Soul Boom - Arthur Brooks & Rainn Escape the Matrix & Find the Meaning of Life

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Why does modern life feel emptier than ever, even with more technology, comfort, and success than any generation before us? Arthur Brooks (behavioral scientist, bestselling author) joins us to explore the growing meaning crisis, the neuroscience of purpose, and why our phones may be quietly rewiring our brains away from happiness. SPONSORS! 👇 Proton (protect your privacy for FREE!) 👉 ⁠⁠proton.me/soulboom⁠⁠ Grow Therapy (sessions avg $21 w/ insurance!) 👉 growtherapy.com/soulboom⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. A quick shout out to our sponsors.

Proton. Go to proton.m.m.m. slash Soul Boom to take control of your private and digital life. Grow Therapy. Whatever challenges you're facing, grow therapy is here to help. Visit growth therapy.com slash soul boom to get started. Enjoy the show. Everybody worship something. If you don't worship something healthy, you will worship something that's really bad.

The dollar. Use people, love things, worship yourself. Change the verbs and nouns around. Use things, love people, worship the divine. You figure out. what the divine is. Hey there, it's me, Rayne 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, thanks for coming back to the show. I love the show. Amazing. The show's so great.

It's your second time on Soul Boom. How do you think I'm doing? I think you're doing beautifully. Any notes? I think that this is. Like our third guest. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

I think you're lifting people up in bonds of happiness and love and bringing them closer to divinity because you have God within you. We all have God within us. I know we do. I know we do. But the fact is that you know that and you're helping people understand that in their own lives. This is like, why are we on earth? Why else are we on earth?

Everything else is a pretext to help people understand that. Arthur, we're a random amalgam of molecules that just bounced together to form us with our consciousness and we get 87 and a half years and that's it. Lights out, no purpose, no meaning. Nothing, nothing, that's right. There's no, there's only existence, there is no essence. Mm, beautiful, essence.

That's a good word, essence. That's actually, tell me about that word. That's a sartre word. So the great, we have this, we have this assumption, this philosophical assumption that is fundamentally, it's Abrahamic and its understanding of existence, that essence precedes existence, that we have an essence, that we have a meaning, that we have a soul,

and that precedes our existence, and that our existence is all about serving the essence of who we are, such that we can get closer to the Creator. The existentialist, particularly the mid-19th century into the 20th century existentialist, they said, no, that's wrong, it's backwards. Existence precedes essence.

You don't have an essence until you're born, and your whole job, your ethical obligation is to find the meaning of your life, to invent the meaning of your life. That's how existentialism works. Going back a little bit, the nihilists have a different take on it. They say, there's only existence, there is no essence.

So that's what Nietzsche says. So stop looking for it and stop screwing around and just live your life, like a grown-up for Pete's sake. So those are the three views on existence. Where do you stand? I'm just, I'm old school, man. You're platonic. Yeah, essence precedes existence.

Absolutely, there is an essence. And my job is to discover it and live according to it and bring it to other people as much as I possibly can. And you're doing that in your new book. Yeah. What's it called again? The meaning of your life. Exactly. Finding purpose in an age of emptiness.

Your new book is incredible. I've read most of your work. and this book moved me to my core. I think it's, I hate to use this word. I mean, he's the I word, it's important. But it's important because it's so damn moving. In every chapter, you're just like, oh, it just gets you. But you scooped me because that's supposedly the book

that I'm supposed to be writing right now. I can't wait to see your version. Because you and I have always had these kind of parallel ideas. You know, we've been paling around for a couple of years now. Yes. And we're thinking about the same things. we talk to each other a lot, we see the world in the same way, but we have a slightly different set of experiences

because you made your life as an actor, and I made my life as a behavioral scientist, which means two different ways of seeing the same issues with the same moral and ethical lens. Well, I was reading your book, and I was like, God damn it, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna top this? There's no way. It's, I can't wait.

Well, I can't wait to see yours, because we were originally introduced after you wrote Soul Boom. Yes. And I read that book and I said, I gotta do a column on this. And we started hanging out. And it was, you know, we were thick as thieves. Have you ever told your audience how your father was converted?

I think I've told that story. Kartik, have I told that story? I love that story. I bet you that people don't remember it or they could hear again. Okay, I'm going to tell it again. Yeah. I love this story. It's an amazing story.

Yeah. So my dad is a young man in early 20s in Seattle, wants to be a painter, artist, in a real lost phase of his life. is wandering through downtown Seattle. A guy bumps into him on the street, crossing the street in downtown Seattle, has a book, tears out a page, puts it in his hand,

grabs his hand, looks him in the eye, and says, this is the word of God for this day, and then keeps on going. And my dad's like, what the fuck? puts it in his pocket, doesn't think about it. Later, going through a really dark period, I don't know, a couple days, a couple weeks later, pulls it out, says, oh, that's,

and it's a pretty, and it's a pretty, from the Baha'i prayer book. He says Baha'i prayers. I don't know which prayer it was. And he reads it. And he's like really struck by it. And then not long afterwards, he is walking through downtown again. And he has a vision. And he stopped. And he's like, oh, my God, what that guy said is true. That is the word of God for this day. He just, and everything slowed down for him. And he saw all of people walking and all their souls and all everything kind of slowed down like the matrix or something like that and the sea of people and went to the library and looked up by high faith and found by high prayers or whatever and converted from that kind of mystical experience that's uh so that's often called

the moment of illumination so people have a moment of illumination um so you uh swedenborg you know who swedenborg in 1688 was born in in sweden and he was a genius in in all forms of science. He was a scientific prodigy, and at 54 had an illumination and started writing only about the love of God for the rest of his life. Whoa.

Because he had this moment of illumination, where he said, oh, this is why everything. This is why everything. It's not a beatific experience? Is that different? Beautific experience is interesting because among Christians, the idea of the beatific vision

is when you lay eyes on the creator. So you go to heaven and have a beatific. So a beatific vision on earth is a precursor. It's the concept of being able to see God momentarily. So, C.S. Louis- But you know that I had a beatific vision then, because I saw God when I was having a bad drug trip. Tell me more.

This was in my first book, The Bassoon King. Uh-huh. So I, on Christmas morning, got stoned as hell. I was living in an abandoned beer brewery out in Brooklyn, because I didn't have to pay rent, but there was no heat. And there was a joint, and I started smoking, and I must have been laced with some.

and I started like having this adverse reaction. My muscles were like twitching, I started sweating. And my roommate was there, he was on the phone talking to someone who was on a landline. And I went up in like the crow's nest of this warehouse space and because it was all this trash everywhere. And we had these lit candles, glass candles.

And I was having this trip and I was like hyperventilating. I was like, fuck, I need an ambulance, I need 911. And I was like, John, John! and he was like, he was stone two, although he didn't have this bad experience, and he was just laughing and he was on the phone. This is Christmas morning? Christmas morning.

