Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Bears, Bulgaria, and Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Today, on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, we welcome a very special guest: Rainn Wilson. You may know him best as Dwight from The Office, or maybe you’ve listened to his podcast with author Reza Aslan, Metaphysical Milkshake. Rainn and Sharon discuss the majesty of Spirit Bears, travel, and starting a spiritual revolution as a way to help heal our worldwide, modern pandemics. They also get real with death, religion, and the temporary nature of materialism. Special thanks to our guest, Rainn Wilson, for joining us today. You can order Soul Boom here and watch The Geography of Bliss here. ***Please note that Rainn Wilson joined us for the recording of this podcast episode prior to the SAG strike. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Guest: Rainn Wilson Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, before we dive into this episode, just a quick word. This was recorded before any of the Hollywood unions went on strike. Hello, friends. Welcome. Today is truly, truly a pleasure because my guest is Rainn Wilson, who you probably know from his role as Dwight on The Office, but he's also an author. He's on other TV shows. And this was just one of my favorite interviews. I cannot wait to share it with you. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

I am very excited to be joined by Rainn Wilson today. Thank you for being here. It's a treat. What a pleasure. I'm such a big fan and happy to be on your show. Truly, the pleasure is mine. You, of course, are best known for playing Dwight on The Office, of course. Are you tired of talking about Dwight yet, or is he still very beloved in your heart? Yeah, it's a mixed bag, I'll be really honest. I'm not tired of talking about Dwight yet? Or is he still very beloved in your heart? Yeah, it's a mixed bag. I'll be really honest. I'm not tired of talking about Dwight yet because when I interact with people, I see how much the show means to them. And so it's a heart thing. It's a heart and a gut thing. People that are Office fans, they'd say how much it impacted their lives how much it brought their family together how much

it soothed their anxiety and so i'm just so grateful to be how many television shows are a balm to people's lives yes that's absolutely correct i would say the same thing to me the office is like macaroni and cheese in your comfortable pajamas at the end of a really long day that's how it feels to me. Nice. I've watched every episode probably a minimum of five to 10 times, except for Scott's Tots. That episode's unacceptable.

Is it too hard to stomach? Those poor children being denied an education. It is. I just can't handle it. As a teacher, I can't handle it. It's too much. I'll watch all the other episodes. But of course, The Office would be nothing without Dwight.

And it really does mean so much to people. And it means so much to a variety of generations. You know, like the people like me who watched it when it was first airing. There's my generation. And then there's like all the Gen Zers that have just discovered it and are watching it in streaming and are like spending eight hours a day binging it. It is intergenerational in a sense. Occasionally you meet people such as yourselves that it was watching it on appointment television on the NBC network at Thursdays at eight or nine o'clock or whenever.

Well, I mean, I do have to ask one quick question and I want to talk about something that you've been working on lately, but I do have to ask which bear is best. Fact, black bear is best. How is that? I did that for the fans, but really in all honesty, have you ever seen a sun bear? Yes. Sun bears are super cool. They're so cool. It's hardly even a bear it hardly qualifies as a bear although there is a certain earth sign ness but they are delightful little creatures and they don't get enough attention it was koala bears and grizzly bears what about the

sun bear or the spirit bear have you seen the spirit bears of british columbia that's not a thing okay you're gonna that is a thing i'm not making it up you're gonna have to google it when we're done spirit bears live only in british columbia and they are this community of bears that has like just existed in its own little community like getting real fat on the salmon that runs through the rivers, et cetera. And they are white black bears. Oh my God. I'm just looking at, I just, sorry, I Googled it. It is a black bear that is white. Sometimes called the spirit bear.

There are about 500 fully white individual ones and they live on the islands up there. Wow. I am a bear authority and I learned something new. I feel like this is my reason and my purpose for being on your podcast. Thank you for teaching me about bears. Sharon, is there nothing that you do not know? I do not know how to speak old German. I don't know about Belschnickel. I'm not an authority on faux Amish repertoires, faux Amish holidays. That's not my thing. There's still time. You're young. You're young, Sharon. You know, when I saw that you were doing a TV show called The Geography of Bliss, I was like, is that based on the 2008 Eric Weiner book that I read in 2008? And now you need to answer the question, anybody else?

