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Narrator
Lemonade.
Gretchen Rubin
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little CA cash back Progressive
Advertiser/Commercial Voice
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Gretchen Rubin
You can focus on exercise, nutrition, all the things you're supposed to do for your health, but if you are not sleeping well, it is very hard to feel refreshed.
Advertiser/Commercial Voice
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Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, and I also love that it automatically starts when you get into bed so it feels seamless. Visit www.slee Sleep Me Gretchen to get up to $255 off your Chilipad 2.0 with code Gretchen. This special offer is available for happier listeners and only for a limited time. Order it today with free shipping and try it out for 30 days. You can return it for free if you don't like it with their sleep trial. Visit www.sleep s l e e p.me Gretchen and see why cold sleep is your ultimate ally in performance and recovery.
Narrator
Foreign.
Gretchen Rubin
Hello and welcome to Move Happier, a special bonus episode of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. It was created for the Move 26 in 26 challenge.
Audiobook Reader/Guest
One of the pleasures of getting regular
Gretchen Rubin
movement is that it pairs perfectly with another terrific activity activity listening to audiobooks.
Audiobook Reader/Guest
People often ask me if listening to audiobooks counts as reading, and I say it does.
Gretchen Rubin
Absolutely.
Audiobook Reader/Guest
And because June is Audiobook Appreciation Month, I'm excited to join Libro FM for their global audiobook walk on June 13th. Libro FM is an audiobook platform that supports independent bookstores, and the idea behind the walk is simple. Pick an audiobook, put on your headphones and head outside. So I thought this would be the perfect episode to share the first chapter of an audiobook that makes especially good company for a walk. If you enjoy what you hear, you can listen to the rest of the audiobook on Libro fm.
Narrator
HarperCollins and harper audio present the mighty a novel by louise erdrich, performed by marin ireland. To those who love birds and defend their place on Earth, the Red river of the north is young. From the sky it looks like a length of string arranged on a flat board in a tight scrawl of twisting loops. The river gathers in the Ottertail and Boise Desu rivers and runs north on a slight incline from Wahpeton to Winnipeg. The river is muddy, opaque with sediment and toxic from field runoff. Not a river you'd swim, but good to fish. At least at its source. The river is changeable, a slow and sleepy trickle in summer, rampaging like a violent toddler in spring when it sweeps across the land, reflecting the sky like its mother, a vast prehistoric lake. Over millennia, the waters have given the Red river valley Earth its blackness, its life. The river is shallow. It is deep. I grew up there. It is everything. The night driver 2008 crystal on a mild autumn night in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, Crystal pulled herself up behind the wheel of an international side dump, steered out of the sugar processing plant and started her haul. Out in the country, the sugar beets from Geist's fields were piled in a massive loaf on the company piling ground. Crystal drove down the highway, turned onto the access road and got loaded from the pile. She cruised back to the plant, unloaded, repeated for as many times as fit into a 12 hour shift. On night hauls she always packed a certain lunch two sandwiches, turkey salami on whole wheat, carrots, apple chips, peanuts, two cookies. She'd attached a segmented canvas tool bag to her lunch cooler. The pockets of the bag were always filled with the same phone, multi use tool, blackjack gum, Icy hot roll on Tylenol lip balm. She brought jalapeno meat sticks, her toothbrush, wallet in her pocket. She kept a lucky hat knitted by her daughter. Crystal also wore an olive wood cross brought back from the Holy Land by Father Flirty. She wasn't much of a Catholic, but like other people who crave order, she was superstitious. Her shift was 6pm to 6am by the time she left for work, her daughter was at her homework. Unless she was waitressing, Crystal got back in time to see her off to school. At 11pm Crystal ate her first jalapeno stick and used some Icy Hot. She left the plant and was going back out to the country, high beams cutting into strange mats of fog that lifted and fell when a brilliant shadow vaulted across the road. Before she could touch the brakes, the animal was snatched away into blackness. It was a mountain lion, the first she'd