"{{ovation.quote}}"
-{{ovation.company}}Talk & Fireside Chat: The Power of Fun – How to Feel Alive Again
Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Catherine Price wants to talk about fun—and to help you have more of it. In this presentation, which is based on her critically acclaimed book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, Price proposes a new definition of what she calls “true” fun, clarifies how it differs from “fake” fun, and reveals why—far from being frivolous—fun is an absolutely essential component of a happy and meaningful life. She then provides the audience with actionable tips that they can start using—right then at the event itself!—to begin to incorporate more fun into their lives.
In this engaging and practical presentation, which can be done in-person or virtually and as a talk or an informal conversation, Price weaves together scientific research with personal experience and evidence-backed suggestions in order to:
Groundbreaking, eye-opening, and packed with useful advice, Price’s presentation on The Power of Fun won’t just change the way audiences think about fun. It will bring them back to life.
Sample audience feedback:
"Catherine is a dynamic and engaging speaker who is able to connect with and inspire audience members from a broad range of backgrounds. She weaves together science, personal anecdotes, practical advice, and humor in a way that makes the subject matter approachable and actionable. Her virtual sessions have been among the best attended and most popular talks in our series, and people are still approaching me months later to thank me for bringing her to speak at our institution.” —Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
The Power of Fun has been included in many noteworthy roundups, including Amazon's Best Books of the Month Pick, Good Morning America, Fortune, and Book Riot. It was nominated for the Next Big Idea Club, and deemed "..the book everyone needs to read in 2022" (and the overall best self-care book of the year) by The Independent. In the words of speaker and #1 best-selling author Adam Grant, “This delightful book might just be what we need to start flourishing.”
More information about The Power of Fun: https://www.screenlifebalance.com/fun
Power of Fun Workshop: The Funtervention
Want to take The Power of Fun to the next level? Price also offers a hands-on “Funtervention” workshop.
Offered either as one longer session or two separate sessions (which can be spread out or offered back-to-back), the Funtervention workshop offers participants the chance to “find their fun” themselves. Instead of simply telling participants what she believes fun is, Price will guide them through a personal process of discovery, via small group/partner discussion and a customized printable workbook that she created specifically for the Funtervention workshops.
Not only will participants leave with a new general definition of fun, but they will better understand what generates fun for them personally, and feel more connected with their colleagues and other attendees in a way that can spark more collaboration and engagement during—and after—the conference. They will leave feeling engaged, inspired, and energized, with a personalized, practical plan in hand for how they will begin to prioritize and build more fun into their own lives, at home, at work, and beyond.
Sample audience feedback:
Note: this workshop can also be coupled with access to Catherine’s SMS-based “Find Your Fun” course (which participants can take individually or as a group) as a way to team-build and further put their insights from the workshop into practice.
Talk and Fireside Chat: How to Break Up With Your Phone — And Achieve Screen/Life Balance
Catherine Price, founder of Screen/Life Balance and author of the bestsellers How to Break Up With Your Phone and The Power of Fun, offers a customizable presentation — delivered as a talk or informal chat, either in-person or virtually — on how to achieve better screen/life balance, create a healthier relationship with technology, and lead a happier, healthier life.
After revealing why screen/life balance can be so challenging to achieve (especially now!), Price explains how audiences can create more balanced and intentional relationships with their phones and devices—and how doing so will improve their resilience, relationships, attention spans, creativity, productivity, and mental and physical health. This program combines a lively, compelling keynote with actionable, evidence-backed suggestions that people can begin to put into practice that very day.
Sample feedback:
“Catherine’s session on digital detox and emotional wellbeing was incredibly insightful and well received by attendees.” — Hyatt
"We can’t thank Catherine enough for her amazing insight on living a more intentionally mindful life by 'breaking up with our phones' and finding the silly joys in everyday life. We’ve already gotten a ton of requests for a replay of the event and some amazing input from audience members.” — Intel
"Catherine is a dynamic and engaging speaker who is able to connect with and inspire audience members from a broad range of backgrounds. She weaves together science, personal anecdotes, practical advice, and humor in a way that makes the subject matter approachable and actionable. Her virtual sessions have been among the best attended and most popular talks in our series, and people are still approaching me months later to thank me for bringing her to speak at our institution.” —Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
More information about screen/life balance and How to Break Up With Your Phone:
How to Break Up With Your Phone and Screen/Life Balance: Hands-On Workshop
Do you and your colleagues feel burned out from being constantly “on-call” to technology — but not know how to stop? In this hands-on version of Catherine’s presentation, offered either as a single longer session or two separate sessions, attendees will learn how their interactions with screens are affecting them (and why it’s so hard to achieve balance) and will take the first steps toward creating new, healthier relationships with technology in both their personal and professional lives.
