Soul Boom - ica, It Is Your Birthday. (Now Grow Up.)

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

Happy Independence Day! On America's 250th anniversary, we're joined by Arthur Brooks, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Amanda Ripley, and Derek Smith to confront the country's crisis of loneliness, meaning, and political division. Together, they ask whether love, service, and spiritual renewal can heal the country. What must America outgrow before its next 250 years? SPONSORS!👇 🛒 Grow Therapy: ⁠https://growtherapy.com/soulboom⁠ 🛒 Get 15% off OneSkin with the code SOULBOOM at ⁠https://www.oneskin.co/soulboom⁠ #oneskinpod 🛒 Get 40% off select Lola Blankets products 👉 ⁠https://Lolablankets.com⁠ use code: SOULBOOM at checkout. Experience the world’s #1 blanket with Lola Blankets. 👉 Fetzer: https://fetzer.org MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠https://soulboom.com/store⁠ Sign up for our newsletter! ⁠https://soulboom.substack.com⁠ SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom! ⁠https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom⁠ FOLLOW US! Instagram: ⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom 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

We haven't done this before. If anyone is having a struggle with the word spirituality, I would say, recalibrate that word to mean something aligned with universal values. And the values that government should reflect are the core values that can help sustain and support society. This is not saying government should favor one religion. It's not saying government should favor one type of people. I mean, Vivek has suffered more than all the rest of us. He was in two administrations, right?

Do you think that our country is spiritually hungry for something that politics can't provide? Yes. Yeah. Good night everybody. Thank you for coming. And this is coming from the cold-hearted world of a journalist without a shred of compassion. On the one hand, government feels very thin, like a very hard way to address love and these big ideas. On the other hand, we have seen government encourage, model, and incentivize contempt.

So why couldn't we see the opposite? We have a big mistake that we're making in this country about talking about needing more activism and more public policy and more law to actually get the things that we want. It starts here. Separation of church and state is perhaps one of the beautiful things about the American experiment. That principle opens up the space for all of us to explore spirituality, religion, our own I don't even think our founders who were all white Protestant males wanted everyone to be a white

Protestant male. They really had a vision for a diverse garden of religious faiths and diversity of opinions. There is something of value in what has been worked out over these last 250 years, and we can learn from that into the future. What is one thing you hope America outgrows? And one thing you hope it never loses. Just one? 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. Hey, I want to give a very special shout out to our sponsors. Grow Therapy, Lola, One Skin, Fetzer. Links and promo codes on the screen and in the description. Enjoy the show. Really happy to be here, folks. We haven't done this before at Soul Boom. We've done some live podcasts, but never like a live panel. This evening, we are going to be talking about some of

the ideas that have been contained in a very important letter to America. This is brought to you by the Baha'i community of the United States. It's called a common endeavor. And I really hope you'll pick up a copy. Maybe you've been given one. I hope that people can find a copy online and give it a read. It has some really beautiful and I think vitally important ideas in it. And it's a crucial conversation starter.

And frankly, a conversation that I haven't experienced happening very, very much in the world right now. It's about spiritual renewal here at the dawning of the 250th anniversary of America. The American experiment was bold and brave and revolutionary at its time. There were some amazing ideals at its center. There were ideas about unity and diversity, representation, equality and justice, some really, really great ideas that we didn't have in place when the nation started. We've had our lots of ups and downs over the course of this great American experiment, and we're at an inflection point right now, at a point of tremendous crisis at the same time, hinging a lot on the ideas that are being brought forth in this document,

mainly that the idea of equality and justice, freedom, you can base a government around them. But there are also spiritual ideas. The foundation of the idea of freedom, equality, and justice is a spiritual principle. There's a lot of things going wrong today. Mistrust of government, of media, television celebrities is at an all-time low. And let's look forward to the next 250 years. What does that look like? You are incredible experts in your fields.

For those who don't know, this is Dr. Vivek Murthy, who was the former surgeon general. He wrote a great deal about the mental health crisis going on and the lonely. this epidemic? Beyond loneliness, how do we deal with the lack of fulfillment that so many people feel in their life? That was something I saw as I traveled all across America, I still see today. And I think we have a conversation that young people tell me about all the time around success. And we associate that as young people again tell me with money, power, and fame. But those don't always drive the kind of fulfillment that we all need as human beings. And so the work I'm focused on now is around what are the core ingredients to fulfillment?

How do we build that into our culture, to how we operate in our families and in our homes? And how does it inform also the kind of people we elect at the ballot box? So that's what I'm working on. Amanda Ripley, journalist, author of High Conflict, and has an organization called Good Conflict. And what can you say about Arthur Brooks, happiness expert, Harvard professor, journalist?

You just had a new book come out, The Meaning of Your Life, which is absolutely sterling and moving and so accessible. These days, I'm thinking about the meaning crisis that we're all facing. And so, you know, I've been looking, as in higher ed,

we're looking at this psychogenic epidemic, which is just a fancy way of saying there's a lot of suffering without biological origin. The depression and anxiety epidemics, I mean, what the root causes. And it really is this meaninglessness problem that people are facing.

And what I want to know in my research is what's the cause of that? What actually is the origin of that? And we know what it is. We've broken our brains. We've broken our brains by the way that we use technology and the way that we approach our culture and the way to heal our brains

is by becoming more transcendent. Love. Fabulous. And Dr. Derek Smith from Claremont University, Claremont College. You're a professor there, an author. What's the name of your new book that's coming out? Rethinking Social Justice.