ever seen. There was the flow of it, her lights glancing off its pelt, the ruthless slope of its head. Crystal rammed her elbow into the side window and slowed down. Driving over the place she'd seen the big cat disappear, Crystal felt a slight electric charge along her jaw. Even in the cab of the heavy truck. The something had touched her, a twinge of unease. A prophecy. She tried to shake it off. Her daughter, Kismet and her husband, Martin, were certainly winding down their days at home. Maybe Kismet had made popcorn and Martin had brewed himself a cup of the special bedtime tea he liked. They were safe. Tune your thoughts to a better station, she muttered. Then her thoughts were broken up as she turned down a gravel road and drove toward the powerful halogen lights out on the piling ground. On her way back to the plant, it crossed Crystal's mind that the sighting might have to do with the grandmother who'd raised her Happy Frechette. Happy had lugged whiskey to Fargo to sell during Prohibition. She had traveled on foot and wasted a bottle beaning a mountain lion. Good money. She had fumed about it over 70 years later. Each time she told of her walk, it got longer and more eventful. Was sighting the cougar a sign she'd finally died? Avidity and cruelty had kept Happy alive, but nobody could live forever. Although if there was anyone. Crystal reeled in her thoughts, drove up the lift. At the beet plant, she put on the hat Kismet had made out of sparkly gold yarn. It was like a warrior helmet. A couple of the guys teased her, but she mocked them back, pretending they were jealous. She was still buzzing from the mountain lion, but she didn't say a word about it. The big cat had appeared just for her. The lift rose until the mercury switch opened the side gate and tipped out 32 tons of sugar beets. By the time Crystal was back on the road, the Call in show she liked to listen to was on. Tonight the topic was angels. Are they out there? Are they listening to us? Yes. The host, Al Ringer, was talking to an expert. They were discussing creatures of holiness, the Prince of Faces, Tetragrammaton, and the Order of Cherubim. The angel expert said she would break this down. If you watched the heavens, you could ask for help from the angel president involved in governing the movement of the stars. That night, for instance, the configuration of Libra on display now was ruled by Zuriel. Was it worth addressing Zuriel? Probably. Although Zuriel was above speech, Zuriel communicated with the Lord of Hosts by signs, told what was needed, what was wanted on Earth. Zuriel's mute requests might be said to elicit more attention because Zuriel wore special rings that flashed and glittered. Someone named Boris called in. Boris had been visited by an angel as a child. The angel had awakened him by calling gently from the end of his bed. When he got up, the angel took him outside, taking care to slam the door in order to wake his parents. His parents looked out the window and saw their son in the front yard. Immediately they rushed out. The angel told Boris to run away as fast as he could. His parents chased after Boris. They were nearly down the block when behind them their house exploded. The angel saved us, said the caller. That's what angels do, said the nonplussed expert. What did the angel look like? Asked Al. Like a seal. A seal? I mean, it was kind of glowy and golden, but yes, a seal. In ancient days, a seal was considered a fish, said the expert. You say the seal or angel led you down the steps and out into your front yard, said Al. How did that happen physically? A hand came out the end of its flipper and the seal slash angel sort of floated. It all seemed normal. They do take various forms. I'll be the first to admit I have no special Al cut the expert off. Just a minute. Here's another call. The next call was from a person who was or considered himself an angel. Why? Asked Al. I was chosen. Simple as that. What does our expert have to say? I will try to be gentle about this, but angels are not earthly beings. Neither am I. They exist outside of time. So do I. Angels see the world from every possible dimension. Same here. They have direct encounters with God, obviously. Well, said Al, it seems that you're an angel. Thank you. Next caller. Hello. I'm the mother of a son. We live on a farm. When my son was real young, he climbed up and fell into a grain bin, which most people the grain would suffocate. But not. He wasn't swallowed down. He said something lifted him up from below. Then later at the zoo, he climbed to the top of a chain link fence and down the other side. It was a tiger fence. The tiger curled itself around him and did nothing. My son's had any number of close calls. Last spring