Working individually and collaboratively, participants will begin by exploring their own priorities and what role they want technology to play in their lives (this big-picture view is one of the features that makes Catherine’s approach unique). Then, working both individually and collaboratively, with Catherine as their guide, they will make a concrete plan—and even take the first steps—in creating a new relationship with technology, over which they have control.
Participants will leave feeling energized and inspired—and with a concrete plan.
(Note: this workshop can be coupled with access to Catherine’s SMS-based 30-day “Phone Breakup” course, which participants can take individually or as a team, as a way to team build and put the skills and philosophies of the workshop into practice for the long run.)
Feedback on Catherine’s “How to Break Up With Your Phone” program:
“I still use my phone, of course, but having a saner relationship with my device has freed up time for a much richer relationship with my family.” — Dan Harris, former anchor for Good Morning America and host of the 10 Percent Happier podcast
“Catherine Price is the Marie Kondo of brains. . . . [F]or the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again.” — Kevin Roose, tech reporter, The New York Times
"I think it’s so important during this time to re-focus my energy away from my smartphone, set reasonable boundaries and mindfully enjoy the world around me. If you feel the same, [Catherine’s] book may help.” — Halle Berry
“In How to Break up with Your Phone, Catherine Price has written the essential guide for taking control of our lives. . . . Price has established herself as one of the leading writers and speakers on this vital conversation.” — Arianna Huffington
“Vitamania”: The Strange and Surprising Story of Nutrition’s Most Powerful Word
Everyone is familiar with vitamins – many of us have taken them since we were children, after all, and marketers often use the presence of vitamins as proof of the nutritional quality of their products. But what, exactly, is a vitamin? Where did the word come from? Does the presence of vitamins mean that something is healthy? And how has the word’s popularity affected our overall approach toward food? In this talk, which is suitable both for the public and for nutrition- and health-related professional conferences and educational settings, Price argues that, as both individuals and a society, we’ve been seduced by a word. She reveals the fascinating history of the word “vitamin,” including its surprisingly recent coinage (it was made up in 1911 by a Polish biochemist named Casimir Funk), its early use by food marketers, and the many ways it is used to manipulate our buying choices today. Along the way, she demonstrates how we’ve come to associate vitamins with near magical powers, and how, despite having no precise scientific definition, the word “vitamin” laid the foundations for our current detail-obsessed philosophy toward nutrition. She also reveals how “vitamin” has been brilliantly used by marketers and the supplement industry to come to stand in for the much larger category of dietary supplements – leading to a regulatory situation that both threatens the public’s health and defies common sense.
Catherine Price's Patient Perspective: Type 1 Diabetes
Catherine Price was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2001, when she was 22 years old. Not only did her diagnosis inspire her career as a science journalist (and her book Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food), but it made her an inadvertent expert in what it’s like to live with an incurable, life-threatening, chronic disease. An enthusiastic supporter of clinical research, innovative therapies, and technologies for blood sugar control — and an advocate for low-carbohydrate diets (for people with and without diabetes alike!) — Catherine enjoys consulting and contributing to panels and fireside chats around subjects relating to diabetes, nutrition, blood sugar control, medical technology, product design/user experience, and clinical research. She also enjoys sharing her own personal story: despite her malfunctioning pancreas (or perhaps because of it!) Price is committed to living as full of a life as possible, which has led to adventures including riding a bicycle across the United States three months after being diagnosed with type 1 and spending seven months with her husband traveling the world, including time spent in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Vietnam and Cambodia, and two weeks spent volunteering on a French dairy farm (cheese has no carbs!).
In addition to participating in clinical trials herself, Price has written about diabetes for publications including The New York Times and Popular Science, and is a member of the Leadership Council for the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania.
Catherine Price Bulk Book Purchase
To complement any of Catherine’s talks, HWA can facilitate a bulk purchase of How to Break Up With Your Phone and/or The Power of Fun to be distributed to your employees not only as a memento of the event, but also as tools to hone these shared skills across your organization. Catherine, who specializes in what she refers to as "science-based self-help," also has numerous additional resources that can be offered to talk attendees, including a discount for her online courses, a guide for a 3-day "phone breakup challenge" (a fun team-building activity!), a phone breakup conversation-starting kit, and a "Fun Toolkit" that's designed to help people build more fun into their lives.
Catherine Price and Oprah share an exhilarating conversation about The Power of Fun on Oprah’s series, The Life You Want
Award-winning journalist and bestselling author CATHERINE PRICE brought her uplifting message of FUN to a very special event last night – a live class with Oprah called “The Life You Want.” After Oprah shared a video online wondering aloud, “what is fun?” it was clear she needed to connect with the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. The two shared an empowering discussion about how to choose joy despite the challenges of the last few years. Oprah set the stage for the motivational conversation and introduced Catherine saying, “in a time when both joy and fun feel so tough to grasp, we have the perfect expert with us today – she’s going to help add more joy to our lives by helping us figure out what fun is!”
