signature coping strategies
• Why adult children of EIP's turn to healing fantasies, and how to let them go
• How to cope with emotionally immature parents as an adult
• What role compassion should and should not play in your relationship with EIP's
• How to heal

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/lindsay-gibson-497

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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In the last couple of years, many people have been extolling the virtues of something called the "Enneagram" but—what the hell is it?

On today's show, longtime dharma teacher, Susan Piver, is here to demystify it. As she explains, the Enneagram is a tool that allows people to figure out their personality type and says it has been one of, if not the most important, tool in her personal development.

Piver has been a student of Buddhism since 1995, graduated from a Buddhist seminary in 2004 and was authorized to teach meditation in 2005. In 2012, she founded The Open Heart Project— the world's largest online-only meditation center. She's written ten books including her latest called The Buddhist Enneagram: Nine Paths to Warriorship.

In this episode we talk about:

• What the Enneagram is and why Piver finds it so helpful
• What she means by warriorship
• The nine personality types, which she views as maps of our blind spots
• Why, unlike other personality systems, there is no test for the Enneagram (at least in Susan's view)
• And we talk about why Susan thinks the Enneagram and Buddhism mix so well even though on first blush it would seem to contradict the dharmic emphasis on the self being an illusion

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/susan-piver-495

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Most of us talk all day long. We speak to each other, we type at each other, and of course, we talk to ourselves internally. Talking and listening is a key part of what it means to be human and It's very hard to be a successful person if you can't communicate your ideas and listen to and understand other people.

Today's guests, Mudita Nisker and Dan Clurman, are here to explain some very simple and easy to understand communication skills that can transform your life. Their new book, Let's Talk: An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication concisely summarizes their teachings and they're coming on the show today to walk us through some of the key learnings from this book.

Over the past thirty years Nisker and Clurman have provided communication training to individuals and organizations in the private, public, government, and nonprofit sectors. They have also led workshops, and trained staff at leading mindfulness centers such as Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Clurman is a communication coach and professor in the Ageno School of Business at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Nisker is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice.

In this episode we talk about:

• Talking vs. listening
• Content vs. process
• The power of saying nothing at all
• Reflective listening
• The Buddhist concept of Right Speech
• Content goals vs. relationship goals
• "I" language
• Provisional language
• Stating positive intentions
• Framing
• And Flooding vs. chunking

You can read an excerpt of the book, Let's Talk: An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication if you subscribe to our TPH newsletter, which comes out every Sunday. And you can subscribe if you go to: tenpercent.com/newsletter.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dan-clurman-and-mudita-nisker-494

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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At times, self-improvement can seem like a never-ending hallway filled with limitless shame and insufficiency. So when something as simple as the breath falls into this category, it seems only natural to meet that news with some resistance. Our guest today, James Nestor argues that many of us, of all things, are breathing incorrectly but that by fixing our breathing, it can help with both physical and psychological ailments.

Nestor is a science journalist who wrote a book called, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into more than 35 languages.

In this episode we talk about:

• How Nestor got interested in breathing in the first place
• Why we are the worst breathers in the animal kingdom
• The importance of posture
• The deleterious effects of mouth breathing
• Why we need to chew more
• The relationship between breathing and anxiety
• The relationship between breathing and sleep
• And we dive into a variety of breathing exercises

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/james-nestor-492

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Most of us worry about money sometimes, but what if we changed the way we thought about our relationship to finances? Today's guest, William MacAskill, offers a framework in which to do just that. He calls it effective altruism. One of the core arguments of effective altruism is that we all ought to consider giving away a significant chunk of our income because we know, to a mathematical near certainty, that several thousand dollars could save a life.

Today we're going to talk about the whys and wherefores of effective altruism. This includes how to get started on a very manageable and doable level (which does not require you to give away most of your income), and the benefits this practice has on both the world and your own psyche.

MacAskill is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University and one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. He has a new book out called, What We Owe the Future, where he makes a case for longtermism, a term used to describe developing the mental habit of thinking about the welfare of future generations.

In this episode we talk about:

• Effective altruism
• Whether humans are really wired to consider future generations
• Practical tips for thinking and acting on longtermism
• His argument for having children
• And his somewhat surprising take on how good our future could be if we play our cards right

Podcast listeners can get 50% off What We Owe the Future using the code WWOTF50 at Bookshop.org.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/william-macaskill-491

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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In this episode from our archives, psychologist Kelly McGonigal dives into her book The Joy of Movement and practical steps on how to develop healthy habits.

Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, and a leading expert in the new field of "science-help." She is passionate about translating cutting-edge research from psychology, neuroscience, and medicine into practical strategies for health, happiness, and personal success. She is the author of The Joy of Movement, The Willpower Instinct, and The Upside of Stress.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why her book is a love letter to movement and human nature
• The science behind the runner's high
• Why she wants to change the conversation around movement
• Why shame and self-criticism is disempowering and not motivating
• The value of setting intentions
• How Kelly has used psychology and meditation to relieve her own pain and suffering
• And what Tonglen meditation is — and its impact on her life

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kelly-mcgonigal-rerun

Since the start of COVID-19, more people are working from home, and with that, more people have strong opinions about whether or not it's the best route to take.

In today's episode, Malcolm Gladwell responds to recent backlash over why he believes that working in an office—and the collaborative creative environment it can offer—is in your best interest (and in the interest of others). We also dive deep into some of the important themes featured in the seventh season of his podcast Revisionist History, including: kindness, generosity, and sacrifice. And, Dan and Gladwell share their biggest mistakes as journalists.

Malcolm Gladwell is the president and co-founder of Pushkin Industries, and the author of six New York Times bestselling books including The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and Talking to Strangers. He's also the host of the new Pushkin podcast Legacy of Speed.

In this episode we talk about:

• The backlash Malcolm faced from his work from home comments
• Pushing the noise aside when it comes to social media
• Lessons in kindness from a recent Revisionist History episode
• The importance of flow states
• How he personally relaxes
• Why people should have a lifelong pursuit or practice
• What he thinks now about his famous 10,000 hours argument
• Why we need to engage and investigate the views of others to be morally alert as human beings
• His biggest journalistic mistake

Content Warning: Brief mention of eating disorders.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/malcolm-gladwell-486

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Today's episode looks at one of the hardest Buddhist principles to grasp— the notion that the self is an illusion. Many people get stuck on the misunderstanding that they don't exist. They look in the mirror and say, "Of course I exist. I'm right there." And that's true, you do exist, but just not in the way you think you do.

Today's guest, Jay Garfield explores this notion by arguing that you are indeed a person just not a self— a principle that can simultaneously feel both imponderable and liberating.

Jay Garfield is the Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Logic, and Buddhist Studies at Smith College and a visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School. He is the Author of multiple books, including his latest, which is called, Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live without a Self.

In this episode we talk about:

• The difference between a person and a self
• The problems with being taken by the illusion of selfhood
• Why he believes the illusion of self is not an evolutionary design flaw
• The many benefits of "losing ourselves"
• How to actually lose ourselves
• The concept of Interconnection
• His definition of real happiness
• The difference between pain and suffering and how to have the former without the latter

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jay-garfield-487

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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The idea of loving people no matter what— no matter how obnoxious or unacceptable their behavior is can sound simultaneously treacly and downright impossible.

But today's guest Father Gregory Boyle talks about the practicality of this idea by showing how the concept of loving no matter what can be used as a tool— not to condone bad behavior but to help see people as doing their best, no matter how unskillfully.

Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who founded a remarkable organization called Homeboy Industries, which is the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. He has a new book out called, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness.

In this episode we talk about:

• How Homeboy Industries began 34 years ago
• Boyle's practices for working with stress
• What he means when he says you have to put death in its place
• Motivating people through joy rather than admonition
• How to catch yourself when you're about to demonize or be judgmental
• How to set boundaries
• How to dole out consequences without closing the doors to anybody
• And we talk about Father Boyle's quite expansive and inclusive notion of God

Content warnings: There are mentions of sensitive topics including, sexual trauma, violence, drug abuse and domestic abuse.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/father-gregory-boyle-486

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Oftentimes Buddhism can take a tough love, no nonsense approach to happiness by saying, if you want to be happier, sometimes you need to face hard truths.

In today's episode we're going to talk about a Buddhist list called The Three Characteristics. These are the three non-negotiable truths about reality, which you have to see and understand in order to be happy. Granted, when looked at from a certain angle, these truths, or characteristics of reality can suck at times. But do you want to see the truth of things or not? Do you want to be happier or not?

