Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 166: Paula Faris, Journey of Faith

Episode Date: December 19, 2018

You may know Paula Faris as the former co-host of ABC's The View or Dan's former co-anchor on ABC's Good Morning America weekend edition. What you don't know is why she decided to leave these TWO dream jobs, and the role that meditation and her faith played in that life-altering decision. Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail at 646-883-8326. The Plug Zone Check out Paula's podcast: Journeys of Faith http://abcn.ws/journeys See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Okay guys, got a good one for you this week. It's Paula Ferris. She was until she abandoned me recently. My long time co-host on the weekend editions of Good Morning America. If you read my most recent book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, she was featured in there as a,

as quite a prominent character. She is somebody who's played a really important role in my life, not only as a friend and a colleague, but somebody who's really forced me to really wrestle with some of my biases. She, as you'll hear, she is not the normal character who inhabits the world of mainstream media. She comes from a very different background. She is a devout evangelical. She comes from the Midwest and went to a school that was really focused on faith and I working with her so closely over the years has really been incredibly helpful for me and you will hear us explore that. She's also done a really brave thing where she stepped back recently

from Weekend GMA and her role as the co-host on the view to spend more time with their family. Often when people spend, often when you see people stepping down from big jobs, they say they're doing it to spend time with their family, that means they got fired. That is not the case with Paula. She did not get fired. She surprised everybody by saying she really wanted to focus more on her relationship with her husband, which she felt was suffering as well as her relationship with her relationships with her three kids, as a consequence of having this incredibly unusual and hectic schedule.

So now she's a senior national correspondent here at ABC News, which has been a tough transition for her, and she feels like she lost part of her identity after stepping back from these jobs which she wasn't quite prepared for. So she wrestles with all of this and also we talk a lot about her relationship with meditation which has been interesting and helpful and also complicated by her faith. And she has lots of say to people of faith who are interested in but reluctant about meditation. So much more to say about Paula Ferris, much more from her coming up, but first an item

of business and then your voice smells. That of a business is, I hope you'll forgive me for being slightly salesy here, but I'm going to do it really quickly. If you want to give the gift of sanity in this holiday season, as we're roaring up to Christmas here, check out the 10% happier app. You can send it as a gift. Go to gift.10%happier.com. And you can send somebody, this is like a great stocking stuffer or last minute gift and I know I talked about Christmas but and Hanukkah's

over but you know there could be a late Hanukkah gift. All right that's the business. Let's get your voice mails. Here's number one. Hi Dan, my question is about meta-meditations. I did my first meta-meditations a few months ago in a meditation class and I found it to be very powerful and emotional and impactful from the tears and I really values that experience. But when I tried to incorporate the meditation that I got from the teacher as recorded and as we see the teacher. I haven't found it to be nearly as powerful. I find it almost kind of boring. I'm wondering how you find it.

It will be useful and impactful more than just as much as for at least to some degree as you did the first time. So, thank you. Thank you. So just for newbies, we've talked about meta meditation many times on this podcast, but if you're new to the podcast, first of all, welcome. Second of all, here's a quick definition.

Meta, M-E-T-T-A, is a kind of meditation that's often translated as loving kindness meditation. I'm not a huge fan for what should be obvious reasons given my incurable skepticism and sort of anti-centimental nature of the term loving-kindness but friendliness is a good term. So let's just call it friendliness meditation. The way it's done is you systematically envision people, visualize them, and then you repeat silently these phrases like may you be happy, may you be healthy, etc., etc. And you usually start with an easy person, then you go to yourself, then you, the order can change, but often it's

taught as starting with an easy person, then yourself, then a benefactor, a neutral person, a difficult person, and then everybody. And I have, you know, I have said many, many times that I found this practice very annoying at first, but also very powerful, and there's a lot of science to suggest it's really good for you. To your question, you said you had a very powerful experience with it the first time, but then now that you've gone back and done it subsequently, it's not as powerful and maybe a little boring.

So my answer to that is I get it. It can be frustrating when we have a powerful experience in meditation and then we feel like we're failing because we don't quote unquote get there the next time or ever. But that is kind of to miss the point. I don't think the point of meditation is to feel a certain way. In fact, if you go into any meditation expecting to feel a certain way, expectation is way. Expectation can be a deal killer. It's a classic, to put it in Buddhist terms, a classic hindrance to meditation.

It's desire. You're wanting something and that just gets in the way of it shuts down the whole system. So I wouldn't worry so much about achieving a certain outcome. It's about the training. It really doesn't matter in some ways what you're experiencing on the cushion. Of course, it does matter in some ways, but in some ways it doesn't. This is no matter how dry it may feel, the act of picking up the phrases, picking up the practice,

and just going back to work in envisioning these people, visualizing the beings to whom you're sending these well wishes, and going through the inner bicep curls of working your compassion muscle. That is what matters, and what the science shows is that over time, this has a physiological and psychological and behavioral impacts. And so the point is to keep at it not to get hung up on having a specific experience. And the way to really measure whether it's having an impact is to do it for a while and step back and take a look at your life, not take a look at how it feels every time you're

on the cushion. That is, again, not to say that the meditation experience doesn't matter at all. There may be tweaks that are needed in your practice, but really the big measure is what is it doing to your life. All right, question number two. Hi, Dan, Rebecca from San Francisco, and I love your podcast and your 10% happier app. I'm a very happy subscriber. One thing that I've really learned through the app and through the courses is the principle of impermanence and equanimity, that's the term. I know that when my friends first started meditating and they would tell me about these all day retreats or weekend retreats where they were sitting for hours on end.

And if they got a muscle cramp or an itch or any discomfort, they were supposed to notice it and then let it go. And I didn't quite ever get that. To me, your body is trying to tell you something and you need to fix it. So that's where my question kind of stems from. So with the course, I do understand the learning lesson in equanimity and impermanence and just noticing things and not judging and not doing anything about it. But do you think there's also a lesson in the fact that maybe if I make a shift, a little

shift, I little shift, I can ease some of that discomfort. I would love to get your opinion on that. Thanks, bye-bye. Yeah, that's a great question and not uncommon question. I think there's a line here that you got to keep your eye on. I definitely agree that sometimes your body is trying to tell you something and if you're sitting in a certain way and you persist through the pain, you might get hurt.

