Soul Boom - Arthur Brooks: Is Happiness a Science?

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Esteemed author and social scientist Arthur Brooks joins us to delve into the art of living a fulfilling life. Together, he and Rainn Wilson explore practical strategies for achieving happiness, the importance of relationships in personal growth, and the impact of societal values on individual well-being. Arthur Brooks shares insights from his latest research, offering listeners actionable advice on how to thrive in a complex world. Thank you to our sponsors! HOKA: https://bit.ly/HokaSoulBoom Waking Up app (1st month free!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a cosmic purpose to your life. There's a divine hand in your life. But you have to pay attention to it. God doesn't put a billboard up right in front of your house. God doesn't send you a direct message saying, here's what you're supposed to do. You have to be aware. You have to be a droid. You have to be listening.

And to listen, you have to take away the distraction. Hey there. It's me, Rain Wilson. And I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom Podcast.

Arthur Brooks. Rain Wilson, how are you? I'm good, man. Thanks for joining the Maiden Voyage of the Soul Boom podcast. I'm honored. I love the book. I love you. Oh, I love you.

I'm launching the Soul Boom podcast. Congratulations. It's such a great idea. I know this idea of recording a conversation and people can download it and listen to it anytime they want. It's a called a podcast. It's a new thing. All the kids are doing it.

Yeah, I'm getting into it. I'm getting really right on the podcast boom in 2024. We were stuck in Seattle. That's right. The land that time forgot. That's right. Eating salmon and moss on a tugboat. What is your advice to me in starting a podcast from your point of view as a positive

psychology happiness professor? What advice do you have for me in starting our very conversation right here and now? Sort of the same thing is if you were starting a business or you were starting a family or you were starting a course of studies, which is to make sure that you know what your mission statement is. Then the mission statement should have an order of operations to it. These are the things that I want to do and it's in this order. Can I propose one to you?

Yeah, please. Look, you and I have known each other for a little while now. Okay. And we have many of the same values. Yeah. Pretty close. I think so. I would say in this order, glorify God, serve others, have fun, make a living. That's last. I don't need to make a living. Well, the point is that I got TV money, bro. I got it. But the whole point is that if it does, it does. That's why it's last. I like that. I like that a lot.

Now make money. Now make money. Make a living, which is different. make a living. Why? Because making a living means you're doing something productive. Yeah. Now, are these four, uh, those are in order? Are these four in this order? Are they good for pretty much anyone and everyone? Depends. You know, it really depends on what, you know, the order of operations is different than you and me. Here's the weird thing. Let's get it right on the table, right at the beginning of the soul boom podcast. Okay. Rain and Arthur believe in God. Yes. We believe in God. Absolutely. 100%. And what is God there for for us to love? God is there for us to love. God is there for us to love. It's not for him to give us favors and do dads and all kinds of fun stuff.

God is there for us to love. And then good things flow from that. And that means that we offer up our work. We offer up our talent. We offer up our time, treasure, and possibility in offering a love for God. And that's why it's number one. So someone else could skip the glorify God and just go right to serve others, have fun, and make a living. For sure.

And making a living means creating value. Right. It means creating value. And maybe that makes money, which, you know, that, as we say in Seattle, doesn't suck. So in the Baha'i faith, the prayer that we say every day is, I bear witness, oh, my God, that thou hast created me to know thee and to worship thee. So the meaning of life is contained in this prayer that we say every day to know and to worship God. So you say glorify God. No and worship equals glorify.

For sure. Because it's also very, those are also very tricky terms, like to know God, what does that mean? Well, to know God is to know a hummingbird or a forest or beauty itself or to listen to music, you know, and to worship God, the highest form of worship from a Baha'i standpoint is to be of service. Work in the spirit of service is worship in the eyes of God, says Baha'u'llah. So there's very much in alignment and the values are very much aligned. For sure. The glorification of God is a funny thing because it makes it sound for the people who are not religious. Like, oh, look, we're in a cathedral and we're just...

Right. And we're basically like, I'm just going to say, look, Lord, I'm going to say whatever you want because I don't want you to strike me dead. But the whole point, and this is one of the things that we get from the science of happiness. If you want more love in your life, go love somebody. If you want better things in your life, go give things. If you're lonely, go volunteer and help somebody. It really starts with the agency, the the action, the decision. See, love, according to St. Thomas Aquinas in 1265, in the Summa Theologia, he was interpreting Aristotle. And he said, to love is to will the good of the other as other. This is it. To glorify God is to love God as God with no expectation. Love God. This is, you know, in Deuteronomy, this is where, you know, the prophets would extend this to the Christian faith later.

but in Deuteronomy in the in the penitook that love the Lord your God with all your all your strength and all your soul and all your means your means in mind what we're doing right now wow that's awesome glorify God that's beautiful yeah there's a there was a woman that I've been in touch with who was going through a lot of hard times and sickness in the family and husband getting fired and her getting fired and we were texting and stuff like that and she was always just in struggle struggle struggle and finally I texted her and I texted her the number of a suicide helpline. And I said, this is a suicide help line that always needs volunteers. And you can volunteer by answering texts to people who are feeling suicidal.

I said, sign up, volunteer, and answer texts from people that are feeling suicidal. So important. And what you're saying is really counterintuitive because everybody who heard you say that just now, the first thing I thought was, Rain was sending her the number in case she's suicidal and needs to call it, you were giving you the numbers so that she could actually be of service to volunteer in greater crisis than her. And she could put her home life in perspective to people who are about to jump off a fucking bridge. Right, right. If you glorify God, then you will necessarily serve others. And then you will have fun. And then your life will have positive value creating meaning,

which is to make a living. I love that. That's great. By the way, don't commit suicide. And if you're thinking of committing suicide, go to the suicide text helpline. That's here on the bottom of the screen. One of the things that really struck me as I got to know you is this seeming dichotomy between your deep, pervasive, and honorable and passionate Catholic faith and working at Harvard University in the business school talking to people about positive psychology

and happiness transformation. Why do I feel like those things are dichotiv? Are they or not? Okay, so yeah. And it's the same thing where people have said to you 100 million times for sure. And I've asked you this before too. It's like, what a weird dichotomy reign. You're like a sitcom actor who talks about spirituality.

Hollywood. Hollywood. It's the Harvard of entertainment. Or wait a second, but you know what I mean? Yeah, right? And you know what you told me? Basically, it's the mission field. It's the mission field.

If you're serious about lifting people up and bringing them together around the ideas of goodness, of love, of happiness, of the transcendent, you got to go where people don't have that yet, not where they have it already. I mean, what's the fun of knocking on your neighbor's door and says, oh, yeah, you're right on everything. Yeah, that's what so many people do because it's highly secure. But people whose lives have touched yours in Hollywood, they say the same thing. He's got something going on. He's got a source of power. He's got something good. I want that. That's how the mission field is supposed to work. And so you're supposed to go to places like that that have, by the way, incredible quality.

And I don't know what the mission field means. What do you mean by that? Well, that's a Christian term. That's a Catholic term, a Christian term that means that's where missionaries go is into the field. Right. And the feel is life. Right. But you rarely even mention Catholicism and you never try and convert people.

You just try and give them the tools to build on their own a happier, better life with deeper well-meaning. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I believe God will do the rest. Okay. I mean, I actually believe this stuff. I get the, you know, one time a missionary, a Mormon missionary, he told me, because he was a great friend of mine, somebody who really admired. He had been a missionary in France.

Can you mention being a Mormon missionary in France? How much rejection you're going to face? Oh, my God. You know, you know, words that no human has ever uttered before. At least the food's good news. There's missionaries on the porch. I mean, nobody's ever said that, right? Sacre blue!