Our guide through these three characteristics is the mighty Mushim Patricia Ikeda. Mushim has a background in both monastic and lay Buddhist practice and is a core teacher and community director at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. This is her second appearance on the show.

Content Warning: This episode briefly mentions child loss.

In this episode we talk about:

• The three characteristics, alternatively known as the three Dharma seals
• Our conflicted relationship to change
• Our brain's tendency to focus on the negative
• Practices that can help with handling change more effectively
• How not taking your thoughts so personally can build your resilience
• And why Mushim believes that universal non-discriminating love is synonymous with Nirvana

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/mushim-patricia-ikeda-484

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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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 historical context for the four foundations of mindfulness
• Why he thinks the Buddha loved lists
• Why the Buddha placed mindfulness of the body first on the list
• The steps to mastering mindfulness of the body
• The meaning of the word embodied and how that's different from our usual mode of being in the world
• How and why to do walking meditations
• What are feeling tones and why are they important
• Practices for cultivating mindfulness of mind
• And we talk about some of the mantras that Joseph uses when teaching

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/joseph-goldstein-483

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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There are so many benefits to mindfulness with one of the biggest being the cultivation of more self-awareness. This cultivation can lead to identifying the unhelpful mental habits that can develop over the years.

Today we're going to talk to Carol Wilson who offers very clear and practical ways that Buddhist meditation can help us turn down the volume on our unproductive mental habits and be less reactive.

Wilson is a guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society, where for many years she has taught their annual three-month retreat. She began her insight meditation practice in 1971 in India and in the 1980s she spent a year in Thailand as a Buddhist nun.

In this episode we talk about:

• How to be mindful throughout the day
• The concept of 360 degree awareness
• Noticing when one experiences wanting or aversion
• Why Wilson believes that the root of suffering comes from making it all about us
• How seeing torment can help us experience freedom from the self
• The benefits of reflecting on your past acts of generosity
• Bringing awareness to your motivations
• And doing a gratitude practice regularly to change the weather pattern in your mind

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/carol-wilson-481

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Many of us may have a reflexive reaction when we notice we're feeling down: we want it to go away. Maybe we think something is wrong with us and we automatically self medicate in any number of ways. But how do we square this with the fact that many of us may also really like sad movies and music? And making things even more complex, how do we compute the fact that the universe is constantly handing us opportunities to feel awe, gratitude, and joy, often at the exact same moment that sadness arises?

What's going on with this complex and conflicted relationship we have with a perfectly normal human emotion?

Our guest today Susan Cain has written a whole book about this called Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. In this book, she explores how the capacity to tune in to the inherent joy and sadness of the human situation can be a superpower for connection.

In this episode we talk about:

• Whether bittersweetness is a skill you can hone
• The relationship between bittersweetness and the Buddhist concept of impermanence
• Why we feel embarrassed about discussing sorrow and longing
• How sadness can be transmuted into creativity, and how that creativity can lead us out of sadness
• And how America, a country founded on so much heartache, turned into, in her words, "a culture of normative smiles"

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/susan-cain-480

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Sit in meditation for a few minutes and you're likely to experience pain, either physical or psychological. Hang around the meditation scene for very long, and you are likely to hear the expression, "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."

And that's what this episode is all about— boosting your pain tolerance through meditation. Because pain really is inevitable, but can you reduce your suffering through mindfulness and compassion?

Our guest today, Christiane Wolf, argues 'yes'. She is a physician turned mindfulness and compassion teacher and teacher trainer. She is an authorized Buddhist teacher in the Insight (Vipassana) meditation tradition, teaching classes and retreats worldwide, and she's also the author of ​Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind.

In this episode we talk about:

• Meditation techniques that offer us a better relationship to pain
• How to work with the physicality of pain
• The stories we tell ourselves about our pain
• And seeing pain as an opportunity

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/christiane-wolf-rerun

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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We all have long-standing painful patterns of behavior or inner storylines that can cause us to react disproportionately or inappropriately to everyday events.

Today's guest, Dr. Radhule Weininger, has a term for this. She calls them longstanding recurrent painful patterns or LRPPs.

Weininger is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and teacher of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist psychology. She has a new book, Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom—at Last

In this episode we talk about:

• How to recognize a problematic pattern or when you've been "lrpp-ed"
• Why Dr. Weininger believes that Buddhism and western psychology, when practiced together, can help us deal with these recurring patterns
• Unpacking the word trauma
• The psychological term "mismatch" and how it relates to childhood trauma or hurt
• How to practice meditation in order to tolerate discomfort

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/radhule-weininger-478

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Today we're gonna tackle one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and inhabiting the now.

