1044: Dan Harris | From Breaking News to Breaking Habits

1044: Dan Harris | From Breaking News to Breaking Habits

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional arms dealer, rocket scientist, or Russian chess grandma.

And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion negotiations, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, crime, and cults and more. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, my friend Dan Harris, back on the show, he's an Emmy Award-winning journalist, the co-anchor, former co-anchor of ABC's, weekend editions of Good Morning America. He's the author of two New York Times bestsellers.

He's also running the 10% Happier podcast and meditation app as well. Today, we dive into anxiety, loneliness, traveling and working in war zones, high pressure work culture. I guess that's kind of the same thing I just said. Hey, mindfulness, pop culture, gurus, Buddhism, and more. Dan is a deep thinker. He's a great guy.

He's a wise man. I love this conversation. We recorded this live in New York City and I think you're gonna like it. So here we go with Dan Harris.

You've been on the show before, but it was 1000 hours of content ago. Whoa. And then some. Whoa. Yeah. But the same show wasn't your, I even know. Wasn't, I think it might have been my previous endeavor.

[00:01:39] Dan Harris: Really?

[00:01:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:01:40] Dan Harris: Okay. Alright.

[00:01:41] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. Well, I always struggle. Transitioning from the awkward small talk in the beginning and then being like, oh, now I have to ask a really engaging question to hook the listener.

[00:01:52] Dan Harris: I usually, you're absolutely right. That is a weird moment. Yeah. I usually just pause for a second and bulldoze to the substance.

[00:02:01] Jordan Harbinger: That's one strategy. Yes. The other one is if I come up with something really clever. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, we did the show a thousand hours ago and speaking of a thousand hours, you've done over a thousand hours of like free dives, and then it's like, yeah.

Or you've climbed over a thousand peaks. But, uh, I don't have a clever segue.

[00:02:18] Dan Harris: It is one of my least favorite aspects of listening to even some of my favorite podcasts, that they feel like there has to be banter at the top. I agree. What I did this past weekend, et cetera, et cetera. I never do that. I wish the podcasters would cut it out.

[00:02:35] Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Meta banter is what we're doing now. Yes. Does that count?

[00:02:37] Dan Harris: Yes. Should I cut this out? I, well that I will leave to you, but I feel like meta banter is a little less annoying. It is less annoying. It's only because it's not done that often.

[00:02:45] Jordan Harbinger: That's right. And then if it goes on too long, which this will not, then that's also a problem.

So anyway, society seems fractured. Dan, the reason I bring that up is I, I just came from Texas and I realized I was kind of turned around and someone's like, you looking for something that does not happen in San Francisco? For example, I was in Austin, Texas and somebody was just like, whatcha looking for?

I. I will tell you in New York this morning where you think society must be super fractured. This woman who spoke very little English. She looked at me and then she looked at this dude who had like crazy hair and was carrying a garbage bag and had his shirt off. And she goes to him, how do I get to Canal Street?

And he goes, he pulled his headphones off and he goes, what? And she goes, canal Street. And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you, you are on it. You're on it right now. And I thought, okay, nevermind.

[00:03:37] Dan Harris: Do not judge a book by its cover in this city.

[00:03:40] Jordan Harbinger: First of all, never judge it. Yeah. Especially in New York City.

But also there's, there is a fracturing in the sense of responsibility that I feel like we used to have for one another. Would you agree with that?

[00:03:49] Dan Harris: Yes. I think, well for sure we're seeing Yeah. Partisan divides. Yeah. Of a more vitriolic nature than for sure. Than we've seen of late. And you know, there's some data showing, like for both Republicans and Democrats, the percentage who say, I would be infuriated if my child married somebody from the other party.

Has gone way up in recent years. Sad. So that seems like a real problem.

[00:04:14] Jordan Harbinger: I notice just in civic discourse though, I what, I guess what I'm doing is juxtaposing that with what I feel like when I go somewhere, I don't feel like if I get lost, the person's gonna go, you're looking for Canal Street. Are you a Democrat?

You know, I don't feel that in everyday life. I feel like Discourse online is doing that. Yes. And maybe crazy Uncle Frank or like the person who can't shut the heck up at, at Thanksgiving, that stuff's happening and you see real fractures in relationships and families. But I don't think it has to be that way, and I don't think it has to infect every element of our life.

I think that's like a choice that some people are making. But again, it's a choice. It's an unfortunate choice, but I think it's a choice.

[00:04:51] Dan Harris: Well, this is not an original observation on my part, but part of the issue online is that when you're typing into a box and you're saying horrible stuff to somebody, you don't actually have to see.

It land on their face. You don't pay the price that you would normally pay. That's right. Of saying something incredibly rude in person, incentivized, might be too strong of a word, but you're incentivized in a way to be as harsh as possible. Further, the algorithm really is incentivizing us to be That's true.

Harsh. Because if you're gonna be partisan or infuriating, you're likely to be rewarded with likes and promotion.

[00:05:28] Jordan Harbinger: That's true. It's funny, we were just talking about that at lunch, about how you, you no longer create for people, you create for this confluence. Of the algorithm and people, which Rene Dures has said on this show.

So the idea is to say horrible things only to people's face. Is that always, is that takeaway? Well, it would

[00:05:44] Dan Harris: be an, it would be an interesting experiment to run. Yeah. If you're somebody who's in all caps mode in your digital life, try that with regular people and see how it goes. IRL, and I think it would probably be an interesting lesson for you.

[00:05:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That would, it would be an interesting le most of those people might not live long enough to apply that lesson to the rest of their life.

[00:06:06] Dan Harris: Yeah. Or you'd get lonely real quick.

[00:06:07] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I know you've reported from all over the world and you've covered wars in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Haiti, Congo.

That has to be so fricking fascinating. I wanted to do that when I was a kid, but my. My mom, uh, talked me out of it.

[00:06:23] Dan Harris: My parents were not happy. Yeah. And if my son wanted to follow in my footsteps, I would be deeply unhappy. It was really, yeah. It was. I, I was taking extraordinary risks, extraordinary risks, such as welcome going to Haiti

[00:06:38] Jordan Harbinger: in the

[00:06:38] Dan Harris: first

[00:06:39] Jordan Harbinger: place.

Okay. But

[00:06:39] Dan Harris: like, well, I would say con, I mean, Haiti was never, I've been to Haiti twice. Neither time felt risky. Actually, the second time I went was right after the major earthquake in like, oh, that, I wanna say it was tragic, tragic. 10 or 11, might have been 2012. But yeah, it was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen.

Just the sheer amount of death and, mm-hmm. And suffering. It didn't feel dangerous. The dangerous stuff was just going into, you know, kinetic war zones where. People are firing at each other and there's no,

[00:07:09] Crosstalk: yeah,

[00:07:10] Dan Harris: there's a certain amount of safety, you know, from being embedded or at least being a journalist, but there's absolutely no guarantee.

And journalists get killed all the time. Yeah. I had friends who got killed or badly hurt, and I wasn't even that young. I was in my thirties, but I, these are not risks I would take now. Definitely not with kids.

[00:07:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:07:29] Dan Harris: But yeah, I would say the biggest risks were like Afghanistan and Iraq.

[00:07:32] Jordan Harbinger: I think this is from your book, but I'm paraphrasing here.

It didn't take long for me to know this job was what I would be doing for the rest of my life.

[00:07:39] Dan Harris: Hmm. Turned out that was wrong. Yeah. Turned that, that line does not age well. That not age well,

[00:07:43] Jordan Harbinger: I, I, I wish I'd put my source in here, but it is a quote and it is in italics, which means it must have been more or less what you said.

I delighted in the opportunity to get intrigued by an obscure but important subject and then devise ways to teach viewers something that might be useful or illuminating. That doesn't sound super war reporter esque though.

[00:07:59] Dan Harris: Well, I mean, the war I. The war reporting, it felt important because I think we need humans bearing witness to what's being done in our name and with our tax dollars at the tip of the spear.

Right? Yeah. So that felt really important. I. But that was just one part of my, I mean, I was at a b, C News for 21 years and I was in local news for seven years before that. So I had a varied career. Not all of it was in combat zones. The other part of my job was just reading widely, getting interested in, in something.

Mm-Hmm. And then pitching my bosses on paying the bills for me to go do or see a thing. And then I could come back and educate the viewers. And it's, this was at a time where it felt like the news, TV news was more relevant. Right. It was really, it wasn't

[00:08:42] Jordan Harbinger: just clickbait nonsense or what, it's

[00:08:44] Dan Harris: not just that, although it is that it was more like there weren't that many other options.

