Soul Boom - Gen Z Unpacks Toxic Internet Culture

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Philosophical and optimistic creators of We Love You, Andy Min and Thomas Sullivan, join us for a deep conversation about friendship, existential anxiety, loneliness, nature, spirituality, and what it means to stay hopeful online. We unpack Gen Z culture, the pressure of "aura," the mental health impact of social media, and why human connection may be the antidote to modern isolation. We also get into cringe culture and the battle between Gen Alpha, Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and...Boomers. SPONSORS! 👇 Proton 👉 (protect your privacy for FREE!) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://proton.me/soulboom⁠ Quince 👉 Grow Therapy 👉 Tiny Souls 👉 (promo: SOULBOOM20 for 20% OFF!) ⁠https://tinysoulsmedia.com⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I couldn't believe it in what you guys were doing. I was like, what the hell? This is so beautiful, what you guys make and what you do. We started off, we love you, with like, how do we want to communicate this idea of hope and kindness? And the way to be a good human is to be kind and to be understanding and to hopefully have hope. The friendship bond at the center of the optimism is so beautiful to see. So often that anxiety people have is, well, I need to be this perfect, cool person, especially young people. Because the internet is so critical of kids.

It's like you need to have aura. You need to be nonchalant. You know, don't be yapping. You know, like you need to have this kind of cool laid back quality. What's yapping? Is that a thing? Yapping is just going on about something for. Like blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like we're always yapping. Like we're people coming. These guys are like. These bros are yapping. But you guys are like 12. I turned 60. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Fuck you. 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. A quick shout out to our sponsors. Go to proton.m-me slash Soul Boom to take control of your private and digital life.

Quince. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Soul Boom for free shipping and 365-day return. Returns, grow therapy. Visit growthreaty.com slash soul boom to get started. Enjoy the show. We love you. We love you. We love you. Our, Rain Wilson. Hey, man. Yeah. Hey, man. Hey, man. What a thrill to have you on Soul Boom. We've been talking about this for a long time. We have. We certainly have. We're really excited to be here. And I couldn't believe it when I stumbled across your Instagram what you guys were doing. I was like, what the hell? This is so beautiful. you guys make and what you do.

Thank you so much. We really like it too. It's a funny little thing we've found online where we just have these videos talking about life, talking about philosophy, trying to find a helpful way through. Just highlighting moments of our friendship. Yeah. It's incredible. I love that connection.

The friendship bond at the center of the optimism is just so, it's so beautiful to see. But you guys are like 12. You said that when we walked in. You look 12. First thing Rain said was, you're 12. And I'm like, just about, you know. But I just can't believe how young you guys look. I think we just do a good job with our moisturizer and our.

He's got a whole routine. Yeah, you have a good face routine? Yes. Okay, since you're so young, I'm starting writing my new book and I need to find a title. I'm going to read a bunch of titles. Pitch us. And I need the Gen Z take. Please.

Okay. Yeah. It's a book on the meaning of life. Okay. Great. And I can also have like a subtitle. Like your book is called We Love You, an optimist guide to floating on a rock in space. Is that right?

Yeah, close enough. Close enough. Tell me what it is exactly. An optimistic guide to life on a rock floating through space. I love that. Dear life. Mission, human. Yeah.

The School for Human Being School. Cool. The human mission. because comma magic soul purpose the meanings of life why all this magic the art of being a human being a human being earth school humanity school life shit yeah an idiot's guide to the meaning of life okay wow soul hacks good period life period your sole purpose, a human being's guide to being a human being.

That's bringing about. That's bringing it up. Yeah. You lit up. Excuse me. My first favorite was the human being school. Yeah. But I feel like you took the kind of offbeat quality and expanded it in that last one. My working title right now is

because magic, a human being's guide to being a human being. Okay. Because magic. Because magic is a little bit, I'll say it. Say it. It feels a little millennial. Is that bad, is that the bad thing?

Well, from the Gen Z, it's like, if you're pitching the Gen Z, I know you guys hate. We love millennials. We love everyone. Okay. We love you. Give me the straight skinny, though, on millennials. What's your take? No, I mean, if you're going for the leanest, meanest connection to Gen Z, sometimes there's a,

there's a barrier there. If you have this millennial quality to the title. Well, what is, but what is that? Because as a Gen X, like, I don't, you're, yeah, yeah, you all look the same to me. Yeah. The thing is, it's a very fine line. And also, as Gen Alpha is coming up, now we're the cringy ones. We are. Okay, what's cringy about the millennials? Oh, tell me, come on. Well, we, our generation, I feel like, not, it didn't invent cringe, but we, we were the ones who cringed at millennials, I feel like. Yeah. The thing is, is that the millennials thought they were doing a different thing by going, we're doing this fun, quirky thing. We're

having so much whimsy in our certain sayings. Yes. All this sort of like, oh, cheeseburger, cat, you know, all this random stuff. And that was fun, it was the first early stages of the internet. Ah, okay. And then I saw, because magic has a quirky whimsy to it that makes you think millennial and makes you guys go like,

give me a break. The thing is, it doesn't make me think that. I like it. Hey, I didn't say I didn't like it. You guys are being very diplomatic, and I appreciate that. You don't want to alienate kind of part of your audience. We just got here.

We're excited to be on Soul film. We're not going to start. All our millennial audiences hates us now. The thing is, you're very savvy because had you started denigrating millennials, that would our producer, Kartik would have like, thumbnail that and then like, we love you guys, hate millennials, click. It's like we got clicks on clicks there. But because magic, I think, what's the story about?

What's the book about? It really is the meanings of life. So I'm going to have like 50 short chapter. that are, each one is like a different facet of finding meaning, purpose, mission in your life. Some are quirky and personal. Some are more philosophical. Some are more like artistic and creative. But I really wanted just short chapters.

I wanted like five to eight pages that you can sit down and be like, and it kind of like explodes your mind in five or eight pages goes, boom. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. Wow. And then you go on to the next one and it might be. One might be about finding God and one might be about how tennis is a metaphor for life. You know what I mean? Which it is.

Which it is. I'm working on that chapter. So that's why because magic is kind of like there's no meaning of life. There's no one answer for that, right? And, you know, it's something that since Aristotle and Plato we've been trying to search for and we're not any closer. In fact, we're farther away. and at the end of the day, it's, it's magic. And that's what you guys have tapped into in your book, too.

