#504: Finding Meaning In The Modern World: Arthur Brooks

The Mark Groves Podcast

Mark Groves

Society & Culture, Relationships

4.9 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode I sit down with Arthur Brooks to unpack why so many people feel lost, disconnected, and unsure of their purpose despite living in an age of endless opportunity. We explore what meaning actually is, how love, purpose, and belonging are built in real life not on screens, and why the path forward requires getting honest, getting off the dopamine treadmill, embracing boredom, and reconnecting to something greater than yourself. This conversation is an invitation to step out of autopilot, take your attention back, and start creating a life rooted in meaning instead of distraction. Arthur Brooks is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, where he teaches leadership and happiness, as well as a CBS News Contributor, columnist for The Free Press, and host of the podcast Office Hours with Arthur Brooks. He is the author of 15 books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Build the Life You Want (co-authored with Oprah Winfrey) and From Strength to Strength, with his upcoming book The Meaning of Your Life set for release on March 31. Widely regarded as a leading expert on the science of happiness, Brooks regularly speaks and teaches around the world, helping individuals and organizations cultivate greater well-being. —Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ —Website: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/ —Pre order the book: https://hub.arthurbrooks.com/meaning-of-your-life-event-registration - Subscribe to Mark’s Substack to receive his weekly reflections and insights straight from his heart to your inbox. ⁠https://markgroves.substack.com/⁠ —Contact us at podcast@markgroves.com for sponsor product support, questions, comments, or just to say hello!—This episode is sponsored by: Cozy Earth: Use code CHANGE for 20% off sitewide at http://www.cozyearth.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Groves podcast.
0:04.4	Today, I am so honored to have Arthur Brooks.
0:08.0	Welcome to the podcast.
0:08.7	Hey, Mark. Nice to see you.
0:10.9	So good to see you, too.
0:12.3	You have a new book that came out on the meaning of life, finding purpose in an age of emptiness.
0:18.9	And as someone who feels like we are in a state of,
0:26.1	I don't know if I want to say purposelessness,
0:28.8	but I feel like your book is coming at a very important time
0:31.7	with the merger of sort of technology.
0:34.1	And I'm really curious about your thoughts on the impact of that.
0:38.1	But I am curious too, why this book, why now?
0:41.4	Yeah.
0:41.9	And, you know, I've been, this is a book I've been working on for five years.
0:44.4	So I write about, I write speak and teach you about the science of happiness.
0:47.3	I'm a professor of happiness at Harvard.
0:50.0	So that's, you know, I'm talking to MBA students and anybody who takes my classes about the basic science of happiness.
0:56.1	And happiness is defined, not as a feeling, but as a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
1:03.5	And so when I look around and I see a big happiness crisis, which we obviously do today, happiness in both the United States where I live and Canada, where you live, has been in decline since about 1990. And when I see acute an acute crisis in it, which
1:17.3	has happened since about 2008, especially among young adults, I know that one of those macronutrients
1:22.8	of happiness is blocked. We have an enjoyment problem or we have a satisfaction problem or we have a meaning
1:28.1	problem. And so for the past five years, I've been looking into, you know, what is it? You know,
	...

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