You know, when I arrived at a BC News, it was the year 2000 the internet was starting, and obviously there was cable, but there YouTube didn't exist yet. There were no apps. The iPhone did not exist. I felt like I was very much in the belly of the beast in terms of information dissemination. Yeah, you were.

And now that has really changed. And you know, there are episodes of our respective podcasts that will reach more people than certain hours in prime time on major cable news outlets. Yeah.

[00:09:17] Jordan Harbinger: And so it's just a different time. I love that though. Do you like that now or are you like, oh man, I used to be relevant.

[00:09:23] Dan Harris: Well, I'm not in the news business anymore. Right. So. I did this thing, um, a couple months ago. I did a completely ginned up, a reason to go on TV again because it was the 10th anniversary of the first book I wrote, which was called 10% Happier.

[00:09:36] Crosstalk: Mm-Hmm.

[00:09:36] Dan Harris: And I got my publisher to put a, a fancy new edition, 10th anniversary edition.

It was complete bullshit. Put a sticker on it. There was no reason to do this other than I was a good time to like try to see if I can make a little noise in the marketplace. Sure. So I, I went and did a bunch of tv, so I went back on Good Morning America, and I went on. Did I go on CNN? I went on a bunch of daytime television shows, like The View and whatever.

It's what Sherry Shepherd. There you go. Anyway, and I realized that I really like it. I miss the sort of what you and I are doing right now, but with a live audience. Oh yeah. And makeup. And makeup. I didn't miss the much. But it was, that reminded me like, oh yeah, I really did love this job. And even if the audiences are smaller and older now, mm-hmm.

Um, you know, maybe at some point I would want to go back into it, but I'm not underemployed.

[00:10:24] Jordan Harbinger: It's funny, once again, I wanted to be Dan rather when I was a kid. My mom, you know, when my mom goes, those people don't make any money bullshit. And now I'm like, oh, she didn't want me to get shot.

[00:10:33] Dan Harris: Yes.

[00:10:34] Jordan Harbinger: Got it. Yes.

Respect those people

[00:10:35] Dan Harris: made a ton of money. Well, yeah.

[00:10:37] Jordan Harbinger: I was like, I don't show her one of den sold pay stubs. Yes.

[00:10:40] Dan Harris: And then they still do at the, you know, it's a pyramid and at the top of the pyramid is Anderson Cooper is Anderson Cooper, David Muir, Lester Holt. I never got to like the tippity top of the pyramid.

I was like a level or two below at the top of the pyramid. Today, even in its diminished state cable and broadcast news is paying its stars. Quite well.

[00:11:02] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, whenever you listen to any news or history podcast that's recent history and they play some clip, it's almost always like you reporting on something that happened in like 1995 or 1993 and I'm like, oh, Dan still sounds the exact same.

It's really funny. Well,

[00:11:20] Dan Harris: the other conclusion you could draw is, oh, Dan is old.

[00:11:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Well, but, but you did, you were kind of like front row seats to a lot of really amazing Yes. Yeah. In every sense of the word kind of events, some of them are quite horrific. I would imagine that traveling over to cover conflict zones.

It's gotta be, is that lonely?

[00:11:39] Dan Harris: You know? Actually it's not lonely. No. 'cause you usually go in with a tight crew of people and it's incredible bonding. You know, there's a lot of research to show. Just to be very clear, my experiences are way less intense than anybody who's actually carrying a gun. You know, an active duty soldier.

Sure. Or a marine. Nonetheless, there are studies that show that when people get home from war zones, often they can get really depressed and miss their comrades. And I think that's true for journalists too. Mm-Hmm. And the depth of the relationships I created. You know, I'm friends, very close friends with people I met in places like Torah, Bora, and Baghdad.

And those relationships, even if I don't talk to them for a year or two, if I see them now. It's like no time has passed. Mm-Hmm. Because we, we've been through extraordinary things together.

[00:12:27] Jordan Harbinger: There's not a whole lot of that these days. I mean, it's tough. Of course soldiers get that. But in civilian life, so to speak, are there comparable experiences?

I feel like low. I think where I'm going with this is loneliness seems to be like it's at an all time hive, even though people are, the cliche is we're more connected than ever, but we're also lonelier than ever. And it's, especially men. We were talking about this on your show. Our mental health is just in the garbage.

[00:12:48] Dan Harris: I think you're identifying what I would venture to say is the biggest problem we're facing.

[00:12:54] Crosstalk: Mm-Hmm.

[00:12:54] Dan Harris: As a species, though, I could imagine people pushing back and saying, well, climate change, bigotry, war. But at the root of all of those things is the human capacity to work together, to solve problems. And that capacity is degraded because everything about modern society militates against human connection.

We are most of us raised in individualistic cultures. We are pushed deeper and deeper into our phones with our own curated information silos. Mm-Hmm. And so we're not getting face-to-face interaction to the degree that we need. It's making us unhappy. We have unprecedented levels of anxiety, addiction, suicide, depression, loneliness.

And so this despair, one of the roots of it really is lack of in of human interaction. I. I'm many years into writing my next book and it's kind of about this stuff. That's good. And one of,

[00:13:45] Jordan Harbinger: when they pitched me your book and it was the same book that we had tenure, I was like, really? Man, it's not new when it's a paperback of a 10-year-old book.

I'll

[00:13:54] Dan Harris: have news things to say at some point soon, but one of the things I wanna point out is that we as a species, like we need each other to survive. Yeah. And yet we're never taught how to do human interaction. You know? Like we're not taught in school. I mean, we get taught math, geography, and all this other stuff, but social and emotional learning, which is taught in some, it's funny, my son who's four, his school, yeah.

They're

[00:14:18] Jordan Harbinger: like, oh, we're big on social emotional learning. We're big on, they said SEL. And I went, what is that? Yeah. Well, SEL is really

[00:14:23] Dan Harris: important and most of us don't get it. And that is a huge problem. Yeah. Because you cannot succeed as a human. Uh, if you are not able to get along with other humans, it's a real problem.

[00:14:35] Jordan Harbinger: Once we heard that, we were like, how much is this school? Actually, I don't care. Take my money. 'cause the other schools are like, they will be able to do trigonometry by grade three. And I, I was like, I just want 'em to not bite people. Mm-Hmm. Can we do like a not bite people unit? And this school was like, don't worry.

Social emotional learning's our focus. And me, and me and Jen were just like, take

[00:14:53] Crosstalk: the money,

[00:14:54] Jordan Harbinger: take the cash. You mentioned anxiety. It does seem like it's not necessarily the other side of the coin, but is anxiety adaptive? So many people have it. I feel like it has to be,

[00:15:04] Dan Harris: well, there's a certain amount of fear that's adaptive.

Mm-Hmm. Right. You want to avoid poisonous snakes and, uh, tarant people who rustling bushes or the opposite tribe that doesn't like you, et cetera, et cetera. There the certain amount of fear that's adaptive. But anxiety is sort of the misapplication of our ancient fear response in a modern context where there actually it doesn't make sense.

And I speak as somebody who has lifelong anxiety. Mm-Hmm. And it's a gigantic pain in the ass. And it's been just a thing I've had to struggle with over and over to this day. I mean, just yesterday, I was telling you this on a walk earlier, just yesterday, I have to get an MRI, but I have such bad claustrophobia that they had to knock me out to get into this thing.

And I have trouble getting on planes and elevators and Oh, wow. And I've done a lot of thi and I'm allegedly like a happiness guru, but sometimes people say to me, you know, you're very anxious for somebody who's. A meditation expert or whatever, and I'm like, no, you have the causality wrong. Yeah. I am a meditation expert or quote unquote expert because I, my anxiety is so bad and it's just one of the many things I use to treat it.

I think there are roots of modern anxiety. There are many, many of them. Mm-Hmm. Some of us are just wired for it. I think as a Jew it's pretty deeply ingrained into our, that's true cultural history for some pretty good reasons. Also, I think lack of social interaction is leading to a big spike in anxiety these days with kids spending more time on their phones than with each other.

We need that kind of rub. Yeah. We need a little bit of rough and tumble in order to, and Jonathan Heights done some great work on this. I. In order to sort of inoculate ourselves against the ups and downs of life. I think another related issue is an allergy to discomfort. Um, we live in a world where that is too friction free.

You can get dates, you can get food, you can get information all with a few swipes.

[00:17:00] Crosstalk: Yeah,

[00:17:00] Dan Harris: there's a certain amount of suffering that is very healthy. And again, to use this word, inoculates you against stress, habituates you to stress. And we are in a world where we're not getting that. A lot of people like my age, and you and I are both Gen X, although you're on the other side of the Gen X, um, uh, debatably.

