Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Three Buddhist Practices For Getting Your Sh*t Together | Vinny Ferraro

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Practical advice from a straight-talking, formerly incarcerated, occasionally profane dharma teacher.Vinny Ferraro is the Guiding Teacher of the Big Heart City Sangha in San Francisco and has led a weekly sitting group for almost two decades. As a fully empowered Dharma Teacher thru Spirit Rock/IMS, he has taught residential retreats at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and the Esalen Institute. Currently, he leads Spirit Rock's Year to Live course and teaches retreats and daylongs through Big Heart City and meditation centers across the country. He is a respected leader in developing and implementing interventions for at-risk populations. leading groups in schools, juvenile halls and prisons since 1987. He has led emotional intelligence workshops for over 100,000 youth on four continents.In this episode we talk about:AlignmentVinny‘s concept of “flashing your basic goodness”Noting practiceThe deep satisfaction in not seeking satisfactionRedirecting awarenessBeing an “empathetic witness” for yourselfWhen to opt for distractionNot taking what’s not yours Vinny’s ancestor practiceWhat is the connection between seeing our family patterns and not taking what is not ours?  How loyal have we been to our suffering?Related Episodes:Get Happier Without Losing Your Edge | Kamala MastersVitamin E: How To Cultivate Equanimity Amidst Political Chaos | Election Sanity Series | Roshi Joan HalifaxNon-Preachy Ethics | Jozen Tamori GibsonSign 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/vinny-ferraroAdditional 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.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, how we doing? My guest today combines two of my favorite things, a deep understanding of Buddhism and the Dharma, and a tastefully and judiciously deployed foul mouth. We cover a lot of ground in this interview, but one of the concepts that really jumped out to me was how to become unfuckable with,

sturdy and steady in the face of whatever happens. Dude, what an incredible North Star. I'm not saying I've achieved this, but I'm definitely working toward it. I would like to have this, and this conversation really helped in this regard. I had never met Vinny Ferraro before this conversation. I had heard of him.

He's got a great reputation in the meditation world, and I was absolutely taken by him. He's got an great reputation in the meditation world and I was absolutely taken by him. He's got an incredible personal story. He grew up in extraordinarily harsh conditions and he'll tell you about it. He ultimately found the Dharma and turned his life around and in the process has turned around the lives of scores of his fellow humans. He now teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, the legendary meditation retreat center in Massachusetts, and also the Spirit Rock Meditation Center,

equally legendary, and he teaches in prisons. The basic structure of this conversation is we cover three Buddhist practices that Vinny is personally using these days to keep his shit together. Over the course of the chat, we hit a whole range of fascinating topics however including alignment, Vinny's concept of flashing your basic goodness, noting practice, the deep satisfaction in not seeking satisfaction, redirecting awareness, becoming an empathetic witness for yourself, when to opt for distraction, Not taking what is not yours? Vinny's ancestor practice? And this question, how loyal are you to your suffering?

Vinny Ferraro coming up. But first, some BSP, blatant self-promotion. Just to say real quick, don't forget to check out danharris.com, my new website where you can sign up for my newsletter, which I haven't been promoting that hard because we've been honing it in the background, but now I really feel good about it. And it's a place where I sum up the key learnings for me

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right there on the app. Every day something new and unique designed to help beginners and seasoned meditators and because we're so excited about it, we're gonna be offering 40% off the subscription price until the end of May. Head over to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% spelled out dot com slash 40 to get started. That's 10% spelled out dot com slash four zero to get started. Hi, I'm Anna and I'm Emily and we're the hosts of terribly famous the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities And we are really excited about our latest season because we are talking about someone very very special You're so sweet a fashion icon. Well Actually, just put this on. A beautiful woman.

Your words, not mine. Someone who came out of Croydon and took the world by storm. Anna, don't tell them where I live. A muse, a mother, and a supermodel who defined the 90s. I don't remember doing the last one. Wow, Emily, not you. Obviously, I mean Kate Moss. Oh, I always get us confused.

Because you're both so small. How dare you. We are going to dive back into Kate's 90s heyday and her insatiable desire to say yes to absolutely everything life has to offer. The parties, the Hollywood heartthrobs, the rockstar bad boys. Have I said parties? You did mention the parties, but saying yes to excess comes at a price as Kate spirals out of control

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or binge the entire season right now on Wondry+. Vinnie Ferraro, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, death. It's a pleasure. In preparation for this interview, my colleague, the mighty DJ Kashmir, who's a student of yours and who has been arguing for a while that we should have you on the show, DJ got in touch with you and asked a really smart question, which is, you know, sort of what are the tools and techniques that you as a Dharma teacher are using in your life these

days to keep it together. And he then, DJ, passed along a list of these tools. And I thought I would just kind of march through them. Does that sound like a good agenda to you? Let's do it. All right. So the first is alignment. What is alignment? Yeah. So when we start sitting, we see how much is going on inside us, right? There's just so much to choose from, right? So many parts of our experience, right? There's our conditioning,

there's the thoughts, there's hopes, there's fears, there's the characteristics, the defilements, right? Everything is like one moment away. And so we get to choose, well, what do I actually want to give life to? What do I want to actually follow? If the two components of mindfulness are seeing clearly and responding wisely, so am I seeing clearly all these different parts of me that are up for grabs in this moment? Then I say, okay, if I walk in this direction, where will that lead me? Right? Is this wise? Is this kind? Is it generous? Right? So it can have all of these different flavors. So are we aligning with that which is wise within us? That's the short answer. I want to encourage you to give long answers here.

