"Happy Hour" w/ Dan Harris

Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: journalist, author, and the host of "Ten Percent Happier", Dan Harris!

Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask Chat GPT” and audio rebuses.

Subscribe to The Puzzler podcast wherever you get your podcasts! 

"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas. 

Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.

The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions. 

Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, Puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler podcast The Fondant Tulip
in your custom puzzle anniversary cake. I'm your host, AJ Jacobs,
and I am here with our guest, the wonderful Dan Harris, author,

(00:25):
journalist and host of the great podcast ten Percent Happier.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome Dan, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
We are delighted. I was honored to be a guest
on your podcast this week, which is a podcast I
think we all need more than ever in these stressful times.
It is a great tool for making people happier, including
meditation for fidgety skeptics, which describes me. It lines up

(00:53):
with my personality perfectly.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
You're my target audience exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
And you have plenty of other tools how to avoid
the negative bias. What am I missing? I'm missing hundreds?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Oh, we do basically whatever you're suffering from, we try
to address it. Anxiety, depression, stress, how to get into
better arguments? What else do we talk about? Money? How
to handle your anxiety and weirdness around money, how to
we call it? How to get fit sanely? How to

(01:27):
get fit without losing your mind. I know you wrote
a whole book about this, so we love the similar issues.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
I did, and I talked about how puzzles can make
you happy, and I do. I believe puzzles can make
you maybe not ten percent happier, maybe eleven percent happier,
maybe four percent happier, but I do believe they are
a tool for happiness.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, you came on the show and talked about how
to reframe your quote unquote problems as puzzles, which can
be your relief and can can you know, make you
less stressed and more creative and a clearer thinker. And yeah, absolutely,
I think that makes a lot of sense. And I
should also say that we spent a lot of time
on the show talking about Buddhism because I'm a practicing
secular Buddhist and so it's all always to do your

(02:13):
life better.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Excellent. Well, we want to make you slightly happier with
a puzzle that we wrote just for you, and it
is themed to happiness. We thought that might be appropriate.
So I'm going to give you a few clues, and
the answer to every clue is a two word phrase

(02:35):
starting with the word happy. So if I said a
cheerful sixty minutes, you might say happy our hour exactly.
They're not all quite that easy, but they are. You
do know how many minutes in an hour? So you
got the first one, okay, are you ready? Yes, the

(02:59):
first one is Joyous toes, arches and heels.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, there was a movie.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's it. That's the one.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yes, all right, happy Feet.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Happy Feet, Yes, part of that wave of penguin movies
in the early two thousands, and so the Dancing Penguin.
All right, what about next up, jubilant fender benders.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, you know, we often talk about the upsides of
experimentation on my show. So I suspect you're talking about
happy accidents.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
I am exactly yes, So two for two, all right?
What about this one? An elated RV an elated RV
recreational vehicle?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Hmm, this one.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Could be a Winnebago, a van, a trailer. Those are
some other ones.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, I'm struggling with this. Like a happy car, happy vehicle.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
You're in the right area. It's but it's a particular
type of vehicle. It's also it's something that kids do
during the summer.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Then they go, oh, oh, I thought you thought I
was going to when you said kids, I was going
to happy meal. But that kids do.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, that may come up later, so you might scoop to.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Kids do during the summer.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Bunks and the overnight and summer camp.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, I get that, but so happy camper, oh right by.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Camper exactly got it? Got it. It's an interesting phrase,
because do you like camping? Is that something you enjoy?

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well? I have a conflicted relationship to camping. First of all,
summer camp I went to when I was a kid,
and I was desperately homesick. Many of the summers I
made it through all Back then there were eight weeks,
not now they're often seven weeks, and I made it
through the whole thing multiple times, but I would often
get struck by this big wave of homesickness. And interestingly,

(05:05):
when I do meditation retreats now, I'm often hit by
the same feelings. I don't exactly know why, but being
something about being unmoored from my daily life I find
a little disruptive. Maybe there's something in there.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
I was miserable at summer camp as well. Well, you
didn't say you were miserable, but I was.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
I was miserable. No, not the whole time. I learned
to love it eventually, But yeah, in terms of camping now,
I love nature.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
We moved out of New York City to the suburbs
in part because our kid really likes being outside and
I like being outside. I don't love sleeping outside. And
my parents were hippies and they used to make us
go camping and I always resented.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Them for that.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
So I like nature, but I like I also like my.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Bed nature during the day. Yeah, all right, I'm with you.
I'm with you. I am not a huge, huge camper,
And in fact, I looked up the origin of happy Camper,
and one linguist who seems to be quite a camping skeptic,
says that the reason it's called happy camper is because
camping is so miserable with the mosquitos, and that if

