10% Happier with Dan Harris

Have you ever noticed that no matter how much shit you buy, it never really does it for you? There's always that next purchase.

I'm no anti-capitalist, but I don't think it hurts to acknowledge the lie—or if you want to be generous, misunderstanding—at the core of the enterprise: that somehow acquisition will lead to lasting satisfaction.

This insight about the limits of materialism is what animates my friends Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who together, are known as the Minimalists. Several years ago, they released a documentary on Netflix. It focuses on how to declutter your stuff and life and how that can lead to decluttering your mind and reduced anxiety.

They actually interviewed me for it—even though I am not really a minimalist—and to this day it is the interview that generated perhaps the most attention of any I have ever done. For years, people stopped me on the street about that one.

Anyway, Joshua and Ryan are now bringing their documentary – aptly entitled "Minimalism" – to YouTube, for free and without commercials. In honor of that, we are reposting an interview I did with them back in 2021.

We hope you enjoy this bonus rebroadcast, and don't forget to check out the Minimalists podcast, Youtube, website…they're everywhere. Oh, and just to say that when we originally posted this interview, we paired it with a supplemental conversation with the great meditation teacher Oren Sofer, so if you want to hear the original, you can check that out here.

Happy Friday, everybody. It’s time for another bonus meditation, and we’re going to stick with our current theme of Get Fit Sanely. This week on the podcast we talked with mobility experts Kelly and Juliet Starrett about how to stay pain-free and flexible even as you get older, and then Cara Lai helped us think about how to exercise without being motivated by subtle self-hatred.

Obviously, a key part of fitness— from exercise to diet— is making and breaking habits. And that’s what today’s meditation is about: how when you’re in autopilot mode—a default setting for most of us— it is hard to change your behavior.  

This meditation comes from the healthy habits course we produced over on the Ten Percent Happier app, which features Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal and meditation teacher Alexis Santos. 

To access the Healthy Habits Course, just download the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting tenpercent.com. If you already have the app, just open it up and find “Healthy Habits” in the Course tab. 

And if you’re not already a Ten Percent Happier subscriber, you can join us by starting a free trial that’ll give you access to the course along with our entire app.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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If you want to opt out of diet culture, then what should you actually eat?

Today's guest is endeavoring to answer this question. Rachel Hartley is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and the author of a book called Gentle Nutrition: A Non-Diet Approach to Healthy Eating.

In this episode we talk about:

• The basics of intuitive eating
• Her thoughts on whether or not we should weigh ourselves
• Whether or not adopting intuitive eating means living with your face in a cookie jar forever
• How her work has influenced her own body image
• The eight guidelines of gentle nutrition
• Her provocative contention that "the healthiest choice isn't always the most nutritious choice"
• Her take on some of the critiques of intuitive eating
• Her thoughts on trendy new weight loss drugs like Ozempic

For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:

https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/rachael-hartley-615

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Most of us have an intuitive sense that there's a pretty serious link between what we eat and how we feel. Today's guest is here to explain the science behind that relationship.

Dr. Uma Naidoo is a pioneer in the field of nutritional psychiatry and an expert on both the gut-brain connection and the food-mood connection. She is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional chef, and a nutrition specialist. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. And she is the author of a book called This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More.

In this episode we talk about:

• What the gut-brain connection is, how it works, and why it's so important
• Her contention that "we are in control of how we feel emotionally through the food choices we make every single day"
• How to leverage nutritional psychiatry to help you handle:
• ---Anxiety
• ---Depression
• ---Sleep disorders
• ---Dementia
• ---PTSD
• ---ADHD
• ---OCD
• Her thoughts on taking in all of this information without developing orthorexia (an unhealthy obsession with healthy food)
• Her thoughts on intuitive eating
• How to understand vitamins vs. supplements (and her advice on taking supplements)

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/uma-naidoo-614

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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It's an urgent question for so many of us: Can we exercise, can we take care of our bodies, without being driven by shame, self-loathing, or noxious comparison to other people?

Our guest today has a unique perspective on this. Cara Lai is a former social worker and psychotherapist who is now a Buddhist teacher. She also used to be a marathoner. But in the last few years, her body has undergone some radical changes, leading her to some hard-won, fascinating, and deeply useful insights about how to strike the balance between taking care of your body and staying sane.

In this episode we talk about:

• Practices for that moment when you're getting out of the shower, see yourself in the mirror, and engage in a festival of self-judgment
• The surprising things that happened when Cara was forced to stop exercising
• A counterintuitive mindfulness practice suggestion for those with exercise routines
• When and why you should purposely do things you know are bad for you
• Why we often resist 'being in our bodies,' why that's OK, and how to lower the bar on this contemplative cliché–without giving it up
• A body-related Buddhist practice she finds to be totally not useful

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/cara-lai-612

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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From the way we sit while watching TV to the way we put on our shoes, our days are filled with opportunities to improve our mobility–without getting all sweaty. That's according to today's guests, who are here to teach us about some simple ways to keep our bodies durable for as long as possible.

