Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Reframe Your “Problems” as “Puzzles” | A.J. Jacobs

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

A counterintuitive way to become more clear, creative, and persistent, via a writer who calls himself a “human guinea pig.”A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, podcaster, and human guinea pig. His new podcast “The Puzzler” is produced by iHeart and is in the Top 20 Apple Podcasts. He has written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help. Among his books are “The Year of Living Biblically” and “The Know-It-All.” He has told several Moth stories, has given several TED talks that have amassed over 10 million views. His latest book is “The Puzzler,” which Booklist called “ridiculously entertaining,” and The New York Times called “a romp, both fun and funny.” In this episode we talk about:The “puzzle mindset” and how it can change the way you approach your problems Creating a puzzle that will take billions of years to solveHow puzzles can help us during dark timesThe dark side of the puzzling worldHow his gratitude project made him better at talking to himself Learning to appreciate everyday objects and people he sees all the timeHow pretending to be a good person helped him actually learn to be one – most of the timeSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/aj-jacobs-688Additional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% happier podcast on your host, Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing today? Quick story before I dive in here. Many years ago, my wife and I were in the middle of an infertility crisis. And I was talking about this with Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher and friend of mine. And I was telling him how upset I was

and he was pretty sympathetic, but then he said something that mildly annoyed me or maybe confused me. He said, if it's not one thing, it's another. Now initially, I was a little put off by this, but as I've molded this comment over the intervening years, I've really come to see the wisdom of it. I've always got some kind of problem, usually several of them, honestly.

And even though I fantasize about how as soon as I solve, whatever problems on my play right now, life will be friction-free, the mind always finds something else to worry about. I know plenty of people who've, you know, had huge success, made all the money they could possibly make and are still worried about stuff. So even though we have an awesome and healthy son or infertility crisis resolved successfully, it's not like my life is problem-free. If it's not one thing, it's another. So today, we're going to talk about how to reframe your problems as puzzles, which, according to my guest, can be a huge relief.

It can also, my guest says, make you more creative, clearer, and more persistent. Just to say before we dive in, I'm not a huge puzzle guy. I never got into Wordal, for example. But my guest, AJ Jacobs, makes a very convincing case for the benefits of developing what he calls a puzzle mindset. If you haven't heard of him, AJ is a kind of human guinea pig. He's written a series of books where he does these grand experiments, for example, he lived according to the rules of the Bible for a year.

He spent a year engaging in an insane fitness routine, things like that. So his latest book is called The Puzzler. It's about his obsession with puzzles and the many mental health benefits that can come from engaging with puzzles. So we'll kick it off with AJ Jacobs in just a moment. Okay, time for a feature we're now calling BSP, blatant self promotion. Here we go. Over on the 10% happier app, we are releasing two brand new meditation collections on some of your most requested topics. Those include meditations about coping with chronic pain from Sharon Salzberg, as well as meditations for people with ADHD or other flavors of neurodivergence from Jeff Warren. Download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps and tap on the singles tab.

Are you looking for a note of sanity in the morass of social media? Follow me on Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn. I'm all over the place now. I'm dropping quick videos on everything from meditation to dealing with difficult people. And of course a lot of cat photos links to my social accounts are right there in the show notes. If you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, you know that it can be a fun and affordable way to visit a new place, but have you ever considered whether you could be an Airbnb host? Maybe you're planning a long weekend with friends or family this fall while you're

away, you could Airbnb your place and make some extra money to help pay for the trip. Maybe you have an extra bedroom or in-law unit where friends and family come to stay with you, you could Airbnb it and make some extra cash while it sits empty. You could be sitting on an air be and be and not even know it. My wife and I have talked about doing something like that before. We certainly love staying in air be and be's, especially when we go to the beach. But again, air be and be as an experience isn't all about you staying in somebody else's home. Whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little

bit more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a renewable natural gas bus replacing conventional fleets. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy. Now streaming only on FreeV. You invited my ex-fiance to Christmas.

You know, I really should go. You're not going anywhere. Bring on the games. My family will work up the courage to ask you to leave before Christmas morning. You want a bed? Starring Layton, Mr. Rent, Robbie Amel. You're God. We're here, God. Xmas. Now streaming only on free V. AJ Jacobs, welcome to the show. Delighted to be on the show.

I'm curious to hear as it may be a jumping off point about your interest in puzzles in preparing to do this interview. I've stated about the fact that I actually don't think I have much interest in puzzles. I don't do crossword puzzles or wordle. I actually hosted a failed game show once, which I enjoyed, not the failure part, but the actual show when it was up and running. I enjoyed it. It was like a trivia show, I enjoyed that, but I don't find myself doing trivia or any participating games much at all. So I'm curious why this is such a passion for you. Well, first of all, I think that you are a secret puzzle lover.

It's everyone loves some kind of puzzle. So we're gonna figure out what kind of puzzle that. My first of all, life is a puzzle, and your show is a puzzle of how to become 10% happier. So that's my pitch. You are of puzzle that. My first of all, life is a puzzle, and your show is a puzzle. How to become 10% happier. So that's my pitch. You aren't a puzzle lover. I have always loved puzzles since I was a kid. So, crossword puzzles and riddles.

And actually, sort of one of the genesis of me getting back into it was a few years ago, I was the answer to one down in the New York Times Crossword puzzle. And as a word nerd, I was like, this is the greatest moment in my life. You know, my wedding was lovely, but this, this is the only grail. And so I'm riding high. And then the next day, my brother-in-law sent a very brother-in-law email. He did congratulate me. I'll say that. But he also said, you should know you were in the Saturday New York Times Crossword puzzle.

And you may not know since you're not a crossworder. That's the hardest puzzle of the week harder than Sunday. All the answers are totally obscure. No one's supposed to know them. So his point was, this is not really a compliment. This is proof that no one knows who the hell you are. So then I'm all sad because you've talked about this on your show a lot, the negative bias. I'm really good at finding the negative. So I was all bummed out, but the 10% half your twist

is that I told that story on another podcast, a game show, actually. And it happened that a New York Times crossword puzzle maker was listening and decided to rescue me and put me in a Tuesday puzzle, where I totally don't belong. That's for like Lady Gaga level fame. So that was the happy ending and that was one of the things that got me back interested in puzzles. And I thought, why not spend two years just doing a deep dive, traveling around, talking to the craziest, most brilliant puzzle makers, going to the CIA, participating in the World Jake Saw Puzzle Championship, which was fun, but a complete disaster, and writing about puzzles and including puzzles in the book,

because you can't have a book about puzzles without puzzles. That would be depressing. I'm just trying to think of the ideal rebuttal to your brother-in-law. I'd be like, you know, two A on Saturday was you, actually, if he was asshole. Yeah, they did it was Asshole. Yeah, they did it for me. I mean, I couldn't have done a better rebuttal than having them put me in the Tuesday. Although I will say the guy who made the puzzle said, I had to make the down clues really easy since you.