I was like, pretend we're not home. And I said, so what are you thinking when you're getting the door slammed in your faces? over and over again. He said, I used to pray, Lord, let the door stay open one inch. All I'm asking for is one inch of space. And you'll do the rest. And so that's the point. You don't have to take responsibility, you know, soup to nuts, a religious experience for somebody. You have to give them an idea of what a better life on this earth, enjoying your life, filling it with love and serving others, what it can actually be. And my view is that those blessings actually come from the divine. other people disagree, that's the battlefield I want to be on

where we're actually loving each other and discussing what that source that I believe is divinity and other people don't. I want to have that discussion. And when we do, all I know is for sure the world's going to get better. I love that. Now we're going to get to more kind of happiness talk. You've done a thousand podcasts and presentations.

Not like this, man, not like this. Well, where you discuss, you know, the tools to happiness and secrets to happiness. And don't worry, kids, we're going to get there. Before we do, I just want to dwell a little bit on this crazy Catholicism thing of yours. Right. I can't get over it. You can't. I can't quit it. You grew up Catholic, but tell me your story. What, what transcendent or beatific moments did you have along the way that galvanized your faith and solidified a kind of a depth of faith that allows you to go to Mass every single day? Our lives are a series of punctuated equilibrium. Stephen J. Gold talked about evolution as punctuated equilibrium.

Like things are the same and things are the same things. And they're not, right? And that's kind of how our lives are. Our spiritual lives are punctuated equilibrium, kind of. And so you can remember experiences that really that made you think in a different way that it inflected your thinking. I grew up in a very serious Christian home, evangelical Christian, not Catholic actually. And when I was 15, I had a school band trip to Mexico City, the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Now, the story of that place is interesting, even from a modern sociological perspective. At the time in the early 17th century, Mexico was not converting into Catholicism because the Spaniards had a very bad marketing technique. It's like convert or die. It was not great. Mass slaughter is not the best way to. Yeah, it's not great. And so there were very few conversions and et cetera. So the legend has it. The story goes, many people believe it to be literally true, that Juan Diego, a peasant, a Mexican ordinary guy was outside on a, you know, on a hilltop outside Mexico City. And the Virgin Mary appeared to him. But here's the profound thing about it. She appeared to him as a mestitha as a woman of mixed race. Now this, okay, so what, right? Big deal in 1609. No joke. Mixed race. No, that was utterly transgressive to any idea of the time. And the point was, Mary is us all.

The mother of the Lord is all of us. And she imprinted her image on his tilma, which is an indigenous garment made of fibers of cactus. He takes it back, shows it to the bishop. It's the Virgin Mary as a woman of mixed race. They dismiss it, of course, because the bishop always dismisses it. This is, you know, the bureaucracy. and he keeps seeing this and coming back until it's finally accepted as it's put up in the church

and as people look at it, they're spontaneously converted. And seven million indigenous Mexicans were converted to the Catholic faith in the next nine years. Holy moly. What year was this? In the early 17th century, the first two decades of the 17th century. And that's the idea is that if when you look at her, you can't resist. I didn't know this. I was 15.

I was going through this boring old church, right? And I was looking at this thing. It was, in those days, the old basilica, it was displayed on the left side of the altar. And I was looking at this thing going, yeah, whatever. Huh. Huh. And I'm looking at the eyes, you know, the eyes. You're looking at the original.

Yeah, the original thing. The original tunic with the impression on it. Of the Virgin Mary. Yeah. And it's this image that you've seen a million times. Yeah. This image. A version of that.

Yeah. No, yeah, this is, and this is a, yeah, this is a facsimile or a representation. of that, that we've seen a million times because it's in every, in all Hispanic and Latino communities, this is, and by the way, she's now the patroness of all the Americas. So including the United States and Canada, this Mexican image. Okay. This is the profound solidarity across,

you know, of the faith. Okay, so I looked at it and I couldn't get it out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I went home to Seattle, and I didn't know any Catholics. And so about six months later, I asked my parents if I could go to the local Catholic church and they're like, oh, what is he doing now? Okay, right. And then I started going to the Catholic Church. My parents were like, okay, I guess it's better than drugs.

Yeah. And I converted. I converted right before my 17th birthday. When I was 16, I converted. And I've been Catholic ever since. Now what was it about seeing that image and the way that image stayed with you? There's just something about it that just touched your heart

and shifted your perspective. Yeah. What it did was it concentrated me on the idea that there were things profound. away from my conscious understanding. There was a level of truth. Something bigger than you. Yeah, there was something transcendent. Something transcendent.

And understanding of reality that was transcendent to me, which had never really occurred to me. I mean, I was a kid. I mean, I was an adolescent. You're not thinking about those things. But I kept thinking that there's something bigger, there's something behind it.

There's something, this represents something that I don't understand. And at that point, I started to read. I started to try to understand this better. And I was, you know, back and forth all the way through my 20s. I was technically Catholic. But by the time I was about 30,

this had truly nested in my heart. So I was Catholic the whole time. But then, you know, I got married. I had married a hard-read atheist Spaniard. Okay. From a hard-read atheist family of Catalans in Barcelona. I got married in Barcelona. She would not get married in the church, right? It's not going to happen. Wow. Okay. And I remember thinking to myself, I want to get this straight and I need to get her into the faith. And so I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and by the time our kids were born, I was going by myself and taking the kids and and every in every Catholic. Was this a source of discord with you guys or was she just cool like you go do your thing? It was a source of sadness more than discord.

On your part or her part or both? Yeah, she didn't care. She was like, I get to sleep in. The kids aren't here on Sundays is awesome. But sadness in your heart that she wasn't on board. Yeah. Yeah, because I really, I had a, I wanted the love of God in my family. And so, and I prayed about it.

I remember praying about it. I remember I felt like I received information. don't bother her. Don't bother her. Just keep praying. And by the time she was in her late 30s, early 40s, something happened that I wasn't quite conscious of, but she had become religious. And I weirdly didn't notice it. I was going to church the whole time. I was practicing my faith. I had a spiritual director. I was reading my Bible every day. I was a serious Catholic dude. And weirdly, I found out, I guess I don't know how I hadn't been paying attention to my wife was going to Mass with me. And then she was going during the week. And now she's my guru. Now she leads me

on paths of righteousness. She's the religious one. She has an educational background now in theology and sacred scripture. She does talks in archdiocese around the United States for women, normally for Spanish-speaking immigrant Catholic. How did that happen? You can't just say, well, it just slowly happened over a decade.

There was no inflecting moment. She explains it that she couldn't avoid it anymore. That the hounds of heaven chased her down. What are the hounds of heaven? That sounds like a movie. I know. That's an expression from Chesterton, from G.K. Chesterton. Because they were talking about the hounds of hell.

Yeah. The hounds of heaven. The hounds of heaven where you just can't avoid it. And, you know, I know about your religious experience too. And the hounds of heaven, you just couldn't avoid it. You know, God's going to hunt you down. It's funny because this is a misapprehension that a lot of people have who are very interested in a religion but can't quite bring themselves to let go.

that, you know, because I go to Dharamsal a lot because I've been working for the Dalai Lama for the last 11 years. And this is the community in northern India where a lot of the Tibetan refugees live and practice Tibetan Buddhism and it kind of mingles with Hinduism a little bit up there.

And the Dalai Lama's been living there since 1960. He's had his residence there since 1960. I've worked with him very intensely. I've learned my meditation from the Tibetan Buddhists and I've studied with the Tibetan Buddhists there and I've done a lot of public work with His Holiness and written with His Holiness when I've been there.