Rethinking Social Justice. I think that we all are searching for that horizon of social justice in the world, and we have to think about it in new ways. It's really an honor to be here with our guests who have done so much work to characterize the social conditions which we are facing today, and now we can think about what is that next step to addressing them, to building up the models that will supplant the existing models that we have and that all can flourish, not just. just a select few. I love that. America will play a great role in the coalescing of all of humankind into a condition of unity and diversity where all can flourish. Our question is how do we get there?

How do we move from the conditions of division, isolation, racism, and fragmentation that have been so ably described by the panelists here to the one of coherence and unity that we know is destined to be achieved. How do you foster the conditions that create community, which is the solution essentially to all of these, many of these ills that we're facing today? So you could say this is how I understand this wonderful document, the common endeavor to be operating within our social context today, taking advantage of this moment of inflection and reflection to imagine what the future must hold for us and how we'll get there. I imagine there might be some viewers at home watching this wonderful YouTube channel that they've clicked on,

who are going like, wait, what? Spirituality and government and America and the Constitution? So first I just want to say that the word spirituality is a funny word, because to some people it means organized religion, and it just means church on Sundays. And to some people, it means kind of an airy-fairy, nambi-pambi kind of incense and crystals and chakra kind of version of you know experiencing the divine so it's a it's a loaded word it's a tricky word but for people who might be struggling with

spirituality as a concept i would put out what we're really talking about are universal human values of the heart that we can all agree on We can all agree. You can be evangelical Christian, you can be diehard, secular atheist, Marxist, and you can agree that compassion is a good thing. It's something that we like to experience. We like to experience in other people. We can agree that love is beautiful and is a healing force. We can believe in honesty and humility and these qualities of what I would call of the spirit. So if anyone is having a struggle with the word spirituality, I would say recalibrate that word to mean something aligned with universal values. So I just wanted to clarify that.

But this letter, which you've all read, I hope, Vivek. Yes. You sent it to me. Okay. I read it. This letter argues that freedom, equality, and justice. are not just civic principles, but spiritual principles. Do you agree and what changes when we understand them that way?

I guess I was going to pose this generally, but since I was picking on you, I'm going to just go with you. Do you think there's a correlation there? I do think there is, and I think particularly when we think about equality, I think the notion that every person is a child of the divine, has a spark of the divine in them, is a very powerful concept that is held in many of our faiths. And I remember when I was growing up, I grew up in an Indian household here in America.

My parents immigrated from India years ago. Hindu background? Hindu background, yeah. And traditionally in India, the way they would greet each other was with their hands together. And there are theories for why, you know, as a hygiene theory, that it was a cleaner way to engage with other people and not pass on disease and such. But what my mother taught me is that there was actually a spiritual reason for that. She said, when you are putting your hands together and bowing in front of somebody else and they're doing the same to you, you are saying the divine spirit in me salutes the divine spirit

in you. It's an acknowledgement that that divine spirit exists in each of us. And if it does, then regardless of what is on the outside, that is what matters most. And so I think that in notion of equality, that we all have something special in terms of our connection to the divine, I do think that is enshrined in many of our traditions, and I think finds its way in, of course, our founding documents as well. Now, one last thing I should say here is that these deeply human values, the use spoke of, right, around love and compassion and kindness and generosity, courage, hope, one can ask, like, you know, yes, these are deeply human values,

what's the role of government with these values? Well, the truth is that at every point in our life, the decisions we're making are guided by values. The question is, are we conscious than them or not? Are we explicit about them? Like, we're not. But those values are, there are values guiding us. And if we're not able to talk about them,

then we can't understand and find the common human values. Many of us do share, but we don't realize it. When I travel around the country, I often find that people think, you know, I want a world that's more compassion, kind, and loving. But I'm not sure anybody else really cares about that. Because that's what they see, you know, online or on social media or in the news. And so I think the place where government has a role is in thinking about, look, what are

the values that government should reflect? And the values that government should reflect are the core values that can help sustain and support society, those core human values. This is not saying government should favor one religion. It's not saying government should favor one type of people. It's saying that we know that for humanity to thrive, that we are better off when there is more love, when there is more kindness, when there's more generosity,

when we look at each other and see that we do, in fact, all matter, that we are equal. And that's a place where government can reflect those values because those are deeply human values. And I'll throw it out to the panel. Do you think that our country is spiritually hungry for something that politics can't provide? Yes.

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So think about it. If even you... Think about how bad it is. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, no, I mean, I think when you were answering, I was thinking how, well, on the one hand, government feels very thin, like a very hard way to address love and these big ideas. On the other hand, we have seen government encourage, model, and incentivize contempt.