So he got a little kneeling in there too. So why spend two years of your life on this? It has to, and I know it does, transcend just the passing dopamine hit of solving even a Saturday crossword. There's something deeper you're pointing to here. Oh yeah. Well, the sum title of the book is One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever from Crosswords to Jigsaw's to the Meaning of Life, which I'm reading now, because I couldn't

remember that long subtitle. But I do think that it's really in your wheelhouse because a lot of it was about happiness and even meditation. Some people talk about how doing jigsaw puzzles is so meditative gets you outside of your mind. But for me, one of the big things is I love this quote by Quincy Jones, the musician. Someone asked him his life philosophy and he said something like, I don't have problems, I have puzzles. And I love that because to me, he was reframing it. He was saying, problems are such a negative word

and it gets you stressed out immediately. It's negative. And puzzles is very solution oriented. It's almost fun. It's like, let's roll up our sleeves and try to figure this out. So reframing my life crises as puzzles has been a huge help for me. And everything from business puzzles, putting the book together was a puzzle, but even relationships. And one of the big puzzles now, I find myself very

stressed about the political situation and just the polarization. So if I'm talking to someone who is on the other side from me, my default was let me try to, you know, argue them into the ground and that doesn't work. That doesn't work on me, it doesn't work on them. It just gets you more frustrated. So instead trying to reframe it as a puzzle. Let's try to figure out why we differ. Why do you believe what you believe?

Why do I believe what I believe? What can we do to change it if anything? Is there evidence I could present or you could present? And let's solve this together as a puzzle. First of all, it's much more fun and less stressful than yelling at each other. And I think it has a much higher chance of creating something productive. So, yeah, I do think puzzles are more than just a fun trivial thing, although they are that. They can really change your life. The example you used to talk to somebody with whom you have a political disagreement is

really great. But I've heard and I've tried to operationalize this advice that it's best when you're talking to somebody who you disagree with to move into curiosity and try to figure out what they think. And I think there's some data to support this. But you're taking into a next level, which is not only getting curious about what they think, but then inviting them into mutual problem solving. Right. Well, I love what you just said, because actually, I like a good rhyming catch phrase, not always, they don't always work,

but one that I heard, this was actually during the pandemic, and I was watching a child psychologist do a webinar, because, you know, I need it, I'll help I could get in during the pandemic. And this guy says, when your kid is throwing a tantrum, don't get furious. Get curious. And I was like, I love that. Don't get curious, get curious.

So that has been a little, you just reversed it. You just said, don't get curious, get curious. Well, sometimes maybe you have to get furious. But 95% of the time, don't get furious. Get curious. So yeah, I love that. And curiosity and gratitude, I think, are my two favorite. I don't know whether you call them emotions or drives or states of mind, but those to

me are the ones I try for. But again, what you said about talking to, I mean, I love everything you just said, but what you said earlier about talking to, I mean, I love everything you just said, but what you said earlier about talking to somebody who you disagree with. And by the way, this can be in politics or can be spousal disagreements, talking to your kid, a colleague, whatever, to move beyond just curiosity. And I don't mean to diminish it as like mere curiosity. It's a massively powerful move to go to curiosity, but then to go to mutual problem solving, hey, let's attack this as a puzzle together. That seems like a really, potentially,

a move with a high success rate. Oh, yeah. And I do think that there are things we could collaborate on, even if I have different values than the person. I think the bigger value is that most sane people want the world to be happier. They want the most good for the most number of people. And it's just we disagree on how to do it. And sometimes we disagree on what that good is. But we do have somewhere we're working from the same place. So let's, yeah, let's dig in and try to solve it. So you refer to this as the puzzle mindset. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah, well, that's just it. It's trying to see the world as a series of puzzles instead of a series

of problems. And it has made my life much, much better because I'm always, you know, as I mentioned, I definitely have that negative mindset where, you know, I hear a hundred compliments and one insult and I focus on the insult. So the puzzle mindset is how do you solve for the negative mindset? That's a big puzzle. How do you solve for the negative bias? And actually, one of my books, the book right before the puzzler, was all about trying to figure out ways to solve for the negative. It was called Thanks 1000. And I went around the world thinking a thousand people who had anything to do with my morning cup of coffee.

So the barista, but then I went to South America and I think the farmer, but everyone in between, the logo designer, the truck driver, I went wide, so I like the guy who designed the road, you know, guy who painted the yellow lines in the road, so the truck driver could drive his truck with my beans. So I wind up gone a little wide, but it was wonderful. That's a great puzzle solution of how to get rid of or fight the negative bias is just to list the hundreds of things that go right every day as opposed to the three or four that

go wrong. I want to come back to things a thousand. It's maybe later in the interview, but let me stick with the puzzler. Yeah, sorry for jumping ahead. No, no, please. I'm glad you did. It wasn't on my list, but now it is. Huh, there you go. But back on the puzzler and the puzzle mindset, I'm just curious, do you think that for

somebody like me who doesn't do the crossword or word ol or jigsaw puzzles, that if in fact I did engage with those kinds of what you might consider to be sort of more frivolous and pleasurable activities could help me scale up to developing a puzzle mindset in the rest of my life. I mean, I do. I'm a little biased. I don't think it's the only way, though. One of the things I do every morning for 10 to 15 minutes is I just brainstorm ideas about anything. And 98% of them are terrible ideas that never see the light of day. And it could be anything. It could be random.

I'll just take a phenomenon and try to think about it in different ways. And that does the same thing, I think, as puzzles. It's all about creating new pathways in your brain. And I'm sure meditation, which I'm not that good at, does similar things. So it doesn't have to be puzzles, but you have to try to get out of your mental rut in any way that you can. And even, you know, the cliche thinking outside the box, it's from a puzzle. The puzzle was that, I don't know if you know that, nine dot in a square, and you have to try to connect the dots in four lines with a pencil.

And the only way to do it is to go way outside the box with your pencil, so you do diagonal lines. So anyway that you can get your mind out of the ruts and think outside the box, I think is super healthy. And puzzles are one that I love, but I'm not saying to be happy you have to do puzzles. A little, I would like to say you have to read my book and listen to the podcast, but you don't.

Brief digression on meditations that you brought it up and I say this all the time, so this is me being repetitive. But when I hear somebody say, I'm not good at meditation, that tells me that you're doing it correctly. I love to hear it. Thank you.

That is a good reframe. Well, you know what? You're doing puzzles correctly, isn't it? How's that? I'm not quite a fair cop there, because I'm at, you're actually meditating even if, if you think it's poor or intermittent, I am not doing puzzles. So I don't think that is how to do it correctly. But I appreciate the attempt. You know, it is a

reframe and I think we take a solution oriented results oriented type A mentality into meditation trying to win at it, but it is not this activity is not congenial to that kind of attitude. Really, it's about sitting down, trying to focus on one thing off in your breath, and then surrendering to the fact that you're going to get distracted over and over and over again. And the mirror, it's not a merely important thing. It is an incredibly important thing. Just the ability to notice when you've become distracted and start again and again and again. That is correct meditation and it's humiliating and by design, because

the whole point is you should get familiar with how fucking crazy you are so that all of that inner mischegost doesn't own you as much. Right. And I love you saying that it's not a game that you can win. A few years ago, you remember we, you, the Nintendo thing, I got that for my kids, and they had all sorts of games like tennis and bowling, and they actually had a meditation game

where you had to sit as still as possible, and you would rack up points for being still. And I actually hacked it. I like put a, I don't know, like a bean bag instead of me that was totally still. So I got, you know, the best score ever at meditating. But it was funny because it seemed the exact opposite of what you're doing. Yeah. That reinforces all of the pernicious misconceptions about meditation that it's, First of all, you don't have to sit still to meditate.