The present moment seems to be a state we aspire towards, but are rarely given practical information about how to actually achieve. But today's guest, Matthew Brensilver offers just that— practical information on how to achieve being present. We also explore his argument that when painful memories surface in meditation, it acts as a kind of exposure therapy that acclimates us to the things we may not want to face.

This is Matthew Brensilver's second appearance on the show. He teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Matthew is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence and continues to be interested in the unfolding dialogue between Buddhism and science.

In this episode we talk about:

• What "be present" actually means
• What to do when Buddhist teachings or meditation instructions feel out of reach and when we start compulsively self-assessing against them
• What to do when a memory arises in meditation, especially a difficult memory
• The brain's tendency toward constant prediction
• The benefits of meditation retreat
• And distinguishing between true alarms and false alarms

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/matthew-brensilver-476

Often, when you're afraid of something, the best advice is deeply counterintuitive, not to mention inconvenient: to turn toward the source of your fear.

Today we're going to talk about the fear of confronting your own past with our guest Sarah Polley.

Polley is an Oscar nominated filmmaker and actress who recently wrote a new book, called Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory. In her book, she explores the relationship between her past and present and how the two are in constant dialogue.

In this episode we talk about:

• The story of her concussion and the unusual advice she got from a specialist that became not just a path to recovery, but a sort of personal credo, "run toward the danger"
• What we often do with our stories of childhood shame, and the immense power of talking about it
• How she has come to stop seeing her anxiety as a stop sign
• Her argument that the advice to "listen to your body" is not always the best advice
• The liberating potential of intentionally making uncharacteristic decisions
• Her path to meditation and her current practice
• And the limits of her own "run towards the danger" mantra

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sarah-polley-475

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

Depression is a debilitating problem both on an individual and a societal level and it has only gotten worse during the pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, depression is now one of the leading causes of disability on the planet.

Our guest today Dr. Samantha Boardman is going to talk about what she calls the opposite of depression— something called positive psychiatry. This approach focuses on the positive things in the lives of her patients rather than just the pathologies.

Boardman is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, which is also where she went to medical school and did her four year residency program. She later went back and got a Master's degree in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently put out a book called Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength

In this episode we talked about:

• The 3 C's (factors contributing to vitality)
• The notion that our understanding of happiness does not have to be internally oriented
• How not all socializing is created equal
• Why identifying your values is important
• The value of hobbies
• The flake factor
• And the value of failure

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/samantha-boardman-473

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

Anxiety has long been a massive societal issue that has spiked during the pandemic.

In this episode, renowned Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche talks in detail about how he personally works with anxiety and panic and the practices he draws upon when dealing with these states.

Mingyur began doing long retreats in his teens and now teaches all over the world. He's written the books The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness and In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying. He also oversees the Tergar Meditation Community, a global network of Buddhist meditation centers.

In this episode we talk about:

• Working with strong emotions using sound and the breath
• Deconstructing your reality to make it workable
• Understanding what awareness is in a Buddhist sense
• How to make meditation free-range and available to you all times
• The simple but also tricky advice of, "stop doing and just be"
• When to take a step back or even take a break from meditation
• What Mingyur Rinpoche says is the true purpose of the practice.

This interview was recorded in person at the TED conference in April of 2022, where both Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Dan Harris spoke.

Full Shownotes:

https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/yongey-mingyur-rinpoche-472

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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In this episode, the social justice educator and activist Jacoby Ballard talks about a universal, or near universal, issue: anger. And, he offers us two mental skills that can help channel anger into something even more powerful and effective. Those skills are forgiveness and equanimity.

Ballard is a meditation and yoga teacher and the author of a new book called, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation

Content Warnings: There are some brief references to sensitive topics, including trauma and suicide.

In this episode we talk about:

• How he went from an activist largely fueled by anger to a dharma teacher with a very different approach
• The sometimes useful role of anger in activism and the danger of being stuck in anger mode
• The subtle but powerful move of getting in touch with what is beneath our anger
• Using annoyance as a jumping off point for inner investigation
• Ways to work with anger and learning to discharge the energy in our body
• Forgiveness, including forgiving ourselves
• Getting over our need to be right
• Equanimity, or as Jacoby calls it, his "tussle with equanimity"

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jacoby-ballard-470

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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How, on this planet, did we go from molten lava and shifting tectonic plates to sentient beings? How are you awake and aware right now? Who and where and what exactly is the "you" that is experiencing everything?