No, it's not. Total coincidence. Completely coincidental. The premise being the same is also totally coincidental. And him being a co-executive producer is coincidental. I'm so impressed that you read that book when it came out, although it was considered a bestseller. And Eric Weiner is an executive producer on the show. And it is the spirit and curiosity and kind of DNA of his book that runs throughout our show, The Geography of Bliss, and an awesome title as well. It totally is. I loved the premise of the book. So throughout our show, The Geography of Bliss, and an awesome title as well. It totally is. I loved the premise of the book. So I was like, if we take the general concept of

this book, which I really enjoyed, and then we just add in rain, this is going to be something that I will greatly enjoy. And I did. It is delightful. It's a delightful show. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you so much. It was a joy to do as well. It is delightful. It's a delightful show. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you so much. It was a joy to do as well. It really was. You can tell. You can tell that you enjoyed it. You can tell, first of all, that for anybody who has not watched it yet on Peacock, you

should do that. It is travel. It's quirky. It's examining big picture ideas. And it has rain in it. And I was not disappointed. Oh, great. I'm so glad you watched it and enjoyed it. And I was not disappointed. Oh, great. I'm so glad you watched it and enjoyed it.

It was offered to me by these young producers who had gotten the right to Eric Weiner's book. And I normally don't kind of just take submissions, but it was such a delightful idea. And they thought this would make a great show. And when we started breaking it down, we realized that the show works on a number of different levels. So number one, like you just said, it's a great travel show. It's fun locations, beautifully shot, exciting and funny and quirky. And if you just watch it as a travel show, you're going to love it. And then it has secrets to happiness and bliss and joy that one can put into one's life. So we go around the world looking for what makes

people happy and gives them bliss and contentment and wellbeing. And you can come away from episodes with some valuable life lessons that you can put into practice. And then number three, the other thing that I thought was really important about the show is that it's my personal journey. It's also Rainn Wilson is seeking increased bliss. He's an anxious guy. He's a disconnected guy. He lives in his head a lot. He suffers from the modern disease. And this is something that would benefit me. And people are going to benefit from watching me struggling and me from going on this journey. So the show works on all three of those levels. I love that. And I love too, that it's not like I'm Rainn Wilson and these are the lifestyles of the rich and fabulous. You know what I mean? It's not about this fantastic

yacht that you rented or this luxury beachside villa that you're really just riding in a car in Bulgaria with a driver, and you're like, so have you seen The Office? And he's like, no. The Office? No, no. It really is your real travel experiences in a variety of very unique places that most people have not been. unique places that most people have not been. When you were conceptualizing this show with the producers and everybody who worked on the show, how did you decide where to go and what the activities that you were going to engage in? Because I'm wondering, how do you get to Bulgaria, find this woman, and make the elder berries syrup? How does that come to be? Well, first of all, what we originally planned and what ended up on the screen are completely different. So we were going to go to Finland

and Moldova. And then a pesky and horrendous and tragic thing happened, which is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And all of a sudden, Finland was on a front line and Moldova was on a different kind of a front line. And we were like, uh-oh, we can't really tell a story over by a war zone about happiness because that's just not right. So we shifted from Finland to Iceland, which has similar stories and has beautiful visuals, and to Bulgaria from Moldova because Iceland is among the most happy of the countries and Bulgaria is among the most unhappy. And we wanted to learn from going to both, like what is it that we can glean from both of those? We were also supposed to shoot in Dubai as well as in Japan. So Dubai got canceled because we were flying from Ghana, West Africa to Dubai.

And the royal family of Dubai had just seen the reality show Real Housewives of Dubai. Oh, no. And they were incensed. They were livid. They were outraged. And they were like, hell no. No reality TV show in Dubai. So we literally showed up to Dubai with our bags. We met with our production crew and they're like, sorry. So hung out in Dubai for a while before I flew home. And then Japan, literally the car was pulling into my driveway. I was not feeling well. I tested negative for COVID.