he and his buddies went out on the snow after a party. They raced around on their snowmobiles. Well, things happened, but he was more or less okay. My question is first, does he have a guardian angel? And second, how to say thank you specifically to an angel. Oh, and third, how do we stop these things from happening? Crystal turned up the volume, leaned forward, stared out at the empty highway as she drove. Overall question. You want to know what's going on? Said Al. Yes, yes, that's it, said the caller. The expert jumped in, excited. Obviously, yes, your son has a guardian angel, and from the gravity of these incidents, I would say his guardian angel is very highly placed, perhaps at God's right hand. These instances are proof that the expert went on for a while, but by then Crystal had stopped listening. She knew the caller. The voice belonged to Winnie Geist, a member of her book club whose family land and beat pile she had just turned down an access road to reach. Crystal could even glance across the perfectly flat fields, glistening under the moon like calm black oceans, and see that a light glimmered in a second floor window of Winnie's house. Everybody knew about the tiger and what had happened after this party, Winnie mentioned on the air, but Crystal hadn't known about the grain bin or that there were other miraculous escapes. Al Ringer moved on. Crystal turned off the radio and drove for a while in silence, headlights peacefully cutting radiant holes in the blackness. She'd never liked the kid Gary, but people had said the way people do, that he must have a guardian angel. Gary was in her daughter's high school class. In fact, they'd gone on a couple of dates against Crystal's advice. She couldn't forget that Gary was one of a group of boys who'd tormented Kismet when she was going through her phase as an innocent, hard working Goth. Crystal didn't trust him, and she certainly didn't trust his mother. Winnie Geist liked tragic endings, even hard history, and pretended she understood what she called the physics of farming. Crystal had named her daughter Kismet to attract luck and lightness of heart, but fate was also involved, and the mountain lion was a hungry shadow. Or maybe she touched the olive wood cross that hung around her neck and remembered how the light glared off its fur. Maybe she had seen a destroying angel. She thought about how another big cat had refused to eat Gary and touched her cross yet again. Crystal didn't know if there was anything serious going on with Kismet and Gary, but she did know that guardian angels only protect their special person. Getting close to someone whose angel was as powerful as Gary's was asking for trouble.
Gretchen Rubin
Now for a quick ad break. I've been trying to say yes more to little adventures. Nothing huge, just getting out of the routine and going somewhere different for the day. And it really makes you appreciate having a car that feels solid and comfortable where you're not thinking about the drive, you're just focused on where you're going. That's what stood out to me about the Defender. It has that rugged design, but it also feels really thoughtful inside. And I like that there's a full lineup from the two door 90 to the 110 and the 130 with seating for up to eight. So it really fits different kinds of
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Julie Louis-Dreyfus
Julie, Louis Dreyfus from Wiser Than Me, etc. Just popping in with a little reality check. Food waste shouldn't exist. There is no reason that our leftovers should end up in a landfill. But that's the final destination for about a third of the food we grow. Our ancestors would be confused. They use their food scraps as compost or as animal feed, or in weird soups, all the stuff we did before garbage was invented. But composting is hard work. Living with a bucket of rotten food on your counter is gross. Most food goes in the trash because it's easy. And these days we'll take any easy we can get. But now there's something easier. Drop your scraps in a mill food recycler. It looks like a kitchen bin and an iPhone had a baby. It takes nearly anything, even meat and bones. It works automatically. You can keep filling it for weeks and it never smells. When you finally empty it, you've got these nutrient rich grounds. Use them in your garden, pour them in your green bin, or have mill get them to a small farm so the food you don't eat can help grow the food you do. Just like it should be. It's why I own a mill, why I invest in mill, and why I'm still obsessed with my mill. If you want to get obsessed too, go to mill.com wiser to get $75 off. That's mill.com/wiser for $75 off.
Gretchen Rubin
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back.
