Soul Boom - Spiritual Tools That ACTUALLY Work (w/ Shabnam Mogharabi)

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Shabnam Mogharabi (co-author of the Soul Boom Workbook: Spiritual Tools for Modern Living, co-founder of SoulPancake) joins Rainn to unpack their new book and explore awe, beauty, and gratitude, through practical “tools for turbulent times” that scale from the self to community. Shabnam also shares her vulnerable story about suffering, intuition, and why noticing” small needs can spark real change. Soul Boom Workbook (Available NOW!) 👉 ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/soulboomworkbook⁠⁠ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Superpower (Code: TAKE20 for $20 off!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://superpower.com Grow Therapy 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://growtherapy.co/SOULBOOM Nutrafol (Code: SOULBOOM for $10 off!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nutrafol.com Quince 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://quince.com/SOULBOOM Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you say to people who would say that you're just being naive? You don't have to be Mother Teresa. You don't have to be Gandhi. You don't have to be solving all of the world's problems and also curing cancer. Like you can just notice that your neighbors need their lawn mode. Less than a third of people say, yeah, other people can be trusted. Wow. The algorithm's reward.

Oh my God, I'm afraid. Oh, my God. You sucks. Could this be the catalyst that inspires an actual spiritual revolution? 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. Shabnam, welcome to Soul Boom. Hi, it's so great to have you here. Thanks for having me. This is crazy. How did you get booked on this show? I don't know.

Some weird guy with a weird name asked me to do it. That would be me. and the reason, ladies and gentlemen, is because Shabnam and I over the last year have worked very hard on the Soul Boom workbook. And what an incredible process it was. This is a creative journal. It's interactive. It's filled with prompts, writing exercises, doodles, quotes, inspiring quotes, mini essays, all about, the life of the soul. We talk about God and the notorious GOD. We talk about beauty, nature,

and art, meditation, sacred spaces, finding faith, death, and dying, tests and difficulties. All of the big metaphysical, spiritual questions we tackle with a lot of, like, beautiful activities and writing and all sorts of razzle-dazzle. We were really inspired by the artist's way book, we're both a fan of and wanted to bring something like that to spirituality. And in some ways, it reminds me a little bit of the other book that we did. We've done two together now. Which is what? The Soul pancake book, Soul pancake chew on Life's Big Questions.

And that was a while ago. It was like 15 years ago. Yeah, that was 15 years ago. It's a long time ago. So in some ways, this book is similar. This is like a cousin to the Soul Pancake book. What was the Soul Pancake 2.0? What was the Soul pancake?

book about, first of all. I mean, SoulPancake, Chew on Life's Big Questions was just about that. It was how do we take all of the big questions that we as human beings grapple with and break it down for young people to dig into through thinking about the questions, through art activities, through essays, through quotes, and just get them to open their minds to deeper thought and thinking and all the things that connect us as human beings. And it was a New York Times bestseller. It was a New York Times bestseller. It definitely dealt with. spirituality, but it wasn't all about spiritual. No, we only had like one section that was really about kind of spirituality in that book. There was more about like, you know, art and, you know, relationships

and introspection. And it was more about kind of the art of being human. Yeah. So for those who don't know, SoulPancake was a digital media company. At first, it was a website. That's how Shabnum and I started working together. And we had an incredible 10 year, 12 year run with Soul Pancake. Yeah. It was a good solid decade, a little bit longer. 3,000 pieces of content over a billion video views. We ended up selling the company to participant media, working with them on it for a while. And now it is kind of like, it's not shuttered necessarily, but it's. No, it kind of, it's a moment in internet history that's been preserved.

Yeah. And a lot of people were greatly inspired and influenced by it. And the videos still get a ton of traction. We still get notes from teachers and students who are like, oh my God, this video changed my life. I mean, to this day, people love that content. Kid president, have a little faith. My last days.

So many of our kind of viral video hits in the early days of YouTube. Content for a younger generation. Yeah, content for a younger generation. But to make spiritual philosophical ideas relevant for younger audiences. And they're, you know, back before the Industrial Revolution, it was philosophers. It was Aristotle, Plato, that were the thinkers and shapers of society. And we kind of threw that out and said, okay, now it's, you know, celebrities. and Fortune 500 CEOs that shape kind of what is important in the world and politicians

and not people who think and reflect on what it means to be a human. And so I wrote this whole thesis about how we need to elevate those voices in media and what that might look like and, you know, put that away. And then in 2008, I was in Washington, D.C. working and I heard you on a podcast. You did a podcast interview. You were on the office at the time. And I hadn't watched the show. Sorry.