So if you're really in an incredible, in an incredible amount of pain and you think you're going to hurt your knee or sprain your ankle or whatever it is from the position you're sitting in. Then yes, obviously move. The point here is not to hurt yourself. However, in my experience, a lot of the pains are not your body trying to tell you, hey, you know, it's not similar to putting your hand

on a hot stove where the pain is trying to tell you something incredibly urgent. It's more that, you know It's more that these are, this is the fact of life of having a body. That after a while, if you stay in the same position, it's gonna start getting uncomfortable. Maybe it's a psychological reaction, as sort of your body,

experiencing psychosomatic pain, not wanting to face some difficult thing that's actually coming up psychologically. There are any number of reasons why you could be feeling pain, but it's not going to be life-threatening or damaging to your body, and that's where I actually do think you should sit with it. Because this is when you can really, it sucks, but you can make real strides in your practice. To turn your attention from your breath in these moments to the discomfort, watch the kind of thinking that happens as a consequence of this, watch see that the

pain itself is not monolithic, that it does shift and move and change and vibrate. And so you can learn something about the nature of change in these moments. And you can also learn something about the fact that as many meditation teachers will tell you, pain is inevitable. Pain is inevitable. If you have a body, you will experience pain in your life. Suffering is optional. That's the stuff we add on top. You can really see how this process works. The pain is there, but the suffering is in our wisest happening to me, when is this going to end, all of that stuff. Disambiguating the two is something that is important work that can really happen

in those moments of physical discomfort. So I think Joseph Goldstein talks about a lot the eminent teacher, Joseph Goldstein talks, he talks, this is gonna sound a little morbid, but it's not, or maybe it is, but it's not in the majority of, that we're all gonna die. not, or maybe it is, but not in the majority of, we're all gonna die.

And in that process, it's possible you will experience some physical discomfort. And how do you wanna be in that time? And I agree with Joseph's argument that you can look at dis-paying discomfort on the cushion as in some way practice for those moments. And yeah, I find that a really compelling thing, but definitely if you think that you're going to hurt yourself, shift, why not? Also, there are times, and I think I talked about this in a recent podcast,

there are times when the discomfort or restlessness or pain just gets to a point where you feel like you've explored it long enough and you've reached your edge. Also, in those cases, find, get up, shift, I do that. But you really want to push your edge and explore it and then continue pushing and exploring it the way we would in in working out for example you don't want to hurt yourself you don't want to drive yourself crazy but this is an interesting area of exploration and really valuable for the practice and again i will acknowledge that it also sucks in some ways all right let's get to paul aferris she is as i said before a an an ABC news colleague of mine and a friend of mine. She was until recently the co-anchor of Good Morning America's Weekend Edition and also a co-host on The View, which is a show we do at ABC.

She has got a new podcast called Journeys of Faith, which I highly recommend you listen to, in which she speaks to incredibly interesting people, many of them very well-known, about the role that Faith plays in their life. And Paula's insight here was that we, at ABC News, we interview celebrities all the time, but it's usually they're promoting their most recent movie or we're asking about their whatever breakup they've gone through or what was it like to work with so and so on this most recent movie. But rarely do we get a chance to talk to them about the most fundamental issues in their lives. So Paula is talking to writers and actors and movies, but rarely do we get a chance to talk to them about the most fundamental issues in their lives. So Paula is talking to writers and actors and musicians about their faith in what role that plays in what they do and she's

doing a great job at this. She's a really probing and interesting interviewer. I will also say, as it pertains to what you'll hear, what you're about to hear, that I think a part of my personality that I don't not sure I ever really expose on this podcast or in any of my books or anywhere really, maybe I do, but anyway, a part of my personality that you're gonna hear in this interview is that if I like somebody, like my wife,

my kid, the people I work with. And that often results in verbal abuse. That's kind of my, as you'll hear me say with Paula, my love language. When I'm really comfortable with somebody, I make fun of them. That's just the way it is. The way I was raised and the way I am in the world

for better or sometimes and also for worse. Anyway, Paul and I are really close and I really like her. And so you're going to hear me tease her a little bit. And I hope that's okay. But it's as we discuss, it's a real sign of respect and affection because that's just the mode I go into when I really like somebody. So here we go. here's polyfarious. Hi, polyfarious. Hi, Dan Harris. Can we wear our headphones?

No, I don't like wearing headphones. Give me a hand. I like to wear headphones. Well, you can wear them. Because you know what? I have to actually focus on you. If you wear the headphones? Yes, because it helps me hone in on what's the conversation.

Because I'm ADD and I have to read lips, it helps me to pay attention, but I can't read your lips because the microphones cover ain't it. You can move them, like, there you go. You can move the microphone. Were you diagnosed with ADD? I have like the most blatant case of undiagnosed ADHD ever.

My whole family has ADD. Bigly. What does that do to your meditation? It makes me feel like a chipmunk. Remember? Yeah. The chipmunk, equanimity. It's, are we rolling on this?

Yeah, we're rolling. Are we actually using this? Yeah, we're going to use it. Aren't you supposed to introduce me properly? I know you have copious notes. Where's my bio? I do that later. And I never come into interviews with notes.

I'm asking the questions here. Let me keep going. By the way, you made a reference to chipmunk equanimity, which I just explained to people. You were a big part of the last book I wrote, Meditation for Figuity Skeptics, and you were complaining to the meditation teacher with whom I wrote the book.

Jeff Warren about how your mind is like a chipmunk, and he wrote a meditation for you. Chipmunk. I have a person, a personal meditation. By the way, you didn't use my alternate title for the book. And I'm still upset about that. I've used it in the book. I know. I did say you want to tell people what it was. Yes, it was 10% happier, but still a I love you. I do. And I, I, I feel like our relationship, and I say it all the time, I'm the sister you never had nor wanted. Would you say big sister or little sister?

Oh, definitely little sister. Hello, I look so much younger than you, right? You do. You are actually quite a bit younger than me. We have a very rare relationship in this, you don't find relationships like ours in this business. How do you figure? You're supposed to, you're supposed to agree with me. I'm curious what you, Is this just in my mind? No, we, I think.

No, we have a great relationship, but I want to know what you think of it rather than me talking, This is your time. I just think it's rare to find someone that will laugh with you, laugh at you, yet advocate and champion for you. And here's the thing, like everyone has an individual agenda in this business. Our ego, this business is driven by our ego, our insecurities. It's rare to find a team player. I think you and I, we just hit it off even though as you write in your book that we are diametrically opposed, different backgrounds, different ideology. I look a lot younger than you. But we, for whatever reason, we we just I love you. I mean I know that you've got my back. I know that you will advocate for me

I know that you will make fun of me which I am which if you're not mocking me and Disparaging me and so with I can see it in your eyes the grinton your eyes And worries that something is wrong my wife says the same thing. She says if I'm not teasing her, then she thinks I'm in a bad mood. Exactly. But see, that's part of your charm. But I just, I'm so afraid. I don't think my podcast listeners know that about me.

Really? No, I think they hear me as, I don't know what they mean. What do they think you are? They probably think I'm more spiritual guru. Ernest than I, then I actually. Oh, Dan definitely has a devious side. Ladies and gentlemen. Yeah gentlemen yeah well the trick on

working with you was that there's a true with Sarah Haines too was also on the anchor desk with us a good morning America before you both abandoned me was that I would off the air tease both of you relentlessly on the air I was always really sweet. And you guys would be so riled up because we come out of a commercial break in which I had said a bunch of incendiary things.

And then we'd be on the air all of a sudden, and you'd both start picking on me, and then the audience would send you meme tweets. We took the bait. We have no timing when it comes to the retaliation. And so, yeah, Sarah and I would get excreated on Twitter We have no timing when it comes to the retaliation. And so, yeah, Sarah and I would get excreated on Twitter and social media. Why are you so mean to Dan?