Guest Anil Seth says that exploring these questions can lead to real and radical changes in your life, including reducing your emotional reactivity.

Seth is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness. His TED Talk on consciousness has been viewed over 13 million times. Most recently, he is the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.

In this episode we talk about:

• How brains give rise to consciousness
• The bundle theory of self
• The comfort in thinking of the self as impermanent
• A new way to think about emotional states
• How Seth's personal experience with long COVID has changed his own sense of self
• The question of whether we have free will
• Whether machines can be conscious – and whether we should be afraid of artificial intelligence

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/anil-seth-469

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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One of the most common and insidious complaints of meditators is distraction, which can be a frustrating and difficult obstacle. Even the Buddha himself acknowledged this common problem and laid out some detailed practices for dealing with it.

In this episode, Shaila Catherine outlines the Buddha's five strategies to help us tackle distractions, which can be applied to our meditation practice as well as other aspects of our lives.

Catherine is a dharma teacher whose latest book is called Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind. She is also the founder and principal teacher at Insight Meditation South Bay and has 40 years of practice, including nine years, cumulatively, of silent retreat. Her first TPH appearance, which we called How to Focus, aired in May 2021.

In this episode we talk about:

• The Buddha's struggles with distraction
• Shaila's attempts to make the teachings of the Buddha accessible to contemporary minds
• The importance of getting to know your own thought patterns
• The counterintuitive strategy of "avoid it, ignore it, forget it"
• Replacing seduction with mindfulness
• Developing a flexibility of mind
• Why we're vulnerable to our own tendencies when we're not mindful

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/shaila-catherine-467

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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It seems like a design flaw in our species that we live in a world of constant change yet most of us are not comfortable with uncertainty.

In this episode, we talk to Maya Shankar about how to get better at dealing with change and to stop seeking what scientists call "cognitive closure."

Shankar is a former Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science Team. She also served as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations, and is currently a Senior Director of Behavioral Economics at Google. She is the host of the Pushkin Industries podcast A Slight Change of Plans, which was named Best Show of the Year in 2021 by Apple.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why humans are so uncomfortable with uncertainty and change
• What a behavioral scientist actually does in the world
• Why even the host of a podcast about change isn't immune to the uncertainties of life
• The benefits of cultivating a more malleable sense of self
• Why humans are such bad forecasters
• The importance of auditing yourself when you're undergoing a big change
• How to take advantage of big reset moments
• The concept of cognitive closure and why encouraging an open mind can make us more resilient

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/maya-shankar-466

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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"The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life."

These words from the legendary Esther Perel have the power to genuinely change your outlook on life. But while it's easy to hear them and immediately have your mind go to family relationships or romantic relationships, today we're going to talk about friendships. Friendships can be massive contributors to mental health. They can also, when they go pear-shaped, be the source of abundant misery.

Today's guest is the legendary Esther Perel. Her resume is beyond impressive: She is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of books such as Mating in Captivity. Her TED talk has attracted more than 30 million views. She is fluent in nine languages. She is the host of the popular podcasts Where Should We Begin? and How's Work? And her latest project is called Where Should We Begin - A Game of Stories with Esther Perel.

In this episode we talk about:

• How the pandemic has impacted our friendships
• Esther's contention that "love and commitment and intimacy don't just belong to the world of romantic couples"
• What makes friendship unique, in good ways and tricky ways
• What to consider when determining whether to confront a difficulty in a friendship
• How to conduct a self-assessment of yourself as a friend
• How systematic we should be about cultivating and maintaining our friendships
• How to reconnect with friends authentically
• Whether or not we can have platonic friendships across the gender spectrum
• How to handle friendships when you're in a romantic relationship, including friendships you share, friendships with those with whom your partner doesn't get along, and friendships with exes

Content warning: There are some brief references to sensitive topics, including suicide.