I hadn't watched the show. You are forgiven. Don't worry. I've since watched it. I've since watched it. But at the time, I hadn't watched it. And you just came on this NPR interview and you were talking about a new, you know, missions company you're about to launch about spiritual ideas and making them relevant again. And I, and I literally had this visceral driving down Connecticut Boulevard. Oh, my God, Rain Wilson stole my idea. Of course you went to stole my idea as opposed to like, oh, wonderful. He's trying to do. Water. No, no. No, I was like, this actor stole my idea. Yeah, no. Yeah, had a visceral kind of reaction to it while I'm driving. And then kind of put it in the back of my head and like didn't even think about it. And then we met this wonderful little kid, kid president. You can tell us about that chapter. Yeah. So we met a lovely little boy named Robbie Novak and his brother-in-law, Brad Montague.

and Brad and Robbie were making little videos for their local university in Tennessee. And we just happened to have two people from Tennessee on our staff who saw this video and we're like, we love this kid. And we reached out and said, we love your videos. Come make more of them on SoulPankake. And Brad was like, yeah, no, I think I'm done. I just made those little university videos. But because we had our Tennessee guys, they kind of bonded and we came over.

They came over. And he was lightning in a bottle. He was pure joy and just kind of exploded onto the internet with these crazy in-your-face messages of just dance. And it's okay. Human beings are awesome and love. And it was really Brad's message. But it was through this amazing, beautiful little boy who also had a bunch of health challenges. And so it was just a story of resilience.

That's one thing that always got me is that Robbie Novak had a brittle bone disease and had broken 50 or 60 bones over the course of his life. and he was making videos as kid president about joy and finding hope and purpose. And there wasn't really any other little kids who had suffered as much as he had and felt as much pain as he had undergone. And I think people took that to heart. They were just like, wow, if he can have that much joy despite the suffering, so should I. And it really struck a chord with people. That was our first viral hit. The pep talk was kind of our first viral hit.

And the very first weekend, it got like 30 million views. We woke up to boom, boo, boo, boo, boo, and we were like, oh, my God, what's happening? And tons of inbound, I mean, the Today Show, you know, the White House, like so many emails coming in. Yeah, he ended up meeting with Obama. He met with Beyonce. He met Beyonce. He kissed Beyonce. He met President Obama.

He interviewed Tom Hanks. I mean, he did all sorts of crazy things. He went to the White House press correspondence dinner. And now he's 22 years old and, you know, live in his college life. And, yeah, it's kind of crazy that that was our first kind of viral hit. And then from there, we had My Last Days, which was kind of a longer documentary series. And we were doing 25-minute videos when no one was doing 25-minute videos. About death.

About death. And getting millions of views. And with an unknown young filmmaker named Justin Baldoni at the time. A little more well-known now. But, yeah. And he. that was our second big viral hit. And who would have thought that 25-minute videos about people dying

and having inspirational realizations about what it means to be alive and to savor being alive would have had tens of millions of hits? And I'll never forget in the story I often tell is like, we were trying to sell it as a TV show because they had so many tens of millions of views. And we went into a bunch of places and pitched it, but I remember going into MTV and showing them the sizzle reel for it and some excerpts from it. And the executives like crying and tears coming down their face. They were literally getting Kleenex.

It's like, it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. We can't make it as a TV show. How are we going to get advertisers to say, will you put your ads for pamper's or Ford trucks on this show about death? You know, like we just. can't, we just can't do it. And, and that showed the limitations of kind of a commercialized television cable at the time that they couldn't do stuff that was too risky. This kind of bound them

in because of the, the needs of the advertisers. Yeah. And, and ordinary people liked the stories and ordinary people were drawn to them. I mean, we had millions of views showing that, but they, they were kind of in this, you know, the church and state wall of, oh, we can't do this, we can't do that, because what's going to happen if the advertisers don't align with it? One of the stories that you tell in the Soul Boom workbook about your time at SoulPancake is about borderline racist young kid and the comments section. Yeah. Can you tell that story?

You tell it so well. And I think it's really relevatory of a certain time that has kind of led us a little bit to where we are today. Yeah. This was about seven or eight years ago. It was 2014. And what video was this for? Can you talk us through this? Sure.

It was about 2014, 2015. It was a video as part of a series called How You See Me. Hey, folks, do you ever wake up and look in the mirror and think, when did my warranty expire? Maw. I want to live long and not just last long. That's why I am excited about superpower. They're helping people take control of their health with real data, not guesswork. You can have a licensed professional come to your home or visit a nearby lab for one simple test.

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Neutrafall.com. Promocode soul boom. So one of the videos was about being black and how you see me. And, you know, all of these individuals in the video talked about what it felt like to be black in America and how they're seen. And one of the comments, we, I'm not going to say the real name of the individual, but we called him Brandon in the book. But this individual writes a comment on this video that basically says, I don't understand how I have privilege. Like white privilege. Like white privilege. I don't understand. I'm, I've been called white trash my whole life. I work at the dairy queen. My mom has diabetes. Like I don't, yeah, I live in a trailer park. I don't understand how I have privilege. And, you know, we had a policy at SoulPankake where we would, we asked our users to, you know,

not hit below the belt, but that we would let them kind of speak their mind, just, you know, keep it, keep it nice. And our social media manager's policy was if there was anything cruel or mean that was said, we would delete it, especially, you know, kid president videos had a lot of really disparaging comments on them. We would delete those, but we wouldn't get involved in the, in the conversations. We would upvote things we liked, but we didn't really get involved. And that was kind of our policy. Let the community speak. Well, this young boy, posted this comment and the community kind of leapt on him. I mean, people were like, you know, this is the problem. You don't even realize how much privilege you have just by the color of your skin.

