Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 88: Virginia Heffernan: Writer, 'Trumpcast' Podcast Co-Host

Episode Date: July 12, 2017

Virginia Heffernan, who has written for several major publications including as a television and Internet culture columnist for the New York Times, opens up for the first time about her addiction to prescription drugs and her decision to get sober. The author of "Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art" and a co-host for Slate's "Trumpcast" podcast, Heffernan talks about the turmoil she was facing in her work and personal life, her relationship with religion and her Twitter persona @Page88. 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 did 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. Our guest this week is another person who I've admired for a long time and then met on Twitter. Virginia Heffernin is a phenomenal reporter and writer. She's been within New York Times among other publications. And so I've followed her for years,

and then we happened to connect on Twitter and it came out that she was a meditator. So I invited her on the show. And as you'll hear, she started to discuss something very personal in the course of this interview that she has never discussed publicly before, really personal, really moving and really important to hear. And aside from that, you're just going to hear a really sharp mind, talk about what meditation can do for a person, and also hear her views on technology and on faith. So without further ado, here's Virginia Heffernin. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

You're way too plugged in. Oh my god, I don't know if anyone is plugged in enough or too plugged in. But I joined Twitter very early on just because I like digital life, digital culture. And I thought that it was going to be another shady message board, like the things I belong to for perfume lovers or, you know, people anticipating childbirth. And so it was just another thing to sign up for. So I gave myself a code name, like an avatar name, page 88, because I knew it was a disgraceful demimond that I was joining.

It has, like my eBay handle, nobody has, you know, you don't have Dan Harris verified account on eBay, right? Like that's just your side house. By the way, great use of the word demimond. I'm actually writing a book right now. I'm gonna find a place for. To smuggle it in. Yes. I will look for that. Hold me to it. Oh, also I like citations. So um, free even for single words. You could get a citation. Why not? Um, so I like, anyway, I like the internet. So I went and I, you know, you know, from the book I joined when I was nine and

just for my sense of spent a lifetime there. Just joined the internet. I joined what was then, I called the computer, but was a networked, it was a networked computing, time sharing system, they had it dark with college. I was a towny child at the cha, you know, when I got the childs to dial in. And I joined this, you know, world that looked very much and has come to be in my mind something like a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. So I had been a D&D kid and I was very excited to create my new online avatar at nine.

I'm excited to die. I was on the 12th side of die for Dungeons and Dragons. I think we had 36 at some point. they were basically like points in geometric points in space instead of actual sides. But so, when you say, you know, how do I, to any extent, maintain balance, even though I am fairly regularly on Twitter, I still think of it as a game. I just got that idea stuck in my head that this isn't life. And anything that page 88, that's my Twitter handle, does, is not what I do, or what the, you know, there's a backward step as the Buddha say, and that I can take that and be sort of even more myself, because I've almost sloughed off the part of me that can be digitized. Do you know?

So it's like anything I am or anything the world is is something that can't be on the internet. And so having defined it that way, I've found more freedom, you know, living a portion of my life on the internet. But you know without it. You're not immune from the sheer volume of data. I walked into this room and you immediately started talking about things that have transpired in the last like five minutes and you got it from Twitter, I would assume. And so I guess it's that always on part of it to what you, I think you were referring to about the

unreality of it and that your page 88, you're not you, that's about taking the stuff that people say to you personally, maybe, as opposed to just having your fingers, as I said before, kind of like in the data stream in that way and always on. Yeah. I'd like to not be in it once in a while. Yes, I take breaks off. I take pretty much after trolling. So after there's any experience with sometimes

after Trump cast the show that I host about our president, sometimes there's some trolling around that or there've been times when it feels like a colosseum on there, you know, where you can't pretend that you're different. You can't know one or at least I certainly don't have an imagination big enough to distance myself so much from page 88 that I'm not constantly getting cortisol and adrenaline spikes every time I, you know, I'm told that I should, what's the buzz off? How about that? Buzz off, stage 88, that kind of thing. But they started with a different consonant.

They do a different version of that exactly. Yes, gotcha. And, and, yes, so I usually take three days off and I have a sort of regimen for those days. Three days? Yeah, three days. I mean, I don of regimen for those days. Three days? Yeah, three days. I mean, I had hasn't happened in a while and three days in this particular news cycle

would be maybe challenging. On the other hand, you know, it's a huge part of, to the extent that I call it a practice, but a huge part of my well-being is predicated on the idea that I am very infinitely powerless over, you know, this life. And to the extent that I start to believe that I have some power over events right now, like take the Trump Russia connections. This, you know, a alleged Trump Russia. That's right. The alleged connections between Trump and Russia.

And certainly there are people on Twitter who are becoming more and more zealous and ardent around the subject and obsessive and chipping off jokes and I've certainly been one of them. And you can start to feel like you're this armchair encyclopedia around. You're just like girl FBI person who's going to solve this all from Twitter. I mean, years and years ago, I decided that today was the day I solved John Bene Ramsey and I was just going to read those handwritten letters over and over again until I solve them. You know, it's not far from the kind of thinking I used to do right up to the moment that

I kind of crashed in my life. Like in 2011, I really thought that there was a lot I could solve and you know, that I could do it from my chair and from my phone. And when I start thinking that way, it's not good for me. So much to unpack here. I'm going to listeners be confident that I'm going to pursue all the threads. But let me just stay for a second because I know a lot of people really care about this. I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast in particular care about this, which is

maintaining sanity in an era of such fast-moving developments. Having a meditation practice, we haven't even started about how and why and where you started yours. Having a meditation practice, being mindful and having some sort of media diet that makes sense, you know, titrating your usage of, or your consumption of news and information. How do you manage that given how plugged in,

I know you to be? I mean, I, I guess I sort of, I'll just say it doesn't work for me, a monastic approach to almost anything in life. And when I hear, especially schools talking to kids about screen use as though there were, you know, no safe legal dose, as though we're a draw, you know, we're without it, no safe dose, no safe, unsafe at any dose. And as though the way people used to talk about sexuality, like one foot on the floor, you can only go to first base,

or you can only, you know, no hands on butt was the school rule at my high school dances. You could do, you could slow dance, but you couldn't, you know, put your hand on someone else's butt. So anyway, those restraints sound to me very like 20 minutes, but not before bed, but you can have your phone, but you can't carry it into the classroom. It may turn out that you do that, and I certainly take these breaks from the internet, and my kids do too.

