Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Sam Harris on: Vipassana vs. Dzogchen, Looking for the Looker, and Psychic Powers

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Frequent guest Sam Harris discusses life after quitting Twitter and the metaphysics of meditation along with special co-host and brother Matt Harris. Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, and author of five New York Times best sellers. His work covers a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, political polarization, rationality—but generally focuses on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live. His books include The End of Faith, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. Sam hosts the popular Making Sense podcast and is the creator of the Waking Up app, which offers a modern approach to living a more examined life, through both in-depth mindfulness training and secular wisdom. Sam has practiced meditation for over 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.In this episode we talk about:The psychological benefits of quitting TwitterVipassana meditation vs. DzogchenThe practice of looking for the lookerSam’s views on the metaphysics of meditation and psychic powersFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/sam-harris-2023See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Alright, we're going into the deep end today, kids, with one of my favorite repeat guests. And a person I consider to be both a friend and a role model. Sam Harris. Sam is an author, neuroscientist and philosopher. He's the author of many bestselling books, the host of a massive podcast called Making Sense and the creator of a meditation app called Waking Up, which is truly an incredible resource. He's done a great job with that app.

As I've mentioned before, Sam was a huge part of my own meditation career. He encouraged me early on when I was still skeptical about the practice. In fact, he got me into my first retreat and personally introduced me to Joseph Goldstein, the meditation teacher, who's become a gigantic figure in my life.

I have a co-interviewer for this episode. This marks the inaugural appearance on the show of a guy named Matt Harris. So we have three Harris's on the show. Although Sam and I share our last name, we are not related. Matt and I, however, are very closely related. He's my younger brother. Despite the fact, maybe because of the fact that I have been meditating for 14 years roughly. And despite the fact that Matt has been one of my closest advisors on my various books and meditation-related projects, I don't know if this is despite the fact or because of the aforementioned, either way, he's never really gotten into the practice.

However, that changed about a year ago when he quite suddenly got deeply interested. And one of the people he's really latched onto in his own contemplative odyssey is Sam. So I thought it would be fun to have Matt join us for this conversation. Heads up, we have basically the same voice, although he does tend to say smarter stuff than I do. So that's maybe how you can tell us apart.

We cover a lot of ground here, including the psychological benefits of quitting Twitter, Vipassana meditation versus Zogchen, which is a Tibetan flavor of meditation. A practice called looking for the looker, and whether Sam is in any way open to the metaphysics of meditation, in other words, what does he think about the notion that meditation can give you psychic powers? But first time for some BSP, blatant self-promotion,

wanna tell you about a big series we're kicking off here in the new year. It's called the non-negotiables. We have lined up a whole cavalcade of stars. And by stars, I mean experts and all sorts of areas. Plus some actual celebrities to come on and talk about their non-negotiables, the practices and precepts. They cannot live without.

We're talking to relationship guru Esther Perrell. We're talking to relationship guru ester per l. We're talking to the Buddhist nun, Pemma Chodran, talking to the actor and comedian Bill Haider, who talks about how he deals with anxiety. Here's a hand, he says, the hippies were right. I mean, laughs when he says that. It kicks off on January 3rd, so keep an eye out for that. Also, a quick note about our friends over at the 10% happier app. If you're looking for a last minute gift, you can give your friends and loved ones the gift of sanity. Get them a gift subscription to the 10% happier app. You can visit 10% dot com slash gift.

That's 10% all one word spelled out dot com slash gift to snag one for your friend or loved one. When you find something you love, you stick with it, like this podcast, and like working out with Peloton. This holiday season, bring home a Peloton bike, bike plus or tread, and work out your way. I always look forward to a ride on my Peloton bike. Unleash yourself. Ride, run, box, or freak the hit out.

It's your workout, your rules. For Peloton's December offer, head to www.1peloton.ca-deals. All-Axis Membership Separate. Terms Apply. Hello listeners, this is Mike Corey of Against the Odds. You might know that I adventure around the world while recording this podcast, and over the years, I've learned that where I stay when I travel can make all the difference. Airbnb has been my go-to place for finding the perfect accommodations. Because with hotels,

you often don't have the luxury of extra space or privacy. Recently, I had a bunch of friends come down to visit in Mexico. We found this large house and the place had a pool, a barbecue, a kitchen, and a great big living room to play cards, watch movies, and just chill out. It honestly made all the difference in the trip. It felt like we were all roommates again. The next time you're planning a trip, whether it's with friends, family, or yourself, out Airbnb. To find something you won't forget. What a life these celebrities lead. Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face,

the designer clothes, the worst dress list, big house. The world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account. The people trying to get the grubby mitts on it. What's he all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous, it's not always easy. I'm Emily Loitany, and I'm Anna Leon Grofie, and we're the hosts of Terribly Famous from Wondery,

the podcast which tells the stories of our favorite celebrities from their perspective. Each season we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrow raising lows and ask, is fame and fortune really worth it? Follow terribly famous now wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. podcast or the one do we have.

Dan Harris, nice to see you and brother Harris. Indeed. Yes, meet Matt Harris. Be prepared for confusion because he has the exact same voices as I do. It's a little trick we play. Nice. I could come in handy in high school, no doubt. Well, some stories are coming to mind, but I will hold those for another podcast. Yes, exactly. Not very mindful.

Not back then. I do want to say that Matt is here because he's a huge fan of yours. He got into meditation pretty recently, even though his brother is co-founder of a meditation app, he's using yours. So that should say a lot about our relationship. I've had analogous experiences. I've just given in. I just recommend your book as the book. People should read first. So I'm no longer affronted by this at all. This is I engineer this. So yeah, I understand. Matt and I spoke last this. So yeah, I understand. Matt and I spoke last night.

He has a bunch of excellent questions. I'm going to let him jump in in a second. But let me just start with some warm-up questions. You went off Twitter a while ago. I guess it's X now. And I'm just curious, because I haven't spoken to you since then, not on the show since then. And I'm curious, what impact has it had on your mental health?