Not even Gen X, gen X. I'm Gen X in a very stable wayly. There's a way which firmly people my age look down on younger people and criticize them for being so anxious, et cetera, et cetera. But that's ridiculous. The anxiety that young people are dealing with is a result of the world that we created for them.

And I think, yeah, I think rather than being critical, we should be taking responsibility.

[00:17:40] Jordan Harbinger: I think a lot of young people agree with you and a lot of older people do not probably wanna

[00:17:45] Dan Harris: Yeah. I'll take the young people off point.

[00:17:47] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's interesting to me that anxiety could be caused, your anxiety is triggered by going in an elevator, but going to a war zone, totally fine.

[00:17:56] Dan Harris: Yeah. Yeah. It's a, that's odd, right? It doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't make sense. Uh, I really like. I've always liked adventure and excitement. There's a way in which when you're doing it for work and you're behind the camera, although I wasn't shooting, I wasn't filming, I was actually in front of the camera.

But in a metaphorical sense, you know, everything that was taking place was content capture. Yeah. In a way it didn't feel real. And so it had, it had, there was a surreality to it that if I had been just dropped into the war zone with no work to do, just had to survive. I don't think it would've felt the same way.

[00:18:33] Jordan Harbinger: Were you kind of playing a character that was

[00:18:35] Dan Harris: not afraid or you were playing a video game? You know, I think that would be a better analogy.

[00:18:40] Jordan Harbinger: Interesting. Look, it looks scary. Being in a war zone, it, there's obviously real world consequences. It's just funny that, 'cause being in an MRI machine, there's nothing to worry about and yet it's so that, just proof that it's completely irrational and like a maladaptive trait.

Yes. You even write in the book that you were freaking out about your hairline, which by the way has not changed in as long as I've known you. So

[00:19:00] Dan Harris: it, it has not changed. Yeah.

[00:19:01] Jordan Harbinger: It turned out to be something you didn't need to worry about. At least not yet.

[00:19:04] Dan Harris: I wasted a lot of time if I could go back, you know, and nobody gets the chance to do this, but I just have spent in my life so much time worrying about the wrong stuff.

[00:19:13] Jordan Harbinger: Well, yeah. Yeah,

[00:19:15] Dan Harris: I mean, I, I would imagine you would say the same thing for yourself.

[00:19:18] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, definitely. Yeah. When I was younger it was like, oh my God, I'm not employable because I don't like anything. It was always like, follow your passion. We talked about this on your show, and it's like, follow your passion.

I'm like, I don't have any passions or my passions relate to computers and nobody uses those at work. I was literally worried about that because nobody used computers at work.

[00:19:37] Dan Harris: You were also using them to break the law, so there was that fine, that issue.

[00:19:40] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, there was that. But you know, I could have used them for other things, but people didn't use computers at work then.

And uh, yeah, I worried like, am I gonna be able to get a decent job? Am I gonna be able to stay interested in that job? And uh, it turned out that I didn't need to work for somebody else who was doing soul sucking. Employment, like I didn't need to do the law thing that I did. Everything turned out fine for me.

But yeah, like I worried about everything and I'm probably still worrying about something that I don't need to worry about.

[00:20:08] Dan Harris: I mean, maybe it's just the cost of being alive. All right. We're a certain amount of worrying. Makes sense. Sure. The problem is it's hard to know in the moment whether you're properly allocating your worrying resources.

You know? Like Yeah. It's easy to know it. In hindsight, this is where advice and friendship and back to social connection is really useful because I do spend a lot of time worrying out loud. Yeah. With my friends or with mentors or with my wife. There's a great expression. Have you had Robert Waldinger on your show?

[00:20:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he's great. Okay. Yeah,

[00:20:43] Dan Harris: so he is, as your listeners may remember, he is the head of the longest running scientific study, I think in all of science. I think

[00:20:52] Crosstalk: so

[00:20:53] Dan Harris: at Harvard, where they've studied several generations of people in the Boston area to try to figure out like what are the variables that lead to a long and healthy and happy life, and.

It's really just one mm-Hmm. And that is the quality of your relationship. Why? Because stress kills and relationships reduce stress. And he has this great expression, never worry alone. Mm-Hmm. And to me that has been really helpful. To worry out loud with people I trust can really help me. If you've got the right relationships, people will say, asshole, you're worried about the wrong thing.

[00:21:25] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Here's another thing you can worry about. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. That's what real friends tell you. You worried about your hairline? No, you should, you need to worry about your gut. That's the problem here.

[00:21:34] Dan Harris: Yeah. And you stink

[00:21:35] Jordan Harbinger: and you smell terrible. Yeah. There's, when you're on primetime news, are you constantly paranoid about looks at that point because you are?

Yes. I mean, millions of, theoretically at that point, millions of people were seeing you and going, oh man, why'd you

[00:21:49] Dan Harris: wear that? Yes. Geez. It's very hard. I found it and maybe others are less egocentric. I found it hard to do that work without obsessing about how you look.

[00:22:00] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like quite shallow to be in a war zone and thinking is my hair too winds swept.

But I, but I also completely understand it.

[00:22:08] Dan Harris: But you know, the thing is, you know that the end user is thinking about those things. They are judging you consciously or subconsciously based on how you look. They have no visceral sense of the discomfort you're in. Right? They just are judging you because, not because people are horrible, but because this is just how we're wired.

I think about this a lot. Like we do a ton of. Interpersonal and intrapersonal violence.

[00:22:33] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:33] Dan Harris: Around aesthetics, you know, around how other people look or what their weight is, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't think it's irrational for somebody on TV or on YouTube or wherever, anybody who's putting themselves out there to be worried about this because we do arrive at these snap judgements and we're, we're wired for it.

[00:22:51] Jordan Harbinger: It's just gotta be such a weird dicho, like, on the one hand, I don't wanna get shot. On the other hand, the lighting is better over there.

[00:22:57] Dan Harris: Yes.

[00:22:58] Jordan Harbinger: And that's a real calculation that you're making

[00:22:59] Dan Harris: that I've never done. That I've never done, yeah. I've never gone for the better lighting. Okay. With the, the more exposure.

But for sure, I, I mean, I remember my mom saying to me once there was a, 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 solder brigade, which was a Shia 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 like 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

[00:23:53] Crosstalk: Jewish mothers.

Am I right? Good lord.

[00:23:56] Dan Harris: Actually, you know, I'm only half Jewish and my mother is, is not the Jewish side. Yeah. And I remember just

[00:24:01] Crosstalk: mothers then.

[00:24:02] Dan Harris: 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.

[00:24:11] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Uh, they must have aged prematurely watching you on TV in a war zone.

[00:24:16] Dan Harris: 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. To this, I would be distraught.

[00:24:26] Crosstalk: Yeah.

[00:24:26] Dan Harris: I can't believe what I put them through.

[00:24:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I think about that a lot too.

My poor parents, I didn't go into any war zones, but I, I worked in dangerous areas and did dangerous things and I was just kinda like, that's fun though. I'll be fine. Like, 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. I. Now for a word from our sponsors better than getting shot at in a war zone.

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You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Dan Harris. You worked for Peter Jennings. Yes. And he was like, for people who don't know is like le, 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 he is the quote is he tormented us or it's just Peter Jennings tormented us. And that's probably a paraphrase, but it's probably not too far from the actual truth.

[00:28:24] Dan Harris: I think I said he was my mentor and tor mentor. Ah, there you go. Um, yeah, you know, it's crazy. I always think of things through a, a Buddhist lens because it is kind of my training now.

Peter Jennings was Panoramical famous when I came to a BC 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. Mm-Hmm. 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.

Wow. Nobody gets ratings like that in the current environment. Th This is like Mr. Beast level, right? I mean, that's, he's the only person you could put in this category now. Oh my gosh. 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.

[00:29:19] Crosstalk: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

[00:29:20] Dan Harris: 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. Mm-Hmm. 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.

Yep. Like Peter Jennings now, he, there's a street named after him at 66th Street and the Upper West side there, there's a block between Central Park, west and Columbus. It's Peter Jennings way. Yeah. But it's just another historical name. That's right. That we ignore that I think most young people ignore, like, uh, they, if they even notice it.

But this was a guy who was so incredibly famous and he was my mentor and he was, but he was also very complicated dude. Yeah. 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.

[00:30:30] Jordan Harbinger: Really? Yeah. Yeah. You, you say that working for Peter was like sticking your head in a lion's mouth, thrilling, but not particularly safe.