*Esther Perel invites you and a colleague to apply for a session with her that will be part of the new season of her podcast How's Work? Her team is looking for work pairs, co-founders, colleagues, managers, or any combination to join her for a session to explore the future of work together. Apply here.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/esther-perel-464

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Life is filled with all kinds of moral dilemmas— from the mundane to the momentous. Should I lie and tell my friend that I like her ugly shirt? Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Ultimately, does anything we do even matter?

In today's conversation, television writer and producer, Michael Schur helps us to navigate our moral dilemmas and answer some of these difficult questions.

Schur is best known for creating and co-creating such shows as Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, and Rutherford Falls. Additionally, he has worked on shows like The Office, Master of None, The Comeback, and Hacks. He is also the Author of How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question.

In this episode we talk about:

• What got him started on the road to reading philosophy and studying ethics
• The so-called "trolley problem"
• Trusting your gut
• Natural states of virtue
• The evolutionary advantages of virtue
• And how white lies can be beneficial in a complicated and messy society

This interview was recorded in person at the TED conference in April of 2022, where both Michael Schur and Dan Harris spoke.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/michael-schur-463

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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How much would your relationships improve if you could up your emotional intelligence game? That phrase, "emotional intelligence" or EQ, entered the lexicon over 25 years ago, when Daniel Goleman wrote a book by the same name.

In this episode, Daniel Goleman talks about the four components of emotional intelligence and how we can develop these skills in our daily lives.

Golman is a Harvard-trained psychologist who, along with other contemplative luminaries such as Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg and Jon Kabat-Zinn, went to Asia and discovered meditation in the 1960s— making it a huge part of their lives and careers.

In this episode we talk about:

• The four components of emotional intelligence, how to develop them, and why these skills matter so much during the middle of a pandemic
• Empathy and relationship management in the age of zoom
• The "marshmallow test" and impulse control
• A phenomenon he calls, "amygdala hijacks"
• Why so many Jewish kids in the sixties and seventies got turned on to Buddhism

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/daniel-goleman-repost

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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It's completely natural when dealing with anxiety, depression, anger, shame, or any other unpleasant emotion, to just want it to go away.

Guest Susan David says that these discomforts are the price of admission to being alive and offers an approach called emotional agility as a way to navigate them.

Susan David, Ph.D. is a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of a book called Emotional Agility. Her TED Talk on the subject has been viewed more than eight million times.

In this episode we talk about:

• Her definition of emotional agility
• The four skills of emotional agility
• Why she says our emotions are data, not directives
• How to move skillfully through a world that "conspires against us seeing ourselves"
• How to avoid emotional "fusion"
• The power of tiny tweaks
• And "emotional granularity"— what it is, why it matters and how to practice it

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/susan-david-461

The phrase, "Get over yourself" is often used in a flippant way, but it's actually speaking to a deep human need to get out of our heads and off our own backs. At a fundamental level, this is what Buddhism is all about— seeing through the illusion of the self, which can be the source of so much of our suffering.

In this episode guest Pascal Auclair talks about how we can unlock this suffering through the use of a foundational Buddhist list called the five aggregates.

Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, where he is now enjoying teaching retreats. Pascal teaches in North America and in Europe. He is a co-founder of True North Insight and one of their guiding teachers.

In this episode we talk about:

• How the five aggregates got Auclair hooked on Buddhist practice and philosophy
• The five aggregates as a way to work with difficulty
• Living with the non-negotiable prospect of dying
• Paying attention to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling tone
• Meditation training as a way to understand that experiences are conditional

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/pascal-auclair-459

Our culture has oddly conflicting views about pleasure.

In this episode, author adrienne maree brown explores the importance of pleasure and how it changes your experience of the world.

adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia's Parables and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.

In this conversation we talked about:

• What is pleasure activism
• The role of sex and drugs
• Why we should say yes more
• How to be in touch with our sense of "enough"
• The role of gratitude
• The line between commitment and detachment
• How she defines authentic happiness
• Her self-description as "a recovering self-righteous organizer," and why self-righteousness actually leads to powerlessness

Content Warning: Discussions of sex and drugs.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/adrienne-maree-brown-458

In a culture that values persistent productivity, one can be left feeling chronically behind.

In this episode, author and recovering time management junkie, Oliver Burkeman encourages us to stop scrambling to fit it all in by exploring the relationship between our mortality and getting things done.

