Your Inner Critic Won't Stop Adding Rules. Here's The Fix. | Julian Shapiro-Barnum
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How does Dan introduce Julian and set up the conversation about Recess Therapy?
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Ten Percent Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. I have this mode that I go into that I really don't like. It's this kind of Heads down, grind through it, bulldoze through your to-do list mode. Uh it's kind of militaristic and mirthless. And uh I feel like one really prominent antidote to this mode is to be playful or childish in the positive sense of the word. So I was very eager to talk to my guest today because that's his whole thing. Julian Shapiro Barnum is uh a comedian and the host of the phenomenally. successful digital show recess therapy. You can see it on YouTube. You can see clips on social media. Uh, and he's got a new book, which is called How to Grow Up Without Becoming a Grown Up.
Julian, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for that. Did I get all of that right? Oh my god, that was more than enough. Okay. All
right. Um just can you tell me a little bit about the the um the impetus? Yeah, behind recess therapy, because I think there there's a little bit of a story there.
Yeah, a hundred percent. So uh hi, I'm Julian. Hi. Nice to meet uh you and everybody. Um yeah, so I started recess therapy in college at I was at Boston University. It was my senior year and I was studying theater, and my senior year of college was COVID. which was not a fun way to spend theater school. Uh we were went from being in person and learning the the craft of acting to suddenly just being in our rooms and doing Zoom acting classes, which sucked. Um And there's a lot to say about COVID, but I won't say it here. But basically I was not very happy. And my way of kind of combating that was I really fell in love with the act of interviewing. And uh every day I would go out into the street and interview people.
And I was trying to connect with adults and interview people. And I think every other week I would do a different random idea that came into my head. And then one day at the end of spring, my senior year of college, I was sitting in a playground with my friend Charlotte. And there were all these kids running around and having so much fun. And I said something to her like How uh what do they know that we don't know? Like they're also in Zoom school, uh, but they seem to be tapped into something really joyful. Uh they they seem to be able to finish Zoom school and play and let go of all of that and I need to I need to know what that is. And so truly on a whim, we interviewed them and asked them how they found happiness during the pandemic.
And as a comedian I went into it looking for probably some piece of comedy, but what I found was something really heartwarming and deep. And I posted online, not really expecting anything of it. And strangers connected with it. And I thought, this is something really special and worth exploring. And s almost six years later it's it's become uh a passion, a career
of
mine.
No, it's it's gigantic and you have many other shows now. Um uh but recess therapy seems to be like the the heart of what you do. It's the flagship. There is a genre of content here that I'm twice your age, as we established uh before the interview. But I remember shows like Kids Say the Darnest Things. Right, exactly. And then there was a show like Are You Smarter Than a Third Rader? This this this whole idea of interviewing kids has been around for a minute. Why do kids say this? I mean like the the The m wisdom from the mouth of babe's trope has been around since the Bible.
I feel
like
recess therapy has marked I I don't want to be too self-aggrandizing here at all. But I feel like it my show is totally a little bit different from those shows. I feel like the kids say the aren't just thing was, oh my God, look how adorable and witty and off the cuff kids can be. Um, and that served its purpose in this place.
What sparked the creation of Recess Therapy during Julian’s senior year of college?
My whole thesis of recess therapy or hypothesis or the thing I was searching for with that show was um how can How can I become a better adult by honoring and exploring the wisdom of kids? So instead of this top-down approach of like, oh my God, kids are so Look look at what these kids can say.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How does Dan introduce Julian and set up the conversation about Recess Therapy?
0:03–3:53
2
What sparked the creation of Recess Therapy during Julian’s senior year of college?
3:53–15:32
3
How do kids simplify complex topics and what can grown‑ups learn from that simplicity?
15:32–34:54
4
What technique does Julian use to process emotions quickly, like a child’s “shiva” moment?
34:54–48:33
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from 10% Happier with Dan Harris
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