Rainn Wilson Is Calling For A Spiritual Revolution

Our post-modern culture has largely dismissed faith and spirituality as a collective pursuit. But today’s guest has a different perspective. He argues that we need to find practical spiritual solutions to help humanity move forward. In other words, we need a total spiritual revolution—what he calls, a Soul Boom. Enter Rainn Wilson, the co-founder of the media company SoulPancake, co-host of the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake with Reza Azlan, and the author of the new book “Soul Boom: Why We Need A Spiritual Revolution”. Oh yeah, and he once played a character in a television show called 'The Office.' You might have heard of it. Today we discuss Rainn’s Bahá’í faith, his conception of the divine, the importance of finding meaning in life, the positives (and negatives) of religious belief, how to build a movement of change, finding the sacred in our everyday lives, and why the solutions to the existential problems we currently face require a spiritual revolution. This conversation is an equal parts fun and profound call to awaken our spiritual selves and engage in a deeper, more meaningful experience of the world around us. I hope you learn as much as I did. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: InsideTracker: insidetracker.com/RichRoll Athletic Greens: https://www.athleticgreens.com/richroll GoMacro: gomacro.com BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/richroll Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:18Rainn Wilson?

  We threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater. We are missing something by throwing out religion categorically. We're missing some things that religion gives us, which is purpose, meaning, and a sense of the transcendent, a sense that there is something more to strive for.

• 1:40Rich Roll?

  You could make the argument that our postmodern culture has largely dismissed any notion that faith or spirituality can be a collective pursuit, and certainly not the bedrock of our society. Personal beliefs should be just that: personal, unique to every and each individual, and securely separated from the state. My guest today has a bit of a different perspective. Rain Wilson. Rain Wilson!

• 2:07Rich Roll?

  He suggests a new way forward through total spiritual revolution, what he calls Soul Boom. Now, you might be wondering why the guy best known for portraying Dwight Schrute on the hit TV series The Office is here to wax lyrical about matters spiritual. But the truth is that Rain is a deep reservoir of wisdom who has more than earned a position of authority on matters ethereal. First, Rain is the co-founder of the media company Soul Pancake, which focused on content related to the human experience and positive social change. He co-hosted the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake with Reza Azlan. They came on the podcast together a while back, and that podcast made a point of diving into the deep end of topics, religious and ethereal.

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  And Rain is also the author of the new book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. In this conversation, we discuss Rain's Baha'i faith, his conception of the divine, the importance of finding meaning in life, finding the sacred in our everyday lives, and why the solutions to the existential problems we currently face require a spiritual revolution. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible.

• 3:29Rich Roll?

  Okay, enough. Let's do the thing. This is me and Rain Wilson.

• 3:39Rich Roll?

  Well, great to see you, man.

• 3:41Rainn Wilson?

  Good seeing you.

• 3:42Rich Roll?

  Thank you for doing this.

• 3:43Rainn Wilson?

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:44Rich Roll?

  Thank you for bringing the Pacific Northwest weather to this experience. It's absolutely insane.

• 3:50Rainn Wilson?

  It's crazy.

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 3:52Rainn Wilson?

  I got caught in a hailstorm this morning.

• 3:55Rich Roll?

  It literally looks like a different place where we live right now. And I've lived here since 96.

• 4:02Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 4:03Rich Roll?

  I don't know how long you've lived here, but I don't remember it ever raining like this.

• 4:07Rainn Wilson?

  I've never remember a colder, wetter, crazier winter than this. I was saying to my wife, because we're both from the Pacific Northwest, it feels like the Olympic Peninsula.

• 4:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Rainn Wilson?

  Like Mia Bay, Washington.

• 4:19Rich Roll?

  It really does.

• 4:20Rainn Wilson?

  Walls of like dark green clouds and like rain every other day pouring and...

• 4:27Rainn Wilson?

  It's rainforest weather. It's crazy.

• 4:30Rich Roll?

  It really is. And for people that aren't familiar with Los Angeles, I mean, we live in a desert and there's lots of, out where we are, there's lots of kind of low hanging mountain ranges that are typically brown and kind of just scorched by the sun. And the emergence of green feels like this sort of weird Avatar-esque kind of parallel universe that we've suddenly found ourselves in. And it just reminds me of, again, you know, kind of going to the heart of some of the things you talk about in the book, like the regenerative nature of the planet. Like, left to its own devices, it finds a way and it's repairing

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  itself in real time. And it's amazing to see how green these hills are right now. As much as I am over the rain and kind of am pining for the sun right now, it is kind of a spectacular sight to behold.

• 5:23Rainn Wilson?

  It is. It is. I hate to get, I hate to turn this conversation a little dark, but I was reading this article on climate change and they were talking, they were putting this weather system in the context of global climate change in terms of greater droughts and greater flooding.

• 5:41Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 5:41Rainn Wilson?

  So it's just more extreme.

• 5:42Rich Roll?

  It's certainly indicia of something awry.

• 5:45Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah. Yeah. Because we had a nine-year drought with hardly any rain at all. And then, and now just like a biblical deluge.

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  I know. So, we're not going to get too dour too quickly, you know, because you strike an optimistic tone. You know, I love the book. The book is great. I read the whole book. I love it.

• 6:06Rainn Wilson?

  Thank you.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  I can't wait to talk to you about it. And there is a, you know, certainly a core of hope and optimism that kind of provides the underpinning for all of these thoughts as you kind of canvas spirituality and religion and our place in the world and how to, you know, think about and approach solving some of the giant problems that we face right now.

• 6:34Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, what I wanted to do, and it was a, it was a big swing. Yeah. It was kind of bold. I'm not sure if I succeeded, but I wanted to re-explore and reinvigorate spiritual ideas. And I wanted someone, I wanted a reader, whether they're a born again Christian, whether they're agnostic, whether they're spiritual but not religious, whether they're atheist, to just kind of look at the panoply of spiritual ideas in, in an exciting new way through kind of some new lenses of, oh, I hadn't thought of that before. Oh, that is interesting. Or, or there is, there is a way to take up a spiritual perspective on partisan politics. You know,

• 7:19Rainn Wilson?

  that spirituality is not, so many people view spirituality, it's such a weird word. I even, I hate it coming out of my mouth. Sometimes I say spirituality is like, oh, because to so many people, it connotates, is that a word? Conotes? Conotes? Is that what it is? I think so. Connotates isn't a word, is it? It might be. Listen to me. I don't even know what I'm talking about. You're the author. I know. You should know these things. Now, I, I went, I can't tell you how many times I went to thesaurus.com to look at, to look at words. Always reliable. To so many people, the word spirituality connotes a religion, an existing religion.

• 8:01Rainn Wilson?

  To a lot of people, it, it means something very vague, a vague feeling in the heart that's kind of airy fairy, hibbly bibbly hippie-ish kind of yoga class and incense kind of vague feeling. And I, not to diss on yoga or meditation, or even some great new age concepts or self-help books and works and concepts. I love so many of them. But, and to some people, spirituality just means like ghosts and angels and spirits, you know? And so, but I wanted to reinvigorate the word. And, you know, the subtitle of the book is Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. And to do so in such a way that kind of...

• 8:46Rainn Wilson?

  Maybe gives people a kick in the ass about spirituality and saying, and there's an urgency behind it. This isn't like a vague, nice feeling kind of word, but there is an urgency to transform how we do pretty much everything. And the way that we can transform is through the use of spiritual tools.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think you did an incredible and beautiful job of doing that, but I kind of want to put a pin in that for the moment, because I think it's important. You were on the show, I can't remember how long ago it was, a year and a half ago, or something like that?

• 9:26Rainn Wilson?

  Two, two.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  Was it that long ago?

• 9:28Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, I think it was a while.

• 9:29Rich Roll?

  We're getting old.

• 9:30Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  And because that was sort of a unique show where you and Reza showed up, and instead of kind of telling each of your stories, we just did these no card things and tackled big problems, which we're going to do again today, I would like to indulge you a little bit, you know, spin the wheel and do a little bit of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now, to help kind of contextualize why these issues are important to you.

• 9:54Rainn Wilson?

  Sure.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  Because as you kind of call out right at the beginning of the book, like, what the hell is this actor doing, like, writing this big book about big ideas, right? Like, how dare you? You know, Rain Wilson? Who do you think you are? Right? But these ideas run deep throughout, you know, the experience of your life, dating all the way back to childhood, and how you were reared, and the various experiences that you've had over many years.

• 10:20Rainn Wilson?

  Indeed. So I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith, and I won't kind of go into detail about that. But for those who don't know, the Baha'i faith acknowledges the inherent divinity of all of the world's religions, that they all essentially come from the same source, and are gradually unfolding chapters of one eternal faith of God, of the divine. And so, growing up Baha'i, we would meet with Buddhists, and I would meet Sikhs, and born again Christians, and Mormons, and Muslims, and we read holy books and writings from

• 11:01Rainn Wilson?

  all the world's faiths, as well as Baha'i holy texts. So it was a very... Idea provoking milieu to grow up in.

• 11:11Rich Roll?

  It's a somewhat obscure religion, but there are like, I don't know, five million people that practice this faith.

• 11:18Rainn Wilson?

  That's right.

• 11:19Rich Roll?

  Are you perhaps the most famous Baha'i? Are you the, are you the, are you, are you to Baha'i what Tom Cruise is to X?

• 11:27Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, no, don't say that. Oh, my God.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  I had to.

• 11:30Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, man. It's, yeah, it's a little, it's a little weird. So, yeah, there's about five or six million Baha'is around the world. There's pockets, it's the second most widespread of the world's religions, next to Christianity. So, no matter where you go in the world, there's Baha'is.

• 11:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:50Rainn Wilson?

  It's pretty crazy. It's kind of cool, like, you can go to the Galapagos, and there's gonna be some Baha'is. You can go to Mongolia, there's some Baha'is, or Malawi, and there's Baha'i communities. It's very, but the numbers are not, are not huge. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm one of the most well-known Baha'is. There's some other actors and directors, Justin Baldoni, he's a Baha'i.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:12Rainn Wilson?

  Andy Grammer, the singer, is a Baha'i. Penn Badgley, from the show You on Netflix, is a Baha'i. There are some other, Dizzy Gillespie was a Baha'i. When I grew up, there was this band, Seals and Crofts.

• 12:21Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 12:22Rainn Wilson?

  "Summer breeze makes me feel fine." Kind of a hippie band, and they were Baha'is, and we were so happy, because they had this kind of like, beautiful spiritual kind of essence through their music. But, yeah, it's, so it's a faith that I, and I talk about this a little bit in my other book, The Bassoon King, I talk about how I left my faith for a long time, and went through those years, kind of wandering the desert, and then I've come back over the last, you know, ten, twenty years or so.

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  Sure. As, as every good kind of spiritual seeker is wont to do, right? We have to, we have to, we have to venture a way to come back, and we have to figure these things out for ourselves, endure our own kind of challenges and crises, and you certainly allude to that, you know, in the book, and I'm interested in, you don't have to be specific about it. But you know, as you kind of emerged out of the cocoon of how you were brought up and went to New York City and started getting into, you know, theater and acting, what it was that drove you back to the need or the desire or the drive to search for

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  something more meaningful and grounding, like a, you know, a guiding principle in your life that, that, you know, kind of, when did you back to your faith?

• 13:47Rainn Wilson?

  The author Julia Cameron, who wrote The Artist's Way, she wrote, "I came to spirituality out of necessity, not out of virtue." And that's how I would describe my path. So when I left the Baha'i faith, I was in my twenties, I was in New York City, and I wanted nothing more than to be an actor. I just wanted to be a bohemian downtown actor. I was going to NYU, living in the East Village, and I really cast aside morality. I didn't want morality over my head. I wanted to have sex with my girlfriend and not feel guilty about it. I wanted to drink. I wanted to try drugs. I really kind of, let me put it

• 14:31Rainn Wilson?

  this way. I drank the Kool-Aid of contemporary society in thinking that religion was of necessity, something that was for grandmothers and for fearful people that needed like a big daddy god to protect them. So I jettisoned anything and everything having to do with religion at that time. That was great for a few years. It was, it was really awesome. And I had an amazing time. I was working as an actor. I was living my dream for a nerdy suburban boy from Seattle, and I'd never known a single professional artist in my entire life, anyone who had ever gotten a, paid a dime to make art. Here I was, like, acting in plays. And yeah, I was only getting like $375 a week, but I was like, I was in

• 15:16Rainn Wilson?

  plays and I was in New York City and I was working with some great theater directors and had a great group of friends and I, and I dove into the study of, of acting and the making of art. And it was fantastic. And, you know, to, to fast forward about like, why was, why did spirituality become a necessity for me? Like, what I was dealing with at the time? We didn't have a name for in the nineties, which was a mental health crisis. So I started to have anxiety attacks. That would leave me crippled on the floor in a pool of sweat. I would have them sometimes on the subway, especially if the subway like was paused or stuck. I lived way out in Brooklyn, like.

