10% Happier

Ambition and self-destruction do not have to go hand in hand.

Most of us are navigating our emotional lives with roughly the same skill set we had at age five.

Faced with uncertainty and fear, most of us freeze. We overanalyze, overthink, and fail to act.

The vagus nerve may be one of the most important and least understood parts of the human body.

The human brain is naturally wired for survival through the Default Mode Network (DMN), a system that allows us to plan and reflect but often traps us in “the house of habit”, a cycle of rumination and repetitive overthinking.

Bestselling novelist Maria Semple discusses her transition from a high-pressure TV writing career to a life grounded in Stoic philosophy.

Physician, trauma expert, and bestselling author Gabor Maté joins Ten Percent Happier to explore why so many of us are caught in cycles of scrolling, bingeing, and self-medicating.

Dan Harris reflects on his conversation with Dr. Arthur Brooks about the modern “doom loop,” the compulsive cycle of distraction that quietly starves our lives of meaning by preventing us from ever sitting with the questions that matter most.

Two of the world’s leading experts on the science of the mind join Ten Percent Happier to challenge the idea that we need to fix ourselves — and to share how the qualities of a flourishing life are already present, waiting to be uncovered.

Dan Harris explores how to break unconscious habits with Dr. Eric Garland, who developed the Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) protocol for chronic pain and addiction.

In this episode of 10% Happier, Dan Harris speaks with Dr. Victoria Maizes, Executive Director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, about the body’s innate “Rapid Recovery Reflex” and how lifestyle choices can help remove obstacles to healing.

Dan Harris sits down with Dr. Maya Shankar, cognitive scientist and author of newly released book “The Other Side of Change”, to explore how the human mind handles major life changes, drawing on Shankar’s research and personal experiences including her transition from Juilliard-trained violinist to cognitive scientist and challenges with infertility and surrogacy.