0:07

On the Freakonomics Radio podcast,

0:10

a special series about failure.

0:13

We are surrounded by failure in

0:15

relationships, in business.

0:18

So why don't we learn from it?

0:20

One big reason we don't learn enough from

0:22

failures is that we don't share them systematically

0:25

enough. So let's get systematic.

0:28

How to succeed at failing, a

0:31

new series from Freakonomics Radio.

0:38

Hey,

0:40

everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back

0:42

to Rethinking, my podcast on the science

0:44

of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational

0:47

psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds

0:49

of fascinating people to explore new

0:51

thoughts and new ways of thinking.

0:57

My guest today is actor and comedian

0:59

Rainn Wilson, whose start on The Office is

1:02

everyone's favorite paper salesman, Dwight Schrute.

1:05

This year, Rainn published his latest New York Times

1:07

bestselling book, Soul Boom. It's

1:09

a delicious smorgasbord of existential philosophy,

1:12

self-reflection, psychology, and Star

1:15

Trek that explores the missing role of

1:17

spirituality in the modern world. I

1:19

was thrilled to host Rainn for this live conversation

1:22

in the Authors at Wharton series. Our

1:24

goal was to light up your brain, warm your heart,

1:26

and tickle your funny mode.

1:27

We delve into happiness and meaning,

1:30

motivation and ambition, mental

1:32

health and meditation, and yes, of

1:34

course, The Office. When

1:37

Rainn offered me my dream job at Dunder

1:39

Mifflin, I couldn't resist asking

1:41

if he would improvise a scene. Yep,

1:44

finally living my improv dream.

1:51

Welcome to Authors at Wharton. I'm Adam Grant. I

1:54

could not be more delighted to welcome Rainn

1:56

Wilson. Hi

2:00

everybody. Thanks Adam.

2:02

Nice to see you.

2:07

You know, it is not every day that the

2:09

world's greatest business school welcomes

2:11

the world's greatest salesperson. Can

2:21

I call you Dwight? No. No.

2:25

Alright. I have so many questions for you. Good.

2:28

And our students had a lot of questions for you too. So

2:30

we all obviously love The Office. Some

2:32

of us have binged it more times than we can count. I

2:35

think you played the most iconic character

2:37

of our time. That's

2:39

very kind. Thank you very much. But

2:45

we don't know much about how you got there. So

2:47

give us the backstory. You have one of the most iconic bald heads

2:49

of all time. I

2:52

wish I could say that was a deliberate decision. Mr. Clean,

2:54

Charles Barkley, Adam

2:57

Grant. No

3:01

one has ever had that thought. But you're

3:03

welcome. Tell us the backstory. I know

3:05

you were a theater actor for a long time. And

3:08

this was not part of your plan.

3:10

Not at all. I was a nerdy

3:12

little disturbed kid from suburban

3:14

Seattle. And I

3:17

grew up kind of with a television

3:19

kind of raising me and watching

3:21

all of those great sitcoms from the

3:23

70s. I would record

3:26

Monty Python sketches on a Panasonic

3:29

tape recorder held up to a PBS

3:32

television station at like 1 a.m.

3:35

to record Monty Python and then memorize

3:38

the sketches. And then when

3:40

I started doing theater, I kind

3:42

of thought, hey, you know, I'm pretty good at this and I can

3:44

make people laugh. Maybe I'll go to New York and study

3:46

theater. And that's

3:49

really where I thought I was going to make my living. So

3:51

I spent 10, 13 years

3:54

total in New York kind of pursuing a life

3:56

in theater and never

3:58

really making it above the pop.

3:59

line as an actor and all truth.

4:02

So you know the idea

4:04

of being like a star or

4:07

a celebrity or making a

4:09

lot of money and being a part

4:11

of one of these most iconic shows like

4:13

one of those shows that I grew up watching as a kid is beyond

4:16

my wildest dreams and not

4:18

at all the path that I thought I was gonna

4:20

take. Oops. Uh-oh. I

4:22

feel like it worked out okay. It worked out just

4:24

fine. Look at me. Look

4:26

at this. It's incredible. So what

4:28

happened after a decade? What

4:29

led you to TV? Well

4:32

I was doing this tour. It was

4:34

a bus and truck tour of Shakespeare plays.

4:36

So I spent two years on a bus with

4:38

a group of like 20 actors going

4:41

from high school to college to community

4:43

center doing Midsummer Night's

4:45

Dream and Romeo and Juliet and Two Gentlemen

4:47

of Verona and night

4:50

after night after night doing 10 a.m. matinees

4:52

in high school cafeterias and

4:55

at the end of this long long

4:57

stint on the road I was on the road

4:59

with this actor. We got back and we were collecting our mail

5:02

after being on the road for six months and

5:04

he had a residual check and he opened

5:06

it and he had spent three days

5:08

on a Harrison Ford movie and he had

5:11

like a four thousand dollar check

5:13

which was more than I had saved for the entire

5:15

run of doing the theater and he was like yeah

5:18

oh my god. I opened like my student

5:20

loans right and

5:22

I realized oh I'm gonna need

5:24

to do some TV and film. Okay

5:27

so when when did you get the call?

5:30

So then you know long story short I

5:33

really struggled in New York. I was the only

5:35

actor in New York who never even

5:37

auditioned for

5:40

law and order. Every

5:42

single episode of law and order has seven

5:46

or eight people that are like loading

5:48

boxes or washing glasses

5:51

or mopping a floor going like I've

5:53

seen him here before but I haven't seen him

5:55

around in a while. I didn't

5:57

even get rejected from that because I could.

