1044: Dan Harris | From Breaking News to Breaking Habits

24:35That I've never done. I've never gone for the better lighting with the more exposure. But for sure, I mean, I remember my mom saying to me once there was I remember the shot. I was I was with some soldiers and we were in Iraq and they were doing nighttime raids and they were raiding people's homes and looking for members of the Sadr Brigade, which was a militia. and I was with them and it was in the middle of the night and I think we'd been up for like 36 hours and everybody was chewing caffeinated gum that the soldiers were handing out to each other and I remember there was a shot that I was in where I was kind of like my back was up against the wall because I was trying to stay out of the way and my helmet was like on crooked and I looked really tired and my mother was like, it was very brave of you to put that shot in because you look so terrible.

25:27Jewish mothers, am I right? Good Lord. Actually, you know, I'm only half Jewish and my mother is not the Jewish side. So just mothers then. Yeah. And I remember the first time I went into a war zone, I couldn't reach my mother. So I called my dad and he started crying and he said, you have a Jewish mother. It's just not your mother. Yeah. They must have aged prematurely watching you on TV in a war zone. I now have it, you know, we both are parents and my child's a little older than your kids. Mine's nine. If he were to do this, I would be distraught. Yeah. I can't believe what I put them through.

26:03Yeah. I think about that a lot too. My poor parents. I didn't go into any war zones, but I worked in dangerous areas and did dangerous things. And I was just kind of like, that's fun though. I'll be fine. And you broke a lot of laws. I did break a lot of laws. They were not happy about that. They were not happy about that. And now for a word from our sponsors, better than getting shot at in a war zone. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself for free in our six minute networking course.

26:32The course is great for business. It's great for personal stuff. Yes, if you're retired, it's still going to serve a purpose. It's about creating relationships and using systems to build and develop those. And it's a super easy, non cringy down to earth way of doing it. There's not going to be awkward strategies or cheesy tactics that embarrass you or the people that you're dealing with. Six minutes a day is all it takes. And many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course at sixminutenetworking.com.

27:00Now back to Dan Harris. He worked for Peter Jennings. Yes. And he was like, for people who don't know, is like, how would you define it? Legendary broadcaster. Yes. And more. I mean, when you talk about working for him, it's not exactly sunshine and rainbows. I believe the quote is he tormented us or it says Peter Jennings tormented us. And that's probably a paraphrase, but it's probably not too far from the actual truth. I think I said he was my mentor and tormentor. Ah, there you go. Yeah, you know, it's crazy. I always think of things through a Buddhist lens because it is kind of my training now.

27:35Peter Jennings was panoramically famous when I came to ABC News in the year 2000. I remember walking down the street with him in New York City, a place where people are famously unbothered by celebrities. And every head would turn as we walked down the street. Every head. It was crazy. This guy at his, at the peak of his powers, was in 30 million homes a night. Nobody gets ratings like that in the current environment. This is like Mr. Beast level, right? He's the only person you can put in this category now. I guess. Right, but here we are, you and I are talking in 2024, and it is quite common for me to be in front of audiences where people don't know who Peter Jennings is.

28:19Yeah, of course, yeah. And so I view it through the lens of impermanence. Like, we feel that we're in a very solid movie. The way things are now, this is the way they will always be. But, you know, if you live long enough, you just see that things are changing all the time. Things that seem like permanent fixtures, like Rushmore level humans like Peter Jennings. Now there's a street named after him, 66th Street in the Upper West Side. There's a block between Central Park West and Columbus. It's Peter Jennings Way. But it's just another historical name that we ignore, that I think most young people ignore, like if they even notice it.

29:00But this was a guy who was so incredibly famous and he was my mentor and he was, but he was also very complicated dude. And so I had this incredible privilege of being able to learn from the guy who I think is probably the greatest broadcaster who ever lived. But he also had a very short fuse and played mind games. And I thought that I learned how to be a different kind of leader. And I've learned to my humiliation over time that I picked up some bad habits that I've had to unlearn from him. Really? Yeah. You say that working for Peter was like sticking your head in a lion's mouth. Thrilling, but not particularly sick.

29:37Like, yeah, because he was, he would turn on a dime, you know, like one minute. I remember him sending me off in 2005, the last conversation I ever had with him before he died of lung cancer. He was sending me back to Iraq. At this point, I had already been in Iraq a bunch of times. I had been in Afghanistan. I was a reasonably seasoned combat reporter at this point. And I remember him saying, like, I want you to go. You're going to you're going to spend some time in Israel. Then I want you to go to Iraq. And there's a bunch of things I want you to do. And then before I left, he was like, you should know that there is a perception that you're not particularly good at this.

30:09Yikes. And I'm going off to war, right? And that's the last thing he said to me. Jeez, man. What kind of motivation? I don't know. That's like a sick, like, if I make him feel terrible, maybe he'll step his game up just a little bit. And then he pats himself on the back like, I know how to make them winners. You know, it's hard for me to, I was having a conversation with my brother recently about negotiations. And he, my brother is a very seasoned businessman. man. He's a venture capitalist at Bain Capital, and he's done many, many big deals. And he said he never tries to put himself in the mindset of his counterparty, which I thought was counterintuitive.

30:44I thought good negotiators always did that. He's like, it's a losing game. You're never right. And so I don't really know what was in Peter's head. I know he had a really complicated relationship with his own father. And I know that at times he was incredibly, I wouldn't say like fatherly with me, but maybe a Von Killer was like a kind of an uncle to me. And he would take me under his wing and give me advice. And the first time I went to a war zone, I was in Afghanistan after 9-11. And when I arrived safely, he called my parents to let them know. So like he had this deep reservoir of decency and he was truly brilliant and like unbelievably gifted at what he did.

31:21It's just that there were times when he would motivate us or attempt to motivate us in ways that scanned to me as pretty twisted. Yeah, but it makes you wonder, the reason this guy is at the level where he is and treats people the way that he does is probably largely a function of how he was raised as well, right? Yes, I think so. Which is kind of tragic, actually. This kind of gets back to this discussion we were having before about young people and this temptation that I see in myself and definitely among my peers to be like, oh, well, when we were coming up professionally, we were hazed and, you know, these kids can't hack it.

31:58But I actually think the kids are largely right. What was acceptable in a work environment when you and I were coming up, it should never have been acceptable. First of all, the treatment of women was abominable. Same for anybody who didn't identify as one of what back then were considered only two available genders. It was a pretty unenlightened time. And I'm not trying to be super woke or anything like that. I'm just saying the sort of militaristic hierarchical system in which I came up doesn't bring the best out of people. And I think what we know from the data is that the way to bring the best out of people is to make them feel safe.

32:38I mean, just think about what we know about the way the brain works. If you are in a fear state, the part of your brain that is operating is back here. It's called the amygdala. It's the ancient sort of reptile part of the brain, that's not the best decision-making mode to be in. If you feel safe, it's the prefrontal cortex that comes online. And so if you want to motivate your team, I think it is better not to criticize somebody as you're sending them out at the door to go risk their lives. I think it's better to, you know, if you want to talk about what their strengths and weaknesses are, you could say, hey, are you open to some feedback?