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  Before Brooklyn was the Brooklyn that we know now.

• 16:03Rainn Wilson?

  I was out past Williamsburg, near Brownsville in an abandoned beer brewery. Cause I lived there, I was squatting there essentially. And when the subway would stop like under where the river was. And I would picture the river above the head of, over my head in the subway. I would start to have a meltdown on the subway and I would start sweating. And I would just hoping people aren't noticing like this sweat pouring off my face. I would start shaking, I would have to hold myself and I got really, really depressed for long periods of time. And I was using more and more alcohol and drugs. And this combination of anxiety, depression, and then what I realize now was addiction.

• 16:47Rainn Wilson?

  And I cycled through, I had my pot phase, I had my coke phase, I had, you know, and alcohol all through. Kind of an alcohol saturated decade. I was lucky in the sense that, um, cause I'm in recovery now, but I was lucky in the sense that I, I wasn't a blackout drunk. I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't waking up in a pool of my own vomit somewhere or something like that. But I, I recognized that I used it on a daily basis to medicate my own anxiety. And I was deeply, deeply unhappy. So, and this is what I, I was in this conundrum, Rich, where I was living my dream.

• 17:29Rainn Wilson?

  I literally, if like, if you could go to 16 year old Rainn Wilson, like what's your dream? Live in New York City, be paid to be an actor, have cool friends, have a beautiful girlfriend, live in a loft and have a van and like collaborate artistically with really cool people. I mean, I was living my dream and I was miserable. And so that's when, and that was before I went into any 12 step programs. I was just like, what the fuck is going on? Like, why? Why am I waking up at three in the morning, just like staring at the wall? Why am I considering suicide? Like, what? This doesn't make any fucking sense. It doesn't make any sense.

• 18:13Rainn Wilson?

  Like, I'm living my dream. This is what you wanted, asshole? Why are you so ungrateful? So, that started a long, slow process of me reinvestigating faith, God, and religion. Because in that, again, out of that necessity, it was kind of like, kill yourself or investigate spirituality, or reinvestigate spirituality. But I didn't want to do it the way my parents would have me do it. I needed to do it in my own way. So I cleared the decks and I just started at ground one, like, is there a God? Do I believe in God?

• 18:58Rainn Wilson?

  I'm in my late twenties, living in Brooklyn with my girlfriend, depressed and anxious, medicating myself, drinking every day. You know, let me, let me go on this journey.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  Sure. And as a good Gen Xer, I think we're about the same age, right?

• 19:16Rainn Wilson?

  I'm 42.

• 19:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm...

• 19:18Rainn Wilson?

  I'm kidding.

• 19:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, me too. You know, the, the sort of ethos or, or, or kind of sensibility of our generation is, is a proclivity towards cynicism, irony, everything sucks. Not really nihilism, but just sort of, you know, a general kind of disinterest in a lot of the things that the culture or the generation that preceded us prioritized. And certainly, religion and spirituality, despite your upbringing, were not only uncool, but, you know, just not, you know, part of the fabric of like, our age group, right? So, it's not, like, to me, as somebody who's your, you know, you know, age peer, like,

• 20:04Rich Roll?

  of course, like, you move away from home and you distance yourself from all of that. I moved to New York City too, like, I totally get it. But the interesting thing of you not only deciding to, you know, embark on this spiritual odyssey, but then to find yourself returning to the very faith that, you know, was, was part of your upbringing to begin with is, is super interesting.

• 20:28Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, it's kind of like The Godfather, like, what's that famous line? They, "I wanted to get out and they pulled me right back in."

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Rainn Wilson?

  Uh, that type of thing.

• 20:38Rich Roll?

  The Godfather meets some sort of postmodern, Gen X, Siddhartha exploration with a little Joseph Campbell mixed in.

• 20:47Rainn Wilson?

  That's perfectly said. And by the way, I love the way you summed up Gen X, because I had never heard someone sum it up in that way. But there was this, also this weird thing about our generation, isn't it interesting about this whole idea about selling out? That people just don't have these days?

• 21:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, not, no. We're, like, if you were to go-

• 21:05Rainn Wilson?

  People are celebrated for, like, "Good for you for creating your tequila brand," or whatever it is. Yeah. If you were to go, you're the famous rich role, ultra marathoner, nutrition, vegan, wellness, health, spirituality expert, and if you were to go on a, do a commercial for, like, cereal bars from, you know, Procter & Gamble or something like that, like, these new, like, people would be like, "Yeah, you go, cash it in."

• 21:31Rich Roll?

  I know, it's so strange.

• 21:32Rainn Wilson?

  And, but we really were like, "Oh, if a band sold more than like 100,000 albums, they were, they sold out, Nirvana sold out, Bleach was their best record."

• 21:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:42Rainn Wilson?

  How dare they?

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's, let's talk about Sonic Youth and, you know, kind of leaving the DIY sensibility and anybody who breaks out, uh, you know, God forbid.

• 21:52Rainn Wilson?

  So there were great things about that, but like you said, there's also bad things where, um, you know, it gets too precious, but at the same time, nowadays, it, it's true, like, you can, you know, just rampant capitalism and selling out is lauded. Anyway, putting that aside. So, yeah, this Joseph Campbell-esque journey of mine was very interesting. I think in the back of my head, I always knew I would probably come back to the Baha'i faith because of all of the world's faiths, it's the most, I find, the most kind of inclusive of a wide range of ideas, like, the idea of me becoming a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Sikh, or something like that would, it would have been a much smaller

• 22:35Rainn Wilson?

  slice of the pie, whereas the Baha'i faith, because it's inclusive of all of those worldviews, um, it, you know, it's, it feels more-

• 22:46Rainn Wilson?

  Arrived in a way, but I had to start with that essential question, do I believe in a God? And, and that took me years, like, and I, and I really dug deep into that. And I would talk to my friends and it was very interesting because they would all say, I would say, "Do you believe in God?" And talk to my RTG and X friends. And at that time, very few of them were straight up atheists. Very few kind of said, "No, I don't. I think there's just the universe and we're just atoms and it's all random and that's it." Very few people said that. Most people were like, "Well, I believe in some kind of energy force out there, but I wouldn't call it God."

• 23:29Rainn Wilson?

  So they were struggling with this idea of like a daddy Santa Claus bearded white man God on a cloud, looking down on us judgmentally. Certainly, as we all should struggle with that idea of a God and discard it immediately. And then I started reading, I talk about this in the book a little bit, I started reading Native American spirituality, a lot of books about it. And that's when the light bulb went on because the indigenous North American view of the Creator is so rich and beautiful and deep and inclusive and just profoundly poetic and moving that it's, it's hard to dispute.

• 24:14Rainn Wilson?

  So in the Lakota tradition, Wa Kanta means "The Great Mystery." And I remember at like 27 or 28, having a conversation with my friend, I was like, "I don't know if I can believe in God, but I can believe in the Great Mystery."

• 24:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this idea that, that God is not a bearded man, but is more like a pervasive energy that, that it's not, it's not like a who, it's like this thing that surrounds us. And that, that Sioux idea that you explore in the book is super interesting. It's like, uh, what did you say? I wrote it down in the notes, but.

• 24:51Rich Roll?

  It's not a, it's not a what, but it's a, what did I do? What, I wrote it down. I can't find it.

• 24:57Rainn Wilson?

  A how?

• 24:57Rich Roll?

  Of course. Yeah, it's a how, right?

• 24:59Rainn Wilson?

  It's less, God is less of a-

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, God is a how, not a what. And you explain this idea, like, the analogy you use is, think of God as like, the internet, where, where wifi is the Holy Spirit and computers are, are souls. So it's this, like, diffused energy that exists everywhere, from which we are not separate. Which is a distinct departure from the notion of the, the monotheistic, you know, God, that's like, sort of peering down upon us as a separate thing.

• 25:35Rainn Wilson?

  The theologian David Bentley Hart talks about most people's conception of God. And when, when atheists talk about not believing in a God, what they're describing is a demiurge. And this word demiurge is really interesting. It's like, it's like a Marvel character. It's like this all-powerful-

• 25:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Rainn Wilson?

  -being, among other beings, that has the power to create worlds, that is looking down on us, that can cast thunder, and can cause miracles, and can look into your mind and read your thoughts like Dr. Xavier, you know, from X-Men. And, so getting away from anything demiurgical toward, I also describe God in a parallel to some larger forces like beauty, or the concept of love. And you might say, "Well, I don't know if I can believe in God, but I certainly believe in love." And, you know, we can be shown that love on a brain scan, lights up certain areas of our brain, and, and it's there,

• 26:35Rainn Wilson?

  from a behavioralist point of view, to help us create families, and, and propagate the species, that's the only reason it exists. And you could kind of say, "Well, nonsense."

• 26:46Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:47Rainn Wilson?

  I know, in my heart, that love is more than just a couple of neurons firing in my brain, and a propagation of the species. I, I have experienced it on, with so many different facets, and, and varieties, and variables, and nuances. And I've experienced it holistically, and I've, and from my wife, and when I held my child in the hospital, in the, in the hallway, in Van Nuys, at 3:00 in the morning, and I, I experience it when I'm in nature. And, so, that experience of that-

• 27:19Rainn Wilson?

  The force of love is much more akin to what I hope people will think of when they think about God or the divine, less as some kind of being among other beings that has superpowers.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  Sure, and as the one sort of biological creature that has the capacity to really, you know, embrace these, you know, these types of emotions that we can't actually locate within the brain, the cranium, right? Where does love exist? How do we define it? Like, what is it exactly? Where does awe and wonder sit? And how do we think about that? And why do these impulses and these emotions live within us? And, and, and why are they provoked by, you know, certain chords of music or somebody on a stage, you know, you know, sort of in the midst of their pathos or, or whatnot? And what do we make of that?

• 28:17Rich Roll?

  And how do we extrapolate from those very human experiences to think more broadly about what is actually going on? Like, how do we telescope up from that and consider more deeply our place here on planet Earth and in the universe? And fucking A, dude, like, what is it all about, Rain? Like, that's what this book is. Like, you know, what's up for you, Rain? You know, not much, just consciousness and God and spirituality and religion and, and, you know, the need for a spiritual revolution to solve our existential problems. You know, are we on the cusp of something new? Are we at a breakpoint that is going to lead to the decimation of ecosystems and perhaps humanity itself?

• 29:01Rich Roll?

  Like, what are we actually talking about here? How are we going to solve these problems? And, you know, this book is really a call to action in that the solutions that we seek cannot be found within the parameters and the structures of the limited systems that continually push us in the wrong direction, but instead require a whole cloth, you know, new way of looking at all of these problems and the capacity of human beings and erecting new solutions. Like, it's almost, you know, it is a revolutionary act, this book. You're asking a lot of the audience in reading it, but it's also very, you know, hopeful in that regard.

• 29:43Rainn Wilson?

  Would you like to do my book tour for me?

• 29:46Rich Roll?

  That's what we're doing right now.

• 29:48Rainn Wilson?

  That was better said.

• 29:49Rich Roll?

  Help me help you, Rain.

• 29:50Rainn Wilson?

  That was better said and more articulate than anything I've ever said about the book previous.

• 29:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Rainn Wilson?

  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna copy that, remember, write that down and, and repeat it. Very well said. So the book kind of has various parts to it and I'm, I'm not sure what the question, should I go right to the spiritual revolution?

• 30:13Rich Roll?

  I want you to just talk about whatever's coming up for you.

• 30:15Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 30:16Rich Roll?

  That wasn't a question.

• 30:17Rainn Wilson?

  No, I know, I know. So here's what was fun to me about this book. I have a chapter on death. Death is one of my favorite topics. In fact, I felt so proud where I got my first call from someone who said, hey, my sister is dying of cancer. Can you talk to her about death? And I felt so, that was one of the greatest phone calls I've ever received in my life. Like, I feel honored and inspired. I love the topic. We're all gonna do it. You and I, Rich, might be 20 years, might be 40 years. We're all riding around in meat suits.

• 30:56Rainn Wilson?

