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

Hey, everybody. Usually episodes of this show are organized around one big question. Often

it's one pain point, i.e. a common problem that people might have. Anxiety, depression,

fighting too much with the people in your life, etc.

Sometimes though we book a guest who is just too interesting for one clear focus, or alternatively

I'm too undisciplined to pick a subject and stick with it.

Whatever the case, my guest today is Jonathan Height, a renowned social psychologist from

New York University's Stern School of Business. I've been following his work for years and

I had a lot of things I wanted to discuss with him, including why it can make you happier

to see your own irrationality and hypocrisy. The value of interacting with ideas you do

not like, how to navigate social media, how to get ahead at work and stay happy in the

process.

The upside of striving, the wisdom of the Stoics and more. A little bit more about Jonathan.

He has written many books, including The Happiness Hypothesis, Finding Modern Truth and

Ancient Wisdom, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion,

and The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up

A Generation for Failure. Since 2018, Jonathan has also been studying the contributions

of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction.

He wrote a super viral article about that in the Atlantic not long ago, so we talk about

that as well. Here's a little bit more on what we cover in the interview. We talk about

Height's Elephant and Rider Metaphor to explain how our minds operate. The rider is our conscious

mind, the kind of CEO mind of executive function. The elephant is our unconscious, which is

...