5:59

I couldn't even get the audition. That's how low

6:02

on the acting totem pole I was. But

6:04

I took this comedy show that my friends and I had created

6:07

in New York, which we called a slacker

6:09

vaudeville, and it was these weird

6:12

clowns in this kind of surrealist Pee-Wee

6:14

Herman landscape doing sketch

6:16

comedy, and we brought it to LA in 1999,

6:19

and I moved there, and

6:22

then a lot of doors started opening, and

6:24

then I started slogging

6:27

along in the world of television

6:29

and film, and after a nice

6:31

run on Six Feet Under,

6:34

which was on HBO at the time, and

6:36

that just opened a ton of doors for me, and

6:39

it's been an incredible ride

6:41

ever since. Yeah, it has. Okay,

6:43

so tell us about your office audition. How did that happen?

6:47

I had been cast in another TV show, and

6:49

I had my plane ticket, and I was flying to Vancouver

6:51

to go start shooting the next day, and

6:54

there was a TV executive that

6:56

I knew, and I was like, oh, hi, and

6:58

he was like, oh, I'm so excited, we just got the rights

7:00

to the British office to make the American

7:03

version, and I was like, oh,

7:06

that's great, congratulations. And

7:09

inside I was kicking myself, because I loved the English office,

7:12

so we had the table read, and it

7:14

went terribly, and

7:19

I got home, and I got a call, and they

7:21

said they canceled the show. Tear

7:24

up your plane ticket, and I was like, yes,

7:27

and I picked up the phone, and I'm like, hey, they're doing

7:29

this office, and I was literally the first actor in on

7:32

the very first day of auditions, and

7:36

I auditioned for both Dwight and Michael.

7:40

What? Yes, and mine just

7:42

exploded. My Michael

7:44

audition was terrible.

7:47

I was such a huge Ricky Gervais fan, I just

7:49

was doing a Ricky Gervais imitation. I

7:52

was like, so, I'm the world's best

7:54

boss. I was doing a lot of mannerisms,

7:57

it was just awful, but really when

7:59

it came to Dwight.

7:59

I was like, you know,

8:03

I know this guy. And

8:06

it was one of those cases where I was like, there's

8:08

really no one else that can play this role. I

8:11

know exactly who this guy is. I

8:13

used to play Dungeons & Dragons with guys

8:15

like this. I

8:18

literally played Dungeons & Dragons

8:20

with a guy named Chris Cole. If you're listening,

8:22

Chris. Chris Cole

8:25

had Battlestar Galactica

8:27

glasses. I'm not making

8:30

this up. He was skinny as a rail, 97

8:32

pounds, and his

8:34

D&D characters would always be these giant warriors,

8:37

and he would draw them with giant rippling

8:40

muscles. Oh, and he studied fencing.

8:43

So, thank you, Chris, because

8:45

although that is not Dwight Schrute, the

8:48

people in suburban Seattle that I hung with were

8:50

absolutely cut from Schrutean

8:52

claws, so to speak.

8:55

Okay, I have to ask, did Chris eat beets?

8:58

I don't think he probably ate beets. I

9:00

think he only ate McDonald's, so, yeah.

9:04

Okay, so you got the part? Yes.

9:06

You become Dwight? Yes. Tell

9:09

us what it was like to be on that show. The

9:11

thing that I've since learned is

9:13

how exceptionally collaborative

9:16

it was as a set. As Dunder

9:18

Mifflin was not collaborative whatsoever,

9:22

the office was completely collaborative.

9:25

As long as we got the lines as

9:27

scripted and got them well, we

9:29

could say whatever the hell we wanted.

9:32

And if we wanted to take a scene

9:34

in a different direction, we would try

9:36

it, because that's one of the amazing

9:38

things about having to be documentary is that,

9:41

we just had two guys with cameras, you know, so

9:44

if you want to go skip over here or start

9:46

wrestling or this, you know, they're going to capture

9:49

it, even like on Friends or a Seinfeld

9:51

set. You know, you have the camera moved and

9:53

it's kind of blocked, and you can't just kind

9:56

of start improvising or doing physical comedy

9:58

on the side.

9:59

It was wonderfully collaborative. Greg

10:02

Daniels, the showrunner,

10:04

was incredibly open

10:07

to ideas. He would have two different cuts

10:09

of a scene, and he wouldn't know which one to do.

10:12

And so he would ask the janitorial staff

10:15

and the security guard and the people

10:17

doing craft services, and he would bring

10:19

them all into the editing room, and he would show them

10:21

the two scenes, and they would vote,

10:23

and he would pick that one. There's

10:26

very few people, trust me, in

10:28

Hollywood that work in that way.

10:31

So he didn't have an ego about

10:33

it. And that generated a

10:35

good feeling in the cast that

10:37

was pretty astonishing. I remember we had

10:39

a director who came in who had just come from

10:42

directing a show that shall not be named,

10:45

Desperate Housewives. And he

10:48

said, oh my god, first of

10:50

all, no one on that show is even talking to each other,

10:53

and they wait in their trailers until they absolutely

10:56

have to come out, and many of them won't do scenes together.

10:59

But you guys not only six years

11:01

in talk to each other, like you love each

11:03

other. You come in, you hug, you high

11:05

five, you laugh. And we kind

11:07

of all, as we were shooting it, we were all kind

11:09

of new, like, you know what, this is probably going to

11:11

be the best job we ever have, hands

11:13

down. I think I've shown more office clips

11:16

in my classes at Wharton than all other movie

11:18

and TV clips combined. Nice. And

11:20

I'm curious about what you learned. It sounds like there

11:23

was quite a contrast between the dynamic

11:25

you had on the show and then the office you were

11:27

creating at Dunder Mifflin. But what did you learn

11:29

about making work better and creating

11:31

good jobs? Well, one of the things that

11:34

was astonishing to us in making the office

11:36

was how popular it was with high school and

11:38

college kids who had never set foot in

11:40

an office. We thought

11:43

we were making a show

11:44

for work

11:46

folk in their 20s and 30s that

11:49

had a jerk boss and had office

11:51

romances and struggles in the office.