But I'm going to prod you because I think this is fascinating. We all have just tons of stuff going on internally. If you just turn the laser beam of your attention inward, you will see, you probably won't like what you see. There's just a lot of chaos and random thoughts and homicidal urges and whatever, or desires. There's just lots of stuff in there. And there's beautiful stuff in there too, of course. And you're saying, you, Vinnie, are saying, I try to check in regularly and figure out of this

whole menu of mind states, which one do I want to go with? Am I restating you with some degree of accuracy? That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, we get to decide with some mindfulness, with some practice, we can decide what we align ourselves with, right? In the beginning in my life, I was just, I received thoughts as commandments, right? They had the power to animate me, right? My thoughts were my reality and they caused immense suffering. So then we get to decide with some practice like, Oh, well, what part of my personality is operating right now? You know, drawn out these marching waters. I don't know if you've

ever seen the X-Men movies. You know, those ones? Of course, yes. Yeah, yeah. So you remember Magneto? Magneto. So he has the power to completely control metal so he can walk off a roof. And as he does, every one of his steps are supported. This is a perfect illustration of my understanding of the Dharma, how each moment is conditioned by the next. And so, if I walk in the direction of the shadow worlds, they open up before me, right? And when I'm able to take refuge in maybe like more wholesome or more like the boundless qualities of the natural radiance of the unobscured heart is what the Buddha kind of called these Brahma Viharas. When I walk in those beautiful directions, those energies inform the world I'm kind of

inhabiting and in some way co-creating. So that's what I'm saying when I say, well, what do we align ourselves with? It's like, what do I want to give life to? Does that make sense? It does. It makes complete sense. Just to, you know, if anybody's new to the Dharma, when you talk about the Brahma Viharas, I might might be worth spending some time there This is you know for people like me who just should kind of have a anti sentimentalist conditioning

I think both of us are probably Gen Xers and that was like the age of irony and we're nihilistic Sarcastic and all this stuff. So when our kind of well certainly for myself my kind of mind encounters an idea like the Brahma Viharas, which and all this stuff. So when our kind of, well, certainly for myself, my kind of mind encounters an idea like the Brahma of Viharas, which translates, I think, into the divine abodes. And that kind of language, often traditionally, I've found that a little repellent, but it's really interesting, this idea, these divine abodes. There are four of them, loving kindness or friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, which is like the opposite of schadenfreude, just delighting in other people's happiness.

And then finally equanimity, which is just the ability to stay cool no matter what's happening. And, you know, if you can set aside some of this sort of grand language, what the Buddha is saying, and what you're now saying more recently, is that these are skills that can be developed. And I can see these capacities in my mind, and like Magneto, create a pathway, a sturdy pathway, to go in that direction, instead of the more noxious alternatives.

Yeah, well, we've seen the limitations of the mind, right? I mean, I certainly have. I've seen the limitations of the mind, right? I mean, I certainly have. I've seen the limitations of taking my psychology to be a reality, right? Because even though a lot of my stories are based in fiction, in this inner narrative, the suffering they deliver is real. Hmm. Right?

So we have to take good care of what we let the mind dwell on. You know, we have to take good care of like what we let the mind dwell on. You know, we have to have some kind of, uh, maybe we can call it like discipline or it's a better word for it. When you brush your teeth every day, right? A habit, a practice. Yeah, a habit or a practice, right? So what we can see, oh, thoughts on this inner judgment, right? The inner narrative is strong. And it comes factory stock, with this biology that we've inherited, right? And if we look closely at that judgment,

it doesn't really lead anywhere. And sometimes even as our awareness grows, we start to practice, the judgment grows. So it's like, wow, hold on a second. I know the subtle violence of self-improvement, right? I know about trying to hate myself into becoming a better person. Didn't really work. And maybe the problem wasn't like a lack of sincerity, but the limitations of anger,

fear, or shame as far as like transformative, right? So the Buddha was, I believe, asserting that the know that comes from love, that comes from care is way more transformative than the know that comes from those other afflictive energies. So with that in mind, we kind of offer ourselves a pardon. We say, okay, however I am, I've come by it honestly, and that conditioning is actually not who I am. So the Buddha kept coming back over and over to this, what is I, me, or mine? What is I, me, or mine? And he was like, not this, not this, not this, not this. But he did say, and I like you used the word earlier, sturdy in terms of the refuges that these heart qualities, the reliable refuge, that they are a reliable way to receive experience,

that even if it's painful, I can meet that with compassion, right? It's not some just pseudo spiritual bypass. I'm like, oh yeah, it's all love, it's all good. It's like, how would that ever contribute to wholeness, which is what I think the Dharma invites us into is wholeness. So it has to hold all of it, the difficulty, the beauty, the generous, and the equanimity that holds the whole thing in gear. Say more about that. The equanimity holds the whole thing in gear. Well, without equanimity, love and kindness can become very saccharine, right?

That over-sweetness, it's not actually authentic, it's not real, right? Or the compassion can just be kind of like, you know, over sentimentality. Right? So equanimity is, you know, near to all things. So I like that, because it gives us that balancing quality so that we're not overly anything. Right? Near to all things, meaning it allows you to be up close with stuff that normally you'd armor yourself against? That's right. That's right. I mean, in the prison, we talk about it as being, you know, unfuckable with, unshakable, right? You remember who you are, right? So you don't have to engage in every fight. You don't have to engage in every fight. You don't have to defend your honor in all these different cases. You remember who you are, right?

So we talk about flashing our basic goodness because that's the real danger when we forget our own goodness. At least it was for me. Flashing your basic goodness, what does that mean? Well, you know, in the prisons or even in schools, you know, you talk about flashing on people and that means you're going to flash some anger. All right, so we talk about flashing our basic goodness. So that means that I remember there's goodness in here and that I'm not determined by your

thoughts of me. Actually, your thoughts of me, Dan, are none of my business. You know what I mean? So we stay rooted in that there's goodness here. That these four heart qualities that the Buddha laid out, they're immeasurable and they're boundless and they're incorruptible and untarnishable. And it doesn't matter what happened to us or what we've that those things are still there and So I really like that as somebody that's gone through a lot of my life and really lost My own goodness lost that connection to it and then oh, you know all kinds of things come out of that desperation Right. That's the real danger

Even after everything you've been through. And this is interesting to me and I like asking people about this. Do you believe that we all have the capacity for goodness? Or do you take it a step further to say that foundationally we are all basically good? Yeah, that's a very difficult question. I could only answer from my experience of myself, which believes that there was no part of me that's beyond redemption, no matter how lost I get. And that's all I'm doing when I go to the prisons, right? I've been going into prison since

87 as a visitor. And yeah, that was a bit different earlier on. But it's like, all I'm doing is reflecting value. I don't give a shit whether they know what meditation is. I want to go there and remind them of their value because I feel like that's the most important thing. And it's a very dehumanizing system. So it's meant to squash that out. And so when I go there, that's all I'm reflecting back. Everything is an excuse to connect. Right now we're connecting. Oh, the premise is we're going to talk about mindfulness or Buddhism. Cool. Killer. Doesn't really matter. Right? So when I I go there That's what's on the forefront of my mind is can I be in relationship with these fellas and can I reflect their goodness back to them? Let me go back to alignment again just to reset. You know you DJ reached out and said hey Vinny

