The Checkup with Doctor Mike - Why Rainn Wilson Loves Paramedics & Thinks Dwight Schrute Is MAHA

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/Huge thanks to Rainn Wilson for coming on the pod! Check out his new movie "Code 3" now.Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rainnwilsonTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rainnwilsonIG: https://www.instagram.com/rainnwilsonRainn's Soul Boom podcast: https://www.soulboom.com/00:00 Intro00:51 Code 308:31 Pharmacy Benefit Managers09:45 Price Transparency12:04 Investing In Primary Care14:00 My Insurance Proposal15:28 DMV As Healthcare22:20 Mistreatment Of Front Line Workers27:18 His House Burnt Down31:40 Rainn’s Doctor / Mental Health40:19 Bullying and Social Media48:40 The Soul1:00:20 Trauma1:14:55 Dwight SchruteHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, an exclusive discord community, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today:https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [e-mail] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **

bank more oncores when you switch to a scotia bank banking package learn more at scotia bank.com slash banking packages conditions apply scotia bank you're richer than you think do you think dwight would support the maha movement i think dwight would be beyond maha what's what's beyond he probably creates his own vaccines involving like goat urine and nettles. Welcome back to the checkup podcast. Today's guest is Rain Wilson, the actor, author, and producer who turned Dwight Shrewd from the office into a cultural icon. Super excited to have him on to discuss his new movie Code 3, where he takes on the harsh

reality of being a frontline healthcare worker. In our convo, we get real about frontline healthcare work. We explore spirituality, our mental health, and yes, he even lets me sort of perform a medical procedure on him. Please welcome Rain Wilson to the Checkup podcast. I watched Code 3. Cool. I am very excited to talk to you about it and your passion for why you chose to do that

project because for us on this channel and on the podcast, we're constantly railing against the fact that there is an inherent misunderstanding between the general public and the health care community. There's a lot of anger towards health insurance companies, hospitals, physicians, health care administrators, understandably, because the system really sucks. But at the same time, there's this tremendous burnout, sadness, anger from the health care worker side that hasn't adequately been documented until some shows that have been doing it well recently, the pit as an example. Now, September 12th, Code 3, why did you do that? choose to undertake a project about being an EMS provider? Well, what a great intro. And I'm so excited

to answer that question. But I want to say, too, like this is, even though I did the film, I did some ride-alongs, you know, I tried to learn what I could. I'm really ignorant in this field whatsoever. So I barely know how to pop a Zit. So, but you know how to do chest compressions. I know how to fake chest compressions at the right rhythm. We did it on the office. You know, you know. Staying alive. Stay in alive.

See? That's all I know. That's all you need to know. And that if you break ribs, it's perfectly okay. It's good. Yeah. That means you're doing it right, as you guys said. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, listen, this film was, it was an honor to do. It was a privilege to do because I met with this wonderful producer and about this project that I really wanted to do. and he's like, you're not right for this project. And I think they ended up offering it to like John Hamm or something like that. So it's like, okay, I get it.

He goes, but you know, just the other day this script came in, you'd be really perfect for it. He handed me to this 180 page script about EMS workers. And just a night from hell, these EMTs, it's funny, it's sad, and it was all based on real experiences of one of the co-writers of the script, Patrick. And it was, there was so much potential in this script. It was, it was incredible. I laughed until I cried.

I cried until I cried. And it just opened my eyes to the dilemma that this script was getting at, which is exactly what you're talking about. So over time, we condensed it down to about 120 pages. We cut out the, some of the, some of the, the flabier bits, and to get to do a movie that is entertaining, like it's a good, if you just want to go laugh and be entertained and have some popcorn at a movie theater, great. Code 3 is going to, is going to rock. But it also is about

something. And I think the way that EMS workers, frontline workers, hospital workers, ER room workers have responded just to the trailers on the clip so far. And the, you know, the movie that we've sent out for folks to watch, they're so thrilled. They're like, finally someone is telling our story. And that's what we wanted to do. We wanted a film that was going to get at something deeper.

Like the American healthcare system is colossally broken. We have the most powerful, the richest empire and the history of planet Earth. And we cannot provide a simple doctor's visit or a simple surgery without, you know, tons of bureaucracy and paperwork and, and lawsuits and, you know, insurance companies being involved and the government being involved when they shouldn't and not being involved where they should. And the list goes on and on. So, you know, it's also a touch point on a

talking point. And so I'm thrilled to be a part of it. And I'm so excited to see the reaction of the EMS workers and it hasn't even come out yet. Were you aware of the plight of first responders prior to reading that script? I was not. I had no idea. I knew the health care system was broken. My wife had an emergency C-section at this down-and-out Van Nuys California hospital. She had a placental abruption.

And it was touch and go for the baby, even for her. And then I remember, like, you know, she lost, you know, five units of blood and he was in the NICU and it was just awful and it was days in the hospital and she was there for a week and then I remember getting this bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars and I and you're like what is the insurance for yeah and I was shaking and calling the hospital billing and or the insurance billing and they're like oh don't worry about that we take care of that with the insurance companies and and work it out and then why send that bill why send the bill and you know why they're sending the bill but on the off chance

that someone's like, oh, I owe money. I'm going to send some cash. Yeah. People do. They get that bill and they're like, okay, $187,000. Maybe not $100,000, but they start making some form of payments. Yeah. Whereas my biggest piece of advice for folks is always inquire, always argue, always ask.

Because when it comes to billing, even for me as an outpatient doctor, meaning that I don't take care of patients when they're admitted into the hospital. I take care of them outside in the clinic. When they come in, sometimes I'll order tests. and they won't be covered because the diagnosis code doesn't vibe with what the insurance company wants. Sure. So all I have to do on my end is adjust the code. Now, that sounds easy, but when it's a patient from two months ago and I have to figure out what code is appropriate that could work, it becomes a disaster, especially once you're scaling that over hundreds of patients.

Yeah. But it's doable. And if you don't ask, you might be stuck paying a huge bill for absolutely no reason. Yeah. We had a guy doing some work for us. And then on one of his jobs, I remember he hurt his hand and had to go in the hospital and get it fixed up. And he got a bill for like, you know, $10,000 or something like that. And it's like, I don't have $10,000.

And they're like, well, we're going to have to, you're going to sue you. And they just went back and forth. And he's like, he's like, listen, I got $500 right here. And they're like, okay, we'll take it. Like, why is a health care system work like that? Why is there, why is there? They're like a mafia boss. Yeah, why is it?

It's like a shakedown. Like, let's see what we can get out of people. Like, that's not, that's not caring for our populace or caring for the hospital's clients. Yeah. If you even know the inside baseball of it all, what happens is sometimes there's one price that they'll give to insurers because they know that insurers. reflexively pay only 60% of whatever they bill. So they'll raise up that number because they're like, we're only going to get 60%.

So let's make the price much higher. And then when you come in to pay and you say, I only have cash, I don't have insurance, they still charge you that ridiculous rate that they only expect 60% of from the insurer, but they charge you the full 100%. Yeah. So it's a disaster on so many fronts.

So do you have a plan for us, Dr. Mike? Come on. Have you figured this out? You've been talking about it for hundreds of hours. I react to medical memes and TikToks. I'm not the solution here. Figure out the medical health care system, please. What are three things we can do?