You're a racist. Yeah. And at one point he tried to explain himself. Like, no, but what I'm trying to say it and he tried to explain himself and the very first comment was racist, right? Like, it was crazy how this community kind of leapt on him. And what was wild is, and I still carry so much responsibility for this, but our social media manager came and was like, you know, what do I, what do I do with this? And I said, well, delete the comments where people are calling him names. Like, that's not okay. But like, we don't, we don't get involved in the back and forth. And so she didn't. And what ended up happening is several people posted comments that said, oh, these people don't understand you. Come check out, you know, this link. And they were all kind of

alt-white threads and articles and links. And eventually this kid, his comments on SoulPankake, more vitriolic and hateful. And then he just disappeared. He deleted his account and just disappeared from our community. And, and I, you know, I definitely feel response. I think so often, like, what, what happened to Brandon? Like, what happened to him? Did we actually radicalize him by not inviting him into a more honest conversation and letting people grab him and pull him into extremes? by not stopping the calling out, canceling, whatever was happening in the comments. This was before canceling was a thing. It was a perfect example of like pre-cancel culture.

It was pre-cancel. Where someone was like shamed and blamed for asking a perfectly innocent question for a 20-year-old from Kentucky or whatever. And instead of being called in, he was called out. Instead of being like, and maybe that's too much to expect from the internet. Hello. Yeah. And he was called in by some people. He was called in to an extreme. To all right. Kind of like you. And I remember some of those comments were like,

you see, you see what we're talking about? These people, they just want to make you the villain. Like you're the bad guy. You're inherently racist. Come over here. No one's listening to you. We'll listen to you. Yeah. And it's taking that red pill. Yeah. And we saw it happen in front of our eyes. Yeah. It was really scary. And, um, and now we're, we've seen those the extremes of the right and extremes of the left going on. It was scary and it also was humbling. It was super humbling because I think we had more risk. I think we kind of shirked responsibility for that.

And I think sometimes maybe we should have taken more responsibility for being the place that called everyone in and said, hey, not okay. Like all voices are welcome here. you know, all questions are here. He asked with a spirit of curiosity and we should honor that. And it was the early days of social media and perhaps we could have used social media more effectively to kind of like have, have us talk about what was going on online here and about his question or bring him on, bring him on to an Instagram live or, you know, like let's talk about this more. Let's dig into this. Like, is he a racist because he says, I don't understand how I'm privileged.

you know, that's not exactly what white privilege means. It's not about like, doesn't mean you don't have struggles and have it suffered. Yeah. But yeah, it was, and what other lessons would you say you learned from that time at Soul Pancake? We got to do so much stuff around positive psychology. You actually got a degree in positive psychology. I got a certification. I got a certification in positive psychology. So one of our other.

Can you talk about the, yeah. Yeah, one of our other shows that was kind of a big hit was called the science of happiness, lots of viral videos out of the science of happiness, the science of empathy, the science of love. Gratitude. Yeah, gratitude. So we explored all these different spaces. And it was very much so rooted in positive psychology. And as, you know, we'd get these research documents and things like that.

And when I was reading them, I was like, oh, my God, this is actually all the stuff I really believe. And I got really fascinated by it. And so I ended up actually getting, doing a Coursera course and got a certification in positive psychology. I did like the perma training that the University of Pennsylvania has with Martin Seligman. So I really kind of went deep into it because I actually found it really fascinating. And it has so much overlap with spiritual lessons. Like there's so much of positive psychology that is actually ancient spiritual wisdom, but brought to you in the form of science.

And we get to that in the Soulbone Workbook. But can you tell us a little bit more about the science of what you learned there and this intersection between positive psychology and spirituality? Yeah. So what's interesting about positive psychology is that, you know, it's the counter to what we all think of as psychology. Right. When we think of psychology, it's about what's wrong with us, right? Like, why is my relationship not working? And what are these deep, dark thoughts I have, right? But, but Martin Seligman and the other, addiction, neuroses, you know, relationship problems, trauma, etc.

But Martin Seligman and others, kind of his peers basically came around in the 90s and we're like, actually, there's a lot of people have a lot going right in their brains. And when they have challenges in life when they have suffering, they have real pain, but the way they respond to it and the way they manage through it and emotionally regulate through it is very different from others. And so this, the field started just as studying these people and how they respond differently to different stimuli. There's a famous quote from Leo Tolstoy that is like every unhappy family is different, but every happy family is the same. And it's interesting because it's true. It is. Like there are some universals in happy families about how they communicate, how they love, how they connect,

that create a kind of a universal cohesiveness, you know, in a functioning family unit. And you can study these tent poles of gratitude, of connection. Community, service. Like there's so many like common themes in the happiest people. They spend a lot of time in nature. They have sources of beauty in their life. Like there's such common themes in the people that naturally have a positive response or can manage difficult situations in a very different way. They don't get kind of mired in the suffering.