What what do you use to you know move through the world with some degree of sanity and you listed a bunch of? move through the world with some degree of sanity and you listed a bunch of techniques that are important to you right now. One of them was alignment, which is basically having the discernment to see what mind states the wisest offerings on your inner menu and go in that direction instead of the temptations of greed or hatred or something like that. And you said something, you use the phrase, the subtle aggression of or the subtle violence of self-improvement, which I love, I think about a lot. And there is a way in which we can learn something like the Dharma and immediately turn it

into a weapon that we use ourselves for failing to be perfect at it. But I think at the root of what you're talking about here is something very empowering, which is even though it is guaranteed We're gonna fuck this up on the regular in every moment. There is the option to make a choice That will condition the next moment in a way like Magneto that will be sturdy at least for some period of time Totally and all we can do is take care of this moment. You know what I mean? That's all we're doing with the practice. You know, everybody, I just got off teaching a retreat, you know, and everybody's like, all right, man, well, how do we take this into the real world? Like, well, what have we been doing? What have we been doing? Like, we've been

tending to each moment. Yeah, we're meditating, walking, sitting 16 hours a day, but we're just tending to each moment. And right now you're asking me how to get the drop on next Thursday, right? Because you don't trust that you'll be able to do it, right? But really, you got a bottom line. What is it that we're doing? We're tending to each moment as it arises, because it's pregnant with liberation every freaking moment. I mean, we don't experience it like that. Right? We experience it, the mind, like I said, factory stock to turn the miraculous into the mundane. You know, same old shit. And it's like, oh, wow, I can see with the noting practice in

particular, what I'm under the influence of. All right. What part of my personality is this? Oh, this is the East Coast. Okay, all right. I remember that conditioning. Does that seem like a direction I want to walk in? Maybe, maybe not. That's the only way we break the trance and not mistaking it for reality is by seeing it. It creates a little bit of a distance, the noting practice. The only way illusion works is if I mistake it for reality. So again, this is not I, me or mine. This is just one of the menu options. Okay.

And what sees all of this? What sees Mara, these afflictive energies that are very naturally occurring for all of us? Well, that awake part of me sees it. And we call that Buddha? Yeah, you can. So a lot of people are in the habit of saying, I see you Mara. But what the hell sees Mara is Buddha. So you should be saying, I see you Buddha. I see that awake quality in me. You know, I see it even when I'm off. It's like, well, what

part of me knows I'm off? The part that's never been off, right? Do you mind if I go back and just define some terms for folks? Sure, sure, sure. I'm enjoying this immensely, just to say. We all have our demons, and it's actually in certain schools of psychology, like IFS, internal family systems, that will encourage you to name different parts of your personality. And the Buddha had his own demon, he called him Mara. And Mara is basically in the Buddhist view, the inner embodiment, if that's even a correct pairing of words- In a manifestation, yeah.

Yes, thank you. Inner manifestation of our more toxic qualities, including greed, hatred, confusion. And the Buddha would say, actually, in the scriptures, the Buddha will occasionally, even after enlightenment, Mara's still hanging around. The Buddha will say, I see you, Mara. And what Vinny is pointing out is that many of us get into meditation and we get better and better at seeing our demons, Mara and his various subcommittees. And we get focused on the seeing of the demons. But I think what you're saying, Vinny, is we should focus on that which perceives the demons because that is, that's really interesting.

What is in you that is awake enough to discern? That's exactly right, man. It gets, it becomes very exciting to me that there's an awake part of me that's just watching this whole saga of Vinnie Ferraro play out. And there's some discernment there. I don't know, man. For me, it's like, you got to ask yourself, who do you take yourself to be? Over and over, it's like, who is this character, Dan Harris? You know what I mean? What the fuck's his problem?

What the fuck's his problem? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, the Buddha asked us to really ask ourselves that question, like, you know, where is the real I here? Who's making these decisions? Who is awake? Who do you take yourself to be? Because, you know, for decades, I took myself to be this, you know, this clot of ailments, you know, a lot of self-pity, a lot of frustration at the world that they didn't see me. And it's just like, man, that's why so many of us have this imposter syndrome. It's like that part of you is an imposter. That ego part of you is an imposter. But where is there some real wisdom? Where is the real knowing? And so when we start practicing, part of the teaching was, can you step back enough and be the awareness

and not what is passing through it? You know what I mean? If you're always, oh, this thought, this hope, this fear, this memory, this plan, it's just like, yo, but how about the awareness itself? How about that you're the presence that's present here? You know what I mean? Like when you can back up enough to see that,

there's enough room for all this shit. Doesn't land like, ah man, this is a problem I gotta solve. It's like we think that things are the problem. You know, I have thoughts. I have a 40 foot rope swing right here. My son just turned seven and it was a birthday party and somebody pulled it down. Somebody pulled the swing down trying to hang a pinata. A couple of days later, I was sitting here in my little office writing my little Dharma

talk and a thought occurred. It's really peaceful. There's not a bunch of kids in my yard, which there generally is, because it's the best swing in the neighborhood. And the thought occurred that maybe I don't have to put that back up. You know, I deserve a place to write, you know what I mean?

I'm doing good things in the world, man. Don't I deserve a quiet place? And I got up and I hung the fucking swing. Because that thought just reminded me of who I don't want to be. That was a selfish thought. It kind of caught me by surprise. I was like, Oh shit. Now I could have gone into like, well, I've been practicing 25 years. How am I still having these thoughts just by taking them personally? It's not personal. The Buddha never said I had a thought. He used to say, a thought occurred. Oh, could that be in the service of an awakening in

some way? It was for me. We think the thought is the problem. We think what's passing through is a problem, but it's really just because we're taking it so freaking personally. Everything, all of this that's happening internally can be taken so personally that you don't see the value in it. You're just trying to get away from these things. I just want to have better thoughts. I want to have good thoughts, all-encompassing, loving thoughts. It's like, well, they're not the only thing that's happening, they're just the only thing you're paying attention to. So what else is on offer here?

