10% Happier

On June 7, 2004, Dan Harris had a mental meltdown live on television while reading the news on Good Morning America. As Harris read the news, he began to have a panic attack and lost the ability to form coherent words. Four years earlier, Harris had interviewed for, and received, a job with ABC News after seven years at a television station in Bangor, Maine, and a short stint at a 24-hour cable news channel in Boston. Harris began at ABC News as the new co-anchor of the overnight newscast, World News Now. However, the anchor he was supposed to be replacing, Anderson Cooper, had decided to stay a little longer. Instead, Harris became a reporter on the weekend edition of the evening newscast, World News Tonight. Soon after, he was allowed to present a story on the weekday edition with Peter Jennings. A few weeks after his story aired on the weekday edition of World News Tonight, Harris was asked by Jennings to do a story on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. This led to a five-year stint as a regular reporter on the show. Working for Peter Jennings was both enjoyable and frightening. Jennings, who was highly exacting in his expectations, approved all the stories personally and would often make unreasonable demands. Jennings also had a habit of reordering the points in a story for no obvious reason and would often steal the best lines of stories for himself. However, it was clear to Harris from the beginning that Jennings was a professional who cared about the connection he fostered between himself....