And when you're there, you found a lot of people that call themselves seekers, a lot of Westerners, I'm seeking, I'm seeking. The trick is that you're sought. That's the trick. Rain Wilson was in the crosshairs. And God cash the check, man. Right. Yeah. And that's the important thing. God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Uh-huh. And this is the change in perspective that people who say, yeah, I'm open to, I'm open to it. I'm open to it. I'm looking for it. I'm looking for it. I'm looking for it. for it is to actually say, okay, find me, find me, seek me, then you will be found. But that's hard because that's scary, right? And that's what happened to my wife. I suppose that's what happened

to me, but I had more of a childhood experience. My wife had an adult conversion experience to the faith in which she was baptized in which she did not believe. And the hounds of heaven came and got her. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, no, it is amazing. And a lot of religious people who have religious experiences as adults have sort of similar types of stories the way that that works. And the whole bottom line is a lot of people are going to watch the Soul Boom podcast because they're seeking. There's nobody who's like, I'm a complete atheist. I hate all that religious stuff. So I'm going to watch Rain's new show because maybe there's some good jokes. I hope there are. Hopefully we'll get a couple good jokes in here. If you know any, let me know.

But that's the point. These are people who have an openness who have the aperture is open a little bit and allowing themselves to be found as opposed to anxiously always trying to find. That might be just the shift that people need. Yeah, you know, I'm reticent in sharing this, so maybe I should share it. It's a good signal, isn't it? Because I'm that way as both a Baha'i and a member of 12-step recovery. So I'm all in. Like I let go.

I drank the Kool-Aid, I let go. And that is a very rare thing for just people in contemporary Western society. But I know that I'm powerless over drugs and alcohol and all manner of things that are addictive. And this incredible 12-step program that is like, I know that I'm powerless. My life is unmanageable, that there is one greater than me that can restore me to sanity. You know what I mean? Like I'm just in. Like my cards are all in on that.

Right. And it's the same thing with the Baha'i faith for me. Like I believe that Baha'u'llah is the latest in a long series of divine teachers who brings a message of peace, love and unity for the modern world that can transform my heart and can help transform humanity. I'm all in. My cards are all in on that. So that's a faith. But that's a leap of faith. And going more specifically to the Catholic journey, I think one of the things that I think would support. the average listener to know, because I've read a bit of the wonderful Catholic mystic tradition. We think, I think a lot of people think of Catholicism and they think of incense and robes and hierarchies and mechanics and- And you do this on this day,

and there's the cardinal here and this and that and that. But that's all this framework, but from Thomas Merton to, you know, St. Francis of Assisi, like, there's a centuries-long, spanning mystical underbelly to Catholicism that is really transformative and probably ties into Daramsala. Oh, yeah.

That's the underlying code. The underlying code of that is that, you know, as we struggle to find the presence of God, it's a deeply mystical experience. It's not a mechanical experience. It's not just following a bunch of rules. That's the, you know, that's one of the ways that we're able to, you know, practice. but practice is different than actually struggling toward understanding. And that requires an appreciation for the deep mysticism that lies behind

really what Catholicism and all major religions can and should be. That there's more to life than what we see, that there's something outside of ourselves, that radical physicalism simply doesn't get us to where we need to be and where we need to go. I have a couple of dynamite quotes from the Catholic tradition. Be who you were created to be and you will set the world on fire, St. Catherine of Sienna. Now that requires that you understand what you're created to be and that's what takes the work.

You know, that's not just like, I'm going to find my identity, man. No, no, no, no, no, no. Be who you were created to be. That's not your mechanical, physical identity. Okay. On the contrary, what she's saying is be who you're supposed to be, which is a divine, beloved child of God. that's who are you actually are going back to these four steps glorify god serve others have fun

and make a living uh-huh yeah okay yeah yeah and so what she's saying is who are you who are you you're divine you have god in you because you're a child of god but don't you think part of this all of this happiness nonsense and this mental health crisis and the anxiety and you know the depression and the loneliness epidemic blah blah blah blah blah couldn't you just winnow all this that down to this phrase, be who you were created to be. And if the younger generation were focusing on being who they were created to be, they would set the world on fire and they would find peace in their heart. Isn't ultimately, and I'm not trying to convert anyone to any religious practice at all, but what we're talking about, about that kind of mystical bridge to a larger sense of purpose,

isn't that really where the answer is? So you're talking about like, take deep breaths, do a cold plunge, you know, and all of this stuff, no, be who you were created to be young, confused, Iowa teenager who doesn't know which end is up. In a meta sense, it's absolutely true, but that's too broad. Okay. That's too broad for people like, where do I start with that? You know, so I get a lot of, I get a lot of questions as a, you know, an academic who specializes in well-being. What is happiness? And it's a combination of enjoyment and satisfaction and meaning? What is meaning? Meaning is a combination of coherence and purpose and significance. How do I find that? And really, that's when you actually, what is the why of my life? Because that

helps us to get to St. Catherine of Siena's understanding of what you're supposed to do, which is to be who you are and then go try to set the world on fire, as opposed to try to burn down the world because you don't know who you are, which is that outside in approach is a lot of what's going on today. That's a lot of what's wrong today. And so then- By the way, we sound like old gray grizzled boomers complaining about the younger generation a little bit. Kids these days.

And the truth is we were kids these days at one particular point. But there's a reason that over the course of your life, you learn more as opposed to learning less, that you get experiences, that you have a crystallized intelligence based on pattern recognition, and you learn an awful lot. We're not perfect. We get a lot of things wrong. But there's a, you know,

and people who are the age of our parents, if you and my parents were still alive, that they would know a lot more than we do, right? It's, you know, they're not perfect, but there are certain things that they know because they've had a lot more experience over the course of life. It's just years, years on the planet, one foot in front of the other is what it comes down to. But when it comes to meaning, how do you find that? Because it's sort of the same question. And in my work, I've tried to figure out, you know, based on the science, the neuroscience and behavioral science, what are the tools to find the answers to that. One of the things that I talk about in the case of meaning is to look for the answers to two

questions in our lives. Why am I alive? And for what am I willing to die today? The beginning in the end. Because your life, on the planet, at least, has a, you and I believe that it transcends that, but it has a beginning and an end. So why am I alive? Why am I in the planet? And number two, what am I willing to end this physical existence for? And there's no right answers. there's your answers. And the only way to flunk the test is to have no answers. Right. But the good news is if you don't have answers to those questions,

going in search of those answers is going to reveal you will discern the why. So it's incredible when you see this actually happen to people. And you can answer the why am I alive in terms of who made you or what you're on earth to do or both. For me, the why of my life, I was created by God to serve others. That's the why, right? For what am I willing to die? for my faith, for my family, for my beliefs, for my country. There's a bunch of things that I actually believe in,

for which I actually would die, right? But if you don't have the answers to that, which many young people don't, that's why you feel it loose ends because you don't actually have a compelling answer to the meaning. What's it all about? What's the meaning of it actually? And that's what we need to,

that's what we're struggling to actually find answers to, I think. I brought up Thomas Merton. Yeah. Are you a Thomas Merton fan? Of course. Seven-story Mountain. I mean, it's really, he was as a trappist monk, he also had incredible appreciation for the other religious traditions that help us to understand our own faith. The great thing about studying religions that are not your own is they teach you about your own.

Yeah. And most people don't understand, you know, the people are worried that their kids, if you're super Catholic, you're worried that your kid is going to go off and study meditation or something. Good because that meditation, I mean, I have learned more about how to say my prayers from the Tibetan Buddhists. Right. Oh, it's just my technique is so much better, my appreciation for God. the Dalai Lama has said to me, I want you to be a better Catholic man. That's beautiful. Yeah.

And Merton was writing books on Zen while living as a trappist monk and Gethsemane in Kentucky. And I got to go visit there. And through a strange happenstance of someone knowing someone else and knowing one of the monks there, I got to spend the night in Merton's cabin. It's in the middle of the woods. It was terrifying. It was like a horror film. There were crucifixes everywhere.

He had his own little chapel with like melted wax. Like a set designer could not create. And they kept it. They kept it. It kept it. Since 1969 when he died. Yeah. It's absolutely since the 60s.

He wrote many of his greatest works there. And by the way, poetry, beautiful, amazing poetry, haiku, his journals, new seeds of contemplation. which is a, do you know that work is one of my favorite of his. Oh, it's beautiful. So you slept in, and I slept in Merton's bed. And I had Daniel Lover's office, but you were in Merton's bed.