As she does in live events with groups including TED, Leadercast, SXSW, Intel, Cigna, Hyatt, T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley, and so many more, Catherine dives into the inherent connection between joy and fun and offers tangible practices for all of us to find more of both in our daily lives. As Oprah flipped to her favorite passage in The Power of Fun, Catherine illuminated how many of us are already experiencing many moments of fun – we just haven’t labeled them as such, and so we’re missing out on the opportunity to appreciate and really benefit from them. With limited time in our days, Catherine emphasizes the importance of prioritizing fun and savoring the fun we’re having as a practice that adds meaning to our lives.
Watch Catherine Price’s exhilarating TEDTalk here >>
Catherine Price’s revelatory new TED Talk offers the secret to a healthier life: more true fun
Award-winning science journalist CATHERINE PRICE took the TED2022 mainstage with a powerful talk inspired by her newest book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. In her already-viral TED Talk Why fun is the secret to a healthier life, Price makes an irresistible case – her playfulness balances the urgency of her message, “fun is the secret to feeling alive.” Price’s talk inspires laughter throughout, with light-hearted and authentic insights about our relationship to fun, how we misuse the word in our daily lives, and how to truly connect with joyful experiences. One of the “Most Popular TED Talks of 2022,” audiences are invigorated and reassured by Price’s own vibrant sense of ease, and she weaves riveting examples of what she calls “science-backed self-help” throughout, making a transformative shift in our daily lives seem possible.
As she does in her compelling in person and virtual interactive talks, Price proposes a new, more precise definition of fun, reveals the science-backed truths about why fun is so good for us, and actionable strategies for creating more fun in our lives. As the Screen/Life Balance founder illuminates her keynote, events with Price capture the very elements she’s describing – inspiring playfulness, connection, and creating a shared experience that makes a resounding and lasting impact with audiences.
Watch Catherine Price’s vibrant TED Talk here >>
Catherine Price: Screen/Life Balance is the new Work/Life Balance
Before the pandemic, the average American was spending upwards of four hours a day just on their phones. That adds up to 60 full days a year, or a quarter of our waking lives. Add in the time spent on television or our computers and tablets, and many of us spend most of our waking hours staring at screens — an imbalance that the pandemic has only made worse.
While some of this time is useful, productive, or enjoyable, a lot of it is not. We feel imbalanced and uneasy, but don’t know what to do. Our boundaries between work and home lives have eroded, if they ever existed at all.
In this talk, which is apolitical and suitable for a broad range of audiences, CATHERINE PRICE argues that work/life balance is an outdated idea. Instead, she introduces the concept of Screen/Life Balance, a term that she coined to refer to the practice of creating a healthy, productive, happy balance between on-screen and off-screen life, whether your work is in-person, at home, or hybrid.
She reveals why Screen/Life Balance is essential for our productivity, creativity, careers, relationships, happiness and long-term physical and mental health, and then gives practical, actionable suggestions to help the audience figure out — and achieve — better Screen/Life Balance for themselves. Audience members leave her talk feeling inspired to make a change and armed with practical strategies that they can implement that very day.
This talk—which can be an in-person or virtual traditional presentation, Q&A/fireside chat or hands-on workshop — is relevant for a wide range of audiences and events, including business leaders, executives, educators, students, parents, and healthcare workers, as well as wellness events, team-building workshops, educational events, tech conferences, and corporate off-sites. It’s also a great offering for clients looking to give a gift to their employees or customers that will actually make a difference in their lives.
“I really, truly recommend trying Catherine’s program. I’m not a ~wellness expert~, but I’ve never done something with such a high return on investment.” — Kevin Roose, The New York Times
For more information, visit screenlifebalance.com.
Catherine Price's Patient Perspective: Type 1 Diabetes
CATHERINE PRICE was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2001, when she was 22 years old. Not only did her diagnosis inspire her career as a science journalist (and her book Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food), but it made her an inadvertent expert in what it’s like to live with an incurable, life-threatening, chronic disease. An enthusiastic supporter of clinical research, innovative therapies, and technologies for blood sugar control — and an advocate for low-carbohydrate diets (for people with and without diabetes alike!) — Catherine enjoys consulting and contributing to panels and fireside chats around subjects relating to diabetes, nutrition, blood sugar control, medical technology, product design/user experience, and clinical research. She also enjoys sharing her own personal story: despite her malfunctioning pancreas (or perhaps because of it!) Price is committed to living as full of a life as possible, which has led to adventures including riding a bicycle across the United States three months after being diagnosed with type 1, and spending seven months with her husband traveling the world, including time spent in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Vietnam and Cambodia, and two weeks spent volunteering on a French dairy farm (cheese has no carbs!).