But what's worked better for me is trying to play the game or become a skilled player of the game. So with my kids, I talk to them about avatar building online. So, you know, there are many, many choices people make about, say, a Facebook profile. You can choose to highlight the best things in your life. You can choose to write essays and mixed cases about politics. You can share the death by cancer of a friend of yours. You can talk about things that make you unhappy in the world. You can try to engage other people.

You can use the hive mind. But those are all choices that people make on the internet. And they shouldn't make them out of fear that they're trying to participate in this world that's so complicated and horrible, but out of that kind of confident self-invention that's playful and that's a little bit wily and vulnerable, but also author know, when my son decided to put this like, almost executive looking picture of himself on his Google profile.

He's 11 and it's his first, you know, creation of a little profile picture. He took, you know, like we all do, 300 pictures of himself, selfies. And finally picked one where he looked like he was sitting in a corner office with his, I don't know how to describe this for the radio, but you know that thing where you put your

hands behind your head, you know, and elbows out and he just said, doesn't it look powerful? You know, he's a little of a mere old kid. And a power pose. He is a power pose. He's CEO there. But you know, I was a Thina when I was nine and coming up with a durable avatar for a kid that keeps you safe,

you know, that keeps you like you're a CEO or you're an armor is great. And later on, you might want to make more connections with it with a profile. You know, it doesn't do great things for you to be always on Twitter. You're going to make a ton of mistakes and I've definitely made them. You're going to jump to conclusions sometimes. You're going to retweet things that you then think better of. You're going to learn some lessons the hard way and that's about playing that game, but to say that there's health, which is screen free, Twitter free existence,

and then there's addiction, compulsion, and that that lives on the internet, sort of sounds like, you know, the way, I don't know, the way it, like, in ancient Greece, it was just, there's shopping, and that's for horrible people who've never thought about their lives. And then there's this other thing, or, you know, which is, you know, salvation and sanctity, which is thinking, and the examined life. And you can think in Christianity, maybe the ideal is the celibate priest, or the celibate Christ, and then the family man is the one hampered by all these

real world obligations, with which spiritual existence is impossible. And I'd like to think that you can lead a mindful life, even if it's up to half of its online. But, okay, I don't think that's impossible. I think if you're going to be a engaged citizen nowadays, there's a pretty strong argument that you should have... you should be dipping your toes at the very least into the data stream.

I'm just curious about like just from a really granular level, like how much time do you spend online and how much time would you recommend we spend on Twitter or reading articles or whatever it is without losing our minds given the fact that people have strong feelings about on either side about what's happening in American politics and the world. Yeah, I mean, you know, not the whole internet is not even, I don't know, I'd hesitate to make a guess, but there's a substantial part of the internet that is not political. And I think that, you know, a few Instagrams not my joint neither is Pinterest for that matter but you know both of those if you live on Pinterest

and Instagram you it's like you you don't even you're walking through a different world than the people who live on Twitter and a lot of journalists are on Twitter Twitter makes it easy for journalists to be on there doesn't show us ads it's a very different experience for people without verified accounts. And I think so that can give the impression that you're with the whole world, that the whole world's here, and I don't think the whole world's on Twitter,

and that Twitter really very accurately represents the internet. As far as sanity, well, I said this thing about which really does bring me back to sort of my dark night and the beginning of my practice. There was a moment when my best thinking, as a journalist and as a person, had gotten me in really dire straits. Like, just things just, we're not looking good for me. In my real world, and internally, I just felt you desolate. So the point right before that was the point I felt like I

had the most power, like almost like a koki manic. Like, I can control a lot of things in my life. And if I just make these changes, and I just, you know, go one step further, like, there must be an SAT I can control a lot of things in my life and if I just make these changes and I just you know go one step further Like there must be an SAT I can take or a route to work out or something and The moment of revelation to me was it's not that I'm not powerful enough It's that I'm absolutely powerless over these 10 things happening in my life And then I started to get really interested in all the things that I was powerless over and what a wonderful realization

that was. And as excited as, I think we might be as journalists to think that we can get in this story and have some say over what happens, ideally, news breaking liked the fact that there's special counsel now that will investigate the presence connections to Russia. Means justice is taking its course, that the camera can go back, be pulled back a little bit.

And there's procedures, there's checks and balances, there's the judiciary and the government that may work on a longer line than we are aware of, you know, that the law might supersede some of these things or have- You didn't tell me how much time you spent trading with them. Well, as I say, I take days off usually three if I have a massive cortisol spike, if I'm just like this is now physically bad for me. So those are, then that happens probably once a month.

And you know, it's really hard to say we are anyone listening to this podcast is on the internet, is in the digital world. We're on the internet right now that we're making this or at least we're creating a digital artifact. I think there's wireless in this room so I could turn my phone over and look at Twitter. I don't know at what point I become on Twitter, and I really am not dodging it. I mean, I... Like, when you walk out of here...

