Book Bite #15: Is a Little Pain a Good Thing?

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Education, Science

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here’s something weird about humans. We like pain. Think about it. We eat spicy food, watch scary movies, run marathons, and take polar plunges. In today’s Book Bite — #15 in our countdown — psychologist Paul Bloom gets to the bottom of our predilection for sorrow and explains why it might be a pathway to meaning. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear a sneak peek of Paul’s interview with our curator Susan Cain. Their full conversation will be part of our new season, which starts in February. Visit paulbloom.net to learn more about Paul’s work. And if you want to check out the Next Big Idea app, head over to nextbigideaclub.com/app.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The LinkedIn podcast network is sponsored by iHG Hotels and Resorts.
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0:10.1	Grow your network at any of our 6,000 destinations.
0:13.2	Visit iHG.com to learn more.
0:18.6	I'm Rufus Griskin and this is the next big idea.
0:23.2	Today, number 15 on our countdown of the best books of last year as chosen by our app users,
0:29.6	The Sweet Spot by Paul Bloom.
0:34.4	There's an old joke. A guy is banging his head against the wall.
0:38.3	Someone asks why? And the guy goes because it feels so good when I stop.
0:44.0	Suffering it turns out can enhance pleasure and helps us find meaning and purpose in a world
0:48.7	full of cheap thrills. That's the seemingly paradoxical theory at the heart of Paul Bloom's
0:53.6	lucid new book The Sweet Spot, the pledges of suffering and the search for meaning.
0:59.5	Paul, who's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, draws on cutting-edge
1:03.8	research and neuroscience in psychology to show that if you want to live the good life,
1:07.8	you've got to learn to live with a little hurt.
1:10.5	Stick around after Paul's book bite to hear a sneak peek of his interview with next big
1:14.3	idea club curator, Susan Cain. Their full conversation will be part of our new season,
1:19.6	which starts next month.
1:21.2	Hi, I'm Paul Bloom. I'm a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto,
1:30.9	and an emeritus professor at Yale University. My new book is about a surprising role
1:37.3	that suffering plays in life well-lived. It's called The Sweet Spot, the pledges of suffering
	...

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