And when we open that space up, we see all kinds of stuff is on offer. Yeah. I suspect a lot of people listening to this are thinking, this sounds really helpful. But how do I remember to do it? And how do I actually do it? Even if I do remember you referenced and I didn't give you a chance yet to explain it, noting practice. And I suspect that may be one good answer to the question some people are might be having right

now. Yeah, the noting practice, it's been, from the beginning, very helpful to me. My therapist, after 35 years of seeing people, he was just like, you might be the most psychologically-minded person I've ever met. I was like, well, what does that mean? He was like, that's what it means, bro.

Like, you live in a very rich internal world, you know? Or, in my case, poverty poverty stricken internally, right? That's how I oriented toward my life and myself. But the noting practice, and we talked about these two components of practice, right? Seeing clearly, responding wisely. So part of that is just noting what is floating through this awareness of ours. Okay, I can see thoughts, memories, plans. I can feel sensations. There's silence, right? Okay, so when we begin noting, well, what sense doors, what sense gate are they coming

through? Can this be in the service of awakening, this phenomenon that I'm in contact with? I'm having a memory, a plan, a thought occurred, whatever it is. So the noting practice creates a little bit of distance because the moment that I can note something, I'm not lost in it. I'm no longer Jason Bourne running through the airport. There's a distance that I've woken up out of the dream. I'm noting, oh, right, thriller, intrigue, espionage, whatever it is. We can note what's arising and it breaks some of the identification with it so we're not lost in the dreams as long.

I want to know as early as possible what I'm under the influence of. So staying close to practice. You've interviewed a lot of luminaries and some of them are just like, yeah, well, you know, I don't really do formal practice. It's more like my whole life is a practice. Now it's just like, oh my God, what bullshit is that? I have never seen the fruit of that practice. I've never seen the fruit of that practice. Not once, not in any of my teachers. Because it's really important to maintain that connection every day to the dimension that's deeper than thought, how else are we going to remember, right? If I'm taking myself to be my thoughts six days a week,

how am I going to remember on Sunday or Tuesday or whatever day that, oh, wow, I'm not that. So the only way that I have seen it work for me anyway is to make time every day that I rest in a dimension deeper than thought. That's the only way we can really have that connection to our goodness, the connection to something deeper, that primordial awareness, whatever you want to call it, that awake quality that's not becoming. Right? This whole world is just about becoming. My first instruction every time we sit is don't meditate. Please, just don't turn this into the

next becoming. Now I'm become a meditator. Okay. Is this position spiritual enough? You know what I mean? It's like, it's just the next game. Next thing to get good at, you know? It's the next electric guitar. And wait till my exes see me. It's like, oh my God, dude. Okay, so in answer to the question of how do we do this, I think what I heard you say was

noting practice is really helpful, and I'll reflect a little bit more about that in a second, but the key is to actually get your ass on the cushion and meditate with some regularity so that you can really get it into your molecules that you don't have to take your thoughts, urges, and emotions personally. And within that rubric, under that aegis noting, it's just like

dropping a, as Joseph Goldstein likes to say, like a soft mental whisper into the mind of that's okay, anger, planning, hunger, fatigue. And you don't have to get persnickety about, you know, like thumbing through your mental thesaurus for the right word. It's just like, make a little note if it's close enough, move on. And I think what you're pointing to is it's helpful to have a consistent practice of, you know, whatever duration, and then you can take that noting

out with you into the world as you're doing this alignment on the regular day to day. That's right. Listen, as long as it's an idea, as long as it's like, you know, the kind of a philosophy that's at an arms, let the way it's not doesn't have the power to transform our lives. We're still getting our sense of reality derived from a compulsive movement of thought. derived from a compulsive movement of thought. We have to break that. We have to challenge that and say, okay, this is one reality. For me, it's like catch and release many, many times a day. And the only reason I even agreed to come on here is because I know you have an aversive mind just like I do. You know, it's clear.

It's clear that, that it's really easy to believe that there's something wrong with this moment, like many, many times a day. And I can feel my resistance. I can feel it. You know, somebody doesn't use their freaking blinker or somebody country, you know, there's a thousand imaginary slights, right? You know, and there's stuff in the world as well, right? It's not like it's all just in my mind,

but I can feel resistance arise in my experience many times a day. Okay. What happens when I do that? Oh, well one thing that happens is we get a lot more sensitive to pain with practice. We don't become these bulletproof Buddhas that are just like walking around unfazed. It's like, oh no, wow, that resistance hurts. This kind of sucks. And so then you kind of turn toward it and you release it. It's like, is there anything actually wrong right now? You know, like, can I check in with like a fundamental okayness? Can I feel my feet on the floor? Yeah. You okay? Actually, I am despite my thoughts, despite my fears and hopes and everything else that's running through, are you actually okay? And it's just like, holy shit, I am so weird.

So, you know, you, you know, Ajahn Amaral, one of my first teachers, he said it so clearly, he said, I discovered a deep satisfaction and not actively seeking satisfaction. It's just like, Oh dude, it's been here the whole time. I was so busy arguing closing arguments that I missed it. You know, the thousand masks of Mara of like, you know, what's wrong? Well, everything. Okay. But really what's wrong? You know, Joseph actually said it so clearly because every time I look for a problem, I can't find one. Reminds me of something that Eckhart Tolle, who I've made fun of with Gusto, but nonetheless, I think he's actually,

he's on to many things. He has this little question he asks people is like, what is preventing you from being in this moment? And that just came to mind as I was listening to you. There is a kind of satisfaction, it might not be conventional satisfaction, the way the world defines it, that's available pretty much whatever's going on. Yeah, and that's what I meant by saying that each moment is pregnant with liberation, right? That's a very poetic way to say it, right?

From a thousand years ago, I think a woman may have said that, but it's like, do we trust that what's found in presence can't be found anywhere else? You know what I mean? Like, where else might satisfaction or contentment or peace arise? Does it matter if I'm peaceful or content next week? You know what I mean? This whole, the whole movement of life is leaning towards some other moment. So it's just like, of course we're going to do that in our practice too. It's like, oh no, this is like a Rocky montage and I'm getting better at this every day, you know, as you be more and more and it's just going to continue. It's like, what leads

you to believe that? Like what would it be like to push all in, like right here, right now? Coming up Vinny Ferrero talks about redirecting awareness, being an empathetic witness for yourself, when to opt for distraction, and what he means by and what the Buddha meant by not taking what is not yours. Alice and Matt here from British Scandal. Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there? Oh, compelling storytelling, egotistical white men and dubious humour. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land.