Yeah. Will I look first of that? Yeah. Or just like, are you in your phone? Would your kids tell me that you're on your phone all the time? No. So, I don't like saying this because I do feel like it plays into the, it's, your phone is all about time,

but just the short answer is, I don't pick it up till 20 minutes after I'm awake except to turn off my alarm. So it turns out to be. That's better than me for the record. I mean, better, see, I don't like this moral thing. Sorry. But because I'm worse at other times,

20 minutes before I got a sleep, you know, I put it down and I don't fall asleep over it, but I'll put it that way. And then I take two hours off in the day and I sometimes use an app that is anyway, that it's called forest and you kill a tree if you touch your phone like a little virtual tree. It's actually really kind of fun. So this is what I was trying to get through. And all those questions. You just feel like how can I hack this? I'm just figuring out an app for that. You threw out a million really, really interesting things.

So I know no finger wagging at you for taking a while to get to what I saw as the nub, but the listeners may see it as something different. But I love that. I mean, it seems really interesting to me, just to know how you're managing this, that two hours off, that's really interesting. And that, yeah, so two hours off in the day, and then the last part is not when I went with another person.

So when the kids, you know, my habit is secret. So I mean, you know, it's in a cafe, sadly, it's while I'm walking down the street. It's when I'm at my desk. But yeah, so not when I'm with another person. And I feel like it's changed a bit that people don't usually have their phones face up on the table when they're together, the way people use to. Or do you keep your phone face? No, I don't.

I really try to think a lot about how to manage my consumption of media, but I don't have as, my rules are not as well thought through as yours, because it is usually the first thing I do in the morning, but I don't check it for a while before I go to bed. And I do meditate quite a bit, so I've actually not looking at that for a couple hours a day,

but it's not a period of the day where I don't know, where it's just structured two hours, I'm not checking anything, I'm doing other things in the real world, I'm usually sitting there with my eyes closed, meditating. Yeah, well, I mean, that's your two hours, right? Yeah, that's my two hours. You meditate two hours a day, so that's a lot.

I will say, by the way, for those of you who have not glimpsed Dan Harris, he gets a very chill, zen-looking man. Really? Yes. That's interesting that you say that. I don't think of myself that way. No, it shows on your face.

Really? Yeah, I mean, you're not quite that annoying Tai Chi kind of person. It's like overly balanced. Sorry, I love Tai Chi. I still have terrible posture just for what it's worth. My wife is always pointing that out to me. Not in a naggy way.

I'm glad we're both like slaying ourselves off so that we're just like, I am not self-actualized at all. Bad posture, look at my phone too much. I just don't mistake me. Tell me about, because you made a couple of references to this, the dark Knight. Your Dark Knight. What would happen? I mean, I'm probably not the first guest to say this,

but I just, I haven't ever talked in this register, you know, surrounded by like ABC News logos. It's just, it's almost, it just feels like a category error, but I do the best I can. I have been sober for almost six years. That's a huge accomplishment. Thank you. Thank you.

And which means that the summer of 2011 was even hard to mention those words together to me. And also, I feel very grateful that it's in the past. So I wasn't, I didn't have a special prosecutor appointed against me. I didn't have a lot of bad things that could happen to a person. But it was bad enough for me. And the two things were that I was sort of being moved

around at the New York Times. And that seemed horrible to me. I loved my, I was writing a column, the late William Sapphire had written the column next to mine and he died at his desk, you know, basically writing on language of the great-old columnist and I just wanted to die at my desk. I just wanted to file and die at my desk. There's just something about New's paper life that I loved, It just fit me. And on top of that, I was very devoted

to the idea of being in a union. I know that the would-be immediately are supposed to have nothing to do with, you know, disgruntled former union workers. But I, you know, felt very like, I just, of course, I don't like patriarchy, but I love paternalism. I just love it being like New York Times, the New York Times company, you know, when I got there,

the stock was going up. I joined the union. There was some thugs that were going to back me up if anything bad happened to me. I took a drug test to be sure that I was like, okay, if I ever had to drive a truck to deliver the paper. And I just loved it. I took a great deal of comfort in that.

And I knew that if I was moved around, I was going to be somehow thrown out into the freelancers world, which just seemed terrifying to me. So this now seems fairly small, but I don't know why, but it was exasidentally terrible to think about leaving the time. It doesn't, I just don't want to know. It does not seem small. People place an enormous amount of meaning in their work. I do yeah, I was getting moved around here at ABC I would take that very personally. Yeah, yeah, so that that was it and and you know And I was also what was the name the column again. Oh, it was called it was called the medium the medium. Yep Yes, yes, yes, and yeah

It was about internet culture and and I just loved doing it It was very like peaceful peaceful time at the magazine. And of course, journalism was contracting. And it just felt this very peaceful. And it was very right with my rhythms to be able to file this way. But as I had worked on that column for four years, two things had happened.

One is, well, I'd had two children, and then also I had developed a coping mechanism for my dissolving marriage, which was Xanax. So, you know, I know that you have sampled the demon cocaine before, but I was past my fun party days and pretty deep into the like mother's little helper time. It's really hard to talk about it because, you know, my kids were little. I mean, I, for what it's worth, didn't take any pills during the pregnancy, but, you know, as soon as I could, I did. So that-

Not uncommon. Not uncommon, right? But even, you know, it's like your bottoms, your bottom, it was big enough for me, you know, I'm not minimizing it all. I'm just broadening. Yes. Another favorite for me was ambience of the sleeping bell and related bento diazepine. Yeah. Yes. And that was, you know, I started taking it earlier and earlier in the day because I liked the sort of odd effects of it. Right before you're supposed to fall asleep, it feels a little funny. They, right. And yeah, it's kind of trippy and interesting.

And, you know, a couple of times I turned my column into the New York Times and it had like a garbled weird stuff at the bottom that I had written while taking ambient. I wrote a bunch about television. Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and be like, did I watch those five episodes of Real Housewives or not? Oh, I don't know. I'll watch them again. So that was kind of a normal morning for me. And- So it was just spinning out of control?