So why couldn't we see the opposite, right? And we can probably think of politicians who have done the opposite, right, who have modeled that and encouraged that. So I think there is a real year-in- I can't think of one. You can't think of one, really? Kidding, I'm kidding. Not alive today, obviously, but...

think there is a real yearning, but there is a failure of imagination about what that would look like, right? Because it's hard. And it's not explicit, like you said. And we don't have a lot of models for it right now. You know, it's the most interesting thing that I see with my students. So I teach MBAs at the Harvard Business School. They're going to be unbelievably successful. They're going to leave Harvard and they're going to have these huge jobs in management and run big corporations and the whole thing. And so I teach a class called leadership and happiness. And I've been teaching it for year after year after year. I'm actually taking it to Vanderbilt and kind of of this new frontier with different students very soon. And, you know, when I first got there,

I thought, I'm going to teach them the science of happiness, the neuroscience and behavioral science of happiness. And what are they going to come and ask me in office hours? You know, how do I make a happier workplace? How do I get more productivity through these technology? No. In my office hours, and this addresses the hunger that you're talking about. They come in, they ask me, the first thing they ask me about every single one, it's always the same thing. How do I fall in love and stay in love? Because they're made to love and be loved and that's become baffling since their brains have been broken. Second, how do I find my faith? How do I find my soul? That's what they ask me. They're not asking me about how to become a better manager. They don't need me to tell them that. They need me

to understand the personal revolution that is within. And this is the big point. There's a hunger for the personal revolution, which in the United States, the magic of this country, is scaling up from the personal to the public. See, so many places around the world, I mean, scale down from the public to the personal, from the person on high to the rest of us that mean nothing, we scale up. We're in grassroots society.

But that raises the stakes for each one of us to be in a spiritual revolution, to point a phrase. Ha, huh? We need to be permanently at war with us, with us individually, to be in a spiritual revolution, to cultivate the love of the divine and the love for others, to love the Lord our God with all our soul and all our might and all our strength

and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Because when we do that, then God bless America, we can scale that up. Good news, there's unbelievable hunger for that love for each other, for life, for happiness through family, and to find the creator of it all. That's all my students ask me. That's all they want to know. said in the Odo a Grecian urn, that's all you need to know on earth and all there is to know.

And then truly is in what I've actually found. And I'm incredibly encouraged because of that harder. Arthur, do you think they come ask you those questions because you talk to them about love and you talk to them about fate? Like, I feel like, I don't know, but they're not going to all their, like contracts law professor or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So they go to the supply chain management guy and saying, yeah, how do I find love, professor? Like, but this is to the point that you were making, right? Because you talk about it, which a lot of people don't, especially in, like, elite, you know, universities. It's absolutely the case. You know, I do teach it. I have 180 students,

400 of the waiting list and a secret Zoom link they think I'm not aware of because they are hungry for it. It's not the milkman is the milk that they actually want is what it comes down to. So I'm convinced that anybody who is in a position of leadership, who is providing this information, and by the way, I'm talking to all of you because you're in position of the leadership and your family and your community and your faith groups and your business lives. Be more open about love of each other and love of the divine so that you can spark the spiritual revolution, eat in each one, in each person. We have a big mistake that we're making in this country about talking about needing more activism and more public policy and more law to actually get the things that we want. It starts here.

It starts. It's the interior revolution that starts all that. Not to say that activism is not important, but the real activism is actually getting your own soul in order because that's what will scale up, in my view. Actually, one thing just to believe in what Arthur said, it's interesting that this is, you're talking about a university or your teaching, and students are coming to you with these questions.

And I think that one area where we have failed students more broadly, I think not just in our universities, but in our grade schools, is we recognize that people need to be sustained in their hearts or much. and their souls, right, and body, mind, and spirit. Yet we primarily cater just to the head, to the cerebral dimension of nurturing a human being in our educational settings.

And I actually saw that in medical training as well, that there was such an emphasis on what studies can you remember, how much can you memorize in terms of the history or in terms of research, et cetera? Can you recited, do you know, like the differential, you know, the most exhaustive differential diagnosis for patient symptoms? All of that's important, by the way. You want your doctor to be well-versed in that. But I remember on one day in particular during residency training,

one of my fellow residents came into our morning conference where we would get together and for half an hour just talk about how residency is going. And she had all her papers from pre-rounding. She threw them down on the table, and she sat on exhausted, and she said, I'm such a failure. Why do you think you're a failure?

She's like, I don't, I can never get like the, I'm not the remember the first person to guess the diagnosis in Morning Report. and never the person who can cite all of the papers the way some of these other people can. All I can do, all I can do is sit with the patient, hold their hand, and make them feel better. And I think about that years later,

and just how ironic it was that the educational environment in which she was growing up and being trained was telling her that those skills of using her heart to connect deeply with another human being in their time of suffering and remind them that they weren't.

alone, that that somehow was a throwaway skill, that it wasn't valued. So I think part of what we have to do, and Arthur, you do this obviously beautifully through your role at the business school, is we need to speak more to the body, mind, and spirit in our educational settings. We need to model for students what it looks like to live a life where you're coming not just from your head, but from your heart as well, and not to shy away from these issues of heart and spirit. look at them as sources of weakness or something that's soft. But these are some of the most powerful resources that we can harness in our life. And anybody who has a child in your life that you care about, whether they're related to you or not, knows that when you deeply love

that child, you will put yourself in harm's way to protect that child. If a car is coming or somebody's coming at them trying to attack them, that's the power of what love can do. And we have I mean teaching our students that that is soft and that what matters is really only what's up here. And I think we have a chance to really change that. That's part of what the revolution has to include. I saw recently someone that had lost an election and this person was giving their conciliatory speech or whatever it is to their supporters. And this person started to cry in that.