Just like wonder and like sprinkly magic juicy juice that you sprinkled on, on, you know, your philosophy. So that's where I was thinking. Yeah. But if you think it's too like millennial cringe, then this is good. You wanted the Gen Z take. I want it. And, you know, we have, see, I think that's one of our- But you like a human being's guide to being a human.

human being. Yes. It's very specific and just to the point. Yeah. It's got some word play in there. Exactly. That's one of our weird superpowers we have because even though we're these optimistic, very positive thinking people, we have this like cynical, cynical brain in our heads that's just like, people say the most denigrating, the worst, most critical thing just so we, which can be a bad thing sometimes. We certainly have to keep our, that in control. But when you're trying to communicate with a broad audience and just trying to connect with people in this really clear way, sometimes it can be a really good tool to have that like what if this really sucked what can we shave off that what can we totally yeah like with our videos just crafting it down to the smallest and the most simple form

of thing you can understand from and learn from in my book soul boom i talk a lot about the importance of nature to building a spiritual practice like it's almost impossible to think about spirituality and to discount nature humanity has tried to do it for about a thousand years. But for a hundred thousand years, humanity's spiritual life was connected to the mystery, magic, wonder, and metaphorical implications of nature. The changing of the seasons, you know, that we know that in a fallow period of winter, that spring is around the corner. We know that a plant needs to be trimmed in order to truly bloom. Like there's all of these kind of beautiful spiritual metaphors in all of the world's faith traditions connecting us

to nature. And indigenous traditions found it impossible to separate something like God from nature. God isn't something you sit in a classroom and talk about philosophically, you know, or on an Alex O'Connor podcast. You experience it. What does nature mean to you? And how do you exactly find the divine in nature. What are the most transcendent experiences that you've had interacting with nature? I mean, it's like the biggest question of our lives. Here's your chance to go as deep and metaphysical as you possibly can. You know, we spend a lot of time thinking about the soul on this show and who we are,

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Quince.com slash Soul Boom. I think the divine is this beauty and this nature. When we're out in nature, we think that it's the best way to access whatever divinity we're talking about here. Because I think so often when we're in our manufactured human world, you're in buildings that are someone built this. You're in houses. Oh, this was built in 1983, whatever. It's like, everything makes sense. I write on a piece of paper.

I go to school, whatever. It all makes sense. It's all just people doing stuff, right? But then when you go out in nature and you're looking at a forest that's been there for 10,000, 100,000, a million years, you go, okay, this is just here. This is the base state of this plane of existence we're on, right? This is this planet, this ball floating through space. And we're just out here. And it allows you to access the actual.

reality of our situation more than your day-to-day life because you're confronted with this this bareness of existence. This, oh, this is a forest. What does that mean? This is what a bug looks like in its natural habitat, not when it's stuck in your classroom. This is what you feel like when you're not constantly rushed along by the ticking clock of our society. I think that's what we would call our connection to the pure universe.

Like we would call it our universal connection. like this is everything. This is what we are. This is what nature is. I love that. I love that. And you find so much spiritual peace in that and so much spiritual, spiritual joy. But yeah, I think specifically we struggle with the terms of spirituality and divinity

because what we find so hopeful and beautiful about humanity about the universe is that it just is. and sometimes a framework of, I don't know. Even calling it God, calling it divinity, kind of disconnects you from the simplicity of it. Yeah. From the simplicity of just we don't need to create, in our minds at least, we don't need to create like a heaven

because we have this existence. Like this heaven, not that whatever heaven might be out there, we don't know. But the spiritual world of our of the nature. The spiritual world that we can imagine in our heads is no different from whatever insane, unbelievable, absurd existence we're all experiencing right now. And that's, I think, what people kind of lose sight of when you think of nature or

of everything is just, oh, it's a scientific phenomenon. And we understand there's atoms and quarks and yada yada. And I'm going to go to my work and I'm probably going to get a burger afterwards. Like it's all just a normal, normal thing, right? It's just pretty simple. But what we really try to knock home in our videos is that there's nothing normal. Like nothing is just a normal thing that you can go about your day around. Like this table doesn't exist.

It's made of energy. We, our bodies aren't really, don't really exist. They're made of energy, which really is also matter, but also maybe that's just a field behaving in a strange way. Yeah. Well, you have that great video about the rock and it's in your book as well. Like, what is this? It's a rock, but what's it made of? Yeah.

Right. Silica, but yes, but it's also energy. And like, and it, and you do when you, when you keep digging deeper into stuff, I go to because comma magic because it is, what is it? What is this table? I mean, we see a table and I can kind of feel a table in my hand here, but it's just a, it's a random word for how these molecules have, have bonded and there's not really a difference between them and the air above them.

It's a tool of thought that we create to understand the world and give structure to our raw perception of reality. And I think that's a useful tool to operate. I'm driving a car. That's a road. That's a thing I call Jeff, my uncle. You know, like that's. But the reality of the situation is it's all energy waves and strange scientific phenomenon, which we've gotten to a certain point of understanding. But then you're kind of like you can always ask, which we have a section in our book about, you always ask, but why?

but why, but why, but what then? But what then? And I think one of the most important questions is like, why is there stuff? Because if we can trace everything back to some kind of event like the Big Bang, and maybe there have been multiple big bangs throughout the multiverse, why did it happen? Why is it necessary to have all of the stuff that becomes ever more complicated and beautiful and variegated instead of collapsing into entropy?

as it should because entropy is a natural condition of the of the physical world. Yeah, we have a section in our book called entropy, titled entropy, and it just runs you through the second law of thermodynamics, which is that essentially the long and short of entropy is that the universe ends at some point in a big, slightly warmer room. You know, it's a big empty space of warmth. But we're in these beautiful, complicated spiral patterns and cells and structures right now And yes, that's because we're not in an isolated system.