33:14I'm sharing this with you because I really care about your success and I'm invested in you. Here are a few things you could do better but generally speaking, you're doing great. And here's another chance to go show us what you got. Right. That's slightly better than, by the way, most of us think that you're not good at your job or whatever it was that he said. But it's hard to be overly critical of him because he was raised by wolves. I mean, I'm not, I'm being somewhat facetious and I don't know his parents, but like that was the world in which he came up. You know, I think Peter came by his quirks, honestly.

33:42More importantly, I think the changes we're seeing in the workplace now where that behavior is unacceptable, I think are largely positive. Now, of course, sometimes it goes too far and there is such a thing as safetyism and, you know, like, and that is that like safe space type animals where people are intolerant. It is back to something we talked about earlier, like the intolerance or inability to handle discomfort. I think it's good to interact with ideas that you don't like and that a safetyism would say that I'm we're going to take that off the table. I think It leads to a sort of intellectual atrophy if you're not interacting with tough ideas.

34:22I'm trying to go right down the middle here and say, on the one hand, we should not abuse junior staffers. That was not a good way to do business. On the other hand, we don't want to have an environment where you can't have tough discussions. You describe him as a man fueled by a combustible mix of preternatural talent and crushing insecurity, which is a hard way to live your life. in the newsroom was a never-ending psyops campaign. I mean, that sounds like every day is massively stressful. And that wasn't just - You'd rather be in a war zone than in the newsroom. I remember, so they're moving now, but the building that I spent 21 years of my life in, there are two entrances, one on 66th Street, and there's a back entrance on 67th.

35:05And I used to leave through that back entrance because I lived up on 75th Street. And 67th Street between Central Park West and Columbus is a very leafy, beautiful part of upper Manhattan. And I remember spending all day in that building freaking out about something. Talk about worrying about the wrong shit. I was probably just worried about the wrong shit all day long. Can I swear on this podcast? Yeah, sure. You just did. Yeah, but I don't know if you were going to be disapproving of it. Anyway, so I spent all day freaking out about what other people were thinking of me and who was getting the story I wanted and who was up and who was down.

35:37I remember walking out every evening and I'd step out in the fresh air And I would think, what was I worried about? There's a whole world out here. Like, why did I spend the whole day coiled like that? And part of it is, it was back then, the culture was by design, internally at ABC, adversarial. If you go back and read the book written by Rune Arledge, who was the boss, he was the president of ABC News when I arrived. He set it up as a series of stars. They were called The Magnificent Seven. It was Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Hugh Downs, and one other person whose name I'm forgetting.

36:18And they were meant to be at war with one another. So if you were, if you like me were close with Peter, you were automatically on the outs with his competing anchors. Oh, man. And this was true at the executive level, too. There were certain executives who I fell in with, but they had enemies. if you were friends with one that by definitionally you were not friends with the other. It was an incredibly difficult environment to operate in. And this is what I'm talking about when I'm saying like this shit would never fly in corporate America now. No, it's not even efficient or anything. I mean, it's just.

36:51It's totally inefficient. It's totally inefficient. God, I mean, look, I have sympathy for people who are hard on others because they're often exponentially harder on themselves in environments like this. Yes. And but it just seems it seems like you would want to change that environment so that it's not so horrible. It has changed. You know, by the time I left ABC in 2021, it was very different. You sometimes see in press reports like media reporters will describe ABC News as like famously combative internally. But that by the end of my tenure there was absolutely not the case. It was, I have, to this day, some of my closest friends are my colleagues from ABC News.

37:32And we, you know, are regularly barbecuing at each other's houses and going to baseball games with each other's kids and going to see movies together. And that really did change over time. But in my early days, it was not good. Jeez, man. With the benefit of the hindsight you have now, how do you navigate that sort of Hobbesian environment, you know, where the various broadcast, the anchors and they're competing with each other. It seems like you can't, like you said, you can't align yourself too closely with somebody because if they're on the outs, your whole career is over. I mean, how do you, it's massively competitive.

38:07And wasn't it Cuomo who was like, hey, I heard you got cats. Do you also sit down to pee? I mean, this is like ridiculous, the level of crap that you went through. That was actually pretty funny. Well, yeah, that one. That's why I made the notes. Yeah. Chris was a great friend and supporter when I was at ABC News. I haven't talked to him recently, but Chris and I are almost exactly the same age. I think he's a couple years older than me. And like that generation was me, Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, Bill Weir, Jake Tapper, David Muir. And we were, they were trying, the bosses were like treating us like we were gladiators, you know, we were trying to get us to dislike each other and to compete against one another.

38:49And it wasn't just our generation, it was the generation above us as, as discussed earlier. It really shows how an organization can be corrupted may not be the right word, but the phrase I often use in my little team now is that the fish rots from the head. So if there's a problem on my team, it's generally my fault because whatever pathology I'm bringing into the work environment, whether I want to or not, is bleeding out to the team. And so when I hear about dysfunction on my team, my story usually is not, oh, well, that person's a jerk. Although sometimes that does happen. Sometimes there are people that you need to get rid of.

39:29But usually it's like, oh, I should do some introspection now because there's something I'm doing that's creating an environment that's problematic. And I think what happened at ABC News was Rune Arledge, who was a genius in many, many ways, set up a system that was, you know, deliberately or not, quite toxic. Tell me about going to Pakistan. I know September 11th you start going to some, the crazy kicks up a notch. Yes. I remember getting off the plane and I had never been to, I don't know, can we say third world anymore? I think you're supposed to say developing, which is interesting because every place is developing.

40:06But we like euphemisms now. Okay. Well, I'd never been to a developing country before. It was like an incredible shock to the system being on the other side. I'd never been that far away from home. It was – I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. You know, I've spent huge chunks of my life being the only white person. And that's a really – I think more white people should have that experience. Yeah. Because you can see what it does to your nervous system. You know, you're always just aware that you're sticking out like a sore thumb. And that, it creates a lot of empathy, I think. Like what it's like for other people who are not in the dominant group, right?

40:46So yeah, so that was the beginning of spending years in places like, you know, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, West Bank, Gaza. I've been all over Africa, all over East Asia. I love being the fish out of water. but it's not for everybody. And you've done, I know you've done quite a bit of this work too. Yeah. Four times in North Korea? Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not getting shot at. If something, if that happens. Yeah. Something's gone wrong. Something's gone horribly wrong. Yeah. But you know, most of my travels were not to war zones. I mean, I spent a lot of time covering actually endangered species.

41:18That's actually quite interesting. It was really fun. I've been, you know, I've been riding on elephants and chasing rhinos and looking for tree kangaroos in Papua New Guinea and all of that. But ABC News was, when I was working there, just, it was a fantasy factory. I basically would dream up the coolest shit I could think of and convince my bosses to pay for it. And it was awesome. It was awesome. Until, you know, this whole side hustle of meditation and happiness took over and I just had to make a choice at some point. We'll get there at some point. Now, you said that there were swashbuckling types of people also on these things.

41:56Are they veterans of places like Bosnia, Rwanda? It seems like a movie where, I don't mean this in a patronizing way, it seems like a movie where a kid finds himself hanging out with mercenaries. And you're just like, wow, this is awesome. And I felt like a kid. I really did. I think I was 30 when this all started going down. And I know that's technically not a kid, but the other reporters. We are old now. That's a kid now. Yeah, well, saying this from age 53 definitely does seem young, but the other reporters were older and more experienced, and the other producers too. So I was in this environment of people who had covered, you know, the fall of the wall and had, you know, covered the war in Bosnia and had been in Kosovo and had a lot of experience.