It was bad. It was really bad. It was very like, yes. And, you know, there were times when... So, and then there was a bottle of white wine, usually a screwdriver bottle of white wine in the evenings. Anyway, it became clear that my, then husband had fallen in love with a friend of mine. So, there's the Telenevella element. Okay, Dan's eyes just opened very wide. Like, he's just like, I'm not judging, but that sucks. It's that of me.

I'm feeling badly. I did just sounds terrible. That's what my eyes went up. Like that sucks. It was definitely bad enough for me. And I'm not very good at looking at someone's email. You know, the stuff that you do to find out if someone's cheating on you.

So I didn't know what they were doing at the Times when they were moving me around and I didn't know What was going on with my ex-husband and I just it was felt like I was in a fog and my idea was double the doses Because that's all I had right not illogical. I mean not wise, but I get it I know what to do about this. Yeah, not at rather all the wake up. And now it's a. Slippery slope. Elvis Presley, Eppers, and Downhill Slope. So, you know, amazingly, I had a sober friend.

She's got a lot of sobriety. And I called her one night. It's a little blurry, but I called her one night in early, very late June of 2011 and said, I don't have anything. I don't, I think I don't have a marriage and I think I don't have a job. And with it, making things more complicated, I converted to Judy's own to Mary and we were like quite observant. And I felt like my religion was also, you know, I was gonna lose that too. And I've very little kids.

I mean, I was, you know, anyway. So, I don't have anything. I don't know why that was what came up. And she said, say this thing. And it's, as I can't imagine anything as corny has ever been set on this show. But it's huge, powerful to me. I'm God's child. God loves me.

I'm God's child. God loves me. I think I said it a thousand times that night. I don't even know what the words meant by the end. I had no idea, but I got to sleep that night without ambient for the first time in maybe 10 years. So you were doing a mantra? I was doing a mantra. Yeah.

Yeah. Can you just define for a listener who may not know what a mantra is, what it is? I'm just a word that focuses the mind. Sometimes, I mean, sometimes you can have them bequeathed to you by great gurus, and sometimes people settle on it, but they'll focus on, instead of a visual objective focus or the breath, they'll focus on people who will focus on word. It could be said silently in your own mind or sometimes chanting. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, sort of, you know, that I'm

God shout, God loves me. It was so silly, but also just the idea of being a child again, it was powerful. And I would have done anything to get myself to sleep. So that was it too. And it turns, it was powerful, and I would have done anything to get myself to sleep. So that was it, too. And it turns out it was better than my best thinking, which was, you know, extended release, ambient plus another ambient. So at that moment, I think I forfeited my right to decide that something was beneath me, you know, because I had made some interesting choices that were not putting me in a great place.

So I joined a fellowship that anonymous fellowship. And A-A. I mean, we try not to use the name of it. I certainly don't represent it. And I wouldn't, because I could easily mess up. And then we'd be, and then we'd be, and I wouldn't want to blame the fellowship. But it is a wonderful

anonymous fellowship and it gets a lot of people better and I was one of them. Well, I mean, I think, I really bravo to you. I mean, seriously, this is a hard thing you went through and I know a lot of people who've gone through similar things, That is hard, really hard. It's hard. I mean, but meditating two hours a day is also hard until it becomes easy, until it becomes the only thing. I mean, I would never go back to the hard life I had before this. I mean, the meditation practice, which in the 12 steps is associated with the 11th step. Which is a higher power? It's it's sought to improve your conscious contact with God as you understood God. Gotcha. And

yeah with that with with that and the meditation that's grown out of that, I can have a life, you know, it's not it like, God bless hard exercises, but when they talk about like the my sanity is predicated on my running a half marathon every day, I am just like, wow, that looks hard. You know, I'm a person that wanted the easy work. I'm a person that couldn't stand a micron of pain and thought I needed to take, you know,

benzos to make a phone call. So I'm not exactly someone who's gonna do anything very hard. Well, I think meditation actually is very hard because it does involve turning into the stuff we normally run away from. Yeah, yeah, and that, I mean, you, I know from your book, like that shift of focus, it's just so counterintuitive. You can't believe you're supposed to look at the things

that you've been not looking at all this time. You know, I think there are astroces, is that the correct way to pluralize astroces? It seems right, astroces. Astroces, I don't know why. Okay, whatever it is, that if you've got real trauma, I think you got to tight trade how much you look at the pain. Yeah, yeah, that's...

Or to do it with medical oversight. That's a great, I mean, you know, Tara Brock, the meditation teacher, you know, often cautions people against, you know, taking too deep a dive. You know, sometimes you'll get really confident, just say like, now's my time to like, you know, go deep sea fishing for some, you know, this thing that happened when I was three and, and you know, it can be too, too painful. But, you know, for fear of that, I wouldn't want to stay away even from some of the harder stuff because, you know, you'll have something on exam and, um, this just,

I don't know, untouched, I guess, not examined because it's not analytical. But just like, I'm not going to touch that part of my psyche and then touching it becomes the solution. I will say the telenevella I just described has had a very, very happy ending, which is that with the help of my fellows in this program and some spiritual work and meditation, I reconciled with my friend. And between a career beyond my wildest dreams after leaving the times, probably the greatest gift to me was my husband's decision to leave.

I'm sort of like, gridded out. And I probably would have read, you know, 18 more books on making marriages work and done active listening. And like all this, like, funky stuff to try to save a marriage or be more what he wanted. And so I feel like that was this moment of great liberation in my real life as well as my Souls life. It's remarkable. So all right Again, I'm at this juncture that I find myself in a lot of podcasts where I have a thousand questions Let me just hone in. I'm gonna make a decision to go after how did meditation

Come to you and what form and what is your practice? Look like now come to you and what form and what does your practice look like now? So I think like maybe like other people who've had an addiction to sleeping pills, I had decided that I had completely intractable insomnia, that like without a lot of white wine and benzoes and opiates and sleeping pills in my system, I was never gonna fall asleep. I just thought I would never fall asleep. So that day that I decided to get sober, my first fear was I will never go to sleep.