And that video of them crying was put up on a news site, I won't say which one, in order to humiliate and embarrass that politician. This is someone who had spent certainly months, if not years, raising money, working with people, canvassing, you know, honing their speeches. And there it was up on this news site. Can you believe this person was crying? And then the comments, thousands of comments, mocking. the person for crying for mourning the loss of their election.

Something any of us would do. Something that any of us would do. Because I'm struck by your saying that this idea that emotions, compassion, softness, qualities emulated best, probably in the history of humankind by Jesus Christ himself, is something so socially mocked. And guess what, Amanda, it was a news site. And I'm sorry to throw darts at you. No, because I'm not really.

You're not in that world at all. But especially now where it seems like the thing most pouring kerosene on the fire of, division and the thing greatest and the entity that is most clearly obfuscating this idea that there could be spiritual underpinnings to this beautiful American experiment is coming from the media. And for young people, they don't trust any media whatsoever. I'm not asking you to defend the entirety of the media.

You're one of the ones trying to tackle this head on with high conflict and good conflict. Can you speak to this? Well, it's an incredible example. I mean, I'm curious, do you remember if the politician was a man or a woman? A woman. Interesting. So, I don't know. I mean, as I think about you were saying, Derek, how do we get from A to Z, right?

Like, if we know we want the spiritual renewal, right, for the next 250 years, then your whole focus, how to get there, right? And you're talking about normalizing love, right? And I think there is vulnerability in that, right? Now, I think one of the ways that makes reasons you are good at this is because you present as very masculine. I mean, fair? Is that fair? I don't know. I'm not sure. Seriously, how much do you bench? Seriously.

Right. No, but that's what makes it work. Because you're at Harvard Business School, very masculine. Right. I mean, traditionally masculine. And you are masculine. And yet you talk about it. you're talking about love, right? So it's this kind of breach, right? You've broken the assumptions and the expectations, which is a little bit vulnerable. So that's transgression, right? Yeah, it's a transgression. Yeah, you're a deviant.

Right. In a good way. No, no, fair is fair. And no, but that's what makes it work. Right, that's because that shocks. And when there's an aperture and attention, when there's a subversion. Yeah.

Right. Right. And it makes it okay for you to do, it makes it more powerful in a way, I think. So I think going to your question, so the newsrooms I worked in were there was always kind of a, I don't want to say it's all, it's not really masculine, because this is a perversion of masculinity, right? But a kind of macho ethos, like locker room kind of. And it was protective, right? So I think it's important to understand what that serves. Like it's not just that people are jerks, right? It's that it's protective. to be, to mock people who cry, right? It feels safe. And what's underneath that is interesting, right? What are you protecting? What is threatened when you see this woman cry? What is threatened?

And I don't know the answer, but I think that's an interesting story that we could tell, right? That we could try to understand. And instead of just staying on the surface and saying, ah, journalists just want clicks and da-da-da, da, da, which is all true, right? I'm not denying that. But like, what are they protecting? And how do we make it safer with certain messengers, right, to make it less threatening? But Amanda, could I ask you to venture, I guess? I know we don't know for sure, but what do you

think is threatened in that circumstance where people are laughing at someone who's crying? I think I'll just speak to my own experiences. And by the way, the newsrooms I worked in were not. I mean, there were a lot of really nice, earnest, hardworking people. But still, there was a kind of shield, like a mask, that kept you a little bit removed, right? Like a kind of, and I'm sure you see this right at Claremont in Harvard. There's a kind of like aloofness that you put on and you wear like a loose shirt. And that way, if you don't get too upset about anything, if you don't get too emotional about anything, then you're somehow immune, right? Like, it's like a mask. And I think a lot of our behavior is a mask. So the last

thing I'll say is, I was, for my last book, I took mediation training. And I was, they made us meditate for like hours every day. And I was like, oh my God, how am I going to do this? Because I just not used to being still. And the first thing they said after the meditation was, let's talk about blame. Obviously, blame is a mask for vulnerability. And they kept talking, and I was like, what? Blame is my entire profession. Right? I mean, on some level.

And there is such a thing as accountability and da-da-da. But like, what is the mask covering? And so I don't know. Do you know? But I think it feels safe even when it's not. Yeah, I think it's harder to go through the world being vulnerable, you know, and it's easier to be in a cynical fallback position. And I think that the comments are indicative of a certain subset of Americans that I relate to.

I can understand. I've gone through big periods of my life being kind of a cynical jerk because things don't hurt as much. So this was really playing to that audience. I'm really interested in Amanda's comments here about the whole idea that the transgression is incredibly important for all of us. I think that's a big, big opportunity. That's a big opportunity for all of us, is to get caught loving. They get caught worshiping.

And you know, it's really funny because I had to make a conscious decision about this early on in my academic career. I bet you did too. Are you going to get caught? Am I going to get caught as a Christian? Yes. The answer is yes.

Why? Because my whole career is a suitcase, for my Catholic faith. That's what it is. I want my work to be in the mission field. I'm a missionary. So are you. So the whole point is,

how are you going to work every day? How are you going to work as an actor? How are you going to work as a doctor, journalist, us as academics, such that you can get caught loving and normalizing it and not making it weird. See, that's really what, and that takes a long time.