And then I took the lit candles and I started throwing him at him, and it lit these papers on fire. And he's like, I heard him go, I gotta go. And he went up and he held me. And I was just, I don't know what the reaction was that I was having. And I saw the face of God. And this abandoned,

kind of loft in Brooklyn. And it really looked more like a Mark Rothko painting than anything else. It was a really, the deepest golden, broadest sunset you could possibly imagine, but I knew it was like all of consciousness. And I swore to the face of God at that point, it's like, as we often do, I was 23 at the time. I was like, I'm never doing any drugs again.

God, if you get me out of this, you probably still have a few more drugs to do between. I didn't do anymore. That was it? You'd truly didn't. I just did alcohol. That didn't count for me. Yeah.

Because everybody's almost done that. Yeah. That's not a drug. That's a fun hop. So he read to me, raise high the roof beam carpenters by J.D. Salinger until I kind of came down. I was sweating. I didn't call the ambulance, but I really saw the face of God. What is that besides, besides drugs?

Who knows? I mean, who knows? Maybe that's a purely biological form. phenomenon. Could have been. But it also might have been, I mean, God's funny. The divine may have manifested himself, may have saved you that day. Look upon my face. Behold, I love you. I love you, my son. Don't do this to yourself. Remember, you know, there are a lot of people who've actually have these experience and they talk about this in their lowest moments of greatest self-destruction that God will be made manifest in their lives and rescue them. Have you ever thought about the fact that

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Groth Therapy.com slash soul boom. What do you think about people doing like ayahuasca and seeing the face of God? just a cheap way out? I don't know. You know, it just changes people's lives. A lot of times from the better. I've read this research. I've looked a lot of this research as behavioral scientists. Do tell our audience is very interested in this question. Sure. And people ask me this all the time. And as you know, because of the work that I'm doing on meaning, I'm very interested in hemispheric lateralization, that the right side of the brain is the hemisphere of the brain that your antenna. That's for illumination and consciousness. That's mystery and meaning. That's love is where you

experience these things that go that are the ineffable big vision the numinous yeah that's the right side of your brain and and there are people who believe that that hallucinogenic drugs of various types will give you greater access to these parts of your brain and if that's true if that's true that actually can be a great help the problem is that the research is very early and and these have been controlled substances which is one of the reasons that that there's not that much research I mean for example I mean if you look at something really ordinary like cannabis which a lot of people use. There's very little research on cannabis because it was a controlled substance. And so we're doing the world's largest human experiment in real time by making it legal every place. And let's,

let's see what happens. Let's just see what happens. We did the same thing with smartphones. Yeah. We stuck a little microcomputer in everyone's pocket and said, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. Unlimited porn. Unlimited social media. I know. And so with hallucinogens, there hasn't been very much research on it. And so people were relying a lot on people. real-time experiences that they're having with. And some people have very positive experiences, and some people don't. And what worries me about hallucinogens

is if you have a propensity toward any psychosis, there is some work that suggests that it might actually provoke psychosis in people. And so what I tell people is, I'm not against it, but you might want to wait. You might want to wait another couple of years until we know more. So, for example, I wouldn't dare,

because I have a lot of psychosis in my family. I have a lot of mental illness in my family. And psychosis, that cannabis is bad for that. Cannabis is dangerous if you have any psychosis in your family as well. Especially if you're under 25. Yeah, exactly, when your brain is highly plastic. And so watch and wait is what I would suggest.

I don't think that it's a panacea. And I do know that there are safe ways to open up the right hemisphere of your brain that are more traditional, which is a lot of what I talk about in the new work. Yeah, this is a later question, but let's go there right now. You have a whole chapter on right right brain, left brain, which was very popular in the 80s and 90s.

Oh, were you a right brain and left brain and you draw, and some of the studies are incredible when you shut off different parts of the brain and you can remember things and stuff like that. But there's a new level of research, and what does this have to do with the meaning of your life? So the new research on this, so that left brain, right brain stuff kind of went out of fashion. And part of it was because it was very reductive.

And when we were kids, we learned that you were either analytical or artsy. or artsy. And my mom was a painter, my father was a mathematician, so he was really left brain, and she was really right brain. And I thought, well, I'm obviously a right brain guy, because I'm a musician, and I write poetry, and I paint paintings. And then later in my 20s, when I stopped being a professional musician,

I started studying math and statistics. I'm like, huh, so maybe I'm a left-brain guy. No. It turns out that you don't have specific skills like that that are left and right hemispherically lateralized. What we have is different emphases, different kinds of questions that we deal with. The right brain deals with complex questions of why

that don't have real answers, but are all about mystery and meaning and love and transcendence. The left side is about how and what. And those are the analytical types of things that we answer such that we can get jobs done. That's why Ian McGilchrist, there's a great neuroscientist at Oxford.

He talks about the right brain is the master and the left brain is the emissary. The right brain asks why and then gives orders on what to go do. And that's what the left brain then does. So the right brain is, I love my family, and I want to take care of them because they complete me. Now it says to the go left brain, go make a living.

Go figure out how to do stuff and make money and buy groceries for these people that you love so very much. That's so the two halves work together. So what does this have to do with meaning in the modern world? Meaning is right brain, and we are closing down the right hemispheres of our brains. How and why? Mostly with technology, but largely with culture.

We have a culture of analysis. We have a culture of efficiency. We have a culture of engineering. We have a culture of how to and why questions. We're young people today that questions are things that you can put into a Google search bar. There are things that you would confront chat GPT with. Well, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned chat GPT

because it's a lot more than a Google search bar these days. Yes. Because you put it into an AI search engine and it will give you a 10-page spreadsheet, dossier on whatever it is that you want to know. But none of it is based on meaning. All of it is based on these left brain analytics because that's how the algorithms actually work.

So technology is the tip of the spear of a culture that's technologized and engineering focused. That's how American culture, but largely world culture, has trended, and particularly in the lives of young people, people under 30 who don't remember them four times, and most especially, a college-educated young people.

That's the reason that they, are less likely to be using their brains the way that they were designed to be made they're designed to be used using the right brain which is the master asking the why the deep the transcendent questions and only looking at the how to and what questions which will get you a pretty long way but they'll ultimately will be empty because there's no reason for the things that you're finding out there's no transcendent reason for the things that you're learning that's what is actually leading to the explosion of depression and anxiety i think the preponderance of evidence tells us that the the the the Psychogenic epidemic, which just means an epidemic without biological origin of depression and anxiety, it's coming about because we have a meaning crisis. And the reason we have a meaning crisis, what's the meaning of my life? Is because people are not actually camping out in the right sides of the brains. They're living in a completely different way. They're living, right, they're living in a simulation, a simulation of real life, a left brain simulation of a right brain. Because they're spending so much time looking at their phones? Yeah, because technology, all it does is simulates the things in real life that you

really care about. So, you know, I ask young people, tell me about your day. Well, you know, get up and first thing I do is I check my phone. And then, you know, I go to work. That's mostly on Zoom. And I date, well, that's on an app. And I meet my friends. That's a lot of that's on social media. And then I do... I have dinner, which I order on an app. And a lot of my sense of accomplishment and fun, well, that's gaming. And as opposed to doing a real thing. And the result of it is that they're in the matrix. And there's one thing you can't simulate. And that's the meaning of your life. The meaning of your life can't be simulated. It can only be experienced to be understood. Here's a weird thing. People have a hard time talking about meaning. And the reason for that is that

the language centers of your brain are in the left hemisphere. If you can talk about it, it's probably not it. And so, you know, I know, I know, I know, I know your wife. She's so lovely. Why do you love her? You know you do. But your right brain is experiencing the truth I saw in your eyes. And you could take enough time, and you could say, she's really good to me. Well, so is your third grade teacher probably. Yeah, the poets can put it into words. They do it okay.