They actually find meaning in it. Anyway, so this field, what it does is it kind of looks at all the qualities that inform that, this matrix of qualities that can bring more positive psychology and positive response into your life and almost rewire the synapses in our brain. I was actually listening on my very long drive here to part of Arthur Book's most recent podcast where he talks about common knowledge. There's the common knowledge of the physical, right, which is exercise, eat well, sleep, enough hours at night. These are so critical to our well-being and it is common knowledge that that is critical to our happiness and our well-being. Doesn't mean that America's doing it. Doesn't mean that we're all doing it, but we know, we all know that if we do those things, it's good for us. And so positive psychology and common knowledge, this

intersection is that, you know, things like having an attitude of gratitude really is important, right? Finding the things to be grateful for even when things are challenging. Being present is really important, especially with people that are most singular source of happiness and health over our lives is the relationships we have with other people. And so investing in quality relationships and owning your part in those relationships, having an air of forgiveness and with relationships in your life, that these things are all really critically important to our well-being. So there's a lot of little nuances like building resilience and a growth mindset and other things that the psychologists discover. But like at a core level, it's investing in our physical

well-being, it's relationships, it's gratitude and presence, right? There's some very core common things that all happy people, generally happy people have in common. And it was really fascinating because we saw it happen with videos at SoulPencake, where we would test these things on real people. And over and over again, their happiness levels would go up doing these little experiments. Expressing gratitude. Yeah. Just literally writing a letter to someone and reading it out loud. And suddenly they were like so low on the happiness score and it would like shoot up just by saying, hey, I'm grateful for the influence you had in your life.

Because just saying that out loud, spark something in their brain. And what about the intersection between spirituality and positive psychology? You talked about these, the common knowledge comes. from these ancient faith traditions, ancient wisdom traditions. Yeah. About, you know, connection to nature is a big one as well. That's both physical and psychological. If you look in the Eastern traditions, right, there's a lot about presence, about communing

with nature, about gratitude. There's a lot in the Eastern traditions about that. And then in the Western traditions, there's a lot around love and compassion and community, love thy neighbor, as you would yourself. these are core principles that humanity, like from the dawn of human beings, has been ingrained in our collective education. And so psychologists came around and said, we're going to prove it through science. We're going to show how brain synapses rewire and how different parts of our brain light up when we invest in those qualities. But those qualities are ancient.

They've been around since millennia. So it's really fascinating to see that the faith idea, the ideas of faith. around gratitude and presence, communing with nature, stillness and meditation, feeling small in the scale of the universe, love, compassion, gratitude, building community. These are all core principles of so many. We were talking earlier about wonder and awe. Wonder and awe. At either or both the natural world and the spiritual world, at the enormity of the creator and the enormity of the night sky. And finding beautiful. in day-to-day life, right?

Like even, you know, the people who look at an outlet and see a face, right? Like, there's just little moments of beauty that are everywhere. I posted a face that was a urinal. I saw a face in a urinal. I mean, that's beauty in the urinal. It had two little urinal cakes. And then the thing and it just was like, oh, that's like a little face. And before I peed, I documented it.

And posted it online for millions of people to see this beautiful little urinal face. Yeah. That's how I roll. That's how you roll because you find the beauty. in the urinals, right? And so I think that's a skill you can actually develop. And science tells us that's a skill you can develop. But then ancient wisdom tells us, look to the sky, look to God, see the beauty of creation, right?

And that's very, very spiritual as well. So I think it's really fascinating how all these things. And it's in the office, too. Pam says in the final episode, it's about beauty and the ordinary things. Isn't that what it's all about finding the beauty in the ordinary things? And I think that's one of the reasons that the office has, resonated so much, it's that there's so many just lovely human little moments here and there woven throughout the episodes that, yes, there's a lot of hilarity and absurdity, but there's

also these just lovely touching little human moments that anchor it. Yeah, the beautiness of being alive. Well, I just love this intersection of your story as a Baha'i as an immigrant eldest daughter going to journalism school, Soul Pancake, Joy Brigade, now Soul Boom, a lot of souls in the title. A lot of soul. Yeah.

And what an honor to get to work on this book with you again. We did it. We did it. We did it. Just hot off the presses. Look at this. First ever two books. The Soul Boom Workbook.

Tell our listeners and viewers about the Soul Boom Workbook, what did we write and why did we write it? Yes. Well, you wrote the first book, Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution a couple years ago. You helped me at it. I did help you with it, which was all about kind of why we need spiritual ideas in today's life. And the next natural question is, but how? How do we actually implement spiritual principles in our life and explore those ideas?