And I somehow thought meditation was a way to put yourself to sleep. And I mean, I know that joke of like, I just meditated for 20 minutes, and then I woke up. You know, I know. And that meditation and napping often sort of blurred each other. Absolutely.

There's a lot to say about this, but meditation can be a good way to get yourself to sleep. And if you are, I mean, it's about, you know, the word Buddha means awake. So it is supposed to be, it is supposed to be the opposite of sleep in many ways, but if you're falling feeling sleepy

when you're meditating, especially usually a sign that you need some sleep, or sometimes, a sign that you need some sleep. Interesting. Do you fall asleep sometimes in your sleep? Sometimes, yeah. And it can mean that I've just haven't had enough sleep. It can mean that I don't want to look at something.

It can be a way to fuzz out and not face something else. Yeah, yeah, fuzz out. So I tried, I called someone, I did not know very well at all and said, I know you know how to meditate. Can you come teach me? And he was like, I'm driving in Pekipsi, and I also barely know you. I really thought only one person in the world knew how to meditate, and it was like a friend of a friend, this guy.

So he said, like, why don't you download this book or find this little, and it was like a PDF. And I mean, literally, I read it, like it was IKEA instructions. Like, I will not get this done. If I skip any steps, I'm going to mess this up. So I went through this and it was a very kind of sketchy, I don't know, new AG thing that I can't really remember exactly what it said. And then something led me, I think possibly someone in a meeting said, you might listen to these podcast by Shins and Young. Oh, yes, he's amazing. And I think I got back and touched with you once I heard him on the show. But, you know, I don't know if, I don't know if

you recommend some of these teachers to your listeners. But Shins and Young kind of closes the book for me on some of these questions. There's something in the way he talks. It's a hybrid of how he talks, his vocabulary, his own precision, you know, in how he talks that just works for me. And certain of his Dharma talks or meditation talks and guided meditations have just been so powerful at helping me through this.

And, you know, there's a tiny bit of stigma attached to, you know, every now and then you get asked, where do you sit? Do you ever get asked if you sit at Tibet House? No. Okay, well this is one of those things where I try not to even say that I meditate because they'll say like yeah someone will say where you sit, which is the scariest thing in the world It's like the thing that happened with yoga when it just became harder and harder and harder, but you were like priced out

We're on this path We're on the trajectory. Yes, it's gonna get weird. It's gonna eat things are getting you already. Yes So in any case I but one of the sort of training wheels things that I did that training wheels I never took off were listening to guided meditations. And. But can I just have you on that? Because I don't think that's training wheels.

I think there's nothing wrong with guided meditations. It's not like a thing you do in order to get on your own. I actually think guided meditations are amazing. And I had that attitude for a while and switched it. And now I do guided meditations. Yeah, not infrequently. Not everyday, but not infrequently. And I think they're amazing.

Every time I sit with, I was doing a speech to a bunch of corporate folks the other day, and I brought a meditation teacher with me. And he was just doing basic meditation instructions. And I found even that 10 minute thing where I was hearing the basic meditation instructions. And I found even that 10 minute thing where I was hearing the basic meditation instructions again, live with this great teacher was phenomenal. It always reconnects me to the, so drop that too.

Okay, I'm glad. All right, good. I'm, look how liberated I already feel. I can see it in your face. But so there's a, he has a meditation called overcoming difficult emotions. And in the midst of this, you know, what would become a divorce and the job loss and religion confusion. I was like, I think I'm experiencing difficult emotions. So I qualify for overcoming difficult emotions, which I will now get on Spotify for free, which I like to do. And so I started to do it and it was actually a trauma meditation and he encourages you or allows you to do it lying down. And a really interesting thing about Shin Zen

Young is that he though he did, though he was in not an astronomer, but we... Monastery? I think it was Zen and it was in Japan. So yes, essentially monocene. He did hardcore right hardcore meditation I mean, there's a lot of like Tim Ferris him sitting in ice cold water and like yeah lots of self that denial and and mortification of the flash and In spite of that he often is he's sort of the least Dictatorial about posture, about how you sit. You know, he often says he's meditating all the time like when he's doing dishes, when he's walking around. And then also he lets you lie down. So I was like,

all right, this is for me. So I lay down and I'll never be able to do it as he does it. But what he essentially asked me at that moment to do was take away all the language associated with the particular kinds of pain so that I could see it neutrally. And what the exercise is, is you locate in your body where you're feeling some kind of pain. So, first it feels like it's all over, you know, you guys don't understand. I have to call lawyer, the house is, you know, what am I going to do with the mortgage, what am I going to do at the house? But I have the kids, now I'm a single mom, what am I going to do? Well,

I ever meet another guy and then it's, you're slowly like, no, no, no, okay, he keeps asking you, like, cool that down, cool that down, until I daily, you finally get to, right around my ribs, there's this achy feeling, right? So it's like all this language, all your plans just turn into this aching your in your rib. And then he asked you to watch that aching your rib and only label it local, small local, as can contain local or global on your whole body, local, global, global, local. You just are watching it, watching it move around your body. And you do it for so long, so long that you're like in this internal space of your body.

And what that ache in your ribs or ache all through your body or a pinch in your leg or sometimes surge of pleasure throughout your body. These kind of strange, you know, when you get this more precise vocabulary that Chinsen Young is so good at. And then suddenly, you don't remember what those had to do with this crazy story you've been telling yourself about the lawyers you have to call. And the fact that you have a to-do list seems like such a neutral fact because it no longer is setting your skin on fire.