I probably got an hour and a half of sleep because I was terrified. I don't believe in any of that stuff. Freaked out. But it was like rattling and winds and like branches scraping against the windows. It was terrifying. But I'm a huge Merton fan and especially the way that he incorporated and honored the belief. systems of so many other different faiths.

There's so much more for us to learn to come to appreciate our own faith. There's just, the world is so big and beautiful. And the whole point is to actually have openness to other ideas, understanding that they're not going to throw you off your own. They're going to enrich your own. In your examination of happiness, do you draw on any mystic Catholic ideas or principles? A lot.

How? Because I never hear you discuss that, but how does that, how does that especially the mystic tradition? of Catholicism infect and inspire your positive psychology work? Well, probably the Catholic thinker that I use the most to rely on the most, and I ask my students to actually read is Thomas Aquinas. So Aquinas in 1265, you know, is writing the Summa Theologia.

He was actually working on 25 books at one time. I mean... Sounds like you a little bit. Yeah, not 25. Yeah, but did he write any books with Oprah? Yeah. Boom. Boom.

There you go. Yeah. Suck it, Aquinas. See, we got the joke in there, that's nice. Yeah, there we go. There's some joke. Aquinas. One joke.

Aquinas is the reason that we, some argue that the reason that we appreciate Aristotle today. Aquinas and Averroes and Mamanides, they were neoplatonists. Pledon. Plytony's was a Jew. Right. And Averroes was a Muslim. And they were all in southern Europe actually interacting in more or less the same 200-year period, which is an incredible intellectual firm.

What year was it? This was in the 12th to early 13th to middle 13th century. So the dark ages. Yeah, so far but it's not so dark. Pre-renaissance. Yeah, not so dark. But really inspired by the Muslim world in a way, right? For sure.

In the Muslims, the Muslims translated the original Greek Old Testament. They're the ones who had that kind of commissioned and brought the enlightenment to Europe really came through the Muslim. Through the three traditions together. Really through the Catholic Church, through the, the Muslims in southern Spain and through the medieval Jewish philosophers, all of whom we're working together, really bringing the Hellenic thought to the modern world. That's amazing. So, yeah, so the Platonists, all these guys ever rose, Memonides, and Aquinas, who were the three bigs across the three traditions. They didn't actually interact exactly, but they were more

or less in the same 200-year span. They were all Platonists, which meant, you know, we interpret Plato, understanding our religious tradition along the way. And, of course, Plato's most important student was Aristotle and Aquinas said, this stuff's better. This stuff is actually more profound. It's more to the point. And so a lot of his work was interpreting Aristotle. So it's a really interesting updating of Aristotle in sort of modern Western ways that are incredibly useful to all of us, notwithstanding the religion. So you can strip out the explicitly religious part and just talk about the philosophical part. You can't really strip it out, but you get the point. For example, I ask my students to play a game called What's My Idol?

So here is Aristotle was an incredibly good behavioral scientist. Okay. His supposition was that everybody wants God, whether they know it or not. Now, we could substitute that, people who are not religious. Everybody wants happiness.

They want the good. Let me just jump in here for a second because I do think that all this God talk is going to throw a lot of people off, and that's all fine. But I've heard a lot of conversation recently about humans need to worship something larger than themselves. and they always will, and you can always find

what they're worshipping larger than themselves. It may be money. It may be capitalism itself. It may be America. Right. It may be their family. It might be their kind of sexual identity or something. It might be a climate.

It might be something that seems transcendent to their experience. Something that's transcendent to their experience. But we are wired to worship something bigger than ourselves. So that's an anthropological. psychological hypothesis that has a lot of evidence behind it. That you just can't find societies in which people weren't worshipping something bigger than themselves to help them put themselves into context. That there is a creation that we're part of, but there's a creator.

And the co-understanding of creator and creation gives you an organization to life. It all leads to the whole mind-body problem and all the way from the ancients to Descartes all the way to the present and a lot of what philosophers are working on today. but it's true. And so whether it's God or not, the whole point is, what is the transcendent? We want the transcendent.

But there's a problem with that, according to Aquinas, which is that it's inconvenient. There's a lot of rules. There's a lot of one-sided conversations. If you're praying, maybe there's nobody on the other end of the line. And so we settle on a simulacrum for the divine,

something that has divine characteristics. And he says there are four. Okay. They are money, power, pleasure, and honor. Now, honor not being, you know, I have a son in the Marines who serves with honor, that's not what I mean.

You mean status. I mean fame or prestige or status or the admiration of others. And all of these things have evolutionary psychological roots. Go over those again. Money, status, money, status, I'm gonna say power. I'm gonna say power, okay.

Which is control over others. Right. Pleasure. Right. And honor. Those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse really in contemporary society. That's what we're all worshiping. Yeah, and here's the thing.

We tend to organize ourselves in communities around our specific idol. So you saw a little quiz here. What is the idol in Washington, D.C.? Power. Ah, what is the idol in Los Angeles? I would say it's a fame and status. Yeah, it's honor. What is the idol in New York City?

Money. Exactly right. Las Vegas. Yeah, you get the point, you know, that we organize ourselves around our specific favorite idol. It's extraordinary how that works. And so Aquinas is, he's an adept in this way, just as a behavioralist. A lot of people would say, and forgive me for poking the beehive here, a lot of people would say the Vatican is organized around status, power, and money.

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, the problem is this run by people. You know, the thing that people are just so flawed and everybody has their idols. And that's Aquinas' point. Aquinas would have completely agreed with you, Ray. He would have said, yeah, that's the problem with the Vatican. It's run by a bunch of dudes who are idolatrous. many of them are also very holy,

but that's the complication of human life. And so one of the things that I recommend that my students do is they read that section of Aquinas, and then we play a little game called What's My Idol? You want to play? Let's play it. And the reason we do that is because, as a matter of fact, all the things that you do in your life

that you're not proud of later that lead you astray are because of that idol. Now, Aquinas' supposition or proposition is that that idol is what you substitute for God. and you need to know it and you need to fight it. Because then you can actually walk toward the divine. You can walk toward the transcendent, what is actually better.

And you will get happier under those circumstances. And by the way, we kind of left out pleasure a little bit. But pleasure runs all through American society because also pleasure has to do with distraction. So I can pick up my phone and there's unlimited porn. And there's unlimited video games, there's unlimited social media, and there's all kinds of different ways to distract myself.

That's one aspect of pleasure. Shopping and scrolling and all of all of it. Shopping, scrolling, yeah. There's a whole literature on that, right? I mean, there's a thing I talk about with young adults about how to turn pleasure into enjoyment, which will be a source of happiness. And there's techniques for doing that, which are really important, because addiction is no joke. But yeah, a lot of people have organized their lives around pleasure. So those are the four big ones, as he's talking about. It's very robust. And then we need to figure out what each of us is required to do if we want to get happier. This is what my students do in the science.