And there are times when you stop short. It's like, am I going to say that thing? Am I going to say that thing? Am I going to stand up in front of my class on the very first day and say, I need you all to know that my role in Catholic faith is the single most important thing in my life. And I will be reciting the sacred scriptures as I take my dying breath, which I tell them. Or am I going to let it pass? I'm going to let it pass.

Because here's the deal. We train for years and years and years and years to be super good at what we do. I mean, we've suffered a great deal. academics, right? I mean, Vivek has suffered more than all the rest of us. He was in two administrations, right? Why are you suffering? Why are you suffering? Because you want the opportunity for what? Money, power, pleasure, and fame? Or what really, really matters the most, which is divine love and bringing it to as many people as you possibly can. That's really what it comes down to. And if you're not willing to transgress, if you're not willing to use that aperture, then what are you doing?

What a waste of time. You're walking around the mission field and not sharing the ultimate truth of love? That seems to be to be a waste of a life. That's how I feel about it. That's beautifully said, beautifully said. I imagine, what I always do is I have these conversations as I imagine the viewers and the YouTube comments.

And I imagine well-meaning people a little bit stumped, like agreeing exactly with what you've said, completely on board, and at the same time going, wait, I thought we were talking about government and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and, you know, legislation and the kind of container of government. And you're talking about divine love. Is there, can there be, Derek, any correlation between divine love and spiritual, passion and government? How does that work? I thought we had separation of church and state. Well, separation of church and state is perhaps one of the beautiful things about the American experiment, right? What has happened is that that principle opens up the space for all of us to

explore spirituality, religion, our own path, right? And so we could say that what that has allowed for is the creation of community of all types at the grassroots that are founded on this ideal of the search for love. And we should be in some ways grateful that we live in a country that that protection is there. And so if we look back across the history of America, we can see that some of the greatest expressions of the search for love and of the building of community around love have welled up from the grassroots from unexpected places. Oftentimes, the government has been less than sympathetic to some of these upwelling, but nevertheless, if we look at the history of black religion in the United States, for example, what site has been greater than that as a

production of love? And so what we can say is that at this moment in history, there are still these opportunities for people to seek out the path of love, which in the Baha'i writings is called the light that leadeth us through the darkness, essentially, right? Those opportunities are there for all of us to go into our communities and figure out how to foster conditions which allow for many people, especially young people, to experience love. In our sort of professional experiences, we work with a lot of, we work with a lot of young people that have great opportunities, right? But we also have experience with people in the grassroots neighborhoods, right, that don't have that many opportunities. And think about the despair and the search that may be

existing in those realms, right? If we go back to this question of masculinity, right, and the kind of aggressive masculinity that seems to dominate online discourse, right? This is, I'm I think men, young men, searching for meaning. What does it mean for me to be a man today? Well, I express it through dominance. But I think that they are thirsting for something deeper. And oftentimes in our neighborhoods and communities everyday life, we don't find the opportunities to express our love for one another.

And so what the Baha'i community is attempting to do in neighborhoods all across the U.S. is foster conditions which allow for young people, young men, to turn around. and nurture spiritual qualities and those are a little bit younger than themselves. One of the things that we're discovering is that if you take a 17-year-old and you create a condition of friendship with an 11-year-old, that 11-year-old thinks the world of that 17-year-old. And that 11-year-old's world will be changed because of that. And the 17-year-old, how do they feel being given that responsibility to mentor an 11-year-old? They find the meaning that is absent in the...

kinds of online spaces where the discourse is about domination. There is a whole new kind of flourishing that is allowed for when young men begin to mentor a company, those that are younger than them, as they themselves search for the spiritual qualities which will guide them through a turbulent period of life that we know is happening in the early teens. And this is what we're trying to learn about in the Bahai community. This is like the spirit that that we think needs to be renewed in the country right now and that holds great promise. Can I ask you a question about this?

Can I ask if this sums up a little bit what you're saying? And I see if this is right. Is what you're saying that freedom and opportunity and enterprise and democracy and justice are answers to how to and what questions, but they don't answer the why questions? And if we don't have the answer to the ultimate why question or the answer to that is divine love, none of it makes any sense in the first place.

If we don't actually have the anchor of love in our country and in our hearts, then all of these other beautiful things that we're trying to do as a nation, they mean nothing at all. Is that a fair summary of this? Right. And I think, again, your work sort of demonstrates that you can reach the highest levels of fame, accomplishment, wealth, and still we find despair among those people. Well, where is the core meaning of they're searching for? Right. They haven't discovered it yet. It's kind of like a nursery room that has like the rules up on the board about like sharing toys and stuff like that.

That's just the container for the play in the nursery room. But it's the life of learning in that space that is really most important. I don't know if that analogy worked. Did that work? Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. All right.

