Soul Boom - My Producer Stole the Show.

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

SPONSORS!👇 🧠 NOCD 👉⁠⁠ https://learn.nocd.com/SOULBOOM Rainn Wilson sits down with extraordinary executive producer, chief of staff and human being, Kartik Chainani to answer YOUR fan questions! Send in more here 👉 [e-mail] 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] Executive Produced by: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kartik Chainani⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at no frills.ca. Can I see my single, Rick? Oh, here he goes. Here he goes. Wow, Diva.

The same questions I would ask if anybody. Diva. Diva. Okay, we're good. Oh, is that work for you? Yeah. Oh, that shot works for Kartik. I think that's pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Are we rolling? Yeah, we're rolling. Okay. 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, Soul Boom fam, may I present to you, my partner in crime since the beginning. How long has it been two years now? Almost three. What? Two and a half. Two and a half. Karthik Chinani. Hello. Thank you for having me. It took two and a half years for me to figure out how to pronounce your name correct yeah sometimes you still do it the other way I like it though what's the other way you say cartes most people say cartic with an American accent that's how I introduced myself

but gothic is how my family would say it and how like like gothic yes like gothic yeah got like got like gothic but you sometimes put like the white guy spin of in the middle so it's like carthic yeah that's how a lot of people who try to get it Indian will say that's what I was trying to I was trying to get it in Indiana yeah I appreciate it almost Indian yeah you have been producing the show from the get-go. What is your job entail? Everything. We together started, we built the social media brand, which was sort of our launching into everything. We went from zero to now what? What do we got? We're 499,000 as of right now. On where? On Instagram. Yeah. We have about 300,000 on TikTok, I think almost 300,000 on YouTube as well. Amazing. Yeah. We've grown a pretty good

audience over the last three years. That's great. And what else do you do? I help curate who's going to be coming on the show, make bookings and try and do a lot of research on other people, not just guest bookings, but different ways we can collaborate in the spiritual and mental health space online, who we can start conversations with and who can also sort of create conversations on Soul Boom and through our platform. Because we don't just try to have the, we don't want Soul Boom to just be a community based around Rain Wilson. It's not the Rain Wilson show. It's not like the Rain Wilson podcast. It's soul boom. It's a home for all things having to do with spirituality, wellness, mental health, living. And idiocy. And a little idiocy, a little sprinkling of it is

idiocy. Well, I can't thank you enough for all of your hard work that you've done with us from the very beginning. And one of our recent sponsors is no CD, which does therapy specifically for OCD, which I've been struggling with last year or so. And you recently have been diagnosed with OCD. It's funny how all this stuff comes around, but yours is showing up in a very peculiar way that I imagine is a little funny on the outside, but sometimes not so funny for you to experience on the inside. Yeah. So what's what's going on with you specifically? Well, I'll say that I also, it was sort of, I kind of came to the realization that I needed a diagnosis because of this podcast and hearing you and other guests like Ed Helms was kind of the first time. I was like, that's really what he described is what's

going on in his brain around his hyper fixations and obsessions was something I've dealt with my whole life. I remember as a kid, I would, I would physically, I would like picture in my head when all the thoughts were running crazy in my head before that would cause me to not go to sleep. I would picture I had a corkboard wall, so I would picture like a hundred pushpins going into that wall, slapping every thought that I was having against it and like killing it against that wall. So it was shoved away from my brain. And I still do that sometimes. But now as an adult, I'm super.

Can I make a little adjustment, a little note on that visualization? Yeah. Because what I thought you were going to say and which would actually be a great visualization is to have a giant cork board and picture all of that flurry of thoughts, each one going up on the cork board with a, different push pin to say, I can pick those up in the morning. Like, I'm letting them go now, putting them over there. And in the morning, I'm going to take out all those pins. And all those thoughts can come fluttering back down like leaves. See, but as you're describing that, what I'm

picturing is those thoughts going up on that cork board and then me staring at that cork board all night. Yeah, just being like, now they're highlighted. I have to stare at them. Yeah. But anyways, keep going. Yeah. So now as an adult, I've started to see like the, them play out and like really interesting ways. Like I'm like not present in a conversation because I'm thinking about what needs to be fixed. And it's such a like it gets it's like such a rush when things are in order for me that I'm still thinking about it. Now, but you you haven't moved to any ERP work around this.