Well, it's been enormous. It's really, I think when I've talked about this on my own podcast, I've said that I'm embarrassed at how big an impact it's had because it shows me just how deranged I had become and I was just unaware of it. I think it's objectively embarrassing to say, it's one of the most important things I've done in the last decade to improve my life personally. I mean, it's just unbelievable. It's like getting out of a bad relationship. I don't know what to compare it to in my life. And I guess I should just caveat this by saying

that I don't think my experience on Twitter was so representative of the general experience, not everyone on Twitter, and certainly not most people on Twitter have as public a platform as I had. I think I had 1.5 million followers at that point, and many people who have lots of followers don't have the same kind of controversial career that I have. I mean, they don't touch the same kinds of polarizing topics. So, and then many people who touch the same kinds of polarizing topics tend to touch them just from one side of the political spectrum or the other, right? So they have at their back a tribe of people

who agree with them about everything who will rush to their defense when they get mobbed. Whereas I'm very much in the center, and I've offended both sides of the political spectrum because I've gone after the left and I've gone after the right more or less equivalently, or with equal frequency. So I had a very unique vantage point as just

see just how dysfunctional and toxic Twitter could become. And so it just got to a point where I felt like it was just subtly making me a misent rope. Right. It was actually contaminated in my view of other people in a way that I actually felt was inaccurate. It's not that I felt I was seeing just how bad people are. In fact, I was seeing a kind of fun house, just mirror distortion. By no means the most avid Twitter user, I was somebody who would tweet maybe three times a week, right? I think that was more or less my average, something like that. But I would check it a dozen times a day, 50 times a day, even more depending.

Now, because it was my newsfeed, and that's how I was seeing things. So it was constantly punctuating my life. It was a kind of freakish meditation. And it became a meditation on my own, inevitably, on my own digital reputation and a kind of digital doppelganger that was a very powerful distortion of who I am. I mean, I was constantly reminded of the fact that millions of people think I'm a monster of some sort, and depending on whether they were coming from the left or the right, it was a very different monster, vilifying me on that basis.

And I was beginning to, as much as I tried to correct for the distortion I knew was coming into my thinking there, I just felt I couldn't actually correct for it in the end. I just, it was, it was, I felt like there were many more psychopaths in the world that there are in fact, right? And so it was just, it was just a bad dream. And then the only thing I could do was wake up from it and the only way to really wake up from it in a way that was durable was just to delete my account. And yeah, so it's been a huge life hack to get rid of it. Now that you've done that, I'm curious, what would you say is the biggest

challenge in your life and meditation practice or at the nexus of the two? I mean, honestly, almost nothing. I can honestly say to you that the worst things that have happened in my life in the last decade, and this is a measure of just what a wonderful life I, in fact, have, apart from a couple of health scares and challenges for people in my family, it's all been Twitter. It's just every bad thing. It has been the result of something that happened on Twitter, something I felt I had to react to on Twitter, the consequences of having reacted to it.

So it's just, it's unbelievable what a bad influence it was in my life and how slow I was to recognize its actual effects because, again, there's so much obvious good. One, it seems like a professional necessity for so many people, certainly people in media, journalists, academics, I mean, people feel like that's the only way they can stay in touch with what's going on in the world and the only way they can kind of market their own wares.

And also, I was just following many, many smart, entertaining people. And so it just seemed like the dopaminergic effects of just seeing all the good stuff on a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment basis, it kept me blind to the fact that this was a psychological experiment that I got enrolled in and I never really read the consent form, and the results were bad. And now I'm convinced the results are bad for almost everybody. I mean, honestly, I've got nothing to tell you that is a current challenge apart from

the ordinary inertia of just gratifying ones' interests and curiosities and desires and getting lulled into living a superficially very, very happy life and not really connecting with all the depth that is available because of just the mechanics of ordinary distraction. It's just like the difference between really sinking into the well of being moment to moment in a starkly contemplative way and just having fun and reading good books and talking to good people and enjoying life. And so far, there's a delta between those two modes of being. And you know, it's easy to get kind of a lulled back into a very pleasant kind of dream life. And so that's the challenge, but that's quite a privileged challenge at the moment.

That's the challenge, but that's quite a privileged challenge at the moment. Yeah, well, high class problem, but still an interesting challenge. And I think hearing you talk about it would be educational, instructive for people. Can you unpack that? The difference between on the one level, the superficial pleasures of life talking to interesting people, having flavors appear on your tongue, et cetera, et cetera, reading good books, interacting with ideas. And I can't remember the phrase you used, sinking into the well of being,

something along those lines. What do you mean by that, and how do you access it, and how do you remember to wake up from the dream to access the well of being? Well, so as many people will know who are interested in meditation, whatever practice you're doing and however you conceive of the goal of meditation, there's this distinction between being distracted and undistracted, between being identified with thought, lost and thought captivated by thought, having one's sense of being in the world really

trimmed down moment to moment by this conversation we're having with ourselves and the imagery of past and future that causes us to overlook the salience of the present moment. There's a difference between that and clearly recognizing what the mind is like in the present. Now, you get depending on what practice one does and how successful that practice has been and what kinds of concepts one has been taught to use to think about the goal there that we could have differences of opinion about what there is to discover about the nature of mind in the present. But whatever practice you're doing, there's this difference between distraction and non-distraction. And yeah, so sinking into the well of being is just a somewhat verbose way of saying that there's prior to identification with thought in the present moment, there is a profundity to just being, just being aware, just being identical to experience

whatever it's character, right? Nothing has to change about experience for you to recognize that it is already free of self, that it is already undefined. There's nothing to cling to and no place from which you would cling. So to use Buddhist concepts, emptiness is recognizable in the midst of any experience. So it can be totally mundane. You could be in the middle of checking your email. You cannot have any prior moments of momentum and mindfulness to rely on. You could have been distracted for the last 10 minutes, but it's possible to locate even in this next ordinary moment that there is no center to experience. Being is not a especially popular term among Buddhists to describe what's left there,

but it captures some of the positive quality of awareness without a sense of self, I would say. Matt, maybe this is a good time for you to jump in because he's kind of let us up to one of the areas where I know you have some questions. Sure. Sam, this is an interesting jumping off point for a question I had and this is a- I'm smiling because the voice really is quite similar. It's hilarious That's great. You guys could punk me right now. He says smarter shit with the same voice just to be clear

I may say smarter shit with the same voice, but my brother is monetized it a lot better than I have in a direct way But here we are. So, I have the question of what there looks like, which is to say this recognition that there's no self. I think it is pretty consistent as a user of your app, but the path there, you know, is not just somebody who follows your guided meditations, but somebody who's listened to a lot, maybe not most of the content, but a lot of the content.