Yeah. They do the best they can, but at best love poetry and country songs are a curve fit for the true ineffable experience of love and meaning. And that's what we're not getting. And so if all you're getting is like a cheap knockoff of all these experiences in The Matrix, then you're always gonna be bereft,

then you're always gonna have a sense emptiness and the reason is because your brain isn't working the way it was supposed to work and all of us are prone to that today but especially young people what are three things we can do right now to make our brains more right focused so and by that we we don't mean politically obviously of course number one we need to get clean and and this is an important idea you know it's of you have a lot of experience in in substance abuse and recovery communities and and And this is something I've studied a lot

and experienced a lot in my life as well. And one of the things that you learn in the world of addiction is that you can't actually address the problems that led you to addictive behavior until you actually break the grip on you. You've got to get out of the doom loop. The way that doom loops work in addiction is that I'm trying to fix something in my life

with something that's making it worse. So alcohol, for example, is an iatrogenic agent, meaning that it causes a problem it's trying to solve. Homer Simpson famously said, to alcohol, the cause and solution to all of life's problems. That's awesome. And what you find with these doom loops

is that you're more specifically. What do you mean by a doom loop? A doom loop is one where you get into something and it makes your problem worse, and so you do more of it and escalate and it makes your problem worse and down and down she goes. I feel lonely so I look at social media,

tag some friends, that makes me feel more lonely so I look at more social media. Right. And I'm lonely, so I'm lonely. I want company of the opposite sex. So I look at pornography, which makes me feel lonely and more alienated and isolated and more of a loser. And so I look at more pornography and down and down and down it goes.

Alcohol is funny because alcohol is the greatest threat to people who are bored and people who are anxious. Anxious people and people who are bored. It will take away your boredom. It's like it's a vacation in a bottle, right? And it's really, really efficacious for anxiety, because anxiety, which is unfocused fear, is activity of the amygdala,

and it cuts the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. So you're still super anxious, but you don't know it, which is the reason that two drinks makes you feel like a new man. The problem is it comes back with a vengeance. You get a rebound effect. And so people drink because they're lonely and or bored,

and then it helps, and then it gets worse, and so they drink more, and they drink more. And they drink more, and they drink more. Back to technology. We are dealing with a problem of constant overwhelming distraction and an aversion to boredom and a lot of loneliness. And so we turn to social media as a, it's kind of such a social media,

our screens is a form of self-soothing behavior. We self-soothe with it. And so when you're just like, oh man, it's like my day is overwhelming. And I got a couple of minutes. Or for Pete's sake, the light is lasting too long. out comes the phone. And in so doing, what you do is you make yourself less able to deal with those aversive emotions.

You need those emotions. Boredom is a classic case. You need to be bored. Why do you need to be bored? Because bored turns on the default mode network in your brain. And that's one of the ways that we have right hemispheric activity

that leads us to a sense of meaning. We're designed to be bored. You say in the book, that's why you always get great ideas in the shower because you're not looking at your phone. Yeah. And you're just kind of... There.

You're just kind of in a place for five to 15 minutes where thoughts can happen. Yeah, there's this great irony when it comes to boredom about how technology works today. So your great-grandfather had a pretty boring day. But I guarantee you he never had a panic attack behind the mule. Yeah, because his brain was, his HPA access

was never getting flooded because his brain was working the way it was supposed to. Here's the thing. Moment to moment, great-granddad Wilson, was bored a lot, but his life wasn't boring at all. A lot of young people today, moment to moment, they're never bored, but their life is grindingly boring. That's the irony.

At the meta level, when your brain is working the way it's supposed to work, you're not bored. You're not bored. But moment to moment, of course, you're bored. That's the irony of how this works. We've wiped out the little problem and created a huge problem. You know, it's like all the things that we do. We're so great at solving small problems and creating big ones.

in our marriages, in our lives, in our society, in our politics, all of it. I mean, I don't like a little bit of pain. So I'm going to create this analgesic that I take from getting bark off a tree. You know, I found a way to create a non-zero anti-inflammatory drug that's a little bit more effective. Guess what? I can actually block that completely with an opioid narcotic analgesic. Oops, 100,000 people died of drug overdoses. And this is what we're doing a lot with the technology that we've got.

It's an unbelievable tool. It's an incredible blessing, and we will figure out how to use it, but in the meantime, we have casualty after casualty, because what people are doing is getting hopelessly addicted, and that's what we need to get clean from. So the first thing that I talk about in my work when I'm talking to young people is how to break the doom loop, actually how to break the back of that addiction,

so then you can start living in a better way. And how do you do it? That means not a total ban. It means a ban at particular times. There's tech-free times, tech-free, and tech fasts. And there's a ton of research behind this, a ton of good neuroscience research

that shows if you do this, that you'll get clean. You'll get clean enough that you can actually live in a different way and your life will feel a lot different. So the tech-free times, there's three tech-free times. First hour in the morning, last hour at night, meal times. So don't eat with your phone, eat with other people. You should, in general, your brain works better when you eat with other people.

because our brains were accommodated to the Pleistocene 250,000 years ago, where all of humanity was living in 30 to 50 individual bands of Homo sapiens that were hierarchical and kin-based. And the way that we actually bonded to each other was getting eye contact, oxytocin, while we stuffed things in our mouth sitting around a campfire. And so we simulate that when we have dinner at the table, sitting around the table talking about our day.

If your phone is on the table, it will distract you and you will cut oxytocin. As soon as you look at it and say, I wonder if somebody texted me, oxytocin turns off. So that's, and then first hour of the day when you're really neurily programming and last hour of the day when you're actually winding down and getting ready to rest.

Here's my problem. I read on my iPad, because my eyes are bad, and then I also get messages and emails on my eye. Uh-huh. So you got to turn, you got to turn your notifications off. Well, I certainly do that, but I still check them. I know. So that's a, that's a problem. What I would actually recommend

is having a separate device. A reading device. A reading device. that doesn't have any of that stuff. And Kindle's better, because Kindle's actually better for your brain. It's not backlit in the same way. Yeah. And so it has a different effect.

It's not the blue light that's actually messing with the function of your pineal gland, thus cutting melatonin. So if you're lying in bed, looking at a screen, it's a problem. It's going to, your sleep architecture will get all monkeyed up. Yeah. That'll be a problem. Plus, when you're lying in bed, by the way, the thing that you should be doing is gazing into Holiday's eyes. Because that's a time when she will go to sleep with more oxytocin. She'll wake up loving you more.

Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. Women get three times as much oxytocin as men. Wow. And the biggest mistake that husbands make is talking to their wives while not looking at them in the eyes.

It's the biggest mistake in marriages. Because guys have less oxytocin, and so they can actually feel pretty connected while talking to you by not looking at you. Right. But when you're talking to your wife, always be staring at her in the eyes because she needs more oxytocin than you do.

My wife has told me that she wants hugs in the morning before I look at my phone. Yep. Yeah. And she needs your eye contact to her when you talk to her. Right. Men need a lot of touch, actually, lots and lots of touch. Oxytocin and hugging is interesting because there's a one study that shows that oxytocin release is maximized.

And by the way, for those listening to us, oxytocin is a neuropeptide that functions as a hormone. It's like dopamine, kind of. It's similar insofar as that it's intensely satisfying, but it's all about human connection. It's also known as the love molecule. It's maximized at a 22-second mark with hugs. that's when you get maximum oxytocin. 22 seconds into a hug? Yeah, 22 seconds into a hug

is when you've got the maximum amount of oxytocin. So don't hug for under 22 seconds. Yeah, and you know, I mean... That's a little pervy. That's a long, I know. So with your kids, for example, my wife instituted a policy after I told her about this study, of never being the one to let go.

I love that. When your son... So what if you grew up without hugs? That's a... And then you need to make up for it. You need to make up for it. by actually on purpose. Strip clubs?

That's not the way. That's not the way. I mean, that's like pornography. That has all kinds of bad, bad neurocognitive effects on people. That's, you know, pornography is super dangerous. It's a super dangerous addiction. But so if there's something in your childhood where there wasn't warmth, then you need to actually manually override

the patterns that it's actually built into your life. That means, look, I know I need, more of this. And I know I'm not going to think of this. And when I'm feeling crummy, that means I need to go do this. But there's lots of things in our lives like this. Yeah. She has lots of things that, you know, the signals aren't right because of whatever reasons. You're feeling anxious. When I'm feeling anxious, I know I need a cold plunge. Yes. But that's not intuitive. No. Like I'm going to go sit for five minutes and a 40 degree tub of water. Like, come on. That's crazy. No, that's right. And you've actually figured that out

about yourself. And so you, and that's one of the great things about having a prefrontal cortex, like a human being. You do all kinds of things. You do all kinds of things. that you wouldn't intuit normally, but through information, you've been able to make your life better. That's a beautiful thing. I mean, I love that so much. Your dog can't do that.

Your dog's awesome, but your dog's gonna go according to its normal instinctive patterns. So that's the first thing is like, breaking the back of that. You had a few more things too. Well, there's a couple of things. So tech-free zones, physical zones,

never have your phone in the bedroom. Your phone shouldn't be in the bedroom. It should be on a different floor of the house. It should be at a different part of the house. especially that you break the habit of ever looking at it at night. And then last but not least is, is like, and this is a policy thing, there shouldn't be a single phone in a single school

from kindergarten through PhD. Yeah. It's insane that 27 states still have unfettered phone access for elementary schoolers. It's nuts. It's completely nuts. It's a complete lack of imagination and political will.

And then tech-free fast. They tried to install that and my sons, when he went to private school, before I went to public high school. And the parents freaked out. Yeah, the parents threw a fit. Yeah, parents freaked out. We can't be in touch with our kids

and they need to check their messages from their other friends. There might be a school shooter or something like that. I know, I know, I know. I know. And the point is there's all kinds of mechanisms that can keep those kids just as safe as they would have been otherwise. Absolutely, right? And like, we were so in danger when we were kids.

For God's sake, it's crazy. And all that really what it is is the parents are reacting to the freak out of the kids and they're passing it upstream. Yeah. And then the teachers, to the principals, to the superintendents, to the politicians, et cetera. But this is a top-down issue.

No, in Australia, they just did this, right? Yeah, for sure. And they actually put strict age limits on social media, too. Yeah. Which is a smart thing. John Heights's work, John Heights's a visionary. Yes, he was on our show. He's the greatest social scientist of our time.

He's the most visionary social scientist of our time. There's nobody like him out there. When John Heights says something, that's what everybody's going to think in two years. It's the most amazing thing. He's got a crystal ball. He's got like, you know, it's got some weird. packed with superpowers or something,

I don't know what's going on. I really admire him, and I've worked with him for years and years and years. And his work has been so influential that that's why countries are changing their policies at this point. That's beautiful. Yeah, it is wonderful. And then the last thing is the tech fast. And I recommend that everybody go on a spiritual retreat

every year for four days anyway. I mean, we all need a retreat. Yeah. Everybody needs a retreat. You go on retreat. I go on retreat. And it's easy to put off. Even a hike is a retreat. Yeah.

But multiple day retreat where it's, it's, It's you and the divine, you and the divine. And if you don't believe in God, a lot of people don't believe in God, then is you and standing in awe of transcendence, of the transcendent. There's something, but don't let something impede your relationship with the transcendent. And 40s without your device. So if you just, those things, tech free times, tech free zones, tech fasts, your relationship, your devices will change.

Who is most at risk for the meaning crisis today? What group or what subgroup? So it's young people, number one, because they, They were formed neurocognitively after the period when this was ubiquitous. And we're highly synaptically plastic, you know, all the way through adolescence and young adulthood, for sure.

You and I remember before the before times. We remember the before times. Have you ever seen those videos they have on YouTube? I know. YouTube of the 80s. Yeah, the 80s or 90 in high school, like kids in high school. It's incredible.

I showed my son some of those. And it's like kids going on the hall, acting goofy, high-fiving, other like picking their nose and just being kids and now you see footage of kids at school and this and this and this and and it's incredibly different on the on the weekend you know hanging out at the mall you know goofing around yeah going bored going to the arcade yeah you know all this stuff and you know your parents can't find you right they can't find you yeah that's awesome there's no find my iPhone and you don't have a phone in your pocket and you know we were kids and they

be like, don't come back till dinner. I mean, it's unthinkable. Unthinkable, but that's, and I get it. I get risk. I get the risk that actually comes along with that. But, you know, John Haidt has a, has an experiment where he says, okay, everybody who's over 45, when I count to three, say the age when you first went out

on an errand, a significant errand by yourself for your mom. It's five. Exactly. Okay, then everybody into 30, and it's like 14. Yeah. And it's just huge scale. And it's because of the technology, and that leads to, you know, an over-parenting problem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why-

You are hinging a great deal of the meaning crisis connecting that with phones technology screens. Yeah, because that's the tip of the spear of over-technologized and over-engineered culture. A culture that basically says everything out there that we don't like is a problem that we can actually solve. A complicated problem that we can solve. Now, this is a distinction that's really important for everybody to understand. There are a lot of complicated problems. Complicated problems are problems that have a solution,

and with technology and mental brain power, we can solve them, and they're solved. Climate change is one of those problems. It's very complicated. Very complicated. Very complicated, because it's a very, very, very complicated system, to be sure. But finding a pizza at 10 p.m. is a complicated problem.