There's walking meditation. For people like me, I'm naturally very fidgety, and a lot of folks with ADHD have trouble sitting still. A slow walking meditation is great practice. The Buddha talked about four forms of meditation, sitting, lying down, standing, and walking. You're not doing bad meditation if you're moving around. So to send the signal that A, it's something you can win at and B, it's about being stocked still for the longest period of time is, that just turns people off to the thing.

I think that if you approach it as, I sometimes joke that it's like a video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward. Oh, I like that. You have to surrender this desire for results and then everything, everything unfolds from there. Well, can I tell you one other? I don't know if it's meditation, but it's also a lot about mindfulness and awareness.

I feel that there's a big overlap between puzzles and mindfulness and awareness because I have a section on on where's Waldo and visual puzzles which I love Fun fact by the way where's Waldo is one of the most banned books on the American library association list of banned books because a few years ago There was a beach scene and one of the little women on the beach was topless. But you couldn't even see.

It was like lying face down. It was like a little side boob, but it was enough to piss someone off. But anyway, I, despite that, love wears wildo. And I try to take it as a little lesson in life as well because there's so much in my everyday life that I don't see, that I don't notice, and I just take for granted. So sometimes I try to pretend that what's in front of me, like I'm looking at it now, is a page on where it's walled though, and just looking for all of the weird, fun, beautiful details that I would normally just gloss over.

So to me, that's been a good lesson in noticing. Visual puzzles have taught me how to notice. Gold star, yes, I do think that, that, that, that, that, that, that, I thought it was my competition. What happened to that? I never said I wasn't a hypocrite. I mean, I've never said that.

No, but I, I mean, I really. I mean, I've never said that. No, but I mean, I really, I really, I think that's true. One of the skills that we're developing through meditation is the capacity to notice. Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher, talks about NPMs, NPMs, noticings per minute. And the deeper you go into meditation, the more noticings might come up, and there are definitely other ways to develop that skill, whereas Waldo seems like fair game.

And by the way, where's Waldo? I don't want to trash where's Waldo, which is lovely, but there are some beautiful, more sophisticated visual puzzles that are for grownups. And in fact, there's a famous, I think it was 16th century painter named Brugel. I think I'm pronouncing it right, who does basically did wear as Waldo paintings that are fantastic. Well, we're attaching a denda to our past comments. Let me just add one last thing about meditation before I move on, which is that for the record, I think it is a menable two-gameification. I think just has to be in the right way.

So one small example is that some of the meditation apps out there will let people get streaks, and they'll show you how long you've been meditating. And I think there's a real upside to that, because it makes it fun, and people want to be consistent and people text me their streaks or send me DMs on social media and that's all cool. I think that there can be a downside too which is it can lead to a sort of obsessiveness and that's probably for some people not super helpful. I think there are other ways to kind of gamify it to do it as a group, to make it a group endeavor.

Let's all do it. Let's see if we can do 30 days straight and talk about it. So I think there are ways to make this into something approaching a puzzle without saying you have to sit still for as long as possible and then you win. Right, I love that. Let me just tell you my meditation lack of practice

because I have gone through periods where I have, I'm gonna do five minutes every morning. you know, I'm going to do five minutes every morning. Now, and I'd be interested to know whether this is good or bad or we don't use valences like that, but I don't have a particular time I do it. I just find whenever I'm bored, whenever I feel myself being bored, I'm like, you know what? This is the perfect time to Whenever I feel myself being bored, I'm like, you know what? This is the perfect time to focus on my breathing or just notice five things that I'm looking at and five things I'm feeling with my body and three things that I'm hearing. So if I'm in the back of an Uber, if I'm waiting for the elevator, if I'm anytime where

there's like those two minutes space where instead of letting my mind wander, which it would wander to something annoying someone said, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to use this for some sort of half-assed meditation where I focus on my breathing or on noticing. So that's my semi-practice that I'm up doing now. Another gold star, I think it's great. Excellent. I mean, I often think about something

that the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein says all the time, which is whatever works for you. And I think a mistake that people in my position often make and it's a mistake that I have personally made is to be overly dogmatic and prescriptive about how and when you should meditate, and I have really moved away from that over time, and so for sure, I could say a few things

to maybe encourage you toward a little bit of formality, but if what you're doing is working for you and your life is reasonably happy, then go with it. Yeah, reasonably. As long as there's that qualifier, there's ups and downs, but I do try to look at the not fall prey to the negative bias. But you do have a daily practice. I'm guessing.

I do. I sit for about an hour every day, not all in one chunk, but usually this morning, I have to like 45 minutes, and then later today, I'll do a little bit more, maybe some walking meditation before bed to get the ants and the pants out. So yeah, I'm pretty committed, but this is maybe where I'm just not comfortable. I said before I never said I wasn't hypocritical. I don't want to be a public meditation evangelical who doesn't practice with some diligence, but it's not all that.

That's not the only reason why I'm doing it. I get a lot out of the practice and I'm totally fascinated by it. I'm in the middle of my third book about it. Host the whole podcast, not just about meditation, but it's a huge part of my life. I don't think this is what everybody has to do. I often tell people, one minute daily-ish is a great way to start. Right. Yeah. I think I add up to at least a minute in my little microwave meditations. I'll put a link in the show notes, but we did a whole episode about a form of one minute

meditations, and my wife did the interview with me, and I found it very compelling as did she. And I think she's still doing that practice. So, yeah, there are lots of ways to go at this, and people are time-starved and busy, and have all sorts of hang-ups. So, I think it's just about working around that. Right. Well, I have two gold stars. I'm going to go for three. It's limitless.

I give them out, like Oprah with cars, so. And it's less expensive as a production cost. Coming up, the AJ Jacobs talks about creating a puzzle that will take billions of years to solve how puzzles can help us during dark times and the dark side of the puzzling world. Hi, it's me, the Grand Poova of Bahambad, the OG Green Grump, and Grinch. From Wandery! Tis the Grinch Holiday talk show is a pathetic attempt by the people of O'Vill to use my situation as a teachable moment. So join me, the Grinch, along with Cindy Luhu. Hello, everyone. And of course, my dog Max. Every week for this complete waste of time.

Listen, as I launch a campaign against Christmas cheer, grilling celebrity guests, like chestnuts on an open fire. Now try to get my heart to grow a few sizes, but it's not gonna work, honey. Your family will love the show. As you know, I'm famously great with kids. Follow Tiz the Grinch Holiday Talk Show on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. your family will love the show. As you know, I'm famously great with kids. Follow

Tiz the Grinch Holiday Talk Show on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Tiz the Grinch Holiday Talk Show early and add free right now by joining Wondery Plus. And don't forget we've got a ton of new meditations over on the 10% happier app including meditations on chronic pain and sleep. Download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. Speaking of meditation, you, at least according to Tara who prepped me for this interview, Tara is one of our producers.