What have you learned? Number one, transparency. Okay. Specifically surrounding pricing and with middlemen, specifically pharmacy benefit managers. This is basically a coupon company that was started as a way to be the middleman between pharmacies and insurance companies to say, well, look, if we're going to prescribe this many or dispense this many medications for you, give us a better deal. And they acted as this

middleman to get us patients a better deal. And it was kind of a win. But then insurers were like, oh, let's start our own coupon company where it looks like we're saving people money. But when we make a $2 savings, we'll keep 50 cents of it. So then they just started moving around money from one pocket to another, acting like they're spending more money, when in reality they're just paying a subsidy of themselves the money. And now those coupon companies are worth billions of dollars. And there's no transparency of how they negotiate the deal, why they're covering one type of medication versus another type. It's all very shady. And transparency needs to happen there. Second, the transparency that needs to improve is if I have an elective procedure,

I need to take out my gallbladder, and it's not an emergency. Let's use hernia procedure, because that's really not an emergency, unless you have incarcerated bowel where the intestine is actually stuck and is being choked out. That's an emergency. But let's say you're aware you have a hernia, there's nothing stuck, and you want to get it fixed. You should be able to call multiple surgeons or hospitals and find out what that price is. Right. That's like near impossible right now.

If a patient asks me, doctor, like you ordered this MRI from my shoulder, how much does it cost? I have no idea. It depends where they go. It depends which insurance kicks in. Is it their workers' insurance? Is it their government insurance? Is it some other form of secondary coverage that they have? I literally had the CMS administrator, the former one for President Biden, who ran Medicare

and Medicaid. She was in charge of it. And asking her to describe all the different subsections of Medicaid or Medicare, I was like, what? She's like, I was dealing this with my family. And it's like part A, part B, part D, part F, part G. And you could get A, but you could get Medicare advantage and you can get this. Hold on. We have AI. And AI supposedly like this magical tool that will solve everything for us. How about we use AI to get through this bureaucracy bullshit? Because that's where I feel like the AI can actually help. Take a bunch of information, simplify it so we can actually get through.

it and decide what's best for us. But no one's using AI like that because it's not sexy. But why don't these things change and why don't they become more transparent? Because there are so many players in the game where there's vested interest and not having them change. Lobbyists from different companies, they buy politicians, they point out some flaw of making that change. That does exist, but it's a small flaw.

and then they leverage that flaw to be the reason why we can't make this change because this will break, that will break. And as a result, nothing changes. So it's very, very messy. But I think transparency is at the heart of making improvements. And then the biggest change

that I would love to see happen is a full-on investment in primary care, which is the type of doctor I am. And while I am biased, given that I'm a primary care doctor, I think the real value from primary care comes from prevention, right continuity of care meaning that you see a doctor who actually knows you yeah when you say

you have a pain level eight does that mean that oh my god we're taking you to the ER oh I know what a pain level eight is that means you stubbed your toe for this guy yeah yeah yeah so like that continuity of care goes a long way and improving outcomes and then you rely less on subspecialty services therefore costs go down so you have prevention costs go down less subs sub-specialized care costs go down. But right now, it's one of the lowest paying fields, like psychiatry, pediatrics, family medicine, which is the type of doctor I am, lowest paying specialties. Students don't want to go to it because they paid all this money for medical school and they're like, oh my God, I need to pay off my loans. I'm not going to go to the lowest

paying specialty. And there's fear that those specialties are not going to exist because the money, the reimbursement for those specialties is constantly dwindling. And people are like, why would I go into those specialties? But those are where we need the brightest minds. Whereas right now, the brightest minds are like, I'm going to be a derm because people aren't that sick generally. It pays really well. I can accept cash.

And then we lose it. And you have all those cosmetic procedures that people are coming in and writing giant checks for. Huge checks. Or, you know, I don't know. I'm trying to think of another, like eye surgery. Very competitive specialty. pays very high, very hard to do.

But I'd love to see family medicine climb up there because I think if we invest in the grassroots foundational portion of health care, we're going to have really good outcomes. Even with insurance companies, this is actually one of the important points. I recommend that this, but I'm not smart enough to know what the drawbacks are.

Right now, everyone's insurer swaps every few years. You get a new job, you get a new insurance plan. Someone gets bought out. That's true. You get a new insurance plan. There's a waiting period. There's a waiting period. Imagine you have one insurer for your whole life.

It doesn't have to be government or like a single payer, but just one insurer is basically tied to you. So they're now invested in keeping you healthy. Right. Now all of a sudden they're going to want to invest in prevention. Because why would you want to invest in prevention in a person where you're only going to be covering them for a couple of years? You want to spend the least amount of money as a business.

But don't they make more money when you're sick, actually? Well, insurers lose money. because insurance is paying out when you get sick. Now, what about private versus public? What about a government health care plan like Canada or something like that? They have their own struggles. They have their own struggles. I mean, it's really hard to go anywhere in the world and go,

oh, here's an example of an amazing health care system. Where that happens is you have a uniform, small population, or at least smaller than the 300 plus million we have in the U.S., and as a result, it's a little bit easier to manage. You could have a single payer system. Everyone's bought into the same messaging. But we're a very diverse group of people, West Coast, East Coast, South, North.

It's very different in what people want, what people need, the jobs that they have. So it makes it a lot more difficult to have a single payer system. Also, as we know with the DMV tired example, but true, anything government run usually doesn't run very well. Hold on a second.

Okay. Hit me with the, is your DMV really good? I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna here's my hot take that's what they say on the internet this is what the cool kids say yeah my hot take the DMV works really well it does the DMV works where is this because I'm going anywhere I've I've used it in New York City I've used it in LA County Ventura County I did it in Seattle like think about it you have an organization that is keeping track of drivers licenses records speeding tickets boat licenses, RV, motorcycle licenses, taking the tests and all of that.

And it's like, oh, I had to wait an hour and a half in a line. And they lost my, like, give me a break. 300 plus million people have really great, you know, driver's licenses and their records are taken care of. And yeah, okay, there's an occasional nightmare story. But really, every single time I have gone to the DMV, I have come out with my new license. It gets sent to me.

My address gets changed. My car is registered. I get my stickers. There's a problem. I go back. It actually, it's pretty damn effective. And everyone talks about DMVs. And yeah, maybe the people could be a little nicer, but come on.

I mean, how hard is that job? Give me a break. I want to do, instead of code three about health care. You're going to do a DMV clerk. I want to do the DMV movement. movie, you know, representing all those DMV workers out there. Instead of like drive with Ryan Gosling, we'll have DMV with Rayne Wilson. What's really your vision?

Wait in line, bitch, yeah. Take a number. Take a number. That's good. Take a number, pal. You should be in show business. Yeah. So, yeah.

