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

Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing today? One of the biggest ongoing issues in my life

is that sometimes I feel like I'm just trudging through my to-do list. There's this great quote from a former mayor of

New York City. I forgot which mayor, but many decades ago, this mayor coined a nice phrase, the squalid

succession of days.

And if you're just in a constant state of toppling forward,

looking at everything through the lens of productivity,

life really can feel like a squalid succession of days.

So today we're going to talk about doing stuff just for the pleasure of doing it.

No ulterior motive, nothing to gain. The only purpose is the

experience itself. Although actually, and this is interesting, these types of activities, which again,

you just do for the fun and pleasure of the activity itself, can also put you in touch with awe,

which is an incredibly powerful human emotion that is genuinely transformative.

My guest today is Lily Taylor, who you've probably seen in innumerable movies and plays and

TV shows. She was in Mystic Pizza and Say Anything back in the 80s. Then she was in I shot Andy Warhol and

Ransom. She was also in high fidelity, public enemies, the TV show American Crime, also the X-Files,

six feet under.

I could go on.

The reason why I wanted to have Lily on the show, however, is not because of her illustrious

career, although we'll talk a little bit about that.

But really, it's because she wrote a book about birds.

It's called Turning to Birds, and it's just come out in paperback.

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