We'll edit it out anyway. It's the magic of something. If you couldn't already tell, I am a very cozy person. So obviously, I'm a huge blanket guy. That's a blanket statement, if I've ever heard one. At the end of the day, I want to sit down and put on a mildly educational podcast that I will not retain. And that's why Lola Blanket has become my sleepy time soulmate. My slumber sidekick, my bedtime buddy, my favorite, my favorite. Okay, that's enough. Lola is made with ultra-soft luxury faux fur, and has this signature four-way stretch, so it doesn't just sit on top of you like some decorative tarp. It moves with you. It understands the assignment. And it's machine washable, double-hemmed for durability,

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Again, for a limited time, our listeners can get 40% off. Select Lola Blankets products with code Soul Boom at checkout. Just enter LolaBlankets.com and use code Soul Boom to get 40% off your order. After you purchase the last, where you heard about them, please support our show. Let them know that we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets. This episode is brought to you by Fetzer. You know, there's this tendency in modern life to believe that every problem has a

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every turn with confidence. The 2026 tracks. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Derek, I'm going to stick with you. based in your experience in your different areas of engagement. It's a pre-prepared question. What would the spiritual renewal of the nation look like

and what can be done to foster it? What would the spiritual renewal of the nation look like? Kind of bringing it back to this message and what can be done to foster it. You were talking about working at the grassroots. That's something that we can all do, whether it's with our church group, a neighborhood coalition on meetup

partner in our cul-de-sac, in our city parks, in our bowling leagues, our Kwanis club, or whatever it is, we can engage with people near us. We can maybe stop waiting for politicians to do everything, but we can actually take proactive charge of the transformation and the betterment of our neighborhoods. That's one thing we can do. I think that's brought up in the letter. But again, the spiritual renewal of the neighborhood, What does it look like? How do we foster it?

I think first we should acknowledge that there is a place for policy, of course. There is a place for government, right? But we don't sort of outsource all of the work towards spiritual renewal to the policymakers and those who are in charge of governance, right? In fact, that robs us of the opportunity to really find true flourishing, those of us in everyday neighborhoods, right? the person who is the security guard, the nursing home aid, the restaurant worker who lives in my neighborhood, you know, they're not going to find any fulfillment in waiting for policy changes to come in. That's not going to allow them for the opportunity for meaning. They will find meaning as they begin to contribute to the transformation of the community that they live in.

Right. So a spiritually renewed country would be one in which we have, what I think of as social justice, right? But social justice should be conceived of in terms that are not limiting, let's say. The true meaning of social justice and the work that we're doing is creating the conditions which allow for all to contribute. Everyone can contribute to the creation of the society that they want to see. What is more just than that? Oftentimes throughout the last 50 years of, let's say, social justice thinking,

we have had this concept of distributive justice, where social honor, material goods are distributed from those who have it to those who don't have it. And there's a kind of a receiving of the honors of a society. But what we actually can look beyond to is a horizon of contributive justice, where we create conditions which everyone is able to contribute to the creation of the community that they want to see. That is the true form of justice that we're looking for. And that would allow for everyone to make meaning of their life. Because paradoxically, what actually gives us the most fulfillment is doing something for someone else rather than for myself. We live in a culture that teaches us that we should have a great deal of self-care. But that's not actually the solution to our

longing for meaning. It is actually that we begin to flourish when we are able to give something to someone else. And so how do we create the conditions which allow for that form of social justice to flourish in our communities is what the Baha'i community is really trying to learn. I love that. Kenneth, a couple of Baha'is back there. We're talking about spiritual renewal, and I would float that same question of the rest of the panelists. What is spiritual renewal? How do we foster spiritual renewal for the next 250 years? What does spiritual renewal actually mean in a country where people disagree so much about everything, about the press, about the science of medical care,

about God, religion, truth, morality, history, social systems? How do you create, spiritual renewal when there is so much division at every level? I think, I mean, if I could just throw some things out here in the time we have left, I think one thing that we could do is tell different stories, right? Like the story of the 17-year-old mentoring the 11-year-old, if told differently and with care and creativity, is a really compelling story. It's not less newsworthy than the story of violence. Right? It's really not. I used to think it was. I don't think it is anymore, right? So telling different stories that give us a fuller picture of what's actually happening can help us create the world we want to live in. I think more stories that give us a sense of dignity and agency, which you write about, right, and hope.

For me, as long as they're rigorously reported and done with care, creativity, are one way so that we can vicariously live through that 17-year-old. right? Because we can't all be that 17-year-old or that 11-year-old, but we can collectively experience the joy, the hope, the grief, whatever it is through different stories. You know, it's, they're, we'll talk about transgression. The most transgressive teaching in any of our collective memories is Matthew 544. You have heard that you should love your enemies and hate, love your friends and hate your enemies, but today, I give you a new teaching, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.

Jesus in the Sermint of the Mount was not teaching that you should go agree with your enemies. He wasn't even teaching you should like your enemies because as Martin Luther King said in 1957, the like as a sentimental something. He said, you should love your enemies, notwithstanding your feelings, which is actually how you start a spiritual revolution

in a free society in which... I don't start charging you every time you say spiritual revolution. Keep going. Either that or I've got to pay you. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You're going to charge me or... Yeah, I'm trying, yeah.

So... Trademark, Rainwell's. It's 20 bucks. Sorry, I interrupted the flow. I love it. This is, and this is really the thing. I mean, we're not called to agree. I mean, how mediocre is agreement when we don't agree?