No, okay. So in being fair, government bureaucratic institutions generally innovate less than private. Right. But if you bring in private companies to run something that is about keeping people healthy and about being of service to people, where's their profit margins? Because again, you have a capitalist system where this is really, it's all generated by what happens in the board rooms. And I think a lot of people don't realize this, that you have these boards of these large companies. insurance companies, hospital. Now there's these hospital mega corporations, you know, with investment firms that own like 57 different hospitals and clinics and whatnot. And quarter

after quarter, the board is saying, where's the profits? Like, hey, profits have gone down three quarters in a row. This is unacceptable. You're going to get fired unless we make more money. So it's, if you need profit quarter after quarter, how is it's going to come from cutbacks or raising prices. So if you put it in the hands of private corporations, I don't know how that works with the existing system. Because even what you're talking about with transparency, isn't that a little bit about just putting band-aids on a system that's so colossally broken that it needs to really kind of be reinvented from the foundation up? Problem is how many millions of people die during the reinvention process. That's the tricky part. And yeah, it's such a tough. Yeah, like you can't

just break up like a building is bad you break it down you restart it's it's harder now it's like repairing an airplane when it's in midair yeah exactly yeah that's a good analogy um i will say that you could have private with really strong armed regulation which is sort of what we have yeah but it's been dismantled and hasn't evolved as the smart people in the boardrooms have evolved in their trickery of how they move numbers around whether it's the buying up of horizontal consolidation where they say or vertical consolidation where they go, okay, the pharmacies where we're losing a lot of money, buy all the pharmacies. Let's just own them because now we could set whatever price they want. And the capital system, as you adequately point out, or

accurately point out, is flawed in health care. Because if I want to decide the cost of this water bottle, I'll say, okay, well, what price can I make this thing that people will market pressure pay for it? If it's too high, they won't. I'll find that number. but when this is your pay our employees and that we can make a little profit on yeah but when it comes to health care is like if this is insulin and I can't live without this I'll pay whatever you set so now you have a really evil way to make a lot of money whenever you want because you just raise the price what am I going to say no I'm going to die that that's not an option so it's not like a luxury good where you can say oh you know these sneakers are too expensive you're going to say

I need that insulin. And that's why the Uberization of health care is really gross to me. And I really dislike, because I've been in those board rooms. The surge pricing and also these companies that are trying to find solutions for a broken health care system in the private equity space, because I've been in those boardrooms where they have those meetings. And they very frequently do things like, oh, we found a way to make urgent care ER hybrid, like in the middle.

but it's subscription pricing, membership pricing. Oh, cool. So this works for the top 5% and then for no one else. So you found a solution for wealthy people. Great in New York City and San Francisco. But that doesn't actually solve the problem.

Yeah. So to me, it's like you're innovating ways to make money not actually helping people. Well, my primary care physician has now the concierge service that started a few years back. So I'm fortunate that I can pay, I don't know, what is it, $1,600, $6,000 a year,

you know over and above you know insurance uh premiums sure um and i can text him and say hey look at this weird growth what do you think this is and he'll text back you know god bless him it's great but it's for the privileged yeah so like i don't know how we fix it but a good part of fixing it is first empowering and educating and i think that's what code three does really well nice nice yeah nice transition well that's what i was watching it i was just excited the whole time in seeing not just how the main character in being an EMS employee, how there was a burnout happening there, but also the struggle that they were having with the ER doc, how they were being nasty back, but they were being nasty back because their administrators

are being nasty back at them. And it's this vicious cycle that exists. Oh, my God. Yeah. The number one thing that I learned from making code three is how mistreated and underpaid our frontline workers are and especially the EMS technicians that are essentially making what people make at Starbucks. And we're entrusting them

with saving our lives and saving our mom's lives and our daughter's lives and our grandfather's lives and here they are getting 20 bucks an hour and working ridiculous midnight 12 hour shifts

you know having to dodge bullets and dodge traffic and getting stabbed in the thighs getting stabbed getting vomited on getting pricked with you know needles that have questionable viruses on them and so just mad respect like it's and there's a wonderful scene in code three where he wants a free muffin or free coffee with the muffin for frontline workers and they're like she's like you're an ambulance driver sorry you know it doesn't count like Those are the people that need the free coffee and the free muffins more than anything.

So please, people, if you're watching, give your EMS ambulance drivers free coffee and muffins wherever they go. And coffees. And coffees. That scene, I don't know if it was meant to be funny, but it made me so sad. It made me so sad because I could see that happening in real life. That happened. It happened, especially during COVID. And the co-writer and producer of the film, Patrick Pianetza,

is, was an EMS worker for many years and is trained, you know, technicians and service workers and now, you know, writes screenplays and works in Hollywood and does storytelling. And every story in there happened to him firsthand. So this idea that like, oh, free. food for frontline workers. It's like, well, you're just an ambulance driver. You don't get it. It's like, I make $18 an hour. You can't give me a coffee. Terrible. You said you did some ride-alongs to prepare. What were those like?

Well, that was very, that was very illuminating. I tell you, I rode along with the fire department in South Central, L.A. And in a community like that, they do it all. there's no walk-in clinics. There's not even in the ERs. You've got to drive a long friggin' way to find an ER in South Central LA. They've shuttered all those hospitals because, again, you know,

they're owned by all these, you know, hedge fund companies that are like, there's no profit. There's no profit there. And there's no, you know, elective procedures happening and people aren't paying, you know, $10,000 for Botox injections or whatever. And so folks just call the fire department and call 911 when they need anything done.

And one of the most frightening experiences I've ever witnessed, and I didn't witness it directly, but on this ride-along was they got a call because this woman had fallen out of her bed. And they needed the fireman to put her back in the bed because the woman weighed 500 pounds. And this is the kind of service that the firemen are doing nonstop

in communities like this. Occasionally they put out of fire. But most of it is someone's having a psychotic episode. They're dealing with health care issues and they're doing community work and so-and-so didn't take his meds and passed out and they

get their blood sugar back up with some apple slices and orange juice or whatever and they're applauded and cheered wherever they go because the firemen really are doing the service in those communities and it was it was really it was really eye-opening and uh it it I was truly humbled seeing them work it's like on a practical level and metaphorical level they're putting out fires yeah yeah well said yeah well said um firefighters not fire men I want to say

was uh was that pointed out to you well I'm just pointing that out to myself realizing like all the language, the brave fire women that are out there, you know, doing this, doing this work. And then undergoing the wildfires directly in Los Angeles and also somewhat recently in Oregon and realizing, you know, how much they're also putting their lives on the line. So they're not just handing out apple slices and lifting people into bed. They're running into not just burning buildings, but burning forests now. Yeah. Yeah.

And you've had some personal experience. that you shared just before we started filming. It's terrible. Yeah. So my house was hit by wildfires in Ventura County, about a month before the big fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades. We lost about half our house. Both of our neighbors lost their entirety of their houses.

Were you aware that that was coming? Or did you have to like immediately in the middle? I was working out of town. My wife was there and they got the Evac notice. And I was like, it's fine. yeah it's gonna snow you know you know and and it was 60 mile an hour winds wow and flaming embers and she said she'd never seen anything like it it was like a war film these embers were flying and and that's where that's where fires people don't quite understand how fires work you you see it in the

movies it's like oh this house is on fire and then the fire jumps and catches this house on fire it's like no there's a wildfire over here 10 miles away and then there's 60 mile an hour winds and the embers are flying at 60 miles an hour and abetting themselves into trees, into roofs, into gutters, into shrubberies, you know, any place you can think of, like bullets. She was like dodging these embers. We have a bunch of animals. We have pigs and dogs.

We had to like evacuate them. You know, it was very, very serious right away. And it was the craziest thing. I was doing a play in Los Angeles at the time. And that was our first audience. And I didn't know if my house was standing. So I was walking out on stage and, you know, ready to do this like three hour, really intense play. And I had no idea if my house was on fire, what the situation was.