We take in energy from the outside world to build our bodies of biology, takes an energy to give structure. But right now in this moment, we're this beautifully ordered, structured concoction of nature that is having an experience. And that's so absurd and unbelievable that to us, that is a spiritual reality. That is a spiritual world. I'm glad you say that because for me, I don't see. it is a separation. I think mankind has separated it, especially in the last 2,000 years,

where spirituality is something that happens in a church or from a book or in a specific gathering, as opposed to communing with beauty. And part of the soul boom spiritual revolution is that the notorious GOD, as I call him, is not a man with a beard that's kind of separate from nature, but inclusive of nature and something much more akin to beauty itself than to any kind of persona with an agenda. And my uncle studies beauty, Dr. Rhett Deezner, and his focus is all kinds of beauty. There's aesthetic beauty, artistic beauty, and there's also moral beauty. And more and more, the social scientists, Dachner, Kelter, Arthur Brooks, Jonathan Haidt,

or talking about moral beauty as one of the most resonant forces in the human experience. Like, there is nothing that lights us up more. There is nothing that lights us up more than witnessing moral beauty. When someone is brave, someone's self-sacrifices, someone does something for someone else out of generosity, out of altruism, when you witness that, the inspiration you get is off the charts. And for me, God is beauty. So if you're at Yosemite and you're witnessing all of this tumult and chaos and beauty and mystery

and wow and wonder and awe, that is the divine. There's not a separation between that and some like some, some like demi-god that. that has an agenda and is judging people and putting down moral laws and what have you. So part of the human experience, I think the most vital part of the human experience we can undertake is a connection to beauty. That can be to art through a person that we find beautiful, through sexual and romantic beauty, through aesthetic beauty, and the beauty of science, because as you dig into any aspect of science and you start to pull tug on the thread of the sweater of science there's just

beauty underneath whether it's mathematics or physics or or chemistry or biology what what what have you and to me beauty is the portal to the divine top that tough hey i mean you're not going to find opponents in us i think yeah but yeah i think the way we think about it is that like you said, the greatest mystery, which is also the greatest comfort, I think, to us, is that there is something rather than nothing, right? It's, you know, maybe not comfortable, but it's fairly easy to imagine a universe where there is just nothingness. Sure. Or there isn't a universe and where there is a life where there isn't a life and it's just nothingness. That's an uncomfortable feeling to confront. That's a weird truth to kind of prod, prod with your mind. But

But the comfort you can find is, but there is something. There is something rather than nothing. You can picture that nothingness, but here you are somethinging over and over again every single day for a billion, billion, billion years. And that something is growing because even now, biologists are studying animal species that are evolving into something more. I think the human species is evolving into something greater. You know, sometimes I view my phone as the biggest enemy that I have, but as someone with

you know, ADHD, my reminders list and my calendar and my to do list and my notes app are that they give me a superpower. They allow me to function in the world. Like I don't know how I functioned before I had those tools because it's another part of my brain. My notes app, my reminders app and my I calendar over here is like it's like it's a pod outside of my brain that I kind of really rely on in order in order to function. Yeah. We continue to evolve. And in terms of entropy, you might see the human species as devolving right now into its kind of crassist, most warlike basest self. But I think there is the potentiality for humanity at large to evolve to something greater than we have been. And a lot of true cynics

are like humans will never change. We're always going to be warlike. We're always going to be aggressive, we're always going to be seeking to like one up someone else and that we're never going to evolve from that. And I think that that is the saddest state because I do believe that individually I can become kinder and more compassionate. And I seek to. I don't always achieve it, but I seek to. And I think collectively we can as well as bad as things are in the world. So your videos give people that hope and your podcast and your book. That's what we try and do at Soul Boom too is like, guys, we can believe have hope. We can get better.

I mean, that's like so much of what we do with you. It's just like, okay, the world is made of people. But yet even if the world is bad and scary, it's all just us here on a ball. And if you like change, like I've changed, my personal like beliefs and values have changed. and I've decided I want to be kinder and why I want to have a better world. All it takes is just everyone changing a little bit, which we all do one way or another

in the slightly right direction to make the world an infinitely better place. You know, one of my heroes is the economist and professor who writes a lot about boys growing into men. Scott Galloway, you know, if you're familiar with him. He has a Prof. Prof.G. podcast and stuff. He said something recently that just blew my mind.

He said most kids, most teenagers and kids in their 20s spend less time in nature than someone in the prison system. They'll spend less than an hour a day outside. And if you're in prison, you have more yard time than your average teenager spends outside. That really floored me. And one of the things I love about what you do is you always connect it to nature. And have you found that that is pulling some younger folks to kind of connect with nature on a deeper level? That's the hope. Like we make these videos out in nature because in our times of personal strife and personal crisis, like nature is this one thing that you can return to that's just there.

And it's just this place of peace. And there's no expectations and no pressure. It's just, I'm looking at a tree right now. And that's like, that's a good feeling, right? And our favorite conversations are when we bump into these people on these hikes and in these beautiful national parks. And they say, oh, you got me out to nature in the first place. You got me off your phone, their phone in the first place.

Yeah. Which is a little bit sad. Like they deleted Instagram. They don't see our videos anymore. People say, oh, I used to love your videos. But you guys made me delete Instagram. It's like, what a badge of honor, but also like our follower account. But that's okay.

We're happy to take that loss if it means people are getting outside. But it's happened to multiple times where people will say, yeah, I deleted Instagram. We used to love your videos. Because of you guys. Because of you guys. I mean, so much of like our mission is to try to get people to go out and connect with nature. So you are succeeding in that. You are hearing from fans that you have pulled me outside more to appreciate trees and

and moss and vistas. Yeah, I mean, because when you're online, when you're especially so many young people spend so much their time consuming, especially short form video content, which because of it's just passive consumption and random scroll, it's like a very scattered, packed, chaotic feeling. And it makes the world feel like it's in the state of crisis, even though, yes, the world is in a state of crisis.

But when you go outside for a moment, you can realize, yes, there is that those real problems are out there, but there is also this moment of calm. There is this moment of joy of, piece that is maybe instrumental in finding a way forward and finding a way to like be joyous as people. Like if yes, we need to solve problems and confront these difficult things that are happening in our world.

But we also need to have this this ground to land on, which is like what is a good moment does a human feel like? And that's, I think, what we kind of try to do sometimes? It's like, oh, what if we're just two bros talking in the woods for a second? Exactly. And then you can go back to the scroll. But for one second, let's like, let's think about, think about feelings. One of the key issues facing young people is this loneliness epidemic.