  We got about 90 some years, if we're lucky, and our essence, what I will call our soul, continues on an infinite journey to meet the divine source, whatever that looks like, infinite, infinite worlds of, of, of the divine, of the holy, of the sacred, that await us on our journey past this physical plane. So I got to write about death. I lost my dad. He didn't die of COVID, but during COVID of, of heart disease about two years ago, and it was one of the most profound and disturbing and heartrending experiences of my life. And I write about that in the book. I got to write a chapter on God, because God is, as you can tell, is one of my favorite topics as well. I get into consciousness.

• 31:41Rainn Wilson?

  I have discussions of aliens looking down on planet Earth and talking about, you know, what these ridiculous human beings are going through down on the planet. I got to just pose super fun conversations. I talk about my favorite TV shows from the 70s and they're kind of through a spiritual lens, which is Kung Fu.

• 32:05Rich Roll?

  Trust me, we're gonna get into it.

• 32:06Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, okay, good. We'll get into that.

• 32:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:08Rainn Wilson?

  But, but like you said in your, in your, in your summary, where it's all leading, and the point I really wanted to make is like, just plain and simple, okay, just where rubber meets the road, like totally practical. The way current systems are set up, they are based on the worst of humanity. You think about the worst of humanity, what do you think of? Lust, greed, aggression. You think about one-upsmanship, and kind of a rampant individuality that overrides community. These terrible qualities of humanity, competition, now there's healthy competition, there's even

• 32:49Rainn Wilson?

  a certain amount of healthy aggression, but they have run rampant in every existing system. Take any system, education, healthcare, certainly, politics, international relations, just capitalism in general, they're based on the worst qualities of humanity. And we need to like, throw out completely, and find practical ways to do this. This is not some like, John Lennon, "Imagine All The People Living Life in Peace," kind of hippie dippy stuff, like, there, there has to, we have to find solutions that bring spiritually-based systems of interaction to bear on how we run everything on planet

• 33:34Rainn Wilson?

  Earth. And if we don't, we're headed off a cliff.

• 33:45Rich Roll?

  So, right now, we tend to address the problems that we have with Band-Aids, whether it's campaign finance reform, or gerrymandering, or healthcare reform, what have you. These are all sort of small, short-term fixes that are blind to the dysfunctional underpinnings of the system itself, right? So, short of a complete revamp, a social and spiritual revolution, that allows...

• 34:15Rich Roll?

  Allows us to kind of deconstruct and dismantle the systems themselves. They will continue to perpetuate and drive us, you know, towards the edge of that cliff. Because they're they're premised upon these predilections of humanity, which are, you know, not great, as you mentioned, you know, greed, power, lust, this zero-sum game mentality, you know, the worst of competition that are pitting us against ourselves. And, uh, you know, basically, in so doing, alienating ourselves from the beauty of our innate humanity and the unity that we share, like our inability to actually see and embrace

• 35:00Rich Roll?

  the fact that we are all one and that what we share and who we are is much more alike than what differentiates ourselves.

• 35:09Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  And we're just quibbling over bullshit as we, you know, sort of accelerate towards the precipice of this cliff. This is what's happening. These problems are ranging from small to extremely existential. Um, and yet I can't help, even in, you know, you know, kind of the the beauty of what you propose in this book. Um, it's hard for me to be optimistic about our capacity to get our shit together. Uh, and and not only like see and identify this, but actually take the actions required to deconstruct and then reconstruct the systems that would set us on a better path.

• 35:50Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, um, you brought up a lot of things. Let me get to a few of them. First, let me start at the end with the optimism. Uh, I get it. It's very hard for me to remain optimistic as well. And I do think, and I use the analogy of like, A teenager having to go to rehab, like humanity is in its teenage years. Humanity, right now, in its development, is literally like sixteen and a half. Thrashing around, kind of, it's kind of following its worst, most base impulses. And, you know, using opioids and oil and materialism and consumerism and the narcissism of social media to kind of hit bottom.

• 36:35Rich Roll?

  Fuck you.

• 36:35Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, fuck you, and hit bottom and needs to be carted away to rehab and go hiking around the mountains of Utah for a while.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  Right, but what is that bottom? Like, how far does that elevator have to go down, Rain, before we have that reckoning?

• 36:48Rainn Wilson?

  And we hope that it's not a nuclear war. And we hope it's not a breakdown of all societal structures. We hope that we're able to kind of like hit a soft bottom and not a hard bottom, to use the 12-step parlance. But, you know, look at Rwanda, for instance. Underwent one of the most gruesome atrocities of carnage in human history. And now, you know, the way that they have the tribes there, the Tutsi and Hutu, have healed the conflict and the way they have set the economy forward and the way women are used in politics and kind of, there's been a profound sea change and shift in how that country works.

• 37:33Rainn Wilson?

  So, you brought up a great point. One of the things that I stress again and again in here is about politics. And one of the things that is my personal pet peeves that I hate more than anything is partisan politics. Because partisanship is immediately like, how much money can I raise? How much can I denigrate the other party? How much can I try and assert power and control over them at all costs? We have stopped seeking solutions to really difficult problems. And everything becomes polarized.

• 38:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not solution-oriented at all. It's about throwing grenades at the other side. It's about owning the libs or pointing out, you know, the stupidity of the other side. quibbling, you know, at the cost of actually solving problems. And that's really a systemic ill of, you know, of the greater structure. Right? Like, part of it is driven by, you know, kind of maybe what's wrong with human beings. Like, we're sort of, you know, we like, we get activated by that sort of discourse. And certainly, social media amplifies all of that. And I think is exacerbating this problem. But we need systems and structures that incentivize and bring out the best of us

• 38:49Rich Roll?

  as opposed to the worst of us. And I feel like that's the pivot that you're speaking to in the book.

• 38:55Rainn Wilson?

  Well, I, so in partisan politics, you talked earlier about Band-Aids. People are like, well, we need a, you know, we need 20 Supreme Court justices. That'll solve the problem. We need campaign finance reform. That'll solve the problem. You know, we need less gerrymandering. That'll solve the problem. It's, we are looking for these fixes. But the entire system is based on fuck you, I'm gonna own you. Let me say this for an example. When there are debates, what's the headline the next day? Who got in the best zingers against the other person they were debating? Oh, Kamala Harris got this incredible zinger in. Joe Biden did the zinger. Oh, Donald Trump really took down Hillary Clinton there.

• 39:39Rainn Wilson?

  Like, that's how we're celebrating? We're celebrating the ability to stand on a stage and cut someone else down?

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  But that also speaks to the unhealthy incentives of the media and social media and the algorithms and the way dopamine works in our brain.

• 39:52Rainn Wilson?

  It all works together.

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Rainn Wilson?

  So, an example that I bring up in Soul Boom to get really, again, because I feel like spiritual solutions to these problems need to be super practical. And if they're not, it's, again, it's just this kind of airy-fairy, kind of vague idea. I use an example from the Baha'i faith. So, in the Baha'i faith, it's a, there's no clergy. It's all democratically elected. So, here we are in this suburb outside of LA, in this particular suburb. I don't know if you tell people where you record this.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  Top secret.

• 40:25Rainn Wilson?

  The, there is an, every year, the Baha'is elect an assembly of the nine most spiritually mature people to guide the community. Right? Every year, we, and we do this silent ballot, prayerful, we meditate. Write it down, put it in slip and paper. You don't know who did it. We've got tellers. They tally it. There's no yard signs. There's no campaigning. There's no fundraising. Now, you can say, "Well, that's fine in a small religion of, you know, a couple hundred thousand in the United States." But how would that work? Well, let's say this small suburb out of here in LA decided one day, "Hey, we're sick and tired of toxic partisan politics."

• 41:06Rainn Wilson?

  So this suburb, here we are in Thousand Oaks, California, "We want to do things differently. We want to have an election. And we're going to meet at this high school cafeteria, and everyone from the community is going to show up. And there's going to be no campaigning, no yard signs, no money. No money is going to change hands. It's not about money. It's not about power. And in the city of Thousand Oaks, we're going to think of the nine most, maybe not spiritual, but let's say wise, mature, and selfless public servants we can think of. We're going to write them down on a piece of paper. And we're going to find the people that tally the most votes, and we're going to ask them to serve one term of one year, three years, five years, whatever it is,

• 41:51Rainn Wilson?

  to selflessly serve to meet the needs of that community. Now, can you imagine doing that on a small scale? Maybe you can imagine that in a small town. Maybe a tiny town in Iowa decides to do that, let's say. And then it spreads. And then you could say a county could do that, or a state could do that. Could we eventually do that in a way? I think we could. It might sound pie in the sky, but wouldn't that be such a better alternative to the, to literally the hundreds of millions of dollars that are changing hands every year? Money that could be used for social benefit, and instead is used for campaign ads that no one under 60 listens to anyway, and they're play on repeat on Fox News and MSNBC,

• 42:36Rainn Wilson?

  and during, you know, infomercials? It's an insane amount of waste and money and corruption perpetuating a broken system.

• 42:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I love it and I also can't help but think perhaps that is a little pie in the sky because humans are our own worst enemies. And I imagine the guy who's like, yeah, I know what Rain's saying, but I know if I elect this guy, he's gonna let me, you know, sidestep regulations and build that fence in my front yard that right now the city's not letting me do. And he told me secretly that if I, you know, like workarounds, right? Like, we are, you know, we'll always devolve to, you know, self-interest. And I think perhaps that speaks to, you know, something I want to explore with you, which is, you know, perhaps uniquely

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  American, which is this idea of rugged individualism. Like, it's really about me and what I want to do and like my liberty versus the responsibility to the collective. And you kind of couch this in a really great analogy that I love because I'm your age, which is Star Trek versus Kung-Fu. Right now, as a child of the 70s, when I think back to my childhood, I think of, you know, banana seats, Schwinn bikes, and Virginia Slims, and brown refrigerators, and, you know, all the greatness that the 70s gave us. But perhaps the greatest gift of the 70s, you know,

• 44:08Rich Roll?

  at least for me, as a nerd, a fellow nerd, maybe not as much of a nerd as you, but I was a rabid Star Trek fan and just less of a Kung-Fu fan, we'll get to that, but Star Trek was my jam. I was the guy who went to Star Trek conventions and like the whole thing, right? And even now, maybe it's that thing when you're at a certain age, like, stuff becomes indelible and you irrationally fall in love with it and still think that it's the greatest. But the original William Shatner Star Trek was so beautiful. And I loved how you talked about it in the book because... What it did was it really grappled with like big social issues and did it in a really entertaining way. Right?

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  And, and that was, in the book, you sort of say, well, this is the collective spirituality that we need to sort of consider more profoundly. And then in turn, Kung Fu being an example of rugged individual spirituality, like the internal development that we need in terms of a spiritual revolution. And you posit this idea of merging these two sensibilities, individual spiritual evolution and a, you know, a true kind of prioritization of the importance of, of, you know, collective responsibility and, and, and responsibility to kind of elevating the whole that is missing from our current culture.

• 45:34Rich Roll?

  So maybe riff on that a little bit or explain.

• 45:37Rainn Wilson?

  You summed it up perfectly. I think the spiritual journey in contemporary society is very much the Kung, of the Kung Fu variety. So in Kung Fu, for people who don't know, Kua Ching Kean is a Chinese Shaolin monk. He's actually, I think he's half Caucasian in the show originally.

• 45:56Rich Roll?

  It's cast a white, white guy.

• 45:58Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, we should note the racism of the show, which was invented by Bruce Lee. They stole the idea and cast a white guy in the show, which was just horrific. But nonetheless, the show was brilliant. And David Carradine, who played Kua Ching Kean, who studied Kung Fu and spirituality in the, in a Shaolin monastery in China. He goes to the Old West in the 1870s, 1880s, looking for his brother. So he's on this quest to find his brother. And he's taking his wealth of knowledge from his background, from the Shaolin monastery, what the, there's flashbacks to these beautiful monks that are teaching him the, you know, you know, be supple, be supple as the willow tree in the wind, you know, kind of concepts.

• 46:41Rainn Wilson?

  And he's taking that into a racist, aggressive, violent Old West. And every day he's on his path, meeting up with some racist cowboy. And there's always a couple of good fights and some Kung Fu fights there. But he's also, most of the show is kind of talking about concepts of forgiveness and healing and acceptance and compassion and some of these, you know, profound and universal spiritual ideas. So. For most contemporary Americans, at least in secular cities, that's what a spiritual journey is considered, that what do I do? What are the tools that I use at a yoga class?

• 47:25Rainn Wilson?