But then we just went up on a vacation up to Oregon and we had to evacuate because of wildfires up there. We have had, we have undergone four evacuations in six years, twice in Oregon, twice in California. Because of climate change and how. all these droughts are affecting the forests. It's very, very real. Now there's fire season, you know, it's every year. My understanding, this is very superficial, but is that it rained a lot at one point, greenery grew,

but then it became a drought and all that greenery that normally wasn't there, then was susceptible to catching on fire. Yeah, that's part of it. So over the last 1,200 years, the driest 25 years, were the last 25 years. So this is a super drought. And in the midst of this super drought, there are some years where it's crazy floods.

And it's 20 feet of snow and all this runoff and crazy rains. And then the undergrowth, yeah, it just goes because it's been parched. It grows like crazy and you're exactly right. So it's in the midst, it's extreme weather events. And that's what we're finding more and more in the climate stuff.

It's like it's the extremity of the floods and the extremity of the drought. It used to be a lot more even keel. Now it's a lot more like this. Thousand-year events are happening every 100 years. 100-year events are happening every 10 years. 10-year events are happening every year. And that's what's causing this.

It's easy to talk about there's a talking point on the political right that has to do with like forest management. And there is definitely a good point there that, you know, you have to do health. logging, you have to allow certain burns, you have to clear underbrush, and we mismanaged forests for a long time. It was like, let's put out every fire that's anywhere near a forest and not cut down any trees and leave everything exactly the same. And then you create kind of a powder cake. There is a point there, but that's not the main culprit. That's just a very small

slice of the pie. But this should probably be solved soon because the head of HHS is an environmental lawyer whose focus is on saving the environment, right? We should be good. Yeah, we should, I'm sure we'll be fine. I'm sure we're being very well. I imagine that the current administration is taking really great care of our air and our water and our forests and our children's children's children. Yeah. I laugh in a sense of despair. Yeah. Kind of like I was when I was watching the movie yesterday. Talk to me about your relationship with your primary care doctor that you mention. Or maybe you had one before that you were closer with. What's your relationship like with the health care system? I am the luckiest human being on the planet. First of all, I'm pretty

healthy. Although I seem to have like an inground hair. Very solvable though. How do I solve it? It's on my... The doctor can fix it. It's on my... Where is it? Do you know any doctors? It's on my pubic mound. Oh, even easier to access. It's very easy to access. We're going to need ultra zoom. We're going to need ultra zoom. Bring in the wide lens. Sorry, telephoto. I'm really not kidding, but I send it to a group text of my...

Group text. Some comedian friends. I took a picture of it, and I was like, what is this? So instead of using your concierge physician, you're using your concierge comedians. I use the comedians. but um yeah so my relationship is great uh dr tenenbaum has been my doctor for 15 years been our family doctor uh he's one of the rare great primary care physicians who also is very open to alternative healing modalities and he will recommend like i was having some uh build up in my arteries

and he recommended taking garlic and i really took garlic like religious for years and it seemed to actually have a positive effect. You know, you can't completely know, but he's open to, you know, acupuncture and different herbal remedies. And he does a lot of studying about, like, you know, with making sure it's data backed. And he's great. He's accessible.

But he had to go to concierge because otherwise you just couldn't get in to see him. Yeah. Because he had that. His choice is like, I either need to have a thousand patients and people can't get in to see me for three months or I have 300 patients paying a concierge amount and then that way you can get in the next week or two. But it's, you know, it's worked for me, but I'm one of the privileged view that can afford it. Yeah. I'm also happened to be in Southern California where you can't turn around without bumping into a doctor. There's just doctors everywhere. Yeah,

we're just flooding streets there. Yeah. What about your mental health? This your primary care doctor also in charge of that? He doesn't, I've spoken to him a little bit about it. There was a time when I was on antidepressants. And I've, you know, I've spoken to him about that. I've spoken to him about, you know, my issues with addiction and alcoholism in the past. And, you know, and he's very knowing there. I've seen psychiatrists.

But, you know, my mental health, again, I'm very, very lucky. I can afford to see a psychologist. And I, you know, I have a shrink and, you know, I go and use talk therapy has been incredibly helpful for my mental health and, you know, the issues that I've had with depression and anxiety, addiction and stuff like that. Yeah. The hardest thing for me as a primary care doctor is, look, I can do an introductory session of what CBT is to a patient who can't get in timewise to see some.

Cognitive behavioral therapy. but the problem is all I do is give them a piece of paper that says referral without a name on it because it's who's ever in their network. So now a person who's struggling with anxiety or depression, let's say, who's unmotivated, who's struggling to get there to see me, who's struggling to take a shower, brush their hair, take care of themselves, I'm suddenly expecting them to find the motivation, to call the number on the back of their insurance card, be on hold for half an hour, get 10 names, call each 10. of those 10 names. Find out who's still in network. Find out how long those wait times are.

Remember to go to that appointment. In the meantime, be fine. That's the reality of mental health in our country. And it's disastrous because, again, we're not taking into account how much better we would be as a populace if we did take care of it. People would be more motivated to work. They'd be more excited to be better caregivers, better partners, less crime, like all of the of these societal benefits that we're missing out on. And this mental health epidemic that has really sprung up over the last 10 or 20 years is it's a killer. It's a deadly silent killer.

So if you're talking about like saving human life, you've got to talk about people who make the choice to end their lives, usually because of untreated mental distress or they need medication. And only now, really only the last 10 years have people started to see that, oh, mental health is, it's all health, you know, and it's brain chemistry, it's brain wiring, you know, it can be hormonal. Well, it's that biosopsychosocial model where it's your biology, as you explain, in the brain, society around you, culture, what's happening in your life. but also psychological. Something could be going on there from a pathology standpoint.

So taking into account the whole picture, there's so. So I would add to your, you know, to your diagnosis of the problems of healthcare is to like fully and completely incorporate mental health into the healthcare kind of biosphere. So it's not something that's seen as like the adult, like the dental.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And by the way, this is my favorite thing to do is like someone would be like, this is Dr. Beaumont, like, oh, what's your doctor? Like, I'm a dentist. It's like, then I always, I love this. I love doing.

It's like, you're not a real doctor. And, oh, it gets them so good. But I love, you know, they're rich. They're dentists. They can handle it. Well, but dentists are not real doctors. Dentists. How take.

Dentists are not real doctors. They wouldn't know what to do with an ingrown hair on someone's pubis. Questionable. Some dentists now are doing Botox and stuff and are venturing outside of their little sphere. But dentistry, if I'm not wrong, along with veterinarians. I believe there's one other career. Veterinarians are real doctors.

Yeah. But those two fields specifically have uniquely high suicide rates. Oh, my goodness. For the reason that a lot of people think that they're rich because of the money. I'm sorry I was dissing on dentists. This is why I do. Dr. Mike, oh my God, I feel terrible now. Yeah.

So patient dissatisfaction, the fact that people don't have insurance, that they have to basically charge money to people who don't have money to pay, it's not like if you come see me in the hospital, it's not up to me. So that takes some of the stress off me. But if I have to be the dentist and one collecting it,

suddenly it makes it a lot more difficult. And it is a feel that people don't talk about quite a lot. Same thing with vets. Imagine like, oh, my dog is dying. Well, do you have money to pay for it? Yeah. Oof. That's got to be hard on the second.