No. Exposure response prevention. Yeah, I don't know really what that is even. So yeah. I mean, this is something you can talk about with your therapist, although usually that you work with a kind of a specialist on it. And probably no CD could point you in the right direction. But what it is is you become exposed to the thing

that most triggers you and you don't do anything about it. So it's exposure and you prevent the response. Exposure response prevention. So if you are a germaphobe and you're terrified that this, glass might have been covered of germs and normally you would wash it 10 times before you drink, you would just either sit

with it or you'd sip from it and you wouldn't do anything. You wouldn't wash the dishes. You wouldn't do any ritual behaviors. You wouldn't even like think about it. Internal rituals you would also not do

and you would just expose yourself to the trigger for a long period of time. and you do this kind of every day. The danger signal in your head of like germs, I'm going to get sick, I'm going to die, turns just into regular fear. And fears come and go like,

oh, I'm afraid that's going to happen. And then it flits away. But when fear gets turned in your brain into the amygdala into danger, then the germs become as dangerous as if you're being chased by a bear. And it feels super, super real. I don't know how that would work with, I imagine it would be like asking Brandy to put things away in a really disheveled way and for you to just be in the kitchen, like looking at it and just being really bothered by it.

I don't have to ask her. She does it. She does it. And then go to bed with it all messy. What's an example that you do that you've been doing ERP with? So I, my stuff is all internal. So it's all internal rumination. So for me, it's like my worst ruminations about like, let's say it's a fear of the future.

It's usually fear of the future or remorse about the past. Like, oh, I should have done that different. I should have done that different. And it can kind of really loop. Yeah. And it can be stuff from like years ago. And I'm just like, I should have done that different. Like I'll write out a monologue of the like a worst case scenario from that.

let's say, I'm just making this up. Let's say I said a really embarrassing thing and I made a poor decision, insensitive decision with a friend, a writer on the office, let's say. And then I would write out the worst case scenario. Like this person thinks about it. They've hated me ever since. They'll never speak to me again. They're going to tell everyone else in the office what a douchebag I am.

No one's going to talk to me. I'm not going to get work from it. Like just all the triggering things, worst case scenario triggering things I could put down in a document. And then I read that over and over again for half an hour. Oh my God. Without doing anything about it. I just feel the discomfort of it and just read this worst case scenario. It can be about stuff in the past or stuff in the future.

Yeah, but isn't it maybe easier to do it with stuff in the past? Because you do know there's nothing you could do now about it, right? Would it work with something that you... Yeah, but stuff in the future, like, you know, stuff like stuff, with my son or something like that. Like it's not in my control. There's nothing that I can really, there's so little that's in my actual control.

OCD wants certainty and it wants the illusion of control. Yeah. That's what I've really noticed about it is it's just like such a feeling of control for me. That's why I like everybody goes to sleep now. I get to do what is needed for the house. But that's the ritual of rearranging gives you that satisfying feeling.

Yeah. But then it's gone the next day. So you have to redo the ritual. Yeah. So that's the response is the ritual. So exposing yourself to it without doing anything about it so that you can have that control. Yeah. All right.

Well, I hope you get some help with that. Thanks. I hope I get help. And I hope Brandy doesn't watch this episode. She's watching her comedy videos. She's watching Trixie. You've probably heard me say this before, but it wasn't until age 59 that my OCD was diagnosed. For years, I didn't know what to make of those endless loops and mental spirals.

I mean, maybe you know what I'm talking about, ruminating thoughts, whether fear, guilt, shame, whatever that keep going round and round in your head like a shoe in the dryer. For millions of people, that's not just anxiety, that's OCD, and many of them have no idea. OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP exposure and response prevention therapy. It's proven to be the most effective treatment. NoCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. Licensed therapists specialize in ERP therapy in live face-to-face virtual sessions with support between sessions, so you're never facing OCD alone.

If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, no CD can. and help book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com. I'm neuroscientist and actress Myambialic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. On our podcast, Myambialic's Breakdown, we explore the biggest questions about consciousness, quantum physics, healing, and what it means to be human. Featuring conversations with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michiukaku, and other leading scientists and experts, our podcast is where science and spirituality meet.

Listen to new episodes of Myambiolics Breakdown every week. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch full video episodes of Myambiolix breakdown at YouTube.com slash myambiolic. Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low, no frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at no frills.ca. We got some questions sent in from Solbomb viewers.

We haven't done this before, but we're going to get. give it a shot. And I just want to say from the outset, folks, like, I'm not a guru. What do I know? I'm a sitcom actor. I'm an author. I'm a dude with a podcast. Like every other person in Hollywood, I have a podcast. There's absolutely nothing special about me whatsoever. I am no way authenticated to give advice. And I don't want this to be advice. I just want to hear what people are going through and we can just discuss it a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we got a bunch of questions.