Advertiser/Commercial Voice
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Narrator
Part 1 the Proposal 2008 the diamond on some days the stone was dull, as though it did not care to shine, but today it twinkled. Garak Geist, aka Gary, 18 years old and pressed for time, opened the little hinged box and tipped the ring side to side to catch the light. The stone winked at him. He placed the box in the cup holder between the seats of his mother's car. Many times he'd opened the box to examine the thin golden ring. Still, as soon as he shut the lid, he wanted to check again. The sales lady up in Fargo had said he'd purchased a wearable fleck of eternity. He wished she had not said fleck. She could have said maybe piece of eternity or symbol. People thought he was a confident person, cocky, especially during football season, which was now. His mother always insisted that from the get go he'd been hell on wheels, though supernaturally lucky. Escaping drownings, maulings, always this or that catastrophe. He had been that way until the party. He thought he'd be that way again. Still, a different word than fleck would have helped him in this moment. While he waited for his girlfriend, who said she was not his girlfriend, to run down the front steps of her crooked old house at the end of Tabor's Main Street. He put out his hand, drew it back, resisted again the urge to look at the ring. Between lifting or hauling sugar beets and a home game, he had three hours. Had the stone really winked? He was beginning to feel ridiculous, but maybe he should check at least that it was really there. He had bought it with his own money, not his parents money, and Gary was pleased about that. His father had started paying him for some of the work he did on the farm. The fact was, they weren't as rich as people thought. True, he'd inherit 3,000 acres, probably more from his uncle, too, and at 21 become a full partner. But this fall they'd started on a new house, and their farm debt was a source of pressure. Still, a young man needed cash, his father said, besides buying his own snowmobile. That was last year. Gary had bought this ring. The two were more connected than anyone would ever guess, the snowmobile being the reason he had to buy this ring and to propose marriage to Kismet R. Poe. Here she was at the passenger's side window. Gary jumped out, walked around the car, and opened the door for her. His mother had taught him how to treat a lady, and Kismet Arpo was a lady. His lady, he hoped. Of course, she would have laughed at him and said that was fucking hopeless. Or, though she sometimes dressed tough, she was a nice girl, so she might just smile and shake her head. He felt his lips stretch in a smile so embarrassingly anxious that as he walked back around the car, he put his hand to his mouth to wipe the smile away. He was in full control of his face as he pulled out. There was nowhere he could think of to go in town. He wanted a meaningful place, an overlook that wasn't a dam, a hill, but there were no hills. A magnificent tree, but Tabor was cutting down all of its old trees. Nobody knew why. The only place he could think of was about half an hour away, so he'd asked her to go on a drive, and they started out after the last of three stoplights in town. They took the curve on the first overpass, went by Steve's Auto Body and then lines of giant farm machinery, a seed station, stacked pallets, Pookies Valley Steakhouse on the straightaway. Gary steered with his knees and occasionally draped a few fingers on the bottom of the wheel. Kismet's thoughts were elsewhere. They used up their conversation in the first few minutes. This didn't really bother Kismet. She liked her own thoughts and could enjoy an uncomplicated silence. Then Gary asked if she was bored. She brushed that off and said that she was a visual person. I mean, if you're bored, we can talk or something, he offered. No, that's okay. I like watching the world go by. It's good as talking. In fact, it was better, at least where Gary was concerned. She liked the way the fields and ditches looked in late October, the soft scorched colors, the pale stubble left in the rows, the trees stripped bare and bristling. She counted the even peaks of pine trees that surrounded farmsteads to break the wind. However, within a mile or two, Gary's question whether she was bored made the silence complicated and exposed the fact that she actually was bored, very bored, and being consciously bored reminded her of what her cynical best friend Stockton had said, how boredom was a part of small town life that you had to get drunk to accept. She wasn't drunk now. She wasn't drunk very often. She did think that if she spent much time with Gary, though, she'd have to have a bottle handy. Still, there was something about him. She took a deep breath, held it, and blinked at the square lake. Yes, it was a square lake. The earth had been dug from a field. The displaced earth had made the second overpass. Kismet watched the lake go by as she slowly released her breath. It's nice just having a quiet ride, she said. Kismet wanted to forestall Gary from sharing his thoughts. He might get solemn and talk about his farming ideas or his philosophy, which was that you should do what your mother told you to do. Kismet had met Gary's mother and she questioned that Gary believed that radio frequencies could carry disease. He started many sentences by declaring there are two kinds of people. He didn't believe in God, but said he could get behind the idea that aliens had manufactured the skein of life. He also talked about, say, the Ten Commandments and would wonder whether thou shalt not kill applied to deer. He loved deer. He cried when he saw a dead one. He also cried when he saw a living one. This was a thing about Gary that really got to Kismet. He didn't hunt. His father and uncle tried to take him out hunting. He refused. He loved animals. Not only deer, but every animal. Still, she didn't appreciate it when he said that she reminded him of a deer in winter with her dark brown eyes and matching hair. Deer were lovely creatures, but they were prey animals. College will get me out of here, thought Kismet, and a tiny rush of fear made her want to sleep. She pushed her seat back. The sun was beaming through the windshield and it was autumn sun, the mellow light of early afternoon. She fell into a dreamy nap as Gary meditated aloud about whether dinosaur bones were real or had been placed there by a super intelligent race of ancient humans or by aliens. Aliens again, she murmured. Damn straight, said Gary in a heroic voice. You know the bones are real, said Kismet. Probably, said Gary. Here's the turnoff to that place. Remember Blasnik? He was a hands on man. There's two kind. I know, said Kismet. Your mom and dad? Yeah. Winnie and Diz. He liked calling them by their first names. They always say there are two kinds of people, hands on and hands off. They really liked how Blasnik took our class out to dig fossils on the banks of the Cheyenne, said Kismet. That was where you found the bison tooth, which aliens didn't put there. She closed her eyes and wondered why she was spending her day off with Gary, listening to the same things he said over and over, though sometimes a surprising thought broke through. But not today, okay? A bison tooth? Gary nodded. Petrified. You know, Turn to stone, they said in unison. She turned away. Gary's throat shut. He was so nervous that he'd fallen into old grooves of conversation. He slowed the car. They were close. At home, he kept the tooth on his trophy shelf under a glass cheese dome. I love that thing, he said every time he passed it.