  And my meditation and my reading and listening to Eckhart Tolle, who I love, you know, these spiritual guides and teachers along the way. We've got, you know, Rumi on Instagram and we try and make ourselves better people. We try and incorporate divine qualities in our lives. We try and find peace and surrender and serenity in our daily lives. And as we go out into the milieu of modern life, stuck in traffic and horrible bosses and backstabbing fellow employees and screwed up teenage kids that are lost. And we're trying to use what we've learned on our journey

• 48:06Rainn Wilson?

  to make ourselves better and kind of, and stay on the path. So that's one side of spirituality and it's a very important one, right? And that's, it's the spirituality we nurture in the garden of our hearts and we take with us on our daily journey. But Star Trek, to your point, I see as a metaphor for a larger spiritual context, which is that humanity, when Star Trek begins, has had a giant war. And they came together after this giant World War III. They don't really talk about what that looked like, but it was mass decimation. And humanity has greatly matured because of it and has healed racism and has healed income inequality

• 48:50Rainn Wilson?

  and has brought all the planet together into kind of a one world government. That is a just government. And they are then able to focus on technology and healing. There's no poverty at home, no one is starving. And they're able to go explore outer space, seek out strange new worlds.

• 49:09Rich Roll?

  And humans seem to be liberated from their base instincts somehow. We're not quite sure how that happened, but it seems to be the case.

• 49:17Rainn Wilson?

  Well, it's kind of the chicken and the egg, isn't it? I mean, if you have a society that's eliminated these kind of building blocks of inequity and injustice, you know, I think it's much easier for our higher natures to flourish.

• 49:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Rainn Wilson?

  And in fact, Roddenberry insisted in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and if you notice this and you read about the show, in The Next Generation, there's no conflict at all.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:39Rainn Wilson?

  So the TV writers-

• 49:40Rich Roll?

  It's very difficult to create drama.

• 49:42Rainn Wilson?

  How do you create a TV show when no one disagrees with each other? But you never hear like Number One, or Decker, or Worf going, "I disagree. I don't think we should go Worf Four. I think we need to go Worf Two." They're past... Now, I don't know that humans will ever go past disagreement, but there is what I view as kind of a necessary evolution, a transformation, a maturity of humanity that we are able to connect with the other species of the universe. And, but I'm fascinated by what life on Earth is like during Star Trek, when they're out gallivanting around solar systems.

• 50:21Rich Roll?

  Sure, and they happen upon certain civilizations that serve as metaphors for social issues that we were grappling with and continue to grapple with now in our times. And you highlight, you know, two of the, you know, the sort of more notable episodes, the, you know, the episode where half the aliens, half the face is black, half is white. And, you know, you don't even realize as a viewer until halfway into it, these people that are in conflict with each other. They're on, the black and the white are on opposite sides of their face, and you realize how preposterous that is as a sort of analogy or metaphor for race relations, you know, as we currently contend with them.

• 51:02Rainn Wilson?

  And let's not forget the first interracial kiss in television history-

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  Sure, yeah.

• 51:06Rainn Wilson?

  Was Kirk and Uhuru-

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  Nichelle Nichols.

• 51:11Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, the gorgeous Nichelle Nichols, who I got to meet before her passing.

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did? Wow.

• 51:16Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 51:17Rainn Wilson?

  It was legend.

• 51:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Rainn Wilson?

  So, and that did more for race relations, moving forward, race relations than almost any other event on television in many ways.

• 51:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and as you kind of aptly point out in the book, it's not that the kiss happened, it's how they kind of low keyed the whole thing, like, yeah, no big deal.

• 51:37Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, we're all, we're human beings, we're of the human race.

• 51:41Rich Roll?

  Right, and so in the book, I'm gonna read a little section where you kind of talk about like how these two, like the sort of Kung Fu sensibility and the Star Trek sensibility have to come together to, you know, create the foundation for this new spiritual revolution that you're talking about, and you say, "What good is a spiritual path that only enriches our own inner peace while hundreds of millions go hungry?" In other words, like the Kung Fu thing of just focusing on self, right? And conversely, how do we sustainably serve those millions if our hearts are hard, empty, cold, and filled with selfish ego or materialistic motives? How can there be peace without justice?

• 52:24Rich Roll?

  There is an ongoing dance, a conversation between the twofold moral paths that lie ahead of us. We seek personal enlightenment so that we can serve more, have an outward orientation, and help create a better world. And when we undertake this service, we are in turn internally awakened and fulfilled to an even greater degree.

• 52:44Rainn Wilson?

  Damn, I wrote that?

• 52:45Rich Roll?

  Profound shit from like, like this Dwight Schrute character.

• 52:49Rainn Wilson?

  From the guy who played Dwight?

• 52:50Rich Roll?

  I know, come on dude.

• 52:51Rainn Wilson?

  Geez.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, how are we supposed to take you seriously?

• 52:55Rainn Wilson?

  Um, I don't have an answer for that.

• 52:58Rich Roll?

  That's good shit, though, man.

• 53:00Rainn Wilson?

  Thanks.

• 53:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Rainn Wilson?

  Thanks. Yeah. Uh, I appreciate that, and I'm glad that that stuck out, because I view it as like a yin and a yang shape that these two... I try, Rain Wilson, I try to be a better person every day. I try and be more patient with my wife and my kid. And I look at my character defects, you know, like we do in 12-step programs. I can be really judgmental. I can be impatient. You know, I have, I have to work on these and get better. And then I also feel like something that many Americans have lost track of is this idea that, um, you know, Bahala, the founder of the Baha'i faith, says, "All men were created to usher forth an ever-advancing civilization."

• 53:46Rainn Wilson?

  So, part of our spiritual purpose is to help all of us move forward, whatever that means. Now, that doesn't mean you need to be Mother Teresa. That can mean that at your job as an accountant, you have great integrity and you refuse to backbite about the other accountants. There's all kinds of ways that we can be of service and be moving the ball down the field toward human transformation and maturity. And I found this in the office, you know, like, I can't tell you, like, every day, online or in person, I hear from people, like, "Thank you so much for the show." We recently, it's recently been 10 years since we did our very final episode and I posted about it on Instagram.

• 54:29Rainn Wilson?

  And the thousands of comments, like, "Thank you for your show." It, it, it soothed us. It made our family laugh. My, my mother was really sick and we would watch it together. My parents were going through a divorce and my siblings and I would watch it together. It helped me through a mental health crisis. It helped me through COVID. Like, who would have thunk that something as silly as, like, a bunch of, you know, weird denizens in a paper company, you know, doing a sitcom, could have provided that kind of a service to a lot of people. And certainly not why any of us, then, "I got the job because I wanted a house."

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:09Rainn Wilson?

  You know?

• 55:09Rich Roll?

  And the fact that, like, perhaps even more people watched it in recent years than even when it came out, like, the long tail on this thing and, you know, the kind of audience building that's happened even over the past of the, the, the past couple of years is unbelievable with this thing. I mean, it really is a unicorn. In that sense.

• 55:28Rainn Wilson?

  Um, I'm profoundly lucky. I have so many friends that are actors and so many of them have been on shows that we haven't even heard. I had a friend who was on the show Yes, Dear, which was right before The Office, had twice our numbers, three times our numbers. No one talks about Yes, Dear. Oh, I can't wait to get home and watch some episodes of Yes, Dear. I'm not shitting on the show. You know, it's fine, funny, you know, sitcom. But the fact that The Office has legs and has great, it has a kind of a timelessness, oddly enough. Offices look like offices. There's fluorescent lights, and there's phones, and there's desks, and there's crazy bosses, and there's-

• 56:08Rich Roll?

  And you're all archetypes that everybody can identify. Like, they all know their version of, you know, the character that you play.

• 56:15Rainn Wilson?

  There's a Pam and a Jim in every office, and there's a Dwight in every office, and there's some version of Michael Scott. And that's the other funny thing about The Office is the fans are young. They've never set foot in an office. Most of the fans that watch the show are teenagers and college kids. And the people who discover the show and watch it, they've never even, they don't know what a fax machine is, or a copy machine, or a, you know, a staff meeting, or anything like that. That was the thing that was greatly surprising to us. Like, all of a sudden, when we were almost canceled a dozen times, and then all of a sudden, we started getting the numbers in, like, the average age of

• 56:56Rainn Wilson?

  your viewer is 24? It's like, whoa, that's crazy. Because we thought it would be people in their 30s and 40s that worked in offices, after all.

• 57:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, my kids are great examples of that. I mean, it's so interesting. Like, what do you make of that?

• 57:12Rainn Wilson?

  Um, I think you tapped into it. I think it's a, I think it's the universals of the characters. And it is a, I think The Office is a vision of working in an office, might be. And very often, I find people that write online and they say, "I want to work in an office, like, in The Office." And like, they want to work in like a menial nine-to-five. And I'm like, "No, no, don't do it!"

• 57:40Rich Roll?

  You're missing the whole thing.

• 57:42Rainn Wilson?

  How soul-crushing it can be. Not always, you know, but-

• 57:48Rainn Wilson?

  But you know, going, connecting that to the book, one of the interesting things with millennials and Gen Z is that for years when they would ask young people, what's the most important thing you're looking for in a job, they would say, you know, good pay, high status, like people will think highly of me by having been sales manager, senior executive, or what have you, you know, commute from home, being in the community I want, you know, perks like healthcare, etc. There was always this list, and it was the same for decades. Then all of a sudden, we found when I was working at Soul Pancake, this digital media company I had, that we found, and it was around 2010, 2012, all of a sudden, like, making a difference

• 58:33Rainn Wilson?

  in the world was shot to the top, like, number one, two, or three for millennials and Gen Z. All of a sudden, there was a questioning of, why are we doing this again? I don't necessarily want money, status, an easy commute, and perks out of my job. Like, I want to be a part of something that, that makes a difference. And I think that's also, this is a really lost couple of generations, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but I think lost in questioning, I think the mental health crisis, obviously, is just through the roof, and it's devastating, it's something I talk about in the book a great deal. But you do,

• 59:17Rainn Wilson?

  going back to hope, I think these younger generations really have their eye on something greater in a way that we didn't, as Gen X. My son is 18 years old, and my wife said that she found him in tears because he found out that Biden had okayed this Willow Petroleum Oil exploration in Alaska, and opening up a national park in Alaska for new drilling, even though that goes against everything he campaigned for, and every promise the Democratic Party made about a Green New Deal and whatnot. And what do you hear? Silence. Silence. He's opening up Alaska for drilling. But if a Republican had opened up Alaska for drilling,

• 1:00:02Rainn Wilson?

  the Democrats would be like, ah! Again, the toxicity of partisanship, and the hypocrisy of partisanship. My son was in tears over this. And he also came up to me the other day and he said, Dada, when no one's around, he calls me Dada. If someone else is around, he calls me Father. He's like, Dada. I was like, what's going on, Walter? What's in your heart right now? And he's like, Dada, I'm really upset about income inequality. I'm really, I was researching it, watching these YouTube videos, like, the middle class is shrinking, and the haves are getting have-ear, and the have-nots are getting have-not-ear, and it's really, really fucked up. I'm very,

• 1:00:42Rainn Wilson?

  very upset about it. And we had a long talk about socialism and social programs, and how the middle class was initially created in the United States. And so, this younger generation, they're very tuned in to what the world needs.

• 1:00:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that is a source of great optimism for me, because certainly that was not my sensibility when I was 18, 21. And the fact that there is this new generation of people who very much are prioritizing meaning, purpose, impact into the bigger decisions they're making about how to invest their time and what career to pursue is extraordinary.

• 1:01:25Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Rich Roll?

  We like to shit on young people, and oh, whatever, but that's really beautiful and laudable. And I'm not sure from whence that emanates. Like, what is the source of that? Is it really just a greater objective perspective on what's actually happening, where they're looking at it and thinking, this is not right, we can correct this? Every generation, obviously, to your point earlier, is here to kind of elevate consciousness and push us forward, progress humanity, and hopefully a better direction. But when you think back on why this younger generation is seeing things in that way, like, how do you make sense of that?

• 1:02:09Rainn Wilson?

  Okay, let's look at the hippie days. If you went into a coma in 1964 with a nice trim haircut such as you're demonstrating.

• 1:02:18Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:19Rainn Wilson?

  And you were in a coma.

• 1:02:20Rich Roll?

  I did have long hair, by the way.

• 1:02:21Rainn Wilson?

  I'm sure you did.

• 1:02:21Rich Roll?

  But yeah.

• 1:02:23Rainn Wilson?