She said that you have something in your book called Jacob's Ladder, which for you is kind of a version of meditation. Can you walk me through that? Oh sure. Well, as I said, a lot of people talk about how jigsaws are meditative because it's just, you know, you put on the podcast 10% happier or the puzzler with AJ Jacobs. Or you know, you put on music and you just those pieces clicking in, it's such a lovely, mindless, beautiful ritual. And it doesn't have to be, you know, as I said, there are these speed jigsars who are really into it and they are not mindless. They're like figuring out all sorts of strategies. But along those lines, I read about something called generational puzzles or eternal puzzles.

They're sort of like Rubik's cubes. They're very physical puzzles. You have to turn things and twist things to solve it. But these are so hard that you have to twist them so many times that you could never do it in a lifetime. So they're generational puzzles because you hand them down to your kids. And I actually with a designer in the Netherlands designed the biggest, longest, most eternal puzzle ever.

It's called Jacob's Ladder and it's this tower. It's not in my room anymore, but it's a tower about three feet tall with about 50 little knobs and you have to turn the knobs in such a way that you can pull out this steel rod from the top. But the trick is it will take, I'm trying to remember, it was something like 45 quintillion turns to actually do it. So if you do one per second, the universe will die a heat death before you actually are able to solve it. So in one sense, it's the most ridiculous waste of time in history.

But in another sense, I found myself doing it in a very meditative way. It's like, there is no goal because I'm never going to get there, so I might as well enjoy the turning. And actually that just catalyzed a little thought in my brain. That is kind of, I feel it's 10% happier. Ish, I interviewed the guy who's called the Godfather of Sudoku. He didn't invent Sudoku, but he popularized it and he's this Japanese man. And I asked him, what does he think a puzzle

is? He said, a puzzle can be summed up in three symbols, not even three words, three symbols. And the symbols are the question mark, the forward arrow, and the exclamation point. So the question mark is you see a puzzle, you're like, what the hell? That's that confusion. The arrow is that working through and trying to get to the aha moment, and that's the exclamation point. But he said the secret to puzzles and in his opinion, the secret to life is that you've got to love that arrow. And the arrow is never just like a straight arrow. It's always curving and going in all sorts of directions. And you got to embrace that arrow because you may never get to that aha moment. But the joy is in the solving, is in coming up with new ideas. I just thought it was a more fresher way to talk about,

it's not always about the destination, it's about the journey. So to me, yeah, it's about the arrow, that's what puzzles are and that's what life is. And that seems to be the driving force behind Jacob's ladder, because you're never gonna get the exclamation point. Right, that's just one big arrow,

and you gotta love the arrow. You said you spent two years traveling the world, investigating puzzles. What were some of the craziest experiences you had? Well, one, I went to the headquarters of the CIA, which took many months to get permission. And it's this beautiful campus, by the way. It looked like a college, a New England college.

It is home to one of the great unsolved puzzles in the world. It's always on the list of top 10 unsolved puzzles. It's a statue created, I think it was 35 years ago, and it's there in the middle of the CIA campus. And the statue was created by a sculptor and a cryptographer, a guy who comes up with secret codes, who was retiring from the CIA. They thought it would be solved in like three days or a week. It has still not been fully solved 35 years later. And it's a bunch of symbols on this wall, this undulating metal wall. It's a bunch of letters and numbers. And even the CIA, where the whole job is to figure these things out, has not been able to fully suck. They've cracked some of it. There are four parts and they've cracked what three of them mean. And there are these quotes about life and mystery. And one of them is

like from the guy who had discovered King Tutts tomb about wonder. But anyway, there is a part that is still unsolved. So I went there, and there are thousands of people who even after 35 years are obsessed with this puzzle. And you know, I go on these chat rooms or these mailing lists and they'll get every day a new theory. I think it has to do with the wind talkers from World War II or it has to do with Moby Dick. And it is just hilarious.

No one gets to go or very rarely. So when I was going, they were all excited. They're like, look and see what color the grass is here and listen to the sound of the babbling brook and see if you can figure any. So I had all of these secret missions to accomplish. Of course, I went there and it was cool, but of course, I didn't solve it. It's been fun-solved for 35 years. But I loved the experience. And I guess there are two takeaways.

One was, I just love the grit of these guys, women, and then who spend hours every week trying to crack this code. You know, that is tenacity. Like, I'm helping my kids with a math homework or I used to. Now it's too complicated. I can't help them at all. But if I helped them a few years ago, I might feel like I'm going to give up after two minutes.

These people have been going for 30, 35 years. That I find inspiring. If crazy, it could be the worst use of human mental energy ever. But it's also inspiring. So I love that. And I also love the sculptor himself because he's still alive and he still gets contacted all the time by people saying, is this it? Did I get it? Did I get it? So now he started charging. You can email him your solution and he will answer you. Yes or no, basically that's it.

But he charges $50 per guess. So he's probably the best paid writer in America, because like he just says, nope, that's not it, and that's $50. But that was just one of them. I also, another adventure I went on is, as I said, I went to the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship in Spain, where there were 40 countries competing, and it was hilarious. I mean, these people, the idea was you had eight hours, eight hours you were given four

pretty big puzzles, like a thousand to two thousand pieces, and you had to finish the puzzles in those eight hours. I went with my family as team USA. We represented the United States. We came in second to last. That was my wife's joke. I stole from her, but yeah, we sucked. But we had a great time and there's something lovely

about seeing people doing something at the height. Even if something might be considered silly, like these are the LeBron James' of that thing. And I loved it. And I love talking to them about, you know, how do you become? One secret is specialization, like these teams of four people, the Russians, they were the ones who won. They had one person who is in charge of the edges, another person who was in charge of

the monochromatic. That was her specialty. Like if it was blue sky, she was like all over that. Because you look for the shapes, not the colors in that case. So it's all about how do we solve problems in creative ways? Even something that some people think is silly like a jigsaw puzzle. You wrote the book during COVID. A lot of people during COVID were doing games, puzzles at home with one another. Do you have any thoughts on whether puzzles can be helpful during trying times? Well, they generally during the depression, the great depression. There was a huge cheek sob puzzle boom. And then you saw it again in COVID.

And I actually, I started doing the book right before COVID. So the timing was unfortunate in one way, but also it happened to be a prime time for puzzles. And then at the end of the pandemic, you had Wordal, which was just a phenomenon. And I think that got a lot of people hooked. And I think we're still in this golden age of puzzles, which is why I sort of spun it off into this daily puzzle podcast where we're trying to do sort of Wordal for your ears every day. It's like a new puzzle with a celebrity guest. And as I said, despite your puzzle skepticism, we're going to have you on and convert you to puzzles.