Thank you to everyone who sent one in. We got them from Instagram. And if people want to send other ones in or they want to send in a voice message or a video message, where do they send that? Yeah, send it to confessional at soulboom.com. It'll be wherever. Or you can DM us on Instagram or TikTok, but best bet is to send it to confessional at soulboom.com. Great. So, yeah, let's start.

We've got a bunch of good ones. This is from Eva. Hello, my name is Eva, and I have a question about grief. Do you think grief can permanently change who you are? And if it does, how do you find peace with becoming someone different? Two years ago, I lost my amazing mom to Frontoreau temporal dementia and progressive supranuclear palsy. For years, we knew something was wrong, but doctors didn't give us a definitive diagnosis. By the time we finally had answers, she was already in the late stages of the disease. I helped my dad take care of her and watched her mind and body gradually. fail her. It felt like we were losing little pieces of her over time and then all at once when she developed aspiration pneumonia that progressed to sepsis. Since she died, I've leaned on my faith, my family, my friends, and therapy. I do all the things people say are supposed to help,

but I still feel as though grief has fundamentally changed me. Sometimes it feels like the person I was before my mom died doesn't exist anymore. How do you reconcile that? Is healing about finding the person you used to be or learning to embrace the person grief has made you? Eva Ambrow. That's a smart question. Yeah. There's a lot going on there and I want to say that I'm very sorry to Eva and on what she went through with her mom. That sounds really horrific.

I can't even imagine. You know, I've gone through some grief losing some friends. It was a period of time early on in COVID when my dad died and my aunt died and two of my closest friends died all in about a span of about a year and a half. And I do think that grief changes people. But that doesn't mean that we have to be a victim to the grief that we experience. Now, I'm not talking about like concentration camp victims, you know, or genocide victims or something like that or war victims.

Who knows what families in Gaza are going through having lost 70,000,000 people there. or what is that kind of grief do I certainly in no way can speak to that. But just from a personal standpoint, from my personal experience, it does change things. You know, there's a sadness in the heart that never quite goes away. There's a deeper wisdom. There's an understanding of the fragility of life, the frailty of the human condition. And that's okay. And that's good.

That's part of wisdom. That's part of understanding. And that happens when it happens. Sometimes people are 12 years old and family members die and they gain this experience. And sometimes they have to wait till their mid-50s to have it happen like it did with me. But I think that what kind of change are we talking about? Like does the grief of that experience then eliminate joy from your life? Then that's a problem.

That's a kind of a change one wouldn't want to see. Does the grief of the loss temper the way you see the world and go about the world with a greater kind of compassion and wisdom and an access to sadness? Yeah, that that is that's a good kind of change. That is a change that is along the path of greater wisdom, I think. We both have lost our dads. Yeah. How did that change you? Well, you were younger and I want to hear how that changed you first.

Yeah, my dad died when I was 24 and I'd say it was probably the, I mean, yeah, the most significant change in my life, I would say, happened then. I don't really know if I could pin it down though, but it definitely changed me for the worse for a while. Like, I think, and it still has this effect in my brain where I have like a fear that people are going to die or just disappear one day now that I didn't. Mostly I have like a fear of my own mortality now because of my dad. sudden death. But I mean, I guess it made me value people more. Now I can see that it's made me understand that people are not going to be here forever. So you should take appreciation in them. But for the first, it's coming up on actually nine years and two days. In two days, it'll be nine years. But yeah, like it just hits you at different times. So I feel like my, it changes me

in different times. It'll change my mood for the day sometimes whenever grief hits me. But overall i don't know i can't pinpoint the positive that it's had i just know the fear and sadness it leaves in me about other people you know so it's it's sort of changed to the way that i connect with people and so yeah yeah thank you for sharing that i think for me you know i was in my mid-fifties i always tell the story i was on neil brennan's podcast and he came on our podcast and he talked about uh i talked about the fact that all these people i had just lost and he talked he said sniper's alley i was like what's that he's like sniper's alley it's like in the bosnian war you know there was that alley in serajevo and there was a there was a sniper always had his and people had to try

and jump across the alley and they'd get shot at from the sniper and it was dodging the bullets of the snipers and um and people would get picked off a lot you know and people died in sniper's alley And that's what happens when you're in your 50s is sniper's alley. So I mean, for me, it was devastating. My dad, my mom, it took off when I was really young and my dad was the only constant in my life. So he was there from the day I was born until the day he passed away in 2020. And it was devastating and then losing these other friends. But what I hope that it gave me is a greater kind of vision and wisdom about

the reality of life in the world. I also have a very strong belief in the afterlife. So for me, I know my father is there, is there, is with me, is reachable. Even my other friends, I've communed with people that pass on. I'm kind of an airy, fairy hippie in that way. Like, I truly know that to be true. And that's part of, that's part of who I am. What about you? Do you ever commune with your father?

