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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 the 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

life's 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, the interplay between pleasure, pain, suffering, and meaning.

Can you start by explaining, do we all actually derive pleasure from some degree of suffering

or pain? Are we all drawn to it? I've never met somebody who wasn't in some way or another. Now, your mileage may vary. Some

people don't like horror movies at all, but they like sadomasochistic sex. Some people don't

like spicy foods, but they like, you know, high intensity exercise. We differ. And we're talking

now about suffering for a pursuit of pleasure, but there's

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