In addition to participating in clinical trials herself, Price has written about diabetes for publications including The New York Times and Popular Science, and is a member of the Leadership Council for the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania.
Catherine Price: How Fun Is the Secret to a Happier and Healthier Life (And How to Have More of It)
We often think of fun as frivolous. But according to CATHERINE PRICE, science journalist, ScreenLifeBalance.com founder, and author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again and How to Break Up with Your Phone, True Fun — which she defines as the magical confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow — is absolutely essential for a well lived and joyful life. If you use True Fun as your compass, you will be happier and healthier. You will be more creative and productive, less resentful, and less stressed. You will have more energy. You will find community and a sense of purpose. You will stop languishing and start flourishing. And best of all? You’ll have more fun.
In this talk, which is the perfect antidote to our pandemic-induced sense of languishing, Price reveals the surprising mental, physical, and cognitive benefits of fun. She then offers a practical, evidence-backed plan for how we can achieve better screen/life balance and attract more True Fun into our daily lives—without feeling overwhelmed. Audiences leave her presentation feeling both inspired to make a change, and equipped with tangible things they can do that very day to increase their happiness and feel more alive.
In addition to being the inspiration for Price’s popular TED talk, The Power of Fun has been included in many noteworthy roundups, including Amazon’s Best Books of the Month Pick, Good Morning America, Fortune, Book Riot, nominated for the Next Big Idea Club, and deemed “..the book everyone needs to read in 2022” by The Independent.
This talk — which can be an in-person or virtual traditional presentation, Q&A/fireside chat or hands-on workshop — is apolitical and relevant for a wide range of audiences and events, including business professionals, executives, educators, and healthcare workers, as well as wellness events, and team-building workshops, and corporate off-sites. It’s also a great offering for clients looking to give a gift to their employees or customers that will actually make a difference in their lives.
Groundbreaking, eye-opening, and packed with useful advice, Price’s presentation won’t just change the way your audience thinks about fun. It will bring them back to life.
Watch Price's TED Talk about the power of fun >>
Speaker Spotlight: Catherine Price helps people scroll less, live more, and have fun
Hailed in The New York Times as "the Marie Kondo of brains," CATHERINE PRICE is an award-winning science journalist, speaker, and author of How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life and The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. As a speaker, consultant and workshop leader, she helps individuals and organizations create healthier personal and professional relationships with their phones (and other devices), and establish best practices to encourage creativity, productivity and mental health. In other words, she helps people scroll less, live more, and have fun.
Her engagements can be customized based on audience size and area of interest, but they are always compelling and actionable, chock-full of what Catherine calls "science-backed self-help." Sought out to speak everywhere from SXSW to Fortune, Catherine receives out-of-this-world reviews, such as: "A very enlightening and thought-provoking discussion that may even prove to be life-changing." (San Francisco Giants); "Catherine’s talk has been one of the most well received we’ve ever had. Not only is she an engaging speaker, but she’s insightful, and will have you thinking about the concepts she touches on for months..." (Livongo Health)
Hailed in The New York Times as "the Marie Kondo of brains," Catherine Price is an award-winning science journalist, speaker, and author of How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life (Ten Speed Press), among other books. Her newest book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again (Dial Press) has released to great acclaim and was deemed "..the book everyone needs to read in 2022" by The Independent. As a speaker, consultant and workshop leader, she helps individuals and organizations create healthier personal and professional relationships with their phones (and other devices), and establish best practices to encourage creativity, productivity and mental health. In other words, she helps people scroll less, live more, and have fun.
How to Break Up With Your Phone has been published in more than 35 countries and featured in scores of high-profile media outlets around the world, including NPR, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Wired, Vox, Refinery29, BBC World News Service, and many others. A New York Times article about Catherine and her 30-day program titled " Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain,” went viral, receiving more than 2 million hits in less than a week. The article remained at the #1 slot for most-popular, most-emailed and most-shared for more than four days and was the #27 most-read article published by the New York Times in all of 2019.
Catherine is also the creator and founder of Screen/Life Balance, which is dedicated to helping people learn how to scroll less and live more. Screen/Life Balance is part of Catherine’s continued mission to create evidence-backed resources to help people around the world design lives in which they control their technology, rather than the other way around—with the ultimate goal of increasing happiness, productivity, creativity, health and wellbeing.
Catherine speaks, consults, and leads workshops on how individuals and corporations can set better boundaries with — and best practices for — their devices in order to maximize creativity and productivity, improve mental health and brain function, reduce burnout, spend more time doing the things that actually matter to them...and have more fun! Her engagements can be customized based on audience size and area of interest, but they are always compelling and actionable, chock-full of what Catherine calls "science-backed self-help."
To learn more about Catherine and her other books and journalistic work, please visit CatherinePrice.com.