But yeah, it does seem to help in times of crises. Can puzzles ever go wrong? Is there a dark side to the puzzling world? I think so. Personally, I do. I mean, it depends. There's this phenomenon, which I didn't know about until writing this book, but you might apophemia, which is what is called when you see patterns in random noise. Finding patterns is what makes us human. That's why we survived so that we could, you know, when the snake rustles in the grass, we know to run away. That's the pattern, and that's good. The problem is we are programmed to find patterns,

and sometimes we find them where they don't exist. And puzzles are all about finding patterns, and people who love puzzles are pattern seekers. The problem is, as I say, apaphenia when you see patterns that don't exist. And to me, that's QAnon. They're trying to solve a puzzle that doesn't exist. They see all of these pieces together, and they put together this puzzle that is non-existent of these crazy cannibals in the highest levels of government. So I think we have to be wary of apaphenia pattern finding is great. Without it, we wouldn't survive. There would be no science, no art,

but at the same time, check yourself. You gotta look back and say, don't fall in love with your hypothesis. Don't be like, this is the only way it can be. And I saw this happen with puzzles, like I was on this, that was a nationwide puzzle scavenger hunt type thing. And there was a clue about a mouse and a plane.

And I was so convinced that it was a reference to Stort Little Two. Everything I saw confirmed my thesis, and I had nothing to do with that. That was just crazy talk. So be careful of falling in love with your own hypotheses. You've got to have a flexible mind. Hold your hypotheses loosely in anything,

in puzzles, but also in politics, and relationships always have an idea, but be open to the fact that it could be wrong. In most cases, it is. Following love with your hypothesis is like the opposite of the puzzle mindset, which is about intellectual humility. Exactly. I mean, which is why it's sort of the dark side of it. It's being curious in the wrong way. You've decided that you've solved the puzzle and then you go and look for confirming evidence that may or may not exist. We've made the link repeatedly to meditation, but there's also a link to be made to Buddhism

writ large in Zen Buddhism. They talk about something called the beginner's mind, not approaching things like an expert who already knows or thinks they know what's going on, approaching it as a beginner. And this seems like a great way to inculcate beginner's mind. Absolutely, yeah, I love that. And I am a huge fan of beginner's mind. I try to have that every day.

I mean, a good puzzle will take advantage of your previous bias and you can only solve it if you step back and have beginner's mind. So, like, I'll just give you one example. British crossword puzzles are super tricky. They are all about weird wordplay. And so, for instance, a famous British crossword puzzle, Clue is, it's just four letters, G-E-G-S, Gags, Gags. And the answer is, it's actually a long, it's like a long phrase, two word phrase.

And I remember coming across this and I'm like, Gags, Gags. So my bias was, you know, that's gotta be a word for something, it's gotta stand for something. There's an airport, I know, that's got to be a word for something. It's got to stand for something. There's an airport, I think, in New Zealand with the letters G-E-G-S. I don't remember something like that. I had all these biases of what it could be. But only when you adopt beginner's mind, do you step back and say,

well, maybe it's none of those things. Maybe it's... I shouldn't even focus on that it has a meaning. Maybe, maybe it's just the letters. And if you rearrange them and, oh, it's eggs, it is scrambled eggs. And they had that aha moment. But I would never have had that if I hadn't stepped back

and said, I'm going to pretend I know nothing about what could these four letters be. So yeah, I love that. You referenced earlier that these two years of writing the book and going deeper into puzzling, really improved your life. Can you say more about that? You talk about how you handle people you disagree with, but what about around the house, with your marriage, with maybe an ornery

editor at your publishing house or how has it helped you in other ways? Oh, yeah, well, the same thing. It's like, how do you solve this problem? Sometimes the best puddles are you have to turn it on its head. You have to turn whatever it is upside down. Sometimes literally, sometimes you'll have a puzzle and if you turn it upside down, you can see that it spells out, you know, victory or whatever. But I do try to do that in my life. I try to sometimes turn things completely around and see will this help. And one trivial example, a sort of trivial, is I'm not so good at keeping my clothes when they're worn in the hamper, and we have three sons.

So there's clothes all over the house. And I would spend sometimes a Saturday, like, you know, 20 minutes going around, bringing an armful of clothes, putting it in the hamper, going back out, bringing another arm full, putting it back in the hamper. And I said, what if I did it the other way? What if I took the hamper with me, and then put the clothes in that way? Thereby saving, you know, 10 minutes of my life. That was an example of solving.

I mean, Henry Ford, for instance, who I have issues with, terrible anti-SMI, not a great person, but he was a brilliant businessman. He reversed the thinking instead of having everyone come to one space to build the car. He had an assembly line where the car moved along and everyone added. So people stay in place and the car moves as opposed to the car stays in place and people move. So that kind of thinking can be extremely powerful. Coming up, AJ talks about how his gratitude project made him better at talking to himself

and how pretending to be a good person actually helped him to be a good person in real life, at least most of the time. Do you ever find that your ability to conjure the puzzle mindset or beginner's mind is blocked because you feel like the stakes are too high. In other words, you're nervous, anxious, freaking out, and you're amygdala, the stress part of your brain is online, and what's there's an expression? You can't open a jar if every muscle in your arm is tight.

Does that ever happen to you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a constant struggle. It's like everything's like meditation or avoiding the negative bias. It's a practice. It doesn't come naturally. And sometimes one trick I have just in life is talking to myself out loud.

So sometimes I'll do that to help if I'm in a stressful situation. And I'm like, this is the worst thing that ever happened. I can't believe it. And then I'll say, listen to yourself. Let's calm down. Take a step back. Try to frame it as a puzzle. There is a solution. It may not be a perfect solution, but there's a solution that will make it better. Let's try to figure it out. So, yeah, I

am a big fan of talking to myself because when I hear my thoughts out loud, I realize sometimes, oh, well, that sounds crazy. This brain is running out of control. So yeah, if I say to myself, okay, let's figure this out. It's a puzzle. That is one strategy to help. A lot of data behind that strategy from what I can tell, Ethan Cross, who has been on the show, will put a link in the show notes

where the whole book called Chatter about the potential to rewire your inner dialogue by counter-programming against the negativity bias notes wrote a whole book called Chatter about the potential to rewire your inner dialogue by counter-programming against the negativity bias that we are wired for through evolution, self-compassion research, which is a booming area of psychology pioneered by a woman named Christinef, who's also been on the show a couple times. A big part of that is about learning how to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. And of course, there's cognitive behavioral therapy, which is not something I'm an expert in,

but it is a field of psychotherapy to school of modern psychology. It's all about challenging the dictatorship of your thoughts. You might think that's some weird little quirk you've got, but you've stumbled upon something that there's a lot of evidence for. That is nice to hear. Well, I'm actually a huge fan of cognitive behavioral therapy. I've been in it for many years. I think you're supposed to be in it

just for a couple of months and cure it, but I just stay in it. Because I think I need to be reminded of these terrible thought habits I have and that most humans have. And also one aspect of cognitive behavioral therapy is how your behavior affects your thoughts. They're all linked.