It can leave you wondering how you actually feel about the Vipassana path, where you really do all the work over years and years versus what you describe as this really attractive, more direct path that you've obviously found through Zogchen. And yet, as I go back to the guided meditations, they seem mainly the posinum, sort of the sort of thing you would get in a regular way, retreat, or most of the content on 10% happier, which of course Dan, I've also comprehensively listened to. So I guess I'd love for you to talk about, do you struggle with one versus the other?

Not that struggles a big feature of your life, obviously, but what do you actually, what do you actually practice mainly and how do you think about those two traditions? And before you answer, Sam, can you in the process of your answer define Vipassana Zocen for folks who are new? the process of your answer defined Vipassana Zocenn for folks who are new? Yeah, so Vipassana is the practice in terivata Buddhism, the oldest form of Buddhism. Vipassana

is the poly term that's usually translated this immense, you know, secular interest in mindfulness, right? Mindfulness is the state of mind one is cultivating in the practice of Vipassana among other qualities of mind. Mindfulness really is the central tool. And this practice has analogs elsewhere in Buddhism, but you know, Vapasana, as it is taught by your friends, Joseph Goldstein, anyone else who would teach it, IMS or spirit rock, this is teravod of Vapasana. And the main export from that tradition has been mindfulness to the secular world and then the scientific community. The Zogchen is a strand of teaching within Vajraana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, that teaches what's

often described as a non-dual approach to meditation. There are other similar teachings within Tibetan Buddhism, Mahamudra is importantly similar to Zogchen. And there are other non-dual teachings elsewhere in the Indian tradition. Advaita Vedanta is the non-duality that one can find in the far more baroque and confusing tradition of Hinduism. But the interesting distinction between Vapasana and ordinary dualistic mindfulness and any non-dual teaching, Zogchen included, is that you can start from wherever you are.

You can be someone who doesn't know anything about meditation, and you're given a technique, and it's rather common to give the technique of paying attention to the breath. So you're, we start by becoming mindful of the sensations of breathing. Every time the mind wanders into thought, we're told to come back to the raw sensation of breathing. And in that training of just noticing distraction and coming back to raw sensation, one is learning to practice mindfulness and one is gaining insight in Vipassana to what are described as the three characteristics of all phenomena and Buddhism, which are impermanence primarily and unsatisfactoriness and selflessness.

selflessness. And I would argue that in Vipassana, in reversely, wherever it's taught, the primary characteristic one is noticing his impermanence, right? The unsatisfactoryness and the selflessness of phenomenon, which again, these are all, these are built as kind of equal status characteristics. But the insight into selflessness, the insight into unsatisfactoriness is virtually always taught as an experience, I would say, as derivative of an insight into impermanence. It's because everything is impermanent, because there's nothing you can find that is a durable moment to moment, that you can then extrapolate to the eluciriness of a durable self moment to moment. There can be no self of the sort that you thought you had if everything, every moment of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, and even the consciousness that

is knowing those things is passing away in the next moment, right? Changing, seasonally changing and seasonly passing away as you pay close attention. And there can be no desire, so successfully gratified, no pleasant experience, so wonderful that you can cling to, that could represent a durable basis for happiness because nothing lasts, right? What, if something wasn't there a moment ago,

the mere fact that it has appeared proves that it will be disappearing, eventually, especially that the stronger your concentration and mindfulness grows, you begin to see that truly punctate and piecemeal character to every experience. So the immense strength of a pasta and the dualistic mindfulness is that anyone can come

through the front door and begin practicing it from wherever they are. They can be handed a technique and they can just begin walking the path. And I did that for a long time. And I think I'd probably spent about a year on silent retreat in increments ranging from, you know, a weekend to three months long practicing that style of apostna before I encountered

non-dual teaching directly. I mean, I'd encounter non-dual teachings in books from the very beginning, and all that non-dual talk was the kind of advertisement for it and alternate framing for the spiritual path, but it wasn't until that I actually got an actual instruction from some great zokshin teachers and advice to teachers that I actually was able to practice differently. The difference with what I would call non-dual mindfulness is that you actually have to have a specific insight in order to practice it. You can't actually do the thing with your attention that you need to do to constitute a moment of practice

until you've recognized something about the nature of consciousness. It's a paradoxical teaching in that it's hard to tell someone how to start. You know, it's like, it's a little bit like an old Dharma joke, an aware came from, but there's this, I'll move it to a New York. You're in New York and you're a tourist and you want to find Central Park and you stop

someone on the street and you say, excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Central Park? And the person says, oh, I'm sorry, you can't get to Central Park from here. Right? I mean, the paradox of that, like, how is it that you could possibly be some place from which some other place can't be reached? Right. It makes no sense. And yet that is in fact true contemplatively, meditatively with respect to this shift between duality and non-duality.

There's a, there's a, aperius assumption of a starting point that has to be penetrated. There's something that has to be undone in order for you to actually start. It's not that you're and we can talk more about this. I realize this is all sounding pretty cryptic, but to speak more directly about the experience, when you're given the instruction to be mindful in the beginning from a dualistic point of view, the way that happens for people is that they're told,

okay, there's something that they should pay attention to sensation, to sounds, to the breath, to whatever it is, to emotions, to thoughts, even, ultimately, and just notice that everything arises and passes away. And inevitably, you begin doing that feeling that you are a subject of experience. You're a kind of spotlight of attention that can aim attention strategically at the breath, or at sounds. And so there's this subject object dualism built into the very project from the beginning where you feel like, okay, I'm over here paying attention in a story. I might, you might notice that you're being buffeted by thought that's inviting distraction moment to moment, but you know,

you're noticing that and then you're coming back to the object, let's say it sounds or sensations of in the body. You're up here in your head as a subject aiming the spotlight of attention, hoping to do this successfully and doing it successfully, noticing just, you know, the warmth or tingling or movement or pressure in the body, say, and having that kind of clear contact. But there is still this feeling of a subject, of a meditator, of a center from which attention can be paid to phenomena. And that is actually a false point of view. I mean, that's the starting point that has to be unraveled in order to start the non-dual practice of Zogchian or any other