(06:17):
you're a happy camper, like you must be a super
happy person. I'm not sure that's that's correct, but anyway,
let me get you to the next one. We got
two or three more. Yeah, mirthful Rory or Laureli. That's
the mother daughter duo from a TV series set in Connecticut,
a delightful series from maybe ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I haven't, I mean, I've never I'm guessing here, but
the oh, it's a happy Gilmore, but Gilmore Girls is
the name of the show, which I've never seen. Happy
Gilmore is a movie with Adam Sandler.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
I am, I right, you got it exactly.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Okay, I've never seen that show.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
It was just one girl we were talking about because
we said mordful brory or it's good. I recommend it.
It's good dialogue, very fast paced.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
All right.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Two more ready? One is what about a contented movie
star Doris on her way to the premiere of pillow
Talk accompanied by It's always Sonny in Philadelphia actor.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Charlie Happy Day.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Exactly Happy Day. Well, there are two of them, so
we found had.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Doris Day, Happy Days, Happy Days the TV show. Sorry, okay,
so Doris Day, the movie star Charlie Day from Who's
She's Amazing in that sitcom It's always like Philadelphia, hilarious.
I My guilty pleasure in life is TikTok, and TikTok
has figured out that I like clips from that show
as well as So, yeah, that was a good one.

(07:48):
Happy Days got it.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Excellent, which, by the way, is kind of ironic because
it's it's always sunny in Philadelphia even though it's an
incredibly dark show, and so but you having a happy show.
It all fits together some all right. Last one is
a Mary fortune teller, a Mary fortune teller or a
psychic clairvoyant type.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh I'm struggling with this. Okay, Mary fortune teller, so
happy psychic happy.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
It is a synonym for that right lesser known. Maybe. Well,
let me just throw one out at you. Okay, Well,
I got you say. If you go into McDonald's in
order fries, you might you don't want a small large
as too much. You might get.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
A okay, got it, happy medium. I would not have
gotten that.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, that's why we're here. We're here to help. Well,
you did fantastic, Thank you, Dan. Where can people hear
more of you?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh, wherever you're listening to this podcast, I'm sure ten
percent happier will be available and you can hear a
Jay come on and talk about establishing a puzzle mindset,
how doing what we've just done actually can reorient you
towards lots of things in your life.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
There you go, I feel happier already. Well, before we
wrap up, as always a quick puzzle for you puzzlers
at home. Here it is joyous, coarsely ground greens, joyous
coarsely ground greens, and there might have been a little
bit of a spoiler earlier in the episode from dam

(09:33):
I I hope you have a short memory. Please don't
forget to subscribe to the Puzzler podcast. If you're enjoying
a tell a friend, an acquaintance, whoever, and we'll meet
you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle
you puzzlingly.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
Hello puzzlers, this is Greg Pliska. I've been released from
the Puzzle Lab. Time to share with you the extra
credit answer from our previous show. We played contradictions with
Juliana pache. These were all words that have opposite meanings,
and we gave you a clue to each of them.
Your extra credit clue is the King could not pass

(10:17):
a blank banning public gatherings without the blank of parliament.
The answer, of course, is the word sanction, which means
both something that bans and something that gives the approval
for I hope you all got that one, and I
hope you're listening to the Puzzler every day. We look
forward to playing with you again soon.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Thanks for playing along with the team here at the Puzzler.
I'm Greg Kliska, your Chief Puzzle Officer. Our executive producers
are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhause of New House Ideas
and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts. The show is produced
by Jody Abergant and Brittany Brown of Roulette Productions. Our
associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with Aj Jacobs

(11:11):
is a co production with New House Ideas and is
distributed by Stop This Arcade, Nah Rearrange the Letters distributed
by iHeart Podcasts. If you want to know more about
puzzling puzzles, please check out the book The Puzzler by
AJ Jacobs, a history of puzzles that The New York
Times called fun and funny. It features an original puzzle

(11:35):
hunt by Yours Truly, and is available wherever you get
your books and puzzlers. For all your puzzling needs, go
visit the Puzzler dot com. See you there,