11:53

And that's what we thought we were making the show

11:55

for. And then all of a sudden

11:57

we were like the number one show among.

11:59

teenagers, but the other thing that's

12:02

pretty nuts is I cannot tell

12:04

you how many times I've seen written

12:06

online or people have actually

12:08

told me that they longed to work

12:10

in a place like Thunder Mifflin. And

12:14

I think they're getting confused. I have

12:16

so many questions. The

12:19

spirit of the show, the heart of the show,

12:21

the love by,

12:24

for, and in between the characters that's

12:27

revealed in the show, the vulnerabilities

12:29

are what people fall in love with, and

12:31

they mistake that for being

12:34

a kind of really lifeless corporate

12:37

drone in a paper company. Because

12:39

first of all, this whole idea

12:42

of like, it's the worst kind of hierarchy,

12:45

patriarchy of like the boss

12:47

who kind of knows it all and you're

12:50

a captive audience, you can't flee

12:52

their jokes or their whims.

12:55

So that feels very like 1950s

12:59

kind of and the

13:01

kind of the drudgery of the nine to five

13:03

and everyone is in their little box. There's

13:06

so many things about it that that feel

13:09

timeless and yet completely outdated. I would

13:12

agree. If you

13:14

were going into Thunder Mifflin, if

13:16

Jan hired you, said,

13:19

Michael, we've got Adam Grant

13:21

here, conference room, five minutes.

13:23

And Adam Grant went in

13:26

the conference room with Michael and

13:28

Dwight and Jim and Pam and and Ryan

13:30

and the whole gang. What would you be working

13:33

on at Thunder Mifflin? Wow. I

13:37

think this is the coolest day in my

13:39

job ever. Yes,

13:42

sign me up for that. That's your next book, by the way.

13:44

I would totally do that. Can we play this out for a second? Do

13:47

it. Okay. Can you be Dwight?

13:50

For

13:57

you, for you I will.

13:59

Wow, he wasn't kidding. Play

14:02

this out. Mr.

14:04

Shoot? Shrew. I'm

14:06

sorry. Hi, Adam Grant. Nice

14:09

to meet you. I understand you're the assistant regional

14:11

manager, is that right? That's correct. Tell

14:15

me what you think is wrong with this place, Dunder Mifflin.

14:18

Let me start at the beginning. Everything.

14:20

I think

14:22

there is an incredible amount of dead wood.

14:25

Here's my list of who should be fired

14:27

by this afternoon. I'm happy to take on the task.

14:30

Hmm. I noticed your list

14:32

says Jim, Jim,

14:35

Jim, and Jim. Yes. What's

14:38

your beef with Jim? I don't have a beef

14:40

with Jim. He's terrible. He's an idiot.

14:43

He's stupid and he's ugly. Okay,

14:46

so if I gave him his own office where you didn't

14:48

have to look at him all day. You can transfer

14:50

him to the Stanford or Utica branch. Alright,

14:54

interesting. What is children's

14:56

sales performance look like? Can I have a raise?

15:01

What have you done to earn a raise?

15:03

I am a tireless worker and

15:05

I close every sale and

15:08

I answer the phone no matter the time of

15:10

day. That's interesting. I've

15:12

actually heard all those things. I've also had your car

15:15

detailed as we've been having this conversation.

15:17

Oh, that's so sweet of you. I

15:20

don't think I authorized that and I'm a little creeped

15:23

out right now that you did that but I appreciate

15:25

the sentiment and the dedication. I found two

15:27

dollars and seventeen cents in the various

15:30

ashtrays. You're welcome. You can have

15:32

them if you want them. Wow. Thank

15:34

you. I will say how much longer

15:36

is this improv going to go on? I

15:39

do have to ask you a question, Mr. Shrew,

15:41

which is I've heard you're incredibly dedicated.

15:44

You're conscientious to the max. You scored off

15:46

the charts on our assessment of industriousness and

15:49

diligence and grit. Angela Duckworth

15:51

actually vouched for your grit personally. Good.

15:55

I have beautiful grit. We

15:58

did get some feedback. that you don't always

16:01

play well with others, and sometimes

16:03

you even stop people from doing

16:05

their jobs.

16:07

That's ridiculous.

16:08

I think it's ridiculous,

16:11

too. Ridiculously true.

16:14

Really? Yes. Because

16:17

their incompetence is nauseating.

16:20

OK, I'll tell you what. So it

16:23

sounds like you want to race. You asked for that. Yes.

16:25

I hear you also want a promotion. Yes. If

16:28

I give you a list of ways that

16:30

you can make other people better, and

16:33

then offered you a raise in promotion if you hit

16:35

those targets, how would you feel about that? I

16:42

feel does not

16:45

compute.

16:46

And

16:49

scene. And scene.

16:54

Good. He's good. OK,

16:58

so you've worked on now, you've worked

17:00

on a lot of projects. You've worked with a lot of people.

17:03

My goal was to try to figure out what motivated

17:05

Dwight Schrute and then connect what I

17:07

cared about to Dwight's motives. How well did I

17:09

do? You scored off the

17:11

charts. That was amazing. That was absolutely incredible.

17:14

Yeah.

17:15

Well, thank you. How would you have done that with Michael?