And for my generation, male friendships are really lacking. There's a lot of guys in their 40s, 50s, 60s that their friend is their wife. And then there's people they hang out with at work. But they rarely are like calling their buddy to say, hey, let's go. go see Operation Hail Mary, you know, or let's really good. Was really good. I heard it was good. I saw the previews with the little rock creature and I'm like, I haven't seen it yet.

So I'm like, oh, it's like a little Rocky. Oh, Rocky's a homey. I love Rocky. Yeah. Is that his name? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. I'll go see it. Fine. Although I do think he's old enough now. It's time to call him Ryan Goose. Right. Yeah. He's grown up.

He's not a hatchling anymore. Yeah. Exactly. But my generation and your generation, especially just speaking for the male of the species, are really deficient at making lasting friendships. Again, we're talking about filial love, filial love, a friendship, a deep warm friendship is something teens, folks in their 20s, and folks in their 60s. I turned 60. Congratulations. Congratulations. Fuck you.

really do struggle with. And what have you learned about friendship, about talking about friendship, and about trying to inspire young folks to deepen the bonds of filial friendship? I mean, I think what you really see is just how many people are lacking it or are like, so many of our comments are,

I wish I had a friend I could talk to about this stuff. I wish I had a friend that I could be out in nature with. I wish I had a friend that a million things. you can see that there's a lack there. And obviously, there's these places people are spending their time, which is just an inherently isolated activity. You're just spending time alone, looking at media on your phone. It's no mystery why there's this huge problem with isolation. But also, you find that in the same way, like, there's this beautiful desire for that close friendship. Just because people are a little bit more lonely and are a little bit more alone doesn't mean we don't

still have that basic human need to have that friend and to find that friend and that desire to go out and find. Like, there's people who have also commented, this inspired me to ask my friends on a hike. This inspired me to talk to my friend about this. What would you say to young people that are lacking in friendships? What advice would you give? Because I love the little things about the quirky ways to like make friends in public. But for real, what does that look like?

Deepening friendships and making friendships, the importance. and you have to risk something to make a friend. It means like not necessarily texting, but picking up the phone or something like that and saying, let's go do this or hey, do you want to hang out sometime? And that can sometimes feel like the most vulnerable thing in the world. Yeah, of course. Do you want to like have a grab a cheeseburger or a smoothie or a coffee at some point?

Yeah. So what would you say to these 20-somethings? You know, one of my favorite stories I always tell about making friends is my friend Trevor makes friends in the most specific way to him. He caters all of the way, his friends to so specifically his energy, right? Like he just is himself. He just is himself in the most him way. And he would basically go around in college and just hand people hard-boiled eggs.

Yes. And say, I've brought an egg for you. Would you like it? And many people would say no, right? But the people that said yes. Became his very close friends to have ever since. And that's a similar way he made. He could put his phone number on the egg.

Yes, exactly. You became friends with him in boarding school. At boarding school, when he offered to open this big can of cheese, he said, would you like to share this can of cheese with me? And I've never had a can of cheese in my life. And sip chamomile tea. I didn't know cheese came in cans. I'm trying to picture that.

It's a beautiful. It's about yay big. It's called Cougar gold cheese made in... Not a sponsor. We could get them. What's it called? Cougar gold cheese. Kruger gold?

Cougar gold? Cougar gold. Sounds like my wife. Cougar gold, if you're watching, we would love to open a giant can of cheese on the show. Go ahead. And then we bonded over this can of cheese and sipping chamomile tea and bonding about these existential crises. we were both having it our lives. And yeah, just truly being yourself is the most.

Because a lot of people listening right now would be like, well, that's Trevor. But I don't have the confidence to go up and ask them and give them a hard bowl of egg. But you're saying is like find your own unique way, risk something by finding your personal expression of friend building. Right. So often that anxiety people have is,

well, I need to be this perfect, cool person, especially young people. Because the internet is so critical of kids. It's like you need to be this, you need to have aura, you need to be nonchalant. You need to be, you know, don't be yapping. You know, like you need to have this kind of cool laid back quality of just kind of yapping. Is that a thing? Yeah, it's, yapping is just going on about something for like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, we're like, we're people coming. These guys are yapping. Guys are yapping. And it's just like people are very self-conscious because internet can be so critical and especially young people can be so critical that they want to put off this perfect poly. aura of like, here's what I am to people. Which is nonchalance. Which is nonchalance. It's so often kind of reserved and cool.

And I'm not going to. Here's the other thing is that people have got their phones out all the time. So they don't want to act too goofy in case they're captured and it's posted online. And they're being like goofy like this and like look at that idiot. And one of the things that I find really sad is I found these videos and they're very popular videos of like kids in the 90s in high school that have been filmed on like a big old panasonic old fashion video. camera where it's pre-social media and you just see the kids in the hallway just

like, hey, and just so, so unself-conscious. Yeah. And I remember showing them to my son when he was an early teen, these videos. It's like, oh my God, I wish I went to high school. Yeah. In a time like that because the kids in high school in the 90s were much more open-hearted and free and expressive. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the, I mean, the moral of the can of cheese, right?

It's the way you're going to meet the people who you truly like, not the people that you want that you think are, that will make you seem cool, people that you're going to become friends with the people who you would actually like is by being yourself and by being the unpolished, unadulterated version of who you are, right? Yeah. And that means putting yourself a little bit out there and being a little bit vulnerable and kind of taking off that mask of coolness and of nonchalance and of that and being a little bit goofy sometimes.

If you're a goofy person and want to go this, uh, like you have to. to do that if you're ever going to be able to do that and be with people that are ever going to be able to receive that. I always told my son, like, hang out with the nerds. Like, find the Dungeons and Dragons groups because you can be up. It's two in the morning and you've got your half elf magic user and you're in the dungeon and you're eating pop rocks and nerds and Domino's Pizza. And you can just be, you can just express who you are.

And one thing that I loved is when I found the drama groups and drama club, they, they accepted everyone. I mean, we had all of the, we had giant people and skinny people and pimply people and gay people and straight and good looking people and weird looking people and people on the spectrum. And everyone was just welcome. We're just going to, we're going to put on shows and act goofy. And I really was the first time in my life. I was like, wow, I feel at home. Yeah. And I mean, that's what we talked about on our recent friendship podcast. And what we so often talk about in our videos is that to reach that kind of connection and to find that place, you have to be a little bit vulnerable.