[00:30:38] Dan Harris: Yeah, because he was, he would turn on a dime, you know, like, uh, 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, I'd been in Afghanistan. I was a reasonably seasoned combat reporter at this point. I remember him saying like, I want you to go, you're gonna, you're gonna spend some time in Israel, and 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. Yikes. And I'm going off to war. Right. And that's the last thing he said to me. Geez, man,

[00:31:15] Jordan Harbinger: what, what kind of motivation is, 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, I know how to make him winners.

[00:31:26] Dan Harris: 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. He is 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.

I thought Good negotiators always did that. Yeah. And he's like, it's a losing game. You're never right. So like, 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 fun killer.

It was like a, 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 nine 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.

It just that there were times when he would motivate us or attempt to motivate us in ways that scanned to me is pretty twisted.

[00:32:29] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But it makes you wonder, the reason this guy is the, 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.

Yeah. Yes, I think so. Which is kind of tragic actually.

[00:32:42] Dan Harris: 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.

But 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. Mm-Hmm. 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. Yeah. 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

[00:33:32] Jordan Harbinger: people. Hmm.

[00:33:33] Dan Harris: And I think what we know from the data is that the way to bring the best outta people is to make them feel safe.

I mean, just think about what we know about the way the 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 wanna 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? I'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.

[00:34:24] Jordan Harbinger: Right. That's slightly better than, by the way, most of us think that you're not good at your job. Yes. Or whatever it was that he said.

[00:34:30] Dan Harris: But it's hard to be overly critical of him because he was raised by wolves.

Sure. I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm being somewhat facetious. Sure. 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. More 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.

[00:34:53] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:34:53] Dan Harris: And there is such a thing as safety is and you know, like, and, um, never heard that.

[00:34:57] Jordan Harbinger: Is that like safe space type, uh, stuff?

[00:35:00] Dan Harris: Animals, yeah. Where people are intolerant. This is back to something we talked about earlier, like the intolerance or inability to handle discomfort.

Mm-Hmm. I think it's good to interact with ideas that you don't like and that a safety is, would say that I'm, we're gonna take that off the table. I think it leads to a sort of intellectual atrophy if you're not interacting with tough ideas. I'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. Yeah. On the other hand, we don't wanna have an environment where you can't have tough discussions.

[00:35:36] Jordan Harbinger: You described them as a man fueled by combustible, a combustible mix of preternatural talent and crushing insecurity, which is, that's a hard way to live your life.

[00:35:45] Dan Harris: Yeah.

[00:35:45] Jordan Harbinger: And the newsroom was a never ending PSYOPs campaign. I mean, that sounds like every day.

[00:35:50] Dan Harris: Yeah.

[00:35:50] Jordan Harbinger: Is massively stressful. And that wasn't just, you'd rather be in a war zone than the newsroom

[00:35:54] Dan Harris: 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.

And I used to leave through that back entrance 'cause 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.

Mm-Hmm. I was probably just worried about the wrong shit all day long. Can I swear on this podcast? Yeah, sure will. You? You just did. Yeah. But I don't know if you were gonna 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.

Right. I remember walking out every evening and I'd step out into the fresh air and I would think, what was I worried about? Yeah, 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, I. By design internally at a BC adversarial.

If you go back and read the book written by Ro Arledge, who was the boss, he was the president of a b, C 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. One other person whose name I'm forgetting.

[00:37:18] Crosstalk: Mm-Hmm.

[00:37:18] Dan Harris: And they were meant to be at war with one another. Geez. 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 No. In corporate America now. No, it's not even

[00:37:50] Jordan Harbinger: efficient or anything. I mean, it's just, it's

[00:37:52] Dan Harris: totally inefficient.

It's totally inefficient.

[00:37:54] Jordan Harbinger: God, I mean, you 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.

[00:38:09] Dan Harris: It has changed, you know, by the time I left a, b, C in 2021, it was very different.

You sometimes see in press reports Mm-Hmm. Like media reporters will describe a b, c news as like famously combative internally. Hmm. 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 a, b, C news and 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.

[00:38:46] Jordan Harbinger: Geez man. It's 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 the they're, 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. And 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

[00:39:16] Dan Harris: pretty funny. Well, yeah, that

[00:39:18] Jordan Harbinger: one, that's why I made the notes.

[00:39:19] Dan Harris: Yeah. Uh, Chris was a great friend and supporter when I was at a B, C News. I haven't talked to him recently, but Chris and I were, 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? Yeah. We were trying to get us to dislike each other and to compete against one another. And 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 that 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. Hmm. 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, but usually it's like, oh. I should do some introspection now. Mm-Hmm. Because there's something I am doing that's creating an environment that's problematic. And I think what happened at a BC News was Ru Arledge, who was a genius in many, many ways, set up a system that was, you know, deliberately or not quite toxic.

[00:40:49] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me about going to Pakistan. I know September 11th you start going to some the crazy kicks up a notch.

[00:40:54] Dan Harris: Yes. I remember getting off the plane and I had never been to, I don't, can we say Third World anymore? Is that Ansible? I think you're supposed to say

[00:41:03] Crosstalk: developing, which is developing country, which is in sync because every place is developing.

But yes, we, we like euphemisms now. Okay.

[00:41:08] Dan Harris: 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. Mm-Hmm. It was, I loved it. Yeah. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. You know, I've spent huge chunks of my life being the only white person.

That's a really, I think more white people should have that experience. Yeah, that's 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, the dominant group.

Right. Mm-Hmm. So, yeah, so that, 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 outta water. Mm-Hmm. But it's not for everybody. And you've done, I know you've done quite a bit of this work too.

Yeah. But

[00:42:04] Jordan Harbinger: you four times in North Korea. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not getting shot at if something, if that happens.

[00:42:09] Dan Harris: Yeah. Something's gone wrong. Something's gone

[00:42:10] Jordan Harbinger: horribly wrong.

[00:42:11] Dan Harris: 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.

[00:42:18] Jordan Harbinger: That's actually quite interesting.

Was

[00:42:20] Dan Harris: really fun. I've been, you know, I've been riding on elephants and chasing rhinos and. Looking for tree kangaroos and Papua New Guinea and all that. A, b, C 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.

[00:42:50] Jordan Harbinger: We'll get there at some point. Now, you said that there were swashbuckling types of people also on these things are, they have veterans of places like Bosnia, Rwanda, it seems like a movie where, I don't mean this in a, in a patronizing way.

It seems like a movie where a kid finds himself hanging out with like mercenaries. Yeah. And you're just like, wow, this is awesome. This, and I felt

[00:43:10] Dan Harris: like a kid. I really did. I was, I think I was 30 when this all started going down. And I know that's technically not a kid, but I The other reporters, well we are

[00:43:19] Jordan Harbinger: old now.

That's a kid now. Yeah. Well,

[00:43:21] Dan Harris: 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.

And they seemed like totally comfortable being, you know, in the presidential suite at the Islamabad Marriott, which later blew up. Um, geez, 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. Um, 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.

He, it's a miracle that he's still alive.

[00:44:14] Crosstalk: Yeah.

[00:44:14] Dan Harris: And after that accident. He set me up with my wife.

[00:44:18] Crosstalk: Really? Yes. I remember. Wow. Okay. I

[00:44:20] Dan Harris: remember walking out of, there was a gym, I 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

[00:44:31] Jordan Harbinger: blocks of Manhattan.

Yes.

[00:44:32] Dan Harris: When I wasn't traveling, my whole life was within four or five blocks of Manhattan. The the office I worked, the gym I went to in my apartment. Geez. That and

[00:44:40] Jordan Harbinger: like Rwanda. That's your life. Yes, exactly. Crazy. And

[00:44:43] Dan Harris: 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. Dating apps didn't exist again, this, this was pre iPhones 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.

[00:45:05] Jordan Harbinger: I guess. I guess that that's something you can admit now that you guys are married and have children.

[00:45:09] Dan Harris: Yes. No, and she is not that that's the most important thing, you know?

Yeah. 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. I had like a, a healthy version, I think, a healthy version of imposter syndrome. Like I did not walk in there cocky thinking, I, I know how to do what you do.

Mm-Hmm. I walked in there thinking, I'm gonna watch you very closely and learn how to do what you do.

[00:45:36] Jordan Harbinger: That's important when you are, you could die if you do something wrong. Yes. I mean, it's important in all industries, but especially there, it's like I. How much do I wanna concern myself with ego right now

[00:45:47] Dan Harris: you talk about the fact that you can die, and definitely people did, and I lost not a few friends.

Now there's a whole very careful protocol if you're going into a combat environment, but back then there was no protocol. I got no training. You should buy a helmet somewhere. I don't think we

[00:46:03] Jordan Harbinger: wore helmets. It was like, well, I looked at video when I was researching this. I did not see you wearing a helmet.