non-dual practice. So when you ask me whether I struggle with the difference between Vapasana and Zogchan, I don't struggle with it personally, but I struggle with it pedagogically because it's a challenge to figure out how to get people up to the threshold of this thing so that they can recognize what is already true of the nature of their minds. And for that, I think there really is no better preliminary practice than Bapasana. And I think Bapasana, you know, Teravatta style of Bapasana is actually in my experience and admittedly my experience of the alternative is somewhat limited. But in my experience, I think it's much better than what is actually given in the Vajranana tradition as the preliminary practice to Zocen,

which is a lot of traditional Tibetan practices that to my, I don't actually prepare you as well as the rigorous Mahasisaya style mindfulness that I learned at IMS and elsewhere. Coming up Sam talks about whether non-duality can be reconciled with loving kindness and whether he's open to the notion that meditation can give you superpowers. 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. Tis the Grinch Holiday Talk Show is a pathetic attempt by the people of Ruvil to use my situation as a teachable moment. So join me, the Grinch, along with Cindy Luhu, 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. They'll 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.

You can listen to Tiz the Grinch Holiday Talk Show early and add free right now by joining W RePlus. One of my favorite styles of meditation, that both you guys have taught me, is meta-compassion-tell meditation. But I will say it seems to have the potentially problematic aspect of reinforcing the subject object divide quite definitively. Because there's sort of a you

and then there's a set of thems. Every time I think about it, I think, boy, if Sam's trying to go somewhere non-dual, this is not helping, particularly. And by thinking about that wrong, or do you, is there a way to accommodate the meta tradition in a non-dual framework? Well, there's definitely a way to do it in a non-dual framework because again,

there's already no center to experience, really. It's not like you have an ego and you successfully meditate that ego out of existence. The ego is itself an illusion even now. It's a false point of view. It's what it's like to be subtly identified with thought and not notice even the thought that you're now paying attention strategically as a meditator. What identification with thought actually is and why it occurs. It's an interesting question. I don't actually think I know what I think about that, but it is,

it's importantly analogous to falling asleep and dreaming. It is a kind of dreamscape, this sense of being identical to one's thoughts. It entails a similar degree of confusion about the status of one's mind in each present moment. When you're sleeping dreaming and you don't know your dreaming, so leave lucid dreams aside, you really are just fundamentally confused about your circumstance. You're safely in bed and yet you're having some experience that doesn't acknowledge that at all and you could be very worried or you could be very excited or whatever is happening. But importantly, in the transition from sleep to dreaming, there's no successful reality testing. It's just amazing that we're not surprised when we suddenly, five minutes after falling

asleep, we find ourselves walking you know, walking down Madison Avenue or whatever it is. And there's no part of us, unless, again, unless it's a lucid dream. There's no part of us that says, wait a minute, how the hell did I get here? And what's happening? Like this is insane, right?

And when, you know, why are the laws of physics being suspended for me right now? If there's something similar that happens when we get captured by a thought in the present moment, I mean, when you're just your paying attention to the breath, you know you're supposed to be meditating. And then all of a sudden, you're thinking about lunch, or you're thinking about a conversation you had last night, and the transition into that, and the feeling that that's you, and the emotional consequences of it. I mean, if you're having a thought that is inspiring anger or anxiety, to suddenly become angry or anxious on the basis of this intrusion

of language and imagery that came out of nowhere, right? It is kind of psychotic. It's completely normal. I mean, this is just the natural state for everybody, but it is quite similar to what we recognize to be the total delusion of dreams in the normal case of a person asleep, and also the clinical consequences of psychosis that you know out in the world when people are awake. You know, unlike psychotics, we know enough to keep our mouths shut most of the time, so we're covertly talking to ourselves. But it is fairly crazy and it's certainly crazy to have one's sense of one's own happiness entirely depend on this process that is happening all by itself. So again, very long answer to a short question. Anything is potentially compatible with non-dual awareness because non-dual awareness

is actually the way awareness is if you just recognize it. So you can do meta, you can play sports, you can talk about the nature of the self, you can do anything because there's simply in each moment there is just consciousness and its contents. The feeling of self is something that's being added as spuriously to this prior condition that's already underwriting every type of experience. Just tactically, the way you often are guiding people in the app to focus on this reality is this concept of looking for the looker, and quite amusingly, you obviously get some feedback about that because now you commonly reference what to do when you get annoyed by Sam saying, look for the looker.

I was frustrating meditation instruction ever, apparently. I can hate mail over looking for the looker. You talk about being driven off of Twitter. I assume that it doesn't even come close to what you disaprovation from looking for the looker. But by the way, you're advised to understand that feeling of frustration and then meditate on that. I've tried that with my wife and kids.

That doesn't work for me. If that approach to defusing frustration works for you, God bless. on that. I've tried that with my wife and kids. That doesn't work for me. But if that approach to diffusing frustration works for you, God bless. You cannot use it prescriptively when you've been an asshole. That's not a defense. Yeah, my son recently was telling me he was bored and I said, how does that feel in your body? And he said, is that a meditation thing? Because if it is, I don't want to hear it. She got used to that, exactly.

But Matt, let me just go back to your meta question. Just for the uninitiated meta meditation is where you systematically, and Sam, I'm going to advance an answer or attempt an answer here and then maybe you can fact check me. But meta meditation is where you systematically envision beings starting with an easy person than yourself, then a neutral person, a mentor,

a difficult person, and then all beings. And you systematically love bomb them with phrases like maybe happy, maybe safe, maybe healthy, maybe live with ease. This is an ancient practice. And Matt's question was, well, is that compatible with the idea of seeing that the self is an illusion?