42:40And they seemed like totally comfortable being, you know, in the presidential suite at the Islamabad Marriott, which later blew up. Jeez, I should not laugh. And I remember specifically, I remember Bob Woodruff, who, again, this might be a name that people don't remember, but he was very, very famous. When Peter Jennings died, Bob took over as the anchor. And then just a few weeks later, he got hit by a bomb in Iraq and had to have his whole head and brain operated on. It's a miracle that he's still alive. Yeah. And after that accident, he set me up with my wife. Really? Yes. Wow. I remember walking out of, there was a gym.

43:23I think it's still there. It used to be called the Reebok, and it was right across from, my whole life was like in this one little - Three blocks of Manhattan. Yes, when I wasn't traveling, my whole life was within four or five blocks of Manhattan. The office I worked, the gym I went to in my apartment. Jeez, that and like Rwanda. Yes, exactly. And I was walking out of the gym one night, and Bob and his wife, Lee, had set me up on a date with a young woman named Bianca. Dating apps didn't exist. again this was pre-iPhone's it was like 2006 I remember Bob calling my cell to make sure I was going and the last thing he said was trust me dude she's hot I guess that's something you can admit now that you guys are married and have children no and she is not that that's the most important thing you know but she's very beautiful and yeah I met her that night we got married not that long after but just to say there were a bunch of swashbuckling types around and it was really cool to be in that environment.

44:22I had like a healthy version, I think a healthy version of imposter syndrome. Like I did not walk in there cocky thinking, I know how to do what you do. I walked in there thinking, I'm going to watch you very closely and learn how to do what you do. That's important when you are, you could die if you do something wrong. I mean, it's important in all industries, but especially there, it's like, how much do I want to concern myself with ego right now? You talk about the fact that you can die and definitely people did. And I I lost not a few friends. Now, there's a whole very careful protocol if you're going into a combat environment.

44:58But back then, there was no protocol. I got no training. You should buy a helmet somewhere. I don't think we wore helmets. It was like... Well, I looked at video when I was researching this. I did not see you wearing a helmet. It was a couple of years into it, they started saying you have to wear a helmet, especially if you were embedded with the military. But generally speaking, maybe you had a flak jacket, but if it was super hot, maybe you didn't wear it. You know, it was, it was, you wouldn't want to get sweaty in that war zone. Well, it was 130 degrees sometimes in Baghdad. What's the difference at that point?

45:27Yeah. I remember one day. Is it really 130? One day we're in Mosul. We're embedded with the army and the cameraman I was working with fainted. And so I shot the rest of the story. And when I came back to the FOB, the forward operating base, they had him hooked up to an IV with an ice pack on his groin. On his groin, just to cool it down? Insult. Oh, is it? It was just a mess with him. Was he unconscious? No, he was conscious, but like kind of in a twilight zone. Oh, I see. So they were like, put this right here. Oh, that's good old hazing culture. They were ruthless, but they were much more good natured about it than my early days at ABC.

46:05Yeah. So the military was less ruthless than Peter Jennings. That's saying a lot, actually. I'd never put that together, but yes, it is. Wow. because the military is not necessarily known for taking it easy on guys who make mistakes or pass out in the desert. Yes. But, you know, so my experience with the military is that they are ruthlessly, they mock each other ruthlessly. Like I remember being in a, what's called an MRAP, which is a, an armored vehicle. I think it's a mine resistant vehicle of some kind. Mine resistant armored something. Yeah. I don't know. Personnel carrier. I don't know. But that would be MRAP.

46:43Yeah, it would. So I'm not sure. My apologies to anybody who knows anything about this, but I was in what I believe is an MRAP and everybody's wearing headsets. And, you know, you've got the gunner and the driver and then people in the back. And it's just a nonstop insult fest. Yeah. But with love. I wish there was more of that vibe in my early days at ABC because it was the insults, but without the love. Right, yeah. The whole, still sticking with me. There's a perception that you're not very good at this. That is, you still remember that. And it's been what, like 20 years, more than 20 years.

47:16It's the sense of purpose, I think, that you get from doing something like war reporting, being in an MRAP with your comrades. I mean, there's a lot of the war reporting types. People say they're adrenaline junkies, but I wonder, are they more maybe purpose junkies instead? Or in addition? Yeah, well, I was going to say, I mean, it might be hard to disambiguate those two. I think for me, it was both. It felt very important. The work felt really important. It was, actually. I mean, you didn't have TikTokers doing stuff from, or people recording Instagram videos. You were the message, or it wasn't going to get out at all.

47:50Correct, yes. So it felt really important, and it was thrilling. And that's a drug, and I definitely got addicted. You talk of a time where you went to interview these Taliban commanders. That must have been pretty damn exciting, right? They're like, okay, they're not going to kill us, probably, and we get to go talk to the Taliban in the middle of this war. Was that kind of a hell yeah moment or were you nervous? So the offer came in. We're in Quetta, Pakistan. So Quetta is in western Pakistan right on the border of, it's like southwestern Pakistan right on the border of Afghanistan and Kandahar is in southern Afghanistan.

48:31It was the capital. It was where the Taliban really had their stronghold. So Kabul is the capital of the country, but Kandahar was kind of like the spiritual and military stronghold of the Taliban. And this was a few weeks after 9-11, and they were actively being bombed by the Americans or the coalition. And our local fixer got an offer from the Taliban to come in and kind of embed with them and report from their vantage point. And I remember we had an offer in air quotes. Well, I mean, they didn't have any leverage. It wasn't like a gun to our heads because we were in Pakistan and they couldn't force us to do it.

49:10It was really like, do you want to do this? I thought you meant your fixer got a job offer from them. No, no, no, no. The fixer got the offer of like, hey, do you want to bring your team in and let them spend a couple days with us? And I remember we had this big meeting and we're all like in a circle with chairs. There was 15, 20 of us from ABC, and people were debating the merits of it, and I knew. Pros, Taliban interviews, cons, might die in coalition bombing. I remember letting the conversation play out and knowing I don't care what anybody says, I'm doing this. Was the conversation generally, hey, we should do this, or was it like, if anybody wants to go do this, fine, but we're, you know, we'll fly.

49:54Most people really did not want to go. Really, yeah. And nobody was forced to go. there were three of us who were willing to do it and we did it it was me and a cameraman and an engineer so i needed a cameraman and then i needed somebody who was going to be able to get to access the satellite so that we could send the footage out those guys were willing to do it and so we went are those kind of career making things where it's like i'll do this and then are you is it expected like hey jennings i went to afghanistan all these other people didn't want to go pick me for the next opportunity? Or is it just like, you know what?

50:27You kill what you eat and that's it. No, no thank you. It's not that linear. I mean, I thought, of course, I remember the two guys that I went in with, with these British guys, Matt and Jeff, and they would make fun of me the whole time. They were like pretending to be me back in a bar in Lower Manhattan, bragging about my exploits in Afghanistan. And I think I thought that it was gonna be, you know, like a career making thing. But as it turns out, there was a really negative article written about me in the New York Times criticizing my coverage. So it didn't end up being that positive for me.