No, no. It was

[00:46:09] Dan Harris: a couple of years into it, they started saying, you have to wear a helmet. Yeah. 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 wanna get sweaty. It was in that war zone.

Well, it was 130 degrees sometimes in Baghdad. What's the difference at that point? Yeah. I remember one day, uh, is it

[00:46:29] Jordan Harbinger: really 130? Yes.

[00:46:31] Dan Harris: One day we're in Mosul. Uh, 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,

[00:46:47] Jordan Harbinger: on his gro, just to cool it down.

Insult. Oh, is it? And it was just a

[00:46:50] Dan Harris: mess with him. Was

[00:46:51] Jordan Harbinger: he

[00:46:51] Dan Harris: unconscious? No, he was conscious, but like, kind of in a twilight zone. Oh,

[00:46:55] Jordan Harbinger: I see. So they were like, put this right here. Yeah. Oh, that's, eh, good old hazing culture. He was,

[00:47:00] Dan Harris: they were ruthless, but they were much more good natured about it than my, uh, than my early days at A BC.

[00:47:05] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So the military was less ruthless than Peter Jennings. That's ain't a lot. Actually.

[00:47:11] Dan Harris: I'd never put that together, but yes it is.

[00:47:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. Because the military is not necessarily known for taking it easy on guys who make mistakes or pass out in the desert.

[00:47:20] Dan Harris: Yes. But you know, so my experience with the military is that they are ruthlessly, they mock each other ruthlessly.

Mm-Hmm. Like I remember being in a, what's it called? An M rap, which is a, an armored vehicle. I think

[00:47:34] Jordan Harbinger: it's a

[00:47:34] Dan Harris: mine

[00:47:34] Jordan Harbinger: resistant vehicle. Thank you. Of some kind. Yeah. Mine

[00:47:37] Dan Harris: resistant armored something.

[00:47:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I don't know. Personnel

[00:47:41] Dan Harris: carrier. I don't know. Yeah.

[00:47:41] Jordan Harbinger: But that would be emap.

[00:47:43] Dan Harris: Yeah, it would.

[00:47:44] Jordan Harbinger: So I'm not sure,

[00:47:45] Dan Harris: my apologies to anybody who knows anything about this, but I was in, in what I believe was in EMAP and everybody's wearing headsets and you know, you've got the gunner and the driver and then bunch of people in the back and it's just a nonstop insult fest.

Yeah. But with love, I wish there was more of that vibe. Yeah. In my early days at A, B, C, because it was the insults, but without the love.

[00:48:06] Jordan Harbinger: 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. 20 years.

Yeah. More than 20 years. Yeah. It's the sense of purpose I think, that you get from doing something like war reporting, being in an M rap 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

[00:48:32] Dan Harris: addition?

Yeah. Well I was gonna 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. Mm-Hmm. You know that the, it was

[00:48:42] Jordan Harbinger: actually, I mean, you didn't have tiktoks doing stuff from, or people recording Instagram videos. Yes. Like you were the message or it wasn't gonna get out at all.

Correct.

[00:48:51] Dan Harris: Yes. So it felt, it felt really important and it was thrilling. And that's a drug, and I definitely got addicted.

[00:48:59] Jordan Harbinger: You talk of a time where you went to interview these Taliban commanders. That must have been pretty damn exciting, right? Yeah. They're like, okay, they're not gonna 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?

[00:49:15] Dan Harris: So the offer came in, we were in Cueta Pakistan. So Cueta 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. It was the capital, it was where the Taliban really had their stronghold.

So kale is the capital of the country, but Kandahar was kind of like the spiritual and military stronghold of the Taliban. I see. And this was a few weeks after nine 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 and offer in air quotes. Yeah. Well, I mean they, 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. It was really like, oh, I see. Do you wanna do this? I

[00:50:12] Jordan Harbinger: thought you meant your fixer got a job offer from them and you were No, no, no.

The fixer

[00:50:16] Dan Harris: got the offer of like, Hey, do you want to bring your team in? I see. 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's only 15, 20 of us from A, B, C, and people were debating the merits of it. And I knew, yeah,

[00:50:35] Jordan Harbinger: pros,

[00:50:36] Dan Harris: Taliban interviews, cons

[00:50:39] Jordan Harbinger: might die in coalition bombing.

[00:50:42] Dan Harris: I remember letting the conversation play out and knowing, I don't care what anybody says, yeah, I'm doing this.

[00:50:48] Jordan Harbinger: 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, fly down. Most people really did not

[00:50:56] Dan Harris: 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 gonna 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.

[00:51:13] Jordan Harbinger: 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, you kill what you eat and that's it. No, no, thank

[00:51:29] Dan Harris: you. It's, it's not that linear. I mean, I thought, of course, I remember the, 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 gonna, they were like pretending to be me back in a bar in lower Manhattan bragging about my exploits in Afghanistan.

Yeah. 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. I What was wrong

[00:52:03] Jordan Harbinger: with your coverage? Too sympathetic to the Taliban?

Yeah. Or what really?

[00:52:06] Dan Harris: Yeah. I remember, I remember there was a BBC reporter there who didn't leave the compound much because he, he just had to be on the air all the time. Oh, I see. And I actually, because a, b, C 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? And they really were not as, as fearsome as the media had portrayed them. I thought it was, this was great material.

[00:52:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it sounds amazing. Uh, there was a

[00:52:43] Dan Harris: cultural reporter from The Times, Karen James, I'll never forget her name. You don't need disagreed with me. That's

[00:52:49] Jordan Harbinger: where Karen comes from.

[00:52:50] Dan Harris: Karen James. She spelled her name with a c Ah, and Karen did not like my coverage. And I was devastated.

[00:52:55] Jordan Harbinger: That is too bad because it, 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. Yeah. And it's like, oh, I'm gonna bring some of those in the article. And it's like, eh, we just want you to wave American flags around and be like, we're definitely right about this.

[00:53:15] Dan Harris: Yes, I think it's true. We nuance is important and sometimes undervalued.

I. In Karen's defense, I do wanna 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.

[00:53:32] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, man. A lot of us take seasoning at work, but not all of it ends up in the New York Times.

[00:53:37] Dan Harris: Yeah, it was hard.

It was hard, but like who the, who remembers it now? Like people, you know, it's like just

[00:53:41] Jordan Harbinger: you and Karen. Yeah, exactly. Karen, who's like, Karen

[00:53:43] Dan Harris: probably doesn't remember it.

[00:53:44] Jordan Harbinger: Karen's like, Jordan, I love your show, but that Dan

[00:53:45] Dan Harris: Harris guy was, he's always been such a loser. Right. She's gonna just send you a, uh, little note that says still a schmuck

[00:53:52] Jordan Harbinger: still.

Yeah. After all these years. Still not 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 Amer. I mean, is it, were they messing around or were they like, no, really, no. Take me to America. This no sucks.

[00:54:10] Dan Harris: No, no. That's incredible.

Yeah. I mean, they were just scared kids, you know? Yeah. They weren't the murderous religious zealots. Right. They may be now, but it was their bosses, their father still

[00:54:19] Crosstalk: alive. Yeah. And these

[00:54:19] Dan Harris: 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.

The bleeders, those were not people to trifle with.

[00:54:29] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course. Well, I, a friend of mine, he is. In high level hostage negotiations, international stuff, and like, I don't know, he didn't really gimme too much permission to talk up, so I'm trying not to, I'll be blurry here, vague, but he told me about a time he went to Lebanon, you know, Lebanon's full of militias.

A lot of 'em 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 Isha and drinking scotch, which, uh, I don't know how much people out there know about Islam, but alcohol is generally Haram forbidden.

They were all drinking and having fun every, he said every guy in this room is a multi-billionaire, and they're 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.

Yes. It's really sad actually.

[00:55:27] Dan Harris: I don't doubt any of that. And I think what's even scarier is that there are true believers. Mm-Hmm. Who are, you know, we're seeing this play out in the Middle East right now. Yeah. There are true believers on both sides.

[00:55:39] Crosstalk: There are, yeah. Religious

[00:55:40] Dan Harris: zealots on both sides. And those are the people you really ought to worry about.

I would take the corrupt ones over the, uh, people who believe that there is a heavenly reward for, well, the corrupt ones can be bought off. Right.

[00:55:52] Jordan Harbinger: The Hamas leaders that are in Qatar in a five star hotel and the crazies that are in the Israeli Knesset who are, you know, are never gonna 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. Those are the people that you are not gonna 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 I do. 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.

[00:56:31] Dan Harris: Yeah. I do wonder. I mean, who knows what happened to their lives, you know?