And that has been a huge theme and pretty much all of my books. For example, to go back to the thanks of thousand, I would wake up in my default grumpy mood and I would force myself to act as if I was thankful. I would force myself to call the company that made the bags that the coffee was carried in or write a letter of gratitude. And after an hour or so, forcing myself to act as if I were grateful, it does start to

sink in. So, I loved the the quote which I certainly didn't make up. I looked it on quote inspector which is a great website and it's not clear who made it up but it is it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. And I found that very powerful in my life. So, woman named Mudita Nisker has been very influential for me. She and her husband Dan Klerman teach communication skills, kind of, they're based in Buddhism, but they're quite secular, very clear, simple and easy to understand skills. And she has said to me before that, you know, you can do years of therapy to become a different person, and maybe that'll work. She's not denigrating therapy. She actually is a therapist,

or you can learn communication skills and speak differently to other people and yourself, and you might find yourself sort of reverse engineering a new person. And what's one communication skill that you have found effective? I talk a lot about something called reflective listening, which is, and I do it a lot on the show. I haven't done it with you today that I can recall, but when somebody says something to me, often I will repeat it back to them,

a very brief version in my own words, so kind of like the headline. And this does a couple of things. One is it gives people the primordial pleasure of feeling heard and understood. Second, it allows me not to jump to conclusions about what they're saying, because we keep talking about the negativity bias,

often we can hear things in what people are saying that are not there, or they didn't intend for us to hear. And so just repeating back the bones of their message can help me respond wisely to what's happening instead of reacting blindly. So that's just one little hack. I love that reflective listening. That's one little fact. I'm trying to do it right now. Just repeating back to what you said. Well done. But another gold star. Yes. Number three. So so we'll be back to this gratitude book. What's the takeaway for those of us who are not going to call

a thousand people and thank them for our morning coffee? How can we integrate this the TLDR of what you learn into our lives? Yeah, there are a few takeaways. I'll just give you say two because as you say, yes, most people are not going to go around the world thanking everyone for a cup of coffee or your pair of socks, whatever. One is you can do it on a very small scale. It doesn't have to be a thousand people, but I found, for instance, if I like a logo of some, you know, I don't know what it is, like a mango juice, I. I bought it the grocery and I've tried to notice those things now We talked about noticing and I'm like, oh someone

Their job was to come up with this mango logo and and they did a good job. It's fun. It's kind of clever If you go on Facebook or any other social media and just you know Go to the website of that company and say, I just want to pass along my gratitude for the fun logo that whoever designed it. And you won't believe people are so grateful to hear. 95% of people, they're not like famous artists who sign their name. They're sort of usually anonymous. So little things like that. Another one was when I

thanked the barista. First of all, she thanked me for thanking her. And then I felt I should thank her for thanking me for thanking her. So it got a little dangerous there. But overall, I asked her, you know, what's your job like? And she's like, you know, in some ways I love it. In some ways it's super hard. Because first of all, she's dealing with people pre-caffeination. So they're not a good mood. But they won't even treat her like a human. They won't look up from their phone.

They'll just wave their phone in the square. The credit card goes through. And so it's almost like she's like a you know, a vending machine she doesn't have an identity. She's just like even if someone looks me in the eye for like two seconds and acknowledges my humanity, that is so important. So I realized I'm I'm that asshole who has done that many times. We're not even looking at the person, you know, I'm not expecting a Nobel peace prize, but just like expecting a Nobel Peace Prize.

But just like making a two-second effort to look someone in the eye and just acknowledge their humanity, it's good for my mental health, I think, because we're wired for social interaction. But it's also, you know, the human thing to do. So that is just one little thing that you can do. But I have a whole bunch of other things that I still try to incorporate into my life because it did change my life for the better. This gratitude adventure. Yeah, they're just to amplify those points because I think that you're excellent. The first one was if you go out of your way to look for awesome shit and then thank the people who made it. At least two benefits for you. One is your awesomeness radar is going to get way more finely honed, and that

is a great way to counter program against the negativity bias. And the second is you're going to get the benefit of all of the gratitude you'll receive for thanking people, making other people happy, will make you happy. And I mean, that's just. Yeah, the virtuous circle. Uncomplicated human math, yeah, virtuous circle. The second thing is also backed up by data. I know I keep doing this to you, but Barbara Fredrickson has done a whole just great work

that micro interactions, that's her term. And you can hear her talk about it because I'm saying this again, we'll put a link in the show notes to that conversation, being a little repetitive today, but you're getting me fired. You're firing my imagination with a lot of these things you're saying, so I'm going to blame it on you.

Barbara Frederson talks about how we can get so much dopamine out of just talking to people that we often overlook. So, it's not just the right thing to do. It's not just what makes you less of an asshole. It's actually good for you. It's, as you said before, a virtuous cycle of talking to people, you have barista strangers in an elevator on the train, people who are doing little work around your house,

people who are cleaning around the office, all the folks that I'll just speak for myself, I tended to overlook really making it a habit to make eye contact and talk to them, has had a huge impact on my daily life. I love that. And I also love what you said about sort of the hidden beautiful things in our lives. And that was one of my big takeaways was these hidden masterpieces that are just lying around everywhere. And for instance, I felt I should thank the people who made the cup and also the people who made the lid. I no longer use plastic lids, but this was a couple years ago. I should have

known better than too. But anyway, I called the guy who designed the lid and it was so interesting to talk to him how much passion and thought and care had gone into designing this lid, things that I never thought about. He made a really big hole in the center because coffee is a lot about the sense of smell. So he wanted to make sure we were getting the aroma. The way that the little hole was designed was to make the coffee flow in an even way. And it was just fascinating all that went into this. And I would have given a zero thought if I hadn't forced myself to talk to this guy. Once you got your act together with Plastic,

did you call him back and tell him he's a monster? I was like, thank you for ruining the world. That's my thanks for you. Thank you for ruining the world. That's my thanks for you. Can you talk generally you you've brought us and I'm I'm grateful to you. Thank you for bringing us to exactly where it's hoping to go once we talked about the puzzler to talk more generally about your work. So you we've talked about thanks a thousand. Can you talk a little bit about your general approach to work? You've called yourself a human guinea pig. Well, I think it goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, this idea of curiosity,

which is what you have, which is why you're so successful. I love this quote. I once interviewed Alex Trebek, the late great Jeopardy host, and he said a quote, which makes no sense on the face of it, but I totally get it. Which he said something like, I'm curious about everything, even those things I have no interest in. And I love that because that is true. So whatever the topic I like to dive in and go super deep and be curious about it. So I've done on gratitude, on puzzles. I did one on, I grew up like you, I think, a not very religious Jew. The line I have in the book is I'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian,

so not fair. Thank you, Rulan. But I became very interested in religion, and that was like 15 years ago I did a book called The Year of Living Biblically, where I followed all the rules in the Bible. The famous ones like the Ten Commandments, but I also had a crazy beard. I also stoned adulterers, but I use very small stones, like pebbles, so I didn't go to jail. That was the same thing, driven, fueled by curiosity and putting myself in there.

Writing teachers always say, write what you know, write about your life. And I did not have a very You know, writing teachers always say, write what you know, write about your life. And I did not have a very interesting life I have to say. But I thought, well, what if I just put myself in interesting positions and see what happens? Then I can write about my life. So that's has fueled the books that I've written. I love it.