  And I, and you woke up from that coma in 1974. And they're like, hello, Rich, wake up. Oh, thank God. Oh, you're saved. You've been in a coma for 10 years. You'd be like, oh, okay, great, great. So what's going on? It's like, woo, 10 years. Okay, what's going on? Well, we had the Beatles and we had Led Zeppelin and we had the race riots and we had the Vietnam War and we had the protests and we had the bra burnings and we had Watergate. And, you know, like, it would be jaw dropping, the amount of change. It'd be like, wait a minute, guys aren't just wearing skinny black ties and skinny black suits

• 1:03:06Rainn Wilson?

  and going to their, their jobs in their, in their Oldsmobiles? Like, what the hell is going on? Where's, where's the Eisenhower America that I knew? You know, back then, you know, we have, you know, finally, you know, rights for, for, for black Americans and legislation, kind of putting a nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. Like, it's a completely different world. So I think, and I hope, one of these days, we're at a turning point. Now, there were a lot of problems in the hippie days. We all know how kind of drugs and sex got involved and that kind of, everything just moved towards drugs and sex land. And by the mid 70s, everyone was just getting baked and, and loving the one they're with. And we kind of lost sight of like real social change.

• 1:03:50Rainn Wilson?

  But maybe we're at an inflection, a similar kind of inflection point.

• 1:04:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think there's a lot of truth to that. And in thinking about that, we have the young people with this elevated sensibility of responsibility and purpose, which I think is really beautiful. That's a Star Trek sensibility, right? We come from more of the Kung Fu sensibility, me, me, me. And in my own kind of personal relationship with religion and spirituality, I probably fall into the camp of this idea that you explore in the book, which is our own personal bespoke relationship with spirituality, right?

• 1:04:43Rich Roll?

  Like this idea that we're in this era where religion is on the decline. People of our generation had the experiences that we had growing up with various doctrines and churches that we're kind of resistant to. And we're finding our own connection to meaning through this sort of pastiche of various spiritual principles, whether that's through yoga, or Hinduism, or Buddhism. We're kind of patching these things together to try to find meaning in our own lives. And I probably put myself in that category on some level. And then matching that, and that's a very individualistic thing. Like, it's about me and my relationship with myself and the world,

• 1:05:28Rich Roll?

  and how can I be a better person? On top of that, with the decline in religious traditions, at least within the context of the United States, we're seeing the rise of the secular guru, right? Like, you talk about celebrity and sports stars, and the people that have sort of supplanted religious figures or leaders as people that we look to for guidance or for inspiration. But one thing that you kind of left out in that discussion are these new figures that are on the social media landscape that a lot of people are gravitating towards for inspiration, for wisdom, for guidance, for better or for worse, right?

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  Jordan Petersons, or the, you know, pick your, pick whoever, Russell Brand, people like that, who in many ways, to my mind, seem to have stepped into the place of the local pastor at the church, or, you know, the, the kind of, uh, community figure that would have galvanized, uh, you know, the young people within that community. So, how are you, like, how do you look at that and think about that?

• 1:06:40Rainn Wilson?

  I think that's very well said, and you're right, I, I, I'm kind of like kicking myself, "Oh yeah, I should have talked more about that, because it's true." And you look at the veneration that Elon Musk gets, for instance, and a lot of the Silicon Valley startup kind of guys.

• 1:06:55Rich Roll?

  Sure, the billionaires, and the, the tech, the technologists, and, you know, these are demigods in our culture.

• 1:07:02Rainn Wilson?

  Right, right. And then, on the internet, you have, um, what's that asshole who got arrested in Romania?

• 1:07:09Rich Roll?

  Andrew Tate.

• 1:07:10Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, you have, you have the Andrew Tates, who are just despicable, materialistic, sexist, violent, uh, idiots. And then you have people that are-

• 1:07:21Rich Roll?

  And yet, have enormous followings of people, you know, particularly, young men, in the, you know, in the age bracket of, of your son Walter, right? Like, I'm sure he has friends who are sort of cottoned on to this guy's messaging, and what that's doing. Like, there's very real implications for all of this.

• 1:07:44Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, it's, it's very real. And, but you also have people like Jay Shetty-

• 1:07:48Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:07:48Rainn Wilson?

  And, uh, you know, there's, in the podcast world, there's Lewis Howes, and, um, Four Hour Work Week, what's that guy?

• 1:07:57Rich Roll?

  Uh, Tim Ferriss?

• 1:07:58Rainn Wilson?

  Like, yeah.

• 1:07:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like the Podcastosphere.

• 1:08:00Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, the Podcastosphere, and they have a lot of great wisdom to offer, and I would, and I'm gonna challenge you on this, because- You say that you have a bespoke spirituality and I kind of make fun of it in the book a little bit like, "Oh, I like this yoga class and I like this Rumi quote."

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  But the Baha'i faith is sort of that too. On some level.

• 1:08:18Rainn Wilson?

  It's really not.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Is it? Okay. Well, disabuse me of that idea. But sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

• 1:08:23Rainn Wilson?

  First I'm gonna disabuse you of your own thought because what did you do? You created a podcast. I'm sure that you just like having deep conversations and it's fun for you, but you have helped millions of people toward greater health and wellness and well-being in your work. So you are 100% part of the solution in what you're doing. You could have just stayed, been an ultramarathoner, gotten a job at a running shoe company, you know, made a nice living or what have you and gotten sponsorships and just kind of like enjoyed your yoga class and your meditation app, right? But you took it a step further. How is the Baha'i faith different?

• 1:09:06Rainn Wilson?

  Because I'm not here to promote the Baha'i faith, but one of the things I talk about in the book is like, we threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater. So in our kind of especially secular left, urban, contemporary America, we have rejected anything and everything having to do with religion for a very good reason. For a very, very good reason. Let me underline that. For very good reasons. Religions have brought some of the worst pain and suffering and grotesque aspects of human nature to bear over the last couple of thousands of years that you could ever possibly imagine. And every decade you read about some new horror that, you know, the Catholic Church

• 1:09:50Rainn Wilson?

  or that evangelicals have engendered. But I do think that we are missing something by throwing out religion categorically. We're missing some things that religion gives us, which is purpose, meaning.

• 1:10:07Rainn Wilson?

  Community and a sense of the transcendent, the sense that there is something more to strive for. There's a lot more to the very best of religion and I try and I have a chapter on kind of the universals of religious faiths, why Buddhism and Islam and Christianity are, why and how they're connected, the essential ideas that bind them together. And I even have a chapter called, "Hey kids, let's invent a new religion," where I'm like, "Let's, let's take the very best that religion has brought humanity over the last three or four thousand years. Let's take the best ideas from that, put it together in a jambalaya and make our new religion." Because we-

• 1:10:50Rich Roll?

  Which you call Soul Boom.

• 1:10:51Rainn Wilson?

  I call it Soul Boom, trademark.

• 1:10:55Rainn Wilson?

  But I also refuse categorically to be any kind of guru or leader of the Soul Boom religion, but I posit it kind of jokingly. But at the same time, there are some, by throwing out religion and we see this current mental health crisis, and if you, have you, have you read the work of Dr. Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain?

• 1:11:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had her on the podcast.

• 1:11:17Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, great. Okay.

• 1:11:18Rich Roll?

  She's amazing.

• 1:11:19Rainn Wilson?

  Sorry, I missed that one.

• 1:11:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:11:20Rainn Wilson?

  Come on, man.

• 1:11:23Rainn Wilson?

  She's great, but there's hard data that supports how spirituality and religion itself makes people happier, greater well-being, greater community, more resilient, which, you know, resilience is one of the big factors in the mental health crisis. So, it's something to be explored, you know, and I can already hear all the people right now switching off the podcast and like, throwing things across the room, "Fuck that, I'll never be a part of religion that's so evil." And it's like, I get it, I get it, it has been, it's true. But there are some universal beautiful truths in religious practice. And, let me say this-

• 1:12:02Rainn Wilson?

  Spirituality, there has to be some kind of systemic sensibility to spirituality if we want to achieve social transformation. If we want that Star Trek world, there has to be some kind of systematic practice that leads in that direction. So that's how I would say different, that the Baha'i faith offers some, again, I'm not trying to like, convert people, but the, what I love about the Baha'i faith is that there are, it fosters grassroots community spiritual movements in a systematic way.

• 1:12:34Rich Roll?

  Right, and I think, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:12:36Rainn Wilson?

  People gathering to pray together, bringing diverse people together, being of service together, children and youth classes that are focused on spiritual virtues, divine virtues, you know, the very best kind of character and leadership qualities that humanity has to offer. These are ways of building a grassroots community movement that, but you don't have to be a Baha'i to partake in this, but some kind of systematization other than a, like you say, bespoke spirituality, I think is crucial to move forward.

• 1:13:08Rich Roll?

  Sure, in order to really shift the tectonic plates of culture and society and, you know, progress humanity or elevate consciousness, you not only need the revolutionaries and the chaos agents, you need a foundation

• 1:13:25Rainn Wilson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  And a structure and an organizing principle, right? And over the history of grassroots movements and uprisings, et cetera, the opposition is always much more organized

• 1:13:36Rainn Wilson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:37Rich Roll?

  than the revolutionaries.

• 1:13:38Rainn Wilson?

  Yep.

• 1:13:39Rich Roll?

  And so, you see this played out time and time again, and you aptly, you know, very astutely, you know, kind of highlight that in the book, which is this idea that if we do want to manifest the change that I think we can all agree that we need, we need to be organized on the level of, you know, the opposition, right? So how do we do that and not fall prey to the pitfalls of, you know, humanity's basist nature? And so what do we do? We look to organizations that have Have figured this out or thrived.

• 1:14:13Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Rich Roll?

  You mentioned the Baha'i faith that's figured out some version of this. And you also point out 12 step, like Alcoholics Anonymous, this decentralize. A lot of talk about like decentralization with cryptocurrency and all of that. Well, look at AA. This is, this is this amazing revolutionary movement that has thrived and grown decade after decade after decade. Why? How? Why did it not implode? You know, due to the, you know, peccadilloes of humanity because there's nobody in charge. This is the only way to do this. And I've, I've banged this drum so many times, but it's almost like they should teach this model at Harvard Business School.

• 1:14:57Rich Roll?

  Or, you know, figure out like, you know, management consultants should, you know, really do a forensic deep dive into, you know, how this came to be because there's, there's true wisdom to be gleaned from this magical mystical thing that kind of, you know, percolated up through, you know, a combination of, of need. And I don't know what else, but the fact that this thing exists and is functional today.

• 1:15:25Rainn Wilson?

  Have you ever been to, have you ever seen or been to an AA meeting in a super remote location? I remember once traveling through the mountains of Guatemala and I saw the little AA logo over just some tin hut. And I didn't go in, but I walked by and it just had a little, you know, curtain blowing in the breeze. And there were, you know, there was 20, you know, Mayan, you know, laboring farmers that kind of had that ancient kind of Mayan mountain look to them in a circle, sharing, praying. You know, they had obviously all hit bottom with drinking in some way.

• 1:16:05Rainn Wilson?

  And I was, I was moved profoundly to tears like, how incredible that Bob and Bill would have these discussions. And then this thing would spread to this little hut in the mountains of Guatemala where these people are getting.

• 1:16:23Rainn Wilson?

  Solace, consultation, companionship, guidance, surrender, and wisdom. And it is, and that is the, it is the archetypal grassroots movement that has spread around the world and helped millions. And we could learn a hell of a lot from it.

• 1:16:40Rich Roll?

  Right. How do we extract the best of that?

• 1:16:43Rainn Wilson?

  Yep.

• 1:16:43Rich Roll?

  And apply that template on, onto, you know, a new model of how we, you know, organize activism, advocacy, spiritual principles, and, you know, dare I say the word religion? It's such a, it's such a loaded word. Like, I don't even want to say that word.

• 1:16:59Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Rich Roll?

  Because it immediately alienates people. And I have my own weird, you know, kind of relationship to all of that. And part of your book is, is really a reprogramming of how we think about that word and the traditions. And you do that by canvassing, you know, you do a deep dive into the history of all these various, you know, faiths, what we can learn from them, what has gone, by acknowledging what's gone terribly awry with how humanity has kind of weaponized them in various ways. But how do we find our way back to the best of what religion has to offer? And why should we reconsider

• 1:17:40Rich Roll?

  the importance of religion in this, you know, kind of secular, post-religious, you know, world in which we are over-indexing on intellectualism, rationalism, the rise of atheism, and our own kind of bespoke, you know, you know, versions of spirituality, you know, as a side dish over here?