17:18

Well, are you going to give us your mic? No, we don't have to play that. My

17:21

read of Michael was that he's actually not a

17:23

bad guy, but he really wants to be famous. And

17:26

his antics are in front of the camera. And so I would

17:29

try to get him off camera, would be my first thought. My

17:31

second thought would be to help him

17:33

see that becoming a famous hated

17:36

boss is probably not the ideal place

17:38

to land. Well, I think he

17:40

was famous before the cameras were

17:42

there, putting on a live show for

17:44

the audience. And then the cameras just threw

17:46

kerosene on the fire. Yeah, I'd want to hold up

17:48

a mirror and have him see how disliked he is. And

17:51

then the hope is he wants to be loved. Although

17:54

I remember him also saying he wants people

17:56

to fear him and love him. And he wants them

17:58

to be afraid of how much they love him. That's

18:02

very good. You've seen the show. Once

18:04

or twice. Yeah. So

18:07

I want to talk about a bunch of other things, but before

18:09

we temporarily leave the office,

18:11

I had two questions about your experience

18:14

on the show. One is,

18:16

you achieve success a lot later in life

18:18

than many people in your industry do. How

18:20

old were you when you were cast as Dwight? I

18:23

was 38 when I was cast as

18:25

Dwight, and I had a peculiar

18:28

baby face. I appeared

18:31

younger, but I was older. But by

18:33

the time the office was really

18:35

kind of off and running, I was in my early 40s. One

18:38

of the great things about Dwight is you can't really put your finger on

18:40

how old he is. Sometimes he seems like he's 25, and

18:43

sometimes he seems like he's 45. So

18:45

it's just kind of this general area.

18:48

But yeah, it was very interesting for me to

18:50

achieve fame kind of in

18:52

my 40s after a

18:54

long, long slog of

18:57

trying to pay my bills

18:59

and be a professional actor. It's

19:01

such an interesting contrast to a dynamic that I think

19:03

a lot of people watch, which is the opposite. If

19:06

somebody gets too much success too soon, it

19:08

goes to their head. They end up with a

19:10

giant, fragile ego. They lack humility.

19:12

They end up becoming more takers than givers.

19:15

There's a whole syndrome that I'm sure you've watched a lot of

19:17

people fall victim to. What

19:20

is your version of that? That's what happened to John

19:22

and Jenna and Mindy and

19:25

BJ and I'm

19:27

kidding. No, but I

19:29

am struck. We've known each other for a few years now,

19:31

although we haven't met in person until now. And

19:35

I'm just blown away by how down to earth you are. You

19:37

don't have 19 handlers. You

19:41

book your own flights, as far as I can tell. Is

19:43

this who you are? Is this your character? Is this a

19:45

function of the late stage

19:48

at which you achieved your success? Well, it's

19:50

something I've talked about a little bit recently and

19:53

has been blown completely out of proportion. I

19:55

talked about how at times,

19:58

not all the time, at time. I

20:00

was very very unhappy while

20:03

doing the office. Here I am

20:05

in a job that is beyond my wildest dreams. Here

20:08

I am making millions of dollars, making

20:10

people laugh, I'm being nominated for Emmy's, movies

20:13

are being offered to me, development deals, all

20:15

kinds of amazing opportunities

20:18

that if you had cut back to six

20:20

years before, it's me not even being

20:23

able to get the law and order. Janitor,

20:26

audition, let alone the job.

20:28

So it was an incredible transformation

20:32

in my life and it

20:34

did go to my head. There were a lot

20:37

of times when I was really wrestling

20:40

with my ego and when

20:42

I was very unhappy because

20:44

it wasn't enough and it

20:46

goes to that kind of essential human not

20:49

enough-ness that we're often dealing

20:51

with where we can't just a

20:54

hundred percent and absolutely be in

20:57

total kind of grace and

20:59

gratitude for the gifts that we have that

21:01

are right in front of us. But we're always

21:03

yearning and longing for the

21:06

thing that's just outside of our grasp. In this

21:08

case, like why didn't my movies

21:11

work? Why didn't I get offered better movies? Why

21:13

didn't I get this other development deal? Why didn't

21:16

I get more money for this? Why did Jeremy

21:18

Piven win the Emmy for Christ's sakes? I

21:20

can't answer that question. But

21:24

this this is part

21:27

of kind of the spiritual conundrum

21:30

and you know, I'm

21:32

a member of the Baha'i faith and the

21:34

son of the founder of the Baha'i faith, Abdul

21:37

Baha'a, came to America about a hundred years ago. And

21:40

there's a story I love because he landed in America.

21:42

He was going to do a speaking tour essentially

21:45

kind of like an Adam Grant does and

21:47

a reporter said hey do Baha'is believe

21:49

in Satan and Abdul Baha'a said

21:51

yes, they do and the reporter's like, oh, what

21:54

is Satan to a Baha'i? And Abdul

21:56

Baha'a said the insistent self.

22:00

So I love that idea that Satan

22:03

is not some boogeyman creature with red

22:05

scales or something like that But that we

22:07

have this battle within

22:10

us and this is in every faith tradition in the

22:13

world But I I came up against

22:15

that hard during the office and

22:17

it was just asked my wife It was some very

22:19

difficult times and I had to do

22:21

a lot of soul searching during

22:24

that time and therapy and whatnot

22:26

to kind of come out on the other side of that and

22:29

and that might be a life lesson for every

22:31

single person here to just

22:32

Enjoy it more

22:35

It's kind of startling to hear because this

22:37

is this is as good as it ever gets for

22:39

an actor I'm sure you've thought many times

22:41

no matter how successful I become at anything I do in the future

22:44

There will never be another office Absolutely

22:46

true and you didn't enjoy that as

22:48

much as he wished.

22:50

I didn't know I wasn't in the present

22:52

moment and in soul boom I draw on a

22:54

number of different faith traditions, but in

22:56

Buddhism. There's a concept of the hungry ghost

22:58

and In kind

23:00

of Buddhist practice where a few

23:03

billion hungry ghosts on the planet

23:05

and the hungry ghost is someone who has

23:07

died Who is living

23:09

in craving living in constant

23:12

craving and is constantly? unsatisfied

23:15

so in the death realm they're

23:18

reaching craving longing

23:20

for Grasping and

23:22

you just described everyone's worst stereotype of

23:24

warden But

23:27

truthfully like Why business

23:30

is it to make money to achieve fame

23:32

to have control to have high status?