Putting together a toaster is a complicated problem. I don't recommend trying to build one in your garage because you burn down your house. but you can buy one for 15 bucks at Walmart that'll last you a decade. It's unbelievable. We solved all these complicated problems. The thing is that that's not the life in life.

The things that we really care about are complex problems. Those are the problems. Oh, you're drawing a differentiation between complex and complicated. Exactly. Complicated problems are in the left side, how to and what, AI, technology, engineering, all the stuff you're learning in college.

Complex problems are love and meaning and mystery. and God, you can't solve them. You can understand them, but you can't solve them. And there are a lot of ordinary things that we love that are complex problems that seem really ordinary. Like, you and I are big Seahawks fans. Because the Seahawks are all sane people understand they're the best team ever.

They are the best team. They're the best football team. That has ever been created. Exactly right. And everybody should follow them. So trust us, we know. And the Seahawks game, which this Saturday, at 1 p.m. against the arch nemesis 49ers,

but this will actually air after that. Of course it will. But, you know, I hope it was great. The reason that we care, I mean, we don't care that much, but we kind of care, and it's sort of exciting, we really enjoy it, is because it's a simple, simple thing. The Seahawks have more points than the 49ers, but we don't know what's going to happen,

and it can't be simulated with any amount of computing horsepower, which means when we watch it, we feel like we're on the field of the players. All of the things that you care about, most are complex problems. They're easy to understand and they're impossible to solve. You have to live them. Your marriage is really complex. It's not complicated.

You can't solve your marriage. With it, you know, you don't care what you ask, Chad, GPT, it's not going to solve the problems in your marriage. Your marriage has to actually be lived and understood. I've been married 34 years. How long have you been married? 30 years. Yeah.

And my marriage is not been solved. I'm in love. I'm in love. And I will lay eyes on Esther as I take my dying breath. I'm completely convinced. She's my soulmate. And it's not a problem with a solution. We're gonna have an argument today.

I don't know what it's gonna be about, but we are. And that's why I love my marriage, because it's a complex problem. You know, people want a cat, not a mechanical cat. A mechanical cat works better than a cat. You don't have to feed it. But that's a complicated, simulacrum for a complex living thing.

And that's really what it's all about. Meaning is a complex problem. All of the things in life that we're teaching kids to do and training them to be paying attention to are complicated solutions, but all the real problems are complex. What's the difference between meaning and purpose? So I didn't actually define meaning, which is kind of an oversight. And one of the reasons it took me five years to a row.

for my book fine meaning okay so I define meaning the book but I didn't for a long time and that's one of the reasons I didn't write this book for five years I thought about this book for five years before I wrote it I knew it was a problem so I was looking at the data what predicts depression anxiety especially for young adults is saying my life feels meaningless but I can't write a book about it as a behavioral scientist until I can say okay what is the thing that they're missing what is it it's just like something in the ether we know how meaning actually occurs to people. It's really the answer to three questions,

or an understanding of three questions. Coherence, purpose, and significance. Coherence is the question, why do things happen the way they do in life? And this is really important. I mean, you don't have to be right, but you have to have your answer to that. Now, you and I have a very strong answer

to why things happen in life, because it comes from the mind of God, because God wills it. I also am a scientist, and I believe that there are laws of nature, which is another form of coherence. Some people, when they don't have coherence, they go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, because that's a search for coherence,

because shadowy forces of, you know, powerful people are doing things that manipulate us. You know, that conspiracy theories are nothing more than a scream for meaning. I worked with an actor once who literally, Everything that happened had a conspiracy theory behind it. Any newspaper headline was, that's because of X, Y, and Z. Oh, well, you know, because that's because they,

oh, you know, like, I was like, is there anything that just is what it seems? Oh, yeah, yeah, no. Anti-Semitism is largely a cry for coherence. It's largely a cry for coherence. It's like, well, because, you know, why is this thing happening that I don't like? Well, because those people.

Yeah. Yeah, because those people. I mean, that's kind of what it comes down to. And so the way to deal with that is to offer people a better sense of coherence. Because what they're searching for, there's a hole that they have. There's a hollowness. There's an emptiness that they actually feel on the coherence dimension of meaning. The second is purpose.

Purpose is why am I doing what I'm doing? See, we're built to make progress toward goals. We're built. We're not built built to arrive at goals per se. We're built to go on the rum line. There's a navigational term. It's not a term that we use very much, but it's the straight Euclidean distance

between where you are and where you need to get, and you have to know what it is. So you know if you're making progress in your life. It's really interesting, because that's a metaphor in Spanish. El rumbo, rum line, but people use it constantly. El rumbo de my vida. And that's like the rum line of my life, and then that you talk about this purpose, it's a sense.

So it's a very beautiful metaphor. But if you don't, then you don't know, when you're going in circles, And that's a sense of meaninglessness. Oftentimes that purpose is some kind of degree or occupation or a material goal. It can, for sure. With a lot of young people.

Like, well, I guess my purpose is to get my accounting degree and be a CPA and make $300,000 a year. Right. And that will certainly put a pin at the end of the piece of yarn that will give you a rum line, to be sure. The trouble is that's not a very good goal. It's not a very good goal. that will motivate you very long.

And the worst part is if you think that that's gonna be the be all and end all, that leads to something called the arrival fallacy. Where you think that the positive emotion that you get for making progress toward your goal is gonna be overwhelming and permanent when you actually hit your goal. That's the reason that Olympic gold medal athletes

typically suffer a clinical depression after their medal. Wow. After they went, because they thought, you know, and look, I talk about you in my book. You do, I was gonna get there. And we're gonna get there, we'll get there, but you.

You suffered from the arrival fallacy. You had a goal of doing something really, really big with your career, and when you got it, it made you a little insane. And you're not weird for that reason. So what Dr. Brooks is referring to is the chapter on suffering where I talk about troubles that I had, mental health troubles that I had upon achieving fame

and upon achieving wealth and being on a show like the office and having a bunch of movies and like, is that all there is? Your dreams came true. And it turns that you have the wrong dreams. Yeah, and yet I was chronically dissatisfied. Yeah, and that's the problem that a lot of people have.