I was like, you know, I should just test one last time. And before I loaded my bags, I took one last COVID test and I was COVID positive. And I don't know if you remember, but Japan was very draconian about COVID and very locked down. That threw everything into a tailspin. So if we get another season, there's lots of great places for us to go. And then when you go to a country, you figure out the kind of story that you're going to tell. So in Thailand, for instance, we knew that we wanted to touch into kind of Thai culture,

this concept of Sanuk, which is just enjoyment of life, and the Buddhist heritage, the connection to the beautiful land in Thailand. So you find storylines that suit the overall story that you want to tell. I got to bathe elephants, I got to visit a Buddhist monastery, and go with some dancers that were all involved in Sanuk. And you want to create a package of five wonderful acts that take you on a journey. One of the reasons that you talk about you wanted to do this project, you wanted to go on these journeys, is for your own personal spiritual journey or your own personal exploration of what makes somebody happy. And this notion of where you are or where you live can impact your sense of happiness.

And I wonder what some of your takeaways from this project thus far, what are some of the things where you're like, you know, I really came to realize that thing, or I discovered I really did not enjoy that. I would love to hear some of your personal takeaways. Right. Well, terrific question. One of the most powerful experiences I had was in Iceland with these incredible Viking Valkyrie women that gather several times a week to do cold plunges in the Arctic Ocean, which is about 57 degrees. And they gather and they dance and they sing and they breathe and they meditate and they hold hands and this dozens of them then walk into the water up to their necks and they're breathing and

singing and then they come out and they dance with a big boom box and it's it's it was one of the most exciting revitalizing and inspiring hours of my life and when you do the research, we look at like Andrew Huberman or whatever about cold immersion therapy, it's really astonishing the positive impact that it has on slow dopamine release. But then doing it communally and creating this tribe of women doing it with such abandon and with the arts and with meditation and breathing and holding hands, camaraderie, that was really powerful. And I kind of feel like we could heal the entire world if we just did that every morning. We gathered, held hands, sang, revealed our bodies in our swimsuits, even though we're all pudgy and weird looking, and went into the cold water.

So that was one incredibly powerful experience. But the takeaway from all of it was really pretty basic, which is that happiness, bliss, joy, well-being comes from community and connection. That's it. That's it. You can do meditation. You can do cold plunges. You can exercise. You can connect with nature. Those are all crucial and lovely. But really where you saw the most vital and exciting and inspiring connections were people gathered in community. We're fooled into thinking that we have a community on social media because we have a lot of friends and likes and thumbs ups and

hearts on our posts, but that's not real community. We need to be in rooms with each other. And that's another reason why COVID was so devastating to us culturally. Do you find yourself prone to wanting to be a hermit? Do you find yourself prone to being like, I just stay at my house? Is that your natural state? I have a tendency in that direction. I have a tendency to isolate. That being said, when I do find community and engage, and I have my faith community, that's important to me. I have a recovery community, that's important to me i have a recovery community that's important to me i have friends and show business that i really enjoy and that make me laugh and recently i joined a little tennis club up the road and have been playing competitive usta tennis we have a little team and we're just

a goofy bunch of fat middle-aged men a couple of of them are in decent shape and it's so much fun. And even that community is as slight as it is. It's really meaningful to get together with Will and Mike and Chris and Tom and all the goofy guys and with their trick knee and their bum shoulders and their hemorrhoids and, you know, duffing it out on the old tennis court. Do you ever look around and you're like, am I this age now? Oh my God. I am this age where you're like, I am in the old man tennis group. Girl, don't.

Not that you're old, but you know what I'm saying. No, I am. You don't have to worry about that. You're young and vital and please don't even worry. But my God, it would be generous to say that I'm in my mid-50s. Let's put it that way. And sometimes I look in the mirror, I'm like, what the hell? What is going on with this? I could relate to that. Like, what in the actual fresh hell is happening to my face? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I get it. Yeah, I have a tendency to want to isolate myself too. I'll just stay home. Canceled plans are the best ones. That's my natural state. But it definitely sort of lit a little fire under me of like, you know, it actually is

good for me to go see the people. I just had a conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, and he's recently announced that we're in the middle of a loneliness epidemic and that the health impacts of loneliness, being lonely is the equivalent of smoking like 15 cigarettes a day. That's what they say. And it just takes years off your life. I also was listening to a podcast about Alzheimer's and they were talking about how loneliness increases the risk of Alzheimer's greatly.