I, that's what I was going to ask you. Or sensed your father? Yes. So that's what I was going to ask you. What does that look like for you? Because I have, I don't know what my, I know, I do feel him here. And I feel that people are always kind of around. I can, I can definitely feel his presence sometimes where I'm like, you are doing that.

There's no way that that just happened by chance. And I do feel him like late at night when I do have anxiety and things. I can feel him like in my brain and in my heart kind of being there with me. but when you say commune, I don't ever feel like I'm hearing something from him. Like, I don't feel... Do you ever speak to him? I speak to him. Or say, help me with this?

Yeah. So I speak to him the same way that I speak to God, which is just like out of fear and like, I guess, desperation of like, please help me. It's the same way that I'll like, if I'm really in an emotional state or... Do you ever feel his help? No. I don't know. I don't know what I feel just...

I feel his prayer. presence when I'm feeling low, which I suppose is help. It's a comfort. But I don't know if I feel anything sort of more than that. I don't know. I mean, I feel him there. I just, I don't, I never really notice the, like I said, I never noticed the positives of what's happened. So I'm sure he has benefited me. But what about you? Has your dad helped you? Has he guided you? Yeah. I, I specifically like, rain, tick a left. No, I haven't heard that from my dad. But, uh, I have felt his love and support and maybe prayers from the other side, prayers for me to be guided in the right direction. Yeah. Let's get to the next one. Sure. Mildly existential question. Hi,

Soul Boom Team. One question I'd love to hear discussed is, how do you grieve the years that mental illness took from you without letting grief define the rest of your life? I'm asking because as someone who struggled with severe depression many years ago and survived a suicide attempt, I realize that recovery isn't just about getting better. It's also about making peace with what was lost along the way. And I suspect a lot of people carry that grief quietly. I don't think we talk about that aspect of healing enough. Thank you for all you do.

Soul Boom team, Chapin. So a lot of these questions center on grief, right? Different kinds of grief. Not all no. I think these are the only two. Okay. All right. Yeah.

I mean, so, yeah. I mean, I struggled with addiction for a lot of years, a lot of drug and alcohol stuff. but I've, you know, you name it, you know, gambling, you know, shopping, porn, whatever, like, can take me out of myself, overeating and try and kind of like numb, squelch escape really uncomfortable feelings and anxiety. I have tried it. And, yeah, did I waste and lose a lot of time? and relationships from that, absolutely. And that's part of the grief.

I remember a 12-step saying, like, we don't want to return to the past, nor do we want to shut the door on it. And I really like that phrase. Like, we want to learn from it. We don't want to go back there, but we don't want to shut the door on it from what it can potentially teach us.

So again, I think there's healthy grief. You know, I think there's like, wow, I really, I think, healthy remorse is a part of the human condition while i really fucked up i really did some shitty things there and how do we get to self-forgiveness and uh and acceptance um of and that's that's what's hard for me um is a bit of a perfectionist and feel like i have to be you know when i was a kid i got loved by doing the right things and being the good boy so i getting good great great grades and getting accolades was how I got love and attention.

I didn't just get love and attention for just being that my family was too dysfunctional to do that. So always in my life, it's like I need to achieve, accomplish and do in order to get, I hope, people to like me more. And it's taken until my 40s or 50s to kind of like try and just accept love and accept myself for who I am, flaws and all. Yeah. It's also tough to say that you lost that time because, I mean, for me, it's a also like my, when my dad died, there was definitely like a five, six year period where I was

in the lowest time of my life and I was living in my car and things like that. Only for a year. But those times. Only for a year. Only for a year. But that time I do remember. Where did you brush your teeth? Did you open the car door and have like a jug of water and actually do it out out the car door like that? I always go to the like YMCA or the or the gym, the 24 hour fitness. I would keep a jug of water in the car so that I could always brush my teeth and spit it out. But my daily was Gold's gym in the morning.

It was like a fancy gym. You could have gone to the 24 hour fitness. It's a lot cheaper. Yeah, I should have. Yeah, that's probably smarter. Sleeping in your car and going to like the most expensive gym in L.A. Only in L.A. Only in L.A.

But what about peeing to? Did you have a pee jug in the car? No. I would have to, that's why you had to be strategic about where you park so that you could get out and, but you could like keep a water jug and like, and then pee in it and then the morning, like, seal it in the morning, like dump it out in the gutter or something. I don't want to sleep next to a jug of pee. I was living in my car, but I'm not a Neanderthal.