Veterinarian fees have gone up through the roof. I don't know if you've known. Do you have any animals? animals? Do you have any pets? I have two dogs. Yeah. And I have one dog that you'd go in and they'd have a hurt paw or they need something done or a cyst removed or something like that. It's like 270 bucks later. You're fine. Now it's like getting into the thousands of dollars pets are bad. Now it's private equity owned too. Yeah. There's groups that are buying veterinarian clinics. Yeah. And just raising the rates. Correct. Yeah. It's rare nowadays

to find, I guess, in big cities, a solo practice vet who takes care of animals. It's usually like a group veterinary emergency group. But that's the same with optometrists. Optometrist, urgent cares. Yeah. Because now you used to go into optometrists and then be like, oh, every couple years, we'll check your eyes and we'll get you new some glasses and here's your prescription. And now it's like, we have to do the test where you're going to need going here. We're going to dialing everything.

We're going to go in with this machine that's going to look at your brain stem. And it's like, you know that it's like. You know that the insurance is paying, you know, $10,000 for that to happen every year you need to have your... Well, that's right. We need the mental health moved in there so that it becomes part of that. Yeah, yeah. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca slash yMex. The twisted tale of Amanda Knox is an eight-episode Hulu original limited series that blends gripping pacing with emotional complexity, offering a dramatized look as it revisits the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox

for the tragic murder of Meredith Kircher and the relentless media storm that followed. The twisted tale of Amanda Knox is now streaming only on Disney Plus. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision?

No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more.

Conditions apply. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026 XC90 plug-in hybrid

from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explore Volvo.com. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes,

protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. I'm curious your take on what you think is driving the mental health crisis that we exist in today. I've heard you speak on this talking about loneliness as a big factor. I'm curious if you feel social media is contributing in any way.

And then more importantly, is it just because the system is so screwed up? Yeah. There's a wonderful young man that was on the Soul Boom podcast that I do named Alex Banyan, and he's doing a documentary right now about the youth mental health crisis.

And he's diagnosed a lot of these issues. in a really exacting way. And one of the things he talks about is the importance of connection. And connection is different than communication, right? So you can post a picture of your puppy on Instagram, you know, and you can have 300 friends and 87 of them like it.

That's communication, but it's not connection. You're not really connecting with someone about their puppy. And I noticed that here in New York City, over the years as I've come back, because I used to live here for a long time before cell phones existed. I left in 99 and there were no cell phones

and then came back and visited and there. You had a pager, I bet. I had a pager just like Dwight Shrewd. Yes, I did. But people on their phones walking down the street. So you're not even like taking in nature and taking in what's around you. So yeah, it's a really complicated thing.

Listen, I'm not an expert. I'm just a dumb actor. We're here talking about these issues. I have suffered from mental health. issues myself. I've gone through really difficult times. I have an anxiety disorder and I've been in treatment for anxiety, depression, loneliness, and this is all greatly exacerbated by social media. And how do I put this? Let me put it this way. I barely made it out of my 20s. I was never fully like, but I did have some very dark thoughts about like, why am I here? Why should I even

be here? And if in my 20s, I had had unlimited distraction on my phone. And this is the most dangerous and colossal experiment like ever perpetrated on the human species. Like here's seven billion of us. Let's give like, I don't know, four or five billion of them little pocket computers that have endless games, endless distraction, social media, YouTube, video clips, TikTok, endless scrolling, endless news and doom scrolling. So you can just be wired into the news hourly in watching the. And of course, what makes you click on a news? You know, outrage. So every hour, there's some news story that's like, oh, I can't believe it. I'm going to click on that. And we all seen that with relatives that we have that spend way too much time on on Facebook and are like, can you believe that, you know, and that that ignites, that pours kerosene on conspiracy theories.

And then also like, you know, unlimited, you know, unlimited porn is, is a new thing. Like, we had to fight hard for our porn in the 70s. Yeah, tell me more about it. Yeah. My uncle Ronnie, you know, had a couple of playboys and we would put them in the stump out. out in the woods and then guys could go take a look, you know, but then they get soaked in the rain and you'd be like,

oh, the playboys are, was it rain? Come on, Dr. Mike. Don't leave the comedy to the professionals, okay?

I'm not going to tell you how to diagnose. You almost showed me your pubes a second ago. I almost showed you my pubic mound. But, so.

You always had the mound. I don't even know. Is that a thing? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. It's the pubis. It's right below the belt.

But it's not at that it's not at your dingled uncle. So you know what I mean? It's right in there. Yeah. I'll show you later. But, you know, unlimited porn. And then if you want anything delivered these days, you want pot delivered. You just get an app and hit a few buttons.

And then unlimited THC pot. And, you know, back when I had my time smoking pot, I'm sober now. But in the 70s and 80s, apparently it had like 4% THC. And now it's up to like 40, 50% THC. It's a completely different. drug that people are not taking seriously. But with all of that distraction, like, I don't know if I could have survived. So I don't know how people do it. Do you think we're going to adapt at some point to, oh, well, we're so tired of this fearmongering of doom scrolling and hitting

this that at some point we're going to be like, I'm over the fearmongering. I'm over this thing and we'll have some sort of reawakening to it. Well, I think young people, when asked if they'd rather not have a phone, they'd say I'd rather not have a phone. Here's what's keeping them on their phone. The fact that other people have phones and they have a FOMO, exactly. So if I don't have a phone, I'm not going to be able to see, you know, my friend Rachel posting her puppy picture and put a heart so that she knows that I like her and I'm still her friend and that we're still connected. So something has to be done around that because people really do want to kind of limit. And listen, I pray and meditate, you know, I have a podcast soul boom about, you know, trying to get in touch with our higher selves. I read a lot. I've been in therapy for 20 years. Like I'm not saying like I'm still a colossal fuck up, but, you know, I have some consciousness and I look at my phone all the time. I'm scrolling constantly. What do you watch? I watch YouTube and I watch clips and I read news articles and I text friends pictures of my.

Ingrown hairs, you know, and, but yeah, so, you know, and it drives my wife baddie. So, um, do you have any rules as a parent regarding phones? We had, my son is almost 21 now, so he's, he's going to have to figure this out on his own. And we do have conversations with him about it. And he talks about his struggles, you know, and it's like, I'll, I'll wake up. And all of a sudden, it's an hour and half later. And I've realized that I've just been, you know, looking at. clips on my phone and I could have been reading a book or doing my homework or writing a song or you know something walking in nature um but yeah we had rules in the evening we put our phones away

i try and charge my phone not by the bed but like out in the hallway i try and wake up in the morning and read an actual book and you know arthur brooks if you haven't had him on the show he's he's a brilliant uh happiness expert uh from harvard university and he talks about making sure that you get the sunlight on your face before you have your screen shining on your face. The first light on your face, let it be the sunlight of the outdoors and not your screen. But that's a topic you really enjoy, the study of happiness, the study of souls. I mean, you have Soul pancake. Soul boom. Soul boom. Tell me what's going on with the soul. Do you listen to soul? One question we have for every guest that comes on Soul Boom is like, how do you define the word

soul. So let me ask you that. How do you define the word soul, especially as a doctor? I think about it biomechanically. So you look at a shoe and you think about how the wear pattern of the sole of the shoe impacts the heel pain and the foot pain, which can then become knee pain. Okay. Because you always have to think about the joint above and below. All right, smart ass. All right. How would you, how would you, a materialist, scientist, doctor, how would you define? How would you find soul it's the part of the human existence that is least understood by science oh wow yeah i like that i haven't heard that one before i've heard a lot of them yeah that's really that really resonates so for me uh dr mike i uh underwent a lot of mental health challenges especially in my in my 20s

early 30s. And the way that I found out of it was, and this, because this was in the 90s and therapy was not as prevalent and there weren't meditation apps and there weren't, you know, self-help books and, you know, podcasts that would help you in meditation or, you know, healing yourself or what have you. I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith and my parents were Baha'i's. I had left the Baha'i faith in my 20s, but I undertook a kind of a spiritual journey. So I found some solace by walking a spiritual path, by learning about meditation, reading about Buddhism, reading the Bible, studying various world faiths. And so for me, I feel like culturally we have kind of thrown the spiritual baby out with the...