51:02What was wrong with your coverage? Too sympathetic to the Taliban? Really? Yeah. I remember there was a BBC reporter there who didn't leave the compound much because he just had to be on the air all the time. Oh, I see. And I actually, because ABC News only had a few big broadcasts, Nightline, World News Tonight, and Good Morning America, we were not on all the time. I had time to go out and really spend time with the Taliban. So I actually really got to know some of these young kids and interviewed them. And I talked about how, you know, they would whisper to me, take me to America. Really? They really were not as fearsome as the media had portrayed them.

51:40I thought this was great material. Yeah, it sounds amazing. There was a culture reporter from The Times, Karen James. I'll never forget her name. You don't need that. That's where Karen comes from. Karen James. She spelled her name with a C and Karen did not like my coverage and I was devastated. That is too bad because I think now it's, oh, we want nuance. You know, hey, our enemy is not just like faceless ISIS level. I mean, unless it is ISIS, right? It's not just like there's complexities going on here and it's like, oh, I'm going to bring some of those in the article. And it's like, we just want you to wave American flags around and be like, we're definitely right about this.

52:15Yes, I think it's true. We nuance is important and sometimes undervalued. in Karen's defense, I do want to say that I was very green and I probably made all sorts of embarrassing errors. So that humiliation, that very public humiliation was a good bit of seasoning for me. Yeah, man. A lot of us take seasoning at work, but not all of it ends up in the New York Times. Yeah, it was hard. It was hard. But like, who remembers it now? Like people, you know, just you and Karen. Yeah, Karen probably doesn't remember it. Karen's like, Jordan, I love your show, but that Dan Harris guy was, he's always been such a loser.

52:48Right. She's going to just send you a little note that says still a schmuck. Still. Yeah. After all these years, still not good. Good thing he got into meditation and podcasting where all you losers belong. Yeah. Um, it's interesting that these guys whispered, take me to America. I mean, is it, were they messing around or were they like, no, really take me to America. This sucks. No, that's incredible. Yeah. I mean, they were just scared kids, you know, they weren't the murderous religious zealots. They may be now, but it was their bosses. And these were the guys who, I'm just talking about the kids who were assigned to just keep an eye on me while I was out taking pictures.

53:25The bleeders, those were not people to trifle with. Yeah, of course. A friend of mine, he's in high-level hostage negotiations, international stuff. I don't know. He didn't really give me too much permission to talk. I'll be blurry here, vague, but he told me about a time he went to Lebanon. Lebanon's full of militias. A lot of them are religious. And he talked about a meeting where it was him, the leader of the Lebanese Christians and Hezbollah and Hamas and local Lebanese army and a few other stakeholders. And they were all smoking shisha and drinking scotch, which I don't know how much people out there know about Islam, but alcohol is generally haram, forbidden.

54:03They were all drinking and having fun. He said every guy in this room is a multi-billionaire and their militias are right now shooting at each other, sniping each other, setting booby traps for each other. They'll kill each other. These guys are all laughing and smoking and drinking together. And he said that one of the guys turned to him and goes, now you understand Lebanon because it's just like, these guys are all just profiting off of this crap. It's really sad actually. I don't doubt any of that. And I think what's even scarier is that there are true believers who are, you know, we're seeing this play out in the Middle East right now.

54:37There are true believers on both sides, religious zealots on both sides. And those are the people you really ought to worry about. I would take the corrupt ones over the people who believe that there is a heavenly reward for... Well, the corrupt ones can be bought off, right? The Hamas leaders that are in Qatar in a five-star hotel and the crazies that are in the Israeli Knesset who are never going to send their own kids over there, those are the people that can potentially be reasoned with or bought out in some other way, compensated. Yeah, the people who have lost all their family or are like, God has given me the right to do this.

55:10Those are the people that you are not going to convince. That's what makes this conflict terrifying. Because one type is pretending to be the other type pretty much any given time. That's not healthy. Do you ever wonder about these kids that you met in Afghanistan? Like, are they still alive? Like, I just wonder, is this guy sitting around somewhere watching friends on his phone and being like, I met an American once. He was a newscaster. Yeah, I do wonder. I mean, who knows what happened to their lives? They might now be senior figures in the Taliban. Maybe now they're true believers. or maybe they got killed.

55:43Who knows? They live in a rough neighborhood. Yeah, to say the least. You mentioned that when you got home from war, you got sick, you know, essentially depression. But like not just, well, tell me about that. I felt horrible physically. I just felt like I had a fever all the time and no energy. And this was summer of 2003. So it was, I covered Afghanistan and then I spent a bunch of time in Iraq, sort of the pre-invasion, invasion, then the insurgency. I'd spent a good amount of time in various war zones at this time, and I came home and I felt awful. I did all these tests. I went to see all these doctors.

56:21I had my apartment tested for a gas leak. I mean, I like went all out. I could not figure out. Oh, really? You were thinking like, oh, I must have radon coming up through the floor. Yes. And I never once considered. That it was psychological. Yeah. Really? There's a different time, right? Now I feel like if you feel like crap, one of the first things you think of is, is it the way that I feel causing me to be ill? Because looking back, it's almost, it seems like, oh, I left this war zone where I had a ton of purpose and now I'm like going back and forth to Planet Fitness and wondering what kind of burrito I'm gonna get for lunch, right?

56:51It's like you just yanked the plug of purpose out of the wall. Yes, and the adrenaline out of the wall. And I think I was really addicted. You know, even though my life when I was home was pretty exciting. I was on national television covering big stories. That's true. But it's not the same as, you know, putting your life on the line. But you make a really interesting point about how things have changed. It's true. In 2003, you wouldn't go to the mind-body connection. I was just like, oh, it must be Lyme or Epstein-Barr or whatever. You know, like, I had all these tests done, and nobody in the medical profession even suggested it to me.

57:30It was only when I finally, as a last defense, went to a psychiatrist. It was like, yeah, dude, you're depressed. And now— It's like the first thing you think of. Well, I mean, it's also—I mean, it's interesting to think about it. I think it's incredibly positive that we are really open to discussions about mental health. Yeah. Incredibly positive. And I sometimes wonder whether we've taken it too far. Just a little bit. How so? Specifically, I worry about people on social media talking about their diagnoses in a way that is just wallowing in the suffering, which has some benefit because, you know, it's good to normalize.

58:09Never worry alone. Yeah. Yes. Never worry alone. Exactly. Exactly. And if that's all that's on offer, instead of actually here are some things you can do about it, I think that can lead to a little bit of contagion or deepening of these feelings as opposed to agency and empowerment. It's funny you mentioned contagion. I had Jonathan Haidt on this show, you know, and he talks about social contagion of things like eating disorders and depression with social media. Because since that algorithm feeds kids, especially what they're already watching, you get girls being funneled like eating disorder content and guys to a certain extent, but with guys, it's often like muscle and steroid level kind of content.

58:52We mask it as biohacking. We call it biohacking, but what it is is injecting yourself with testosterone and getting an eight pack or whatever along those lines. That stuff's dangerous. There's other things that are socially contagious and even talking about it will get you canceled, which is too bad. Because I think mental health needs to be discussed and needs to be discussed openly. And if you're starting to apply that political correctness veneer over things, it just gets ruined. It's great that we can, I was too embarrassed back then to admit that I had any psychological issues because it was not accepted in this rather toxic atmosphere.