And my answer to that is twofold. One, you got to think about mental exercise the way you do with physical exercise that cross training is necessary. And meta-meditation has benefits that include being a very good concentration practice. So it can really help you focus. And it can help you raise your baseline level of warmth, which for frosty new Englanders like you and me can be very helpful. As it pertains to the potential confusion that could be created with this seeming concretization of the self, I suggest you maybe just ask yourself a question,

who is sending the meta, who is sending the loving kindness, and just looking in that way gets you right to Sam's principal instruction. So Sam, I say that for your reaction. Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. I that. Actually, you can think about it from two sides. One is that whatever your practice, even if it's a non-dual practice, you're going to spend much of your time, even most of your time, lost in thought anyway. Right? So why not be lost in thoughts of loving kindness for all sentient beings, right? And for yourself and for the people you love and for strangers and for even rivals and enemies. And you're going to be dualistically meditating on

something inadvertently much of the time anyway. And if meta was something you're doing in that vein, it is, as Dan just said, changing the character of your mind. If you're going through the world thinking, how much you wish people to be freed from suffering, and you wish them, you wish their hopes and dreams realized and thoughts of compassion and sympathetic joy are coming to mind, you know, when you see someone succeed rather than, you know, fall into to end this disgruntlement about that, you actually think that's precisely what you wish for them, right? Like if you pretend to wish them Buddhahood, of course, you also wish them a Pulitzer Prize, even if you don't have one, right?

Who are you kidding, right? Like do you really think you wish people boot a hood if you're going to be so miserally as to not wish them a Pulitzer Prize, you know, on the way to boot a hood? So if you're continually undercutting your self-concern and the comparative judgments of well-being that people so effortlessly make,

you see someone's succeed and you feel, however, suddenly diminished by that. And as an antidote to that, you are dualistically thinking how much you want people to be happy and how much you're rooting for them to succeed. That is just a very different ethical foundation, ethical and psychological foundation for one's relationships and encounters with people in the world. So it's just a good thing to do whether or not it is something you would do

if you could also just be non-dual moment to moment. But I would say there's that way of thinking about it, which is even if it competes with non-duality, it's not a problem because you're going to be lost in thought most of the time anyway. But it doesn't actually compete with non-duality because ultimately nothing does. You can just be aware of whatever you're aware of, thoughts included, without feeling identical to the next thought that arises. Without clinging to experience, even the experience of knowing what is happening, I mean, being aware of experience. And this one way to think of identification is as a kind of clinging, right? Like there's a kind of clinging to the observer, you know, clinging to the feeling of being the witness of experience. Again, the words one uses here are really all of them present various liabilities, but you know, the sanctioned words within Buddhism are words, it terms like emptiness,

right? And it's as super confusing and requires a lot of explanation when you translate shunyata to emptiness and then have to tell people what that's all about. But what it suggests is what experience is like prior to concepts and prior to identification with any part of it. Right. And it's to say that there's no self is also somehow to say too much or to be potentially misleading. Frankly, it sounds terrifying to people. Like, how could it possibly be a good thing not to have a self and it seems somehow adjacent, if not identical, to madness? Right. So how could the complete eradication of self bebe desirable. Right? Again, the thing that you're experiencing from a non-dual point of view is not some new

experience. It's kind of the prior condition of everything you were already experiencing, and there's less there rather than more there. Again, it's a little hard to describe, but the reason why you can often seem like there's a conflict between the two styles of practice is that dualistic mindfulness really can be practice from the point of view of feeling that there's a real problem that has to be solved and to feel that what one's mindfulness in each moment is just revealing just the mediocrity of your identification with self and the impermanence of all experience.

And it's not to say there aren't, you know, once you start getting any significant concentration there and any real continuity of mindfulness, then there are very pleasant mind states that appear and you can be quite very expansive and drug-like and you can feel like you're making progress. But the signature of progress inevitably there is this change in the character of your experience. Once things begin to feel meditative, it begins to feel a little drug-like. You begin to feel like, oh, okay, now finally, now I'm getting somewhere, it's starting to move. And that, that's just bullshit, right? It's like that is exactly what you don't want to be thinking and feeling with respect to the progress of insight. But it's just so easy to get stuck thinking you're schlepping up to the mountaintop and in every moment

you're far from your goal and you're in danger, losing the progress you've made, non-dool teachings in part, the opposite message in every respect, the thing to be realized is already the case. Your awareness is already the mind of the Buddha. There's no difference between that in you, which is aware of your experience, and that, which was in, you know,

the historical Buddha's mind to be aware of his experience, which was in the historical Buddha's mind to be aware of his experience. And you're already identical to that condition. And you simply must realize it and that doesn't have to take any time. Right? And there's nothing you're going to experience, however wonderful, that it really represents progress because it's all transitory. It has no logical relationship really to this prior condition. This prior condition is already true.

It's not improved by your feelings of bliss. It's not harmed by your feelings of restlessness and frustration. Restlessness and frustration are just as good as objects of consciousness by which to reveal this prior space. It's like the difference between, you know, there's like a pleasant sound and an unpleasant sound is just as good for the purpose of revealing the space in which the sounds can be known. Right? So there's no, there's nothing to hope for.

There's nothing to regret. There's nothing to, like, it is a completely different framing. And yet, the problem with this style of teaching is that the path is so steep. It's functionally a brick wall for many people. It's hard to figure out how to start. But the reality for most people is that they're going to spend most of their time distracted in the beginning. They're very few people who recognize non-duality and then become buddhas. So there is some reason to practice because the alternative is just to be distracted

and to be pursuing all the other things you desire in life dualistically. And then, in the ultimate case, you just sort of forget that you were ever interested in the Dharma or it was like that was interesting. But, you know, now I'm selling insurance and I've got all kinds of life anxieties, right? There are people who sort of fall off the path because all they had was this non-dual framing.

So, in my mind, Zochen has a very nice balance of recognizing kind of the paradoxical beginning, the always already true aspect to it, but then also recognizing just in an intellectually honest way that most people are going to need to do a fair amount of apparent work to stabilize this insight. And so in my view, what the practice then is is non-dual mindfulness. Right? So you're just then you're just practicing this thing. But you're not, it has none of the character that I described of, you know, the worst dualistic mindfulness, which is just this effortful slog up the mountain, really feeling like you're you're far away from your goal.

Coming up Sam talks about why the consciousness we have is identical to the Buddha's consciousness and as I keep teasing whether meditation gives you superpowers. Quick reminder if you're looking for any last-minute holiday gifts, you can give the gift of 10% happier. Go to 10%.com slash gift to get a subscription to the 10% happier app for anybody in your world. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to natural gas to make it more sustainable.