Kelly and Juliet Starrett are the authors of the new book Built to Move: The 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully. Their book covers 10 tests you can do to assess your mobility "vital signs" and 10 practices you can do to improve those vital signs and make your body work better.

In this episode we talk about:

• What the Starrett's see as the shortcomings of "the fitness industrial complex"
• What mobility is, and why working on it is different from working out
• Why you should practice getting up off the ground without help
• The importance of your hip range of motion
• Why the Starrett's recommend a minimum of 8,000 steps per day, not 10,000
• The 'Old Man Balance Test'
• The 'SOLEC test'
• The Starretts' recommendations on nutrition, sleep, and breathing

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/juliet-and-kelly-starrett-611

Editor's Note (March 2026): This episode contains a brief reference to Peter Attia. Since this episode was published, documents released by the Department of Justice have revealed Peter Attia's connection to Jeffrey Epstein. We find these revelations deeply troubling and do not condone any association with Epstein or his activities. Please know that we have removed our interviews with Peter Attia from our library.

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Starting next week, we're launching a six part series where we're going to talk to a vast array of experts on longevity, exercise, and diet — we're calling it Get Fit Sanely.

To kick the series off, I wanted to have our senior producer DJ Cashmere on, who's the architect behind this project. You're gonna hear him get really personal about how these issues have affected his own psychology, and you'll hear a very thoughtful person talk about what he's taken away from the months of research he's done on these subjects. And, we'll give you a taste of what it's like here behind the scenes at Ten Percent Happier.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/buddhist-beach-bod

Other Resources Mentioned:

• No Excuses: Race and Reckoning at a Chicago Charter School — DJ's audio documentary about his time as a teacher

Additional Resources:

• Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Everyone from the Buddha to the Stoics have exhorted us to remember that we're going to die. So what are we to make of Dr. Mark Hyman? He's a physician and a student of Buddhism who is just out with a new book, called, "Young Forever." In it, he argues that your biological age can be reversed even as you grow chronologically older. So we decided to have him on, learn about his approach, and gently grill him on some of the things that made us most skeptical.

This is the second part of our new six-part series, Get Fit Sanely series, where we are trying to help you to make sense of the noise around getting fit–and to do so without losing your mind.

A little bit more about Dr. Hyman: He is a practicing family physician, the Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, and a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author. He also has his own podcast, called The Doctor's Farmacy.

In this episode we talk about:

• Whether there's a tension between Mark's approach and Buddhism
• Whether it's realistic for people alive today to think that we could make it to 150 or 200 years old
• Mark's contention that he is in better shape at 63 than he was at 40
• His take on intuitive eating
• His top line recommendations on exercise
• The benefits of cuddling
• His response to critiques of functional medicine
• Whether his longevity routine is something regular people can do
• The research on cold plunges and saunas
• His advice on alcohol

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dr-mark-hyman-609

Editor's Note (February 2026): Since this episode was first published, documents released by the Department of Justice have revealed Peter Attia's connection to Jeffrey Epstein. We find these revelations deeply troubling and do not condone any association with Epstein or his activities.

After careful consideration, we've chosen to keep this episode in our archive. Removing it would erase a record of who we've platformed—and we think transparency is vital to building trust with our audience and community.

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Most of us want to stay alive — and healthy — for as long as possible. But how to actually do that, given all the obstacles? What advice should we listen to? How do we find the time and motivation to follow it? And how do we do so without succumbing to what has been called the "subtle aggression of self improvement"?

Today, we are launching an ambitious three-week series to tackle these questions. We are bringing on top experts from science and Buddhism who will talk about how to eat better, exercise smarter, and extend your lifespan. Guest number one is Dr. Peter Attia. He has trained at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, and the National Institutes of Health. He's the host of a popular health and fitness podcast called The Drive and the author of a new book called Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why Peter kind of hates the word 'longevity'
• The definitions of 'lifespan' and 'healthspan'–and what we can do in five key areas to increase both
• The importance of exercise, including what types of exercise to do, how to measure your fitness, and how even a little bit of weekly exercise can go a very long way
• The roles our genes play in our lifespan and our healthspan
• The importance of nutrition, including Peter's top tips, his personal evolution, and his take on intuitive eating
• How to get better sleep (and when to stop tracking it)
• How to think about pharmaceutical tools, incl. a discussion of how to make sense of the crowded and unregulated supplement market
• The importance of emotional health, including a raw story from Peter about how he came to understand the importance of mental health, and why he believes tending to your emotional health makes all of the other health levers easier to pull.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/dr-peter-attia-608

As you might already know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month – and, while mental health is important every month, it's an important opportunity to share resources that can help one another.

So, in that spirit – we're going to bring you a bonus episode from a podcast we love called Meditative Story. We're going to share my episode of Meditative Story with you, where I tell a personal story about a father-son trip that I went on with my son, Alexander, when he was four years old. And how this trip really changed our relationship.

If you're not familiar with Meditative Story, it provides immersive storytelling with mindfulness prompts embedded right into the narrative, woven with a wonderful musical soundtrack.

I hope you enjoy this episode of Meditative Story.

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