I'm like, if you only knew half of the things he was just saying to us, do you know that he has this wife programmed us as helper and his phone? No, but I love you. And you know what, oh well. Well, I love you right back. But I love you. And you know what? Oh, well. Well, I love you right back. But I want to hear that. That's not very, can you give me a little more enthusiasm?

I love you right back. But I am uncomfortable with the motion. When I give him a hug, it's very, you've never reciprocated. I reciprocated. I think once your arms, like they reciprocated mildly and they kind of padded me on the back But you just kind of stand there You're we're uncomfortable with with emotion. No, I have a different love language than you do What's your love language?

verbal abuse I heard my wife saying to my son My wife was talking to our kid the other day and she was like, I heard her explain to him, you know, if Daddy's being silly with you, that means he loves you the most. Oh, I love it. So yes, that's just a different love line. See, I love the chief embraced the love languages.

Yes, you were the first person to use that. And I think that there's a great book out there besides 10% happier. And you're SQL. It's called The Five Love Language is by Gary Chapman. And it just breaks it down that we each communicate love in our primary love language. Mine is definitely physical touch. That's how John can love me, my husband, and that's how I give love to you, thus the uncomfortable

enduring hugs that I love to give you. And also, acts of service. I just like to do nice things for people. But if he's not communicating in my love languages back to me, I won't feel loved. So your love language is words of affirmation, I would imagine. They're the words of affirmation. But what I want or what I do. Well, what do you, what fills your tank?

Okay, words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, that I say physical touch and physical touch. Those are the five level languages. Those are the five level languages. Which one fills my tank? I pick all of them. Oh my gosh, seriously. Yeah, I like all those things. But which ones do I

communicate in? Which ones? What makes you feel loved when your wife does X, Y or Z? What makes you feel more loved than anything else? What would I say my love languages with my wife? I think the most important thing that goes on between it, from my end, that goes on between the two of us, is that I actually need her advice all the time on a million things. And I, nothing I do goes out in the world without being run through her. And so I want her time and attention to give me advice on the most important projects I've got going. Quality time? I guess it's quality time. So she's not working right now. She's been taking a year off. She's working. She's taking care of your child. Right. Okay. She's not working outside the home.

Good point. And so sometimes I have her come to some key meetings with me or for outside projects, not ABC stuff, but book stuff for she'll travel with me if I'm going to give a speech. And that's really important to me. I like having all that time with her. I like to be able to run stuff by her because she's the most important advisor I have. So I guess that would be my answer. Quality time. Quality time. Yes. Interesting. So anyway, I don't know how we just went down that rabbit hole. Let me know. No, but sorry.

You, I went down that rabbit hole because you said I was insincere when I when I said I love you right back. I was totally sincere. I guess it's not that's not how I interpreted it. Yeah. It's very much open to interpretation to it is, but you're not alone and and diagnosing my lack of overt affection. Okay. My yes. Okay. That anyway, this is about you. So let me do what I was trying to do when I profunked or really said, is that even a word? I love you right back. I was trying to refocus the conversation on you.

That was really where I was going with it. You said so many things at the beginning of this that I actually kind of want to unpack. But let me just go back all the way to the beginning of the conversation about you and meditation and chipmunk mind. How did you start meditating? Why did you start meditating? When was that? Can you just tell me that story?

Well, I feel like there were several occasions where meditation where I attempted it, but you were the impetus, okay? And I feel like I had a hard time at the very beginning, even attempting it, because I don't really understand it. And it wasn't until you gave me a great analogy, which it's not that you're trying to empty your mind. Because for me, it's very, the moment I close my eyes, my eyes just dark back and forth, and I'm thinking about a million things.

It's not so much empty in your mind, or clearing your mind, it's just learning how to focus. And when you said it's a bicep for your brain, that was a great... Bicep, yeah. Yes, a bicep. You said it was a bicep, a crow for your brain. That was a great visual. But also, do you remember that analogy, the description that you gave me with the whackable? Yes. Okay, so for me, that's the benefit. That's when I had my aha moment with meditation about what it could do for me.

Yes, I'm going to continue to have these distractions, but it's like the whack-a-mole, it's still going to pop up, but I can choose to respond to it in my time, right? So I don't have to be frantic in responding to the whack-a-mole. Those distractions are still going to be there, but there with how I choose to react to those distractions. Yeah. I would say maybe, or so there's a difference between how meditation shows up and your mind, how the practice works in your mind when you're doing it and how it impacts how you are off the cushion and the rest of your life.

What I hear you saying there, if I'm hearing you correctly, is so funny how ADD you are because you just picked up your phone. I wanted to pull some because I have something I wanted to read to you actually. Okay, that was me picking on you inappropriately apparently. But I am, listen, it's rampant. It's not something you wouldn't do. Anyway, the whack-a-mole thing is like your life is constantly throwing crazy things at you. You have three kids and a more than full-time job and lots of stuff going on. The fact of the matter is all things are going to be popping up at you all the time.

Meditation I find helps you do is just kind of not react blindly to all the things that are coming at you. You're much more focused. Focused and less emotionally reactive. Right, and I feel you're focused but you're intentional to about what you react to and how you let it affect you. We recently hired, at the 10% happier company,

we hired a firm of all millennial women to help us come up with new advertising. And they came up with a slogan that I really like, which is life is a mess, You don't have to be and That I think is a really good encapsulation of what the practice does. That's right. Although I still feel like I'm a bit of a hot mess Yeah, I mean, but that's part of the beauty of you. You don't always have to be a hot mess Right, exactly. Sometimes you won't be I'll be honest you and I have had so many discussions about our Faith, okay, what we believe. My case, lack thereof.

Well, it's still a faith system. And my lack of faith is still you're believing in something, right? Well, no, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll you don't have hot or cold water. You have hot in the absence of heat is cold, right? You don't have light and dark. You believe in absolutes, dualism,

or as dark as the absence of light? So you just might be the abs. You still have faith in something. We can unpack that later. But I think that there's this myth. I am a born-again Christian. You know I love Jesus, right? And we talk about this all the time. And I think there's this, I wouldn't say myth, but maybe a misconception in the Christian community that if you start meditating, you're somehow going to be turned into a Buddhist, that it's somehow part of this religion. So, the Bible talks about praying and meditating. I mean, Jesus went into the wilderness to pray and meditate.

So, I think for me, you know, when I first started hearing about meditation, though, it was in the Eastern religion sense, instead of really looking at what the Bible says about it. And I think that there, as a Christian, I might meditate for different reasons, and I might meditate on different things. Like my mantra is, be still, which is a verse from the Bible. And I very much make the practice my own own that I wanted to read you this verse from Psalm and it says, the heart of the righteous one meditates before answering. And also I will meditate on all your activity and ponder over your dealing.

So when the Bible references meditating, it's really like meditating on who God is and his creation. Well, those just went by fast. Can you just read the first one again? Yes. The first one is from the Old Testament, which is Proverbs 15, 28. It says, the heart of the righteous one meditates before answering.

