Dan Savage has been writing the popular sex-advice column Savage Love for over thirty years. He also hosts the Savage Lovecast and is the author of numerous books. In 2010 Dan and his husband founded the It Gets Better Project, which was designed to give hope to LGBTQ kids. It was seen all over the world–and won an Emmy. In this episode we talk about: How to handle disappointment and jealousy How to get better at sex Why so many couples lose their spark and what to do about it How to date ...
Feb 05, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep 723•Transcript available on Metacast You don’t have to slow down and sit to be mindful. You can be busy and get things done while still growing your mindfulness muscles. About Jay Michaelson: Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, including his newest, The Secret That Is Not a Secret. In his “other career,” Jay is a columnist for The Daily Beast, and was a professional LGBTQ activist for ten years. Jay is an ordained rabbi and has taught meditation in secular, Buddhist, and Jewish context for eighteen years. To find this me...
Feb 04, 2024•6 min•Ep 722•Transcript available on Metacast We’re dropping a fun little treat in your feed today: it’s an episode of The Puzzler, a new podcast from writer A.J. Jacobs, who was my guest on Ten Percent Happier at the beginning of December . His new book, also called The Puzzler, is all about his exploration of the world of puzzles – everything from word games to jigsaw puzzles to Sudoku and beyond – and how what he calls “the puzzle mindset” can really improve your life. So then he asked me to be his guest on The Puzzler , a daily podcast ...
Feb 02, 2024•13 min•Ep 721•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes perseverance is overrated. An argument for strategic quitting. Julia Keller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and playwright. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from The Ohio State University and has taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She was the chief book critic at The Chicago Tribune for many years before quitting the world of daily journalism to write books.&n...
Jan 31, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep 720•Transcript available on Metacast Our ability to focus is not lost, it’s just changing. Here’s what we can adapt. Here’s a horrifying fact: the average attention span has now declined to just 47 seconds on any particular screen. 47 seconds! How did this happen? How can we get anything done this way? Today we’re going to meet the scientist who’s done this research, find out what’s driving this, and what we can do about it. And the good news is we really can do things about this. We're experiencing a fundamental shift in how we th...
Jan 29, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep 719•Transcript available on Metacast Gently opening to the full sensations of anxiety and even making friends with it can actually create more calm and peace in your body. About Leslie Booker: After training as a yoga teacher in 2007, Booker was drawn to Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Mindful Yoga and Meditation training which she completed in 2012. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fe...
Jan 26, 2024•7 min•Ep 718•Transcript available on Metacast A Harvard Business School professor discusses how to get good at “intelligent failure.” Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her latest book is called the Right Kind of Wrong . Her research examines psychological safety and teaming within and between organizations. In this episode we talk about: The problems of shame, perfectionism, and social media How not to get caught up in analysis paralysis The importance of self-compa...
Jan 24, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep 717•Transcript available on Metacast How to boost productivity, empathy, and focus, while reducing burnout. From the godfather of Emotional Intelligence. If you have any degree of ambition, one of the things you probably think about is how to perform at your best, or somewhere close, every day. How to keep your energy up. How to get into flow. How to stay focused and productive. How to play well with others. Daniel Goleman— his friends call him Danny—-has been thinking and writing about optimal performance for decades. He’s p...
Jan 22, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 716•Transcript available on Metacast Start your day by tuning in and learning how to feel more connected to all the little details of your life. It turns out, they matter. About Cara Lai: Cara Lai spent most of her life trying to figure out how to be happy, or at least avoid total misery, which landed her on a meditation cushion for the majority of her adulthood. In the past, Cara has worked as an artist, wilderness guide, social worker and psychotherapist, but at this point she’s given up on being an adult in exchange for an all-o...
Jan 21, 2024•7 min•Ep 715•Transcript available on Metacast The author/podcaster talks about her nonnegotiables at a delicate time in her life. Glennon Doyle is an author, activist, and the founder of Together Rising. She hosts the We Can Do Hard Things podcast and wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed , a Reese’s Book Club selection, which has sold nearly three million copies. Photo Credit: Alexandra Hedison In this episode we talk about: The concept of embodiment Undoing harmful deep conditioning around hustle and diet culture The role o...