59:27Now it would be accepted and that's great. But I think if we're fetishizing, oh, what's your diagnosis? Here's my diagnosis and we're over medicating. I think that could be a problem, although I'm not against medication. It can have really positive effects on some people. I think there just needs to be an emphasis in the dialogue on what is doable to help rather than just the pathos and the pathology of the suffering. That's the missing element, I think. Reporters say war is a drug. You mentioned you went through like, was it kind of like war zone withdrawal? Is that fair? Yeah. Adrenaline withdrawal.

1:00:05You see this in much more seriously among the soldiers, the troops, because, you know, my experience was nothing compared to theirs. In my little way, that's what was happening for me, that I had all this excitement. I would come home to what normally would be an exciting situation. But how can it compete with standing in Iraq and watching, you know, missiles fall or watching the fall of Saddam or whatever it is? It can't compete with that. And, yeah, I really struggled. And I made a bunch of dumb decisions Like what? Cocaine Okay That's just one decision. Go on. Well, I made it repeatedly. I see.

1:00:44There you go. Yeah. So did you have an addictive personality before that? Yes. Yeah. Is that sort of something you knew about yourself your whole life? Yes. I don't think I did much about it. I mean, I never, first time I did cocaine, I was 32 or 33. Okay. I had never done hard drugs. I drank, but not really, I mean, I have alcoholism in my family, but I never, I'm not an alcoholic. I didn't like it that much. Right. I smoked a little weed. I didn't like that that much either. But when I did cocaine, I was like, oh, this finally found my drug. This is my poison. And I remember specifically because you had asked me before about being sick and testing for gas leaks and Epstein-Barr and whatever.

1:01:24This was the first thing that made me feel better. Well, actually, actually, the first thing that made me feel better was going back to the war zone. Oh, I see. Yeah, I remember one day I had this very clear memory of coming home. this was pre-Iraq this was during the second intifada in Israel so 2002 there was a Palestinian uprising yeah and I was spending a lot of time in the West Bank and Gaza and covering it I came home I was having an early taste of like what it's like to be withdrawing from adrenaline and I was just kind of feeling like shit and I was fighting with my bosses it just wasn't going well and they sent me back.

1:02:04And I remember getting off the plane directly into an armored vehicle and going to the West Bank and covering a riot in the town of Janine in the West Bank and diving into a ditch after like shots went off and then getting back into the car and falling asleep because I was jet lagged and waking up on the side of the road and we were out of danger. And there was some local Palestinian gentleman selling watermelon and I was eating some watermelon with the West Bank. It was beautiful, just this beautiful environment. And I realized I don't feel sick anymore. It was just, it was gone. And the same thing happened the first time I did cocaine.

1:02:47Could have been the watermelon? No. No, it was not the watermelon. It was not the watermelon. It really just, you know, this malaise, this lethargy, this languishing that I was doing when the adrenaline was taken away from me, cocaine, yeah, it did it. I don't recommend it, but it definitely did it. It's a weird bind you're in. What's more sustainable, a cocaine habit or a war zone habit? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Neither, right? So I had to give them both up. Oh my gosh. So when you're in the war zone, you can't get cocaine, you don't need the cocaine. Is it just like when you come back, you're like, all right, here's the baggie.

1:03:22Yes. Get my war zone fix. Yes. I don't even think I made the connection. Of course not. I didn't make the connection until I know at some point you're going to ask me about having a panic attack. It wasn't until I had a panic attack. Spoiler alert. From like 2002 to 2005, I would go back and forth from war zones or I also covered like the presidential campaign. I covered John Kerry's campaign when he lost to George W. Bush. I was basically going between these big experiences professionally. And then when I was home, I would occasionally go out and rip it up, you know, bright lights, big city style.

1:03:57But I did not make the connection that one was compensatory for the other until I had a panic attack on national television. Now for a word from our sponsors. Not as exciting as cocaine in a war zone, but it's certainly the next best thing. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of the sponsor, you can't find the code, email me, jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

1:04:32I am more than happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. All right. Now, back to Dan Harris. yeah so tell me tell me about that panic attack i'm sure it's a fine moment that you love reliving yeah so it was june 2004 i was filling in on good morning america there used to be a good morning america a person who would come on and read the headlines at the top of the hour that person in 2004 was robin roberts who is now the main host of the show but she was the newsreader then. That was the technical title. And I was filling in for her, which I had done a bunch of times.

1:05:14And the job was at 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. you sit in front of a camera and read the main headlines of the morning. And it gives the main hosts a break and gives the audience a quick news rundown. So I was in the middle of doing this and I'm like looking at the camera and there's a teleprompter and I'm reading the words off of the teleprompter and all of a sudden it becomes incredibly salient to me that there are five plus million people on the other side of that camera and they can see me right now and maybe that should make me a little bit nervous. And then my mouth started to dry up. My palms were sweaty.

1:05:55My heart was racing. My lungs seized up. my mind started to register that my body was in mutiny mode and the more terrified I became psychologically the more my body reacted and it's kind of a what a friend of mine calls a toilet vortex of this like vicious cycle yeah and I just at some point I just couldn't breathe which is a problem if you're trying to read the news on television live live and so I had to quit in the middle and toss it back to the main hosts of the show I mean in some ways that was like a real luxury because if it was just, you know, many shows are just you, you know, it's just you anchoring the news.

1:06:34But I, this was a multi host show. So I was able to say, Hey, Diane and Charlie back to you, or like kind of squeak that out to the extent that I could speak. If I hadn't been able to do that, I don't know. I probably would have ripped the mic off and run away. Oh my God. That would have been, that's a career ending move. I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was horrible. It was horrible. If you look at the video and if you just Google panic attack on television, and it's the first result. Yeah. If you look at the video, one of the responses I often get is, it doesn't look good, but it doesn't look that bad.

1:07:02Yeah, it wasn't that bad. And I think part of that is because I was able to toss it back to these other hosts. And part of it also is that even though I was young at the time, I think I was like 33, 34, my whole adult life had been on camera. So I'm like pretty good at concealing my emotions, which is not an interpersonal strength, as it turns out, that has caused problems for me in my relationships. But in that moment, and it was pretty good that my poker face is strong. It seems like now, well, I guess top line newscasters, they don't seem overly emotional about things, but it's weird. In podcast land, it's like, no, no, we like it when you get fired up, or we like it when you get angry or indignant about something.

1:07:39It's like, you don't see David Muir doing that, right? He's funny. He always looks like he's not quite able to see the teleprompter, and he's off to the side. I just want to ask him, like, are the lights bothering you, or is that just like your trademark look? He's got that little, like, tonight. Unlike Peter Jennings, David Muir is an extremely friendly person. He does not look friendly on the news. Really? No. No, he's the sweetest. That's funny. He's such a, like, I actually emailed him the other day because when the Trump verdict came down, I did something I never do, which is I turned on the news.

1:08:11I actually stopped watching TV news like a decade ago. Even as soon as you stopped working, they're like, I'm out. No, no, no. Way before I stopped working. I just lost interest in, I still read the Times and I read a bunch of Substack. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but television news just stopped doing it for me. But I turned the news on and I wanted to see ABC's coverage of this huge historic moment. And David was on. He was so good. And I sent him a note. I was like, dude, you're just a master. And he got right back. He sent me this very sweet note. I mean, he is like the anti-Peter Jennings.