Can't that, isn't that another way of saying what I just said about Wacomal or what we both just said about Wacomal? Completely. Which is that life is going gonna be throwing all these little weasels, they're gonna be popping out of holes at you. And you can respond wisely to the little weasels, the righteous heart meditates in those cases. I'm taking that as an example.

Before answering. Yes, yes. Right, and then, you know, there are a multitude of references in the Bible, and I just think Christians can benefit so much from meditating. Yes, we're not going to go to a Buddhist retreat, or that's not what I'm looking to get out of it.

And when I'm practicing, I am thinking about I'm trying to draw near to God. I'll do a three minute meditation, And that's kind of my go-to. And for a one minute, I focus on my breath. For the next minute, I go to my happy place, and that's usually Lake Michigan, and I smell the air where I'm from. Yes, I'm from Michigan. So I'll go to the beach and I can feel my hands in the sand, and I can hear the seagulls and I can just smell. It's the smell of the lake.

I can hear the waves. I can smell the suntan oil that I put on. And then the third minute is it would just be some sort of affirmation. You can make that affirmation whatever you want for me. I'll just say I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. I was, you know, together in my mother's womb. You know, I can do all things through Christ. So I'll say affirmations from the Bible.

So for me, I've kind of made it my own little Christian meditation practice. And it works for me. Great. And you say in that first minute when you're on your breath, is that when you're using the mantra about be still on the in-breath and the up-breath. And you do find a rainbow. I actually want to get a tattoo the mantra about be still on the in breath and the up breath. And you do find a rainbow. I actually want to get a tattoo. This is be still on my wrist.

I like that. You should get it. I'm getting all tatted up. You have no other tattoo. I don't know. You've got to start somewhere. I have a good place to start. Do you do this every day?

I try to. I try to. And it doesn't, I don't sit down for 25 minutes at a time. But I would. You said three minutes. Yeah, this is really good. This is, this is called a three minute cure. I went, I did this experiment with Red Book. And I tried all kinds of crazy. Red Book magazine.

Yeah, Red Book magazine. And I did. Sad. How did you do an art, this is for an article. This was for an article. I did an experiment. They wanted me to try all forms of different meditation, putting mantra, sound wave, smells. I did the three minute cure. But of all of them, the three minute cure is one that, how can you not make clear three minutes out of your day, 180 seconds. You're impressed with my math there, aren't you? So, I really like the three-minute cure.

I also will just, if I just need some time to myself, I'll just close my eyes and I'll be still. Be still, and that focuses me. I'll do that for five, 10, 15, 20 minutes. I think it's great, and I also wouldn't beat yourself up over the fact that, you know, I said, do you do it every day? You said, I try to.

One of the things I learned in over the fact that, you know, I said, do you do it every day? You said, I try to. One of the things I learned in writing the last book is there's this concept that we use now at the company, at the 10% company, is daily-ish, which is like, we just tell people try to do it most days. Well, I think that you just have to give yourself some grace. And we're so hard on ourselves. And we talk ourselves out of it. We're dissuaded because, oh, I can't do it perfectly.

Well, it's not about perfection, it's just about trying. Give yourself the same amount of grace you give every other person on the planet, start over, if you didn't do it for two days, straight, three days, a week, whatever, just get back to it. It's okay, be kind to yourself. I love that. But I did, she's just get back to it. It's okay, be kind to yourself. I love that.

But I did, just going back to what you said about being a Christian who meditates and some of those cultural caution that people have in the evangelical community. And I know there have been prominent evangelicals who've gotten up and Reverend Al Moller Scott up and said, you know, don't, you know, you're gonna let the devil in.

If you do this, the Pope, the former Pope Benedict called it meditation auto erotic spirituality. So what do you say to your fellow, your co-religionists about this practice? Well, see, the Bible says pray and meditate. So what are we not supposed to obey the Bible? And I think, you know, it's like Halloween. Halloween was a pagan holiday, right?

Are we celebrating like the pagans did when we go trick or treating? No, you make it your own. And the Jesus again went into the wilderness to pray and meditate. And I think if it's in the Bible, like, I'm going to go for it. Yes, it could be rooted. There could be some roots in Buddhism. But for me, meditation's rooted in the Bible. How can I argue that?

And yes, people are going to turn it into what they want it to be, but you make it your own. And that's what I'm going to go with. I'm going to go with my gut. I'm not, you know, praying to Buddha. I'm not facing East. I'm not trying to, I'm not doing this for religious Buddhist reasons or any of that or any ideology. I know what I want from it and that is you know, to draw closer to God and I feel like I really can through meditation.

to God and I feel like I really can through meditation. But I also want it just for focus and equanimity and the ability to be intentional and not so scattered with my thoughts. You have such a, you really do have very, you have a lot going on. Three kids, I mean, you were running slightly late, come into this, your son, your middle child has pneumonia. Right. You got a lot going on and plus you work here at ABC, you're traveling all over the place and this is a pretty competitive tough environment. So I'm just wondering how has this changed you or the way you relate to all this as a consequence of having this practice. I just, I think I realized how much I needed. Once I started, I realized how much I needed to do this.

And I realized that something was really missing. I don't, like I said, I have a very, I have an undiagnosed case of ADD. But if you talk to anybody, they know I have ADD. But this for me, I don't want to take medicine. Then people that do, my family does whatever. I just don't want to pull myself full of ADD drugs. This really helps me to focus, and it's one of the few things. And so, once I started meditating, I realized how much better I felt.

It was a spiritual connection to God, physically, mentally. I really noticed a mental difference. There are so many benefits, and I didn't realize how many benefits there were until I started, and I stopped for a while. That's a great way to notice the benefits. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I'm hooked.

But again, I've made it my own. Yeah. And as much as you are, my spiritual guru, right? And my leader, what do you say you are to be honest? I always ask Bianca how's it feel to be married to your spiritual leader? I love it. I love the eye roles I get in response.

I admire you too. I've seen such a difference in you. Honest to God. You've endured a lot too. We all, this can be a really tough business. Just from the physical aspects, the physical grind, the emotional grind, the ego checks. And I've noticed a huge difference in you, not just 10%. I would venture to say 14%. I'm going to go out on the ledge. But you're

dear, much more zen. You're happier. The way that you respond, and I don't know for sure if that's because of your meditation practice, but I've seen a huge change in you. I appreciate that. I think I have a lot of work left to do. Well, we all do. Yeah, but the goal is not perfection, right? No, I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that.

To the extent that you're comfortable, can you talk about the unique stresses of being in the job that we have? Oh, yeah. You can. Okay, because I don't want to put you on the spot to say things you don't want to say or whatever, but okay. No, I mean, what do you want to know about the stresses?

I want to know that the stresses from your perspective. I know them from on. It's very much a job where there's a huge double standard. I'll just go out and say that. Men and women. Oh, yes. I completely agree. I don't go out and say that. Men and women. Oh, yes. I completely agree.

I don't even know what you're going to say, but I think you're right. aesthetically. You and I could, you could wear the same suit for 365 days straight. Nobody was noticed. Nobody's going to notice. You and I have talked on the set before about if we were to look at each other's replies on Twitter, some high percentage of viewers would either be completely sexually inappropriate or just mean about whatever you're wearing or your hair or makeup.