You have to cross, like, there's a gap between you and everyone else. Whether we like it or not, ourselves are different entities where there's a separate my mind and your mind. And to cross that gap, you need to reach out a hand. And sometimes it's going to get slapped away. And sometimes you're going to be embarrassed, which is very common. You're going to be embarrassed. And for our generation, you're going to be yapping.

Yes. You're going to be. Yeah. Maybe someone will take a snapshot of you and put it on their story of you being kind of weird. Yeah. It's going to be, but that's okay. Because that's not what matters. What matters is you expressing yourself in this beautiful life we're all living, right?

And finding the people you're supposed to be with or people you can be with if you just put yourself out there. And really, like, it's the best feeling in the world is when you put your hand across that gap and someone's there to meet you. And I mean, that's why it's so good to have a best friend for our whole lives. We've had each other to be like, yeah, we can talk about anything and we're not embarrassed because you're my friend. And I know you're meeting me there. And but that's not unique to our friendship. It's, that's just what humans do.

We're here to connect and to learn from each other and to help each other and to be kind and to love one another. It's the only thing that we like to do. It's what everything is for. It's beautifully said. Yeah. And the way that you connect that to nature too is so, is so beautiful. And did some of this exploration that you guys undertook come from some mental health

struggles you might have had yourselves as preteens, as teens going through COVID, anxiety, depression? Is there a kind of a counteractive undertaking that you're doing in the We Love You movement? You know that one task you've been putting off since forever? For a long time for me, it was start therapy, and not because I didn't want to, because it just sounded like a whole thing. You know, you've got to find someone, check insurance, figure out schedules, and suddenly you're stressed about fixing your stress. And that's why I'm so glad I found Grow Therapy. They make it insanely simple. You can find a therapist who actually fits you, not the other way around. They've got thousands of licensed therapists across the U.S. with over 90 specialties, and you can search by what

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That's why I was so happy to stumble upon Tiny Souls media. It's actually a collection of tools designed to help very small humans become decent, large humans. They've built an app with hundreds of activities, songs, and short mindfulness exercises that teach kids things like patience, honesty, empathy. It's grounded in real developmental psychology and it's practical. If your kid is hitting, melting down, refusing to share, Tiny Souls, gives you ways to actually work through that stuff in real time. They even have this great animated series called Zip and the Tiny Sprouts that reinforces those lessons.

So if you're a parent or educator and that resonates with you, visit tiny soulsmedia.com and use the code Soul Boom 20 to receive 20% off an annual subscription or products to give your child a strong, social, and emotional foundation from the start. Give your children a tiny soul boom. Rain out. I think we've definitely had struggles with anxiety and depression. And that's fueled a lot of this existential experience that we're trying to put out. Yeah. So many of our videos, people would assume, oh, these guys are so enlightened.

These guys are at peace. They're so happy. But we're making these videos basically to our past selves and to our future selves. Because oftentimes, like, you imagine wisdom being a straight line. I was wiser two weeks ago than it was today. You know, like, it happens in that way sometimes. But yeah, I mean, we certainly had these deep existential questionings of our lives that for me was a huge source of depression and anxiety. And I think we both went through that.

But at certain moments of my life, there was just whether that was sitting out in nature, there were these little turning points, or whether it was reading a poem by Mary Oliver, that was just that pushed me in slightly the right direction. And I found a way out of that dark pit. And if we can be that at all for people, like that's exactly what we're trying to do, is just to be that little voice, that little, speck of light in the dark cave that you know, okay, maybe I can go that way. I imagine myself or ourselves like angsty, 13 year olds saying nothing matters. Life is meaningless and everything sucks and feeling because that's the way you're supposed to feel. That's the way that seems the coolest, the edgiest. But deep down, I knew that it wasn't serving like my heart, right? We weren't happy. you weren't feeling right about the world.

And if I could have seen someone that was saying just something a little bit more hopeful or something that was addressing something that I was actually feeling deep down, whether that was fear of death or fear of change or fear of life, I knew would have made a really big difference. I think a lot of people feel like people who are making positive content in the podcast world on YouTube, on social media, TikTok, Instagram, in books, like are kind of corny, big-hearted, naive people at heart. And I think this is really important, what you stumbled onto Thomas, which is, because I'm the same way.

Like, there is not a more darkly cynical human being walking the face of the earth than this guy right here. And I think people can kind of tell that. And at the same time, I consciously choose to put, positive, human connection, heart-based material into the world because I don't want to have like a shitty podcast where we

snark on people and like tell shitty snarky jokes. Like that's easy. And I could have 10 times the viewers if I did that. Sit around with comedians and like talk about getting fucked up and how fucked up we were and how fucked up

the world is. But I don't want to do that. And I and I think it's important. for people to know, like, hey, you can, you can understand cynicism and sarcasm and darkness. You can understand the dark side and then you can turn and you can choose to put light into the world. And in some ways, I think that's smarter and stronger. Yeah, I think we're, yeah, very much that same kind of, in that same kind of thinking. Like, we started out our early lives as edgy teens on the internet.

On the early internet, which was very cynical. And exactly that. The podcast realm was so, it was the birth of the manosphere, so to speak. Right. Yeah, those people are sitting in a room going like, this is so messed up and this is how we can be so edgy. And how, like, it's the cool, smart thing to be like this force of,

if not pure negativity, just kind of this like cynical snark that's. And it really crafted us into being very anxious and stressed people, You know, throughout our high school and college years. You met on a playground at age 12? Yes, on a playground. Were you like playing kickball or what was what happened? Just about.

Walking around the play structure. Yeah. On the wood chips. Yeah. Right next to the slide. Yeah. You're walking on the bark. Yeah.

Walking on the tamper. Under the monkey bars. Andy moved up to the Bay Area where we met in like fifth grade and in sixth grade. We just became good friends and have been friends ever since then. We were doing Godfather impressions. I really loved the movie. movie The Godfather, which, you know, pretentious little. You were 12?

I was 12 and I saw the godfather. So do an imitation of 12 year old Andy. Oh my gosh. Doing the Godfather. What would you do on the playground? You gotta channel it. I'll make you off your family fuse. See, that's pretty good.