It's just completely flaccid. It's boring. You know, we're not called to the standard of coexistence or tolerance, which I just, I just, you know, if I told you to my wife and I tolerate each other, you'd say that we need counseling, you know, if I say that, you know, well, down to the company, we coexist. No. Now, the whole point is to love, notwithstanding your differences. No, across your, no, because of your differences. And the only way to do that, of course, is to present your beliefs as as a gift and not as a weapon. And that's ultimately where we've taken the wrong turn in our society

today, that we have our differences and we wield them as a cudgel as opposed to offering them as a bouquet of flowers to those with whom we actually love because of our differences. And that's something that we actually have the power to do, but only if we have the equanimity that comes from a great deal of spiritual depth in our own lives. And this, I will say, as a behavioral scientist, you can't love your enemies unless you have spiritual depth. It just can't be done. And that's ultimately, at the end of the day, you want to heal America? Don't pretend you agree with your enemies. On the contrary, take your best shot and make it an expression of your absolute love for your country and for your enemies and for your friends and offer up to the divine in a spirit of love.

I think that's the only shot that we've got. Does that have to do with e pluribus unum out of many one, kind of the one that the kind of unity and diversity? ideal that was set forth with the American experiment and that because out of many one doesn't mean everyone becoming exactly the same. I don't even think our founders who are all white Protestant males wanted everyone to be a white Protestant male. They really had a vision for a diverse garden of both opinions and religious faiths and diversity of opinions. Yeah. I agree. I agree, that's the ideal. We haven't been so good at living up to it, right, Derek?

But that's the next, well, maybe the next 250 years. We haven't been so good at living up to it, but there have always been people who have looked at that e pluribus unum model and said, I believe in that, and I'm going to work for that. And so we can follow a kind of narrative of American history in which we hold up those moments in history, just like we hold up these stories in the contemporary, that are out of the ordinary, let's say.

When we see people working across racial boundaries, class boundaries, cultural boundaries, to live out the ideal of America, I think that is the theory of American history that Baha'is are invested in, that there is something of value in what has been worked out over these last 250 years, and we can learn from that into the future.

And what we have to do is really, really take stock of what it is that allowed Harriet Tubman and Garrett Smith to work together, right, across these boundaries of experience in order to bring more and more folks across that line from the south into the north. And I would say that oftentimes what we have to hold up is the principle of unity. We have to find unity, but we have to balance it with justice. When those people were coming across, you know, through the underground railroad in the path northward, when they were escaping enslavement, they had their eyes trained upon the North Star, right? That was their guide toward freedom. In the same way, we think as Baha'is that our eyes have to be

trained on the North Star of unity. Sometimes when the swamp arises or the mountain is there, we might go east or we might go west, right, in our pursuit of justice alongside unity, but we never lose sight of the ideal, the north star of unity. And people in America have done that throughout. And what we want to learn from is how do we search out that north star of unity at all times while also maintaining a commitment to justice, which, Baha'u'llah, the prophet founder of the Baha'i faith says, justice, the purpose of justice is the appearance of unity. So we have justice so that we can seek unity.

That is the horizon to which we aspire. What is one thing you hope America outgrows in the next 250 years? One? And one thing you hope it never loses. I hope we outgrow our fascination with conflict entrepreneurs who exploit conflict. What does that mean?

Conflict entrepreneurs are people and people companies who exploit and inflame conflict for their own ends, for profit or for a sense of belonging or power, they delight in conflict. And we've unfortunately created a bunch of institutions to reward and glorify conflict entrepreneurs right now. But I don't think it will always be that way. So that would be one thing we should quit. Right.

And the press should stop putting them on the cover of magazines. And sub being them. I mean, be conflict. Yeah, I mean, every day I just wake up and I'm like, don't be a conflict entrepreneur today. And that's, we should all have this mantra. This is very easy right now, right? That's one thing that we should quit. And then one thing we should keep.

I do think, and people can disagree, I do think Americans can be very kind to people in need in a way that other places I've lived or visited, it's not part of the culture. Now, I know we can be cruel and I know all the things, but also that is a beautiful thing, like neighbors helping neighbors, and I hope we don't lose that. That's beautiful. Amen. Amen. I keep going second, so I keep saying the same thing, the person before me. But I really hope that we can outgrow polarizing identity.

I really hope we can, and because I think it's metastatically. awful that we're defining ourselves in opposition to one another. And that's not just about conflict. That's about inherently saying, my difference from you is the essence of who I am. And I hope that we can actually grow into what I think was the spirit of the founders of this country, who believed that it was a divine spirit as well to say that we would grow into a unifying story. Identity is not the same thing as story. That means we have to write that story, and that story has to be a just and good story, but that we can, could grow into a unifying story and move away from the identity that's actually ripping us apart.

That's my hope. And one thing that you hope we never lose? One thing that I hope we never lose. I hope that we never lose an abiding, overwhelming belief that God loves us and loves our country. I mean, these are just such beautiful articulations of the same things that I hope for. I hope that we can somehow grow and mature into the condition of true oneness, which is intended for humanity by divinity. And I hope that we can do that here in America without losing the glorious diversity, which characterizes the nation. In fact, it's the ability to create unity in the condition of diversity that is the highest achievement.

and it's very possible, perhaps here in America, and we have to struggle toward that ideal, I believe. Vivek, what I hope for, for my country and for the world. To me, it looks like a place where we love better, where we serve better, and we grow better. We love through our relationships with each other. We serve by helping one another, whether that's informally or by serving in organizations

or serving in our military or serving in civilian ways. the growth is also important. We need to grow interiorly, not in terms of our assets, accolades, and achievements. The most important growth is what happens inside. Are we growing in our capacity to understand one another, and our capacity for forgiveness, and our ability to find meaning in difficult times? And I'll tell you something about nature,

is nature tells us that growth is the norm, and then when we don't grow, bad things happen. So in the body, for example, when blood does not flow, when it's stagnant, it clots. When fluid does not flow when it's stagnant, it gets infected. When material does not flow through your intestine, it gets blocked, and you develop life-threatening situations like intestinal rupture. And trees, even old trees, they are still growing. Growth is part of human nature.