Thanks. You're a Jewish the way the olive garden is Italian. Does that mean you're a source of unlimited breadsticks? Well, if they're flat bread, of course. They got it. Right, right, of course. It has to be Jewish. Yeah. So what did you learn from the Bible book?

I mean, what would you say has stuck with you from that? Because it is like on the one hand, and I don't use this word in the pejorative. It's a stunt. It's a great conceit for a book, but I imagine there were things you learned that go beyond just the wow factor. Oh, yeah. And I was actually very nervous when I was writing that book before it came out that people would dismiss it totally as a stunt.

And I got lucky. I got very good feedback from both religious people and non-religious people. It was actually this was an example of the confirmation bias. Atheist would email me like, thank you for showing how crazy religion is and I would get religious people and thank you for renewing my faith. So everyone just read it in the way that renewing my faith. So everyone just read it in the way that they thought. But there were many takeaways. One was gratitude. That was sort of the, there's a lot in the Bible about gratitude. So that led to the gratitude book later. Another one was the one we were talking about, about how acting your way into a new way of thinking. So, you know, part of my goal was,

in addition to the crazy stuff, like stoning adulterers, I had to do a sort of moral makeover because the Bible says you shouldn't gossip or you shouldn't covet and you shouldn't lie. And I'm a journalist in New York City. So that's like 80% of my day. So I was like, how do I do this? And the most effective method was to try to act as if I were a good person.

So my friend was in the hospital. I really don't want to go. But if I'm acting as if I'm a compassionate person, like the Bible says, then I'm going to force myself to go. And after you do it a few times, you trick your mind. You're like, oh, I guess I am pretty compassionate. I'm a compassionate guy. And then you sort of associate that. That becomes your identity. So that was very powerful. And also rituals. I actually, I was very skeptical about rituals because I'm very much a science rationality fan. And I thought, you know, what this is a little weird to do these crazy rituals. But, you know, the people I talked to are very smart. I had a board of spiritual advisors. So, rabbis and ministers and scholars and atheists.

And a lot of them said, don't be so dismissive of rituals. Rituals can be so meaningful if they don't hurt someone. I don't human sacrifice, I'm not a fan. And they don't have to be religious. They can be a birthday party. That's a ritual. There is nothing rational about putting fire on top of a bunch of sugar and then blowing it out. That is not a rational scientific action. It's a ritual,

but rituals can be wonderful and bind us together as humans. You know, those are just three random ones that came to my head, but it was a great experience, actually. A pain in the ass, but great. Did any aspect of the moral makeover stick with you? Are you more compassionate now than you were before you wrote it in a biting way? I think so. I mean, I'd say like 30%. If I were going to put a percentage on it, I'm still higher than my usual percentage. That's right. That's right.

30% more compassionate. You know, I think I still struggle. I'm still, you know, self-centered in many ways, just the terrible person, but I fight it. I fight it. And one way I fight it is I do, you know, gossip is an interesting one because in one way gossip is important,

like, you know, at just an evolutionary, if someone's a cheater, you do want to spread the word. But a lot of it is not good for us evolution. It feels good in the moment. And the Bible actually talks about that. Like it's like a, you know, a sweet taste, but then it turns bitter. And so forcing myself to only say good things about people, unless they're an

ambassador, try to find the positive in people. And by doing that, convincing myself that humans have goodness. And so again, it's the behavior of talking, saying nice things, changes the way my brain is wired. And I find more goodness in people because of that. What about rituals? Have you, beyond birthday parties, kept up with any rituals? Well, I do. I'm still not, you know, a believer. I'm not a, I'm agnostic, but I do like the Jewish rituals. I've become more of a fan of that, like, Sator, just getting together with your family. And if it doesn't have to be Jewish, is any, like Sator just getting together with your family. And it doesn't have to be Jewish. Any ritual where you get together with your family or friends and do something every year, I love that.

We have a ritual where we go to deep, rural Maryland with 10 friends and their kids every new year. That's a ritual. And I've actually become a big fan of morning rituals. One of which I talked to you about was having those 10, 15 minutes of brainstorming. I love that. So yeah, rituals are huge in my life. You also did a book about getting healthy. What was the name of that book? That was Drop dead healthy. We've done a lot of shows about my ambivalence and the ambivalence of many experts with whom I've spoken about

the kind of unhealthy fixation with being healthy. I'm just curious where you landed. Well, that is so funny. That was one of my big takeaways. You predicted, there's even a word, orthorexia, which is an unhealthy obsession. I don't think it's in the, you know,

the official psychology books, but I love it. Because, yeah, one of the takeaways is, it's somewhat about diet and exercise. That's a part of it. But a lot of it is about having a strong family or group of friends, you know, having a social network that you're embedded in. A lot of it is about stress,

which you can fight with meditation and sleep. So those are just as important as diet and exercise. And if you're just focusing on, say you're like so obsessed with eating the exact right non-GMO asparagus, you know, grown organic and it means you won't go to restaurants with your friends. That is not healthy. That is unhealthy. Or if you're spending all of your time at the gym instead of going out for drinks with friends, not healthy. It's a balance. So yeah, I agree. You don't want to be unhealthily obsessed with health. The good news is a lot of what we find pleasurable like

meeting friends actually is healthy. We just underestimated. And actually, since my podcast, the new podcast, the puzzler, is basically having people come on and solve these puzzles, these quizzes live, can I give you a really quick version like a 30 second puzzle? Yeah, absolutely. This one speaks to what we were talking about before, like, sort of thinking outside the box,

thinking in different ways. So it's this puzzle that me and the producers came up with. It's a rebus, but it's an audio version of a rebus. So I'm going to say a word in a certain way, or a certain tone of voice or an accent. And that's the clue. And you're going to have to guess the two word phrase that comes from it. So for instance, if I said the word tide, that is a clue for two word phrase. Yes, rising tide. Rising. Oh, yeah, okay.

Look at that. You say you're not a puzzler. I'm there. I think you're a safety. Yeah, that was very fast. That was fast. All right. Let me give you a couple more.

Bressing and excuse my, this. Say to get. My acting is not top not, but I'll try. Blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing. Blessing, blessing. I'm saying the word dressing, but in a certain way. French dressing. There it is.

There it is. I'm like Tarrard, J.Fartouc. You're like, what the hell is he trying to do? I thought I was in it. It was seen from Ratatouille. Well, that's a compliment. All right, I'll give you one more, which is chair, he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he you might have played as a kid. Oh, musical chairs. Musical chairs. Yes, sorry, that one, I didn't ace that one. Yeah, I got it eventually, but yes. You know, it's just to say, I, as we've talked about my skepticism about puzzling, it's actually I don't have any skepticism,

it's just that I'm not naturally drawn to doing them in my spare time, but I will say that I love mysteries. And I bet this will land for you as a writer, but in my books, I've only written one proper memoir and I'm writing the second one now, but I really do structure them as mysteries, even though they're not, there's no crime,

except for the moral crimes that I commit along the way, but there's no murder. And yet, I really love that format. I love watching way, but there's no murder. And yet I really love that format. I love watching. I think there's a primordial pleasure to watching people figure something out. And so as a storytelling device, I really try to raise huge questions at the beginning. And I think you do this too.