Jan 19, 2024•47 min•Ep 714•Transcript available on Metacast Plus, provocative and practical ideas about actually enjoying exercise, the real relationship between weight and health, the problem with weight loss, the morality of food, feeding your kids, and who "the real bad guy" is. Virginia Sole-Smith is the bestselling author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture and The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America . She also writes the Burnt Toast newsletter, hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast, and frequently contributes to The...
Jan 17, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep 713•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Jud breaks down how habits work and how to change them. Plus, insights on stress, boredom, mindfulness, pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment. Judson Brewer M.D., Ph.D., is an internationally renowned addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist and a bestselling author. He is a professor in the School of Public Health and Medical School at Brown University. His new book is called The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We’re Not Hungry and How to Stop. In this episode we talk about: The scientific...
Jan 15, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep 712•Transcript available on Metacast You are complex and contain multitudes. Try this refreshing take on loving-kindness and offer love to all the different parts of yourself. About Dawn Mauricio: Dawn Mauricio discovered the practices of Buddhist meditation in 2005, and from then on, did what any well-intentioned perfectionist would do — plunge in head first! Since then, she's graduated from several teaching programs, including Spirit Rock's four-year Teacher Training. Her teaching style is playful, dynamic, and heartfelt, and she...
Jan 14, 2024•7 min•Ep 711•Transcript available on Metacast Have you already bailed on your resolutions? Where are you on your other life goals? This episode is a master class on sticking with it, no matter what. Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama—an organization that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, as well as rever...
Jan 12, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep 710•Transcript available on Metacast Chödrön also talks about how to deal with difficult people, set boundaries, and keep a sense of humor in the face of our human foibles and failings. Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City. In her mid-thirties, Ani Pema met and studied with Lama Chime Rinpoche, becoming a novice nun in 1974 in London. She received ordination from His Holiness the Sixteenth Karampa during that time. Pema first met her root guru, the teacher with whom she had the most profound connection, Ch...
Jan 10, 2024•59 min•Ep 709•Transcript available on Metacast Kabat-Zinn on the nitty gritty practicalities of starting a practice, being fully present with no agenda, and letting go of “the story of me.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Back in the 1970s, he came up with something called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, which is a secular way of teaching Buddhist meditation. He’s written many books , including Full Catastrophe Living ; Wherever You Go, There You Are ; and...
Jan 08, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep 708•Transcript available on Metacast Is meditation the last thing you want to do right now? This one's for when closing your eyes and watching your breath sounds like torture. About Matthew Hepburn: Matthew is a meditation and dharma teacher with more than a decade of teaching experience and a passion for getting real about what it means to live well. Beyond Ten Percent Happier, Matthew has taught in prisons, schools, corporate events and continues to teach across North America in buddhist centers offering intensive silent retreats...
Jan 07, 2024•7 min•Ep 707•Transcript available on Metacast The star of SNL and Barry discusses how he channels his anxiety into his work. Plus, an imitation of Joseph Goldstein. Bill Hader has made the transition from being a master of stand-out characters and impressions on eight seasons of Saturday Night Life to becoming a true multi-hyphenate by creating, directing, writing, producing and starring as a burned-out assassin trying to break into Hollywood as an actor in HBO’s award-winning and critically lauded dark comedy, Barry . In this episode we ta...
Jan 05, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep 706•Transcript available on Metacast The renowned psychotherapist talks about the importance of accountability in generosity in her own life, and the one thing you can do right now, today, to make yourself happier. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She has a therapy practice in New York City and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her TED Talks have garnered more than 40 million views and her books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs , are huge bestsel...
Jan 03, 2024•52 min•Ep 705•Transcript available on Metacast A leading behavioral psychologist reveals practical strategies to help you actually make the changes you want to make this new year (and beyond). Hal Hershfield is a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making, and psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and the author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today . His research on future selves has been featured in the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , as well as the Harvard Business Re...