I think when we look in the future, when we look back on this time, we'll really be uncovering the mental health epidemic, the loneliness epidemic, and the diseases of despair that I describe in my book, and really unearth some very sobering realities. Yeah. I was just going to mention this thing from your book, which you refer to as sort of these deaths of despair, these ideas that there are unique things that of Pandemics. And I talk about the COVID pandemic. And then I reference the fact that there are a dozen other pandemics that we don't think of as a pandemic, but that's how they should be viewed. The mental health epidemic is one of them. We've discussed that a little bit. Climate change, I view as a kind of pandemic, discuss that a little bit. Climate change, I view as a kind of pandemic, the roots of its disease being spiritual, not political. How so? Well, because we are so disconnected from planet Earth

that humanity uses planet Earth like a giant ATM machine where we just withdraw oil, gold, where we just withdraw oil, gold, copper, we're almost out of copper, and we just suck these out in the most destructive ways. And then with our waste, we just dump our waste right back into planet Earth. And we can pass legislation all we want to limit CO2, and we should. But that's not where it ends. If we think that that's going to solve climate change, it's a deeper pandemic. All of these pandemics, including diseases of despair, racism, sexism, income inequality, these are not some kind of lefty, woke jargon. They're very real, but their roots are, again, and this is a part of the thesis of my book. There's more to it than that. But part of the thesis of my book is that the roots of

these issues are spiritual and need to be addressed as such and need to be healed with love and compassion and forgiveness and with building of community and turning from being self-centered to being other-centered. You can pass legislation all you want. That's just putting Band-Aid on a cancer. And that's kind of what we're doing in Western civilization right now. And you argue in your book too, that that's one of the reasons we need a spiritual revolution in whatever form that would take for you and whatever your beliefs are in that topic, if you practice a formal religion, or if you just, you know, have your own personal beliefs about something, that those sorts of

spiritual beliefs, those bigger, broader spiritual ideas that almost all spiritual practices have some of these things in common, that these pandemics aplenty that you refer to can only be addressed via some of these spiritual avenues that we can be like, stop being racist, period, sign it into law. And yes, we should have laws that make it so that you can't discriminate and things of that nature, of course, but it doesn't mean we should have laws that make it so that you can't discriminate and things of that nature. Of course, it doesn't mean we should abandon legislation, but we can't address the pandemic of racism or sexism, for example, without addressing the spiritual component. It's exactly like what you were saying with the climate issues. Yeah. Couldn't have said it better myself. You're exactly right. And I think racism is a great example. Like the voting rights law was passed in 1965, making sure that black people were always eligible to vote and that there weren't any restrictions on race. That's a year before I was born. And it's such an important law. And all the laws that we've passed to end Jim Crow have been crucial

in our country's development, but they're not enough. And we see that today with an increase in kind of polarization that to work on racism, we need to go back to the roots of some of the deepest religious and spiritual teachings that have been around since the dawn of time. We need to go back to the life of Jesus Christ. We need to go to the root of what the Buddha taught, or what's in the Bhagavad Gita, or the Vedas, or Upanishads. And that there's another one of my theses, that sounds kind of dirty, but theses of my book is that there is a wealth of spiritual information and tools that is there from 5000 BC onwards that we can harness and put into practice on a both a personal level, which is how most people consider the spiritual journeys

on a personal level, and that's important, but we can also utilize these tools on a collective level, on a social level for kind of social transformation can have a spiritual underpinning, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday

with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that I really related to in your book was about the death of your dad. You talked about how it seems impossible to you that life could not come to an end because brain activity ceased and that it simply doesn't compute,

that it all adds up to nothing. And I remember writing that down. It simply doesn't compute that it all adds up to nothing. And what makes us who we are so much is our consciousness, but there has to be more to it than that. My favorite topic in the world, it really is. I have a chapter on God in the book called The Notorious G.O.D., where I try and kind of explode and re-inspire and reinvigorate conversations about the divine. And Death and How to Live It is the chapter you're referring to, which I frame with talking about the passing of my father, which was incredibly heartbreaking. So there's a big cultural conversation between the atheist elements and the theist ones. And I tried being an atheist for several years. When I was younger, I had rejected the faith of my youth, which was the Baha'i faith, and I had kind of turned my