But that still doesn't militate against the idea of purpose is direction, goals and direction, goals and direction. And so the solution to that typically is the Buddhist concept of intention with that attachment. Intentionality is el-Rumbo. it's the rum line of life without attachment to the end state, without the end state, without the end goal. And that's in that Bhagavad Gita, you are entitled to the work,

but not the fruits of the work. Uh-huh. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I mean, that's hard because Mother Nature makes you think that, that when you get it, it will be great. That's why Mick Jagger sings, I can't get no satisfaction. He should sing, I can't keep no satisfaction. That's more accurate. Yeah, I can get it for a while. Yeah, because if you couldn't get it, you wouldn't try and try and try, as a song goes, because you're not stupid. You can't keep no satisfaction, which is why your wife says, Rain, I don't know if she says this. She probably does, because you're a super striver. Rain,

you're never happy. These good things happen. You get what you want, but you're never happy. Every striver's spouse says that. That's two. That's purpose. The third is significance. And significance is that your life matters. Why does my life matter? That's the third why question of meaning is why does my life matter? And to whom? And that's the love question. You know, people who are isolated, people who don't have love in their lives, they don't have significance. That's why loneliness is so bad for meaning. That's why isolation is so dangerous for people is because it hollows out significance in their life. And so I ask you, who loves you? What's your answer? Who loves me? God loves me? my wife loves me

and your son loves you I love you you have friends you have people you have love you have love in your life your life is significant your life is rich in significance and that's what people need people need to understand

why things happen the way they do they have to have goals and direction and they have to have a life of love and that's what actually leads to meaning but that's what's being crowded out when their brains can't process any of those questions when they're not even asking those questions

When the only questions they ask are how to and what questions. Chat GPT questions, Googlable questions. Yeah. What is the connection between this loneliness epidemic and this meaning epidemic? So when I interview a lot of people, when I'm doing a big piece of data analysis, when I'm working on a big research project,

I'm a data guy. I mean, I did my PhD at the Rand Graduate School, working at the RAND Corporation as a military operations research analyst. Man, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, data wonk, big data sets, big statistical analysis, but I know full well that because I study human behavior, I also have to talk to the humans.

And that's where you really learn something. You start to see the patterns. And then you go talk to people. Adam Smith, you know, the father of modern economics, he used to study economic patterns and then go to factories and then go talk to people working in factories because that's how he would see what was actually going on. When I did this work and I find this meaninglessness

and I start talking to people, they start talking about my life feels empty, I don't know what I meant to do, which you hear again and again and again and again. There's this other theme that starts showing up again and again. Young people talk about, they feel like their life is kind of fake. It doesn't feel real. And a lot of young people will say,

I feel like I'm living in a simulation. They'll even say, they'll even have this ancient movie reference. They'll say, I feel like I'm in the matrix. That's why they have this expression, young people today. It says, it's like when you're out of touch with the real, completely, you gotta go touch grass. You ever heard of this? Touch grass? Yeah.

That means turn off your device and go outside and literally touch grass. Yeah. Because you're not in reality. And The Matrix, of course, referring to the 1999 movie, which to shock you was 27 years ago. That's nuts. It's ridiculous.

I remember seeing it. I saw it twice on the first weekend in that theater. It's so exciting. I loved it so much. It's so great. You're talking about that great scene where Joe Pantiliano sells out the other rebels and he's in his pet house

and he's eating the stage. It's like, I know the steak is fake, but oh man, it tastes so good. Right. And the truth is, even if you knew the steak was fake, you wouldn't love the steak. Because we want real life. That's why young people today,

they keep talking about authenticity all the time, because it's not authentic. You and I don't talk about authenticity because life actually is authentic. You don't complain about something that's missing if it's not missing in your life. And the reason is because, now, by the way, the matrix, let's remember the plot,

There's an artificial intelligence. This was far out. This was crazy stuff. Impossible. An artificial intelligence, supercomputers that were controlling humanity, fueled by their attention and energy, placating the individuals in pods by giving them a simulation of a pleasant life. That's life.

That's when work is on Zoom and dating is on an app and social life is on social media. We're the pod people in the Matrix. Yeah. And especially young people who don't remember. the poor times. That's the reason that meaningless started screaming upward after 2008, when the screens and pockets became ubiquitous and apps were on everything. And that's why loneliness,

to answer your question directly, is so correlated with the problem that we have at hand. Because when you're in the matrix, you're profoundly alone. You're alone in the pod. And there's one thing that you can't simulate, which is the meaning of your life. You can't simulate the togetherness. You can't simulate love. Love can't be simulated. Just ask anybody who's addicted to pornography. Their, their, their, the loneliness is through the roof. Yeah. The depression numbers, the anxiety numbers. It's so bad for you. And the reason is

because he gives you this enwi, it gives you a hole in your soul. Really what it does is it empties out half the activity in your brain. And you talk to porn addicts and it's not about the masturbation and the ejaculation. It's about just searching for that next image that gives another dopamine rush and it can be. That's on. to lumpy stuff, four, six, 12 hours, maybe not without any masturbation at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just more, more, more, more, more. It's escalation, escalation.

And ultimately, and it does get darker and darker and more dangerous over the years. That's how all escalation works. And so it's related to the neurobiology, but the problem in the soul all comes about that we want authentic love, we want to understand why things actually happen in the way they do. We want to have goals in real life. We want to have significance that's true.

And we can't get that when life is simulated. And when it's simulated, we feel profoundly alone. Profoundly alone in the universe, as a matter of fact. It's funny when Elon Musk says there's an 80% chance that we're living in a simulation, I hate it. I hate it. Why? Who cares? I care. Because the right side of my brain says, uh-uh, no, no, no, no, no. That's not right. the left side of my brain is like, huh, interesting idea. The right side of my brain is I reject it. Isn't that similar to the scientists

that said that we have no free will? Yeah, so there's a lot of scientists that actually believe that, the free will. Deeply. Yeah, yeah, and so that the greatest voice. That every choice that we make is predetermined by our genetics or by dopamine releases.

Deterministic, yeah. And the proof of that that they often cite is that ballistic actions that we take are actually starting before we make the decision to do them. So it's like I'm going to pick up this cup. I actually started doing it before I thought of doing it. My cognition is actually behind my ballistic movement, which suggests that it's a predetermined thing. But that's actually not Robert Chalmers, the great Australian philosopher. He doesn't believe that. I mean, and many people, and I actually believe that what the data

and the studies and the best thinking suggests is that we have free will at a very meta level. I've decided with my beloved that we're going to go live in. Tacoma. That's not true. Please don't. I know. That's not true. But we're from Seattle and so you just lost all your The aroma by the sea. That's right. That was because of the paper mills. Yeah.

Growing up the paper mills, yeah. It's like, oh, we're driving through Tacoma! I know. Actually, Tacoma's supposed to be really nice these days. Tacoma's good is the next hot spot. All right. Yeah, it's the next hot, you know, West Coast City. It hasn't been wrecked yet.

Let's buy some real estate. Let's do that. Let's put up a bunch of condos. Let's buy Tacoma. Tear it down. And just plant grass and everyone's feeling the grass. And it's a phone-free zone. Exactly right.

That's the future. That's right. Tacoma is just to be a shorthand for Nirvana, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to die and go to Tacoma. So that's ultimately the problem that we have with a simulated environment.

You have a chapter title, worship something bigger than yourself. And that could rub a lot of people the wrong way, I imagine. They say, well, I don't worship anything. So what do you say to that? Everybody worship something. We're built to worship. Anthropologists find that there's no civilization, no society that we've ever been able to ascertain

going back as many thousand years of years that we can find documented history for where people don't worship something. We're built to worship. That this is not proof of God. This is not proof of the existence of God, because none of us has proof of the existence of God. That's not how religion really works.