Um, they might now be senior figures in the Taliban. Yeah. Maybe now they're true believers or maybe they got killed. Who knows? They live in a rough neighborhood.

[00:56:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. To say the least. You mentioned that when you got home from work, you got sick, you know, essentially depression. Yeah. But like, not just, well, tell me about that.

[00:56:55] Dan Harris: I. Felt horrible physically. I just felt like I had a fever all the time, or, and no energy. And this was summer of 2003, so it was, I'd covered Afghanistan and then I spent a bunch of time in Iraq, sort of the pre-invasion. Invasion. Then the, the insurgency. I had spent a good amount of time in various war zones at this time, and I came home and I felt awful.

[00:57:19] Crosstalk: Mm.

[00:57:19] Dan Harris: I did all these tests. I went to see all these doctors. I had my apartment tested for a gas leak. I mean, I like went all out. I could not figure out. Oh, really?

[00:57:26] Jordan Harbinger: You were thinking like, oh, I must have radon coming up through the floor.

[00:57:29] Dan Harris: Yes. And I never once considered that

[00:57:31] Jordan Harbinger: it was

[00:57:32] Dan Harris: psychological. Yeah.

[00:57:33] Jordan Harbinger: Really, that'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. Yeah. Right. It's like you just yanked the plug of purpose out of the wall.

[00:57:55] Dan Harris: Yes, yes. And, and the adrenaline out of the wall.

Mm. And I think I was really addicted, you know, even though my life when I was home was pretty exciting. I was on natural television covering big stories. Oh, 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 MINDBODY connection. I was just like, oh, it must be Lyme. Or, uh, must've gotten hit by a ticket Epstein bar or whatever. You know? Like who, who I, I had all these tests done. Yeah. And nobody in the medical profession even suggested it to me. It was only when I finally, as a last defense, went to a psychiatrist who was like, yeah, dude, you're depressed.

Mm-Hmm. And now it's like the first thing you think of. Well, I mean, it's also, I mean, 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. Really. How so? Specifically I worry about people on social media talking about their diagnoses in a way that is, I. Just wallowing in the suffering.

[00:59:06] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:59:06] Dan Harris: Which has some benefit because you know, it's good to normalize these experiences. Worry alone experiences.

[00:59:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:59:11] Dan Harris: Yes. Never worry alone.

Exactly. Yeah. 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.

[00:59:30] Jordan Harbinger: It's funny you mentioned contagion. I had Jonathan Hyde on this show, you know, and he talks about social contagion of things like eating disorders.

Yeah. 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 content. We, we mask

[00:59:53] Dan Harris: it as biohacking.

[00:59:54] Jordan Harbinger: We call it biohacking, but what it is is injecting yourself with testosterone. Yes. And getting an eight pack or whatever along those lines. That stuff's dangerous. There's other things that are socially contagious and to even talking about it will get you canceled, which is too bad because. I think mental health needs to be discussed and it needs to be discussed openly.

And if you're, if you're starting to apply that political correctness, veneer over things, like it just, it just gets ruined.

[01:00:17] Dan Harris: 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. Sure. Now it would be accepted and that's great, but I think if we're fetishizing, oh, what's your diagnosis?

Well, here's my diagnosis and uh, and we're overmedicating, I think that could be a problem. Although I'm not against medication, it can, no, 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.

[01:00:58] Jordan Harbinger: Reporters say war is a drug. You mentioned you went through like, was it kind of like war zone withdrawal? Is that, is that fair?

[01:01:04] Dan Harris: Yeah. Adrenaline withdrawal. You see this in much more seriously in among the soldiers, the troops, because you know, my experience was nothing compared to theirs and 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 Mm-Hmm.

[01:01:30] Jordan Harbinger: The

[01:01:30] Dan Harris: fall of Snam or whatever it is. Yeah. You can't compete with that. And yeah. I really struggled and I made a bunch of dumb decisions.

[01:01:37] Jordan Harbinger: Like what?

[01:01:38] Dan Harris: Cocaine.

[01:01:38] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. That's just one decision. Go on. What are the other, well, I made it repeatedly. Yeah, I see. There 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?

[01:01:52] Dan Harris: Yes. 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. I mean, I have alcoholism in my family. Mm-Hmm. But I never, I'm not an alcoholic. I didn't like it that much. Right. I'd smoked a little weed. I didn't like that that much either. But when I did cocaine, I was like, oh, this finally found a drug. This is my poison.

Oof. And I remember specifically because you had asked me before about being sick and Yeah. And testing for gas leaks and Epstein Bar and whatever. This 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.

[01:02:31] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see.

Yeah, of course. I,

[01:02:32] Dan Harris: I remember one day I had this very clear memory of coming home. This was pre Iraq. This was during the second Inda and 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 and it just wasn't going well. Mm-Hmm. And they sent me back and 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.

Geez. And, and then getting back into the car and falling asleep, uh, because I was jet lagged and waking up on the side of the road and, 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 in this beautiful environment.

And I realized. I don't feel sick anymore.

[01:03:40] Jordan Harbinger: Hmm.

[01:03:42] Dan Harris: It was just, wow. It's gone.

[01:03:43] Jordan Harbinger: Was that Wow. And

[01:03:44] Dan Harris: the same thing happened the first time I did cocaine. Uh, could

[01:03:47] Jordan Harbinger: have been the watermelon.

[01:03:48] Dan Harris: No, no. It was not the watermelon. It was not

[01:03:51] Jordan Harbinger: the watermelon.

[01:03:51] Dan Harris: It really just, you know, this malaise, this lethargy, this languishing that I was doing.

Mm-Hmm. When the adrenaline was taken away from me. Cocaine. Yeah. It did it. I don't recommend it. No, but it definitely did it.

[01:04:06] Jordan Harbinger: It's a weird binder in what's more sustainable, A cocaine habit or a war zone habit, right? Yeah,

[01:04:10] Dan Harris: exactly. Exactly. Geez, neither. Right, so, right. Yeah. I had to give 'em both up.

[01:04:16] Jordan Harbinger: Ugh. 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.

[01:04:22] Dan Harris: Yes.

[01:04:23] Jordan Harbinger: Get my war zone fixed.

[01:04:24] Dan Harris: Yes.

[01:04:24] Jordan Harbinger: I don't even think I made the connection. Of course not. Yeah.

[01:04:26] Dan Harris: I didn't make the connection until I know at some point you're gonna ask me about having a panic attack.

It wasn't until I had a panic attack, a 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. Mm-Hmm. 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? Mm-Hmm. Bright lights, big city style. But I did not make the connection that one was compensatory for the other until I had a panic attack on national television. I.

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Alright, 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.

[01:07:54] Dan Harris: 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 news reader then that that was the technical okay title. And I was filling in for her, which I had done a bunch of times. And the job was at 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM 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 am 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, my 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 just like a 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.

But 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. Mm-Hmm. To the extent that I could speak. If I hadn't been able to do that, I don't know, I probably would've ripped the mic off and run away.

[01:09:52] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. That would've been, that's a career ending move, I would imagine.

Yeah,

[01:09:56] Dan Harris: yeah, yeah, yeah. It was horrible. Oof. It was horrible. If you look at the video and if you just Google panic attack on television, it's the first result. Yeah. If you look at the video, one of the responses I often get is, didn't, it doesn't look good, but it doesn't look that bad. Yeah. 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, I'm like pretty good at concealing my emotions. Mm-Hmm. Which is not an interpersonal strength, as it turns out.

That has caused problems for me and my relationships. But in that moment, it was pretty good that my poker face is strong.

[01:10:32] Jordan Harbinger: 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 and dig about something and it's like you don't see David Muir doing that, right?

No, he's funny. He always looks like he's not quite able to see the teleprompter and he is off to the side. I just wanna ask him like, are the lights bothering you or is that just like your trademark Look, he's get that little, like

[01:10:59] Dan Harris: tonight un, unlike Peter Jennings, David Muir is an extremely friendly person.

[01:11:04] Jordan Harbinger: He does not look friendly on the news. Really? No,

[01:11:07] Dan Harris: no. He's the sweetest. That's funny. He's such a, like, I actually emailed him the other day because I. When the Trump verdict came down, I did something I never do, which is I turned on the news. I actually stopped watching TV news like a decade ago. Even. Even here, as soon as you stop working, they're like, I'm not, no, no, no way.

Before I stopped working, oh, I just, I just lost interest in, I still, I read the Times and I read a bunch of Substack. Okay. And 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. Yeah.

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. He's very nice to everybody in the world. That's great. Yeah.

[01:11:50] Jordan Harbinger: He always looks so dang serious. I'm like, oh, this guy must be a terror to work with.

So funny.