Pragmatism of secularism. We threw out religion and we also threw out spirituality. So we threw out spiritual baby. with the religious bathwater is what I say, and that there can be a great deal of healing that can be found in spiritual practice. Whether it's part of a religious faith or separate from the practice of a specific faith

that can heal ourselves not only internally and help us find kind of balance, connection, meaning, purpose, because we do have a meaning and purpose disease pandemic that's affecting contemporary Americans. Why are we here? And asking yourself, like, why are we here? Why am I here? And what do I have to offer? And how does it all fit together? And this path led me toward God and led me away from a previous understanding of God is some kind of patriarchal mean guy with a beard on a cloud or anything like that,

but that there is some kind of like energetic connective tissue, some kind of source that when I'm able to tap into that with prayer and meditation and service to others, that I can find meaning and healing. And that helped me out of my mental health crisis. And when I had this digital media company SoulPancake, and we created a lot of like positive uplifting, digital content, and now Soul Boom is much more about spirituality.

I have a podcast and a book about it. We have a workbook coming out in November. That's going to be kind of the artist's way for spirituality, a journal, a workbook about finding your spiritual path, that I think this can really help people. It's something that helped me tremendously, and I want to share it with others, and kind of get people talking about spiritual ideas in a different way. because, you know, we people think spirituality sometimes they're like, well, what does that mean? Like a woo-woo.

Yeah, woo-woo yoga class crystals. Or does it mean, you know, church on Sunday or synagogue or, you know, or temple or what have you? And so I do think that part of this mental health crisis is looking for spiritual connective tools that can help us out. And I do believe that, and I don't know how. this would work with the health care system that can there be a spiritual reimagining of what health care is in a way that makes us reimagine our relationship to healing the sick? I don't know exactly how that works, but again, it's either a government bureaucracy or it's private, you know, profit seeking. And is there something in between? If

if the priority of our culture is to take care of the least privileged among us and of the sick, as Jesus talks about at infinitum and works on nonstop as serving the lowest among us, how would that transform the health care system? But that's a big cultural shift, but I do think that spirituality and even religion can aid in that path. So if spirituality has been defined or maybe hijacked, in some instances with the woo-woo of it all. What is the correct viewpoint of spirituality or how do you see it?

Well, my favorite quote of all time is from Father Teilhard de Chardin, who's a Jesuit priest, but he was also a scientist, philosopher, I think he maybe was a doctor of some kind. And he said, we're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

So when I hear that quote, to me, feel like you talked about your definition of the soul of what medical science has the least understanding about like i feel to quote c s lewis i don't have a soul i am a soul i have a body it's it's a shift in thinking i am a spiritual being this consciousness that i have this miraculous consciousness that we're having this conversation and i'm having memories and thoughts and feelings and, you know, taking in the surroundings and no one can figure it out in a laboratory. No matter how many brain scans they do, they can't figure out, like, where is consciousness?

Like, yeah, certain parts of the brain kind of light up when certain things kind of happen, but no one has come any close over the last 50 years of doing MRIs and brain scans to figure out how consciousness works because I believe that consciousness is our spiritual, immaterial reality. and that it is harnessed to our physical bodies and we get 80, 90 years, if we're lucky, and these slough off and then our consciousness, soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, continues. So to me, that's what it's about. And it's a reframing that when I greet someone, when I connect with someone, and I think

most people do this, like, I'm looking at the light in their eyes. You know, I'm looking at their divine qualities of peace and harmony and love and patience and service to one another and compassion. And that's the dance that I'm interested most in doing and in connecting with people. So what are, and I think about, as you're saying this, even a joke from the movie in Code 3 when, like, careful, there's brains on the floor, don't slip on his thoughts. Because it's like what is a thought, right? Like we can't, as scientists even,

yeah, we can talk about synapses and neurotransmitters all day long. Sure. What's a thought? Like, where does that thought live? Is it, if I transplant my brain into yours, you'll have my thoughts? We don't know that yet. So that's an interesting thing to postulate over. What's practical ways that you've seen?

I mean, you had your show where you were studying the geography of bliss, I believe you was called. Seeing that how community impacts spirituality, doing good onto others. Are there practical things that you live that could be valuable, perhaps, to our listeners and viewers? Well, one thing I want to say, and there might be a lot of people rolling their eyes right now

that work in the medical industry, and I know you have a lot of different kinds of viewers, but I do believe, and this is a fundamental belief of my faith, the Baha'i faith, is that science and faith are both parts of one reality, and that you can't have faith in spirituality without science. And science has to be respected and it's real. And it's a way of organizing information.

And it's also a way of exploring information. And it has to do with what makes the physical world work. But there is this other aspect of being a human being. Like you talked about having a thought, about having a consciousness. So, yeah, I mean, for me, a meditation practice has been really key. I'm sure you've had a lot of people on here talk about meditation. I mean, the health effects of meditation is pretty astronomical. I have a gratitude practice that I do.

It's part of my prayer. What does that look like? Well, so there's a book called Help Thanks, Wow, by Anne Lamott. And those are the three types of prayer that she talks about. You know, help, like, oh, divine forces, God, universe, help me through this difficult time. Thanks, which is just gratitude. Thanks, I'm alive. Thanks, I'm healthy. Thank you for getting my cousin Ronnie through that difficult time. And wow, which is expression of awe, of wonder, of curiosity. And I think even for people that are

more on the science side or people that are more on the faith and religion side, awe and wonder and curiosity or something that that brings us all together. And nature, you know, really inspires awe and wonder, the stars at night, the magnificence of a tree, you know, watching a hummingbird feed. That is a scientific awe and wonder and it's also a spiritual awe and wonder. So a meditation practice, a prayer practice that has to do with gratitude. I also have a gratitude text chain every day sending out gratitudes to a bunch of friends because we are wired, I believe, and some studies have shown that we are wired for anxiety because that's what kept, that's what got our species to this point. You know, if we're always on the

lookout for some kind of danger and we hear a twig snap and we fear the worst, you know, we don't think it's just, you know, a pleasant sound. A pleasant. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bear. It's a white noise. They're going to eat our face off. And so we're kind of wired to look for the worst out there. And what would that be like to recalibrate that? And gratitude helps us do that.