Gretchen Rubin
We'll take a quick break and be back soon. I had one of those weeks where the to do list just kept growing. Little repairs, things to mount, random projects I kept putting off, and eventually it all starts taking up mental space, even when you're not doing it. And that's why I've been using TaskRabbit. You can book a skilled tasker for furniture assembly, home repairs, mounting, yard work, whatever you need help with.
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Gretchen Rubin
or at taskrabbit.com Summer always changes what I want to wear. I stop reaching for anything heavy or complicated and just want pieces that feel light, comfortable and easy from the you know, the first second I put them on. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. Their linen pieces, especially, have become my default this time of year. I have a linen button down from that, you know, it's one of those pieces that works for everything. For travel, for dinner, for weekends. It feels much more expensive than it is. I love that Quint uses high quality materials like European linen and organic cotton, but everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories.
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Gretchen Rubin
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Narrator
At present, the brown stone tooth was in his pocket. He'd brought it for luck. He and Kismet would have to walk to the place. He dug it up. That's where he would propose. He stopped the car. See that? He pointed across a field and told her it gave onto the riverbank. Kismet wasn't having it. We're walking across a field? Are you kidding? I wore my nice boots. Kismet lifted her foot up and rested her stacked heel on the console, not budging. Gary, don't be a hardass. I want to show you where I found the petrified bison tooth. The tooth is cool. I can see that. But Kismet nicked her chin at some hunters in orange vests walking along the edge of a shelter belt. Gary followed her. Look. True, getting shot at wouldn't make her want to marry him. Hey. She plucked the box from the cup holder and before he could speak, she opened it. A ring. She put it back. Lets go home. He scooped up the box and begged her to wait. Give that to your mom, said Kismet. I'm going down on my knees in the car. He swung the car out and the box rattled back into the cup holder. Kismet braced herself as they fishtailed on a gravel section road and then careened into the presence of a deserted farmhouse overgrown with giant thistles. Baby trees reached through the tousled shingles of the roof. Gary stopped the car with a jolt and turned to her in torment. He couldn't speak. His agonized good looks melted her heart. Aw, don't look at me like that. Marry me. Kismet blurted that she had a boyfriend, though that wasn't strictly true. I don't care. Gary grabbed the box and offered the ring to her. His hands were shaking. He'd lost weight since last March, and the hollows in his cheeks gave him an eerie authority. Kismet tried to turn away, but she couldn't move. His desperation paralyzed her. He grasped her hand, wouldn't let go, and before she could react, the ring was on her finger. Ah, ah, ah, she managed. Yeah? Did you say yeah? You said yeah. Gary threw himself across the storage console and the cup holder and was on her, weeping in a frenzy. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my God, I love you. I'll do anything. And so forth, on and on, alarming her, and then, as he quieted, convincing her of his passion, of his commitment, of his ardor, his adoration and his love. For surely this was love, thought Kismet. This was the heights. She had conquered him. Her heart swelled. He would do anything and everything for her. How she herself felt about him didn't really enter into it at that point. He had never gone out for long with a girl, and all of a sudden he had dated Kismet, and everyone at school treated her with a mixture of skepticism and surprised respect. Was it true, at least, that she found him tolerable? Or was this something pulling at her, a sense of the inevitable? Gary always got what he wanted, said everyone. But did she also want to be carried off into an exhilarating madness, for that was how he was acting, an insanity of love? Was this what passion felt like? As they drove back the same way they'd come, Kismet put on the radio and didn't listen to the music. She tried to think Gary had said that he didn't care if she had another boyfriend. Was her other boyfriend real if she never said his name? Maybe she didn't have to marry Gary Geist, but could just be engaged to him for a while. She didn't really have to wear the ring, she decided. No harm in seeing