It's pretty good. Okay, you got the voice pre-pewescent, yeah. Okay. Actually, my voice is already dropped by this point. His voice dropped when he was like 11 years old. Yeah, it was a different. Yeah. Because you sound like a late night FM DJ a little.

And I saw some of those early videos. early videos that you guys did with like Minecraft and like telling a lot of jokes and like trying to be really edgy and cool. So how did you go from friendship to like, hey, let's do funny Minecraft commentary, manosphere, edgy videos. How did how did that birth? It was interesting because we had this idea to be the hopeful platform or this, this. I feel like it started when we were kids. Like one of the way we really became good friends was Andy was like, I want to make movies. And then I realized, like, I knew that I wanted to be an artist of some kind.

I wanted to make movies. And so, like, okay, let's make art today. Let's make videos together. Let's make music. We're in a band together in high school. Yeah. And then we made music videos for Andy's music, uh, the random times during college. And then it was a few years ago when we actually started, we love you.

We were like, okay, we want to create this hopeful platform of some kind, the kind of reverse engineers, all the negative stuff on the internet that like the reason it's connecting to people's brains like what is it and then let's kind of twist it why did you want to do that why did you want to twist it I think we were going through a tough time in our life it was right after COVID or during COVID more or less and we were just always caught on these platforms scrolling and absorbing all this negative content and we just had to be a force of positivity in the world somehow and we decided to meet people where they're at I mean did you come from your parents I'm trying I'm I'm trying to understand, because you guys have harnessed something really powerful and beautiful,

and you get millions and tens of millions of views to your stuff. And yet so few are doing it or trying to do it. Well, that's the funny thing is we started out thinking that the best way to connect with people was by creating those videos you're talking about. They're kind of Manusphere podcast stuff. Then we twist and we're like, wait, actually, that's consider the metaphysical implications of this. And we would quote Gandhi and we dive into it.

And always halfway through. have this twist. So even from the beginning of those ones when you had like Minecraft stuff going on, you were you were trying to subvert. Yes. Exactly. That was the intention. Yeah. But then we, and that we did those for honestly, it was like a like a month or so. And then just about, we took a break after that. And then we were on this long hike back home in the Bay Area. It was like 12 miles. 12 miles. Andy was wearing these weird barefoot shoes that you had. I've never had more foot pain in my life. Those were really big for like five years. Yeah. I think they're coming back. Yeah. This is our hot take.

But then we were on this long hike and we were down this river valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains where we've hiked for all of COVID and our whole lives growing up. And we were by this little creek and there's these two banana slugs, which if you don't know, there's these little yellow slugs. They're the cutest little things perched on a little mossy boulder by this creek. And I think I said, oh, look at those slugs. I think they're friends. Could be us in our next life or something. And he's like, yeah, maybe. Or maybe they're just slugs.

Yeah. And then we took a pause and we were having a normal moment. And we're, oh, that could be a video. And at this point, we had like, you know, 100 followers or something. Yeah. And we put the phone in our shoe as a tripod to set up this two shot. And then we shot this video in five minutes. We edited it in 30 minutes.

I edited it in my car after I parked after driving somewhere. So I'll edit this video. And then we posted that the next morning and it got, you know, a million views. And that was our start. And instead of this cynical lens. Were you called? We love you at that point. Yeah, we recall we love you from the very beginning.

Okay. Because the mission, like, it was a very purposeful mission that we set out on to be the force for good on the internet to try to be the opposite of all this terrible stuff that we felt pushed us in the wrong direction growing up. Try to be an alternative for especially young people and young men to have something that's both hopeful and positive and thoughtful but also cool. And people can connect with and not feel embarrassed about liking. Exactly like you're saying.

It's that thing where so often people who are optimistic or positive are thought to be hokey or maybe naive, but it's trying to create, we're trying to create something that feels like, no, we're not naive, we're not hokey, we're not cheesy, we're hopeful, and that's cool. It's got just enough edge in it. Exactly. Yeah, that you don't, yeah, you're right. You don't feel sappy for having watched it. But when we started, we wanted, okay, we'll start by being that Manosphere reverse engineer. But then our first video that ever did really, really well was genuine. It was very earnest. It was just two friends having a normal conversation, a real conversation that we just had. And that's when, like, that's what we started. And we realized, oh, we could do,

we could do a million of these videos. Unlimited, truly, yeah. Because it just came so naturally. And that's what people connected with. I love you saying it came so naturally. Because it, it wouldn't come naturally to me. But I love this intersection of there's always nature. There's incredible photography. And then bottom line, there's this bond of real friendship. Like when you watch your videos, you can tell like, oh, these, these guys are real bros, like old school, way back bros underneath it. And so there's, there's that love, which, you know, the English language is really, uh, lacks in this sense that there's only one word for love. Yeah. And like the Greeks had eros and they had filio, which is friendship love. And there's familial love and there's like

love of country and there's like love of God. And like there's, there's different words for all of these kinds of love. This is like filial friendship love, which people kind of cringe at like, oh, friends love each other. But if it had a different name, I think that it could have more resonance. Yeah. And then, so tell me about this concoction. What is what is this magic recipe you guys use when you make your incredible videos? Because I watch them and they're like, each one is like more profound than the last and you do it over and over again. And there's just these these four or five key components, then you put them kind of in different kind of orders.

How does your creative process work? You know, it's different every time. Yeah. I mean, bare bones is we either have an idea going out to hike or we don't. Yeah. And sometimes we'll have like a bulleted list of just like, oh, there's like time, money, like videos, things we might want to talk about. Ideas we want to, yeah, come across.

Yeah. And then we'll go out. So sometimes big ideas, sometimes like a big metaphysical idea. Yeah, definitely. And we'll go, okay, we know the, it's a weird thing because we have this philosophical core that we can always come back to, like, what if we were going to go to our truest, our truest selves, what would they say about this? And then we kind of have this working philosophical textbook that's just between the two of us,

just how we talk about things, our friendship. And so it makes it pretty easy to just go out on a hike. We're hiking in Malibu Creek or in the Santa Cruz Mountains where we're back in the Bay. And we're just, then we'll find, we look for the shot. Each of our videos starts with the two shot, we call it. Yeah. Which is us standing kind of like this in front of a mountain or in front of a tree or a river or waterfall. And then we'll usually prop up the camera in our shoe or on a tripod or something.