And this is the answer. So basically the book is a journal that takes you through the personal, right? Like what is our personal relationship with God and faith and prayer and meditation and what is sacred and how do we find beauty and art in our own lives? And then towards the end, we kind of take it out into the world. How do you actually use spiritual ideas and principles to effectively engage with your community and create change in the world? And so it's really kind of a guidebook to our most.

modern lives through a spiritual lens. One thing that I hoped that we could do with the Soul Boom Workbook was make a workbook for people who had never really thought about spirituality before. Make a workbook for active spiritual seekers, a workbook for people that are spiritual but not religious, although we do have sections on faith, finding faith and the positive aspects of religions. We all know the negative aspects. And we were also hoping that this could be a book that would be used by evangelicals or youth ministers

to allow the young, you know, churchgoers and believers or people going to mosque or synagogue to kind of dive deeper on these spiritual ideas. Do you think that we've succeeded in doing that? I mean, I guess people will tell us once they get the book if we've succeeded in doing that. But I think we have a really good balance. I think there's, there's, there's, there's religious ideas in it, but it's not about religion. It is very much so about kind of how do you, how do you nurture your own soul and spiritual longing? And I think that is a deeply human need and a deeply human desire to connect to something bigger. And so I think we're trying to give people the tools for that.

It was actually, it's really funny that you say the audience because the Fetzer Institute, which has been really supportive of soul boom and is really supportive of this workbook. you, Fetzer, we love you. Really supportive. The head of the organization there was asking me, who do you think this book is for? And I was like, well, it's for the nuns, the spiritual, not religious, right?

The people who have no kind of, none of the above on the religion list, right? It's like none of the above. So they're the people who are like, I think, I believe in spirituality. I like crystals. I sometimes pray, right? And yet I don't want the religion. but it's also for, you know, evangelical Christians and progressive Christians, people who are, I believe in Christ.

I believe in the church, but the church of today doesn't look like the church I grew up with and I'm not sure where I belong. And so there's kind of multiple groups, I think, that could really find, you know, something in this book for themselves. I hope. We hope. A lot of the ideas from the Soul Boom book, like I had a chapter called The Notorious GOD, there's a chapter in here called a notorious GOD. Instead of reading about various ideas of God, you get to kind of soul search and fact find

and use your right brain and draw and sketch and doodle and read inspiring quotes about the journey towards finding something like God, the creator, the divine essence, the source. And we very, very clearly say like, oh, the Michelangelo bearded white, like, no. Let's throw that out. Man on a Cloud with Superpowers. Let's think about other ideas.

Yeah, let's completely throw that template out. And hopefully you and I will be making our documentary, the notorious GOD. Yes, we have developed a little film that we want to make. In 2026, hopefully funding will come together for that. That would be an exciting announcement to take that journey, searching for the divine in the modern world. What does God look like in the age of AI? You know?

And God is everywhere. If we think about it, God is on our money. It's in our classrooms. Our Pledge of Allegiance. It's influencing our governments and our schools. And yet nobody talks about like what exactly is this God? That seems to be everywhere in our lives. And so that's really just a film following you as you try to dig into that.

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Fetzer.org. That's F-E-T-Z-E-R.org. And it's full of spiritual tools for modern struggles, which is exactly what we're trying to cultivate here at Soul Boom. Fetzer believes that most of humanity's problems are spiritual at the root, and they're helping people plant some deeply soulful solutions. So I urge you to go poke around their new website, check out Fetzer.org. Thank you, Fetzer Institute, for helping sponsor the show and all of the truly amazing work that you do over there. that's fetez e r.org. You have a really personal and scary story about your first engagement.

Yes. And hitting an emotional low point. And how do you use that story? Can you tell us that story? And how do you use that story to kind of highlight? I think that was tests and difficulties, right? Yeah, that's why do we have suffering? Why is there suffering in the world?

But you want to share that story with us and then how that dovetails into a spirituality workbook? Yeah, sure. I was in a relationship with an older gentleman and it was not a, you could call it toxic. It was not a healthy relationship. And at the time we got engaged and I went on a work trip and ended up losing the engagement ring. And, you know, for I think a normal couple losing an engagement ring would be kind of a funny story. or, oh, crap, now we got to cut down the budget of the wedding or something like that. And instead, it was kind of a bad situation for us.

And there was yelling and it was just not healthy. I kind of felt like a sign. I spent the next two days of this work trip. Just it's a sign, you know, you aren't meant to be with this person. You need to call off this engagement. Maybe the notorious GOD. The notorious GOD was sending you some. Took your engagement ring.

Threw it down the toilet. Yeah, exactly. Because I, I mean, I crawled on conference room floors. I dug through trash cans. I was terrified that I had lost this ring. And I just took it as a sign that this is not healthy. There's not, this is not okay. And so anyways, ended up calling off the engagement, which was really, really hard,

lost money. Like, it was just a bad situation. And then, you know, this individual followed me to the East Coast trying to kind of tell me we shouldn't be breaking up. And it felt kind of scary. And what's funny is afterwards was when I actually grappled with my own faith probably the most was, you know, why did God put this person in my path? And what am I supposed to learn from this? Like why was, why was this okay? You know, why did I need to do this? Which is a great spiritual question for the soul boom workbook. It is. Like, why did this happen? And what is this supposed to mean? You know, Elizabeth Gilbert in her latest book, talks about life as being Earth school. And this idea that, you know, we are put through these spiritual tests and hurdles and have to

jump through fire and crawl over broken glass sometimes to learn a specific lesson. Sometimes we get it over and over and over again. But asking that question is one of those great spiritual conundrums. Like, why am I being tested like this? What is going on? What am I supposed to get out of it? But keep going. Yeah.