23:35

I think these spiritual questions are very relevant

23:37

no matter what your career paths, but especially

23:39

to people that are Seeking

23:42

to change things and shake

23:44

things up through entrepreneurship. I think

23:46

it's important conversation to have Let's

23:48

talk about soul boom a little bit because I was floored

23:50

by this book. I expected it to be funny

23:53

It is I didn't know it was

23:55

gonna be this deep in this broad I feel like you're

23:58

delivering a message that could not be both

24:00

more timeless but also more timely for

24:02

a generation that's about to enter the workforce or

24:04

reenter the workforce. I've been teaching

24:07

here for 15 years. I have a lot of conversations

24:09

with students who feel like there's a gaping

24:12

hole in their life around purpose or meaning, and

24:15

they've filled it with ambition.

24:18

And that sounds a lot like the hungry ghost that you're

24:21

talking about. So talk to us a little bit

24:23

about your case that we need not a religious revolution

24:25

but a spiritual revolution.

24:27

Yeah, I think that's very well said,

24:29

and I really relate to

24:31

that, by the way. I think that

24:34

in order to really make it as an actor in show business,

24:36

you have to be incredibly driven and you have to be incredibly

24:39

ambitious. You need that coupled

24:42

with talent and a lot of luck. That

24:44

hungry ghost phase that I went through

24:47

when I was on the office was really one

24:49

driven by kind of like an

24:53

ending ambition.

24:55

I think one of the things that I'm most grateful

24:58

for is the mental health crises

25:00

that I've undergone in my life. Did

25:03

you just say you were grateful for having had mental

25:05

health crises? Yes, I am. Can

25:07

you unpack that for us? Sure. When

25:10

you turn to the teachings of the Buddha, his

25:12

number one rule of the Four Noble

25:14

Truths is life is suffering.

25:17

When

25:18

the Buddha used the word suffering, the translation,

25:21

the original word in Pali Sanskrit

25:23

is dukkha, and dukkha means

25:25

kind of anxious discontent.

25:29

Life is anxious discontent, and

25:31

maybe some of you can see some heads nodding,

25:34

have felt some anxious discontent

25:37

in their lives. Why aren't things the way that I want

25:39

them to be? Why can't it be more like this? I want

25:41

this outcome, and why does this person keep

25:43

acting this way, and how come I didn't get what I

25:45

wanted? We live our lives

25:47

with those gears grinding. We're

25:50

wired to do that as human beings

25:53

because it's what's kept us alive for hundreds of thousands

25:55

of years. But how does

25:57

it come to play in the modern world? For

26:00

me, in my 20s, when I was struggling

26:03

as an actor, trying to get an audition for

26:05

Law and Order, I suffered

26:07

a lot of anxiety and depression

26:10

and addiction issues, loneliness, and

26:12

again, through trying to substitute purpose

26:15

and meaning and vision for ambition,

26:18

thinking that, ah, once I get this next

26:21

big acting gig, then I'm gonna

26:24

feel content, then I'm gonna feel at peace,

26:26

and it's always just outside of my grasp, and

26:29

then I get that big movie, and

26:31

it doesn't do well. I'll need the next big movie.

26:33

I need the next big thing. And you can apply

26:35

this to any career that one wants

26:38

to undertake, but what it forced

26:40

me to do, these mental health issues,

26:43

was to get a lot of therapy, and

26:46

to do a lot of soul searching,

26:47

a lot of meditation and praying, and

26:49

a lot of reading of the world's holy writings. I

26:52

feel like

26:54

that work that I've done on the spiritual

26:56

side of being a human being

26:58

and my spiritual reality has brought

27:01

me great peace and

27:03

vision and mission and

27:05

purpose that can feed

27:07

my creative life and also help me to write

27:09

a book and spread the word, and also talk

27:12

to young people about this most great

27:14

crisis that's happening right now. There's two great

27:16

ones. There's climate change. Maybe we'll get

27:19

to that later, but the mental health crisis

27:21

that's affecting young people and destroying young

27:23

people

27:24

and tearing their lives apart is

27:26

something that spirituality

27:28

does hold some answers to. So

27:31

without me suffering,

27:33

I never would have been driven to

27:36

read and explore these issues

27:38

that I've written about that I would never

27:40

have allowed me to transform

27:43

from a hungry ghost into the

27:45

incredibly handsome international

27:49

talent you see sitting before you. I

27:52

love that. As you were describing

27:54

your experience, I was thinking about what

27:56

Tal Ben-Shahar calls the arrival fallacy.

28:00

the misguided belief that once I get

28:02

this job or this recognition

28:05

or once I fall in love

28:07

and get married or once I have kids, fill

28:09

in your once that everything will

28:11

be different. And I think Hemingway

28:13

put it best when he said you can't

28:15

get away from yourself by moving from one place

28:17

to another. I think your

28:19

book really speaks to this in you spend a lot

28:22

of time on inner work and sort

28:24

of walking us through what

28:26

you learned spiritually that helps with

28:28

your mental health. I'd love to know what

28:31

came out of that. And I think our audience is probably curious about

28:33

that too. One of my favorite

28:35

quotes that I throw around a lot

28:38

is, we're not human beings having a spiritual

28:40

experience. We are spiritual

28:42

beings having a human experience.