But during that time, I remember that caused a lot of anxiety for me was like I'm wasting my life, like living in this car and just being in despair. But now, I don't have any regrets about that time because it's like if I didn't go through those things, I don't think I'd be here talking to you now. And I don't know how you can look at your life, anyone, and not realize, well, you wouldn't be here right now if those things didn't happen. You know, it's like it's a butterfly effect, right? So I think you have to go through the things that happened to you. And maybe, you know, for me growing up where I only got attention and affection through accolades and accomplishment, maybe that helped me be successful as an actor.

Yeah, exactly. And forced me to kind of do the next thing and make the next move and try and do whatever I could to move my career forward, which made me miserable for a lot of years. But, you know, I did have and do have a successful acting career. Yeah. And a lot of comics say that too. It's like they have fucked up childhoods and that's why they have a successful career.

Would they rather have not had a fucked up childhood? and, you know, catch 22. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Hey, everybody, make sure to click subscribe. It's right over here somewhere. Please, pretty please. It would help us at Soul Boom so much.

Click subscribe. What's next? Okay. Does an abandonment wound ever fully disappear? Hi, Rayne, thank you for your incredible work on Soul Boom. I deeply respect your journey and look up to the person who you are today. My father abandoned me when I was five. I cannot remember his face, only his name on my ID.

Now at 22, I'm experiencing a new shift. My mom has a boyfriend and has distanced herself, stepping out of my life, out of the blue, though I would sincerely wish her happiness. Despite this, I've chosen to forgive them. I'm actively working on self-love and serving others rather than searching for validation outside myself. My question is, when you look back at your younger self,

does a deep wound like abandonment ever fully disappear, or is it something that stays with us but eventually becomes something we can look back on with peace and even a smile? With gratitude, Aisha. Wow, Aisha, I'm really sorry about that. And one thing I learned in therapy early on is like the word abandonment is a heavy word. Like adults can't be abandoned. So if you're 22 and your girlfriend leaves you or you're 25 and your husband leaves you or something like that, you haven't been abandoned.

Abandonment can only come to helpless children. So underage equals abandonment. Otherwise, I mean, you can be neglected or you. you could be left, but true abandonment is the child state. And that happened to her when she was five. So my mom left when I was one and a half, two years old. And I didn't really have very much of a relationship with her until I was about 13 or 14. And I don't know how that affected me.

I mean, I know it did. I'm sure it did. And my predilection for, you know, addiction and anxiety and depression and whatnot, I'm sure came for a lot from you know you know sometimes i feel like a motherless child says you know billy holiday in the in the famous song and uh you know there was a term i heard recently about anxiety which we really resonated with me which is hypervigilance and i think when you're abandoned you get wired for kind of a hypervigilance like is someone going to leave am i okay what is something going to get shipped. Is the rug going to get pulled out at some moment? And that a lot of

anxiety comes from childhood trauma that has to do with and the hypervigilance. So I do think that stuff like hypervigilance gets wired into our nervous system is for Aisha. And it'll probably be there to some extent for the rest of your life, for the rest of our lives. But again, like you talked about living in your car like this can be a learning opportunity you know what is that phrase oh a great another fucking growth opportunity but the but that's that's what it is you know um and it's an opportunity to heal that wound and to know like hey guess what i didn't abandon my son yeah so can I close the loop in the family that I choose to create? But do you think that that maybe also was like the birth of why you felt you needed to earn

people's love like your dad and your stepmom was because you were abandoned by your mom so you didn't feel like you got natural, you didn't get love at birth so you had to earn it? I think 100% that's true. Yeah, I think 100% that's true. And I think that all of this stuff that happens to us. I had a lot of, I've talked about it a ton, but a lot of misery and disconnection in my 20s that started me on a spiritual journey. So then I got to kind of really think about God and the meaning of life and souls and being a human being and why we're here and spent decades really thinking about big questions. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for whatever impetus led me to kind of read more and excavate more. But, you know, would I have

traded it all in for a happy childhood and happy adolescence? And maybe. But we get the hand that we're dealt. That's part of the human experience. That's interesting you like defining abandonment only being for for children. So then did that not that feeling carry on like in your your intimate relationships. Did you not have a fear of abandonment from holiday at any point? Sure. Yeah. You know, that's been something for me to work through. I think if you have fear of abandonment in a relationship, a primary relationship, like we're married, it can be a barrier to intimacy because you can be intimate to a point, but then I'm going to have my hand here because I am afraid that you're going to leave. So to kind of like let that hand.