Meditation, all of these practices, prayer and gratitude practice, kind of rewire your brain. And if you can do it in the morning, even for just 10 or 15 minutes, like it's profound how much it can change your day. It's kind of like going to the gym. No one likes to go to the gym. They don't want to go to the gym. I can't wait to go to the gym.

But you come out the other end and you're like, wow, I'm so glad I went to the gym. I feel great all day. And six hours later, you're like, I had so much more energy today. And I feel good in my body, even though that was a pain in the ass. Why does it always take something going wrong in people's lives?

Or it happens so often that something goes wrong in people's lives that they're at a low point that they seek this information out, whereas it seems so valuable and it should just be part. of your everyday being, just like perhaps the gym is, like we have a P.E. hour in school. Yeah. But there's not so much talk about the spirituality aspect. Yeah, well, we can certainly talk about that. You know, how would you teach some of these spiritual ideas without getting into specific

religion, indoctrination in schools and some spiritual tools that could be used? But isn't that one of the great metaphysical questions? like why, why do we gain wisdom through pain? Miller Light, the light beer brewed for people who love the taste of beer and the perfect pairing for your game time. When Miller Light set out to brew a light beer, they had to choose great taste or 90 calories per can.

They chose both because they knew the best part of beer is the beer. Your game time, tastes like Miller Time. Learn more at Miller. Must be legal drinking age. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered.

A cabana? That's a no. But a banana? That's a yes. A nice tan, sorry, nope. But a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine? No. A box of fine wines?

Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets, product availability may vary by Regency App for details. When your investors, customers, and workers demand more from your business, make it happen with SAP. The AI-powered capabilities of SAP can help you streamline costs, connect with new suppliers, and manage payroll, even when your business is being pulled in different directions. To deliver a quality product at a fair price, while paying your people what they're worth too, so your business can stay unfazed.

Learn more at SAP.com slash uncertainty Oh, hi, buddy. Who's the best? You are? I wish I could spend all day with you instead. Uh, Dave, you're off mute.

Hey, happens to the best of us. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish. Pumpkin is here at Starbucks, and we're making it just the way you like. Handcrafted with real ingredients like our real pumpkin sauce and rich espresso sprinkled with pumpkin spice. It's full of real flavors you'll keep coming back for. Made just for you at Starbucks. Wouldn't it be great to gain wisdom through things are just going great? But we learn

from those times when we suffer the most. And there's a show that we're compiling on Soul Boom. We've released a few episodes when we'll release more called wisdom dump and it's about people getting wisdom and what they went through the suffering and struggle that they went through and how they came out on the other side with the wisdom and perspective and how they're even grateful for the difficulties and struggles that they underwent and how that helped transform them because I'm grateful for my mental health struggles because it's allowed me to have you know I'm a daily practice. And I'm not over it. I'm not all better and I'm not like some arrived guru guy. I'm a colossal fuck up that, you know, still struggles, but it's helped me a lot. And then

I've been able to share my story and in help create some platforms that have brought people some comfort as well. But when I say that, like, is there something for you like a hardship or struggle that you underwent that when you were going through it just sucked? And you were like, this is the worst thing ever. And now when you look back on it, you're like, wow, I'm really glad I went through that. Before I answered it, I have a question about that. Part curiosity, part devil's advocate.

Okay. I frequently hear guests, friends, coworkers, say things like, I'm so grateful for the struggles that I went through. Some share about childhood abuse, some share about their mental health struggles. Recently, I had a guest who was blind, talk about her blindness, she doesn't want the cure for her blindness because it's made her who she is.

And so many people that undergo cancer are then grateful for their cancer because it reprioritized their life to some degree. And I'm curious because when I ask them the next question, they have different answers. I'm curious where you land on this. Would you wish your struggles on someone else? No way. But yet you're so grateful for them. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how that works. Yeah, it's one of these metaphysical questions of like and sometimes like I have a son. He's

about to turn 21. He's had a lot of struggles over the years. He was a COVID teenager. That's hard. Right. And you see, when you have kids, you see their struggle and you can also see the outcome. And you can even as a parent be like, I'm kind of glad they're going through this struggle.

And I'm glad they're talking about it and I'm glad they're dealing with it. because they will gain a certain wisdom. And now do I like to see my son struggling or unhappy or crying or, you know, overwhelmed? Of course I don't. But at the same time, as a loving parent, I'm kind of like, you had to go through your first breakup, right?

And you're going to learn coming out the other side. I hate to see you crying and I hate to see your heartbroken. But I'm kind of glad that this is a good way to have your first breakup. And then you're going to have a second and a third. And then things are going to even out a little bit. And you're going to have healthier and healthier relationships. So I don't know how that dance works entirely.

But I certainly wouldn't wish, like, the mental health struggles that I underwent on to him or any other young person. Is it because of the potential that they may not deal with them in the ways that you have and they could have ended worse? yeah yeah sure certainly um i just think our job is to try and alleviate the suffering of others you know when you when you study buddhism people think about buddhism in a certain way and they think about like life is suffering if i'm detached from my you know needs and necessities and the constant grasping for things things change and once i'm in greater acceptance then i will have

much less suffering, but there's a whole other aspect of Buddhism, which is to eliminate the suffering of others. In Tibetan Buddhism, the universals are like, no one likes pain and everyone wants joy. So we want to eliminate people's pain and bring joy to other people. And that's part of our life's purpose is to eliminate other people's pain as you do in the medical profession. And all of the people in the medical profession have set out to do alleviate pain, create more joy. Um, that's, that's what it's all about. So, you know, it's, it's an interesting, you know, metaphysical conundrum that you present, but I, yeah, it's interesting because I think about, so to answer your question, I've had some messed up things happen in my childhood that I don't

really talk about ever on camera, but in thinking of whether or not I'm grateful for these things, it's such a weird, almost, because I'm very practical. I like to be as, useful to people as possible. That's probably why I'm a primary care doctor. So to me, I started thinking about, okay, am I happy that this happened? Would some other struggle have ultimately happened because life inherently has struggles? And those struggles were not my choices. But I'm happy how it ended up turning out.

So maybe I'm happy with the way it ended out, but ended up, but not how it started. Well, for you, what made you transition from just being a primary care physician? to spreading your message and having these conversations and creating these channels that are bringing so much hope and knowledge and wisdom to others. I wish there was a great answer that would make me sound really smart and enlightened.

I had a viral moment of popularity where they called me the sexy doctor and I leaned into it and I viewed it as an opportunity to do the work that I'm doing, educating patients in the office to now doing it on social media. And it worked. And a lot of people thought it wouldn't

work. A lot of people said that you have to sell out. You have to start doing miracle promises or selling snake oil. And we said, no, no, no, there's a way to do this where you can be entertaining, funny, have insightful conversations where people would want to watch because they want the truth. And I thought there was going to be a moment where this truth would be very important. And interestingly, the pandemic came around. But that took a lot of wisdom for you to kind of like say, hey, I'm having this viral moment, you could have just used it for your own personal pleasure. Like, I'm just going to get late every weekend. And instead, you're kind of like, hey, let's, let's leverage this for the common good. I mean, where did that impulse come from? Is it instilled by your parents?