back on it and entered kind of secular New York City in the 90s and going to acting school and being a bohemian, and most of my friends were atheists. And I tried it on. And then as I was on kind of a spiritual journey and learning about faith and the soul and spirituality and whatnot, I realized that there's two options. So either everything is a random assemblage of molecules and atoms and energy that was kind of sparked 7 billion years ago, but may have pre-existed that. And it's all random and it's bouncing around. And we happened to have formed out of the animal soup and the animal zoo on planet Earth and have advanced consciousness. And that's just a trick and a miracle of evolution. And then when we die, it's lights out and the consciousness goes out like a light bulb. That's one option. And the

other option is that we have some kind of eternal element to us, a soul, that there's some aspect of our consciousness, of our essential beingness, our light, that is simply residing in these human meat suits for 80 or 90 years, if we're lucky, and then continues on its divine journey, whatever that may be. And different religious mythologies, as it were, point to different possibilities of this kind of a journey. But all religious faiths talk about how the material is kind of illusory and temporary, and not something to attach oneself to, but to continue on the journey, wherever that goes into eternity and beyond time and space. So as I pondered these questions, life's biggest possible questions about God and the soul and the meaning of life and death, to me, it made the most sense. It was incomprehensible to me that life was meaningless and then it was over, but that there had to be something more.

And as I've dug deeper and deeper into that realm, I have come away firmly believing that to be true. Yeah. I mean, you talk about how you tried on being an atheist for a while, and then you decided to return to being a person of faith. And I'm curious about what that journey is like when you decide, you know what? It was all an accident there. You know what? Animal soup. That's how it went down.

And that's what I'm going to go with. Was that a concerted effort on your part where you're like, no, I don't believe that anymore. How does one go from like a person of faith? Nope. Atheist back to being person of faith. Just very high level. You don't need to get too granular about it, but do you know what I'm saying? Was it a concerted effort

to decide like, I am now an atheist or did you have this moment of like, I'm losing my religion? Yeah, it's all blurry. So for me, it was, I'm no longer interested in religion. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about spirituality and the soul and all of that stuff. And I really don't want to think about morality because I'm in my 20s and I'm living in the big city. And so I don't want to think about those kind of right and wrongs. And in the doing of that, I was like, you know what? And since I grew up in faith, I don't even know if there is a God. So why do I need to accept all this stuff? I'm going to throw it all out. I'm going to start from square one. I'm going to start as if there's

nothing. There's no religion. There's no God. There's no soul. There's just me and my body living my life. And I'm going to enjoy it and see how it goes. And I guess to get a little more personal, Sharon, for me personally, I struggled. And I had a lot of issues that I would call mental health problems. When I was in my 20s, I had anxiety attacks and depression and a lot of many difficulties. And I was deeply, deeply unhappy. And there's nothing like crises and misery to spur one on to explore these deep and big questions more and more. So that's when I started exploring spirituality as a bomb, as an escape, as a portal to truth, because I wanted to figure out what my life was about and why was I so unhappy. I read a lot of the writings of the Buddha. He has a book called the Dhammapada, which is really his essential teachings, which I highly recommend as a good starting point.

There's another book called What the Buddha Taught, which is quite, quite good. book called What the Buddha Taught, which is quite, quite good. The woman, Julia Cameron, who wrote The Artist's Way, she said, I come to spirituality out of necessity, not out of virtue. And I would view the same for me. I needed to kind of get centered, find my way, find a path, understand why I was alive, reach for meaning and purpose and belonging. And I found that through going on a spiritual journey that brought me back to God and to the faith of my childhood. But it really was born out of suffering and struggle. I loved the chapter that you call the seven pillars of a spiritual revolution, because a number of the seven pillars of a spiritual revolution, I was like,

those are the exact principles that I think we need to harness for government, that we need to harness for activism, that we need to harness for sort of systemic societal change. And I love the phrase, celebrate joy and fight cynicism. Because cynicism is the opposite of hope in many ways. Cynicism is what makes it impossible for us to have positive change in society, to have a fair justice system, or to have a system that provides equal opportunity for everybody. If we embrace cynicism, then we can never become sort of our best selves as an individual, but also our best country. We can't be the best country if we are spending all of our time embracing cynicism. And I wonder what that means to you personally, because I'm viewing