Sure. Zero percent of mine would be about how I look. No, you're the newsman, you're the serious newsman. And I think we're held in many ways and it's the nature of the business, the nature of the culture unfortunately, but we're held to a different standard. I can say the most profound thing and people respond, your necklace was crooked. Did you know that? Or what's up with your hair?

Why is your makeup look funny today? And it's those things that, and I understand that, but that's tough. That's a tough pill to swallow. It's a high stress job. And I say this, everyone that works in the TV business, the news business, got a little bit of crazy going on because we thrive off of pressure. And these are high pressure, high stake situations.

You can say one wrong thing and ruin your career. What about the crazy that makes you want to be in front of millions of people? Yeah, well, we all have it. Yes. Right? I don't know what that crazy is. We thrive. I think for me, I don't work well until the final moment.

If you give me three months for a project, I'm going to cram it right at the end. That's just when my blood gets boiling, my thoughts start working. I'm a bit of a procrastinator in that sense because I know that's when I'd produce my best work is when I'm stressed, like a grape, like a wine grape. If you've ever been to a vineyard, okay, the grapes are so, they look like raisins, right? They're distressed, they're withered,

but yet the more distressed, the better the concentrate. I kind of feel like a wine grape. I have to be distressed, stressed, in order to produce my best fruit. I see. In some sense. I wasn't following that analogy till the end. Did you follow it out? No, I got it.

I got you. I know you abstained from alcohol, so you don't even want that to taint. Not for religious reasons. I know you abstain from alcohol, so you don't even want that to taint. Not for religious. I know. That's another podcast in and of itself. What Dan is not eating these days, but we're not going to go down that road. So boring. So boring.

That's like 90% more boring. That's the next book, right? I don't know how I could get more boring. Good thing you have a really great personality, and you're very magnetic. I sometimes I'm not so sure about that. Anyway, I keep trying to get it back to you. Oh, sorry, I'm good at deflecting. The stress of the business isn't just the deadlines and the high-wire act of being in

public or the criticism that I think is disproportionately directed at females, especially on an aesthetic level. It's also, we're competing with one another. We're competing. You talked about this earlier when you said everybody has an agenda. And you're using that to talk about the sort of unusual nature of our relationship as co-anchors who really had each other's back. What's your view on the sort of competitive nature of our relationship as co-anchors who really had each other's back. What's your view on the competitive nature of the business?

Well, they throw everyone into one ring and it's different when you're... I've worked in three local markets, so I work for the local affiliate. So if you live in Dayton, Ohio, you work in Cincinnati or you live in Cincinnati, Ohio, you turn on your local news or I worked in Chicago, your local news, I worked there. You'll see your local anchors local news, or I worked in Chicago, your local news, I worked there. You'll see your local anchors and reporters, so I did local. It's a totally different beast when you come to the network because everybody gets thrown into this pit.

And the cream will rise to the top, but sometimes to rise to the top, you've got to stab one another in the back. It is so competitive. Everyone's going for the same assignments. And that's what makes it difficult. And at this know, at this level, they're so, they're so little real estate. They're so, in terms of anchoring, reporting, and everybody's fighting for the same fish. And so it's rare when you can hug somebody

and know with confidence that they're not gonna be stabbing you. Even if they don't hug you back. I don't hug you back, but you know that I'm not stabbing. Maybe you're not hugging me because you have a knife and you just would feel so awful about stabbing your little sister on the back. No, but it is such, and I say, when you get to the network level,

it's only 40% talent and it's 60% politics and it's figuring out how to navigate it. And sometimes the most talented people don't get the best assignments. Sometimes you're excluded because, you know, I can't drop everything. I have three little kids. I remember I was asked to go to the London Olympics, whenever the London Olympics were, I think the 2012, they asked me to go three days before and to be gone for three weeks.

You know, the Olympics, they're like a very last second assignment, right? I mean, it's not on the calendar for 10 years prior to, but I couldn't drop everything. I had two little kids. I, you know, I had to bring family in from, what I have to bring family in for out, I'm like, I would have loved to do it. I went to Brazil for a month to cover the world cup, but you know opportunities like that. And then they look, oh, she's not willing. She can't go. She can't make it happen. So you're almost punished for those situations. And that's, that can be difficult to try to navigate that.

Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after. Hey, I'm Arisha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wunderys podcast even the rich where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten

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One of the things that I find most interesting is like you and I think you've been a source of we could have been what kept us apart but I think it's actually a big contribute to our friendship is like you are not the normal You don't bring into this building the normal biography. I Was born into people's Republic of Massachusetts both my parents are scientists I was kind of raised to be in the mainstream media, right? You are from Michigan you raised by evangelical Christians you went to a college that was you know Really geared toward Christianity and...

Christian Liberal Arts School. Christian Liberal Arts School, which what's called? Cedarville University, about 3500 students. I met John there by the way. I met your husband there. College Sweethearts, we got married at 24. Something you don't see here on the news. No, right, right.

So, what's it like walking into this building every day, given that biography as opposed to mine? You sometimes feel like you're a fish out of the water, but I like, I've always been, I wouldn't say always, I like being the devil's advocate. I like bringing a different side to the table. I think that's part of my journalistic instinct. I want to bring whether that's in a story or just my own personal background, my resume. I don't, you know, I have

bring a geographical diversity to the table, ideological diversity to the table. In some sense, as I feel a great responsibility to represent marginalized voices that aren't represented. I know what it's like to live in Chicago and to be referenced as a flyover state. I know how hurtful that can be. I can feel the elitism of the East Coast and the West Coast and nothing else in the middle matters. So, I take a personal responsibility to make sure that those views and those voices and opinions are presented and are at the table.

So I consider it a great honor. I love it. I feel like I'm thriving. I don't want to be in a room of like with a room of like-minded people. I like to be the instigator in some senses. I like to be the odd man out. Well, I will say you said before that I'm not super effusive, I will say that your ideological lens, and I don't think that's probably the wrong way to say it because I don't actually think you bring ideology to the office. It's more that you have your own cultural history

that you bring and you bring a sort of contrarian point of view into the office has had a profound impact on me. So one of the things that we did for the many years when we were co-anchors on Weekend GMA was every Saturday and Sunday morning. We have a political analyst on to talk about the big news and in the era of Trump, it's almost always big news, and we would craft those questions together. Often in the makeup room,

just kind of arguing about what's the most important thing, and you always forced me to think outside of the normal outside of the box. And then you were, you know, you've turned me on to Will Ben Shapiro, for example, the conservative podcaster, who I now listen to all the time, you know, I have my problems with Ben. I've interviewed him. He's got some blind spots. And he's a recent guest on your podcast, which we will get to eventually. But you really, really forced me to see my blind spots and my biases.

This isn't a question. It's just a long, a long salute to you and what you've brought into this office, but I think it's been very, very constructive, at least speaking for my narrow. But don't you think we're better, I think we have an obligation to think outside of ourselves. That's why I was, I've learned so much being on the East Coast as well.