Get that shot. And then we'll just like sit there. Sit and talk for hours sometimes. Truly. We've spent five hours, just sitting and talking before you're even shooting. You record some of that, all of that, none of that. Sometimes we'll voice memo it just to remember the conversation that we're having and then come back to it. And sometimes we'll need to then redo the first shot because, oh, now it's sunset.

We need to get a completely different shot. But also we'll be inspired by the environment around us. Like if the fog is rolling in on the hills, maybe we do a video about how, yeah, scary. It is enough to not be able to see what's out there. Right, exactly. Yeah. You'll find a metaphor. The concept of nothing versus everything.

Exactly. Yeah. And it's kind of this weird hybrid of us. having these ideas and then also just trying to go out there and receive what's not being told to us, but just trying to receive what's there, receive what's out there, whether it's the fog or it's some banana slugs. And then we will usually just write a video and usually we'll start out, like in our notes app being, you know, a metaphysical essay. We're talking about the truth of life and it's, oh, this is not going to be a conversation between friends. And oftentimes I think

I'm the metaphysical essayist and then you're like, this is, we need to make this like more friendly and more clear. Right. So you have different roles that you guys play as well. Which we always alternate. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we'll cut down, cut down, cut down, until it just feels like the clearest possible version of it, of just like, what would two friends who were talking about this talk about? What would they say? Yeah.

And then we'll shoot our video, whether it's on our phones or on our camera. Yeah. And then when we're editing it, we just find the right music, try to capture the feeling or write music for it.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like these YouTube shorts and the Instagram reels and the TikTok videos that you just do this. And it's like, oh, there's an otter doing a backflip. And then there's a truck exploding. And then there's a guy slam dunking with his feet. And then there's like, you know, someone popping a Zit. And it's just like it when I do that, I have ADHD.

And I feel like the Pachinko ball of my brain consciousness just going, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I really had to take all that stuff off my phone because I, I realize it really degrades my life. And it's kind of like when I was a kid, we used to eat pop rocks, this candy that like exploded in your mouth. I can't think they've tried to bring them back a few times. We've had pop rocks.

We love pop rocks. Are you a big pop rock man? Yeah, they're sponsored on the show, but yeah. Soul boom, brought to you by pop rocks. But also like, like, and that we love you podcast, brought to you by pop rocks. My son loves the nerds. Like there's all these different like flavors of nerds candies.

It's like coated nerds and red hot nerds and like lemon tingle nerds. Red hot nerds is what we were called in high school. Red hot nerds. Yeah. It was like, we love you or red hot nerds. We couldn't decide. Well played. Well played.

But it's kind of, it's like eating that, you know. It tastes like great on your tongue for like 47 seconds and then you crash from the sugar. And then you're like, wow, I wish I had had like some cheese cubes or, you know, or some beef, a sweet potato. Yeah, but that's what that kind of social media, that's how it affects me.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think for us, we have, it's been so ingrained in our lives from such a young age that it's also a sort of separate place in itself. Like it's a home on its own in not necessarily a positive way.

Yeah. Like you're, because so much of your conscious time is given over to these platforms, I think for a lot of young people, like, that's where, like, that's where they live. Like, even if they're in a home, even if they're somewhere, even when they're out on their day at school or out on some trip, like, you have this place to land, which is like the place where you spend most of your time. And so it's like your plane of existence. Exactly. And that's a very troubling thing when it's like ad-sponsored data stealing propaganda land.

Right. But I did the same thing. I had a company called SoulPancake for many years. So it was an early YouTube channel that was doing positive, uplifting, inspiring content. And we always had this conversation like, we are making content on a platform that makes people's mental health worse and is kind of part of the algorithmic, you know, industrial complex mafia that is stealing data. And, you know, they literally were found guilty in court, you know, of knowingly degrading young people's mental healths. you know, meta did and in alphabet. And but at the same time, you have to meet people where they are.

It's there anyway. There's going to be on Instagram and TikTok anyway. So why not try and meet them with some positive content? How do you guys wrestle with that? We wrestle with it for sure. Yeah, it's always been a struggle, really. The term we use is like, are we just healthy cigarettes? Is that what we're building?

here like it's just like a slightly less detrimental cigarette. You'd soften up your lungs. Yeah. You gotta get those lungs nice and nice and frosty. Before we started we love you. We were making the stuff that wasn't as algorithmically focused. Andy was making these music these songs we'd make music videos for them and this is these big projects we'd make together and then we'd make them and they'd get you know a thousand views or a hundred views. And we really wanted to we had this decision to make something that made a difference in the world. Like, our, if we felt our talent was making media and art together, and we're trying to figure out a way to make a positive impact and kind of undo all the, as much as we can,

all those terrible things that are happening in the world because of these algorithmic platforms, we're like, okay, do we, do we write a manifesto? Do we make a documentary series that really, like, exposes how we're all one and how there's beauty in the world and how we can love each other? And then we realized the only way that this is ever going to actually connect with people and make an impact is by meeting people where they are. And that's by being on short form video and YouTube and being a little bit of a healthy alternative to something that is kind of unhealthy, even if you have to be in the same platform. Which is, it feels like a devil's bargain sometimes. It does, yeah.

Because when you're scrolling, you're sometimes filled with so much anxiety from all these things you're watching that are meant to retain your attention. and be the most outrageous thing you've ever seen. And then sometimes it feels like, oh, maybe we're the little band-aid over that giant wound. So you can continue on your scroll. Exactly, exactly. And that's why we really, in the last couple of years, we've really been trying to focus on moving people out of just the short-form scroll

into whether we have our podcast now and we released our book last year. And just some more. Maybe a mailing list. Yeah, we're talking about a mailing list and just stuff that feels a little bit more thoughtful and active, like, choices. of moving out of those constant panic sphere of the internet. Your book is fantastic. It's a melange of a lot of different things.

I actually found it really inspiring and thinking about this new book that I'm working on about the meaning of life because it's a it's a popery of there's photography, there's there's poetry and there's kind of essays on on science. So tell us about what it is you were trying to do with. an optimistic guide to being on a rock spinning around the universe, whatever it's called. Totally. Yeah, we started off, we love you with like, what is it? How do we want to communicate this idea of hope and kindness? And again, we thought maybe a manifesto was the way. Which we got to right.