28:46

And

28:47

as deceptively simple as that phrase

28:49

is, for me, that means a tremendous

28:52

amount. And the understanding

28:54

that I am an essence, a spiritual

28:57

being, and I get 80 or 90 or 100

28:59

years, I hope in

29:01

this magnificent fleshy tuxedo

29:04

running around is

29:07

to me puts everything into crystal and

29:09

clarity. Every day

29:12

is a kind of spiritual test. Every

29:14

day is a spiritual

29:16

obstacle course where I'm gonna be beset

29:19

with things that are gonna make me impatient

29:22

or frustrated or feeling

29:24

less than. And I

29:26

get to use spiritual tools to

29:29

help me come back this,

29:33

what's coming at me. I know you've also worked

29:35

a lot in positive psychology, and there

29:37

are so many tools from positive psychology

29:39

that are essentially spiritual

29:42

tools, like gratitude is

29:44

a great one. Meditation is

29:46

a tool that works on so many different levels. So

29:48

I have a daily meditation practice. And

29:51

one of the things that meditation does is

29:54

it allows you metacognition. And

29:57

as Arthur Brooks writes about in his new

29:59

book,

29:59

idea that when I'm in a meditative state,

30:02

there's a part of me that gets to float above

30:05

and look down at my thoughts and

30:07

go, oh, I'm not my thoughts. And

30:09

there's part of me that gets to look down and have feelings

30:11

like, oh, I'm not my feelings. Like my

30:13

reality is greater than my thoughts and my feelings

30:16

and certainly greater than my body. I

30:18

think the way that you just articulated metacognition

30:21

is really compelling. And I think, well,

30:23

I want to say something about that. I wake up

30:25

in the morning, I look at a couple of emails and

30:28

make my half-calf latte

30:31

and my head is a beehive. So

30:33

it just, I

30:36

need a practice to help me gain

30:39

kind of perspective. And I will also

30:42

say that I have this beautiful little bench

30:44

out in our backyard that's gorgeous. We have an olive

30:46

tree and some flowers and there's tons of hummingbirds

30:48

out there. And sometimes I'm trying to meditate.

30:51

I just can't meditate for shit. And so I

30:53

just turn and I just witness

30:56

the beauty and majesty and wonder of

30:59

the hummingbirds and the leaves and the trees and

31:01

the wind and the light through the leaves. Anne

31:04

Lamott has a great book called Help

31:06

Thanks Wow. And those are the three prayers

31:09

that you say. You say help, you know, God

31:11

help me, thanks, thank you God, gratitude

31:14

and wow. And then I just try and live

31:16

in the wow. And if you can live in the wow

31:19

for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes,

31:21

just like this is fucking

31:23

great man. Listen to

31:25

those birds. I didn't know hummingbirds chirped. Wow.

31:29

Like if you can live in that, to

31:31

me it helps my day tremendously.

31:34

I could take a data-driven test,

31:37

you know, on one of your websites and

31:40

man after my own heart and find a 12.5% increase

31:43

in well-being

31:46

over the course of that day when I had lived

31:48

in wonder. I mean that makes

31:50

a lot of sense to me and there have been a few papers showing

31:53

that even when people do transcendental

31:55

or loving kindness meditation, sometimes

31:57

they come out more self-focused.

31:59

It's like, I want to be more loving. I'm

32:02

going to be kinder. I'm going to be more generous. How

32:05

do you think about making sure that whatever

32:07

reflective or contemplative practice you do isn't

32:10

self-centered?

32:11

Well, I think that's a problem

32:13

with how spirituality is viewed in contemporary

32:16

society. Because really, spirituality

32:19

has become commodified and

32:22

has fit into our

32:24

kind of capitalist way of doing things

32:27

where it's like, I'm

32:29

really anxious and out of

32:31

balance. I'm angry all the time.

32:34

Let me download this app and subscribe

32:36

to this mindfulness app. Let me download

32:39

this Eckhart Tolle podcast. Let

32:41

me subscribe to this roomie quote of the day

32:43

on Instagram. Let me go to

32:45

my yoga class. And I'm doing all

32:47

this so that I can reduce my

32:50

anxiety. So that's a transactional

32:52

nature. I'm going to spend this money and I'm going

32:54

to invest this time so that I

32:57

feel better. So it really

32:59

pisses me off that spirituality,

33:02

which is all about connecting with the mystic

33:05

divine, beautiful purpose

33:07

of the universe in service and in

33:09

community and in transcendence with others

33:11

has been commodified to such an extent

33:14

that it becomes this selfish

33:17

act of like, I want my life to be

33:19

better. That was a great screed

33:21

again to make mindfulness exactly

33:24

what the world needs. If you think about the void

33:26

of spirituality, the sense of purpose and transcendence

33:29

that a lot of people are looking for in life. I

33:31

remember Derek Thompson wrote a great Atlantic article

33:33

a few years ago on workism, where

33:35

he said that work has taken the place

33:37

that religion and faith and

33:39

spirituality traditions used to hold in our society.

33:42

I read the article and I thought, yeah, I teach a

33:44

lot of students who pray

33:47

to the high priest of hustle and who

33:49

worship at the altar of status. Like

33:52

you were saying earlier, I don't think we should strive to

33:54

strip work of its meaning. I want people

33:56

to have meaningful, worthwhile jobs. But

33:59

there is a sense in which this gets blown

34:01

up or reified and work becomes too important

34:03

as a part of somebody's identity and

34:05

their contribution to the world. And I wonder

34:08

how you've navigated that. So with

34:10

this perspective that you bring to the table, how do you

34:12

think about your work being meaningful but not

34:14

the most important thing on earth?

34:16

You know,

34:17

I had this incredible acting teacher

34:20

named Zelda Fitchandler. She always talked

34:23

about the shaman. And

34:25

I

34:26

always loved that, that

34:28

she compared actors to

34:31

shaman. And it sounds a little self-important.

34:33

But what it does is then it

34:36

elevates being an actor to, I'm

34:38

not just someone who memorizes lines and tries to

34:40

make them sound convincing. I'm someone

34:42

that gets to play all kinds

34:44

of roles in theater, in film, in

34:46

TV, in spoken word,

34:49

gets to use language and

34:51

tell stories that help

34:54

shape our culture. And I

34:56

was really fortunate with The Office because

34:59

the genius writers wrote

35:01

the words that I got to use to help shape

35:04

culture. I remember when I was talking to Greg

35:06

Daniels early on, I'm like, what do you hope to do with The Office?