We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peterua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Cleopatra. An iconic life full of romances, sieges and tragedy.

But who was the real Cleopatra? It feels like her story has been told by others with their own agenda for centuries. But her legacy is enduring and so we're going to dive into how her story has evolved all the way up to today. I am so excited to talk about Cleopatra Peter. She is an icon. She's the most famous woman in antiquity. It's got to be up there with the most famous women of all time. But I think there's a huge gap between how familiar people are with the idea of her compared to what they actually know about her life and character. So for Pyramids, Cleopatra and Cleopatra's Nose.

Follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Before we get back to the show, a quick reminder in honor of World Meditation Week, we're offering on Wandery Plus. As I listen you speak, it strikes me, and maybe there's some projection going on, because, you know, I've sat through not a few meditation retreats myself and try to apply it on the daily. But what you're describing as your approach to life sounds deeply sane and like a lot of work. Yeah.

What else is there to do, Dan? and like a lot of work. Yeah. What else is there to do, Dan? I mean, every time I look at my suffering, most of it has my fingerprints all over it, right? So it's like, okay, dude, we get it, bro. It's really, really hard to have a mind and to have these nervous systems. And I made my life so much harder than it needed to be, bro. You know, losing people. We're not taught how to tend to that

which is difficult to bear. You just get over it, man. Keep moving. Next thing you know, you're strung out because, you know, basically all drugs are painkillers, right? We're all running from something and it, you know, it can be shopping or eating or sex, you know, it has a thousand faces, right? The avoidance. And I just haven't seen it bear the fruit, right? When I see Joseph, bro, I'm like, that's a cat that's been sitting for over five decades. Is there fruit on that tree? God damn right. That's a pretty free character, man. That dude, you know what I mean? So when I see something like that, I'm like, that's where I want to go. That's where I believe in how do we do that day by day and stop postponing awareness

or arrival for some time where the party's gonna get better? It's gonna be killer. I think we might've touched on this a little bit, but I'll emphasize it here and hang a lantern on it. The second of the three techniques that you have said that you've been using for yourself in your practice to keep it together, generally to do life better. The first was alignment. The second is something you call redirecting awareness. What do you mean by that? life with anxiety. It's what really brought me to the Dharma, you know, a real difficulty sometimes accommodating that energy. You know, it can come in the form of self-incrimination, it can come in many forms, but it's like, it's kind of scary to be inside here. So

it's like, okay, how can I accommodate this experience? How can I meet that experience? And so through some trauma training, they really teach you that you can direct awareness to, you know, especially if the mind is not offering up anything helpful, can you redirect it to a different part of your experience? It's like, oh yeah, okay, like I mentioned earlier, the fundamental okayness I feel in my feet, right? Touching the ground, it's not a story, it's a direct experience. It's like, okay, all right.

Most of the time when I feel anxious, I feel it in my trunk, sometimes in my throat, but it's generally contracted feeling of my trunk, my belly. Is it in my feet? Not so much. Oh, okay. So that means that I can titrate my awareness a bit. I can locate awareness very specifically anywhere I want. And not through the mind, not through thinking about it, not imagining my feet, but actually, oh, I can direct awareness and it kind of turns on awareness in my feet where my feet are touching the rug.

It's like, okay. Okay, so anxiety is not the only thing happening right now. Well, that's good news. Okay. Are you okay down here? It's like, yeah, okay. Do you want to dip back into the anxiety to see if you can tend to it, to see if what we can discover about this thing I'm calling anxiety, right? So is there a center? Is it dropping? What are its characteristics?

Are there edges, right? And are there places that it's not? That way, I can tend to it with care. I'm not, we're not being asked to cannonball into these overwhelming experiences. We're asked to tend to them with some care. And so I can do that if I redirect my awareness where it's not overwhelmed. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, this seems like a pretty deeply complementary practice to alignment. With alignment, you're looking at the full menu of options and then picking the healthiest option

and using your commitment to it to condition future moments. With redirecting awareness, it seems like maybe a different take on the same idea, which is, okay, I have these unpleasant sensations in my trunk and my throat that I'm calling anxiety, but I'm going to pick something else to focus on right now. Maybe it's the feeling in my feet. And is that okay? Is that better? Let me go with that. Am I restating this correctly? I think it's a good way to put it. I mean, basically, we're trying to figure out how to open the closed fist of the mind, right? When I am activated, let's say, right, with the anger or anxiety, or something that's hard to bear. I've lost access to my clearest thinking.

I'm gone, dude. You know, I'm in that fight, flight, freeze, fawn. So the animal body that I'm in, I don't have access to that clear thinking because I'm afraid whatever is happening, anxious, angry. I mean, you have a kid who my son is like you have a kid, you know, who my son is like, wilding out. Reason and logic ain't gonna reach him. I can't, you know, just reassure him again that there's nothing under the bed, that there's, you know what I mean? Like, bro, bro, bro, you can't, nothing in this room wants to hurt you, bro. It's just gonna fall on deaf ears. What does he want to know? Oh, he wants to know that he's not alone and he wants to be helped. He's like, okay, I can do that. Okay.

They say the experts at trauma say that trauma happens with the absence of an empathetic witness, right? So we can be that empathetic witness even to ourselves. So it's like, okay, I'm having anxiety. I have a place to lay down, I wrap myself up with warmth and affection, same as I would anybody I love. And I say, all right, I'm right here. Now, I have my own way of dealing with that, right? So first, it's like, I stopped taking it very personally, right? That's the first part of it because it manifests as something that's wrong with me. But I hear the Buddha's voice, 2,600 years echoing through

time and space. What if it wasn't about you? Like just for a second? I know that it's hard to imagine, but what if it was just for a second, right? And so when I'm not taking it personally, when I'm not making it my fault, that eases up some of the blame and some of the loneliness that suffering often comes accompanied by, right? Now, like, okay, is this mine? Is this I, me or mine? No, I'm not the origin story of anxiety. I didn't give birth to it on this planet. It's like, okay, do other beings know this? How many other beings know this feeling? Countless. Oh, okay. So now I'm in the presence of sangha, right? Now I'm in the presence of community. How many of my ancestors may have struggled with these energies, you know, stress, anxiety,

self-forgiveness, so just buckling under the pressure of trying to meet their family's needs. I mean, both of my grandfathers were dead before 45 of heart disease. They didn't have access to these healing modalities that we do. I mean, sometimes I'm just trying to touch into the compassion to the one who's being judged so harshly, but there's a compassionate response. And this can be a way that we can break the cycle. Things tend to get bigger the more I run from them. So when we turn and say, okay, anxiety is here, difficulty is here, grief is here, it's

like, okay, what is this thing? And so, by directing our awareness toward it, and if we feel it's too overwhelmed away from it, we can even look at the validity of a path. We can say, well, what delivers me to a moment and what delivers me from it. Sometimes I need to be delivered from it. Sometimes redirecting awareness is like, you know what? I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to distract myself. I'm going to just kind of let this pass, man. I don't actually have the inner resources right now to meet it. You know what I mean? We have to be honest about ourselves because there has to be that willingness. If there's not willingness, we're just like to get out of jail free card we're looking for.