Which we got to right, which maybe isn't the best way of putting it. I love that. I think a manifesto is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, we decided to start with the smallest thing that could give us hope. And for us, it was atoms, right? And even smaller. And starting with actually mud. Mud. Yeah. And then zooming in on mud. Zooming in on mud and getting to atoms and smaller corks and so on and so on. And eventually expanding larger into ecosystems and the individual first. Right, the individual, yeah. Then ecosystems and then expanding all the way and coming back to you. We expand through the planet to the universe we're talking about.

And then in the end you come down to the individual. Yeah. Come back again. Yeah. Because I love you, start at the very beginning. We're on a rock spinning through space. Okay, what does that mean? Yeah.

And then you're like, am I going to be okay? Yeah. And then there's atoms, but even below atoms, there's quarks and like the smallest subunits of being. And then you start with mud and then you go up through biology. and plants and animals and stuff like that. And then I love the way that you do that. Like let's start at the very, very beginning. It's a, it's a, and where do you arrive at the end of the book?

I mean, the way the book starts is saying, okay, what if you just had never existed before and you appeared into existence right at this moment? You'd never seen anything, never heard anything, never known anything. And you were just like in a space with a, at a table sitting across from Rain Wilson. And what would you feel in that moment? Pure discovery, pure wonder. Pure, like, blank mind, pure wonder. Yeah.

And we kind of walk people through, through everything from the very small to the very big and ask these big questions along the way. And the truth is, which is kind of the truth of our videos, is that we don't have the answers to these questions. Like it's, but that's kind of the answer is that this unknowing, this unknowing wonder and appreciation of everything you can know, which is like, I see this leaf in front of. of me, that's unbelievably beautiful. Or I see this slug in front of me. That means something to me.

And that's something you can know. That's empirically true, that it means something to you. By the end, I think it's not exactly we reach some huge conclusion. I know that we kind of do. Just that we're all on this rock floating through space together. And that we're all actually in this position of just being born into existence without any context, without any instruction manual or reason why. We're not told by some force before you're going to do this now. We're just here. We just pop in.

And we have to figure out how to do that together. Right. And I think the place we reach is just one of our like grounding like kind of rhythms we go through is understanding kindness and hope. And it's this almost like a little technology of thought we've built up, which is when you're confronted with some huge big question or some terrible reality you need to face, try and meet it with as much understanding as you can. Yeah.

And ask the questions, try to answer the questions, figure out what you can. But also carry with you in that understanding period kindness and have this like overwhelming like teeth grit. I am kind to this. I am loving to this. This is good. It will be good. It will be done.

I say it so. Yeah. Because you have that force in your brain to go, what if this was good? Not just what is this, but what if this was? good. Yeah. And then we always try to reach, like every one of our videos, hope. Yeah. Hope. And we find, and in our book, it's framing the entire human experience this way. It's like understanding, kindness, and hope. And the way to be a good human is to be kind and to be understanding and to hopefully have hope. Yeah. That's a beautiful formula. It's so simple. I love that you

discovered that through the mystery and magic of the banana slug. understanding, kindness, and hope. That's kind of all we need. Yeah, that's the idea. Tell me about your podcast. What are you guys doing with that? It's kind of just like we're just the two bros talking about life. Exactly.

Yeah, we usually focus on one specific topic like last week is how to make friends. We talk about our friendship and. You don't have guests. So it's really the two of you. For so far, it's just been us talking about different topics. We talked about trees one episode. We just talked about our favorite trees and all the different metaphors around trees we found, we've found meaningful to us. It's really just us kind of going

back and forth, goofing off. It's very silly. We often will end the episode with like a list of bits that we just will like have like last episode was fun ways to make friends in public. And it was just like a list of like what was I'm trying to remember any of them? Bringing exotic fruit to a party and all trying to putting up flyers for a like a competitive competitive thumb wrestling team and just like bonding with random people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a very fun just like low stress podcast then kind of has this like you're saying, this floor of thoughtfulness and friendship. You know, at the end, we always ended with a mindfulness, mindfulness meditation or something like that really reflecting on these ideas we've talked about throughout the episode. Give people a mission for the week to come. Exactly. I guess past week was try to make a connection with someone that you haven't considered your friend,

but might be your friend going forward. Like, try to breach that gap that we also often have between like acquaintance and actual person you care about and how like so many people in our lives you see every day. But you don't really want to put it in that effort or take that risk to like be vulnerable for a second. Be like, hey, also like ask a meaningful question and connect with them. Before I let you go, there's one question we ask every guest. I'd love to hear from either of you and both of you, which is this word soul is in everything. and you hear soul, soul, soul, soul, soul. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

It's kind of tricky to define. How would you define the word soul? I'm not sure exactly what I believe about the soul. But the belief that I do have is that whatever the soul is, I think we all share one. I think we're all just a little part of a tapestry. And I think we share it with dogs and tables and trees and airplanes. It's the living and the non-living. It's the living and the non-living. It's just being. It's like we're talking about. It's,

there could be nothing, but there is something. And that's something is just being. And when you're looking at over a beautiful Yosemite Valley or looking up at a tree or a banana slug, that's just you being. And those little moments of clarity and peace is when you're just, I think, being whatever that soul is, takes all the, all the veneer off, all the masks off, and you're just a moment of being there is the closest you get. Do you know the, Hindu philosopher Rupert Spira. Pete Holmes is a big advocate of his. I love Pete Holmes.

Non-dualist Vedantic thought is exactly what you're describing. So there is a spiritual path for you, but it is non-dualist Vedantic thought and check out Rupert Spira because he, that's, that's his credo right there. There is, we live in the illusion of separation. and the reality is that we're all the same. There's one consciousness, and we're all different portals to the same consciousness. Amazing.

Well, check it out. We'll have to. Anything else to add on soul, as a musician especially? Yeah, that's good. It is that feeling when you listen to the best song you've ever heard in your life, when you're standing in that concert experience and get that existential feeling of, beauty and contentness in being. It's like this. Oh, we're going to be okay. Yeah. I love that. Thanks. We love you.

Thanks for coming on. Andy, Thomas. What an honor to have you here on Soul Boom. In honor to be here. Thanks so much. All right. We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts. Thank you.