Because the science class. This is not a religion class. I just happened to be a Catholic guy. Most of my students are not. They want to learn about the science. The original question is, how do you bring your Catholic viewpoint into your science work? And what I bring in is I'm not trying to bring in my Catholic viewpoint to convert anybody. What I'm trying to do is to bring in the parts of my Catholic faith that are actually most helpful for people to understand the science of happiness and live better lives. That's how I'm thinking about it. So I make them play this game. We're going to play now. When we identify Rain's Idol, it will be the thing for you most to keep your eye on, because that's the thing that's most likely to be going, blink, blink, blink, look over here. And we start by the

thing that you like the least, that you care about the least. We're very proud of the idols that we don't possess, right? So when I think about money and power over others and pleasure in life and the admiration of others, what's the one you're most likely to kick away? To be really honest, I would kick away money and power are, are, they, you care the least about. But which do care the least, least least, power over others? I think power, yeah,

me too. Yeah, I don't really. Yeah, and the key way to know that, by the way, is if you hate it

when people have power over you, then you're most likely not going to really want to have power over others. Right. That's usually the case, because power bothers you,

and there's all sorts of, you know, psychology behind that. Okay, good. We got three left. Money, pleasure, right? Admiration of others,

applause, even of strangers. Yeah. Which when you kick away next, it's money, right? , money, yeah. Because,

you know, money's great. But then I didn't, I didn't even get into acting for money. I just wanted to pay my bills. I eventually wanted to buy like a little house, but I was never coming to Hollywood to like make, to roll in big bucks. Right. And by the way, you know, people are watching us going, look at those two guys that are pretty prosperous, you know, saying that. But the truth is, there are, there are rich people who care about money and they're rich people who don't care about money. Yeah. There are. There are poor people who care about money. Poor people who don't care about money. That's just the truth. Yeah. Okay. We got two left and now it's warmer. Right? Okay. Right. You got to kick away one, but I

I know you want, you like both, but you've got to kick away one and you're going to leave one that you most want. Is it you're going to kick away pleasure or fame? Or not fame. I mean the admiration of other people, the appreciation, the esteem of others. That's the one that I most struggle with. So you would kick away pleasure, although the pleasure and addiction go hand and hand. And it's near on ruin your life.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that's all kinds of pleasure. That has to do with like, you know, it's.

It's certainly drugs and alcohol, it's food, and it's gambling, and it's workaholism, and it's porn, and it's, you know, all manner of things that just are triggering some kind of dopamine response to try and kind of like stick my finger in an electric socket. Yeah, the neurochemistry is, is, the neurobiology is very, very interesting. But we have identified the thing that's, that's most dangerous because that's what's going to distract you from the transcendent. That's why I'm making a fucking podcast. What's going on?

why am I making a podcast if I'm seeking admiration of others? This is, but this, I'm going in the danger zone. No, but here's the, here's, well, let me interject at this particular point. Because, you know, you and I have been paling around for a little while now. You wouldn't be making this podcast if you were not fighting against the idol. Right. Because, you know, it's like, oh, I know. You want to know how to make the most, how rain can have the most popular podcast out there.

It would be, talking about God. It would be straight up comedy. It would be straight up comedy. You'd be doing another sitcom. You would be doing, you'd be playing on all the fame that you justifiably got from all the different points in your acting career. You're doing this using a particular vehicle for something different and more transcendent your life. Good, good. But the fatal attraction is always going to be that one is the admiration of strangers. And it's going to get back to and we could get back and this is what we talk about with my, me too, by the way, me too. Okay. It's I'd kick away power. Don't like it. I was a CEO. It was hard for me. I hate it when people called me boss. It bothered me and maybe. me feel uncomfortable. I money, it's just money, right? There's not that much. You can do this that great. Yeah. Once you're beyond levels of need and security, which everybody has to mate,

and I hope everybody does, and we're working for that. Pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. But my idol is admiration. My idol is I want people to hold me in high esteem. And so every time I do something that's contrary to my values and taking me in the wrong direction. Every time I'm doing something that ultimately leads me to be less happy, it's because I'm following that idol. And that's how we use the behavioral science insights of St. Thomas Aquinas that's based on the deep mysticism of his belief in God, leading to him vis-a-vis Aristotle, who's pre-Christ, tying all of these threads together into the modern science and the modern neuroscience, which I show my students, where they can use it today. That's amazing. There's a historical.

rumor and there's it's written about a little bit in the Baha'i writings about how Plato traveled to the Middle East this undocumented right and got so many of his ideas like the cave that right the cave of shadows what do you call it the cave that shadows in the wall allegory of the allegory of the cave and that whole idea of higher forms right that he got from the Jewish mystics and a little bit from the Zoroastrians right um and brought back to Greece and synthesized through Greek philosophy. Well, this was, yeah, I mean, his, a lot of his writing was more or less contemporaneous with the Babylonian exile. And during that time, the Zoroastrians in, it's a good name for a band. Yeah. The Babylonian exile. I like it. Yeah. And the Zoroastrians,

now the Parsis who are in India today, that religion was a highly mystical, monotheistic religion. That influenced evil. Yeah, that influenced the exiles, the Israelite exiles who were in who were in exile at the time. And they became what were later called the Pharisees, who were a very mystical sect of Judaism. Jesus was of the Phariseical tradition. St. Paul was a Pharisee. That's why they've had all these weird mystical views

of life after death, of an existence of heaven, of saints, of angels. All this was this very mystical came from Zoroastrianism. They came less from the Torah and more from that tradition. This was brought from the exile, back into Israel during that time and then transferred into the Christian religion. So the Christians are kind of a Zoroastrian influenced, mystical, minor strain of Nazarian Judaism. Hey, hoo-hoo, and the three wise men, Zoroastrians.

Yeah, yeah, astrologers probably are Zoroastrian. So the whole point is, look, our roots are variegated and deep. And if we don't appreciate and understand each other, we're missing the boat. The field of positive psychology really started in the mid-late 90s for the most part. I mean, you can look back and you can find, you know, a little bit earlier, but it really started with the work of Marty Seligman at UPenn. So much has been uncovered. Countless books, hundreds of them.

Your weekly column, 168 columns you've written for the Atlantic Magazine on different facets of finding happiness. And people are more miserable than ever and year. after year after year, they seem to be getting, especially the younger generations, lonelier, more distracted, more disconnected, more anxious. Why is it that there has this wealth of information that has sprung up over the last 30 years?

And yet there's such a colossal disconnection from it. So the information doesn't actually reach very many people. That's one of the problems. And the real reason that- But even on- it's on TikTok, it's on Instagram. There's a headspace, meditation app and there's YouTube videos and podcasts. But not the science.

The science actually doesn't penetrate very far. That's actually why I'm doing the work that I'm doing. I'm trying to start a science-based movement and happiness. The reason that happiness isn't a decline is kind of a climate problem and a weather problem. You know, there's a systemic problem and there's a, there's a storms problem. Yeah. And you know, we find that the general happiness has been in decline since about 1990 in the United States.

It was kind of gradually rising through the 80s, and kind of through the 70s, up and down a little bit through the 70s. And then around 1990s turned around gradually started to decline. And the reason was because there were four things that started to go the wrong direction quite gradually. People were less involved in the transcendent faith or spirituality, philosophy, less, less, less, a lot less.

People trying to seek the source of meaning in the transcendent. Family life started to go on the rocks. People were starting to get married less, have fewer children, and they were more likely of schisms in their families for all sorts of reasons. People were less likely to form authentic deep friendships, real friends, not just deal friends. Why? And there are a bunch of different reasons for that. In the 90s, I had my best friendships in the 90s. I look back on the 90s,

like, ah, the 90s. You're living in the village or something like that. The music was so good. I was in Greenwich Village. It was awesome. Yeah, it's funny. I was, I thought I was living in New worked in the 80s. And yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But in the 1990s, it started to turn around for a bunch of different reasons. You know, the way that we interacted with each other started to change. And the storms that I'll talk about in a second really interacted with that in a very deleterious way. But what you find is that people were more likely to move away from their hometown. They were more likely to, you know, be living and working in a place where they didn't know anybody where, you know, the urbanization of every part of the world, included the United States.

Living alone. Yeah. And people, for sure. And where people were... Bowling alone. So not bowling in community. Yeah, they were, that's, you know, Bob Putnam, my colleague at Harvard, his stuff, was talking about the fact that people did not have civil society and voluntary ties and, you know, the weak ties of just knowing people. And the fact that people weren't going to church made a big difference because a lot of the weak ties that we make with people that we know in community

actually happens at houses of worship around values as opposed to interests, which is really important. Yeah, yeah. And then last but not least, our orientation toward work started to change. We started to see work as less vocational and more as a, you know, money, you know. And so it was less vocationally oriented toward this is what I do. This is what I do to support my family. This is what I do to use my skills.

