Rainn Wilson & Reza Aslan On Living In The Questions

The Rich Roll Podcast

Rich Roll

Education, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 13.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2021

⏱️ 114 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we’re going take some of life’s biggest questions, toss them into a Vitamix, press hyperblend, and whip up a Metaphysical Milkshake. My sous chefs for this cosmic concoction are Rainn Wilson & Reza Aslan. Do I really need to introduce these two? Star of screens big and small, Rainn is best known for his role as Dwight Schrute on The Office. An OG in the online high-vibe content space, Rainn is also the founder of SoulPancake, a digital platform for people from all walks of life to discuss and question what it means to be human—a place to wrestle with the spiritual, philosophical, and creative journey that is life. Reza is a scholar of religions, a professor of creative writing, a television host, an Emmy-nominated producer, and the author of many bestselling books on religion, faith & spirituality. These two have teamed up on a fantastic new podcast worthy of your attention called (you guessed it) Metaphysical Milkshake. In a mild departure from my typical interview format, the idea for this episode was to tackle some of those big life questions, themes that recur on both of our shows, and have some fun doing it. So I wrote down various queries on a stack of index cards, wadded them up, tossed them in a bowl, and let Rainn and Reza take turns fishing them out for today’s round-table. Among the threads pulled today are: What does it mean to be human? How do you be a good person? Why are humans prone to spirituality? How do you reconcile science & rationality with faith & spirituality? Are we addicted to everything? What is the role of consciousness? To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Prepare to have your noodle bent—and have some laughs along the way. Good times! Peace + Plants, Rich

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are these huge questions about life that have been relegated to kind of philosophical
0:09.4	academics that you take an undergrad philosophy 101 and that people oftentimes steer away from.
0:18.8	So we just felt like there's all these spiritual tools and spiritual perspectives about looking
0:24.5	at all of these questions.
0:26.3	What that every episode that we do is spiritual, some episodes we're just talking about politics
0:30.9	and sociology or just feelings, but underneath there's underpinnings of a spiritual connection
0:37.8	which has to do with reason and purpose.
0:39.7	Why are we here?
0:41.1	And how does that guide our approach to asking these deep, probing questions?
0:46.5	If you're listening to this and saying, okay, find everybody has a purpose, well then,
0:50.2	you know, am I doing my purpose?
0:52.0	How do I know what my purpose is?
0:54.0	If you don't know, then you're not doing it.
0:57.7	My wife and I have a couple of sort of life models, family models that we focus on a lot
1:03.6	and one of them is have a mission not a job.
1:08.4	And I say this to my students all the time because I think so many of us pursue jobs.
1:13.2	I want to be an actor.
1:15.0	That's what my passion is.
1:16.0	I want to be a writer.
1:17.5	That's where my passion is.
1:18.5	That's great.
1:19.7	But what's your mission?
	...

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