Having lived in the Midwest for 35, 36 years before I moved here. And so it's opened my eyes to different backgrounds to different ideology. You say ideology, I say ideology. Can you say it either way? No, I think you're saying it correctly. Correctly or incorrectly. Correctly. Really? I think so. For once?

Oh gosh. What's that? Is that the opposite of man's, and then man's splitting I normally do. Oh no. Gosh, I never win this for. I mean you are. I think it's ideology. I think you said it. If that's what you are. You are the king of etymology. I don't know about that. No, you really are. You're dance really smart by the way. Yes. You don't know about that. No, you really are. You're Dan's really smart, by the way. Ish. You weren't allowed to watch shows growing. I was not allowed to do it.

You could only watch educational shows on TV. I was allowed very limited TV. Now, of course, I work in the box, which is the ultimate growing. Iron. And my mom, you still, you know, like, read it to us out of the dictionary and give us the Latin derivations of words.

Yeah, I was super nerdy. Pretty nerdy. So great, though. My brother's way worse than me. I have to admit, when I read your books, I have to have a dictionary nearby. But I love that. But you have this way. You have such a keen sense of writing and conversational way of writing that the words can be lofty, but I kind of still understand what they mean in the context.

And I can hear, I can see that twinkle in your eye, and I can tell that some of it's tongue. I know what you're talking about, but I feel like I'm learning so much, not just about the practice and meditation, but I mean, you're dropping some knowledge. I've got my dictionary. What does that word mean? Everything you just said was super kind, but you are deflecting. Oh, what are we talking about? We're talking about you. So I have another question about you, which is that you did a really, I think brave thing recently in a professional context. I killed my career.

I didn't kill your career, but you took, well, I want you to tell the story. But I want to ask before you tell the story, one question that hopefully we'll just get nit-nit-nit-nit-woven into the answer, which is, did your meditation practice the calm equanimity, any of the little dose of calm and equanimity that was injected into your life through meditation in any way contribute to this big decision that you're going to talk about? I think it did because it made me realize how out of balance my life was and I may not have felt that otherwise. But I remember you and I, so this summer, I decided to walk away from Wiken, GMA, walk away from the view into this ambiguous base of my career. I

was, I had been working weekends for the better part of 17 years, virtually my entire marriage, three little kids, my health started to suffer, but when I broached it initially the summer of 2017, so a year prior, I remember I talked to you about it, and you literally, I remember you came back and you said, I thought you were crazy. And I think that's what most people thought. Why would you walk away from two dream jobs into this space of the unknown? You understood why I was doing it for I needed some work-life balance, right?

But still, we get so sucked into our own ego and we inflate who we are in our own minds and the impact that we're having on other people. And we don't realize that I was more focused on the spotlight instead of my own sanity. Everybody was getting my leftovers, my husband, my kids. And I realized that my job had become a bit of a addiction. It had become my narcotic of choice. Honestly, I was addicted to the thrill of being on TV, addicted to my ego, I guess you could say. And I knew that if I had walked I walked away, people would think I'm crazy. Oh, she was forced out. And I was worried what people were thinking would think about me.

If I stepped down. And then, so this the summer 2017, I had spoken with you. I had spoken with another executive and who had told me flat out, you're crazy if you walk away. And it would be hard for you to climb up the ladder here, you know, to be promoted if you walked away. We're not going to promote somebody that's not an anchor. So I let that fear really paralyze me. And I dug deeper. I'm like, okay, I'll just prove to them how important I am here. I'm going to stay put. And then I went through a really tough season. And it started with a miscarriage, the day before I interviewed Sean Spicer.

I had this big interview with Sean Spicer, I was getting an exclusive with him. The first time he had spoken since his controversial Emmy appearance, day before I found out, I went to the doctor, John, I went to go see the baby, no heartbeat. So conducting the interview,

thinking the child inside of me is probably dead, which is a tough feeling. When you're conducting, talk about triumphant tragedy in one moment. Well, I just can't stop you for a second. We've been through miscarriage too, but my family, but obviously I'm not the one carrying it, so I can't pretend to understand the half of how horrible that must feel. But for those of those in the audience who haven't seen the Sean Spicer interview, you were incredibly good in that interview. And so it's amazing to me because I didn't know the timing.

I or I'd forgotten the timing, but I do remember the interview and you were really spot on in that interview. And so incredible to me that you were carrying a lot of emotional distress into it. Right. Because it didn't show. I kind of didn't. The thing is I run to work. I've noticed and that's when I that was one of my coping mechanisms when I had to go back to the doctor, the following week to confirm that the baby wasn't viable. I had to take

a pill. A couple days later I developed an infection, had to have an emergency procedure on a Friday, got home at 11.30 that night and the next day you were gone that weekend. I went right back to work. I just dug deeper. That's how I cope. I go back to work. I don't want to think about it. So I get up four hours later after I've had an emergency DNC. So that was part one. A month later, I'm doing a live shot in front in Wall Street and some, can I say that? Ryan's saying no, but they'll believe it. So a month later, I'm on Wall Street doing a live shot for Good Morning America about the bull run, which the irony of me doing a story on the stock market.

Okay. Anyway, I was roughly 10 to 20 seconds from going live and these two hoodelums threw something at my head. I didn't know what it was right away. They threw an apple at my head, but they threw it so hard that the apple exploded on my head. I didn't know what it was right away. They threw an apple at my head, but they threw it so hard that the apple exploded on my head. And luckily it wasn't on camera, I know it would be dubbed Apple Girl Forever, but I got a concussion from it. The police found surveillance video. They said it was two kids. They never found them, by the way. They were probably

on their way to school. They said that they threw it 60 miles an hour. So it hit the side of like right behind my earbone. If my face had been turned, just a couple of like centimeters to the right, it would have shattered the right side of my face. So I had a concussion, I was forced to sit out for three weeks. The day, and I'm talking, five minutes after I get an email from work, clearing me to go back to work, I get an email from work, clearing me to go back to work. I get into a car crash. Not my fault, head on collision.

I've just dropped John off at the train station where we live, driving my minivan, minivan's totalled. I can't go back to work right away. Then a couple of months later, I get influenza, which subsequently turns into pneumonia. That's seven months of my life. Okay? I don't know if God could have screamed any louder that I needed to slow down.

And I needed to take this step of faith and walk into the unknown and take care of myself. And so is in that moment. I mean, like literally I felt like God had to hit me over the head with that apple, but he needed to get my attention. I was so addicted to work and I was so addicted to the high of my job. And when I first broke the news to the bosses, they were supportive. They didn't want me to step away. I mean, there's no one that can deny that we had a great chemistry. The whole team, it's hard to find rapport like that. But they honored my decision. And

it was really tough, but I felt like that's what I was supposed to do. I think it was incredibly brave. I think it was, I mean, I was selfishly not happy about it because I didn't want you to go. But initially, you thought I was a little coo-cootist to you're like why would you walk away from this? And that's what most people thought. And that's what I bought into. I bought into that fear and I thought everybody's right. I'm totally crazy to walk. Yeah, but a big part of my resistance was just selfishness because I knew it was going to be bad for me. I thought it could be bad for me. Isn't meditation supposed to help you with your selfishness? Oh, maybe, you know, 10% buys me a lot of room.

you know, 10% buys me a lot of room. You know, you're an idiot. So that was my problem with it, but once you explained, hey, look, I gotta work on my marriage. You know, not that you guys were having problems, but just that, oh, I needed to invest in my marriage. And your kids? Yeah, I did.