this as a big systemic issue of how we can't afford the luxury of hopelessness in the United States. We must maintain that sense of hope and joy if we want to progress as a country. But I wonder what that means to you personally. So I finished the book and I take the reader on a, you know, I say I'm throwing a lot of spiritual spaghetti at the wall and we'll see what sticks. And I take folks on a journey through a lot of big ideas about God and death and the soul and religion and the meaning of life and all of that nonsense. And then I kind of finished it and I'd finished my outline that I'd given my publisher. And then I realized like, wow, this is just too depressing. So I need to leave people with some takeaways. And the seven

pillars of a spiritual revolution is just that. Takeaways that people can put into practice, that are tangible and relatable and that anyone can do. You don't need to be a fancy celebrity like myself in order to engage. And one of them that you point out is foster joy and squash cynicism. And I tell the story in there of this acting teacher that I had named Andre Gregory, and he's the subject of the famous film, My Dinner with Andre, named Andre Gregory. And he's the subject of the famous film, My Dinner with Andre, and a very famous director and teacher and actor in his own right. And he would meet with his students and have tea. And I had tea with him one day and he's like, so Rain, how are you doing? And I was like, well, Andre, I'm just feeling kind of depressed these days. I'm feeling hopeless.

And I just, I don't know, I'm just kind of overwhelmed and washed up. And I don't know what to even think anymore. And he was a little old man then. He's still alive. I don't know how, but he is. And he reached out and grabbed my arm hard and he looked into my eyes and he said, don't, don't do it. You can't be cynical. You can't be pessimistic. If you're cynical, they win. If you're pessimistic, they win. They want you to be cynical. They want you to be pessimistic. I don't know exactly who the they was he was talking about, but the forces of not change, the forces of corruption, of greed that want things to stay the same, that profit by things staying the same. Want everyone to be pessimistic and

eye-rolling. But I remember the 70s when people talked about world peace. Beauty contestants would say, I want world peace. And government officials would talk about world peace. And scientists like Carl Sagan would talk about world peace. We believed it was possible. And nowadays, if you talk about world peace, people are like, oh my God, they just roll their eyes. Yeah, good luck. And I stumbled out of his apartment and that really changed my life. And every time I roll into pessimism and cynicism, I remember his words and I'm like, if I stay pessimistic and cynical, then I'm not going to write this book, number one. I'm not going to do a travel show about happiness because what's the point? And we have to be realistic. We have to live in the real world. But we also have to believe in the power of the human spirit and how indomitable people are and determined.

And we can overcome tremendous adversity and rise to our better angels and transform things. And we have to keep that hope alive. And we have to do it, especially those who work with young people in this mental health crisis and in this divided and terrible and anxious and fraught modern world. We need to keep that spark of hope alive. I love that. I totally agree with you. Somebody once told me, and I've never forgotten this,

that speaking of the proverbial they, that if they can't stop you from doing it, they will try to keep you from enjoying it. And that really hit me like a ton of bricks, that they can't stop you from doing it. They're going to try to keep you from enjoying it. And so the trick is to not let them. That's great. The trick is to not let them stop you from enjoying whatever it is that you are meant to be doing with your life. I also loved one of the other pillars of this spiritual revolution,

which is don't just protest, build something new. That it is not enough to be like, well, I hate it. It's not enough to just be like, well, that's dumb. It has to be replaced with something else. Just railing against the machine doesn't actually improve anything for anybody. You actually have to do something about it. And I would add my own caveat, which is posting about it on social media is not activism. That's not. That's not changing anything. Keyboard activists, slacktivists, as they call them. I have this quote right here I keep on my

desk and it's in my book by Buckminster Fuller. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. And that goes hand in hand with what we're talking about. We live in a culture of protest. Protest is very important. There wouldn't be a civil rights movement without protest, but it only takes you so far. If you simply protest with some angry tweets and a march or two and a coffee house argument or two, and then you're done, it's much harder to build something. It's very hard to do. It's really, really hard to go and try and create a grassroots movement to do. It's really, really hard to go and try and create a grassroots movement or to get together with people and just even like clean up a local park. I remember I was gathering with people of my faith community and we wanted to have an arts in the park event for race unity day. And boy,