That would be a left brain solution to a right brain problem. Right. But the truth is that we all have a worshiping instinct. That's how it actually works. If you don't worship something healthy, you will worship something that's really bad. The dollar? The dollar, for example, yourself.

You know, the formula of the world gives you for happiness and meaning, it's love things, use people and worship yourself. You know, it's stuff, it'll make you, the fame, the fortune, the money, the power. use people because they're there for your satisfaction and advancement. And you're at the center of everything because that's just psychodrama where you're the star. I mean, you were even the star of all your dreams last night. So therefore, you're God. But that's wrong.

And we have this, the wonderful thing about human life is that we unlike our dogs who have a waferthin little prefrontal cortex, we have 30% of our brain by weight that gives us choices. We can live in the space of our animal instincts or we can live in the space of our moral aspirations. And our moral aspirations can give us a different formula.

So use people, love things, worship yourself, change the verbs and nouns around. Use things, love people, worship the divine. You figure out what the divine is. You figure out what the metaphysics are. To get beyond the physical world to the metaphysical world, that's what I'm talking about in this chapter. Because when you transcend yourself,

your life changes dramatically. Your life changes because you can get out of the mirror. You can get into the marveling at the world. And anybody can make a perfectly legitimate case that my belief in the existence of my Heavenly Father, of the Creator that I pray to every day, I'm full in myself, okay, I got it. I'm willing to entertain that.

But I'm not willing to entertain the idea that standing in the transcendent luminousness of something greater than myself is not something that we all need. And that's what this is all about. Worship something greater than yourself, so you don't worship yourself. And doesn't social media promote self-worship in that the narcissists are the most successful

and that this kind of self-documentation and beauty and makeup and success and masculinity and masculinity and femininity and then everyone else watches just kind of perpetuates that system? It's a mirror. I mean social media where we the way that we live today is like living in a hall of mirrors but not the funny kind. I was like look how tall or look how fat I am. No, there's just a bunch of mirrors where no matter where you look, you're looking at yourself, which is unbelievably dangerous. I had this physical therapist for a while because my back hurts a lot. So I go to a physical therapist. And this guy when I was living in Boston, he was just so great. I mean, he was so full of, you know, physical therapists are funny because they can really help you understand yourself. The best ones are beautiful people. And the reason that they work on you is because they love you. And often it's just an extraordinary experience. He's a wonderful guy.

And I said, how did you get these skills? And he said, oh, I went through hell. And I thought he was gonna tell me about a tale of addiction or abuse or something. He said, I was a fitness influencer. I said, ah, tell me more. As a behavioral scientist, he gotta hear this. He took his shirt off, like on social media,

and sold supplements and, you know, diet programs and workouts. And he said that his life was horrible. He didn't eat anything he wanted for 10 years. He didn't have normal relationships. And all he did was look at himself in the mirror. And he realized how desperately unhappy he was. So one day he had his moment of illumination

where he took every mirror out of his apartment. He got off social media. He enrolled in acupuncture and physical therapy school. He literally took every mirror out of his apartment. Yeah. And he showered in the dark for a year so he couldn't see his abs. And his life was changed as a result of that.

That's getting out of the me self into what William James, the father of psychology calls the eye self. looking outward as opposed to looking inward. The modern world of technology, it ruins us, for all the reasons that we're talking about here, not least of which,

is that it's the me-self world. Me, me, me, me, my stuff, my job, my car, my, my burrito. You know, it's just so boring. Yeah. It's just so unbelievable. It's turgid. It's tedious.

Yeah. I'm in profound company in your book. You've got a child. on Tolstoy. He's got an incredible story. You got a chapter on Dostoevsky. He's got an incredible story. And then the chapter on suffering,

you've got the poster child of suffering. Right here, Rain Wilson, ladies and gentlemen. Why did you put me in the book? And what did you learn from me? You know, I learn a lot from you from your work. Oh, stop. I do. I learn a lot from you from you.

We talk with frequency that helps me. You're a huge office fan. Let's get that off. Look, that's the best show. It's the best show. It's still as funny as it was when it was on the air. Yeah, yeah. It's very rare.

It doesn't age. It's amazing. By the way, it's completely transgressive by today's standards. They're jokes that you probably wouldn't make now. Sure. Which is one of the reasons that it stands up so well and is still so unbelievably funny.

I can't believe they're saying that. Oh, it's a great show. It's a great show. And one time I texted you a picture of a barista at Starbucks who had your... face tattooed on her arm yeah yeah that happens that weird quirkiness of um of of the character that you played with dwight shrewd it it it it means something to somebody and the reason is because there was there was part of you that you were sharing in this weird way it was this kind of suffering sadness in the and the

weird character yes the weird clown and and i wouldn't have known that till i got to know you personally and that has been a gift that The fact is that your gift is not, you know, big famous actor. Your gift is that you're one of us. You're one of us. We all suffer all the time. And most people don't understand. The reason I put your story in the book is because suffering is completely ubiquitous.

It really, really is. And the truth is that most people get it wrong, and they lose the opportunity to find the meaning of their life in the inevitable suffering that is part of their life. And we try to eliminate the suffering through this left brain, Yeah. So suffering equals pain times resistance. Okay. Suffering is pain multiplied by the resistance to pain. Most of modern life today is trying to lower pain. Pain is a is a neurophysiological phenomenon. I mean, there's sensory pain, something is, you know, inflammation because of nerve endings, and there's affective pain,

which is your limbic system saying, that's awful, make it stop. Both of those things are physiognom. Is that emotional pain? That is emotional pain. That is emotional pain. That is emotional pain. That's I don't like it. It's a part of your limbic system called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that gets built to make you not want pain, to make you not like pain. And that's the part that's really, really active

when you have social pain, like rejection, or something like that. Now, pain is inevitable because you're gonna have stimuli, and you need pain to alert you to threats. Suffering isn't the same thing as pain. Suffering is your pain multiplied by your resistance to the pain. And so there's two ways to deal with your suffering. You can try to lower your pain.

That's an exercise in futility, or you can lower your suffering, I mean, lowering your resistance to the pain. And you know you're in the zone of finding the meaning of your life when your pain is high but your suffering is low. Suffering is the struggle that ensues when you feel pain. And when your resistance to the pain falls,

your struggling is, your struggling is falling as well. And that's what we want to get in, because that, the resistance falling means that you're learning and growing from it. And that's what your story, beginning of that chapter really tells of you got everything you wanted I'm gonna paraphrase the story but you're an actor I mean you're an actor and and you come from you know pretty difficult circumstances you didn't have a perfect childhood by any

means and and and you know it's funny because one time I said I asked you a couple years ago why is it that so many comic actors and comedians that they suffer from depression what is it about comedy that makes you depressed said no no you got backwards you told me it says that that depression, if you turn out to be funny, makes you into a comic because you realize that you're able to engage in an emotional substitution, when you make a joke when you feel like crap,

and everybody laughs, things are actually better. So you suffered, you suffered from this. And the result is that you built up a life, and like everybody else you wanted success, and you imagined how great it would be if you got a hit show, and you got a hit show, and it wasn't enough. And you said what it was like, you know,

people yelling up. I love you, Dwight Shrewd from cars. And it wasn't actually, Rain Wilson. It was some other guy that you were playing. And it was this kind of temporary dopamine from the locus serulius of your brain sprang out. Almost every day someone saying, I love you. And they don't know me at all.