35:08

And he goes, you know, American comedy is really bad

35:10

right now. I want to move American comedy

35:12

like one degree in the right direction.

35:14

It's like steering the Titanic.

35:17

You have to move it by one degree, and then it ends up going

35:19

in the right direction. And guess what? He succeeded. More

35:22

than a degree. You reinvented American comedy.

35:24

Amazing. So as I allowed

35:27

myself more and more to be a shaman, I'm

35:29

like, oh, you know, I've

35:31

got a platform because I'm an actor. I'll write this dumb

35:34

book about spirituality and God

35:36

and souls and the meaning of life. Maybe

35:38

some young people will read it and respond to it. Maybe

35:41

not. I do work in climate change.

35:43

We do climate change storytelling. And that's

35:46

really exciting to me and jazzes

35:48

me. So I forget what the question was, but

35:51

the answer is shaman. It's

35:54

a good answer. And I think every shaman today

35:56

has a podcast. And I'm

35:58

going to be starting

35:59

one.

35:59

We were waiting for that news.

36:02

Yeah.

36:07

Let's talk about the extensions of Soulboom

36:09

into some of the other work that you're doing. So

36:11

I remember when I read the geography of the list

36:13

and thought it was an ingenious look from

36:16

a grumps perspective at what

36:18

might actually drive happiness. I

36:20

was overjoyed when I found out that there was

36:22

going to be a TV show that you were going to host,

36:25

trying to find the world's happiest place. Yeah.

36:28

So you've scoured the world for

36:30

happiness secrets. What have you learned? We

36:33

got to go to Iceland, one of the world's happiest

36:35

places. Bulgaria, one of the

36:37

world's unhappiest places. Ghana,

36:40

West Africa, one of the most optimistic

36:42

places in the world. Thailand, one

36:44

of the most kind of spiritually connected places.

36:47

And then I got to bring it back home to Los Angeles,

36:49

which is a god awful, culturalist

36:51

void. To try and bring what I

36:53

learned back home. Although there

36:56

are a lot of hummingbirds. Too many

36:58

frickin' hummingbirds, if you ask me. You've got

37:01

to do something about that. So you went to five places? Five

37:03

places? It's amazing. In

37:06

the book

37:07

I referenced the grant study from

37:09

Harvard University, which I'm sure you know

37:12

tons about. And they followed these 300 men

37:15

for like 80 years to find

37:17

what made them have a good life. And

37:20

it all boiled down to essentially connections. And

37:23

having better, deeper, richer,

37:26

more frequent connections. And

37:29

guess what? We live in a time of increasing isolation. When

37:31

we're all doing this all day. And connecting

37:33

less and less. And

37:36

that's really what I learned out on the road. And

37:38

it was so beautiful to see whether it was, you

37:40

know, these beautiful valkyrie, Viking

37:42

women in Iceland. Singing and holding

37:45

hands and walking, doing a cold plunge into

37:47

the Arctic. All ocean. Whether

37:49

it was a communal group of people

37:52

in Ghana. Growing cocoa beans

37:54

and collaborating together. And trying

37:56

to kind of uplift their community. Whether

37:59

it's in Thailand. people spend their birthday

38:01

not receiving presents but

38:04

on their birthday giving to others.

38:07

They spend their birthday going and

38:09

feeding the poor and tending

38:12

to the monks and monasteries

38:14

and temples and giving of their time

38:16

which I thought was a wonderful inverse.

38:19

And in Los Angeles where

38:22

everyone has a podcast but again

38:24

it really was just about these beautiful ways

38:27

that humans connect and how

38:30

that's where the work lies. The work lies

38:32

in just bringing people together

38:34

in unique ways creating bonds of love

38:36

and unity and community and social change

38:39

based in grassroots movements

38:42

of loving people working together. I

38:44

love this idea of turning your

38:47

birthday into giving as opposed to getting.

38:49

I'm also struck as you

38:51

talk about the Iceland experience. Durkheim

38:54

called it collective effervescence. The idea

38:56

that we're going to be immersed in a group

38:59

with shared energy around a common purpose and

39:01

he described that as the most transcendent

39:03

experience that people have. We

39:06

were at the Eagles game on Sunday and

39:08

there was an amazing A.J. Brown touchdown

39:10

and the whole stadium erupted

39:12

and all of a sudden it hit me. I don't

39:14

have that in my life other than going to a sporting

39:17

event. We feel that at the family

39:19

level but the community level that's gone. I

39:22

think you put your finger on something really important.

39:24

But what religion I

39:27

believe can give folks at its

39:29

best is a group of

39:31

common folks coming together seeking

39:34

transcendence, seeking communion,

39:37

seeking connection with nature, with

39:39

God, with eternity, living

39:41

especially if they're doing service to others

39:44

and serving the poor and coming together

39:46

to give up their time and

39:48

their energy and their schedule

39:50

and their status to serve other

39:52

people. I do

39:55

think that humanity is missing

39:57

something by having lost

39:59

that. transcendent need to

40:01

commune in community.

40:05

Let's put the commune back in community. Well

40:07

put. I think it's time for a lightning round.

40:10

Okay, all right, here we go, pass.

40:12

You're

40:15

fired. First question,

40:17

what kind of bear is best? Sun bear,

40:19

Tibetan sun bear. Favorite office

40:22

episode? The injury.

40:25

Favorite office character other than Dwight? Creed.

40:31

Favorite Jim Frank on Dwight? Putting

40:34

the desk in the bathroom. Classic,

40:37

I thought you were gonna go for when the phone was full

40:40

of nickels and then you slammed yourself in the back. That's

40:42

the psychology one, because that was

40:44

based in the, Pavlovian

40:47

theory. Pavlovian conditioning, that's why I loved it most. Okay,

40:50

your favorite scene that you improvised

40:53

on the office? The scene where

40:55

Michael had two Michael heads and I was dressed

40:58

as a Sith Lord and we were having a conversation

41:00

in Halloween about firing Dwight

41:03

and I was like, don't fire Dwight. Should

41:05

I? I don't know, that was all improvised.