Inschooling by your religious practice? I've used, I worked in some of these celebrity practices when I was younger and I would see the bullshit that was being sold to them. And I would always be like, wow, they're being so mistreated with what they're being given in terms of treatment. So I said, I always wanted to fight back against that and be the truth teller in my group with my friends. So I viewed truth as always a higher calling in some weird way. Where did you get that from? I don't know.

Like there's always, I think humans instinctively have something about fairness in them. Like when a kid steals a toy, that's not fair. Fair mindedness. Yeah. We have an impulse toward that. Yeah. So I feel like I had that. And maybe coming to the United States, learning a different language, seeing the unfairness

at some level that was happening to me as an immigrant, seeing my friends that were bullied, watching shows that instilled it. Like, it could have been as simple as watching like Doug on Nickelodeon or Rugrats, where fairness was a principle that was valuable. So I don't know if it was anything deeper because I was raised a religious. My parents were very practical in their get an education. We're Soviet parents. My father went to medical school again in the United States to become a physician again.

My mom was a PhD math professor that then swept floors here and ultimately became a professor again. Wow. So they didn't really instill that to that degree because they were just like work, work, work, get an education. But I don't know. I guess there might have been some moments that I've missed. that led me to say, oh, truth is very valuable. I always just viewed truth as a long-term antidote to anxiety. Almost like in cognitive behavioral therapy,

how you try and speak back to irrational thoughts. I felt like truth was always that answer. Like, if I just told the truth, there's nothing more I can do. So I did it everything. I kind of laid it out on the line. In thinking of trying to get a girlfriend when you're 14, 15 years old, You're like, I'll just tell the truth. Oh, boy, that didn't work well when you were a kid.

But it allowed you to have more peace when your head hits the pillow at night. So I always had that as my mindset. Like, oh, if I just always tell the truth, like, what bad can happen? But perhaps if you hadn't been an immigrant kid and you had just grown up in Scarsdale, New York, and your parents had not had to get double PhDs and sweep floors, and you weren't teased for your accent and picked on and bullied, and you had just grown up in an average middle-class life that you wouldn't be bringing the light and knowledge

and truth that you're bringing to the world in the way that you are. You would have settled for a more comfortable life that was just more about personal pleasure and satisfaction. Very possible. But the question is, how do we grade other people's struggles in comparison?

to ours. Is that fair? Is that valuable? Does it play out as cleanly as we just did as Monday morning quarterbacks right now? Because, you know, as much as people want a trauma compare, oh, well, this person went through this and I went through this. So I struggled harder than them. Oh, they're richer than me. So that must mean they have it easier or they have a celebrity family. It's not always clear. One of my guests who is a quadriplegic race car driver. he says something really interesting on the show a few weeks ago he said everyone has their own wheelchair and sometimes you can't see their wheelchair and that's really true because some people have a trauma that you're just completely unaware of whereas on the outside looks like everything's

great and some of the greatest figures in Hollywood look like they were crushing it they were at the top of their game they were doing so well and yet there was this darkness inside of them that no one really understood. So maybe being that kid in Scarsdale, maybe because everything was so safe, I would have developed some other trauma, a drug habit young that then I had to overcome that would have made me a good counselor for those struggling with drug addiction. I don't know. There's a quote from Plato to be kind to everyone you meet because everyone is fighting a harder battle. I think Robin Williams said something very similar to like, we don't know the battles that people are fighting so just the the choice is to just be kind all the time um and i i think that's true we

you don't know i've i've certainly worked in hollywood for a long time and i've i've met some people that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars that are insanely good looking you know and have everything going for them and the world adores them and they're some of the most miserable people you'd ever meet and they have their struggles and uh we just we just don't know Yeah. Yeah, that's why that community is so important. I think back to a random episode of comedians and cars getting coffee with Seinfeld and Chris Rock when they were in like some fancy car and they were like, do you like this car? He's like, yeah, I like this car, but we could have fun in a broke down like crap car. Yeah. And that's the reality that even in your show,

uh, you travel to all these nations. It's who they're with that matters more than what their surroundings are. And I feel that quite often, in being someone that grew up quite poor on welfare and now having financial success on my own, that it really doesn't matter having fancy objects or things or experiences unless you're doing it with people who are meaningful to you. And you're sharing some sort of connection with them. Yeah. Not communication.

Not communication, but connection. And that's exactly right. In The Geography of Bliss, the show that I did for Peacock, a year or two back, looking for happiness around the world. That's what it all boiled down to. It's all community. It's all connection. We're social beings.

We're tribal beings, which can have its bad aspects of tribalism and it's good aspects of tribalism. But it is in community, in support, in love, in mutual service, and commonality, acceptance. That's where people find real joy. And it certainly doesn't seem like contemporary American or Western culture is leading us towards ever greater connection and communities. We have to do what we can to find it. And that's one of the things in jettisoning religion. We've also jettisoned, you know, potlucks and gatherings and dances in church basements and people singing together.

I mean, how power humanity has been singing around fires and singing in communities. for hundreds of thousands of years in creating together. So that's where so much of the work needs to be done. Yeah. Yeah, I even think about my time going out in my early 20s and seeing how I didn't like going out in New York City much because going out didn't mean going and hang out at a bar where everyone's together and chatting and having a good time

or even dancing together. It was like you had to buy a table where you're segregated from or everyone else and I made you cool because you're VIP, and now you're alone. Yeah. And it's not fun. And then you're alone looking at your phone. Yeah. And you're like, oh, I guess I look cool sitting up there.

You've got Mouet champagne there. So you're like, oh, this is not fun. Yeah. Yeah, that's really true. I know you have to run, but I want to ask you a single Dwight question. Yes, please bring it. Because this is very valuable for the time that we're in. Okay, great.

Do you think Dwight would support the Maha movement? I think Dwight would. be beyond maha what's what's beyond maha ha ha ha ha ha make america healthy again over again and again uh yeah he would um i think he'd be like create your own vaccines he probably creates his own vaccines involving like goat urine and nettles well because he doesn't like germ theory so it's kind of RFK, junior-ish. Yeah, there is, there's a little bit of that there. Yeah.

I always thought that if there was going to be a Dwight spinoff now, it would be really funny to have him be, I wouldn't want, you would never want the office to be overtly like political or anything like that, but Dwight as an ultra-right-wing politician running for mayor of Scranton. But just with the,

just the craziest off-the-wall ideas that we've come to expect from Dwight Shrut. I think that would be really... That would work. It would be like a veep, but in Pennsylvania. Yes, in rural Pennsylvania. At Lancaster County.

Perfect. Where can people follow along your journey? Where do you want them to follow you? I think that people can follow me over at Soul Boom. At Soul Boom, we're trying to build a community of people having deep, meaningful conversations and connections and check out Code 3 in a select number of theaters on September 12th, but then in a few weeks in another, two or three weeks it'll be you know you can you can buy it and stream it amazing okay rain thank you

so much yeah appreciate it wow huge thanks uh for rain wilson coming on uh what a honor to have him on the checkup podcast actually we had uh another great comedian actor on the podcast tony hale that i think you'll really enjoy the conversation with he's of the show veep arrested development emmy award winning he's in a new movie called sketch that just recently came out I'm a huge fan of his. I think you'll enjoy that conversation. So head on over to our full episode list, click on that, enjoy that episode. In fact, if you enjoyed this episode, don't hesitate to give us five stars because it helps us find new listeners and viewers.

And as always, stay happy and healthy.