This is the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hey everybody. Today we've got a fun little episode about anxiety and depression. And yes, I know that sounds pretty counterintuitive. And yet, it can be genuinely enjoyable to have a candid conversation about these common and often life degrading conditions. Enjoyable not only because talking about this shit serves to normalize

and aerate it, but also because especially in this conversation you're about to hear, there are lots of

really practical ways to handle anxiety and depression, evidence-based techniques grounded in both

modern science and ancient Buddhism, and it is enjoyable to hear that you can work with

this stuff. So what you're about to hear is a conversation between me and my friend, the great

Dharma teacher, Leslie Booker, which was recorded in front of a live audience at the New York

Insight Meditation Center, a great place. Booker, and that's what she prefers to be called Booker,

Booker and I in this conversation get pretty candid. We talk about our own mental health

struggles and then we talk about how to deal with them. We also talk about how anxiety and

perfectionism show up differently across gender and race, what it means to mask your suffering,

and how the cultural conversation around mental

health has changed, both for better and for worse.

A quick reminder before we dive in to go sign up over at danharris.com.

If you're a member, you get custom guided meditations that come with our full-length

Monday-W Wednesday episodes, and you get weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions every

Tuesday at 4 Eastern.

Also, one last very quick plug here. If you want to meditate with me in person, I'm doing an

intimate little event at a hotel called Trout Beck, which is in the Hudson Valley, north of New York

City. That's on November 23rd. It's a Sunday. There's a link in the show notes if you want to come.

Okay, after the break, it's me and

...