• 1:18:02Rainn Wilson?

  I don't, I don't have any answers. I mean, I took a stab at it by trying to invent a new religion.

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  You did. Yeah. I don't have any answers. I just, I just proposed a new religion in my book. But please don't call me a guru.

• 1:18:14Rainn Wilson?

  I will say that I have the seven pillars of a spiritual revolution.

• 1:18:20Rich Roll?

  You do it that, you do, indeed, indeed, you do.

• 1:18:22Rainn Wilson?

  Um, and they are, to write a new mythology of humanity, you know, the current mythology that we have is like... Doggy, it's a dog eat dog world and one upsmanship and survival of the fittest and don't tread on me and live free or die and this, this kind of like, you know, the strongest survives. We need to write a mythology that remembers that we're a cooperative species, that we've come together in community, that we have healed through great traumas, that we have lived for most of our existence with great peace with planet Earth, right? We need to create a new mythology. It's like I use the Star Wars mythology as a, as

• 1:19:07Rainn Wilson?

  an example of, you know, how to use a Joseph Campbell, you know, hero's journey. Well, we, we can do the same thing with, with our human. I'm not going to read through all of them, but.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  But just to pause on that idea for a moment, I mean, that's a big ask, right? Especially in America where it's all about rugged individualism and staking your claim and your individualistic, you know, pursuit of happiness and your rights and your liberty, which I think overshadows to, you know, hearken back to what we were talking about earlier, this, this notion of collective responsibility. Like liberty is only as powerful or as potent as it is paired to the responsibility that we shoulder for the collective, right? And I think that, that responsibility piece has gotten lost in this conversation and what

• 1:20:03Rich Roll?

  you're saying is we need to recapture that, but it's almost, requires an undoing of the very sensibility of this, this whole kind of American myth or ideology. Like rewriting that story is not a small task.

• 1:20:22Rainn Wilson?

  It's not a small task. I don't know. What's a, what's a way forward? Yeah, I, I don't, I don't know how to start.

• 1:20:33Rainn Wilson?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Rainn Wilson?

  I don't know how to start. I mean, I think this mythology of don't tread on me, live free or die. Every man for themselves, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. We came to America for a very good reason. We were escaping Puritanism, although many of our forefathers were Puritans, who wanted to be more Puritan.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:52Rainn Wilson?

  You know?

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  It wasn't hardcore enough.

• 1:20:54Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, more hardcore.

• 1:20:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Rainn Wilson?

  But then there was a lot of people that just wanted to be out of the auspices of being told what to do in the kind of draconian bureaucracies of Europe at the time. So, you know, we wanted guns and we wanted land and we wanted freedom and freedom of free speech and expression. And, you know, a lot of those things are great. I think, but again, we just need more storytellers to be telling the stories. Because think about freedom. Have you ever been to a country where there's no traffic laws?

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's just a free for all. Cars are just parked on sidewalks and every man for themselves.

• 1:21:33Rainn Wilson?

  I remember driving in Morocco was the first time I saw human brains.

• 1:21:37Rich Roll?

  That was immediately the place that I thought of.

• 1:21:38Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah. The first time I saw human brains splashed on to a street.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:21:43Rainn Wilson?

  Because everyone just goes as fast as they want through, barreling down the wrong side of the road, the stoplights are optional and it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It does not get you there faster. Freedom, total freedom in Morocco. So, in the United States and in countries that have traffic laws, we're like, oh, we've got these traffic laws, I don't want to drive, I can't drive 55, I don't want to wear my seatbelt, you know, but these are all for a very good reason and it actually works and it gets you there faster. And you're really grateful for our traffic laws because it works. So, I know that's just a lame, dumb little example, but it's an example of, you know,

• 1:22:25Rainn Wilson?

  reinvesting, reinvestigating the word freedom and what that really means. Because freedom in the context of system and cooperation is a really powerful force. But freedom just on its own, without any kind of limits and without any kind of morality, for lack of a better word, is extremely dangerous.

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a bottom up thing, is it not? Like in order to, you know, kind of shock people out of their own personal agenda and, you know, self-seeking. And to contemplate the well-being of the greater whole, that requires a spiritual revolution, right? Like, it's an elevation of consciousness in order to...

• 1:23:11Rainn Wilson?

  So here's my challenge to you, Rich. The next one here is to foster joy and squash cynicism. We've been talking a lot about that pessimism and cynicism that you feel around this, and I completely understand. And this is part of my character defect is to be cynical and pessimistic. That I tend very easily in that direction. It's hard for me to be hopeful.

• 1:23:33Rich Roll?

  It's a practice.

• 1:23:34Rainn Wilson?

  But one of the superpowers of this kind of like, these seven pillars for a spiritual revolution is to foster joy and squash cynicism. Whenever that arises in our chest, we just have to know it's not serving us. I tell the story in here about I worked with a great theater teacher and director, Andre Gregory, who's the star of Focal Point of the amazing classic film, My Dinner with Andre, if people haven't seen it. It's absolutely, it's an entire two-hour movie of a conversation with two people at a dinner table. And I got to work with him for several weeks, several months. And fascinating human being who's traveled the world and done theater

• 1:24:15Rainn Wilson?

  in every culture of the world and is just beyond fascinating. Anyways, he had a meeting with me, as he did with his students, and we had tea, and then as we were leaving, he's like, "So what, how do you feel, Rain? How are you these days?" I'm like, "Well, can't help but getting cynical. I'm kind of pessimistic. How is things gonna work out? And the world is so dark and fucked up." This was the 90s, mind you, when things were actually pretty good. And, um, yeah. He grabbed my arm, hard. Grabbed it. He was a little old man then. He's still alive. I think he's like 98. He grabbed my arm, he looked into my eyes. He's like, "Don't do it." Don't do it. Don't give in to cynicism. Don't be pessimistic. If you do that, they win.

• 1:24:58Rainn Wilson?

  That's how they want you. If you're pessimistic, if you're cynical, they win because you aren't gonna do anything to change the world. You're gonna get shut down. Don't do it. And he was just like held my gaze and held my arm. I was like 25. I was like, and then he let go and then I walked out into the world and I saw things in an entirely new way. I won't say that I was transformed and all of a sudden I was arrived or anything like that, but I'll never forget that interaction. And I think that for all of the listeners, for you and the rich role posse, it is so important to foster joy and hope in everything that we do because the other

• 1:25:40Rainn Wilson?

  side, the side of darkness, the empire, you know, the Voldemort forces that are out there.

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  The eyes are on.

• 1:25:51Rainn Wilson?

  They want us cynical. They want us pessimistic and they want us, resultingly, not doing anything. So how do we especially engender that and inspire that in the younger generation? How do we do that with teens? How do we do that with college kids and people in their twenties that are lost and dealing with this rampant mental health crisis that's killing millions? How do we foster and engender hope in that generation? Whatever we can do, that's our most important task in front of us.

• 1:26:23Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful. Yeah. You know, like you, my default setting or my disposition is, you know, as a tried and true Gen Xer is to be cynical and it's work. It's a practice to keep that at bay and to try to find a way to hold on to hope or to cultivate that. And as you were sharing that beautiful story, I was thinking about the, what's her name? Having a senior moment.

• 1:26:50Rainn Wilson?

  Happens to me all the time, every day.

• 1:26:52Rich Roll?

  Come on. The beautiful woman who worked with the apes.

• 1:26:57Rainn Wilson?

  Jane Goodall.

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  Jane Goodall's The Book of Hope. Have you read this book?

• 1:27:00Rainn Wilson?

  No.

• 1:27:01Rich Roll?

  Yes. So it's a book co-written by my friend Doug Abrams. And it's all about that. Like, how do you maintain hope in the face of dire circumstances? Or, you know, all the pressures of society that are kind of marshaling you to, you know, believe otherwise. And he also wrote a book with the Dalai Lama called The Book of Joy.

• 1:27:23Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:24Rich Roll?

  And Desmond Tutu.

• 1:27:25Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, I read that one.

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, same guy. Which are, yeah, those two books together kind of speak to exactly what you're saying.

• 1:27:33Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:33Rich Roll?

  Which is great. You have a whole beautiful section in this book about pilgrimages, like this idea of going on a sacred pilgrimage. And it's really a discussion about, in a broader sense, you know, asking the question about, like, in our modern world, like, what is holy anymore? Like, what is deserving of reverence in the modern world? Like, how do we think about what is and what is not sacred? And how has that changed or evolved over time?

• 1:28:08Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, I went with my family a few years back on what is a Baha'i pilgrimage to the north of Israel, in the Haifa, Israel area, where the founder of the Baha'i faith is buried, which is the most kind of sacred spot to Baha'is. And there are a number of other, you know, shrines there. That's where the Baha'i Administrative Center is. And so it has a lot of, like, power and beauty, beautiful gardens and architecture. You can Google it. And it was really profound, because we went on this journey with people from, like, the Philippines and Romania and Italy and in Finland and, like, all over the world. And a very diverse

• 1:28:53Rainn Wilson?

  group of people that were Baha'is that came in to, you know, take this nine-day journey of prayer and meditation and to be devout. You think about that word devout, which also is connected to devotions, devoted. And it really, when I got back home, I saw things in a very different way, because I was like, Wow, there's just nothing sacred around me. It was so weird to have nine days when things were sacred and you would pray and you would meditate and you would ponder things and you did it as a group. And it was really a beautiful experience. And then in contemporary Los Angeles, it feels like nothing is sacred. I mean, I suppose if you do a dawn hike and you're in the Santa Monica Mountains and you see

• 1:29:38Rainn Wilson?

  the sunrise or something like that, certainly that has a sacredness and a connection to nature is where sacred is. But I use that story to kind of pose the question about what is sacred in the modern world. And I reference the great medieval Japanese poet Basho, who wrote haiku and is considered like the greatest haiku poet of all time. And what he would do as part of just his tradition, it's part travelogue, it's part spiritual journey and it's part meditative journey and the connection to nature and

• 1:30:22Rainn Wilson?

  it's a part of an artistic journey, is he would walk from town to town and he would go to temples and beautiful places and he would meditate and pray where he was and then he would write a poem about that place and he would leave it at the local temple. Right, every day, right? Every single day. So it was like this, and you can track, you can go on his journey and he wrote this book called, sometimes it's called Narrow Path to the Interior, Narrow Path to the North. It has different kind of translations and meanings. And I thought about how special that was, that here's this person combining art, right, haiku, prayer and meditation, a spiritual path, and kind of a cultural travelogue at

• 1:31:06Rainn Wilson?

  the same time, visiting historical places and highlighting the sacredness of this path and the way that he walked this path. So I just kind of issued a challenge to the reader and to myself really, like, how do we find what's sacred in our lives? Does it need to be some special place where someone's buried? Can we find, I reference, you know, Lambeau Stadium and to the people of Green Bay, how sacred that stadium is because of the mighty Green Bay Packers and that's such a legendary history. So. Yeah, I'm just wondering if that resonated for you or how you find the sacred in your life?

• 1:31:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the idea of what is and what is not sacred is really about our relationship to things, right? The idea that this Japanese poet could write beautiful haiku as he's traversing the landscape, he is, you know, creating art out of mundanity, right? And in that, there is something sacred. So you can create a relationship of sacredness with whatever is providing you with meaning, or just the effort of trying to be present with something, I think, creates a sacred relationship.

• 1:32:28Rainn Wilson?

  That's a really good point.

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  So it's not like you go to these faraway places and you also talk about, you know, going to Israel and like, you know, these historic, the Wailing Wall and all this sort of stuff, like these, you know, artifices that are just, you know, loaded with historic meaning that are, you know, obviously agreed upon sacred sites. But I think that there's a broader conversation to be had about finding the sacred in our everyday lives. Like, how can we mine meaning and be elevated by our own environments, right? And that's just a decision that you make and a decision to kind of invest whatever

• 1:33:11Rich Roll?

  experience you're having with a more kind of, I don't know, elevated conscious awareness of how it could be awe-inspiring or wonder-inducing, rather than just mundane or normal. Or, I mean, can it be, can you drive down the 101 freeway in Los Angeles and figure out a way to, you know, find something sacred about that? I don't know, maybe.

• 1:33:39Rainn Wilson?

  Well, I was just thinking, as you were saying that, what would it be like if we wrote a haiku about every place that we visited, every single day?

• 1:33:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Rainn Wilson?

  Even in the mundanity of our life, even just going to Trader Joe's and picking up some naval oranges? The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:33:58Rainn Wilson?