And so once you said it that way, it made a lot of sense. And actually, it's provoked a lot of really healthy thinking for me and dialogue with my wife about work life balance. So it's been, I talked about how you had an ongoing impact on my thinking about tribalism for example, and bias and the media big impact. This was another decision you made that really helped me think about my own life.

So I think it was a really brave move. How are things going? They're going great, but it's, one of the toughest parts about it. It's not like I was leaving one, like two dream jobs for this other cushy gig. I literally, that quote from Martin Luther King, faith is taking that step when you can't see the rest of the circuits. I literally felt like I couldn't even see the step I was on. So you basically, just to fill people in, you decided to become a correspondent here.

Instead of you had, you had, you were a co-host of the view, you were the co-host of Weekend Good Morning America. And now you have neither of those titles. And anchor titles. Yeah, anchor titles. And big titles. Which is a big deal in our industry. And now you are a correspondent for ABC News and you travel and do all sorts of stories. But it's a much less well-defined role. Oh, completely. It's not defined. And, you know, I think I was

a little too prideful in the sense that in Haughty, I thought that, oh, I'm not defined by what I do. I'm defined by who I am. I'm a wife. I'm a mom, I'm a child of God, you know. And so, but the moment I walked away from what I did, I didn't know who I was anymore. And there was a lot of guilt involved in that. Why isn't being a mom enough? Why isn't being a wife enough? Why isn't being a child of God enough? And there was a tremendous amount of guilt, not just that those weren't enough, but the fact that I totally lost my identity in what I

did. It's like that long ago, so you still... No, I'm still working through all of this, but I'm better every day. But that was a huge wake-up call. I mean, if you ask yourself, if I walk away from what I do, what I still know who I am, I thought I would always know the answer. I didn't realize that this quote unquote vocational calling that I had had completely consumed me to the point that I didn't know who I was outside of it anymore. And I think that's part of why you get that response from the bosses and from me, your

friend when you propose this idea is because you're triggering, I can always speak for myself, fear in me. You know, could I do what she's doing? You know, could I, if I have enough to all this meditation, could I walk away? I don't know. I mean, it really forced me to think about it in ways that I'm still wrestling with today. Yeah, I'm, and thank you for that.

It's been tough though, because it's, I've been very introspective and just realizing that again, It's been tough though because it's been very introspective and Just realizing that again, I had become addicted to my job and I didn't realize it But one of the things you done this gets us to ostensibly wire here which of course we bring up at the last minute here, but Which is your fault because you're too interesting on all these other things Is one of the things you did that I think I have a lot of respect for and I think is going to be

incredibly successful is you thought really long and hard and strategically about, you know, how can I mold this job into, how can I channel my profound interests into this new sort of undefined role? So you started a podcast where you talk to people about faith. Right. So can you just talk about that for a second rather than having me talk about it?

When I when I broached this subject of stepping away with the boss, as they said, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to work on big stories, the people that are in the center of them. So, you know, substantial stories, consequential interviews. And I said, I don't know what a lot of faith podcast. And I actually have you to think of all people, my whatever you are, atheist, agnostic friend, you and I were talking months ago. And I was like, I just don't know what my lane is. Is it parenthood? And you're like, it's faith. You dummy. You didn't probably say dummy. But for me,

I just, I don't see myself, it's not a hobby, it's not a habit, it's who I am, and it's, I can't see myself without it. I don't see it myself separate from faith. So I didn't, I didn't even think about it, but for you, you were able to identify, this is your lane, this is who you are. And so you're the one that encouraged me to do the faith podcast.

I did. I don't even remember that. Take some credit, yes. Okay. Well, you helped me. I love you. We talked about what my lane could be. And I still remember you're like, it's faith.

You should do a podcast on faith. Well, I mean, and I also think you've come out of such a unique perspective because you have a foot in both worlds. Right. You have a foot in the secular, upper west side, mainstream media world, and you have a foot in mission. I'm good at straddling. There's what you're saying. Two separate worlds.

For gymnasts. No, I feel like there's such a hole in the market because we want to talk to newsmakers and influencers about their latest project about, you know, that game winning touchdown about something salacious they said in the news, but we don't talk to them about their faith. If they mention, you know, you know, Jesus or Allah or Buddha, what have you, we're going to believe, we don't, we don't want that. That's not what this interview is about. And so I just sense the fact that yes, I am a Jesus follower.

I can't imagine my life without my faith. It has been so important to me and guided me and carried me when I, my marriage was on the rocks, when I've had multiple miscarriages, I didn't think we could even have babies through moves across country, several, it has sustained me so much and I can't imagine my life without it. It is my glue and my foundation and my rock. And I know there's other people that feel the exact same way,

regardless of whether they're Christian, they're Jewish, they're Muslim, they're atheist. And I want to give people an opportunity to talk about what they believe, why they believe it, and how it's navigated their life through triophant tragedy. I just think there's a whole for it. You can go to the 700 Club, you can go to Rabbi Schmooly, you know, which Roseanne Bar did, but you can't, there's no mainstream outlet that's giving people that platform to talk about it.

And so that's what I wanted to do. And I just sat down with Sam Harris, who is totally out of my lead, by the way. He's got as a philosopher and you're good friends with him. He's been on your podcast, right? Yes. And I've been on his, I think I've been on his, maybe I have, I don't know. Anyway, Sam is a good friend of mine. But let's say you've had many guests, some of them super famous like country music stars.

Lou Bryan, Hillary Scott, Kellyanne Conway, Tim Tebow. I'm having a Resa Osslin who's who grew up she converted to Christianity, then converted back to Islam. So I want to, I also want a encouraged dialogue with people that we disagree with. I don't have any common with Sam, but I want to hear where he's coming from. I don't want to debate. Listen, that's not a debate anybody wants to see me and Sam Harris. I would give my butt kicked, okay? But I want to establish that we can have respectful conversation. I mean, if you think about some of the more profound conversations you've had, it's with

people, you and I, people that you don't see eye to eye with. So let's just learn to just pull up a chair, find some common ground, let's listen, let's respect one another. I wanna know more about other religions that doesn't mean that I'm questioning my faith, but I do think you need to question your faith. You need to know what you believe and why you believe it. You need to, you know, the Bible says,

be able to explain the hope that is within you. And this is challenging me. I hope it challenges other people. I don't want to just sit down. You know, Jesus sat next to sinners and people that he didn't see eye to eye with. I want to be able to do that. I want to sit down with people from all different walks

and ask them what they believe and why they believe. And inspire people. with. I want to be able to do that. I want to sit down with people from all different walks and ask them what they believe and why they believe and inspire people. And I think that impulse is incredibly important right now in this country where one of the big benefits of my friendship with you is that I feel like we're doing something that the rest of the country really needs to do, which is we're having respectful, I mean sometimes it's more locker room, not so respectful, but not in the access Hollywood locker room sense. Right. That's right.