You just, you know, the to-do list seems so simple. It was like, I could just walk through it. You know, how am I going to pay my mortgage, turned into, you know, set up an auto pay. I think it took me five minutes, you know. And the action, so the action that came out of that detachment and practicing that detachment over and over again, you know, satisfying, you know, you talk about not losing your edge. I didn't want to not pay my mortgage, you know. But for fear that if I dropped my vigilance for one second and if I didn't

constantly wheel through all the possibilities of something that I, you know, that I'd lose my house and that my kids would starve for fear of that happening, I wouldn't relax, you know. I got into, I couldn't go to sleep. Like, I make human organisms on my one chance on Earth. Why did I possibly convince myself that I couldn't, that I was, didn't deserve eight hours of rest at night, like every mammal? Like, the short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions.

What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others

and that's why in each episode I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends

about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon music or Wondering app. How are you sleeping now? I mean, you know, I don't want this to be a total meditation fairytale, but I also don't

want to underestimate it. I sleep wonderfully. I don't think I ever had insomnia as the truth. I had an addiction to pills that convinced me that, you know, I couldn't bear a micron of pain or, you know, lying there for five minutes waiting to go to sleep. I know somebody I was close friend who struggled with just the cascade of pill use that you described of ambient at night, clonipin in the afternoon actually, starting the day with that or all.

Sure. 20 years she did it. Wow, she got in there probably with Riddlin at the beginning. She was ahead of the curve. It's for mother, it's the speed freak of middle-class mothers because you start to understand the ADD drugs and then you start getting them for yourself. Yeah, she did it before she was a mom and then... And she got sober? No, right.

No, so yeah, it's tough, nasty, nasty. It's not a joke and it also, you know, I don't blame anyone by myself. I love to drink from an early age, you know, did other hard drugs, but I, you know, you are prescribed this stuff. For some people they can't take banadil for allergies. You really have to decide what it is for your stuff. No pills, you can't cook with wine, you can't.

You used to, but I kind of interrupted you when you were saying something interesting, but pretty much everything you say is interesting. But you said something about going to church. Yeah. And it reminded me that you would talk before about being an adurbing Jew, which you did talk about in the final chapter of your excellent book Magic and Lost, which I feel like we've given short shrift thus far in this podcast. You in that final chapter talk a lot about your experiences with spirituality and Abrahamic faiths and So not like new age spiritual out of the get you got a little of that too And then also some controversies that that were generated as a consequence so hold forth the mic is yours

Wow that I just want to remind anyone who's not here meaning not Dan Dan, me or the producer, that we are surrounded by these totems of awesome, masculine accomplishment at ABC. Like, I'm just like, there's Peter Jennings, there's all these people that have their left branch and stuff together, life together, and we're about to talk about how I'm a church mouse. So let's just, let's just visit this.

No, it's great, Dan. When you say, looking around, because I can't but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but'm like kind of, you know, pretty loyal ABC News employee, Anchorman, whatever. But I wrote a book about, you know, having a panic attack. I love judgment here. No, exactly. And that's, I think, been a great thing that you've done for people, including me, like, let you live sort of that it's possible to not be an monastery and still live a mindful life.

I mean, it's just a simple truth that came as a breakthrough to me. So, yeah, the book is, the subtitle of the book is the Internet As Art, Magic and Lost, The Internet As Art. And so, I had this experience early on with network computing that just to put it briefly, I was using one of those old-style terminals

with green letters in the front in a dark background, and the two most enchanting things in my life, I think just because of constant exposure to this particular screen, where it was the language, the symbolic order in the front, that was connected because it was networked to social life, romantic life, you know, coming of age, and then this fathomless dark yonder, behind it, that could be the night sky or it could be, you know, the depths of the mind or it could be, you know, there's a literary critic that says when that effect is generated by the Bible, you start to think you see the face of God. And so

let's say it was something like that, the feeling of awe that some people get looking at the night sky or face with the cancer diagnosis. So I wondered always sort of what that dark space was. And it sounds strange, but I feel like I developed a kind of techno spirituality. And that sounds very weird, I guess, until you think that, you know, Marshall McCleoon was this very strange Catholic mystic. My absolute hero, Kevin Kelly, who started Wired Magazine as a serious Catholic. Steve Jobs, as we know, had very odd religious beliefs and practices. And you know, the progressive Jews who started Google, you know, have a plan to hack death. So, and, you know, they think of it as like a few lines of code that they can get around with supplements and stuff.

So none of us is really just on a sane track here. And thinking about technology and spirituality or technology and the afterlife, as it were, or even just how to quiet the mind in relation to it. For some reason it seemed like a natural connection to me. At the same time, I had a regular religious life. So, people say a lot I'm spiritual, I'm not religious.

To some extent, the best parts of my life have been when I'm religious and not spiritual. So now, at this point in my life, there are things I do religiously, whether or not I feel it. So of course, who doesn't want those beautiful, mountaintops times when the picture of perfect meditation, where you're just like, there's some kind of white light or just some slip psychic switch that makes you feel feeling of well-being or of insight. But whether or not you have that every day,

and I have it almost never, I still sit down. And so that's the religious part. You just keep going. And my parents are regular churchgoers. There's a way I used to watch my father just like take communion just like I don't know there's just something very Just solemn and a little bit wrote about it, you know and when I was

regularly dovetting and going to shawl I really liked the ritual of the ritual and the just like of course I'm going to do this. You know, but do you how firm is your embrace of the dogma? So for example, this is my own little litmus test that I, from years of covering Christianity. From me, like you were what I would consider pretty active Christian. If you actually literally believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God Was killed and rose from the dead I so want to be like

You have doubts about that. I was like you even but Yeah, I do do believe that you're just like please don't be insane. I believe that I'm not saying that that's insane. I'm just saying I have a lot of Christian friends I've spent a lot of time in the Christian and evangelical world. And there are a lot of people I know who really believe that. And I've got nothing to say about that.