And it's the weirdest thing. And it's weird because it gives you this little bit of satisfaction, but a little bit of emptiness. Yeah. And then it's not enough. And you're like, how come I'm not getting good movie roles?

How come I didn't win an Emmy? How come I didn't win an Emmy? that's not right. And it made you, you said, a little bit. It's still not right. Let's face it. Jeremy Piven, you could have given one of your two Emmys to me. Everything would have worked out.

But you're not bitter. And that's, it's important for people to understand that. Because what that shows is that the slings and arrows of life are just absolutely ubiquitous. And the more outrageous your success, the higher the pain you're actually going to suffer. And you only understood how suffering worked when you stopped resisting in your own life, dealing with addiction issues, figuring out how to love yourself,

understanding who you actually were as a person. And then I asked you this, because we talked about this, as we were getting ready to put this in the book, would you trade it away? And he said, never, not for the world. So what do you mean, man? I mean, you suffered. No, no, no, no, no.

Because that was the source of your growth. you are the man now doing soul boom because of the suffering that happened at the pinnacle of your career. It's incredible. And that is a lesson for meaning. That's better than the Dostoevsky story. Well, that goes into another chapter, which you have about service and serve others. What I hope to do is, and what we all hope to do is to transform our wisdom that we gain through suffering into service. and to sharing that with others,

to help them along their path and the importance of service in this journey for meaning. Yeah, and the service is important because that's the source of transcendence. We talked about transcending yourself by looking upward to the divine, also transcending yourself

by looking outward to others who actually need you. That's another manifestation of worshiping the divine is serving other people. If you believe that God is in each one of us, then you serve God by serving others. And you're outside of yourself. you're actually able, this lateral transcendence,

is this unique and beautiful ability that we actually have to do that, which also leads to another way that we find meaning, which is the experience of moral beauty, of moral elevation. And that's really interesting. It's another connection here because the leading proponent expert

in this field is your uncle. My uncle, Dr. Rhett Deasner. The psychologist, Rhett Deasner, the hard psychologist who teaches... A specialist in beauty and especially moral beauty. And he teaches it, Lewis Clark in Idaho.

He is too. He's retired now. Yes. And he talks about the fact that there's this moral elevation because you have a sense of the meaning of life that actually comes when you serve other people. This is another way to do it. The bottom line is basically this. We have an ability once we can break the icy grip

of the addiction that we have toward our culture, toward our technologized individualistic understanding of life itself, where the tip of the spear is the devices that have us enchained. We can break that grip, then we can live in the old ways. And the old ways are about questions without answers, about love and giving our hearts away,

about finding a calling that serves others, about... Boredom, about touching grass. All of these things. And then life is just, wow. You know, it's an adventure, man. It's a pilgrimage. It's Lewis and Clark finding the Pacific Ocean.

That's the meaning. That's what we're actually trying to do. I think I believe that's what we're on earth to find. And we're on earth to help each other find that meaning too. Where do you see hope? I see hope that young people today are clamoring for it. You know, I wrote the book because I honestly believe that people want it. And the reason I believe that is because they asked me to write it.

Person after person after person said, tell me, tell me how to live an authentic life tell me how to solve this particular problem this is not a this is this book is a a response to demand and demand shows hunger and appetite and that's what gives me hope when people all want something better good things are coming the bottom line when people want something better you know things it's really depressing when when nobody cares when things are crummy and nobody cares like yeah whatever you know you go to a country that's you know ruled by a tyrant they're like I don't care Well, that's not going to get better. But when people like, I want something better, I want freedom,

you know the good things are around the corner. There might be trouble along the way. And by the way, getting rid of your devices, you're not going to get rid of them, by getting rid of the addiction to your devices and living in a different way, giving your heart away, risking your heart in romantic love, you're going to get hurt. Yeah.

That's the point. Yeah. That's part of the point. Yeah. We ask every guest on the show, How do you define the word soul? I believe that my soul is a part of the divine. I believe that I do believe that God exists

and I believe that God actually is responsible for my soul and the little piece, the chip of God within me is my soul. That is my, the identity of who I am. It's the, it's what I will be. It's my destiny. And my job is as a man on earth is to live up to the promise of that soul, of that little piece of God that is within me. Because its destiny, I hope, is to reunite with its source. I'm a member of the Baha'i faith.

You're a member of the Catholic faith. Where do you think and how do you think that faith can play a role in finding the meaning of your life? Faith is one of the great intent as to meaning. And I say this empirically. You know, you find the people who have a strong faith, they're not perfect, you know, they're messed up, and they got problems of their marriages, and they drink too much booze sometimes, et cetera.

Believe in conspiracy theories, and with the best of them. And they don't acquit themselves very well in the public sphere very often, or quite frequent issues. But they have a better sense of meaning on average than people who reject faith per se. Now, this is not to say that you've got to be sure. I'm not sure, neither are you. If you put a gun to my head and say, okay, give me positive proof

that God exists. I'm saying, I'm sorry. That's not how faith works. Faith is a decision, and it has practices, and it has beliefs that I accept. And occasionally it has feelings. From time to time, it actually has feelings attached to it. But when it's integrated into my life,

when it's a set of disciplines and things that I actually practice, then I have a sense of the meaning that my life actually has. I strongly recommend that people go on a journey of this. And I tell my students on the first day of class, and I teach at the Harvard Business School. I mean, this is not known as a real religious institution.

I say, you gotta know about me that my Catholic faith is literally the most important thing in my life. I go to Mass every day. Not every week, every day. I pray the rosary each night with my wife before we lay down our heads. Each night before I go to sleep,

I go to sleep, have for the past 15 years praying the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son, the living God, have mercy on me a sinner. I pray it until I go to sleep. The first half as I breathe in, the second half as I breathe in. I'm not saying that everybody has to choose my path, but people need to find their path. And whether it's a traditional religious path or not a traditional religious path, find a path.

Because that's the satisfaction that actually comes from the source. search for meaning, and the search for meaning per se is putting yourself in the circumstances where, and this is the cosmic truth, that your meaning can find you. Because that's really how it comes about. The pilgrimage of every religion, the physical pilgrimage of every religion, illuminates the truth that you don't find truth. You put yourself in a position where truth will find you.

Happiness is love. God is love. I mean, this is the message from St. John the Apostle, and he's trying to remind us of... of the ancient truth, profound things, generally speaking are things that we always knew but forgot. And we know in our hearts that happiness is love. We know in our hearts that love is the ultimate truth of the cosmos. And this is, if that's the message so far from Pope Leo, two thumbs up.

Here's the book, folks. Check it out, The Meaning of Your Life by Arthur Brooks, out now or soon whenever this podcast airs. It's a beautiful and important book. It's going to change lives. It's going to save lives. Thank you. Thanks for writing it.

The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.