Jan 01, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep 704•Transcript available on Metacast Get out of the trance of thinking and explore what it’s like to be more generous with your attention directly, here, now. About Pascal Auclair: Pascal has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America with revered monastics and lay teachers. 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. He is a co-founder of True North Insight and...
Dec 31, 2023•7 min•Ep 703•Transcript available on Metacast Tackling one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and “inhabiting the now.” Matthew Brensilver , MSW, PhD, teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers.He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA C...
Dec 29, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep 702•Transcript available on Metacast A slew of evidence-based, ready-to-try-today interventions we can use to “complete the stress cycle.” Emily Nagoski is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life . She has a MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior, both from Indiana University. She’s also the co-author of Burnout: The Secret To Unlocking The Stress Cycle . Amelia Nagoski holds a DMA in conducting from the Universi...
Dec 27, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep 701•Transcript available on Metacast How to stay focused, fight distraction, and function at your peak. Dr. Amishi Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. Dr Jha is the author of the national bestseller, Peak Mind . In this episode we talk about: What peak mind is Why meta awareness is important to practice and achieve peak mind The suite of mindfulness-based attenti...
Dec 25, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep 700•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes we feel like we have too much energy to meditate. Make space for all of that energy by listening to sounds as they come and go. About Sharon Salzberg: A towering figure in the meditation world, Sharon Salzberg is a prominent teacher & New York Times best-selling author. She has played a crucial role bringing mindfulness and lovingkindness practices to the West. Sharon co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield and is the author of ...
Dec 24, 2023•6 min•Ep 699•Transcript available on Metacast Understanding the Buddhist concept of “the five aggregates.“ Pascal Auclair has been immersed in the study and practice of Buddhist teachings since 1997. He has participated in retreats in Asia and America with renowned masters from both monastic and secular backgrounds. Pascal completed four years of teacher training with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. Pascal teaches mainly in North America ...
Dec 22, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep 698•Transcript available on Metacast The interview that changed the way Dan relates to food. Evelyn Tribole , MS, RD, CEDRD-S is an award-winning registered dietitian, with a nutrition counseling practice in Newport Beach, California. She has written ten books including the bestsellers Healthy Homestyle Cooking and Intuitive Eating (co-author). Her newest book is the Intuitive Eating Workbook: Ten Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food . In this episode we talk about: How meditation practice and intu...
Dec 20, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep 697•Transcript available on Metacast A comprehensive strategy for setting and maintaining boundaries—and respecting other people’s boundaries. Nedra Glover Tawwab , MSW, LCSW, is the author of bestsellers Drama Free and Set Boundaries, Find Peace . She is a licensed therapist, and sought-after relationship expert and has practiced relationship therapy for 15 years. Tawwab is the founder and owner of the group therapy practice, Kaleidoscope Counseling . In this episode we talk about: The definition of boundaries Leading with l...
Dec 18, 2023•58 min•Ep 696•Transcript available on Metacast Cultivate resilience by choosing to turn towards joy, and transform difficult times into growth opportunities and heartache into gratitude. About La Sarmiento: La Sarmiento is a mentor for the MIndfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP) and a teacher with Cloud Sangha. They have taught meditation retreats for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Teens, and Young Adults, and everyone in-between around the United States since 2010 and are a 2012 graduate of the Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader Tra...
Dec 17, 2023•8 min•Ep 695•Transcript available on Metacast Next year marks the fifteenth anniversary of Gretchen Rubin’s #1 New York Times bestselling book, The Happiness Project. To celebrate, she’s leading a one-time, one-year course called “The Happiness Project: Revisited.” In this bonus excerpt from the course, Gretchen and Elizabeth explore the lessons Gretchen has learned over the years, talk about her plans to do a new happiness project in 2024, and discuss how other people can do their own happiness projects. You can learn more and sign u...
Dec 15, 2023•13 min•Ep 694•Transcript available on Metacast 