But I don't, but that I'm an agnostic. I'm not saying it's not true. Yeah, I don't, I don't believe in the little, literal truth of those things. I also think that I, this may sound like a dodge again, but I think that I have... I haven't let you get away with one dodge. You can try. I have some skepticism about sort of the speech act of I believe or belief or statements of

faith generally. So to back to the shins and young thing, before I found a way a little bit to detach from the language that's like constantly, you know, in my head or on Twitter or, you know, in the Bible or on my phone or in my text messages or that, you know, when we say the prayers either in synagogue or now a church before that I Definitely would invest in certain parts of the language so like Real like make that investment that's just I believe this and when people say things that are at odds with it It's my job to police the boundaries of this particular belief so like you know

You know, I almost don't want to mention the topics that people do this on because they're so calcified, but on the climate or on Trump. You could take us, people can take steps in some directions and be considered a Trump apologist. And all of a sudden, if you modulated your voice in the wrong way, then this other thing. So we're policing what everyone says. And certainly evangelicals and people who've made that particular investment of faith in

literal truth will get very brittle around those subjects. And it's just not good for me to take experiences I've had that have made me feel better and decide that that means something true about something that happened in the world thousands of years ago, or that defy science, or that are probably at odds with everything else that we believe in the social fictions that keep us alive. Have you read Sapiens? No, I want to have him on the show because he's a big meditator. Oh, is he? Oh, I'm not surprised. But one of the really fascinating things, and I can't wait for

Harari himself to explain it, but is in that book, is that, you know, just the reminder that we're apes. Language was pretty late breaking in our evolution, as when we became Sapiens and got our Sapien Dia, that was a double edged sword, our would- be wisdom. And that with that language came all these fictions and just literal myths meant to shore us up, like that a limited liability corporation exists, or that such a thing as human rights exist, or that all those things are stories that the foragers and hunters didn't tell themselves. That bond, you know, create empires that can move mountains, that make people do things they might not otherwise have done. They get them invested in armies, but all these things,

these creeds, it's one thing to believe them to feel better. It's one thing to believe them, to mobilize people and motivate people to do things, or motivate yourself to do things, you know, like believing a good mother shows up to her daughter's, my daughter has good mother shows up to her daughter's, my daughter has a ceremony coming up to her daughter's humosh ceremony, actually, she's in Jewish school. You know, and it's another, and then that helps me go to it.

But it's another thing to believe that there's a literal fact that you have this privileged access to the world where you know what's good and what isn't, what happened, you know, that there was one time in the world in immaculate conception, and the product of that conception was the Son of God, and that you have some idea of what God is. It just seems like a crazy exercise that us apes should probably stay forever. So what is going to church do for you? So that is another part of the ritual. One of the things, part of my love of ritual, So one of the things I love about the Episcopal Church are the changes of posture and they

have this in St. August too, but just being on your knees as an act of, you know, humility, being standing and singing, you know, with other voices, you know, going up to take the communion, standing in line with people, making space for people in the pews, putting a dollar in the basket, dressing up a little bit. You know, it's like the Piscopal Church is very lovely. The hymns are beautiful. They are also regressive for me because I love them from my childhood. I missed the hymns in particular so much when I was away from them. And then finally just giving me an opportunity to and just in a very way that to me is familiar. I mean my ex-husband was so, had gone to achieve,

I was so wonderfully familiar with the the liturgy of the conservative Jewish tradition and I could see him just like the melodies. He just loved them, you know. And I just love the melodies of the Opusible Church. So it gives me an opportunity also to, you know, give thanks, express some awe and a tone a little bit. You know, you say just this ritual like we regret that we have sinned against you and you know thought word indeed. And it's just a weekly inventory of one's dishonesty, you know, and sins and excessive zeal, you know, with, you know, as we talked about, I host this show, Trump Caston. You know, sometimes I think like, have I been too sanguine? Have I been too terrified? Have I been, you know sometimes I think like have I been too sanguine have I been too terrified have I been you know and it's not self-legilation but just taking stock taking stock you know

um and uh you know you just walk out of there like I don't know I guess like some people feel about exercise I'm told with like indoor fence and whatever. I like social life, I like seeing the church ladies, I like gossip, I like the coffee afterward. I'm kinda sold. Seriously. See you Sunday, great show. Great show. The first event, the defense.

But you got yourself in, and again, you talk about this in magic and loss. You got yourself in some controversy with something you wrote that had to do with religion. Now I'll let you tell a story. Yeah, this, this, you know, was a horrible experience and also, you know, ultimately a wonderful one and teaching for me experience. I was, after the times I went to Yahoo News. And Yahoo News at the time, I mean, some of us

may sound, I promise it's relevant. It had something like 70 million people hit the homepage every day. It just, in the old days, when Yahoo was a lot of people's default homepage. So when it was such a change from the times, I would write something for the times, and my mother would see it, and everyone I know would see it.

And it was great. And I would get 26 comments. And then I'd write something for Yahoo, and it would be up. And I feel like I would shuffle something on my desk and there'd be 26,000 comments. I just was like, it just was this whole new world. And the commenters were very different. It was unmoderated, it wasn't like the times.

And I just was like, how can I talk to them? What do they care about? Because I was writing the same kind of filter bubble stories that I'd always written. They hired me just to do the same thing I'd ever always done. And I was covering Mitt Romney's campaign and writing about digital. And I was covering Mitt Romney's campaign and writing about digital.