It sounds like solar panels generating thousands of megawatts, and it sounds like carbon being captured and stored, keeping it out of our atmosphere. We've been bridging to a sustainable energy future for more than 20 years. Because what we do today helps ensure tomorrow is on. Enbridge. Life takes energy. Today helps and shirts tomorrow is on. Enbridge. Life takes energy. There's kind of a layman's version of this that I wrestle with, which is one of the concepts that you and people, you know, in my phase, which is to say early, think about

a lot as the concept of attachment. You know, your life is filled with these attachments and the Pocina meditation helps manage the level of attachment to these various things. And if you just think, even physically about attachment, there's two things, right? There has to be two things in order for there to be an attachment between them. And so it's like the very purpose of doing it has this effect of stabilizing this, there's me, and there's the thing I'm attached to and I'm managing to be less attached, but it leaves you very much still with the me. It's sort of inherently dualistic until you get to the point where then you're managing

your own attachment to the concept of you, which is sort of, you know, and again, layman's terms a little bit what you've been talking about, layman's terms, a little bit what you've been talking about. And it's just, I would say, a very big leap after all this, you know, reification of the me through the management of attachment to then try to dispense with it. Yeah. Again, it's, unfortunately, it is somewhat paradoxical. I don't know if you remember the story. It's at some point in waking up, I tell the story of the Asian tourist and I think it was Norway. Do you remember this story? I don't want to bore people if you don't want to hear it. But for me, it's just the best metaphor I ever came

across for the kind of undercutting of the false premise here. It's this, I think it was real. I found this on the internet. This is a purported to be a real story of an Asian tourist. I think it was Norway. It was on a tour bus. And the bus stopped at a rest stop. And everyone got off to enjoy the view and have a meal.

And the tourist for whatever reason changed her clothing at the rest stop, and everyone got back on the bus. And at some point, someone stood up and said, oh, there's somebody missing. There was this Asian woman who hasn't gotten back on the bus. And because of language barriers and all the rest, the woman didn't recognize that she, what had been said there. And she thought there was a missing tourist along with everyone, the other people on the bus. And they formed a search party and they went looking for the missing tourist, and she joined the search party. And this went long into the night, and apparently, you know, helicopters were being readied for a dawn patrol to find the missing tourist. And at some point in the middle of the night, it was like, you know, three in the morning,

she recognized that everyone was looking for her, right? She was the missing tourist. And if you just could reflect on the logic of that, what that epiphany was like and what it constituted, it did not constitute the fulfillment of the search. It's not like the missing tourist was ever found, or was ever missing. There was a premise that was false and that just evaporated. Something that was already the case was revealed. No one was lost. Everyone was accounted for. Everyone was present. It was not like the stated problem was revealed. There was no one was lost, right? Everyone was accounted for. Everyone was present.

It was not like the stated problem was solved. The problem really did evaporate. And there's something about that kind of phase shift in a direction you didn't even know was a possible direction. That does in some way capture the character of this insight, which is that, in some way capture the character of this insight, which is that, you know, the place from which you thought you were going to solve the problem was not the angle of attack was wrong, right? And inspecting it sufficiently revealed that it was palpably false, right? Like again, I'm somewhat hamstrung by the words here, but there's something to reflect on in that analogy. It really does do some work for me. Yeah, I agree. It does work for me as well. And I look forward to getting further on this. You said

something in your description, which is to paraphrase that the consciousness that I have and that you have is identical to the consciousness that the Buddha had. And I think I know what you meant in a very secular way. You're saying, not that they are one in the same, but that they were their identical but separate. But there is certainly a more religious or spiritual version of this line of thinking, which holds that they are kind of one in the same, that there's a unity or a sharedness to consciousness.

And obviously you're kind of famously irreligious. So I wouldn't want to impute that to you. But there are even I, who also am quite secular, find as I spend more time on this, that there's a temptation to be sympathetic to this view of connection that this people use the this idea. There's a falseness to this separate self notion. And of course, they could mean within you, you create a false separate self from your own consciousness. But there's also, again, this lovely adjacent idea that well, maybe I'm not even separate from everyone else that we share some consciousness. Do you ever get kind of sympathetic to those spiritual notions or for you? It's,

you know, if you can't prove it, it's just simply not a compelling idea. Yeah, well, I'm very sympathetic to it, but from the other side, I mean, there's kind of a, what I would consider the false and quasi-religious and metaphysically aggressive approach to this would be, and this is the kind of thing that I think is the kind of message you get from somebody like Deepak Chopra. This is a call back to Dan. This is where we met at a debate with Deepak. This is the kind of thing that Deepak and I would disagree about.

I mean, we might sound like we agree about a lot with respect to meditation and it's importance and even it's utility for bringing first person experience into science. But here's what I think is the wrong way to think about it, which is where the separate selves that feel separate from other people who also have their separate selves, and we feel separate from the world, from the environment, from nature, and from

the cosmos. And that's an illusion. And if you meditate enough, you can discover that there's really just one big thing and you're it, right? You can just, you can get transported from yours, you know, this separate vessel. And you can merge with the totality. And then you can recognize that you are the mind that gave rise to the cosmos. And you are the consciousness that preceded the big bang and all of that, right? So it's this picture of fullness and merging.

And in many cases, in many spiritual contexts, it's explicitly this notion that there really is a separate self. There's a soul. You've got a soul, an eternal soul, very likely. And like a water drop released from a rain cloud, it can merge with the ocean. And so there's that picture of merging. I don't think there's a basis. There's no scientific basis to speak in those terms.

And I would say there's no contempl scientific basis to speak in those terms. And I would say there's no contemplative basis to speak in those terms, although I would admit that there are experiences you can have that seem to give credibility to that to some degree. I mean, like you can have experiences with in meditation or on psychedelics that do have a, the character being transported out, like with respect to one's body and mind, there can be this feeling of going elsewhere. Whether you want to think about it as going elsewhere, you're like, would there be like merging with the cosmos? So you just want to think about it, the mind being much vaster than it normally seems to be.

