So here's a conundrum about technology and happiness in our current moment.

Did smartphones make us miserable?

Or were we already miserable and then turned to smartphones to cope and this ended up making

things worse?

Now, this answer matters.

If the second option is right, then creating a deep life

in a distracted world is not just about reforming our use of technology. It involves fixing

a more fundamental problem. And this is what I want to talk about today. To help me, I'll be

joined by Arthur Brooks, who is a number one New York Times bestselling author,

call on us for the Atlantic, a professor who teaches leadership and happiness at Harvard.

Brooks has a new book out that's called The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of

Emptiness.

In it, he argues that we entered into this age of emptiness, starting in the 1990s, and then in the last decade, new technologies like smartphones and social media served to make things worse.

In our discussion, we get into the details of the shift, and just importantly, we explore Brooks' advice for rediscovering the purpose that we've lost.

So if you're at all interested in seeking depth in our current moment, you need to listen to this episode.

As always, I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in a distracted world.

And we'll get started right after the music.

All right, Arthur Brooks, it's great to have you back on the show.

To talk about a book I'm really excited about because I think there's a lot of ideas in here,

especially when it comes to the complicated bi-directional relationship between things like meaning and technology that we are in a really good dialogue and we're kind of coming from the same place.

So this is a conversation I've been looking forward to, but I want to start it where you

started the book, which is sort of setting up the problem that we're going to address and

...