And I just was kept feeling like I was hitting it wrong with them. Like it wasn't their idiom. They were pushing back on small things. So I wondered, what were they thinking about? And what did I have in common with their voice? And I was just read the comment. And one of the things I felt I had in common with them

is a sort of weariness with atheism and and scientism to some extent. I mean, I that can manifest itself in like truly destructive beliefs like climate denial. But I think a little skepticism about sort of the changing recommendations and science and especially pop science the way that it filtered down to I thought some of the changing recommendations and science, and especially pop science, the way that it filtered down to, I thought some of the readers who, the time I think we're still reeling from being told that they should be eating fat,

and they didn't, they didn't do any carbs in their lives, and that's why they were diabetic. And I felt like they were just like, but we just do everything we read, and we thought we were doing the right thing with carbs, and now we have to switch, and now we're considered idiots, and you know, anyway this old diet

So I was thinking about how I felt sort of jerked around by science myself and one the other thing that I was appalled That is that evolutionary psychology was Sort of being shaken up especially at Harvard and they had also decided like just complete reversals on things like it used to be that men were Polygamous and women were, you know, monogamous and now it turns out to be exact opposite. So anyone who's predicated your whole relationship on this other view, anyway, frustrated with science. Okay. Had fairly recently discovered a set of religious practices and had an idea for sadly a funny column on my unease with science and my embrace of religious life. But before trolling or before I understood what trolling was, you probably remember from the beginning,

you were sort of goaded as a journalist and I know you were always more neutral, but as a columnist, you're sort of goaded into writing things that were like hot, like because I worked for Tina Round. Profokative, you know, striking, but now that's trolling, but in any case, and it was trolling that. So I decided to write it and call it why I am a creationist. I honestly thought creationism was just a funny word from Inherit the Wind days, and I don't know what I was thinking except I did look it up in Wikipedia and it just was like that the hand of God was present at creation and at, or at, sorry, at the beginning of the universe and and uh, and at the birth of consciousness. So I thought, well, I can sort of get behind that and I never really understood the big, big bang and I've read Darwin, but some of it seems really fishy.

And I honestly, I seriously thought that I was like writing for a blog. I think some of the stuff in there went too far. I also was, I had heard arguments on both sides about fracking very recently. And I had decided that I also felt that people on both sides had more to prove than something about stones and energy.

And the things were ideological that didn't seem ideological and that like scientific facts were being leveraged to prove ideological points. But there were some good intentions. There were some just this is kind of this jockey thing. So anyway, we put it up. Now it does always seem organic when something like that goes viral and you get trolled for it, but actually what happened is Reddit, you know, the massive site for the exchange of ideas that I never look at. And often,

when you're like, where did this meme come from? Everyone's just like, four a.m. on Reddit. Everything starts there. In any case, Reddit made it their top story of the day, or second, second highest story of the day. When that happens, and you're the person that wrote that thing, I think whether or not Reddit gives it a thumbs up, and they very much did not give why I'm a creationist to thumbs up, it's a weird day. It's just a weird day.

So I looked at Twitter, on your notifications on Twitter, it tells you a number, and it was just like thousands. Like just people were like using my name everywhere and they were, you know, they were people just that, you know, called me a clueless asterisk, they were people that, you know, talked about, raping me, they were like that kind of crowd and then they were also science writers like legitimate people one was a colleague of mine at the times, that just decided that I should be schooled on natural selection,

and on Twitter, you know, in these tweet storms, and it just, it was pretty much hell, but it was in the summer. I was on an Islamorada in with my cousins who live in Florida. What year was this? Um, 2012, 13. So you're a year sober? So you're a year sober.

So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober.

So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. So you're a year sober. and I couldn't, there was no way with like pools and kids and whatever that I could, you know, it's like there was no way I could be at a computer or look at my phone. And so I was like, I'm aching to get back to my room, but why? So that I can just like feel the pain of P-J-8 socks, P-J-8 is an idiot. There's no bigger idiot than P-J She has brand damage, she's whatever,

over and over again. Then somebody else retweeting it with Haza, then somebody else retweeting that with like, yeah, I've never seen a bigger idiot. So I was like, why do I want to get back to my room? And then I looked around and was like, oh, a bad day on Twitter is not a bad day. Like, there's this other world

where things are going on using my name PG 88. She can deal, she's been up there for a long time, she can handle this and take Sniper Fire for me and I will be down here, you know, in this pool eating, you know, a weird lobster roll with my dog, you know, and my son and my cousins and, you know know nobody mentioned it and I went back and was like oh this video game is still going on you know I'm losing at asteroids that's what we can say for the day is that this is a substantial loss at asteroids I did not land on the leaderboard but you came back for men I mean it's like you're you're still. The lesson in it for me really was that was that that's not my real life

and that my time here on Earth will be spent living in that world because I have things to do. I'm interested, I'm engaged in the world. But my sort of larger purpose is to find out to know the world that was me at the pool with my daughter and son. Weird lobster roll.

Weird lobster roll, my God, that thing. I felt like it was canned lobster. That's gross. But I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I inch and then slowly goes up, like the notion thing, kids can do it. And I was standing with the lobster roll and also like my first beach time so I just felt like this pale, very not submerged in water, a person. But I was like, this is kind of fun. And there were like Floridians around, there was Jimmy Buffett playing.

I mean, it was not the like, you not the moment that you see in Mindful Magazine or someone's on the cushion, but it worked for me. Where, final question, where can people learn more about you because I suspect they're going to be really interested? So Magic and Lost is out in paperback. It's Magic and Lost, the internet as art. It's about technology, but it has some of the story that I've told here in the last, the internet as art. It tells, it's about technology, but it has some of the story that I've told here in the last chapter. And then vphefernan.com is my website for all things magic and loss. And as we know, you're handled on Twitter.

I'm like, oh my god, how many times have I said that? Please don't troll me. Or at least the very least follow. Follow, that would be lovely. But a mind, really interesting to listen to you talk. Thank you. It's been really great, it's driving me. OK, that does it for another edition 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 V 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. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free. I'll talk to you next Wednesday.

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