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I've always been interested in why we sometimes like to suffer.

It's no big deal to explain why people like food and sex and good company and all sorts of fun stuff.

But it's a real puzzle why we often choose to put ourselves in a situation

and involve pain and effort and suffering.

Why we like spicy foods and some of us go to movies that make a scream.

Some of us train for marathons and triathlons.

And I became very interested in why.

This is Paul Bloom.

He's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

And this question, why we sometimes seek pain and get pleasure from it, is the subject

of his book, The Sweet Spot.

But it's not just pain for pleasure's sake he's interested in.

It's also pain and struggle

that can lead to meaning. Consider somebody who has a maximum life of pleasure. They're hooked up

to a drip of some delicious drug that just gives them this enormous high all the time. And they

spend their whole lives lying on a table maxed out on that drug.

Maybe they're happy, by definition, they're getting a lot of pleasure.

But I think we could look at that and say, that's an awful life.

So can some degree of pain and suffering help us live a good life?

You're listening to All In The Mind. I'm Sana Khadar.

Today's episode is one from our archives, and it's all about the interplay between pleasure, pain, suffering, and meaning. Can you start by explaining,

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