We're going to outmaneuver it. You know what I mean? Through meditation, we're going to somehow outsmart suffering. So silly. even in the Buddha, right? So we don't need these energies, whatever it is, to just somehow disappear. That's not what happened to the Buddha. When the Buddha became enlightened, Mara continued to arise, but he just wasn't perceived as a problem, right? Because it's not the thought. It's not the afflictive states that are the problem. It's our relationship to them. It's taking them for who we think we really are. I am this problem. I am this anxiety.

I've always been like this. I'm always going to be like this. So in some way, redirecting awareness for me has become a superpower of being able to tend to this and not even be afraid. And then 10, 15 minutes, I can usually feel that kind of golden honey sunset light because we can imbue awareness with qualities, just like we imbue it with fear or anger or frustration. We can imbue it with this wish for all beings to be free. And I get to be included in that. Right, every time we sit, it's not just for Vinny.

That would be like some Sisyphus over and over and over. But when we're able to hold it, that these energies are not me and not I and not mine. Even the precepts, right? You familiar with the precepts, Dan? Yeah, just for folks who may not be, it's basically these promises that we make to ourselves and others in a Buddhist context to behave in a certain way. What I like about Buddhist ethics, you know, the precepts may be like not taking other people's stuff, not killing

or not harming, those kinds of things. What I like about the Buddhist version of the commandments is there's more elasticity and no promises of eternal damnation. That's right. Yeah. I mean, the second one is the one that really moves me. You know, the second precept is not taking what's not ours. Well, we can think about that quite literally, right, in terms of property, right, not stealing. Okay? But we can also expand that to include how do we not take things personally? How do we not take the suffering of our families on that are not ours. When I see the cycles of intergenerational trauma, right,

and my family of addiction, incarceration, and violence, I've been conditioned to take that on. How do I keep this precept in mind? You know, is it okay to be free when somebody is suffering in my family? It's like, I don't know. Am I taking what's not mine? Am I taking, you know, like I said, taking things personally, there's a lot of ways that that particular precept delivers freedom. Just to say that's the third of the techniques that we were going to talk about today. The first being alignment, the second being redirecting awareness. And the third, not taking what's not mine.

Can you just elaborate down on that a little bit, like especially as it pertains to, and I know you've gotten more interested in ancestor practices, ancestor worship even. So how does that connect to not taking what's not yours and not taking things personally? Yeah. You can see how they roll into each other. Yeah. Yeah. These topics, they kind

of arise pretty seamlessly with some, even a little bit of practice. But the ancestor practice for me, it's like I really felt alone in the world. I was a homeless teen, strung out, locked up, all that stuff. I didn't feel like there was anybody pulling for me at a certain point in my life. I turned my back to the world and kind of lost my sense of belonging. I felt very exiled. That led me to some very scary places, that sense, led me to some very scary places that sense. Because the thing is, Dan, belonging is not enough. You have to know it. You know, the knowing of it is as important as the bond. Because you know, when did I really not belong? It's so strange. I found myself in 95. You know, I'd made some really big commitments to go to India, to meet the Dalai Lama, to see if this was real or if this was just another hustle.

You know, my whole life was a hustle, bro. The family, the neighborhood, the drugs, it was just like, oh, another thing. And so I made a commitment. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go look in this guy's eyes. And if I see some side eye, you know what I mean? If I see some slickness, I'm a snapper students elbow. I can get close enough to him. I'm nice with my hands. I could do this. And this is how afraid I was, bro. This is how afraid I was that there wasn't anything in this world worth living for. Right. This is what was at stake.

And so I, uh, you know, I, I got a chance to meet him and I just wailed. And, uh, oh my God, an ocean of tears. Cause of the love he looked at me with, right? Well, a week later, I'm sitting in a cave in Nepal. There's hermit monk been there and he's doing this puja and I've been staying there for two, three days just sleeping on the floor. He's giving me a little bit of food. I don't understand any Tibetan.

He spoke even less English. So it wasn't in his words, but there was something about it, bro. He's up there praying for all beings. And there was some admittance back into the garden for me. There was just tears flowing down my face. And I realized I'd never been alone. This guy had been up here for 2,600 years. You know what I mean? That lineage. So when I talk about ancestry, I look back on this idea that all my ancestors are behind me. And I'm at the tip of the spear shooting through time and space because I'm alive right now.

They're all pulling for me, but it's my time to see if I can break some of these cycles that my family and the world has been lost in. And so there's something about that that gives me strength. You know, that's like, I'm not just doing this for me. I'm doing this for all my ancestors. I couldn't do it. And I'm doing it for my kid. So I don't pass on anything that's not helpful. Right? Yeah, so that's how the ancestor kind of worship or actually you just, you know, I burn stuff every day and just try to keep it in mind that like, okay, I'm at the tip of the spear, they're pulling for me and that can be kind of like a resource. A reflection and a question, the thought that I had in listening to you is

that, you know, I kind of glibly said at the beginning, we're going to talk about these three practices you use to keep your shit together. But really, it's three practices. I mean, it's that and then on a bigger note, it's these three practices you use to break cultural, evolutionary, familial patterns that have not worked well for your forebears and might not work well for your kid if you weren't in the middle there trying to show a different way of being. Yeah. I mean, I didn't want to have a kid, bro. You know, I wasn't raised in a conventional sense. So I didn't want to pass on things that were not helpful. And I didn't feel like I had anything to offer. I was just gonna do my best to be a good godfather, good uncle. And then I met a woman that I knew I needed to be with.