  Elevated conversations. Oh, see, I can't.

• 1:34:02Rich Roll?

  You can. We could put ChatGPT-4 onto it.

• 1:34:07Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  And have it write out some good.

• 1:34:09Rainn Wilson?

  Been doing it for us. But, but even that brings a kind of an elevated consciousness. And I think when you read the work of Eckhart Tolle, when you read the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, who talks about being present while you're washing the dishes, how that's the hardest task. Like, part of it is presence, like to really be where you are.

• 1:34:30Rich Roll?

  Is it not?

• 1:34:31Rainn Wilson?

  It's such a.

• 1:34:32Rich Roll?

  If you can be, I mean, Eckhart Tolle would say if you're completely present with what you're doing, there is nothing that isn't sacred, right? Like, that capacity to be 100% in the moment that you're in, is there, you know, it speaks to this idea of oneness and unity, right? Like, human beings are organisms that are always trying to identify patterns. And in that pattern-making kind of proclivity, we tend to other, right? Like, we're this, they're that. This makes sense, this doesn't. I fit over here, those people are over there.

• 1:35:11Rich Roll?

  And it belies the truth, the greater truth, which is the oneness of everything, which you speak so eloquently about in the book. And, you know, presence is a way of transcending or overriding that default to kind of identify patterns that are mechanisms of separation.

• 1:35:36Rainn Wilson?

  Hand in hand with that, very well said, is what we can learn from indigenous peoples and looking back into our history. Because if you look back far enough, all of us were, at one point in time, indigenous. My people were indigenous to Norway and to the British Isles back in the day. But. When I think about Basho, I think too about art, nature, because the haiku is always about nature, art, nature, spirituality, religion, you know, it comes from the Buddhist and Shinto tradition. Art, nature, and spirituality all converge and there's no separation between them.

• 1:36:16Rainn Wilson?

  So, to strive for the sacred, I would say that art, beauty, nature, and the spiritual are all unified and are working together. As the many Native American traditions point us to. So, how do we do that in the Western society?

• 1:36:40Rainn Wilson?

  I don't know.

• 1:36:41Rich Roll?

  You're supposed to have the answers.

• 1:36:43Rainn Wilson?

  I don't have the answers, I have the questions.

• 1:36:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, speaking of indigenous traditions, one thing you do talk about in the book is, you know, how we as modern individuals in Western society are always trying to look for shortcuts to these answers. And one of those shortcuts is, you know, exploring traditions of the indigenous in the form of plant medicine, right? And the sort of pitfalls and also advances that, you know, these experiences that people are having, like, I have a lot of opinions about this, but you're, you're pretty clear in how you feel about all of this. So, explain kind of your perspective.

• 1:37:27Rainn Wilson?

  Here's my unpopular opinion, okay?

• 1:37:29Rich Roll?

  It's an unpopular opinion that I share, so go ahead. You're, you're in safe company.

• 1:37:34Rainn Wilson?

  Unpopular opinion, oh, that's good. I didn't know that you shared that. I talk about quote unquote "plant medicine," which by the way, why isn't heroin or cocaine a plant medicine?

• 1:37:43Rich Roll?

  Yes, I've asked myself this question.

• 1:37:45Rainn Wilson?

  Why is it only like what we want to justify?

• 1:37:48Rich Roll?

  Cocaine is a plant, like, we apply, like, also this idea that it's the work. You heard that one?

• 1:37:55Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:56Rich Roll?

  I'm doing the work?

• 1:37:56Rainn Wilson?

  I'm doing the work, yeah. Do the work when you're, you know, you're doing your taxes and doing the work when you're, do the work when you're taking your family to the mall to get some shoes. Yeah, I feel very strongly, because I remember, because I'm old enough to remember people in the 70s who were talking about LSD and what a revolution that was in the early 60s and mid 60s with Timothy Leary and drop in, drop out, et cetera, and everyone doing acid. And that acid was the gateway towards self-realization. And, you know, I met, and I have a couple of uncles that fried themselves in that way and met people whose brains were just fried from doing acid. And they, you could look in their eyes and you saw rainbows in their eyes, but you'd also fry a lot of neurons along the way.

• 1:38:41Rainn Wilson?

  And then I remember being in college in the 80s and early 90s and people like going to the, going to do peyote and going to do mushrooms in the mountains and having these kind of like experiences that are outside of the daily where they're looking for this enlightenment. And now with ayahuasca, I feel like it's the same kind of thing, like, oh, my shaman, the shaman went to the Best Western in Tempe, Arizona, and I met him there. He used to go like to Panama and Colombia and actual Amazon and now like, they're coming to you.

• 1:39:12Rich Roll?

  Now they're like, yeah, like down by LAX.

• 1:39:14Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, but I know people that have gone to, literally just gone to a conference room, you know, hotel to do their ayahuasca. And I just feel like it's a very American thing. It's like, I wanna, I wanna have this peak experience. I'm gonna pay, you know, $875 to fly the shaman up to Costa Rica or to this resort in Mexico and have this experience. It's gonna change my mind. It's gonna change how I see things and, you know, and, but I'm gonna do it every year or two. And the rest of the year, fuck it. I'm just gonna like be an asshole. Just try and make a lot of money. I'm gonna use my dating apps.

• 1:39:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, life is usual.

• 1:39:54Rainn Wilson?

  I'm gonna look at you porn and, and just, you know, you know, collect comic books and, you know, go to the movies or whatever it is that we do in our lives. And it's a very American kind of thing. I think it's a cop out and I think it, we were talking about Basho, we were talking about Wakontanka, we were talking about Eckhart Tolle. Like, this, this is hard work, you know? Spiritual transformation is hard daily.

• 1:40:19Rainn Wilson?

  Work. Now, I can hear a lot of people saying, "Well, I'm gonna do the daily work, but I just, this will help me see things in a different way." And I know people that has had a very powerful effect. And by the way, I don't want to take away from the efficacy of these drugs to help people who are suffering from severe, extreme depression and from severe, extreme drug addiction, that there has been some proof that they have worked on those things with, you know, a professional, you know, and with a very specific system in mind toward healing. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the recreational, touristic idea of, "I want to go get enlightenment in Costa Rica at a resort."

• 1:41:01Rainn Wilson?

  And I can, I've only got till Friday 3:00 PM till Monday 10:00 AM in order to do it.

• 1:41:05Rich Roll?

  Right, because I gotta get back for the board meeting.

• 1:41:07Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I agree with you 100%. Certainly, there are efficacious cases. I know people personally who I think their lives have been benefited from having these experiences. And the science that's coming out around, you know, the use cases with respect to depression, PTSD and addiction, as you mentioned, I think are promising and interesting.

• 1:41:31Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Rich Roll?

  I just think that the idea that we can have a casual relationship with these very powerful substances and that the mainstreaming of it such that, you know, we're sort of lured into this idea that this should be part of our, like, daily wellness routine is irresponsible. And I do think that tourist sensibility is problematic and it is, you know, kind of so, you know, emblematic of like an American sensibility. Like, as somebody who, like, went to rehab and I know people, I have, I know a guy who, you know, was on ketamine and jumped off his roof. Like, these are not benign substances. These are very powerful substances that need to be, you know,

• 1:42:15Rich Roll?

  administered in controlled environments in the best-case scenario. And I think we just need to slow down a little bit and like rethink, you know.

• 1:42:25Rainn Wilson?

  You don't need it to have a transformative spiritual experience.

• 1:42:29Rich Roll?

  Right, and it's really about, like, to the extent that they can open up a portal and allow you to step outside of your ego and see things maybe more broadly, I'm cool with that. Like, great. But that is only as valuable as the follow-up work and the path that you're going to pursue to kind of more deeply invest in what that means for you, right? And you don't need to do those things in order to have those experiences. And fast-tracking your spiritual development or growth is really not like what it's about.

• 1:43:11Rainn Wilson?

  I met a young guy and he talked about his ayahuasca trip and how he saw oneness in all things and how all things were connected and unified and it actually gave him a belief in God and it was really transformative. And I was like, oh, that's great. What do you do? What do you do? What's your life? It's like, well, I buy, sell and trade sneakers and Air Jordans. So I, you know, I'll buy a sneaker for $300 and I'll sell it to some teenager in Ohio for $500. And it's like, okay, all right. Now, nothing against a little commerce. I do, I do some dumb commercials sometimes to make some money, but that just seems antithetical

• 1:43:54Rainn Wilson?

  to the spirit of, you know, real profound soul transformation.

• 1:43:59Rich Roll?

  How judgmental of you.

• 1:44:00Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, there's my character defect. Sorry.

• 1:44:02Rich Roll?

  I know. Yeah, it's tricky, but I just, you know, I guess my, my overall kind of vibe on that is like, slow down, think twice. These are, it's not a binary thing. It's not bad or good. It's what is your relationship to this? What are you trying to get out of it? And what is the plan of, you know, after these experiences? What are you going to do with it? Like I, yeah, I have a friend who, I think he does it like every weekend. You know, and then he's like, I'm doing the work. And I'm like, dude, like, are you not enlightened yet? Like, what are you doing? Like, this is an escape on some level. Like, how are you incorporating this into your life?

• 1:44:43Rainn Wilson?

  I did the work 15 years every day with alcohol. I was doing the work.

• 1:44:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:48Rainn Wilson?

  I was just doing the work.

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  How'd that work out?

• 1:44:49Rainn Wilson?

  It didn't, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't work.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  Such a bummer.

• 1:44:54Rainn Wilson?

  It didn't.

• 1:44:54Rich Roll?

  I wish it did.

• 1:44:55Rainn Wilson?

  It didn't soothe me, it didn't allow me to escape my pain and my anxiety, and it didn't, didn't quell the fear.

• 1:45:02Rich Roll?

  And so what is the, what is the, what is the daily practice now look like for you?

• 1:45:07Rainn Wilson?

  So, uh, I would say about four or five days a week, uh, I am able to, uh, wake up in the morning and read a holy writing from my faith tradition, which reminds me about my spiritual essence and my spiritual nature, that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, as Per Te Heart de Chardin says. Then I do, um, a meditation, uh, for a very simple one, 15 or 20 minutes, nothing fancy. And, uh, then I exercise, even lightly, jog up and down my driveway, which is kind of a hill, and lightly lift some weights and stuff to help reduce my anxiety.

• 1:45:48Rainn Wilson?

  And then I do a cold immersion, uh, even for just three and a half minutes.

• 1:45:53Rich Roll?

  You got the cold plunge?

• 1:45:54Rainn Wilson?

  I have a cold plunge, although

• 1:45:55Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 1:45:55Rainn Wilson?

  Most of the year in LA, my pool does the trick.

• 1:45:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cold enough, right?

• 1:45:59Rainn Wilson?

  And I, and I fool myself, it's like, oh, it's 59 degrees, that's cold enough.

• 1:46:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04Rainn Wilson?

  I don't need to get into that.

• 1:46:05Rich Roll?

  Doesn't need to be 39 or whatever.

• 1:46:06Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, I don't need to get in the 45 degree tub. But that has really helped with my mental health, with my anxiety. And in the Baha'i tradition, we pray, uh, between noon and sunset, a very simple prayer that connects us to our Creator. And then I, um, read another, uh, quote, a spiritual quote in the, in the evening. You know, there's usually, you know, in 12-step programs where, you know, we're making calls and reaching out and like connecting with people in the program, which is part of its beauty and the community that it creates. So I'm, I'm rolling, uh, rich rolling phone calls as well and kind of living in consultation

• 1:46:48Rainn Wilson?

  with my, with my brothers and support groups, so, um, and then I do therapy. I'm very serious about therapy and part of what my therapist does is, uh, hypnosis. So I do.

• 1:46:59Rainn Wilson?

  At least twice a month, I'm doing hypnotherapy, which I think is really powerful.

• 1:47:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:05Rainn Wilson?

  Kind of forgotten kind of therapy. It was like big in the seventies or whatever. And you hear about it. It's not at all hypnosis, like you're a chick, pretend you're a chicken or something like that. It's just getting in touch with that enormous reservoir of the unconscious.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Sure. And I think you mentioned last time you do like a men's group. Do you still do that?

• 1:47:26Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do a men's group retreat every three or four months. We get together, you know, in Airbnb or someone's house and we do intensive, you know, step study and sharing and, and bonding activities and, and stuff like that to, because intimacy among grown men, as you know, is really difficult and it's something that's really lacking in our culture.

• 1:47:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:49Rainn Wilson?