1:08:43He is very nice to everybody. That's great. Yeah. He always looks so dang serious. I'm like, oh, this guy must be a terror to work with. No, no, no, no. That's so funny. Not at all. Speaking of you becoming suddenly aware that 5 million people are watching you, the inner voice, you've said before that we assume the voice in our heads is actually us and it's not. Tell me about that. Because if the voice in our heads is not us, who are we then? That's a very deep question. That's a very deep question. Don't get too deep in the answer. I'm not going to follow. We don't have that kind of time. Well, how can I say this?

1:09:15We have many modes that we go into, right? So there's self-critical mode, there's generous mode, there's fearful mode. So which one of them is you? And by the way, if you go looking for who ordered up that thought, you know, Jordan, you might be walking down the street later today and be like, you know what? I don't look good today. I just passed myself in a reflective shape. Yeah, it never happens. I don't really have to choose a different example. Who asked for that thought? No, that's true. It's true. I mean, sometimes actually it's very interesting if you're in the middle of some sort of thought shitstorm like anxiety or self-criticism.

1:09:53It's an interesting way to flip the script is to go looking for who's having these thoughts? Whose voice is this anyway? You can't find it. And that actually is kind of liberating. In Buddhism, they often say that the not finding is the finding. to see the insubstantiality of what you are calling yourself or Jordan is a relief because then you don't have to take all of the garbage that your ego is vomiting up so personally. You don't have to act it out as if it is gospel truth. First of all, it's just very interesting, but it's also very practical. Did I go too deep? No, no, no, no, it does make sense.

1:10:31It's just that I would never assume that the voice in my head is not me. It's like the only part of me that I was like pretty damn sure before this conversation was actually me. It's deeply counterintuitive. Yeah. And it's countercultural. In the East, the idea that there is no core self, that this sense that you have, that there is some Jordan behind your eyes and between your ears, it's actually a non-controversial idea in many cultures in the East. It's been around for millennia. take enough psychedelics and this truth will come bearing down upon you with thunderous force. This is when you take psychedelics and they talk about ego death.

1:11:10I mean, I had this experience when I was 14 years old and I was smoking skunk weed with my buddies at Newton South High School. I was a freshman and I was in the gym watching a JV basketball game with all my friends. And I just smoked some weed out in the parking lot and the weed started to kick in. And I had a classic psychedelic experience where I realized, holy shit, everything that's happening right now is happening right now. Oh, no, no, no, no. Now it's right now. Now it's now. Now it's now. Maybe that weed wasn't so bad. This was, I don't know if it was the quality of the weed or the quality of my mind at that moment, but this was my first panic attack.

1:11:53And I realized that I don't think I would have been able to articulated at the time. But now in hindsight, what I realized is I was just seeing that the solid ground that we think we're walking around on isn't so solid. And this is what happens on these psychedelic drugs. And this is what can happen in deep meditation. And it is healthy. It is also true. It's an insight into what is true. But this can sound super esoteric and maybe not that helpful. But what is helpful about it is that you don't need to believe your thoughts, whether you see them as you or not whether you want to go down that rabbit hole or not that's fine but what is universally helpful is every single thought you have you do not need to act it out like it's a tiny dictator the thought oh i should say something that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of my marriage or i should go eat 75 burritos because i'm lonely or bored you can call bullshit on these thoughts and that is really helpful that sounds powerful i think you said something along the lines of the ego is obsessed with the past and the future at the expense of the present.

1:13:00Yes. I mean, I obviously identify with that. I think everyone probably can identify with that unless they've done a shitload of psychedelics, as you'd mentioned, and their ego is dead and not talking to them anymore. The problem with psychedelics is that you can have those experiences with, and I'm not somebody who's done a lot of psychedelics and I'm not against them at all. I think there's a lot of healing potential. I see them more as medicine than as drugs, and I use that drugs in the pejorative, I think there's a ton of potential to psychedelics. But one of the problems is that the learning can be episodic, that you have the experience, but it doesn't get into your molecules in a deep way because it's kind of unearned.

1:13:37This isn't always true, but this is sometimes true that you take the molecule and you have this big experience and then it's hard to access it again. Integrate it, yeah. Or integrate it or to re-access it. What I think can be more true about meditation, since it's such a pain in the ass, you know, you have to do it and do it and do it. And the big experience, if it ever happens, is slower, is that you're getting it into your marrow in a deeper way. Yeah, that makes sense, right? So the meditation is sort of like getting strong through weightlifting. And psychedelics are more like getting strong because you're Popeye and you get a can of spinach.

1:14:11And your muscles plump up. Yes. And that is true enough. I just want to be big. Just so nobody, like, don't at me. I just want to be clear. I'm a huge supporter of the research around psychedelics. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I think it can affect lasting change in some people. But even Michael Pollan, who I'm sure you've interviewed and I've definitely interviewed, even he will say that the downside or one of the downsides or the knocks is that you can have these big experiences and they're a bit ephemeral. Yeah, I suppose there's so much good research on psychedelics and MDMA for like PTSD. Yes. So, yeah, I definitely don't want to scare people away from asking their doctor about this kind of stuff.

1:14:53This is another one of these great aspects of the fact that it's become socially acceptable to talk about our mental health challenges. I don't know if it's a parallel discussion or the same discussion in a different form. But the fact that psychedelics are also now back in favor. I'm sure there are problems, too, that we should look at. And maybe, you know, as often is the case, the pendulum can swing too far. But generally speaking, and from what I know of the research around psychedelics and what's happening out there, it seems very positive. We probably at some point are going to need some more regulation.

1:15:25Sure. And like a good housekeeping seal of approval and quality control and all of that stuff. But the fact that, you know, veterans can come home and talk about the mental health challenges and that there are these novel treatments that heretofore were either illegal or or embarrassing. That's awesome. You mentioned that you were doing a lot of cocaine, had a panic attack on live TV. You were mostly only present in the war zone slash on the drugs. How did you I mean, you're not on cocaine these days. So how did you kick all that stuff? You got any? No, officer. I do not have any. Are you a narc?

1:16:01No, I am not on cocaine. I've not done cocaine in 20 years. We're too old for that stuff. Yeah, it would also kill me. Yeah. So I went, I had a panic attack and then I went to see a psychiatrist who was the first person to point out to me that the cause of the panic attack was most likely that I was doing drugs. I was not high on the air, but he was like, if you're doing it with some regularity, your brain chemistry is going to change and you're more likely to lose it in any number of contexts, especially live television. So I quit that day and he did not think I had been doing it enough to warrant a trip to rehab, but he did want me to see him once or twice a week.

1:16:37And I ended up seeing him, I think for 10 years until he got promoted upstairs. Dr. Brotman, shout out to Dr. Brotman. He was awesome. And he really helped me. You know, it was not easy. You know, I really wanted to keep doing it. And I had a lot of friends who were doing it. And so it was complicated in those relationships. And so that was a real struggle. It took me a couple of years to like feel okay. Wow. With that. That's a lot of therapy, by the way. It's like a thousand hours of therapy. It was a lot of therapy. Holy moly. Yeah. But I learned a lot. And it was through that, that I got turned on to this whole meditation and in Buddhism thing, you know, because Bratman himself wasn't really into it, but he mentioned it and I started reading a few books and then I was off to the races.