Raise huge questions at the beginning. And then you give readers the pleasure, hopefully, of watching me stumble towards some sort of answer. My mom was an editor at the New England Journal of Medicine, she was very early pioneering female physician, and she was the person in charge of the most popular section of the New England Journal of Medicine, which was called the CPCs that Clint, I don't remember, I can't remember what it stands for, but it was basically where they took an unsolvable case and solved it as a group. And so, and she would, oh, I grew up watching her read, act of the Christie and all these murder mysteries, which I then went on to read in my earlier

years. And so, I am very influenced by that. And so, I guess that's a form of puzzle. That is such a, in fact, I meant to have a chapter on it. I just ran out of time. But yeah, absolutely. And I love that you structure your books that way. That's why one of the reasons why they're so popular, people love a mystery. And the mystery is the same thing. It's an aha moment. There's misdirection.

And then you look at the clues in a different way. And you're like, oh, now it all clicks. Order from chaos. And that's another big theme in puzzles and same with mysteries. And I've actually started, I've been for the last month on a crazy deadline for my next book. And the only way I can calm down is to read mysteries before sleep. So I have actually, for the first time since I was like a teenager, been reading mysteries. Clonopin works too, you know, if you get really desperate.

I'm not opposed to drugs, I really am not. And this seems to work. There is just a basic pleasure to question Mark Arrow exclamation point, just order from chaos, watching somebody figure it out, and being sort of involved, even as a spectator, because your brain gets involved. It is really pleasing and fun. And it's funny for the podcast, it's actually interesting, the feedback we get,

people love it when the guests, the celebrity guests, struggle, they wanna see that struggle. We had Ken Jennings, and he was great, hilarious, but he was also a little too fast because people want that they want to participate, they want to guess it at the same time. So that's been a fascinating lesson. Ken Jennings was the first contestant of my failed game show, and he actually bombed. No way. It was, yeah, he was.

What was the premise of the game show? The name of the show was 500 questions. It was like, Jeopardy on steroids. It was a much crazier visually designed to give you an epileptic fit version of the Jeopardy. And so, yeah, I was the hyper caffeinated version of Alex Trebek on that show, although I don't drink caffeine. So I just, you just, you mentioned your next book. I'm curious, what is it? My next book is actually sort of a sequel to the year of living biblically. It's called the Year of Living Constitutionally.

And I tried to understand the US Constitution by living it, expressing my rights as if at the time they were written. So I had a quill pen and I wrote pamphlets instead of tweeting. I handed out pamphlets. I had a musket. I walked around with a musket for my second amendment rights. I quartered soldiers. That's in the Constitution. It says you don't have to, but if you want to, so I quartered a couple of soldiers. It's been a fascinating journey, and it was sort of spurred by politics now. I think one of the big questions in politics is how literally should we take the constitution,

how narrowly should we interpret it? And so I was like, I'm going to explore it by being the ultimate originalist and see what that's like. Will you come back on when the book comes up? Are you kidding? I would love to. And I have specifically been trying to find wisdom from, there's a lot of things we don't want to get back to, a lot of horrible sexist racist smelly things.

But there also was some wisdom, as you know, on happiness and virtue and thinking about the common good. So I've made a sure to explore that so that I can talk to you about it. I love it. Consider me flattered and intrigued. Excellent. So, but just by my final, the traditional two questions for you, one is, is there something you would have like to talk about that you didn't get an opportunity to talk about? I was going to bring up, I'm very interested in how to fall asleep and I've listened to a lot of your shows, but I don't think I've ever heard your sleep ritual. I'll tell you mine quickly is going through the alphabet from A to Z and

trying to think of something I'm grateful for for each letter. That's awesome. I have to switch up, you know, because I can't always start with A. So hopefully I'm asleep by like H or I. So sometimes I start with S, sometimes with G. So that was one I would have discussed if we had time. My sleep ritual just to answer the question is I struggle with episodic. In Somniam, we've done a bunch of episodes on sleep and what I've learned a bunch of really useful stuff. And I've realized I got really bad at this recently. So I've instituted more discipline around not staring at my phone for the

two hours before I go to bed. I get a lot of restlessness at night, so I do a lot of walking meditation before bed. And if I can't sleep, I don't stay in bed and thrash. I get up and go read a book or do walking meditation or whatever it is in order to get my mind ready to fall asleep. And I finally just, you know, it's back to the self-talk thing. If I can't sleep, I just talk myself and say, look, you've been through this a million times.

Tomorrow's gonna be fine. You've survived many days of one, two, three, or zero hours of sleep. You can survive this next one. Don't freak out about it. And actually that often helps me fall asleep. And I do the gratitude thing too. Before I go to bed, I just list a bunch of things

that I'm grateful for. All right, these are good. These are good. I like that. And the screen one, I mean, I know it and I just Ignore it. I got to do what you do. Yeah, that's a good one. No, you just the hardest part about personal growth in my opinion is forgetting. Yeah, and so you just need to be reminded over and over and over again. Right. That's a full employment act for me actually. Doing this show. Exactly. Thank you for reminding it over and over again. The final question is, can you just, I know we've mentioned it, can you just mention again the name of your latest book and the podcast and any other books or resources you want people to know about? Well, thank you for that. I would love to. Yeah. This latest one is called The Puzzler.

And the podcast is called The Puzzler with A.D. Jacobs on I Heart. And it's available everywhere. And it's super short. So, you know, you could five, seven minutes a day, make it a practice, and then listen to Dan's show. And I've got the year of living constitutionally coming up in next year. Oh, last thing I totally forgot. I went and I looked up, tried to figure out anagrams with your name, because you have a very anagramable name.

One of them is hard rains, hard rains, like the Bob Dylan, hard rains is gonna to fall and the other one is oh wait what is the other one ah I'll have to tell you later maybe that'll be something for the listeners they can come up with something with hairs uh darn hairs that's what it was darn okay hairs so there you go that was the only only thing we didn't touch on. I had a colleague Sarah Haines at Good Morning America. She used to call me Daenerys Targaryen. Almost an anagram, but not quite an area, but a wordplay nonetheless. There you go.

AJ, what a pleasure. So I hope the first of several. I loved it. I have a Van Tant, and I learned, I feel like I'm, you know, I won't say 10% happier, but maybe even more, 15, 20. It was great. Great.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll take it. I'll take it. Big thanks to AJ Jacobs. By the way, he has a new podcast called The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs, which is a short little audio puzzle that you can do alongside celebrity guests, such as Baratunde Thustin, Roy Wood, Jr., and Lisa Loeb.

Thank you for listening. I really appreciate that. And thanks, everybody who works so hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davie, and Lauren Smith. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor, Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production, and Kimmy Regler is our executive producer.

Alicia Mackie leads our marketing and Tony Magyar is our director of podcasts, Nick Thorburn of Islands, wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, I hope you do. You can listen early and add free right now by joining Wondery Plus and Wondery App War on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen to add free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to

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