it took us like four, two hour planning sessions to do something so simple, which was gather. We're going to do some creative writing. We're going to do some theater games. We're going to have some food. There's going to be a Native American person singing some songs. That's it. But it's hard to do. It's hard to collaborate, to consult. It's challenging, but it's so, so rewarding. It's so necessary. we have to, especially young folk need to get out of that culture of protest and go do something. It's very hard. Good luck. It is. It is. But if you look at people who have been change makers throughout history, they didn't just tell us what was wrong with something. They cast a vision for the future that we wanted to believe

in, that people wanted to follow, that they said, I believe in what you believe in. Let's build that thing together. Those are the successful change makers. It's not the people with the sickest tweets. It's not the meanest burns. That's not going to be on your headstone one day, Raid. Have the sickest burns on Twitter. That's very true. But speaking of the sickest burns on Twitter, this has to do with our political system. I write a great deal about the partisan political system as the system itself being very broken. Because when you were talking about sick tweets, I was thinking about our debates, like in like presidential debates, the talking heads come on the news shows and they say, well, who won the debate? And it's whoever got in the most zingers. And that's not

how we should govern. We shouldn't elect people who get in the most zingers. We should elect people who have the most sound, prudent, practical, and effective policies that positively impact the most lives in the country, whatever you think that may be. But it needs to be on policy and not on zingers. Yeah, zingers are like the great presidents of history. Nobody thinks Abraham Lincoln was the best at zingers. He would not win the mean tweets game. What would, just to wrap it up, what would Dwight think of your book and your TV show, Rainn? Dwight would hate my book.

Dwight Schrute would hate my TV show. A TV show on happiness? It's like, how about this for happiness? Sell more paper. Oh, and spirituality? No. Although, you know, is Dwight Christian is a good question, or is he pantheistic? Perhaps Dwight believes in the old gods, the old Norse gods or something. He doesn't believe in God, but he believes in Odin or something. Yeah. Yeah. I've never heard Dwight talk about Jesus of any kind. It's all of these very weird beliefs. Yeah. Dwight wouldn't be into it. That's right. That's true. He would be too busy delivering Michael's fake baby that's a greased watermelon. That's what he needs to spend his time doing. All right, final takeaway. If you could impart one message to a college student who is struggling, perhaps as you did when you were a young man who went to New York, what advice would you give them?

Oh boy, that's a tough one. Puts me on the spot, but I'm going to go with something that gives me great solace and meaning in my life. When I do my morning meditation and prayer and I sit on a little bench outside of my yard and I watch the hummingbirds and the beautiful flowers. And I take some deep breaths and try and quiet my mind and center myself. I remember this, my favorite quote of all time from Father Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest who said, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And when I witness myself in that regard as a spiritual being having a human experience, I'm a little

shard of the divine in the body of this Rainn Wilson weirdo. And I've got 80 or 90 years in my meat suit before that falls away and I continue my journey. And if I am a spiritual being, which I am, what do I get to explore in that regard? How can I develop the qualities of my soul, of my spirit? How can I further develop my compassion, kindness, humility, honesty, openness, creativity, joy? This shift in perspective away from the discomfort of being a human being like, oh, I'm hungry or I need to poop or I've got a Zoom meeting in half an hour and my knee hurts and all of that stuff, I can shift away from that into a more spiritually connected place. My day is infinitely better and it helps with my mental health and my anxiety. And it also helps make the world a better place.

Beautifully said. Well, I will be watching season two, which I'm sure is coming, of The Geography of Bliss. I really enjoyed the TV show. It was very fun for me, and I also had several really great takeaways. And I really enjoyed reading Soul Boom. And I think anybody who picks it up, no matter your faith tradition, maybe you have no faith tradition, maybe you're an atheist, I think anyone who picks it up will have glean from your hard fought wisdom. I know you had to beat back Dwight Schrute to like claw your way into that spiritual experience. And thank you for Dwight.

Everybody wants me to tell you that. But the office is so meaningful to them. And I know you know that. But thank you for Dwight. Oh, well, on behalf of Dwight, you're welcome, idiot. Idiots. I really appreciate it. You bring such wonderful light and knowledge to the world.

I'm grateful to be a part of the Sharon McMahon universe. Thank you. Sharon McMahon universe. Thank you. You can watch Rainn Wilson's show, The Geography of Bliss on Peacock, and you can check out his book, Soul Boom, wherever you buy your books.

This show is researched and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform? That helps us so much. And we always love to see your shares and tags on social media. We'll see you again soon. you