41:08

We'd have to rewatch that. What is the

41:10

Dwight attribute that's most like you? She's

41:13

the world in an offbeat, odd,

41:16

fractured way. And his

41:18

trait that's least like you? Bullying.

41:23

Touche. Something you've

41:26

rethought lately.

41:28

I've rethought assault weapons

41:31

bans

41:32

due to Malcolm Gladwell's

41:35

exploration of that particular issue

41:37

around gun control on his podcast.

41:39

Me too, it was a great episode. This

41:42

one I have to say comes from a student. As a person

41:44

born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, I

41:46

have to ask, how much time have you

41:49

actually spent in Scranton, Pennsylvania? So

41:52

one of my favorite events

41:54

that ever happened in my life, the office

41:56

had just started. I got a call and

41:59

they were like, they want to pay.

41:59

you

42:00

an extraordinary amount of money

42:02

and sign autographs and help open

42:05

the Steentown Mall. Remember,

42:08

I'm 40 years old, I've been broke my whole

42:10

life trying to make it as an actor and

42:12

I was like, oh my god, this is incredible.

42:15

So I land at the Scranton Airport, the

42:18

mayor's

42:19

entourage picks me up with

42:22

full retinue of police cars and a limousine

42:25

and full sirens and the mayor's

42:27

like, come on in, like they're making me an honorary

42:29

Lackawanna County sheriff and

42:32

they're giving you the key to the city. I was

42:34

bigger than Justin Bieber,

42:37

you know, for a day and

42:40

when the office ended we went to Scranton and we

42:42

did a parade, we stayed up till 4 a.m. all

42:45

the bars stayed open and it was it was

42:48

just nuts. So here's to you great

42:50

city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

42:55

You've been doing a lot of work on climate change, you

42:58

in part have a mission to make climate change

43:01

fun and even occasionally funny. Can you tell

43:03

us in a sentence how to do that? One

43:08

sentence, sure I can do this in one

43:10

sentence and here continues the sentence

43:13

into saying that I've been working with

43:15

this nonprofit called Arctic Base

43:17

Camp and now Climate Base Camp and

43:20

we try and speak science to

43:22

culture and to power through

43:24

using hysterical media activations

43:27

that are attention-grabbing and

43:30

targeted towards the moveable middle

43:32

because too much climate work focuses

43:35

only on converting the already

43:37

converted or else arguing

43:39

with the people that will never be converted of the

43:42

importance of climate change. That was

43:44

a sentence.

43:44

Do

43:49

you have a favorite example of one of those activations?

43:59

front of the conference center so that it was

44:02

melting as the attendees were going into

44:04

the conference. And we bottled the water

44:06

from the iceberg and gave it out

44:08

along with data points about the melting

44:11

global ice sheet. And we got a

44:13

lot of very interesting media

44:15

play. And it was also very

44:18

hard-hitting. Wow. Yeah. Excellent.

44:21

I have a lot of takeaways from this conversation. I learned

44:23

that you have a real vendetta against law and order. And

44:27

a little bit Jeremy Piven. A little bit. I

44:30

wasn't going to say it. What's a closing piece

44:32

of advice or wisdom you'd love to share

44:34

with our audience? I had an acting

44:36

teacher, Andre Gregory,

44:39

who had the movie My Dinner with Andre, which

44:41

everyone should see. And

44:44

I met with him once. And

44:46

I told him I was feeling pessimistic and kind of run

44:48

down. And he

44:50

grabbed my arm. And

44:52

he was like 80 years old. He grabbed my arm and he was like,

44:55

don't. Don't do it. You

44:57

need to be optimistic. You need

44:59

to bring hope. You need to feel joy.

45:02

Don't get cynical. You cannot get

45:04

pessimistic. If you're pessimistic, if

45:06

you're cynical, they win. The forces

45:09

of darkness want you to feel pessimistic.

45:11

So you'll sit on your couch all day and do nothing.

45:14

You've got to keep hope alive.

45:16

And I really think that that is the clarion

45:19

call for young people these days. That

45:21

there is a lot of hope. And we can

45:24

transform and come through these

45:27

very difficult and dark times to

45:29

a much more beautiful, vital,

45:32

connected world that's not pie

45:34

in the sky, naive, eye-rolling, daydreaming.

45:37

That's absolutely true. And it's something

45:39

we can all work for even

45:41

in a very small way. Beautifully

45:44

said. Thank you for coming, Rainn Wilson.

45:45

Thank you. Thank

45:47

you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

45:50

you.

45:58

Thank you.

45:59

Adam Grant and produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard.

46:02

Our team includes Colin Helm, Eliza Smith,

46:04

Jacob Winning, Asia Simpson, Samaya

46:07

Adams, Michelle Quinn, Ben Van Teng, Hannah

46:09

Kingsley Ma, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney

46:11

Pennington-Rogers. This episode was produced

46:14

and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our fact checker

46:16

is Paul Durbin, original music by Hontail

46:18

Sue and Alison Leighton Brown.

46:26

What are you hummingbirds? I

46:29

feel like your alter ego would know the answer to this. Yes.

46:33

That needs to be an app, like Ask Dwight,

46:35

like Chat GPT. I

46:38

think a Dwight GPT would be a big tip. Dwight GPT

46:41

would be idiot hawks.

46:47

You

46:47

ever feel like your laptop just

46:50

keeps going, but you are completely

46:52

drained? I think a lot of us don't realize

46:54

how much pain we live in because

46:57

of our interactions with computing. NPR's

47:00

Body Electric, a special interactive

47:02

series investigating how to fix

47:05

the relationship between our tech and

47:08

our health. Listen in the Ted Radio

47:10

Hour feed wherever you get your podcasts.

47:15

PRX.