1:17:14So you began seeing thoughts just as thoughts. And it's hard for me though because worry it feels like it keeps me on my toes so it feels useful in some ways it is useful in some ways okay good because i would say worrying works man 99 of the things i worry about never happen uh yeah i don't know if that is evidence for worrying work i don't think working i think some that joke failed no i got in quite land okay good well you know that's a um And Ernest, that's a, no, I'm getting the name wrong. Samuel Longhorn Clemens. But what did he write under it? What was his pen name? He wrote Huckleberry Finn.

1:17:54Oh, God. Why am I saying his name? We should both know this. Yes, this is embarrassing. It is. We should edit it. We have to edit it together once we find it and feel like. Mark Twain. Oh, yeah. Mark Twain. Thank you, Lauren. That's Mark Twain, by the way. Yes, thank you, Jordan. Mark Twain said, most of the worst things that happened to me never happened. And that is true. We're just constantly conjuring situations in our mind, situations that have not happened. But the suffering we're doing is actually happening. So some worrying or plotting or planning or stress does make sense, but it very quickly crosses the line into useless rumination and manufactured suffering.

1:18:36I see. And so the value of practices that will give you more self-awareness, including therapy, talking to friends, and I would argue meditation, is that it helps you draw the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination. And that has been very helpful to me. That is not to say I still struggle with anxiety in a very real way. And so there's no silver bullet here. And that's why my whole shtick is, you know, 10%. 10 % happy. Yeah, just go for it. Lowering the bar. I mean, I just don't, I mean, you've done how many thousand plus interviews? Has anybody presented you with a silver bullet for anything?

1:19:16Yeah, a lot of people have tried. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they always have something for sale, those people. So my point is, what I think is on offer is messy marginal improvement over time. But perfection is not available. I think that's important. I mean, what was the trending? I feel like when we first talked about this, there was something trending. You know, it's the secret. That's what it was. Oh my God, yes. That stupid law of it, like if you manifest. But you know it's coming back now. It is coming back. That's why I was going to bring it up. People still send me messages about this and I'm like, my God, have we not passed this already?

1:19:51I see influencers, podcasters and stuff talk about this and I go, surely nobody's actually buying it. It's a huge thing right now. Look, magical thinking is, you know, it's been with us since humans. That's true. started walking on two feet. And I get the appeal. You can disprove it with a very easy thought experiment. We were talking about the earthquake in Haiti, Port-au-Prince. So if it is true that you can control objective reality through the power of positive thinking, is the opposite true? So was everybody in Port-au-Prince, Haiti during that earthquake engaged in some mass cognitive error that resulted in incalculable woe and suffering coming down upon them?

1:20:34Of course not. So this is just an easily falsifiable set of beliefs. Do I think that there's some value to being optimistic and positive and working your ass off in pursuit of your goals? Absolutely. But do I think that you can cure your own cancer through the power of your thoughts? No, I'm highly skeptical. Yeah. Even, and I think it's so funny, this quote's been said three times in three different days on this trip that I'm on right now, praise Allah, but also tie your camel to the post. Absolutely. It's funny because one guy who told me this was a Israeli Jewish guy. I know it's in your book.

1:21:08I think it's in your book. It is. And another person who told me is definitely like, I'm not talking to even Muslims. It's just such a really funny, famous line from the Quran. I love it because it's like trust in God, but you know it, lock the door. Just lock the door. You should lock the door too. Yeah. Ronald Reagan's, when he was negotiating arms deals with the Russians used to say, trust, but verify. And it's a similar thing. Is the universe mysterious and maybe magical in some ways? Sure. I'm open to that. Quantum stuff. Yeah. Like I don't need, it's incredible that we even exist. And if you lose touch with that, you're missing out, you know, I'm not trying to kill all the joy.

1:21:45In the magical thinking, like the secret, there's no post. You're visualizing the post and the camel. Yes. And just hoping that both of them show up. Yes. Which is not how any of this works. Correct. Tell me about propancha. This is a cool concept. I love it because it's such a relief that people have come up with a name for a thing we all do to ourselves that we think may be just like, only we do this. Yes. So propancha is, it means a lot of things in the ancient language of Pali, but one application of it is the mental movie making we do when say we stub our toe and then we imagine I'm never going to walk again or why does this always happen to me I'm always the guy who stubs his toe I'm not going to be able to play squash later tonight or whatever we just we make these phantasmagoric projections into the future as a result of some data point in the present moment.

1:22:44That is propuncia. And we're doing this all day long. Somebody looks at us some way in a room and we think that person hates us. Oh my God, I'm never going to get a raise because that person might be my boss someday and I'm going to die alone. We just make the, it happens really quickly and we're doing this all day long. And just to be able to put a label on it is really helpful. So the next time you notice yourself doing it, if you can remember the word propancha, you can just say projection if you want or movie making or whatever. It just kind of takes the air out of it and helps you do what I think is really important, which is to not take this self-inflicted, self-manufactured suffering so seriously.

1:23:29and there are just these very effective ways to work with the mind that often involve just seeing clearly what's happening. And so the fact that there's a name for it is really helpful. I think that is helpful because then, one, you realize you're not the only person who does it. Two, if there's a name for the phenomenon, it's essentially so common that you can call it out every time it's happening, which makes it less like, this is definitely real. Speaking of worry and worry not necessarily being kind of useful, how can you essentially advise us not to worry about the things we have to do in the world.

1:24:01Like if I miss my plane, that is a real genuine problem. It's not an irrelevant thought. Yeah, there's a great, and this is not, I want to give credit where it's due, there's a great little tool you can use to figure out whether the worrying makes sense. And this comes from a guy named Joseph Goldstein, who's my meditation teacher. And he's awesome, just turned 80. And I remember I actually asked him once, dude, just what you just asked me, You know, there are times there's some shit I need to worry about sometimes. And he's like, yeah, that's true. But maybe on the 18th run through, ask yourself one simple question.

1:24:37Is this useful? And that is brilliant because it cuts right through the nonsense. Is this useful? No, but I'm doing it compulsively, potentially. Yeah, but once you see that it's not useful, you can change the channel. That's true. And it may come rushing back, but you can change the channel again. I mean, I think, and this is, you may have heard me say this before, but there's so much wisdom out there. The hard part is just remembering to apply it. Well, I was even going to make a joke like now I got to remember to remember that. Yes. Well, honestly, I mean, this is why I tattoo. I mean, like I have a tattoo on my left wrist and my wife and I got tattoos last summer and she's already making noises about, are we going to do it again this summer?

1:25:19Wow. So like is this useful would be not a bad little tattoo. On my left wrist, it says F-T-B-O-A-B. It's kind of off-brand in its sincerity, because I'm usually not very earnest, but it stands for the benefit of all beings. And it's a reminder to me to not be so selfish, because I am wired for a certain amount of fear-based acquisitiveness, selfishness. And so, but my job really is to be helpful. And so I like to have this right next to my watch. So when I check the time, I remember, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My job is to be helpful. And so maybe on my other risk, is this useful? Or Joseph has all these little expressions that are good ways to just kind of remember what you know, but tend to forget because the world is always dragging us into habit.