And it just opens up to something that's beyond the self and the body. Those experiences are there to be had and they can seem to have metaphysical implications. I've always thought that we should be very slow to draw metaphysical implications from personal experience no matter how profound and thrilling. I don't think you learn anything about cosmology through meditation. If you don't know anything learn anything about cosmology through meditation. If you don't know anything about quantum mechanics before you become a Buddha, I don't think you're going to know anything about quantum mechanics after you become a Buddha. I see no evidence that the greatest meditators I've ever met knew much of anything about science by virtue of having spent 20 years in a cave or doing their other practices. So I just think these are separate domains.

I mean, the truth is, non-dual awareness doesn't even tell you that you have a brain, much less, that it's doing anything. Even that isn't obvious, right? It really doesn't tell you about cosmology or the births of stars or anything, right? But there is this conceptual insight and also an experiential one, which again comes at almost achieves the same thing from the other side, which is when you think about what makes us separate, what is it that makes me different from you guys? What's particular? But how is it that makes me different from you guys? What's particular? But how is it that I wake up each morning

and I experience my life and myself and my mind and not you or not Matt's or Dan's? We all have the same last name. We should be pretty close to experiencing something similar. But I get the same version. You guys get Matt and Dan and we never get confused. I never wake up feeling like I might be one of you guys. Everything that makes us particular as minds and bodies and as the life streams, it's

among the appearances in consciousness. It's not consciousness itself. There's something deeply impersonal about consciousness. To use the analogy of a film projector, right? It's like you can put new films in the projector, but consciousness really is just a light by which those films are broadcast on the screen. It doesn't have any intrinsic relationship to the particulars of experience, right? So that, which is aware of joy, is the same as that,

which is aware of anger or impatience or anything else. And that, which is aware of joy is the same as that which is aware of anger or impatience or anything else. And that which is aware of your memory of your 12th birthday is the same as that which is aware of my memory of my 12th birthday because there's only one way for anything to appear by the light of consciousness. I'm sympathetic with the notion that consciousness is something like that, which is that there's no basis from which to differentiate that in you which is noticing you at this moment from that in me, which is noticing me. If you have a pain in your knee and I have a pain in my knee, there's no place in the universe other than where you are right now for that pain to be appearing, the pain that's in your knee. And so it is with the pain in my knees.

Very much like this coffee cup. It's like the space in the coffee cup is completely continuous with space everywhere. But there's no place for this coffee cup to express itself other than, you know, as it is here in this space, in the same space that is everywhere. So, like, so consciousness is almost like subjective space. It's deeply impersonal, and there's no basis from its point of view to differentiate any point of view from any other point of view. It simply is the fact of having a point of view on the cosmos. So in that sense, when you're just recognizing consciousness as it is, it's not the same thing as merging and becoming a totality and getting access to more contents, right?

It's recognizing your identity subjectively with the principle in the universe that allows for subjective contents. Consciousness is just the fact that it's like something to be what you are. So if it's like something to be you, and it was like something to be the Buddha, 2500 years ago, and it's like something to be my cat, there's some identity to that. But again, from a Buddha Buddhist side, you wouldn't want to reify it, you wouldn't want to emphasize it's something, this. It's just the fact that anything can appear subjectively at all. So is there no aspect of Buddhism's metaphysical claims, for example, like rebirth, or much

more controversially, the idea that you can get enough concentration and meditation to be able to manipulate the elements and have what are sometimes referred to as superpowers. I think I know where you stand on that, but is there no aspect of the metaphysical claims of Buddhism that you have some sympathy for after all these years of meditations of meditation or do you categorically reject anything that can't be objectively proven? It's not clear what consciousness is.

I mean, again, it's easy to be naively materialistic about all this, and I wouldn't want to do that. So it's very easy to think, well, consciousness is arising in the brain, and we know that, and we know the brain's just made a meat. And so really, we're in a meat universe. The universe is filled with meat and rocks and fire and forces like gravity. What we're talking about now, consciousness experience, the feeling of being, anything

that could be ascribed to the mind side of the mind matter dichotomy, all of that is arising on the basis of the physics of things. And that may be true except the moment-to-moment truth of our being in the cosmos is of being consciousness first. Right? We don't, like consciousness is the only thing that can't be an illusion, in my view. And it's dependence on the brain. It is quite plausible, but it's yet to be firmly established. If it reaches down deeper into the physics of things, I would not be especially surprised. I mean, I wouldn't quite know how to think about that, but it's totally possible.

And all of us are in this very weird circumstance. We're all kind of in the matrix already because all we have is, we impute a physical, non-conscious world beyond our senses. But all we have direct contact with is consciousness and its contents in each moment. So we're all brains and vats already. We're all already philosophical thought experiments.

We don't have direct contact with the cosmos. We're inferring the cosmos on the basis of what we do have direct contact with, which is consciousness. So any deflationary reduction of consciousness to the physics of things can't be all that deflationary in the end because consciousness is always first and foremost the thing that we're talking about, even if we're claiming to reduce it. And there's no evidence of consciousness anywhere apart, so far apart from our direct encounter with consciousness itself, as consciousness itself. There's no evidence of consciousness in the world, in brains, in other animals, in other people,

apart from the fact that we know consciousness directly in our own case, each of us. And then we extrapolate from that and say, okay, well, it's only parsimonious to think that other people are conscious too, right? And many animals are conscious too. And then we then we run into the conundrum of how far down to push that phylogenetically, you know, so, you know, is a cricket conscious? I don't know, right? At a certain point, your intuitions begin to get frustrated, but given how much we don't understand consciousness and its place in things, House astonished would I be to know that death is not what it seems

and something continues somehow after death, like you wake up into something else. This is a kind of simulation in some other simulation. It really wouldn't be surprised one way or the other. There's nothing I think I know about science or about the mind that would leave me astounded if death wasn't what it seems. The IE, the end of everything. Again, actually, this kind of connects with what we were just talking about. There's a one section in waking up where I talk about an essay written by this philosopher Tom Clark.