down and room he talks about like there's no need to seek for love but just to remove the barriers inside of you that keep you from love it's been a process of 30 years of removing and lifting barriers that i've had internally to loving my wife more more fully i've got work to do yeah okay um this is from instagram this is chris from instagram i was raised Catholic in South Louisiana, and after going to Catholic school, I started to question a lot of the beliefs I was taught, thanks to a college religion class I took. As I've gotten older, I believe that I am not agnostic or atheist, but rather a secular humanist. For the last year, my 15-year-old son has been attending the local Baptist church with a group of his friends. It's a good place that keeps him involved. However, he has started following some religious, quote-unquote, influencers, insert vomit noise,

that have started to change some of his views. Last week he told me I was going to hell because I didn't believe in God at 15 and all he would say is that it's in the Bible I don't shit on other people's religions, but how did we give him enough space to explore without us stepping in when social media bullshit starts to change his mindset? Boy, that's a tough one. Yikes. Yeah. Yeah. The hell thing. I recently met some born-again Christians and they were trying to convert me and save me from going to hell because of them.

a member of the Baha'i faith. And Baha'is believe in Jesus and love Jesus and believe that. Jesus is the son of God and God is the Father. So, you know, there's great alignment, but it's pretty rigid who is and isn't going to hell. And I don't think Christianity has anything to do with hell beliefs. You know, there's a handful of, you know, if there's 127 writings about love and there's four about hell, we've spent the majority of the last couple hundred years talking about

hell and not enough about love. But there's so many different ways to interpret that. I mean, I think, frankly, I think a Bible study is the way to do it where they start unpacking the sayings that talk about hell and how to interpret them. Because, you know, one of the things is that Jesus never used. The word hell comes from the Latin translation. I think it actually has like Norse roots to that actual word. But Gahena was the word that was mostly used in the ancient Greek.

And Gahena was a place outside of Jerusalem where they burned garbage. It was like a garbage dump. Like, do you want to go to a garbage dump with a lot of burning garbage? Like, no, I don't want to be there. It's like, well, that's what it's like

if you don't believe. It's not necessarily like an underground realm run by a guy with red skin and a pitchfork and eternal hellfire damnation. There's some references to that. but Jesus always talks about speaking in parables.

He talks about that through the entire Bible. And he talks about like an understanding of Bible teachings and prophecy through a lens of interpretation that goes deeper. There's surface level and there's deeper interpretation. So the fact that that particular telescope isn't used on writings about hell for certain denominations is preposterous. It's ludicrous. And to think of like an all loving God that's talked about dozens of times, you know, creating most people so that he can torture them for all eternity. Like what kind of sicko, you know, malevolent asshole is that? Yeah. So that pisses me off,

but that is not necessarily Christianity. And maybe the two of them can find a church that rejects a vision of hell as damnation and accepts the idea of hell as separation from, you know, going along with that, the word sin in the original Greek was Hamartia, which means to miss the mark. So sin was not a word. Again, that's the King James Latin translation from the Latin. how Martia is at archery term to miss the marks. When sin was referred to in the Bible,

it was always like missing the mark, missing the mark, fucking up, making mistakes. It's not like a black mark burned into your soul because Adam, you know, Adam said, fuck you to God and tasted at the apple. And then for all eternity, we have like, we're branded on our hearts and our soul, with the word sinner on it.

Again, what kind of malevolent dictator would do that to his creation? Yeah. So we all miss the mark. I've missed the mark. You've missed the mark. You've missed the mark. It's a different. So there's just a lot of different ways to read the Bible.

That was a long-winded way of saying that. But what should he do about his 15-year-old on social media seeing these sort of surface-level interpretations of hell? Yeah, embrace it. Like, great, let's watch it. Oh, here's what he says. Let's look for some other videos and some other contrasting news. Let's look up the quotes in the Bible. Let's talk about them.

Show him soul boom content. And, oh, he's the producer. Look at you. Okay. Next, this is also from Instagram. This is Brian. Question for the show. Hello.

My name is Brian from North Carolina, and I currently work in the court system as a counselor for delinquent juveniles. What is your take on why the youth in today's era is increasingly becoming easily bored of the typical teenage lifestyle. How can exposure to media be adjusted to positively influence the youth to enjoy their teenage years rather than find it quite boring and uninteresting?

Huge fan, Ray, it was a pleasure meeting you at GalaxyConrally. Yeah, you know, we live in a world of distraction and people don't like boredom. We're wired to not like boredom. Arthur Brooks talks about this in his new book, the meaning of your life, which I highly recommend. And we'll do anything to escape boredom.

And guess what? We've invented boredom escaping devices. And I think that part of being a teenager in the 70s and 80s, for me, I was in the 80s was just being bored together. You're just down in the basement. and the only thing to do is listen to a Led Zeppelin album and throw darts at the wall and shoot the shit and you learn how to be social. I feel like a grumpy old man talking about these devices, but I think even, you know,

Gen Zs and Gen Alpha knows the toxicity of these boredom escaping devices. So what's the answer? I don't know. It's we've got to be better parents. Parents need to educate themselves and create spaces. Like schools where there should not be any phones in schools all the way through high school. There should not be phones, especially during lunch. Lunch is not a time to be able to be on the phone.