1:26:09What are you going to do when your kid wants a tattoo? And he's like, dad, you have one. Mom has one. He just got his ears pierced. It's different. I feel like that's like your wife's probably like he'll take those out in a few years. Tattoo, not going anywhere. My dad always said that the hardest part of parenting is letting your kids make their own mistakes. And I made a lot of mistakes and he had to put up with it. And so I tend not to be overly prescriptive with my son. I've basically chosen two things to lecture him about. And other than that, I just try to be a supportive listener. Yeah, that's a good strategy.

1:26:43I actually would love to get a ton of tattoos. I just want the ability to turn them off when I don't want them anymore. And that's not how tattoos work. It can be a little claustrophobic. Like the morning after I woke up and I was like, oh man, this thing is, this is never coming off. Never coming off. But it has been so helpful. I mean, because I'm looking down in this direction all the time because I'm looking at my watch or my arms are out in front of me while I'm on a exercise bike. I mean, you just, I see these letters all the time. And for me, I just, I need this reminder. As I often say, the hardest part of personal development is forgetting.

1:27:19Because you listen to a great podcast, you read a great book. It opens your eyes, but then the world's just dragging you back into denial and routine. And so you need ways to wake up. And so for me, tattoo, if my son wanted to get it, I mean, he's nine, he's not getting a tattoo until he's 18. But, you know, if you wanted to get a tattoo of something like. That's what you think. But yeah, yeah, go ahead. Exactly. Exactly. If tattoos are as big as vice, let that be my problem. Yeah, could be worse. Your book has a lot of tiny bits of wisdom. one I love, which is there's no point in being unhappy about the things you can't change.

1:27:52And there's no point in being unhappy about the things that you can change. Did I do that right? I feel like I might not have done that right. Let me do that again. I'm trying to think it through. I'll just do it again in case I write it wrong. There's no point in being unhappy about things you can't change. And there's no point in being unhappy about the things you can. So if you can't change it, why be unhappy about it? It's already, there's nothing you can do. and if you can change it, there's no point in being unhappy. You can just change it. Go change it, yes. Yeah. I feel like I'm glad I said it twice because there's people who are jogging or like driving.

1:28:23Angela and Blake, pay attention to the road. And they're like, oh God. So just leave that in there, Jace. Do you pull Angela and Blake out of nowhere or are those two people you know? No. Often when I say something twice or I'll say, I'll just name people and I figure statistically, there are people with those names that are freaking out that I just, there's a woman named Angela who's grocery shopping right now we're driving and she's going, oh my, oh my God. Wait, how does he know? That's the voice in my head. It's shocking. It jars them back into the present moment. I think it's really true.

1:28:53First of all, it's not my observation. Most of the things I say in the book and elsewhere are like taken from other people. Joseph has a great phrase that he's like, we're part of a lineage of thieves. So we're just taking wisdom from the millennia and like re-skinning it and re-languaging it for modern audiences. I think it is true. If there's nothing you can do about a thing, worrying about it, there's not a lot of utility in that. And if there is something you can do, then do it. Having said that, like I'm a worrier and I get it. We come from a multi-thousand year tradition of worrying about things.

1:29:27Overall though, your podcast and book pointed the idea that happiness is essentially a learnable skill, which is pretty empowering. Yes. That's the whole point. That's the whole point of my life now is to point that out to people in a million different ways that you're not stuck. As I often say, this is like my go-to language, but it's true. Like you're not stuck with your current mind and traits like they're unalterable factory settings. They are trainable skills. So I've just got to find new ways to say that and present that information until I can't breathe anymore. I mean, that is, it's incredibly good news.

1:30:09It's incredibly good news. And so I used to do bad news. And now this is the news I do. And there are many ways to train these skills. Obviously, I spend a lot of time talking about meditation, but therapy, relationships, nature, medication, exercise. There are many ways that you can train your body and your mind and psychedelics, and we should be investigating all of them. Dan, I'm grateful to know you, man. Really. We've been friends and every time I hang out, it's just such a pleasure. I feel the same way. Thanks for having me on. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Jonna Mendez.

1:30:49She was the chief of disguise for the CIA in Moscow during the latter part of the Cold War. We'd really get into the weeds on how they hid people and hid spy gear in one of the most hostile espionage environments anywhere in the world. We invented technology that didn't even exist yet. The small batteries, for instance, they're in our watches and our phones and all of that stuff today. They're kind of like Q from James Bond, but it's the CIA. We could create any kind of character over your face. Masks that came out of Hollywood. We'd say, great, go down to the cafeteria and have lunch. This is at CIA headquarters where everybody knows everybody in the cafeteria.

1:31:26And they would go and discover that no one paid any attention to them. You go, wow, I'm hiding in plain sight. They were following us just every minute. The case officer would step out of the car. The driver would hit a button. This dummy would pop up wearing the same clothes as the guy that had just left. Trailing surveillance would come around the corner and they'd follow that car all night. They never knew. And if they could get to those people, they would execute them. They were feeding people into these crematoriums, feet first, alive. Unbelievable. A really valuable agent said, I'll work for you on one condition.

1:32:03and that is that you give me the ability to take my own life. Eventually, everybody got arrested. So they arrested him, and we had put that L pill we gave him in the cap of the Montblanc pin. It was cyanide, and he knew where it was. And they said, we want you to write your confession. So they brought him his Montblanc pin. For more with John Amandes, including some incredible spy stories that will really perk your ears, check out episode 344 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. Love, love, love talking to Dan. What a smart, wise guy and a good friend. All things Dan Harris will be in the show notes at JordanHarbinger.com, including 10 % Happier.

1:32:41Check out the show. Check out the app as well. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The idea here is to give you something specific, practical, that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes every week. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about 6 Minute Networking over at 6MinuteNetworking.com.

1:33:12I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn for those of y 'all who use that one. That's where the sane people are, although that is changing rapidly. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who needs a little bit of mindfulness or would love a conversation like this, maybe they're in a high-stress work environment and could use some wise words, definitely share this episode with them.

1:33:45In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Vital Proteins. You've probably heard of Vital Proteins. They're the number one brand of collagen peptides in the U.S. and for good reason. A lot of people, myself included, take it pretty much daily to support things like healthy hair, skin, nails, bones, joints, all the good stuff. That starts to matter more the longer you've been walking around on this planet. But now Vital Proteins is shaking things up, literally, you can tell a dad wrote this copy, with a brand new collagen and protein shake.

1:34:14And this isn't your average protein shake that tastes like chalk and sadness. This one's light, chocolatey, super smooth, and it's got something pretty unique going for it. High quality protein, 30 grams of it, plus collagen. That's pretty good ROI. Usually you're choosing one or the other, but Vital Proteins gives you both a ready-to-drink shake you can toss in your bag or fridge, zero added sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and no carrageenan. And I don't know what that is, or if that's even how you say it, but you're supposed to avoid that. If you're already taking collagen or you're just curious about how it might support your hair, skin, nails, joints, and you don't want any carrageenan, this is a super easy, tasty way to try it.

1:34:51Get 20 % off by going to vitalproteins.com and entering promo code Jordan at checkout. This episode is sponsored in part by Conspirituality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspirituality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

1:35:27An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspirituality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspirituality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.