where things went between them besides, well, sex, which they'd had, or almost had, behind an old grain elevator and on his friend Charlie's basement couch. During football season, Gary often stayed at Charlie's house so he wouldn't have to drive out to the farm. Gary was handsome, but Charlie's attractions were on a different order entirely. His looks made people uncomfortable. Charlie, Jurassic Park, Knievel, Rapatoe, and Harlan Gaul were some of the guys who had been at that party. And there was Eric Pavlecki, Gary's best friend. Eric lived on a nearby farm and had been there, too. Eric drove to school with Gary every day he was the only one of those guys who ever said hello to Kismet between classes as they passed in the hall. Are you going to tell Eric? He already knows about the ring? Yeah. We drove up to Fargo. He was waiting in the car. Did you show it to him? I was going to, but he said it was your business and my business and I should keep it as a personal surprise. Were you surprised? Yeah, really surprised. As you may know, said Gary, as though he was some kind of teacher, diamonds are from the time of dinosaurs. They are petrified carbon, old as time. After a drama filled pause, he said, you are wearing a symbol of eternity. Oh my God, whispered Kismet before her throat closed. A sudden sweat leaked from her brow and armpits, alarming her as much as the ring had the pressure of millions or even billions of years. She slipped off the ring and silently placed it in the cup holder. She had taken Mr. Blasnik's class too, and was pretty sure that diamonds were even older than dinosaurs. A simmering nausea, a twinge of headache, and flushes of fear overtook the sweats as they drove along, but subsided once they reached her house. He stopped the car, hopped out, but didn't get to her car door in time. Kismet was halfway up the broken concrete walkway. She waved. He blew her a kiss, then looked around to see if anyone else was watching. So he missed that. She didn't blow a kiss back at him. She was already in her house. He took out the bison tooth, held it for a moment, nodding his head in a silent prayer. People said he was lucky to survive what happened at the party, but there were times he thought being dead might be better. He slid back in behind the wheel, and only when he was turning onto the highway, pounding the steering wheel, moaning to the radio, did he glance down at the cup holder and notice the glint of the ring.
Audiobook Reader/Guest
That's it for this bonus episode of Happier if you'd like to listen to the rest of today's audiobook for Libro FM's global audiobook walk, you can find the full audiobook on Libro FM. And if you'd like to join us for the Move 26 in 26 challenge, where we're aiming for 26 minutes of movement every day this year, you can find more information@happiercast.com move26 thanks so much for listening. And remember, the best time to start moving was 26 years ago. The second best time is now.
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Podcast: Happier with Gretchen Rubin
Episode: Move Happier: The Perfect (Free) Audiobook Listen for Your Next Walk
Date: June 12, 2026
Host: Gretchen Rubin
Special Context: Bonus episode for the Move 26 in 26 challenge, in partnership with Libro FM and Audiobook Appreciation Month. Features the first chapters from Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty, narrated by Marin Ireland.
This special bonus episode is designed to encourage listeners to incorporate more movement into their lives—specifically walking—by pairing it with a great audiobook experience. In celebration of Audiobook Appreciation Month and as part of the “Move 26 in 26” challenge (26 minutes of movement per day throughout the year), Gretchen Rubin partners with Libro FM to offer the first chapters of a compelling novel, The Mighty by Louise Erdrich, as motivation to get outside and walk. The episode blends short reflections from Gretchen with an immersive audiobook sample.
This episode successfully marries Gretchen Rubin’s signature practical optimism with the atmospheric, character-driven storytelling of Louise Erdrich. The overall tone is warm, supportive, and inviting, while the audiobook excerpt offers a meditative immersion into the rhythms of rural life, family ties, and the coming-of-age experience. The segment’s authenticity and sense of place encourage listeners not only to walk but to slow down and take in the world—both real and imagined—around them.
This summary was created to help listeners catch up on the episode and decide if they’d like to join the movement challenge or continue with the audiobook. No ads, intros, or sponsor content has been described in this summary.