  The only way men can bond is over sports, really, and, and, you know, playing sports and, and watching sports and, and stuff like that. So, you know, sharing with other middle aged men and being vulnerable and asking for feedback, help and, you know, consultation is, is a powerful force.

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think modeling that is, is super important, especially when it comes to kind of untangling that knot. Like when we think about what's required to elevate consciousness in order to more efficaciously like solve these problems in a healthy way, like the big problems that we have, a lot of it, you know, kind of tracks back to, you know, masculine models of unhealth, like our inability to kind of communicate or, or be honest about our emotions or, you know, check our ego and all these sorts of things that like kind of, you know, have this undercurrent of like driving culture in the wrong direction and,

• 1:48:52Rich Roll?

  you know, pushing us towards that, you know, existential cliff.

• 1:48:56Rainn Wilson?

  I remember when I first got into therapy in the early 2000s in LA and someone recommended a therapist and he ended up being really great. And I, and he would say like, so Rain, what's going on? And I would kind of summarize what I did that week. And then like, so how are you feeling? And I was just like, I had literally had no vocabulary to talk about what was going on inside. It wasn't that. I was flummoxed. I literally didn't have the language. And he had this kind of poster of this emotion wheel. And it was like,

• 1:49:30Rich Roll?

  Is it this?

• 1:49:31Rainn Wilson?

  And I'd be like, I'd be like, well, I'm pretty frustrated with my career, let's say. Like, I would do a superficial thing. And he'd be like, frustrated, okay. And he'd pull out this emotion color wheel. And it was like frustrated, you know, and it had different variations of it, like irked, irate, overwhelmed. And it's like, do any of those ones like, actually overwhelmed? Yeah, overwhelmed. That's what I'm feeling overwhelmed. Oh, okay. How does that make you feel? And then I'd have another emotion and like, I had to learn a language because no one had taught or modeled it for me. Language of how to have feelings and how to communicate those feelings. I was just so locked up and constipated.

• 1:50:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the idea that to do that somehow threatens your masculinity, right? Like, it's a threat to like this identity, you know, of what it means to be a man. And I think it's so important to do that. And I think your guy, Justin Baldoni, like, he's like, at the leading edge of like, trying to educate people about this in a really interesting way.

• 1:50:42Rainn Wilson?

  He's caught a lot of flack for that.

• 1:50:44Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:50:44Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, he's gotten this great book and podcast called Man Enough, where he really challenges his own ideas about his masculinity. And obviously, he's like a model handsome guy.

• 1:50:54Rich Roll?

  Right, so handsome. It's crazy.

• 1:50:55Rainn Wilson?

  Washboard abs. But he talks about how like, you know, if he was doing a show and he had to take his shirt off, like for weeks in advance, he would just feel less than. I mean, he's got washboard abs. I mean, they're insane. And he'd just feel less than and judged and overwhelmed and like, and his body and he wasn't enough. And but they really take apart masculinity in some interesting ways on that podcast and in his book. And boy, he's caught a lot of flack from it. I mean, he gets lambasted online.

• 1:51:21Rich Roll?

  What is the, what is the negative feedback?

• 1:51:25Rainn Wilson?

  I guess it's the Andrew Tate contingent of like, you're a cuck and a pussy to kind of even question what being a man really is, and you're emasculated, and you're pussy whipped, and there's a population that views any challenges to masculinity as some kind of very threatening affront, and a dangerous direction for humanity to go, which is men having feelings, being vulnerable, expressing their feelings, asking for their needs to be met.

• 1:52:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's problematic.

• 1:52:04Rainn Wilson?

  That is.

• 1:52:05Rich Roll?

  It's a concern.

• 1:52:06Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:52:08Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:09Rich Roll?

  I guess the idea of you're better off just getting in your Lambo and smoking your cigar and...

• 1:52:15Rainn Wilson?

  And your weed.

• 1:52:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, I don't know. That's upsetting, because I see what Justin's doing, and I think it's so cool.

• 1:52:24Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25Rich Roll?

  And the fact that there's organized pushback to that is disconcerting.

• 1:52:29Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:30Rich Roll?

  I suppose. So, we gotta wrap this up, but, you know, maybe we can kind of close this with just some thoughts around why you think it's worthwhile and meaningful for somebody to cultivate a spiritual connection, or to really grapple with these ideas that kind of transcend the material world in which kind of predominates our daily experience. For somebody who's listening to this or watching it, for whom maybe they have a negative reaction to religion because of the way they were brought up, or they have an allergy

• 1:53:11Rich Roll?

  to anything spiritual, make the case for why this is worthwhile for somebody to kind of mine or explore.

• 1:53:22Rainn Wilson?

  Gladly. Thank you. Great question. So, the first thing I will say is, the reason why spirituality is important is because it is reality.

• 1:53:34Rainn Wilson?

  So what is reality? I am fully in agreement with Tejart de Chardin, who said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." I fully know, it goes beyond belief. I fully know that I am a soul and that I am inhabiting or attached to or in connection with a bodily form for who knows how long, 60, 70, 90 years. I'm not sure how long it'll last. And that is my reality. And who I am and what I am is not my body. It's not even my personality. It's not even like the background that I...

• 1:54:18Rainn Wilson?

  You know, it's not the trauma I suffered. It's not what I've been through. That there is a little spark of the divine inside of me or that is part of me that is reflecting the majesty of the divine, of God, the divine presence, the creative force, just like a sunflower turns to the sun and follows the sun throughout the course of the day. That is reality. So for me to deny my reality is not beneficial to anyone, and at least I'm not myself. So now, if you're a hardcore atheist and you're like, "That's bullshit, prove it to me." Prove to me this divine spark of which you speak. I want to see it in a laboratory or in an algorithm or on a computer screen.

• 1:55:02Rainn Wilson?

  Well, that's not quite how it works because every spiritual tradition will show you that we live in a matrix, that we live in an illusion. And when we wake up from this corporal form, we're going to be in some greater reality. And this is, this has come from the atheist, this idea that, you know, perhaps we're living in an avatar. The simulacrum. The simulacrum, you know? And we're living in a fleshy avatar and we're going to wake up to some greater reality. But putting all that aside, I would say to the atheist or agnostic that, try it and see if your life is better because there is hard... We talked about Dr. Lisa Miller and her work.

• 1:55:44Rainn Wilson?

  There's hard data that shows around mental health and well-being that having serenity, meaning, purpose, focus, a sense of service to others, a losing of oneself to a transcendent self of the divine, the transcendent, the abundance that's around us, increases greatly the quality of our lives. When we see ourselves in true humility with the size and scope of the universe and whatever infinite universes are beyond this universe, that it makes the quality of your life better. So, cost-benefit analysis, putting in a small amount of time every day, I'm talking about 40 minutes in your day

• 1:56:28Rainn Wilson?

  to some kind of spiritual opening and/or practice has incredible benefits. This has been found time and time again. It's found in the 12-step programs. It's found in Buddhist meditation. It's found in the most ancient texts that humanity has ever proved, created, the Vedas and Upanishads from, you know, 3,000 years ago. This sense that we are a wave on the sea of creation and the wave crests and the wave falls. We're a part of something much greater and much more beautiful than ourselves. And in living in that state can greatly enrich your life. How is that?

• 1:57:07Rich Roll?

  Hmm, I think, you know, despite the fact that you are shunning the mantle of guru, you might have just inherited.

• 1:57:16Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, damn it.

• 1:57:17Rich Roll?

  Because that was like, pretty well said and very inspiring.

• 1:57:21Rainn Wilson?

  I have no interest in being a guru. I am, however, interested in the cash.

• 1:57:26Rich Roll?

  The cash?

• 1:57:27Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah. Cashing in on a guru ship.

• 1:57:30Rich Roll?

  Cashing in, thought leader.

• 1:57:31Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:32Rich Roll?

  Spiritual pioneer.

• 1:57:34Rainn Wilson?

  Maybe like retreats.

• 1:57:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:35Rainn Wilson?

  That cost $1,400 or something like that.

• 1:57:39Rich Roll?

  I think, I think you're well, I mean, this book is like, basically the foundation of a whole new thing for you, dude.

• 1:57:46Rainn Wilson?

  Man, not gonna happen. No, I'm a lonely, I'm but a lonely awkward actor. I'll be playing my next weirdo character on television screens near you soon.

• 1:57:56Rich Roll?

  It's funny. What you just said, I think, you know, guys in the back, clip that. That is an Instagram reel. We didn't even talk about the fact that the last time you were on, I mean, we had some texts about it, but that monologue that you delivered around like your twenties are for like fucking around and exploring life and like being loose and trying things and failing and all of that, like went, you know, crazy viral and created like a really interesting discussion and dialogue that was split. Like, a lot of people, like amen, probably the older people, right? Like, oh, I wish I'd done that or whatever. And then an interesting pushback

• 1:58:40Rich Roll?

  of some younger people, like, you don't understand my life, or that's convenient for you, but like, you know, this is my circumstance, and which is great. Like, that's a dialogue.

• 1:58:50Rainn Wilson?

  See, I would view it differently. I would view the younger people were like, thank you, that put so much in clarity, gave me so much clarity.

• 1:58:56Rich Roll?

  Some, yes, but some like barriers up, like, hey, like scared of that message.

• 1:59:02Rainn Wilson?

  I think many people viewed it as like, oh, that's just an invitation to like fuck around and not do anything. But no, it's try things, learn, explore, fail, but don't worry about it. You don't even know who the hell you are.

• 1:59:15Rich Roll?

  I know, but it's like, when you're that age, you can't hear that because like you think like everything is so, you know, time sensitive and precious and you've got to get on it and all of that. I had, do you know who Kevin Kelly is? I had him in here the other day, founder of Wired magazine.

• 1:59:32Rainn Wilson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:59:33Rich Roll?

  Like legendary, like futurist, big thinker kind of guy. And he like dropped out of college after a year and like lived in Asia for years and like basically said everything that you said in that clip. And I was like, yeah, that's what Rain said. And he's coming back. It's cool.

• 1:59:51Rainn Wilson?

  I loved how viral that went and I love that it's provoking a conversation and that's what I hope to do with Soul Boom.

• 1:59:57Rich Roll?

  With Soul Boom.

• 1:59:58Rainn Wilson?

  Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution is-

• 2:00:00Rich Roll?

  We are here to market your book. This is my purpose, Rain.

• 2:00:03Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, come on. Stop it. But I do, I do have more questions than answers. So it's just, it's an important conversation. We need to be digging into, you know, what are spiritual tools? Can they benefit us personally and can they benefit us collectively? Let's talk about it.

• 2:00:19Rich Roll?

  Sure. And I think it's important to point out that, that you have a sense of humility about this whole thing. Like, we didn't really talk about that, but like, you're sort of self-deprecating throughout this whole thing, like, hey, I don't have the answers, but let's ask these questions and like, hey, how preposterous is it of me to be writing this book and, and, you know, using like, kind of fun examples from pop culture to illustrate like, these deeper points that you're making and it's a really, it's, it's, it strikes a balance between being super deep and provocative and asking a lot of the reader while also being really fun and easy to read. Like, I literally-

• 2:01:00Rainn Wilson?

  You are marketing my book.

• 2:01:00Rich Roll?

  In like, a day.

• 2:01:01Rainn Wilson?

  You are marketing my book.

• 2:01:02Rich Roll?

  It is. I loved it. It's great. I'm excited for you.

• 2:01:06Rainn Wilson?

  I love what you do and your podcast and the conversations that you have are so important and the scope of what they are from veganism to wellness to exercise to, to greater consciousness and you are, you are on the Star Trek path of making humanity a better place and helping mature our species. Thank you for that.

• 2:01:32Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate that, but I think what we can conclude from this conversation is that we should each be each other's publicist.

• 2:01:39Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, we should. Well said.

• 2:01:41Rich Roll?

  I love you, buddy. This book is great. I'm super excited for people to experience it and I'm at your service and there's always a cheer for you here.

• 2:01:51Rainn Wilson?

  I love it. Thank you. Love you too. Thanks for having me.

• 2:01:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thanks, Rain.

• 2:01:54Rainn Wilson?

  It's been a wonderful discussion.

• 2:01:55Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.

• 2:01:57Rainn Wilson?

  Bahai. Spiritual growth. Bears beats.

• 2:02:00Rich Roll?

  Battlestar Galactica. There you go. Live long and prosper.

• 2:02:16Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting

• 2:03:01Rich Roll?

  the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Salis, Dan Drake,

• 2:03:46Rich Roll?

  and A.J. Akpodiate. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.