Hello my friends I have an absolutely delightful conversation to share with you today.

I am chatting with author Catherine Price about the power of fun. The power of fun is so important and she's a fantastic new

book out about the science behind the power of fun. We actually had so much fun talking to each other and I think you are going to have a bunch of light bulb moments with this conversation.

So let's dive in. Let's dive in immediately. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

You know, we were chatting before about just how challenging the

last couple of years have been I don't think there's anybody who is like these

unprecedented years have been completely joyful.

I think the one person in the world who's done that is my six-year-old,

like you know, like the depths of last winter, was like this is the best year ever and we looked at her like please hold on to that because you were the only person in the world but yes I agree it's not been like the peak peak fun of humanity for the best two years

these are not going to be the good old days yeah they'll just be the old days

be like oh my goodness I'm so glad that's over days not the good old days so I'm curious first of all you're a good old days so I'm curious first all, you're a science journalist,

and your work has appeared, pick a top publication,

top magazine, top newspaper, it's just been everywhere,

you've written a number of books,

and I'm so curious about what it was that made you choose this topic and choose this

topic about how to have fun now.

Well this book The Power of Fun, is actually a direct follow-up to my last book, which was called

how to break up with your phone.

And at first there might not seem to be a obvious connection there, but basically what happened was I had this kind of wake up moment where I realized that I was letting my life be stolen from me in five minute increments from under my nose on my phone and I decided I wanted to change and I wrote this book how to break up with your phone and then as a result of that book I did make a lot of changes in my own life and perhaps unsurprisingly ended up with a lot more free time and I did not realize when writing how to break up with your phone that really that's the first step the second step is to figure out what you actually want to do with your free time.

Yes. Right and then I remember having this kind of wake up moment for this book where I was taking a break from my phone and all devices my husband and I were doing this practice that people call it digital Sabbath of just taking a 24 hour break from all of our technology.

Yep. I was in the same room I am right now speaking to you and I had this hour ahead of me because my daughter was napping, my husband was out of the house where I could do whatever I wanted to and I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to do.

And it was a horrible moment. I thought, oh my God, I'm just sitting here waiting for dinner, which

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