So that's what I want in my country, is a place where we love better. We serve better, we grow better. And all of us and all of our institutions and our government can help nurture and support how we love, how we serve, and how we grow. It doesn't mean that any one sector has a whole responsibility. But since we're here talking about government, just I think about my friend Tom Tate, who used to be the mayor of Anaheim, California. And he ran on a platform of making Anaheim kind.

and he thought he was thinking it I make it what? Kind. Kind? Kind. K-I-N-D. Shocking, I know. Anaheim? It's in Orange County.

So he thought when he decided to run on this platform of kindness that he was going to get laughed off the stage and people are going to think I have softie who doesn't really understand what government's really about. But when he galloped, got to get his speech,

announcing his candidacy, he talked about wanting to make Anaheim a kind place again. He saw all these heads nodding. And once he was elected mayor, wow. He was actually elected. He started, he went to his team and he said, I want us to ask what a kind policy would look like for the challenges that we face. They were in the midst of an opioid epidemic. And he asked his team, what would a kind policy be to help address the opioid epidemic? And they realize it would be one that recognizes that we're all fallible. And then people are struggling with addiction. They need support and treatment and not to be thrown in jail.

for an illness that they have. He asked the education system, what would a kind education system look like? An idea they came up with was, well, it would look like a place where we encourage and model for children how to demonstrate kindness, including to where people they don't know,

random unexpected acts of kindness. He asked neighborhoods, what would kindness look like in their neighborhoods? And he developed what he called a high neighbor program, which literally was just saying hi to your neighbors, but it involved going to your neighbors. neighbor's door and knocking on that door, saying hello and introducing yourself, which was very

scary for people to do. So he did it himself and model that. This is a power of what we can do when we put our minds to it. And I know that this is the time where we look around and we see a lot of despair in the world. We see the challenges in front of us and we ask ourselves, do we have what it takes to address these challenges? And the reason I feel so hopeful about this is because when I meet people across the country, what I realize is that that spark of the divine, that instinct to lean toward love, that desire to help somebody who might be struggling, to be kind to somebody in a difficult moment, that that is alive and well. People may think that they're the ones who care about that others don't, but despite all the terrible headlines that I would

see in the papers during my time in government, I routinely encounter people. who were stepping up to help their neighbors when their neighbor lost their job or got sick, who would rush toward the monkey bars when a child fell off the monkey bars at school, even if it wasn't their own kid, because that kid mattered. I saw people in the workplace when somebody died, you know, because of COVID or somebody got ill, so a kid was ill, or somebody had a real disappointment at work. They stepped up. They showed up. And so I find that in moments of despair,

what we really need to do is just to look for ways to love, to look for love that's already there. It may be hidden, may not be covered on the front pages of the paper, it may not be what goes viral online, it may not be what the social media algorithms choose to promote. But if we put those aside for a moment and look at our own communities, at our own families, we will find more love than we may realize.

is actually there. And that's where we find hope. Not necessarily in politicians or in programs or in policies, but in each other, because we all have the capacity to love, because ultimately we are all sparks of the divine. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Rain, what's your answer? I hadn't thought about it. I think that, I hope we outgrow our relationship to materialism, and putting it as the highest God, and celebrating only those that have achieved material wealth in a way, putting them on a kind of a pedestal. And I think in the doing, we might see a deeper responsibility for the social safety net to provide wonderful health care and education and environmental sacredness to our populace.

So I hope we can move in that direction. And one thing I hope we never lose is, honestly, I've traveled the world. I haven't lived in a lot of places around the world, but there is a spark and enthusiasm in America that is true. There's something in the American soul that is a kind of like ideological entrepreneurism that I hope we never lose.

Yes, we are too individualistic right now and we need to learn how to more gracefully form the collective. But that spark of individualism is something that has just inspired so much incredible arts and creativity when you think about the rich tapestry of the American artistic experience, especially over the last 100 years or so. I mean, jazz was created here.

I mean, come on. Some of the best sitcoms in the world is early... Some of the best sitcoms in world history. So there is a creative spark that is uniquely American, I'm going to say, and I hope we never lose that while at the same time learning how to have a collection. loving responsibility. Amen. Okay.

Let's give it up, folks, for our panelists, Dr. Murthy, Amanda Ripley, Arthur Brooks, Derek Smith. I want to really thank the Baha'is for this incredible message, a common endeavor. Thank you, Station, D.C., for these beautiful digs here. Thank you for PJ and the Baha'i office of public, what is it, assistance, affairs. Hit that subscribe button, like, follow, soul boom. Thank you to soul boom.

I want to thank especially my producer, Carthick, who works tirelessly behind the scenes. Where are you at? Where are you at, buddy? He does it all. He's a one-man band for all things, Soul Boom, social media, the podcast, the broadcast, the and he flew out here, put this together. And thank you for being a part of this conversation. It meant a lot, and it was beautiful.

And I actually feel some warmth in my cold dead heart. So thank you. Thank you so much. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.