Lunch, you need to sit at a lunch table and be bored and eat your tuna sandwich and shoot the shit with people and get your phones. But there need to be vacations, dinners, places, weekends, a Sunday, a family day, a family hour, a game night that are device free. and kind of boredom rich yeah yeah totally we we have a like policy at our house like when i get home from work i leave my phone in the kitchen so that when we're in the family room doing stuff there's no distractions because we also have like such a feeling of guilt when our daughter's guy will see us looking at our phone when she's trying to get our attention or something so we're always like really consciously like okay we can't let her see that we have it so we try to not have it around at all so she doesn't see that something else is taking up our attention over her.

Now I feel bad for texting you at 10 at 9. Like, where's that video, car tick? No, I have you on. Do Not Distrib. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. Next up, this is from TikTok. They subjected not looking for God, just some honesty.

Hi, Rain. I just recently discovered Soul Boom when your episode with Alex O'Connor came up on my YouTube feed. And I've been binging episodes while I'm taking my dog on our evening stroll. That Alex episode really stuck with me because you guys were talking about how certainty doesn't have to be the goal in your journey with spirituality. I realized I've spent the last five years trying to replace one certainty with another. I grew up evangelical. At certain points in the year, I would be at church three times a week. Christian school, purity, culture, youth group, the whole thing.

When I was 24, my younger sister came out as gay. Watching the people who taught me about love suddenly becomes so cruel broke something in me. Now I'm 31 and I don't really know what I believe anymore. Here's the weird part. I don't actually miss Christianity. I miss certainty. I miss feeling like someone knew what was happening. Sometimes I wonder if I'm searching for God or just trying to recreate the comfort of thinking somebody has all the answers. How did you know when your faith became your own instead of something you inherited? And is doubt actually a part of faith, or is that just something people say to make themselves feel better? Wow, that's a deep, wonderful question. This person

needs to write a book about their journey. What's their name? They didn't put a name. No name. No, they were honest. Yeah, that's a great question. I think starting at the end first, I think that doubt is a part of faith. And I think that faith is this is riding waves. And there's times when faith feels like this is amazing and I feel connected and I have reason and purpose and everything makes sense.

And then the wave goes down like, really? Like, this is bullshit. And am I sure? And what the hell am I? doing and that can last months it can last years you know and uh i think that's part of the journey i don't think that faith is like a boulder you know i think it's like it's like riding waves but yeah certainty is a is a is a is a is a tough one humans like certainty uh we talked about it certainty in terms of ocd and anxiety you know anxiety loves uncertainty and guess

what folks everything is uncertain what happens when we die is uncertain and what happens while we're alive is uncertain when we're going to die when someone else is going to get sick pain and change is just a part of life and uncertainty is part of life so um i think the whatever the spiritual path i think it's important to just embrace a path of uncertainty that's good uh this is from Brianna on TikTok. Nostalgamation for God. Hi, Rayn, I've been subscribed to Soul Boom ever since the Britt Hartley episode. I grew up Mormon and have been following her no-nonsense spirituality page after I got into a deep dive on Mormon deconstruction after I left school. Six years after leaving, I didn't know if I missed it. My whole family is still very tied to the church, and I see

friends from there still socially, but I must admit that it sometimes feels like my connection to all those people in my lives has lessened. Not because I want it to, but because I feel they think less of me now for not having faith in their ideology. How can I replicate that sense of community that church gave me, but without it having to be all like-minded people of the same fate? Shouldn't communities be a mix of different people? I'd love to have that same connection I had with my Mormon community into a new community

that also includes my atheist friends, my gay ones, black ones, whatever. I want us all to feel connected without having to think the same way. Is this type of thing possible? Looking at the state of the world right now, it doesn't seem like a community is capable of functioning if we're not all like-minded. If you don't agree with the powers that be, you become the enemy and ostracized by your own peers.

How do we stay connected but with different opinions? That's great. And I mean, really, what's their name? Brianna. So Brianna really is talking about church, you know, a different kind of church. And some people find a church like that. at a Dungeons and Dragons game.