No, and it is true. You're kind of like, you know, I especially, you know, again, oldest daughter of immigrants, I was like, I've always done everything right. I've always followed the rules. I've always been like the good kid and like this. Like, why is this happening to me? Why, why did this person get put in my path? And why am I in so much pain, right?

And so it really was like a crisis of faith. Like I just didn't understand what God was trying to teach me. And it was funny because that was actually 2008, which was right before. Then I go to Haifa and I hear you on the radio and all of this is happening. And I do think that SoulPankake kind of became a healing. balm in a lot of ways because it forced me to think about what could this have taught me and was I forced you to work 15 hour days. It worked, it forced me to work 15 hour days to process the pain and like to fill you know the sadness with something that brought me joy and that was important like finding

finding that distraction in a way was really important to get me out of the the depths of you know sadness and grief I was in at the time. So it was it I I say in the book that ultimately, you know, I think the mess, the mess does matter. The mess does matter. And I think it taught me to listen to my intuition. I knew from the beginning this person wasn't right and I wasn't listening to my gut. And I do think that I, I wasn't listening to my intuition. And it really taught me like my inner voice matters. I should listen to my gut. My intuition tells me things that affirmations, like when you're on the right path, affirmations do happen, like doors do open. Things are easier when you're on the path that God is meant for you. And that has happened to me

multiple times in my life. I spent, I spent a little while looking for a big executive role and doing a bunch of interviews and becoming a finalist and not getting the job multiple times. And eventually I had to say, okay, rejection is God's protection. Like it shouldn't be this challenging to do this. Like, what is this trying to tell me? What is this challenge telling me? And I had to learn that lesson the hard way through a lot of heartbreak, but a lot of rejection. A lot of rejection and a lot of hurt and pain. And then you kind of go, oh, actually the mess does matter. And you are meant to learn something. It's telling you something. And we should all be better at listening to what the suffering is trying to tell us. And isn't that one of the great spiritual lessons of, wow, I suffered so much. I went

through hell. That was the lowest I've ever been in my life. And I look back on it and I'm so grateful. Yeah. And I think that's a lesson that young people need to learn about resilience today is that suffering, you know, purifies the gold in the fire. It does. And oftentimes, not all the time, but most of the time you look back. Even Arthur Brooks was talking about people who get cancer. Sometimes people who get cancer, it's the thing they're the most grateful for in their life. We don't really hear about this. Yeah. The thing that might kill them and might still kill them, you know, reframed being alive,

being a human being and living one day at a time in gratitude in a way that not being sick could never have done. So. I mean, an entire unit of this book is about the anxiety, mental health, suffering, tests and difficulties, death and dying, cancer. Like, we talk about that significantly because I do think it's one of the, but it's funny. There's also fun stuff and there's also jokes. Tell me about some of the sections that you resonated with the most that we.

Yeah. Well, some of my favorite sections, we have an entire section on beauty, nature, and art. It's one of my favorite sections of the book. And it's a lot about kind of finding beauty around us. There's an activity in here that our mutual friend and Solstankakee co-founder, Golry's Lucina does with her kids, which is beauty emergencies, you know, just stopping and finding beauty emergencies. And I do this with my kids where we'll be walking or in the car.

And now my son will be like, oh, my God, mom, beauty emergency. Half the time it's a fire truck. But it's still like, mom, beauty emergency. A rainbow or a beauty. beautiful tree or a crack in the sidewalk. Just anything that makes you stop and go, oh, that's, that's beautiful. And then we have an exercise to capture the beauty emergency on your phone and share it with a text chain.

Yeah, create a text chain. You and I need to start a beauty emergency group where we can just like message each other these pictures. But it also explores, you know, connecting with nature and art and music and dancing. And I think so much of the joy of life comes from this, that playfulness. And beauty is, beauty helps you access playfulness. So I really love that chapter. There's a whole section about forgiveness.

We don't talk enough about forgiveness and how important that is. But there's a whole section about forgiveness that I love. And then one of my other favorite activities is called the effrenda of influence. So I love this activity. Hold it up a little bit better for the camera here. If we can push in there and capture that. Of influence. This one of my favorite.