Oliver Burkeman is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Former guest Adam Grant has called it, "The most important book ever written about time management." This is Oliver's second appearance on the show. Burkeman joined us on the show a few years ago to talk about his other book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. He also writes a bi-weekly email newsletter called The Imperfectionist.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Why accepting mortality is a crucial step in improving our relationship to time
• His conviction that it's not about being more efficient. It's about knowing what to neglect
• Patience as a superpower and the impatience spiral
• The benefits of burning bridges
• Becoming a better procrastinator
• The benefits of rest
• What he calls "cosmic insignificance therapy"
• Practical tips, such as the "fixed volume approach to productivity," the value of serialization, and strategic underachievement.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/oliver-burkeman-456

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

Our guest this week is Alicia Menendez, an award-winning journalist, who finds herself in a common position for many women: caring way too much about what others think of her. Be nice, but not too nice. Be successful, but not too successful. Just be likable, whatever that means. In the workplace strong women are often criticized for being cold, while warm women may be seen as pushovers. In her book, The Likeability Trap, and in this conversation, she discusses this issue and explains how and why both men and women should combat it.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• The aforementioned likability trap
• The structural imbalance in feedback for women and men in the workplace
• The things for men to consider as they engage with women in the workplace

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/alicia-menendez-212

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Sometimes part of healing trauma means learning how to be human.

This episode is the last episode of our Mental Health Reboot series to mark Mental Health Awareness Month. Dr. Jacob Ham, who was introduced in Stephanie Foo's episode earlier this week, helped Stephanie through her case of complex PTSD and discusses how to live with the hardest things that have happened to you.

Dr. Ham is the Director of the Center for Child Trauma and Resilience and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He sees children, youth, adults, and families across the age range and for a variety of issues.

In this episode we talk about:

• What Dr. Ham says may be the "most important thing he's discovered" as a therapist
• Why he shuts down his clients' attempts to intellectualize their experiences
• Kairos versus kronos
• Why Dr. Ham says the Incredible Hulk is so important to him
• The concept of mentalization
• What it means to love exquisitely
• And whether or not we have to learn to love ourselves before we can learn to love others

Content Warning: Explicit language.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jacob-ham-453

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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We've all had difficult, and sometimes horrible things happen to us.

While some people may be luckier than others, it's rare that anyone goes unscathed. This episode is part of our Mental Health Reboot series to mark Mental Health Awareness Month.

In this episode, Stephanie Foo shares her story of being diagnosed with complex PTSD and how she learned to process her trauma and live with her past. The result of her journey is a new book called What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma.

Stephanie Foo is a journalist and radio producer. Her previous work includes This American Life, The Cut, Reply All, and 99% Invisible. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times and Vox.

In this conversation we talk about:

• The various therapies, meditation styles, and wellness modalities Stephanie explored to help process her trauma
• What actually worked for her, and how it might be relevant to other survivors
• Shame, gratitude, and self-love
• Her transformative work with Dr. Jacob Ham, who will be featured in another episode this week.

Content Warnings: Discussions of trauma and abuse, references to addiction and mental health challenges. Explicit language.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/stephanie-foo-452

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Very few of us will live a life without loss.

As part of our Mental Health Reboot series in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, this week's episodes talk a lot about grieving. Mary-Frances O'Connor, an expert in bereavement research, explores the science of how we grieve and experience loss, whether it's a job or a loved one.

Mary-Frances O'Connor is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona, where she is also the Director of Clinical Training. And she is the author of a book called The Grieving Brain.

In this episode we talk about:

• The distinction between grief and grieving
• How her Buddhist practice has influenced her understanding of grief
• Whether or not we can ever quote/unquote "get over it"
• Why she argues for "a really big toolkit of coping strategies"
• How to understand the work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross today
• What grieving looks like in a pandemic
• What to say to people who are grieving
• The new diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder

Content Warning: Brief mention of suicide.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/mary-frances-oconnor-450

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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There is an unstoppable flow of gain and loss within our lives.

Processing this flow helps us to develop equanimity. In this conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winner and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz discusses her new book Lost and Found: A Memoir, in which she explores experiencing both a huge loss anda huge gain, and how to live in a world where both happiness and pain commingle.

In this episode we talk about:

• How humans experience grief
• A gift you can give to the grieving
• Why she loves the clichés that remind us to enjoy the moment
• Her broad understanding of the term "loss"
• Why the key word in 'lost and found' is "and"
• What she's learned about compromising in relationships

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kathryn-schulz-449