People had a very different orientation you can actually see in the data. So that was this gradual, gradual, it was the climate change. Right. Then the weather change actually happened in three major cataclysmic storms. The first really big one was 2008, 2009. And we thought it was the financial crisis because a lot of people came out of school Instagram careers and that's what it was. It was that all, you know, the social media went on everybody's phones in 2008, 2009. And that just cratered in person friendships. The key to

experience oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide in the brain that links us to each other, the magic of talking to you in person is eye contact. And when I see you, I hug you. That's super important. Eye contact and touch. That's, come here. There we go. See they feel that oxytocin How's your hands warmer than mine? How's you keep your hand so warm there? I run hot. You're hot, baby. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's the first one was social media, which really pulled people apart. It's become the junk food of social life. It's like getting all of your meals at fast food places. But I think even before social media, and I think less attention is put on this, is like, here's, let's create a giant social experiment. I think 100 years from now, we'll look back on humanity in the early 2000s. Right.

And we'll be like, hey, guys, here's a. really fucking stupid social experiment that's gonna fuck us all up. We're gonna put many computers in everyone's pockets. The screens, yes, for screens. So it's, the social media is probably the most deleterious of the interactivities on the phone. But I mean, you can shop, you can play games, you can look at porn, you can text instead of call.

In the 90s you could do that, by the way. This is when internet started to become ubiquitous, especially among young adults, was in the 1990s. Where people were spending tons of time, you know, looking at these screens, which are unbelievably brain capturing and fascinating. And then the highest... I was trying to get porn on the dial-up DSL with a... Yeah, the best thing about that is it took so long.

That's a, you know, saved you. And then you just get some lame picture and you're like, oh, screw this. That wasn't worth it. That half an hour... I'm going to watch the Sopranos. So that screens for sure. And then the supercharged version of the screens, which is giving you your... It's giving you lots of new...

calories but no nutrients. And so if you ate at Taco Bell for all your meals, I mean, occasionally no big deal. But if you ate three meals a day at Taco Bell, you'd be getting too many calories and not enough nutrients. You could become inadequately nourished and obese simultaneously. And that's what social media has done to people. So they don't.

What if all Americans and like most Americans, they are eating all of their meals at Taco Bell and getting socially, emotionally, and spiritually malnourished from their interactions? There's also the illusion of community because you can have 847 friends on Instagram and 87 of them can like your photo and you feel like you're connected

but it's not a real connection. Well, you're getting your oxytocin. You're getting a dopamine but no oxytocin. So, and again, it's great to eat a Taco Bell once in a while. But the executives at Taco Bell will say, don't eat three meals a day here. That doesn't make sense. That's the problem.

By the way, this podcast is sponsored by Taco Bell. So the whole point is there's nothing wrong with Taco Bell. The problem is eating there all the time. Okay. The problem is not social media. The problem is getting all of your social contact from social media. The problem is binging. It's,

and that has everything to do with the capture of your brain from these particular tools. And that was the first storm that gave us an inadequate level of oxytocin in our brains, made us lonely, is what I can. Even though we were binging on it, we were getting lonelier and lonely. There's a lot of experiments that show

that every hour on social media makes you lonelier than last. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah, yeah. So we have to have protocols. I took it off my phone. Yeah, because you can't handle it, right? Yeah.

It's also, I have an addictive nature, and then I would just spend all of a sudden it's an hour and 45 minutes on Instagram. I'm going like this, watching videos of the cutest otters you've ever seen. Otters are awesome. Who knew? In people's kitchens.

Yeah. Like eating dish towels and stuff. And you're like, oh my God. That's right. Yeah, you have a pet otter and their affectionate. It's awesome. Who knew? It's weird.

You get otters? I get raccoons. I haven't seen many raccoon videos. Apparently if you watch a couple of raccoon videos. then the algorithm will start feeding you more and more raccoons. Oh, okay. I like raccoons. I didn't know it.

Good to know. Anyway, so that's storm number one. Have you seen the little beavers that build dams in the kitchen? I know. They grab like the couch cushions and the spatula and then they build like a dam. Oh my God, I need to get on social media.

Let's end this stupid interview. Let's do this now. Anyway, so second is political polarization. So the Buddha one time said that hatred is like picking up a hot coal to throw at somebody else, you're the one who's burned the worst. And the idea of fomenting political hatred across ideological lines, this is so deleterious to especially young adults who are effectively, starting in 2014, 2015, 2016, were conscripted into a baby boomers culture war as child soldiers.

And this is ruined that. Wow. That's so well said. And it's a real problem. I mean, it's like, I sit on a campus and I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You're actually willing to throw away your own happiness because of somebody else's political views. That is insanity. And that is just endemic across the United States, many places in the world, you know, polarization, populism, et cetera, have been horrible for happiness. You can see it clearly in the data. And last, of course, was COVID. Last of course was the lockdowns. It was the loneliness that actually came. It was the fact that kids missed a year or two of school and their social relationships that, like you and I were locked down. My son missed the entirety of his, God, what is it now?

his sophomore year in high school, when you should have just been doing high fives in a hallway in a high school and he's sitting behind a screen in his room. Every high five is a little shot of oxytocin and the screen gives you none of it. And so they're lonely. And so now a lot of young people are like, I'm incredibly anxious.

I'm feeling incredibly depressed. And it has to do with these, the storms along with the basic climate change and the ones who are the greatest victims are not the people whose basic console wiring, you and me grew up earlier. It was the people who grew up later than that. And that's one of the reasons that we see,

you know, the main reasons that we see so many crises. So how do we get out of that? Let's go right to solutions. Gen Z, young millennials, those certainly affected by the COVID, but this loneliness epidemic, the increase of anxiety, lack of connection. There's a 22-year-old watching this right now. What are the three things you say to them to like,

what can you do right now to increase the quality of your life? Number one, screen detox. Number one is especially a social media detox. No social media for two weeks. Now, Anna Lemke up at Stanford Medical School. Love her. She's wonderful. She's done working. Dopamine nation's a must read. I love that book. It's an incredible book. Very profound book. And start with a fast. Start with a social media Now what about a dopamine fast? In general. Which is different than a social media fast. That's because people do talk about that. Yeah, yeah.

Dopamine fast means that you look at the thing that actually is capturing your brain. So, you know, 90% of boys before the age of 14 have had access to internet hardcore pornography. Yeah. That is super bad for their brains. Yeah. This is incredibly dangerous.

Do you remember porn in the 70s? It's like, oh, my cousin Tony. Had a Playboy magazine. He has three playboy. He hid in a stump out in the woods. Come on, let's go look at him. And then you go with your friends. and you're like, oh my God, they're twins on a hay bale,

and there's like some boobies, and that's like it. And it affects your dopamine, but it's not like this. This is the stuff today is fentanyl. Yeah. And, you know, we've supercharged in the lab the way it's going to affect our brain chemistry, and they did it on purpose. Yeah. And they're using it.

They're administering it to young people. They're, it's just giving hardcore drugs to young people. And social media is fentanyl too, isn't it? They have got scientists that study the algorithms and dopamine release. systems and it just keeps you clicking back. It's the way that gambling works. It's you know, largely it has to do the algorithms that have to do with the way the social media set up are very much like the way that slot machines work where you need a payoff, but it has to be an irregular payoff. You don't get as much pleasure or as much dopamine from it if it's

a regular payoff. It becomes predictable. So you need something that like I put in a post, I don't know how it's going to do. I have to wait and see you got to check back, check back, check back, scroll, scroll, post, how many likes, etc., etc. It's feeding the system in the same way. Because there's a lot of evolutionary biology about why our dopamine system works the way that it does, but that's how a lot of these systems work. Yeah.

So you need to fast from, you got to get the monkey off your back. And the way that you do that is by fasting from whatever this really jacking up your brain chemistry. Okay. So for social media, it means take the apps off your phone and make a commitment to not look at it for two weeks to a month.