So it's, you know. What is an offreenda? So an effrenda is, you know, in a frienda is, you know, in a friend. in the Hispanic tradition, Dia de los Mueros is the day of the dead. It's where you celebrate the memory of your ancestors. And an affronta is created where you create kind of an altar and to honor all of your ancestors. So all the people who came before you. It's a way to remember all of the individuals who form kind of your family tree, your lineage, your ancestry. So what we did in the book is I think it's such a beautiful tradition and such a beautiful ceremony that they do and the altar that they

make remembering these ancestors. I think in the Hispanic tradition and in the Mexican tradition, specifically they say you die three deaths, right? They die one death when you physically die, when your heart stops beating. The second death is when you're buried and you're put in the ground and return to the earth. And then the third death is when the last person who knew you says your name. That's kind of the third death that you die. And the effrenda is a way to still remember and honor those people still have their names and their memories alive. So I think it's such a beautiful tradition. But what we did in the book is we created an a friend of influence. And what we said is, you know, no human is an island, right, to quote whatever movie that's from, but no human being is an

island. And so we all are influenced by people, right? We've got the people who guided us as children, the people who influenced us as adults, the people who set the bar for us, right? Like, mentors. Our mentors, right? Like, who are all the people who create that altar of influence in our lives and really digging into that? And I think it's such a a beautiful reminder. I think it's a, it's kind of a backwards way of practicing gratitude, right? Like, remind ourselves in our brain, like all the people who contributed to us and cared about us and believed in us and shaped us, right? And I just, I love the idea of taking this cultural tradition. Yeah, creating a shrine. Creating almost like a shine and alter to like, how we got here today.

How I got here. I love this soundtrack of my life. You know, writing about the songs that influenced you from childhood, from your first party, your first kiss, your first dance. then adulting songs associated with your love and family, songs that tell you, define who you are. And then they have a dance break. Then there's be a fashioner. What's yours? What's the song that made you feel seen as a teen? When I first got into kind of punk a new wave in like 82, 83, everything kind of changed.

And there were a bunch of songs in there. I remember the police singing like so lonely off of like Zanata Mondata, like. I thought it was just brilliant, but lost in the supermarket by the clash off London calling. Okay. Was that, that was like, I heard that song, I'm all lost in the supermarket. And I was like 16. I was like, that's, that's. You see me.

This is who, this is who I am. This is like the tone, the style, the, the humor, the, the rebelliousness. And London Calling is, I believe, the greatest rock album. ever made. And that kind of defined my young adulthood. All right. Yeah. The clash. Yeah. Yeah. One of the challenges with Soul Boom from the very beginning is that people really respond to meditation and finding peace and serenity, reducing anxiety, you know, connecting with nature, harnessing love. But folks in contemporary American culture don't really see spiritual ideas and tools that can be transformative to their communities into the world at large.

This may be as a Baha'i thing, so it's a kind of a newer concept, but how can you harness ancient spiritual truths for societal change, not just making your life more peaceful and more serene and less anxious, right? That's important. You can do meditation class. You go to yoga class. You do prayer, you know, meditation, use apps and whatnot. Dance and sing.

But how do we harness spiritual tools and ideas to build and create community, to build bonds of unity, to bring people together, and to ultimately, through a ripple effect, try and make the world a better place. And we tackle that in part four of the Soul Boom Workbook, Soul Boom and Society, creating community, a service mindset, and how to change the world. Are there sections in there in the workbook that resonate with you around this?

Yeah, that was a really hard section to write because you're right. Like it's, I mean, our modern lives are not exactly set up to take spiritual ideas and implement them in our community work and government and civic environments, right? It's just not set up that way. So how, you know, coming up with even how to frame that section was really challenging. One of my favorite things in that section, though, is, well, there's two. But one is to recognize what role you play. And the second is to notice what's needed.

Like there's one really great. We have kind of this activity around recognizing the type of role you play, right? We have everything from the leader to the connector to the artist, right? Like, know your skills. The bridge builder. Yeah, the bridge builder. Like what are you good at? Like, what are the skills that you bring that even if no one asked you to do,

do it. You would be doing those things, right? Like, I will always end up being the organizer and planner because that's, I'm just really good at organizing and planning things. And so I'm, I, I know that I'll get things done. So I could be the doer, even if, you know, no one asked me to do it, I would get stuff done. But knowing that about yourself, it makes it easier sometimes to raise your hand in spaces and say, oh, I want to be part of this community. And actually, this is the thing I can do. I'll do it whether you ask me to or not, but this is the thing I can help with. And I think that's important to recognize, like, what's the skill you bring? Because some people, people feel like if I'm not Mother Teresa, I can't make the world a better place.

Or if I don't have infinite hours of time or if I'm not really good at organizing things or I'm not a good public speaker, like I can't do those things. But every community needs different types of people and different roles. And so it's really important to know like where can I step in and help and what's the lane that I fill that contributes to the greater good. And then the second thing that we talk about that I think is really important. And I actually have learned it more as a mom than anything else is the importance of noticing. So, you know, you can tell a kid 50 times, like, pick up your shoes and put him away or, you know, oh, I see that someone's crying. Like, you know, oh, you hurt someone on the playground, like, go say sorry. But in parenting, they tell you actually what the bigger skill you

need to teach your kids is how to notice, right? Like, oh, I noticed that someone's sad. What can I do about that? Or I noticed that the plates are on the table. What could I do about that, right? Like, just noticing the needs that are around you. I would say if I, if I may, my wife and I always talk about like, hey, read the room. Like I love this idea of read the room because it, in a way, it's like that. It's like read the room means like an interpersonal level. Like if someone is sharing and then you pick up your phone and look at it, like read the room. That was not. That wasn't the moment to do that. That was the most conscious, sensitive choice. And read the room means you live in Dubuque, Iowa. and you're reading the room of Dubuque, Iowa.