And she was just like, this is what I'm doing. So I better get get on board or or bounce, you know. And I you know, there was a lot of grief there, you know, lifetime of never allowing myself to feel that feeling. You know, that excitement of like, well, maybe it's something I can allow myself to, to just consider. I had never let that happen. And then once you do it, you realize, oh my God, this was such an act of generosity. Oh my God, like thankless, you know what I mean? In some ways, you know what I mean? Like it has its own gifts, obviously, but it would call on me. And I thought I was much further along on the path to be quite honest.

Real talk, man. I mean, talk of, you know, I'm back in therapy. That guy got me on the cushion every day. Talk of the cruel tutelage of Valentino. You know what I mean? They say, you know, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, you know? And you know, he really calls forth in me the most generous part of me. You know, and you realize that the barrel that you're surrounded around, you and your wife, you and your partner, that

barrel is not you. This life is not your own anymore. So I had to sell my chopper. I had to, you know, if you sell the low riders had to do the things that I could do to, to make that decision, that commitment to something bigger than me, something more important than me. You know, because you know what it's like. You have a child. That moment that they're birthed into this world. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would

die for him. Wasn't that he was funny. He didn't have some, you know, Gucci diaper. You know, it's just, you just like, oh shit, wow. And then that's where we can get in touch with like, at least what comes to mind for me. And we talked about, you know, the beauty of kids. It's like, I don't think babies are beautiful. I just think that the eyes that we look at are so blameless. It makes them beautiful. You know what I mean?

If we bookend this thing and say, all right, one of the first things we talked about It's like is there any part of us that's beyond redemption. We know that we can see through those eyes Now whether we think we got that common. That's another story But we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that baby's got a comment. So that's something they give us. They offer us that that blameless, unconditional love that's just like, I didn't know it was possible. There was always a reason I loved my friends because he was funny. I loved her because she was beautiful.

She was smart. You know, all these. There was always reasons to love. And then and there was the unconditioned they bring into our lives, into our, then knowing in our hearts, you know. Jared I remember right after our son was born, I was, I ran into John Kabat-Zinn, the great Buddhist teacher. The great meditation teacher. I don't know how Buddhist he considers himself these days. But I told him, I had a kid, and he said, oh yeah, the Dalai Lama just moved into your house. That's right.

That's right. Coming up, Vainey talks about this question, how loyal are you to your suffering? And we also explore how much confidence he has after all of these years of practice that he's still making progress on breaking the cycle. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history.

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And you'll be in the Situation Room when President Barack Obama approves the raid to bring down the most infamous terrorist in American history. Pre-order The Hidden History of the White House Now in hardcover or digital editions editions wherever you get your books. Mindfulness, meditation, breath work, more and more people are discovering self-care practices. But what about this practice of stoicism? Maybe you've heard that word bouncing

around and I know you're thinking stoicism, ancient philosophy, who cares? Well, stoic philosophy is more relevant now than ever and it's a really powerful tool for helping us with the daily anxieties and problems of modern life. I'm Ryan Holiday, host of the Daily Stoic Podcast, where every day I share lessons on how to live a better life through the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, a philosophy of kings and emperors, as well as ordinary people alike in Greece and in Rome. Stoicism is a philosophy designed to make us more resilient, happier, more virtuous, and wise. And like all important journeys, this is one that begins from within. Follow The Daily Stoic on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen

to The Daily Stoic early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. So what is the connection between So what is the connection between seeing our family patterns and not taking what is not ours? You know, so much of my life has been very intense, Dan. You know, dramatic, very dramatic. I came home and found my mom passed away when I was a teenager. That was very dramatic. One of my family members had to take her life. Very dramatic. So I got to be there. You had to take her life? No. Well, we had to pull the plug on my mom, but one of my family members, she tried to take her own life. Oh, okay. So I was in the emergency room again and standing over her and realizing like, oh wow, okay. And I talked her into letting them take her in, like for real, right? Not just

saying what you need to be said, they'll get out. And she was like, okay. And they started wheeling her away. And I was like, oh wow, I remember this moment from my teenage years. And I was part of the problem. But now I'm like the helpful uncle. Okay. How real do you take these roles that you're being cast into? Like just, okay, I was the pain in the ass teenager. Now I'm the helpful other. It's just like, wow. You start seeing the intergenerational trauma and then you're able to start questioning how loyal I've been to my suffering. What am I pledging allegiance to here? Is this I, me, or mine? It's not just some spiritual bypass, it's a real question. I'm like, okay, what do I take myself to be? Obviously, I care about this person deeply. There's compassion there. But how do I not take on more than is helpful? What's helpful? And what's personal?

What's the added layer? Sometimes we call the second arrow. It's just like, oh my god, what, what is this person ever gonna figure it out? Now I gotta figure out how to remind them of who they are. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So in a way, I guess it's like not making things harder than they need to be. There's already enough real suffering going on. We don't need the additional that comes with taking things very personally. Let me test my own comprehension there and say it back to you. So as a teenager you had this horrible thing happen to you where you found your mother deceased or near deceased and then had to bring her to the hospital and make a painful decision. Fast forward several decades, another really hard situation where a member of your family has tried to take her own life and you're trying to play as positive a role as possible.

So there's already a lot of sort of non-negotiable suffering that's happening in both of these situations, specifically in the latter situation where you've at this point been practicing meditation for a while, but you decline to add on the level of, oh, I'm part of this messed up family and these people can't get their stuff together and I'm never going to get out of these patterns and, you know, I, me, mine, all of this. So you're not taking all of that as yours anymore. That's right. As one great monk said, you're not misappropriating public property.