Okay. The first week it would be like children screaming in your head. It's really hard. starts to get easier. And by the way, I just want to throw in there like commitment, schmimimimitments, because what you need is accountability. So it's really helpful to make a commitment, get a partner, say, hey, let's do this together.

Let's check in with each other. Hey, did you look at it today? Yeah. Well, I snuck a look. I just wanted to see, but okay, we'll start our time over. Let's do it. Okay. Like you close the loop because commitment is so difficult with something as addictive.

Right. As what we're talking about. Absolutely. So that's the first way to do that. Then if you decide to come back to it, which many people won't because they'll realize that their life is better. And when my son, who's in the military, got rid of his social media accounts, he's like, this is way better. This is way better. You know, he was a special operator in the military.

And you're not going to be posting all the stuff that you're doing. He got off social media and life was like, huh. And so you're going to find that you like it better potentially. But if you do go back to it, then you got to put parameters around it. probably the best protocol is 30 minutes a day across all platforms in one period. In other words, you don't look at it in the bathroom. That's pretty much what I do. Yeah. And you're looking at in the morning. I mean, you post a couple of things. You see what your friends are up to. You have a couple of laughs. And then you're done for the day. Yeah. And then why? Because it's not sprawling into the

rest of your life is the way that that works. That's something we need to do. Second is less politics, less politics. And when people that are the age of Rain and Arthur are telling young adults that if they're not outraged, they're not paying attention, they're trying to use you. They're trying to use you. They're trying to conscript you into their culture war. And that's a big problem. Don't let old people use you for their profit and their following and their jollies. Here's the problem with that. There's stuff to be outraged about. Yeah, always. There always has been in all of human life. Yeah, and there probably always will be. There are grave injustices. There's systemic racism. There's oil companies that continue to drill

and governments won't very simply curtail businesses that are increasing climate change. There's anti-Semitism. There's laws, there's anti-Semitism. The list goes on and on. Forests are getting chopped down. There's things to be outraged about. Depending on what you find outrageous,

there's things to be outraged about. And how do you balance the fact that there's a shit ton to be outraged about and yet not succumb to the outrage machine. The point is that your outrage, per se, is not going to solve a problem. And that's what the old people are trying to convince you, if you're mad enough, it's going to help.

Let's substitute your anger and your attention for actually doing something that helps humanity. There's a lot, for example, one of the things when I talk to young people, it's like, okay, you're really, really upset about what's actually happening in Ukraine. I got it. So go help somebody in your community.

go actually do something that helps humanity and mobilize your concern about something in a part of the world that you can't actually change for a part of the world where you can make a change. If you're really worried about poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, then go help a homeless person in your community. That's the answer to it because what that will do is it'll make you happier and it will actually solve a problem. And you won't be just part of the outrage industrial complex where some boomer is making bank on your eyeballs and whatever. whatever it happens to be, or getting power by you, you know, yelling and chanting slogans. Yeah. And I would say too for all the outrage

that young people have about the invasion and bombing of Gaza, go to the Middle East and there are tons of refugee camps everywhere, especially in Jordan, it's safe in Jordan, mostly Syrian refugees, but some Palestinian ones as well, and go be of service and bring them food and serve them water. Get to know those people.

Get to know that people in service. that people, get to know Muslims and Arabs of the Middle East that have been suffering. I mean, I think what you're saying is better, like do it in your own community. But if you really want to make a difference, like get mom and dad to give you a thousand dollar plane ticket and go over there and volunteer. If you can. And on the other side of the, on the other side of the conflict, you know, if you're really, really stirred up about what's going on on the other side, If you mobilize, use your outrage to mobilize into something that you can actually do as opposed to all you're saying and all your writing on social media and all the people you're denouncing

and all that because you're just working for somebody else's agenda. And that, by the way, that's going to make you unhappy. And they don't care. Yeah. You know, the outrage industrial complex doesn't care. This is what happened to me very specifically around climate change is I found myself sending out angry tweets every couple of weeks. and that was the extent of my work in climate.

And I really had a kind of a come to Jesus. Don't be offended. As it were. No, no, I'd say in the vernacular. And I was like, you know, Rain, you're such an asshole. You're just a keyboard warrior. Get off your butt and go do something. Go do a thing.

No, I'm in a privileged position because I have a little money. I have a little influence or whatever. But I started talking to climate scientists. I met this wonderful climate scientist, Dr. Gail Whiteman. We went to Greenland together. I made a little documentary.

Now I work with her in the World Economic Forum and we're making content and trying to kind of elucidate the conversation about climate through using media. And you've translated your concern for a lot of the injustice in the world with the foundation that you have in Haiti.

Right. That's a real thing. I know it's a real thing because you guest lectured for me in my nonprofit fundraising course at Harvard. I'm happy to come back. to do that. We'll do it again. I mean, it's like, that's talk, it's better than a celebrity cameo. You actually gave expert testimony on what you're doing with a real foundation, but that's the

point. Action speaks volumes and it will make you happy. Right. This is the key thing. You feel valuable. Yeah. You give you meaning. Yeah, a lot of young people when, serve others, have fun and potentially make a living. Yeah. And, and, and a young person asked me in, you know, I was giving a lecture at a Christian college and afterwards, somebody said, you know, what, what should I do? I'm, we're so surrounded by homelessness. It was in New York City. We're so surrounded by homelessness and I feel so there's a Christian college in New York City? It was actually outside New York City. But they were and and I said well here's the deal. I mean if you believe that that person is the face of Jesus, which if you believe Matthew 2540 as you did for the least of these, my brothers and sisters,

you did for me. If you believe that's literally true, then you need to do something. Now I understand that it's complicated to give somebody who might be addicted to drugs and alcohol money. But But okay, the sandwich. Got it, fine. But then do something else. Take it to a deeper level. Stop and say, would you pray for me and my family? Because as a Christian, you believe that God hears the cries of the poor.

And you actually need that from him. You need his prayers. You need her supplications on behalf of your family. That is taken to the next level. And that's the kind of creative thinking that we need. We don't need you to watch Fox News or MSNBC necessarily. or to be a keyboard warrior. Come on, man. Get after it. Yeah, because the world needs you. But hand in hand with that. Like, educate yourself about homelessness and the causes of homelessness

and how it works because it's a really complicated. It's a very, very complicated. Gordian not to try and untangle. Everyone thinks like it's home, oh, more shelters. There's tons of shelters. There's tons of shelters. There's a lot of issues around it. But educate yourself and see if there's an aspect of the homelessness crisis that you can help people and affect hundreds or things. thousands of lives instead of giving a sandwich to a dozen people. And my guess is that when you educate yourself, you're going to find you have a lot of common cause and people on the other end of the aisle

or the other side of the political aisle who also are educated on it. And that's important. And last but not least, that's the second thing is don't be used politically. And the third thing is everything needs to be in real life. You need more eye contact and touch. More eye contact and touch.

One of the biggest reasons for the mental health crisis among young people today, they have less eye contact and they have less touch. And that's because they're behind screens. And furthermore, in the cases where they would have the most of it, like in schools. And when you say touch, you're talking about physical touch, high fives, hugs, handshakes, all of it. Sitting shoulder to shoulder. All of it.

Physical touch. We are made for eye contact and touch. And this is one of the reasons that everybody would be better off if there were no phones in schools. Because what you find in public schools, private schools too, you find that it's like, I'm in school doing this. Yeah. That's insanity. There are people who are talking to each other sitting next to each other by text.