[01:11:54] Dan Harris: Not at all.

[01:11:54] Jordan Harbinger: 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. Yeah, tell me about that. Because if the voice in our heads is not us, who, who are we, then that's a very deep question.

Mm-Hmm. That's a very deep, don't get too deep in the answer. If people want, I don't want, I'm not gonna follow, we don't have that kind of time.

[01:12:18] Dan Harris: Well, how can I say this? We 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 subject. Yeah, it never happens. Don't really, I don't really look good. An example who, who asked for that though,

[01:12:48] Jordan Harbinger: right?

No, that's true. It's true. So

[01:12:50] Dan Harris: I mean, sometimes actually it's very interesting if you're in the middle of some sort of thought shitstorm, like a anxiety or self-criticism, it's an, 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? Does that make sense?

[01:13:35] Jordan Harbinger: No, no, it does make sense. It'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.

[01:13:45] Dan Harris: It's deeply counterintuitive. Yeah, and it's counter-cultural 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.

Hmm. Take enough psychedelics and this truth will come. Sparing down upon you. Yeah. With thunderous force, this is when, when you take psychedelics and they talk about ego death. I 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 had 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. Mm-Hmm. No, now it's now. Now it's now, maybe. Now that weed wasn't

[01:14:50] Jordan Harbinger: so bad.

[01:14:51] Dan Harris: It was, this was, I don't know if it was the quality of the weed or the quality of my mind at that moment, but I, this was my first panic attack. Nevermind. And I realized that I don't think I would've been able to articulate it at the time, but now in hindsight, what I realized is I was just seeing.

The solid ground that we think we're walking around on isn't so solid, and this is what happens on these psychedelic drugs, Indic. This is what can happen in deep meditation, and it is healthy. It's 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 gonna ruin the next 48 hours of my marriage, or I should go eat 75 burritos because I'm lonely or bored. Mm-Hmm. You can call bullshit on these thoughts, and that is really helpful.

[01:15:57] Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Yes. 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.

[01:16:14] Dan Harris: 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, I see them more as medicine than as drugs. Mm-Hmm. 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.

Mm-Hmm. Because it's kind of unearned. This 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. Yeah. Or integrate it or to reaccess 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, Mm-Hmm. Is slower, is that you're getting it into your marrow in a deeper way.

[01:17:06] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That makes sense. Right. So the meditation is sort of like getting strong through weightlifting and psychedelics are more like getting strong because your Popeye and you get a can of spinach, your muscles plump up.

[01:17:17] Dan Harris: Yes. Yeah. And that is. True enough. I just want to be 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, and I think it can affect lasting change in some people. But even Michael Pollen, who I'm sure you've interviewed, and I 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.

[01:17:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Uh, I suppose there's so much good research on psychedelics and MDMA for like PTSD. Yes. So I, yeah. I definitely don't wanna scare people away from asking their doctor about this kinda stuff.

[01:17:58] Dan Harris: This is, and another one of these great aspects of the fact that it's become socially acceptable to talk about our mental health challenges.

Mm-Hmm. 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 gonna need some more regulation. Sure. And like a good housekeeping seal of approval and quality control and all of that stuff. Yeah. 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 hereto for were either illegal or or embarrassing.

That's awesome.

[01:18:47] Jordan Harbinger: 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? I

[01:19:00] Dan Harris: mean, you got any

[01:19:01] Jordan Harbinger: No officer, I do not have any.

[01:19:05] Dan Harris: Are you a narc?

No, I am not on cocaine. I've not done cocaine in 20 years. We're too old for that stuff, man. 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 gonna change. Right. And you're more likely to lose it in any number of contexts, especially live television. So I, 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.

And I ended up seeing him, I think for 10 years until he got promoted upstairs. Dr. Broman, shout out to Dr. Broman. He's awesome. And he really helped me. You know, it was not easy, you know, I, 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 years to like feel okay.

[01:20:01] Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

[01:20:02] Dan Harris: With that,

[01:20:03] Jordan Harbinger: that's a lot of therapy by the way. It's like a thousand hours of therapy.

[01:20:06] Dan Harris: Yeah, it was a lot of therapy.

[01:20:07] Jordan Harbinger: Holy moly.

[01:20:07] Dan Harris: Yeah. But

[01:20:08] Jordan Harbinger: I learned a

[01:20:08] Dan Harris: lot and it bet, and it was through that, that I got turned on to this whole meditation and, and 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.

So you began seeing thoughts

[01:20:21] Jordan Harbinger: 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.

[01:20:30] Dan Harris: I mean, it's useful in some ways. Okay,

[01:20:32] Jordan Harbinger: good. 'cause I, I would say worrying works, man. 99% of the things I worry about never happen.

[01:20:36] Dan Harris: Uh, yeah. I don't know if that is evidence for worrying works.

I don't think so. Worrying working. I think some that joke bailed. No, I got the joke. Some land. Okay, good. Well, you know it, that's a earnest, uh, uh, 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? Uh, he wrote, um, huckleberry Finn. Um,

[01:20:59] Crosstalk: oh

[01:21:00] Jordan Harbinger: God.

[01:21:01] Dan Harris: Why am I name, we should both know this. Yes. This is embarrassing. It

[01:21:03] Jordan Harbinger: is. We should edit it. We have to edit it together once we find it and feel like

[01:21:07] Dan Harris: Mark Twain. Oh yeah. Ly Twain. Thank you, Lauren.

[01:21:09] Jordan Harbinger: That's, that's Mark Twain. Yes. By the way.

[01:21:11] Dan Harris: Yes. Thank you. Jordan. Mark Twain said most of the worst things that happened to me never happened.

And that is true. We're, we're just constantly conjuring situations in our mind, situations that have not happened.

[01:21:25] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[01:21:25] Dan Harris: 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.

[01:21:42] Jordan Harbinger: I see. Yeah.

[01:21:42] Dan Harris: 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%,

[01:22:09] Jordan Harbinger: 10% hap yeah.

[01:22:10] Dan Harris: Just, just go for

[01:22:11] Jordan Harbinger: lowering the bar.

[01:22:12] Dan Harris: Throw 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? Uh,

[01:22:21] Jordan Harbinger: yeah. A lot of people have tried.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They always have something for sale. Those people. Yes.

[01:22:25] Dan Harris: So my point is, what I think is on offer is messy, marginal improvement over time, but perfection is not available.

[01:22:34] Jordan Harbinger: I think that's important. I mean, what was the trending? I feel like when we first talked about this, there was something trending.

What was it? You know, it's the secret. That's what it was. Oh my God, yes. That uh, stupid like law of like medi, if you benefits, you know, it's coming back now. It is coming back. That's why I was gonna bring it up. It's people still send me messages about this and I'm like, manifestation. My God. Yes. Have we not passed this already?

Yeah. I see influencers, podcasters, and stuff talk about this and I go. Surely nobody's actually buying into this. It's a

[01:23:03] Dan Harris: huge thing right now. Look, magical thinking is, you know, it's been with us since humans. That's true. You know, 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. Yeah. The for de prince. So if it is true that you can control, uh, 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?

Of course not. So this is just a, an easily falsifiable set of beliefs.

[01:23:45] Crosstalk: Yeah.

[01:23:45] Dan Harris: Do I think that there's some value to being optimistic and positive and working your ass off in pursuit of your goals? Absolutely. Do I think that you can cure your own cancer through the power of your thoughts? No, I, I'm highly skeptical.

[01:23:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:23:58] Dan Harris: Even,

[01:23:59] Jordan Harbinger: uh, 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 'cause one guy who told me this was a Israeli Jewish guy. I know. It's in your book. I think it's in your book.

It is. And another person who told me is definitely like, I'm not talking of even Muslims. It's just such a really funny, famous line from the Koran. I love it because it's like trust in God. But you know what? Lock the door. Just lock the door. You should lock the door too. Yeah.

[01:24:30] Dan Harris: 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. I'm, I'm not quantum stuff. Yeah. Like I don't need it. It is incredible that we even exist and if you lose touch with that, you're missing out, you know? Right.

[01:24:49] Jordan Harbinger: But, but in the, I'm not

[01:24:49] Dan Harris: trying to kill all the joy

[01:24:51] Jordan Harbinger: in the magical thinking, like the secret.

There's no post. You're visualizing the visualizing the post and the camel. Yes. And just hoping that both of them Yes. Show up. Yes. Which is not Yeah. How any of this works. Correct. Tell me about Prop Pancha. This is a cool

[01:25:03] Dan Harris: 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.

Okay. That we think maybe just like,

[01:25:15] Crosstalk: oh, do this. Yes.