Like, how are we disconnected? Where could we use help? How could this community obtain greater healing? What are the populations that are most at risk at need? What about nature? What about the parks? What about common spaces? Or even simple things like, I'm driving down my street

and I notice that one particular house is overrun with weeds. Is that an elderly neighbor that might need help mowing their lawn? right? Or is it a psycho killer? Or is it a psycho? And I need to do a podcast. But see, we don't trust anyone. See, you're assuming it's a psycho killer because we don't trust anyone. Guilty. I know. So, so yeah. So it's like little things like that. You know, like you get on the bus and you're like, okay, who's riding this bus? Who could use help carrying their groceries off of it, right? Like it's those kinds of things like the little things that if you just pay attention and notice. Start with the noticing. Start with the noticing.

It's important for kids. And it's important for us as a adults when we're trying to figure out like, oh my God, everything's overwhelming in the world's burning. What can I even do? Just literally look around and see what you notice. And I think that's a really powerful exercise in here that we sometimes forget. Like it doesn't, you don't have to be Mother Teresa. You don't have to be Gandhi. You don't have to be solving all of the world's problems and also curing cancer. Like you can just notice that your neighbors need their lawn mode. And here's a wonderful activity. Tools for turbulent times. tools for turbulent times.

Like everyone says this, like the world is so chaotic. It's overwhelming. There's climate change and political division and political violence. You know, how can I harness spiritual tools to help me navigate this increasingly kind of chaotic world? Gratitude practice, conscious breathing. Yeah, we literally map out like, okay, you're feeling like this, do this. You're feeling like this. do that, right? And I think that's important too, because spirituality can help us with that.

And I know this feels very kumbaya, but like we really did try to make it practical. Like, we really did try to say, like, some of these things might feel silly. Some of these things might feel deep. Some of these things might feel, you know, too simple. But I think we were trying to make it practical, I hope. I mean, you tell us, get a copy and tell us what you think. Okay. That's, that's too hard sell. Two hard sell. Two hard sell. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. It's all. But I also think that is an important part of it is the other thing that I think is important to talk about is that we wanted this book to be something people do with other people.

You know, I think there's a lot of beauty and hearing like what that song was that defined your childhood, you know, or even talking about like what are the things you notice in your neighborhood. I just think this book is, I think doing this book with other people could be also really powerful. And what do you hope that this book achieves? Honestly, I think my biggest hope is that there's, you know, 200 book clubs across the country of people digging into spiritual ideas for their lives and not about any specific religion or dogma or, you know, moral certitude, but more about just how can I take some of this ancient wisdom and make my life and my family's life and my community's life

stronger and deeper and better connected. We desperately need that. We're isolated and alone and feel so much doom and hopelessness. Like if this can get small groups of people across the country connecting with each other and feeling a little more helpful. Besides someone doing it on their own and feeling kind of more connected to their spiritual journey, let's say, getting hope, you're hoping the book also builds community itself. Yeah.

Because that's the solution. I mean, every stuff. study on earth, every scientist, every human being. And I think in all of our hearts, we know at the end of the day, the thing that will make us happiest and healthiest is other people and having good relationships with other people. And if this can be a tool to start building those kinds of deep relationships, then check plus A plus gold star to us. Could this be the catalyst that inspires an actual spiritual revolution? Ah, tusha, maybe. Shabnam, what a pleasure having you on Soul Boom.

It's been so long, you're one of my dearest friends. I'm so grateful for you. As are you, Rain. Incredible work you did on Soul Pancake and on Soul Boom. Before we go, one thing we ask every guest is how do you define the word soul? I think the soul is the spark of the divine, the spark of the universe in each and every one of that transcends space and time. There you have it.

Shabnamogarabi. That names a mouthful. Yes, it is. Rain with two ends. What an honor to have worked on this book with you and onwards to our next project together. Yes. Thank you for having me.

All right. It's finally here, folks. The Soul Boom Workbook, Spiritual Tools for Modern Living. It's out now. This is the interactive spiritual journal your soul didn't know it needed and now it can't live without. Listen, the world out there can suck sometimes. Fact. This is our spiritual revolution for changing the world with hope. In this we get to explore beauty, love, God, grief and the sacred power of potlucks. So pick up a copy of

the workbook today. And bonus, invite some of your weirdest, deepest, kindest, friends to get spiritually curious with you in a Soul Boom book club. I promise you this isn't self-help. This is Soul Help. Order the Soul Boom workbook today. Click the link below to buy.