Really, there's no substitute for reading his essay, but he argued very much based on the impersonality of consciousness that the birth of any conscious being, you know, after your death is in some sense deeply analogous to your own rebirth. Given your identity as consciousness, like your survival of death is more or less assured as long as consciousness persists anywhere. And I know that's not satisfying from the point of view of someone who feels like a self and who wants their self perpetuated, you know, like that's the only continuity that would matter. But when you actually get into the details of the argument, it's pretty interesting. There is, it's not clear that what you imagine as continuity in your own case is really

any different, impossible continuity in your own case. It's really any different from anyone else's existing after you die. So, anyway, I'll just leave that to the attention of anyone who wants to read it, but the philosopher's Tom Clark and I'll give you the link you could put it in the show notes. And as far as psychic power is, it's like my feeling, I'm totally open-minded on this topic. I like, you know, I have to, to the consternation and horror of atheists everywhere. I at one point said I was totally open-minded about sci-phenomenon and, you know, whether telepathy is real, etc. But I'm also mindful of the fact that none of

these things have been demonstrated in a lab, and they would be the easiest thing to demonstrate. That's the great scandal of our spiritual traditions, wherein people are rather sure that these powers are available. This would be the easiest thing in the world to demonstrate. You just could walk into a Harvard yard and an hour later, you could have... If you had these powers, you could have demonstrated to the satisfaction of scientists everywhere. And so the dodge in every spiritual tradition is that it would be somehow spiritually uncouth to demonstrate these powers. Right?

Like, it's just, you know, it's just too crass. It's just not, this is not the way the saints and sages behave. Although strangely, they use their powers for far more trivial things in all kinds of other ways. I mean, like, you hear the stories about Neem Corolli Baba or Deepama or anyone who students believe that their teacher had these powers. And it's just the most cavalier use of miracles. Like, I mean, I think there's one story of Deepama where like, they're all on a bus and there's some obstacle on the road, but they have to get to where they're going. So she like physically, you know,

translocates the bus to some other road. I mean, it's just, you know, as, as preposterous as you could imagine, but yet, but for the purpose not of saving the lives of, of children or ending a war or doing anything else of great importance, is just to get these people, you know, on their itinerary, youinerary while traveling in India.

Listen, if anyone has the power to really read minds or move objects without touching them, et cetera, telekinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, it would be profoundly compassionate to establish the reality of these powers and completely transform the worldview of Western scientists everywhere by having done so. In an afternoon, you could prove that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in our philosophy to the satisfaction of everyone. I could set it up. I mean, I could bring in the necessary skeptics. This experiment could be done. It would not be hard to do it. And it would be good for the world if these powers exist. Right. So the fact that no one has done that, you know, it's

the dog that didn't bark that should give us a lot of skepticism about the reality of any of these stories. And say, so that's where I am with it. I'm completely open-minded. I would fund the experiment. I would help run it. I'd get Darren Brown in there and every other magician who would backstop us against fraud. I would do it next week. So just show up.

You great yogis who have this sufficient concentration. You've gone up and down the genres. You've trained these powers. Just come one, come all. I'll put you up in a four seasons in your desired city. And we will get to the ground truth of this. And the fact that you're not doing that, you yogis with your with the sonic powers, is not based on the impurity of the exercise, because you could easily do this motivated by compassion for a benignity humanity that does not know that karma is real or that all of these other things

are worth paying attention to. You would prove that the amount of faith in the project of meditation that would follow upon a demonstration of these powers and a press release from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford that we now know this is real, a real capacity of the human mind. It would be a sea change. It would be all to the good, right? If you think that's not the case, you know, that I can be forgiven for believing that that's just a sign that you actually don't have the powers that everyone thinks you might have. Well, that's a pretty good place to leave it.

Let me just say that it is really fun to have two of my absolute favorite human beings on the planet together in this little digital room. So thank you both for making the time. Nice. Well, happy to be here. Thanks for letting me crash the party. Yeah, nice to meet you, Matt. Great to meet you, Sam. It's really thanks for indul me crash the party. Yeah, nice to meet you, Matt. Great to meet you, Sam.

It's really thanks for indulging on my questions. I learned a lot. And thanks, frankly, to you both for the work you've done. Bringing this information to a lot of people who really need it. So this was awesome. Nice to be continued. Thank you to Sam Harris and to Matt Harris.

Fun to do that with both those guys. Also you heard Matt and I talking about Sam's incredibly impressive meditation app called Waking Up. And on that tip we've got a special promo for 10% happier listeners. It's a 30 day free trial of Sam's app. All you have to do is head over to wakingup.com slash 10% to check it out with over 50,000 five-star reviews waking up combines the rigor of modern science and the power of ancient wisdom to help you live a better, more fulfilling life.

Again, that's wakingup.com slash 10%. 10% Happier is produced by Justin Davy Gabriel Zuckerman, Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson, DJ Cashmere is our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman, is our senior editor, Kevin O'Connell, is our director of audio and post-production, and Kimi Regler is our executive producer, Alicia Mackie, leads our marketing and Tony Magyar, is our director of podcasts, finally Nick Thorburn of Islands, wrote our theme.

By the way, as I mentioned at the top of the show, Sam has been on this show before, if you wanna check out his previous episodes, go to the show notes. If you like 10% happier, I hope you do. You can listen early and add free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen to ad free on Amazon music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.

Hi there, I'm Guy Ross. And I'm Mindy Thomas. Wait. And we're the host of the number one podcast for curious kids and their grownups. Woo! Wow in the world! Join us as we discover the wonders in our world.

Or as we like to call them, wowes. The wows of science, the wows of new technology, innovation, and the people changing the world as we know it. Wow, now I kind of want to listen to the show, guys. Woo-hoo-hoo! Exactly. Join us on our next scientific adventure every Monday, wherever you get your podcast.

Or, add free and one week early on Wondery Plus Kids. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, everybody, it's Dan on 10% happier. I like to teach listeners how to do life better. Uh, I to try. Oh hello Mr. Grinch. What would make you happier? Ah, let's see. And out of business sign at the North Pole.

Or a nationwide ban on caroling and noise, noise, noise. What would really make me happy is if I didn't have to host a podcast. That's right, I got a podcast too. Hi, it's me, I got a podcast too. Hi, it's me, the Grand Puba of Bahambad, the OG Green Grump, the Grinch. From Wondery, 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, listen as I launch a campaign against Christmas cheer, grilling celebrity guests, like chestnuts on an open fire.

Your family will love the show. As you know, I'm famously great with kids. Follow Tuesday Grinch Holiday Talk Show on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.