My son was going to this private school, not far from here. And the new principal came in, and she saw the problem that was going on. And she said she wanted phones away, even during lunch. And she saw all these clicks happening at lunch. And so she was like, random seating during lunch,

no phones. Right. And the mothers went, Haywire ballistic. They went apes shit. Like they want to be texting their daughters during lunch and their daughters want to sit with their same five friends. Now, I don't know, but, you know, I don't know if the random seating was like every single day or if it was like a couple of times a week. But I'm impressed. I'm impressed. And she got fired after a year. She was run out of town. Yeah. I mean, that's a hard thing to do. But, you know, the truth is that the early experiments on phones

in schools shows that people hate it for the first three weeks and then they like it. And the way that they do, there's all kinds of technologies for lockers where you check in your phone when you come to school and you check them out at the end of the day so they're secure. And then what happens is that when nobody has them, nobody is bothered by that after a week or two. The problem is, of course, is the parents. But the interesting thing is that there's a new study at the University of Chicago came out just two weeks ago that shows that most young people wish that nobody was on social media. and actually they say that if they could,

they would pay money so that nobody's on social media. Wow. We have a collective action problem. We have a huge collective action problem. And very least this- So you have 100 million young people on social media every single day and a majority of them wish that no one was on social media

so that they didn't have to be on social media. And they know in a primordial sense that they need something that they're not getting. They're starving. They're starving. And they're starting. So the bottom line is is control your dopamine. Step one.

Step two is don't be manipulated so that you're hating others. And number three is more eye contact and touch. That's the prescription that actually comes from the science. There you go. Boom. Mic drop. Boom. That's a soul boom.

That's amazing. That's so cool. That's so cool. It's so specific. It's so doable. And it's so resonant. Yeah. And it's human.

it's human. Yeah. Because, you know, we, we forget that this is what humans need. You said something else in an interview I heard you say something about like, don't check your phone in the morning, go out for a walk, take deep breaths, and take in the sun. Is there a way to incorporate nature into this a little bit more? Yeah.

So I get a lot of, especially young men who feel, you know, to graduate from college and nothing is going right for them and they're back living with mom. And, you know, I don't know why a lot of, young guys are writing me about this, but I hear about this a lot. And so I've actually put together a protocol that tends to work based on the science, but also it makes pretty natural sense. Wake up in the morning. When you don't know, what you need to do is discern, to quote St. Catherine of Siena, what you're supposed to do with your life so that you can be set on fire. And the only way you can do that is by paying attention and thinking about the problem. You have to think about the

problem. And so the way to do it is to wake up in the morning before dawn, I recommend five, 30 in the morning, which is maybe the first time that some people have ever done that, and especially young dudes, that's hard to do. Make sure it's still dark. Don't pick up your phone. Go for a walk for an hour without devices. And the goal of the walk is, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?

That's the question. And do that every day for 30 days. And I promise that you'll have unique insight by the end. Now, there's a whole lot of brain chemistry, there's a whole lot of science that's going on behind this. but the whole point is you got to look for the thing, man. You got to look for the thing. And you're not going to find the thing here. It's not going to show up.

It's like, oh, yeah. What I wanted to do is to be a YouTuber. No, no, no, no. There's a cosmic purpose to your life. There's a divine hand in your life. But you have to pay attention to it. You know, God doesn't put a billboard up right in front of your house. God doesn't send you a direct message saying,

here's what you're supposed to do. You have to be aware. You have to be a droid. You have to be listening. And to listen, you have to take away the distraction. Take away the distraction of others. Take away the distraction of your warm, comfy bed. Take away the distraction of your phone.

Go out there. Walk the street for an hour. There's other elements too. You're witnessing the sun rising. There may be you're witnessing your breath. You're hearing your breath. I always, you know, when I'm not listening to a podcast when I'm walking like or running,

I'm just like hearing my breath, right? And maybe you're a little bored, you know, because probably a good 20 minutes of that hour you're just gonna be kind of bored. You're understimulated because you've been so over-stimulated. Yeah. And so you're itching for something to do. That's 30 days, man.

Three days? Game changer. Yeah. My friend who's a poet and professor at Bard College, Phil Party, he teaches a class on poetry, but it's contemplative poetry. So he has a three-hour class. They put their phones away,

and they do nature walks and write poems. they write. One of the things they do is they sponsor a tree. So they find a tree on campus, and they're supposed to come back to that tree every week and write about it and how it's changing and its transformation. So it's kind of experiencing poetry, not from an academic standpoint of like, oh, here's an Adrian Rich poem. And I wonder what kind of Greek mythology she's referencing when she talks about this God here or something like that. It's not, so much that kind of literary poetry, but it's a, you know, it's experiential. Experiential poetry. Yeah. How can we experience poetry in our daily lives? I guess that's a question.

Are you paying attention enough to actually be able to describe something? And poetry begins with with paying attention. If you want to learn how to draw, so most people can't draw. If you want to draw better than you ever have before, you need to learn how to look at something. So most people, they'll look at something like, I'm going to draw rain. No, no, no, no, look at rain. Actually, look at it. Look at them deeply. And we don't do this in life.

And we do this less and less and less and less in life. I mean, dig in, man. You've got to experience this thing. A lot of young people today, a lot of old people today. A lot of people our age are not, they're not fully alive. You know, St. Uranias, the great fourth century Catholic saint. Of course, I ranes. Who doesn't love Iranias?

I hadn't infected Iranias for a while. You need a pipe. You need a pipe on this. I do. I need a Mearsham pipe. Exactly. Google it. Mersham?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Mersham, that was the thing of the past, wasn't it? That's that big like Dwight Eisenhower. Yeah, yeah. But it's made out of something. I don't know, whatever Meersham is.

We need more Meersham around here. Yeah. The world needs more Mirsham. It really does. Number four. That's the number four. That's the number four. More Mirsham for sure.

Back to Iranae. St. your and a time said that the glory of God is a person fully alive. Wow. Man, how many of us are not fully alive? Well, you know, St. Dominic Savia once said, I am not capable of doing big things, but I want to do everything, even the smallest things for the greater glory of God. Well played, Rain. Yeah. St. Dominic. Yeah. St. Dominic. You know, who's the most famous Dominican? I would say, who's the closer for the Yankees that just got put in the All of Fame? There you go.

They're a Dominican Republic. That's good. Aquinas was a Dominican, actually. Okay. And that was an upstart Spanish order of warrior monks. Warrior monks. Yeah. And Aquinas came from...

Sounds like Dungeons and Dragons. I had a monk character for years in D&D. The biggest badasses in the, you know, Aquinas was a, was a, he was aristocracy. And so his, they were going to send him to be the head monk of the local Benedictine Abbey in, in Montecino in Italy. And he ran away and joined the Dominicans. Okay. Yeah, it was an incredible thing. But the, but Torquamata was a Dominican. Okay. Yeah, yeah. The head inquisitor. Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a, they've got a tough background is the whole thing. But the Dominicans are incredible because of exactly the kind of thing that you just read.

you know, the deep, deep contemplation while being fully engaged in the world. And at the end of the day, you know, this is what we want. You know, find the deep magic, the divinity that's in everything. And the only way you can do that is be actually being alive in this world. And all the things that are distracting you from your world are distracting you from the divinity that you want and from the transcendent things that you want. So you're neither in, you're neither in heaven nor on earth. And we're just like these beings floating around. That's the battle, isn't it? It is. That is. That is the greater jihad. It's the internal battle. Yeah. It's between yourself in the world and your ego in between.

It's an incredible adventure. It's an incredible adventure. For you and me, that's why I'm so happy you're doing this show. Because for you and me, it means actually looking for what is greater, what is bigger, what is above, what is more profound, what actually is the divine. you're not going to find it until you seek and let yourself be sought. The Hounds of Heaven. Got to be open to the Hounds of Heaven. Woof, What incredible conversation. Thank you, my brother.

God bless you. God bless you. And I really mean that. Thank you. I know you do. I know you do. I love you, man. And I'm so happy to be part of this.

And thank you for what you're doing. Oh, thank you for coming on this little weird show. I really appreciate it. My guess this is not going to be a little for very long. Well, who knows. It's a soul boom. We're going to boom some souls, baby. Right on.

You're listening to Soul Boom.