[01:25:17] Dan Harris: So Banja is, it means a lot of things in the ancient language of poly, but one application of it is the mental movie making. We do. When, say we stub our toe and then we imagine, um, never gonna walk again. Or, why does this always happen to me? I'm always the guy who stubs his toe.

I'm not gonna be able to play squash later tonight. Or, uh, whatever. We just, we make these phantasmagoric projections into the future as a result of some data point in the present moment that is prop pania. 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, I'm never gonna get a raise because that person might be my boss someday and I'm gonna 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 prop, Pancho, 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 the self-inflicted, self manufactured suffering so seriously and 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

[01:26:46] Jordan Harbinger: because then one, you realize you're not the only person who does it too. If there's a name for the phenomenon that's, it's essentially so common Yes. That you can call it out every time it's happening. Yes. Which makes it less like this is definitely real.

[01:26:57] Dan Harris: Yes.

[01:26:58] Jordan Harbinger: 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?

Like if I miss my plane, that is a real genuine problem. It's not an irrelevant thought.

[01:27:12] Dan Harris: Yeah. There's a great, and this is not, I wanna 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.

Right. And he's awesome. Just turned 80. And I remember I, I actually asked him once, dude, just what you just asked me, you know, there are times, there's just some shit I need to worry about sometimes. And he's like, yeah, that's true.

[01:27:37] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[01:27:38] Dan Harris: But maybe on the 18th, run through, ask yourself one simple question.

Is this useful? And that is brilliant. 'cause it cuts right through. That's right. The nonsense. Is this useful?

[01:27:50] Jordan Harbinger: No, but I'm doing it compulsively. Potentially.

[01:27:52] Dan Harris: I mean, yeah. But once you see that it's not useful, you can change the channel. That's true. And it may come rushing back. Mm-Hmm. But you can change the channel again.

I mean, I think, and this is it. You may have heard me say this before, but like there's so much wisdom out there. The hard part is just remembering to apply it.

[01:28:08] Jordan Harbinger: Well, I was even gonna make a joke like now. I'd gotta remember to remember that. Yes.

[01:28:12] Dan Harris: Well, honestly, I mean this is why tattoo, I mean like I have a tattoo, tattoo tattoo on my left wrist and my wife and I got tattoos last summer and she's already making noises about are we gonna do it again this summer?

And Wow. Full. So like it's a full sleeve. This useful would be not a bad little tattoo. My, on my left wrist it says F-T-B-O-A-B. It's kind of off brand in its sincerity. Um, 'cause I'm usually not very earnest, but it stands for, for the benefit of all beings. Ah. And it's a reminder to me to not be so selfish because I am wired for a certain amount of fear-based acquisitiveness.

Mm-hmm. 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.

[01:29:14] Jordan Harbinger: What are you gonna do when your kid wants a tattoo and you're, he's like, dad, ha you have one? Mom has one. He just

[01:29:20] Dan Harris: got,

[01:29:20] Jordan Harbinger: he just got his ears

[01:29:21] Dan Harris: pierced.

[01:29:22] Jordan Harbinger: I'm, I'm just, yeah, it's different. I feel like that's like, your wife's probably like he, he'll take those out in a few years. Tattoo

[01:29:28] Dan Harris: not

[01:29:28] Jordan Harbinger: going anywhere.

[01:29:28] Dan Harris: My dad always said that the hardest part of parenting is letting your kids make their own mistakes.

And, uh, 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, uh, just try to be a supportive listener.

[01:29:47] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a good strategy. I actually would, I 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.

[01:29:56] Dan Harris: 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

[01:30:02] Crosstalk: off. No. Um,

[01:30:03] Dan Harris: but it has been so helpful. I mean, 'cause I'm looking down in this direction all the time 'cause I'm looking at my watch or if my arms are out in front of me while I'm on a exercise bike.

I mean, you, 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 because 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, I. Tattoo if my son wanted to get it. I mean, he's nine. He's not getting a tattoo until he is 18. But you know, if you wanted to get a tattoo of something, like that's

[01:30:42] Crosstalk: what you think. But yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Exactly,

[01:30:44] Dan Harris: exactly. If tattoos are as big as vice worse, that'd be my problem.

Yeah. Could

[01:30:48] Jordan Harbinger: be worse. Your book has a, a lot of tiny bits of wisdom, but one I love, which is there's no point in being unhappy about the things you can't change. And 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.

Lemme do that again. I'm trying

[01:31:05] Dan Harris: to think it through.

[01:31:06] Jordan Harbinger: I'll just do it again in case I write it wrong.

[01:31:07] Dan Harris: Okay.

[01:31:07] Jordan Harbinger: 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.

[01:31:22] Dan Harris: Go change it. Yes. Yeah.

[01:31:24] Jordan Harbinger: I feel like I, I'm glad I said it twice, because there's people who are jogging or like driving, Angela and Blake pay attention to the road, uh, and they're like, oh God. So just leave that in there.

Jason, do you

[01:31:33] Dan Harris: pull Angela and Blake out of nowhere or those two people, you know?

[01:31:35] Jordan Harbinger: No. I, every often when I say something twice or I'll say, I'll just name people, and I figured statistically yes, there are people with those names that are freaking out that I just, there's a woman named Angela's grocery shopping right now.

We're driving and she's going, oh my, oh my God. Wait, how does he know?

[01:31:52] Dan Harris: Yeah, that's the voice in my head. It's

[01:31:54] Jordan Harbinger: shocking. It jars them back into the present moment.

[01:31:57] Dan Harris: I think it's really true. First of all, it's not my observation. Most of the things I say in the book and elsewhere are like taken from other people.

Oh yeah. Joseph has a great phrase that he's like, we're part of a lineage of thieves. Yeah. So we're just taking wisdom from the millennia and like re-skinning it and 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 Mm-Hmm.

In that. And if there is something you can do, then do it. Having said that, like I'm a worrier and I get, get it, we come from a fi,

[01:32:28] Jordan Harbinger: a multi-thousand year tradition of worrying Yes,

[01:32:31] Crosstalk: yes. About things. Yes.

[01:32:32] Jordan Harbinger: Overall, though, your podcast and book point at the idea that happiness is essentially a learnable skill Yes.

Which is pretty empowering.

[01:32:40] Dan Harris: Yes. That's the whole point. Yeah. 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.

Mm-Hmm. Like their unalterable factory settings. They are trainable skills. So I've just gotta find new ways to say that and present that information until I can't breathe anymore. Yeah. I mean that is, it's incredibly good news. It's incredibly good news. It, it's 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.

[01:33:40] Jordan Harbinger: Dan, I'm grateful to know you, man, like this. Really likewise. We, we've been friends and every, every time I hang out, it's just such a pleasure.

[01:33:46] Dan Harris: I feel the same way. Thanks for having me on.

[01:33:50] Jordan Harbinger: You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with John Mendez. She 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.

[01:34:06] Clip: We invented technology that didn't even exist yet. The small batteries, for instance, they're in our watches, in our phones, and all of that stuff today.

[01:34:15] Jordan Harbinger: They're kind of like Q from James Bond, but it's the CIA.

[01:34:19] Clip: We could create any kind of character over your face masks that came out of Hollywood and we'd say, great.

Go down to the cafeteria and have lunch. This is at CIA headquarters where everybody knows everybody in the cafeteria, and 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 'em. They were feeding people into these crematoriums feet first alive,

[01:35:03] Jordan Harbinger: unbelievable.

[01:35:04] Clip: A really valuable agent said, I'll work for you on one condition, and 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 moon, block pin that was cyanide, and he knew where it was and they said, we want you to write your confession.

So they brought him his moon block pin.

[01:35:28] Jordan Harbinger: For more with Jona Mendez, including some incredible spy stories that will really perk your ears. Check out episode 3 44 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@jordanharbinger.com, including 10% happier.

Check out the show, check out the app as well. Advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Also, our newsletter, wee 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. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute Networking over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger 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 Fogarty, 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. In 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.

[01:36:58] Clip II: Hi, Cold Case Files fans. We have some exciting news for you. Brand new episodes of Cold Case files are dropping in your feed. And I'm your new host, Paula Barros. I'm a cold case files super fan true crime aficionado. And I love telling stories with unbelievable twists and turns. And this season of cold case vials has all of that and more.

I want to die. You don't want to die. I want to die. Her cause of death was strangulation lying face down on the bed. She was in a pretty advanced state of decomposition. A little bit of bloody froth had come from Deborah's mouth. He panicked and decided he was getting rid of the body. I saw danger in everything.

So get ready. You don't wanna miss what this season has in store. New episodes of Cold Case files drop every Tuesday. Subscribe to cold case files wherever you listen to podcasts.