10% Happier with Dan Harris

My other books, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy and Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection are for a more clinical audience.

My other books, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy and Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection are for a more clinical audience.

They also recently co-authored a book called Humor Seriously Why Humor Is A Superpower at Work and In Life.

We have a whole chapter in our book chapter three that dives into them

Our book is humor seriously

I remember reading this book by my friend Dacker Caldner from UC Berkeley it's called Born to Be Good he's been on the show before and in there he talked about what researchers were calling off record humor sort of like kind of inappropriate jokes being useful for marriages

including Sati Patana, the direct path to realization which has been very influential with many of the teachers you've heard right here on this show, including Joseph Goldstein, who is my teacher and frequent flyer on the show.

Today, though, we're going to focus on another of Bikku Analio's books called Mindfully Facing Climate Change.

And so what I was trying to do was in my book a store basically bringing down perspectives that are grounded on meditation practice.

He and I wrote a book together called Meditation for Figuity Skeptics.

He's the author of the new book From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the second half of life. It's out this week. I blurbed it. It's really, really good.

And I want to solve that for me and I want to solve that for others. And I went on an eight year, I mean, I'm a social scientist. I'm a PhD social scientist. Why should we be able to take on this task? Unfortunately, that's like taking out your own appendix if you're a surgeon. So it was a little tricky. But after eight years, I think I've actually cracked the code.

I wrote mom I've just been reflecting a little bit on our conversation from the other day which you talked about how much you're enjoying your current situation and how deeply engaged you are with the community at the place where you live I have some respect for how well you made this transition it's genuinely a triumph I believe it ranks right up there with your stellar career and A plus parenting as a life achievement to transition into a completely new context and do it with such a plum and enthusiasm is an inspiration for me as your son

The book that we're talking about which you know eight years into making and has changed my life a lot and I hope it helps other people as well is called From Strength to Strength and it comes out from portfolio penguin and is finding happiness success and deep purpose in the second half of life

In addition we have lots of books out there, Eight Dates is our latest book that we just love and it's not just for couples who have recently met and are wanting to have interesting conversations.

If there's betrayal a wonderful book is what makes love last which describes how we get to betrayal as well as how to heal from betrayal.

We went with it because it happens to be the title of a recent book whose author you're going to hear from today.

In his book, Evan takes a hard run at people who have profoundly influenced my thinking, including Sam Harris and Robert Wright, both previous guests on this show...

Yeah I wouldn't say I turned against it so in my book why I'm not a Buddhist I try to frame it in terms of this idea that I consider myself a friend of Buddhism and I want to be a good friend and so a good friend is someone who points out critical things that you don't want to let pass.

The last chapter of my book why I'm not a Buddhist kind of sets out that idea and uses it as a way for really trying to actually promote the Buddhism science conference but seen in this different cosmopolitan light...

yeah I'd be happy to so the book that we've mostly been having the conversation orbit around is a book that came out in 2020 called why I'm not a Buddhist I think it's just coming out in paperback this month February I think it's out in paperback...

and then my book that's immediately previous to that which also people might be interested in is called waking dreaming being and it's about the self and consciousness seen through the lenses of neuroscience and meditation and philosophy and the kind of three way conversation between those...

I remember when I was in college reading in the college library in a comfortable cushy chair and I was reading a book Peter Unger Living High and Letting Die that was illustrating just the degree of inequality of well-being across the globe and my privileging of trivial comforts in the face of the enormity and tractable suffering of the world and that scrambled me and my heart in a deep way

My colleague Sheryl Goodman and I wrote a book expecting Mindful that is brings these practices specifically in work that we've done with women during pregnancy and early parenting and that really focuses on how learning the skills of mindfulness and self-compassion can be critical for one's own mental health as a new and expectant mom and can help to establish a foundation for the transition to parenthood and family life in really important ways.

We follow the curriculum of what they're doing in UMass Massachusetts medical school. So where they just to explain that to folks that's where they really invented mindfulness based stress reduction invented by this towering figure I think an American life John Cabinzen molecular biologist who really came up with a version of meditation that stripped out the metaphysical claims and the religious practices and just gave you the mindfulness.

And then about three years ago I began reading John Kabatzen and taking a look at the brain research of the possibilities of mindfulness.

I found this book by I must be a West Coast therapist and Zen teacher John Terrent I think his name is called Bring Me the Rhinoceros and Bring Me the Rhinoceros and others then co-ons that will save your life

co-ons reveal a hidden kindness in life that was his final one so I read that and I was like oh yeah that's what I'm trying to say so unlocking uncovering uncovering a hidden kindness

The newsletter is called a non-zero newsletter it's it's abstract and the title comes from book I wrote called non-zero which I also wouldn't discourage you from checking out

Her new book is called The End of Bias, A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias.

Why and how did you get into this immensely important subject of bias?

we call it technically bunga b-h-a-n-g-a which means dissolution and it's known in other traditions for example d s-eleot got the Nobel Prize in literature in 1944 for writing a poem called the Four Quartets which is amazing to me considering that i sincerely doubt that any of the judges that gave him that prize understood what that poem was actually about

the wounded surgeon applies the steel that questions the distempered part beneath the bleeding hands we feel the sharp compassion of the healer's art resolving the enigma of the fever chart