Some people find it at a meditation group or a yoga class. Some people find it on meetup.org in a hiking group. But this is something that Brianna can create. You can literally start at the grassroots and meet at a park, put an ad in the paper. And everyone likes meditation, even atheists, believe it or not, Gartik, like meditation. But you can read from different holy writings, you can celebrate nature, you can do service together. But this by all means, you know, I always say that we throw,

have we thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater by jettisoning religion like Brianna did with Mormonism, maybe for very good reasons, have you also thrown out connection and community? And this is a big modern quandary. How do we create and keep community going when we're not going to the church of our parents and our grandparents? Yeah. My wife actually just, she had that same feeling of like not having a sense of community.

She's a mom. She's got two kids. She's home all the time and doesn't really talk to adults very much. And she wanted to do something about that. So she made a TikTok saying I'm an L.A. Valley mom and I want to start reading more. So I'm going to start a book club. is anyone interested in joining me? She had like 80 people reach out to her.

And she did the first one in person at a park last week. And she just came home like on a high. There was like 30 people that came. See, a book club is a great way to do that. Because then you can read books like Siddhartha by Herman Hess. It was a beautiful spiritual text. And you can do the Soul Boom Workbook. You got any of those around?

I don't think we do. No, but I made her tell them that that's on the queue. Okay. Because the Soul Boom Workbook was created for just this kind of thing for like people to get together to explore spirituality, whether you're a born again Christian, whether you're an atheist, something in between, you can do the soul boom workbook and have a deeper understanding of your own spiritual journey by doing it with a diverse group of folks. That was one of the reasons that we created it. Yeah. Insert graphic of soul boom workbook right here. Thank you. There'll be a lower third

with the link. Bears beats obsessive compulsive disorder. I ran first. First off, thank you for being so open about your experience with OCD. I've honestly never heard someone describe it the way you did. Getting stuck in obsessive thought loops and refusing to let something go is pretty much my personality. It made me realize that this is actually not a normal way for my brain to work. I've never been diagnosed and I don't want to armchair diagnose myself because I know that, like you said, there's a lot more to it than just overthinking and I don't want to trivialize the experience of anyone who has actually been diagnosed.

but I definitely have an obsessive mind to a point where it keeps me distracted and borderline unfunctioning sometimes. If I send a text that feels slightly off, I'll replay it for hours, wondering if I sounded weird, if I should go in and edit it. If someone seems a little quieter than usual, my brain immediately starts building a story that I must have done something wrong. I'll research a random health symptom for three hours until I'm convinced I have a rare disease, only to laugh at myself the next day. Sometimes I know my thoughts don't make logical sense, but they still feel true enough that I can't move on. The exhausting part isn't even the thoughts. It's just the feeling that I can never convince my brain that it's okay to let it go. I don't have health insurance, so therapy and seeing a psychiatrist just aren't realistic options for me right now.

So I guess my question is, even if someone doesn't know whether they have actual OCD, what are some things you've learned through therapy that have helped you deal with an obsessive mind? Are there any practices, mindset shifts, or tools that someone could start using today to stop feeding those mental loops? Thanks for creating a space where conversations like this can happen. Just hearing you describe your experience makes me feel a little less alone. Wow, it's quite an essay. And thank you very much for writing in. And yeah, I mean, one of our sponsors in OCD is a good place to start.

But it sounds like if that person isn't in full-blown kind of like OCD mode, like they're set up to experience it. So it's super good to learn more. about it. There's a great YouTube channel called OCD and Anxiety. I forget the Nathan Peterson, I think is his name. He's got great episodes

about it. That's why YouTube can be such a great resource. I mean, you can learn so much. But it's a natural human tendency where social creatures to have a certain measure of anxiety of like, am I accepted or am I going to get thrown out of the flock? Because if we were thrown out of the flock, we would die. So it's a natural tendency to have a certain measure of anxiety to want to fit in with a friend group. And like, did I send that text

right? Did I do this thing right? Do my friends still like me? Am I still accepted? Am I still loved? That's a natural human quality. But when it goes too far and starts to own you and dominate your life and dominate your thinking where it gets in the way of you living your life, that can be something that really needs looking at. Yeah. That was all of them. Cool. That was great.

Send us more. We'll do this again. And where did they send them? Confessional at soulboom.com. Confessional at soulboom.com. Thank you soul boom fam for tuning in to this special episode, strange episode. We've never done this before. We wanted to give it a try.

Why the hell not? We'll see how it goes. Yeah. Thanks, Karthik, for being a great producer and business partner. And thanks for compiling these and making the show what it is. Thanks, Frank. Thanks for having me on. Love being here.

Okay. Sweet. 55 minutes. Cut. Soul Boom is also on Spotify video. If you've got Spotify premium, you can enjoy it free of Spotify ads. If you don't, you'll get even less ads if you hit subscribe to Soul Boom. Also enjoy on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, or wherever else you get your stupid podcast.

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