But we, you know, we have respectful conversations, even though we probably use a lot of profanity about profound disagreements. And that is what America is missing right now. You can't, Dan, you can't, people won't even listen to you. No, we're not talking to each other. I know. Because we have our own silo. If you're a Fox News viewer, you're not listening to MSNBC.

If you're an MSNBC viewer, you're not listening. I'm not trying to pick on those two outlets, but we have our own tailored social media feeds. We can't even agree on basic facts. And I give the credit to you in terms of teaching me how to do this because you're the one who's had to walk into an environment where most people probably don't share your cultural. Am I your life guru now a little bit?

I would say you've been very useful in my life. You're useful. Can you just say I've been inspirational and that you aspire to be like me? Put it in the teleprompter, maybe I'll put it out for you. I love it. I've missed you. No, but I encourage people to tune in and to support it and to subscribe, journeys of faith.

We have Marlon Maples and coming up, we have Resa Osslin, who's Muslim, we did Ben Shapiro, Robin Roberts, we have Sherry Shepard, Melissa Joan Hart, and then season two, you know, I just, I'm open to your suggestions. So. Before we go, let's have the debate you started at the beginning of guys at table.

You said something about atheism. Is a faith system or something like that? Can you just go back up? Are we really going to end this now? I don't like bringing something up and then telling people we're going to table it and then not bringing it back. Well, I talk to Sam Harris, who from his vantage point, he does not believe that it is a faith system. I don't either. But I wouldn't call myself an atheist. And I think he has some problems with that word too. not to Sam Harris, who from his vantage point, he does not believe that it is a faith system.

I don't either, but I don't, I wouldn't call myself an atheist. And I think he has some problems with that word too. Right. And we tried to differentiate between atheism and agnosticism. And I think he... I think there's a key difference there. Yes. I mean, even in the roots of the word, right?

You know the roots of the word. Atheism is without God. A agnostic is without knowledge. So I don't know if there's a God. I don't know. How do I know? So I can't tell. I wouldn't sit here and say everything you believe is patently untrue. I just don't know. Right. And that I see. So what do you classify yourself to be? I would say I'm a respectful agnostic as it pertains to organized religion. I would also call myself a Buddhist, but not in the religious sense in that. I think of Buddhism as something you do, not as something you believe in. So I meditate,

I find the sort of philosophical and ethical explorations, philosophical stuff in Buddhism to be really interesting and actionable. But I don't, you know, I can't tell you that karma is real or that reincarnation. I've seen no evidence for that. But what I like about the Buddha was he was like, take it or leave it. Do the meditation, take it or leave it. By the way, he had no creation myth around about the universe. He had no, he was just a dude who died.

He didn't, you know, he didn't claim to be a god or a prophet or anything like that. But to the extent that he made metaphysical claims, I maintain an agnosticism. Right. I just enjoyed sitting down with Sam. I don't agree with him. I understand where he's coming from, though. I understand the problems that he has. So I just think you can't prove everything in a scientific lab.

And I think that so many philosophers, scientists, neuroscientists, they can't prove everything in a scientific lab. And I think that so many philosophers, scientists, neuroscientists, they want to prove everything in a lab. If I asked you to prove your love for Bianca, you could scientifically prove it, but you'd also have to factor in circumstantial evidence, direct evidence, just like you do in a courtroom. And so I think that's where I have a problem with people saying science can't prove. Science can prove. I mean, anthropologists, theologians, scholars, psychologists, psychiatrists can prove that Jesus existed. It's just you have a problem with whether or not he grows for the dead. Well, what was the son of God? I think both the son of God, the divinity as well.

But I think there's an aspect also of faith. But I think again, you gotta dig into it. You can't just say I was raised this way. You need to know why you believe it. It can't just be the faith of your parents. Here's a suggestion for season two, perhaps. I issue this gingerly bit. Somebody would-

Got a trump? If you can get them definitely definitely Francis Collins who uh... what is he's the head of the NIH natural institute to help I think okay hopefully I'm not wrong with it anyways but he's a he's a devout Christian and uh... I sat and interviewed him once and and I pressed him a lot of kind of things you were talking about here and and his answer was ultimately just you know I think he's saying what I what I think you're saying which is ultimately just does come down to a leap at the end of it. At the end of that there is a bit of a leap of faith and I come back to my brother was my brother and I was an atheist for 30 plus years.

He's a physician and he just talks about his moment where he realized This we are such intricate beings. We couldn't have just been random That was an aha moment for him and I say well, you know, I have all these questions and you know There's so certain things you can't answer and he's like I just realized if I could explain Every single thing about God he would be too small certain things you can't answer. And he's like, I just realized if I could explain every single thing about God, he would be too small. And I think at some point, the Bible even says that now we see through a glass dimly, then we're going to see face to face. You know, to God a day is a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. We're trying to, as

mere mortals, figure out an infinite immortal being. And if I could do that, God would be way too small. So there is definitely a sense of faith. I do think you have to have the knowledge. You need to dig in. You need to be able to answer. Profoundly, what do you believe in? Why do you believe it? It cannot be the faith because it's the faith of your fathers You need to it needs to be real and personal for you and that's what that's one thing

I hope to encourage people with the podcast. It is totally challenged me So that's what I want to do Did you subscribe yet? Give me your if you have not subscribed to my podcast. I don't know I'm gonna walk out of this studio right now Where's your phone? It's in my pocket. Let me see. Let me just say something. Let me see your phone. Hand it over, Dan Harris. You're not gonna be able to unlock it. Unlock it right now. By the way, look how broken it is. Okay, just subscribe. If you're not subscribed, I'm gonna be so mad at you. I'm so hurt. I think it's just a crap. No, you didn't. Somehow I overlooked it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you did. You have to just

listen and give me a little feedback. All right. Just subscribe. I'm embarrassed that I haven't subscribed. It's okay. Because that's a key that people need to know. It is important to subscribe because you have a lot of listeners that might download, but they have not subscribed. Subscribing is so important. Right? Yes, it is. That's how we,'s that's how they know that's what they that is their metric of success description. Well it's also listen listen's for episodes big deal. LPs. Is that what they're called? I don't know I just made that up. I said they're with confidence. I don't know. LPs. Can I say something in closing? Am I allowed to do that? Are we going to say Lord's Prayer?

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine. I need to be gracious to you. The Lord left you up with, look upon you with favor and give you his peace. I pray that over my kids every night. That's the first time that's been done on this podcast, but really?

There you go. I was just joking by the way when I said that, but you let me go with it. So we're not. What I was going to say is I do love you and I really hope that this podcast is a massive success. If I could have 10% of the success

in your podcast, I'd be happier. How about, how about I, I see what I just did. It was so clever, it was awesome. How about you, how about my podcast ultimately is 10% as successful as yours that would be the right order in the universe I think okay let's let's go for that let's push for that thank you for coming on anytime this has been pleasure of the 10% happier podcast.

If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at abcnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday.

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