Welcome to episode 32 of Live Happy Now. As the song says, you gotta have friends, but do you know just how good they are for you?

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and today's guest is Hal Urban, a lifelong teacher and author,

whose positive outlook has earned him the nickname The Good News Guy.

With his new book, The Power of Good News, Feeding Your Mind with What's Good for Your Heart,

he looks at the importance of positivity in our lives.

Today, we're talking with him about what friendships do for us

and how we can better understand and tap into the power they offer.

How welcome to Live Happy Now.

Glad to be here with you, Paul.

We are glad to have you here because you are the good news guy.

And goodness knows, we need some good news these days.

So to start this off, I wanted to find out how you became known as the Good

News guy. Well, it started a long time ago. I was a teacher. I was a full-time high school

teacher and an adjunct professor in a university. And I wanted to start every one of my classes

in a positive way. And so I just asked people if they had good news. And they said,

what do you mean? And I said, well, something good going on in your life you'd like to share

with others in your family, in your community here at school or whatever. And they did. And they loved

it. And it got us off to a good start. I had a big sign in my classroom says, who has good news?

And I was teaching adults in the evening at the University of San Francisco. And they were people, most of them

were in their 30s and their 40s. And I told them the way I started classes with my high school

kids about sharing good news. And I said, I don't know how you feel about this. If you think

it's kind of too childish or whatever. And they said, oh, man know how you feel about this. If you think it's kind of too childish or whatever.

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