That's right. You're just focusing on what is actually here now instead of adding on a bunch of voluntary pain. Yeah. And what was there was some incredible heart, a lot of compassion, just not that added layers. And that's like, okay, this is how we break the cycle by seeing through that I wasn't the pain in the ass teenager and I'm not the helpful brother. It's like, you know what I mean? Like that was never me. That's just like the role. Okay,

now I'll be this. It's like how wholeheartedly can you hold these roles when you see that you weren't the first one, you're not the second one, you're not going to be the third one. You're just a being here that cares deeply about this person. You know, I don't know, I don't know what it's like to be you, but I was really bred to take on that suffering, to make it my fault, to make it my problem, to figure out if you can't figure it out, then you failed, right? And maybe it's different in all kinds of different families, but that's what I kind of grew up with. And so the deep failure of losing my mom, it was just like, hold on, it's already hard to lose your mom. She was like my best friend. But

then there's like, it was your fault. You should have been there. She died alone. It was just like, whoa, decades of trying to run from that, a path, a life of destructive relationships based on those beliefs. Kids make everything their fault. Right? So, I kind of saw through that in this instance, the details were dramatic enough to wake me up out of that and see like, oh my God, it's just happening again. Wow. Okay, what am I in choice about here? How can this be in the service of awakening? This very confusing moment. What am I awakening to? I don't know if this is a fair or useful question. I'll throw it out there and maybe maybe we'll answer a different question. But

how much confidence do you have after all these years of practice that you're making progress on breaking the cycle? You know, it is a hard question to answer. I feel a lot less suffering. That's some kind of measurement. I tend to not stay in story as long. So that's another measurement because these stories can often be not generous internally or externally. So it's like, okay, that catch and release that I talked about, right? It's like, oh, I can feel the resistance. We become a lot more sensitive. So when I wake up to that, that resistance that hurts every time, I'm usually able to release it fairly quickly. So there are some

measurements that lead me to believe that there's progress being made. Certainly not perfection, but I can wholeheartedly say that there's just so much less suffering that I'm creating for myself. I believe it. I do. Yeah. Yeah. I feel very lucky to have found the, I feel like the luckiest person I know.

Cause I'm not even supposed to be alive. Like there's nothing in my history that would lead you to believe that I would be alive at this age. And so the fact that I get to go into prisons and work with death and dying, do all this beautiful work in the world, I just never thought I had anything to offer. You know, I didn't know I could be a part of something good because of the world I was born into. So we saw that hustle, that street, that survival mentality. And then growing up and coming into these more wholesome qualities,

it was like, oh my God, I'm so glad that I survived the first part. So that I have something to offer in the second part and really find out more of who I was and not just, uh, you know, be lost to the world. I sincerely believe we are all lucky that you are alive. That's sweet. Thank you, brother. Yeah. You feel pretty lucky?

About my life? My life has been charmed from the jump. So I had every event. And so yeah, I feel very lucky at baseline and then extremely lucky that even though I have attempted to sabotage all of my unearned advantages, I found the Dharma, you know, 14 years ago and have been awkwardly and unevenly applying it into my life, into my life ever since. So I feel lucky in several ways. That brings up something so tender for me because what is the Dharma? You know, what's the main premise here, Dan? Is it that conditions don't lead to suffering? Because that's a really big question for me. Because you talk about

the difficulties in your life, right, as I just have. What sent me running into the arms of the Dharma but my difficulties? You know, I think it was Frankel that said conditions don't lead to suffering or bondage, that it's only the attitude of the being that determine which way these things flow. What a radical proposition, you know? Radical invitation that conditions don't lead to suffering. My conditions were so intense at the beginning of my life, I couldn't imagine a happiness. I couldn't imagine a freedom. Now I can see like, oh, you're standing in an emergency room.

Okay, which direction do these conditions lead? Throw it on your back, throw it in the backpack, sissifish, back up the hill? Or is this how we break a cycle here? It's an interesting conversation to have with people that are incarcerated. You know, there's a lot of kinds of incarceration. Right.

Damn straight. Vinnie, before I let you go, do you have a website? People wanna learn more about you, how can they do that? Yeah, I do. A friend of mine built me a website. It's vinnyferrara.org. You know, it's sparsely populated.

I'm not so good at marketing and all these other aspects of teaching, but I do feel lucky to have a sangha in San Francisco that I've been the guiding teacher of for about 20 years now. And so just to be witnessed, right? Just to see, you know, they've seen me through so many of the chapters. Yeah. And that's something that community really provides us. It's not just a place to compare hallucinations, but it's also this other part that's like, Oh, wow, I'll remind you, you remind me when I lose my way. So I've been

really, really lucky to have a community. Yeah, that does that for me. And with me. Thank you for doing this. This was an absolute pleasure. I think it's going to help everybody who hears it. So thank you again. Thanks for having me, Dan. I hope to see you again, bro. You may regret saying that because I'm going to ensure that you see me again. Maybe so, bro. Thanks again to Vinny Ferraro. I loved talking to him, I suspect. I'll try to enlist him as a frequent flyer on this show. There are several episodes that this one reminded me of so I'm going to put some links in the show notes if you want to kind of stay on these themes. We talked to Kamala Masters about equanimity, Roshi Joan Halifax also about equanimity, and Josen Tomori Gibson on the various Buddhist precepts. So I put links to

those episodes in the show notes if you want to go check them out. Don't forget to check out danharris.com, my new website where you can sign up for my newsletter which includes lots of recommendations and little wisdom bombs and also a merch store where you can buy 10% happier gear. We're currently rushing to restock the inner peace motherfuckers gear but that should happen soon. Finally thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson and we get additional production support from Colin Lester Fleming, Isabelle Hibbard, Carolyn

Keenan and Wan Bo Wu. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production. DJ Cashmere is our managing producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

I'm Shimon Liayi and I have a new podcast called The Competition. Survey. are used to being the best and the brightest, and they're all vying for a huge cash prize. This will probably be the most intense that you've ever gone through in your life. I remember that feeling because I was one of them. I lost. But now I'm coming back as a judge and also a kind of teen girl anthropologist. Because if you want to understand what it's like

to be a young woman in America today, the competition's not a bad place to start. Hopefully no one will die on stage tonight. From Pineapple Street Studios and Wondry, this is The Competition. Follow The Competition on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Competition early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry+. Once upon a beat. Remember those stories and fables that would capture your imagination and you couldn't wait to see how they would unfold?

And now when you read them as an adult, you think some of these old tales could use a fresh spin. We have a perfect podcast to bring you the stories you remember, remix and reimagine for the kids in your life today. Join me, DJ Fu, and my trusty turntable, Baby Scratch, as we spin up new tales in the new kids and family podcast, Once Upon a Beat.

Wondry and Tinkercast are bringing you a jam-packed, music-filled weekly party where hip-hop and fables meet. It's Once Upon a Beat. Follow Once Upon a Beat on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Once Upon a Beat early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or Wondry Kids Plus in Apple Podcast.

Once Upon a Beat.