This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, everybody. How are we doing? In my opinion, one of the biggest problems we face in this country, by which I'm referring to America, and this is also true in many other parts of the world, but one of the biggest problems is that the public conversation has become increasingly and impossibly toxic and corrosive. There are many aspects to this,

but one of them is that we tend to exist in our own media echo chambers, where our priors and

our biases are reinforced and rarely challenged. The image that comes to mind for me is like

a murmuration of starlings, you know,

when all the little birds instinctively flow as a pack, which can be beautiful in nature,

but deeply unhelpful when it comes to a functioning democracy. We really are in a precarious and

combustible moment. We have huge groups of people who detest one another, often based on incomplete understandings of the other side's point of view.

There's a surplus of confidence and certainty and outrage and a dramatic, and I would argue, dangerous lack of empathy and basic curiosity.

So today, we're going to talk about how to develop your critical thinking skills.

We're also going to talk about how to get comfortable with uncertainty, how to stop self-censoring and self-silencing, how to speak up and challenge members of your own tribe, how to successfully engage with people with whom you disagree, and much more.

My guest today is Janara Nirenberg, who's a journalist and author.

Her latest book is called Trust Your Mind, Embracing Newance in a World of Self-Silencing.

Before that, she wrote another book called Divergent Mind, Thriving in a World that

was not designed for you.

Janara holds degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and UC Berkeley, and she lectures

widely on rhetoric, psychology, neurodiversity, sensitivity, innovation, and communication.

In this conversation, we talk about lots of stuff that I have already mentioned, but a few

other things just to say by way of teasing the contents of this show. We talk about the phenomenon of group think and its health implications. We also talk about the health implications of self-censoring, vulnerability in the age of social media, the role of comedy in pushing back against social norms, and much more. Before we get started, I just want to let you know about

something very cool that we're going to be doing in the second half of May. We are going to be doing

a live meditation mini-series each weekday from Monday, May 19th to Friday, May 23rd at 4 p.m.

Eastern. I will be leading a short guided meditation, and then I'll be taking your

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