André Duqum

Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast.

Our guest today is a social scientist, one of the world leading figures on human happiness, which is a big subject.

He's a Harvard professor, a three times over New York Times bestselling author, and somebody who's going to help guide us as a maestro in the conversation today around the meaning of your life.

Arthur Brooks, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Andre.

Could you help us by setting the lay of the land in terms of what the studies and the science is saying for...

The current meaning crisis, like how bad is it compared to, say, 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago?

So if we take that lens of coherence, purpose and significance and look back historically and we see this decline of meaning, which are in your definition constituting of those three things, what would be the predominant reasons and factors for why those three things aren't being met on an individual level, which builds to the collective issue?

Well, there's an assumption baked in there that I finished it.

Yeah, like 2016, I went up to MSU for like a very short period.

Michigan State, Lansing?

Yeah, and then dropped out and came here and did my own thing.

The coherence, significance, and purpose.

What happened?

And I know that you seem to have quite a proclivity towards studying the Eastern side of the diagnosis for these reasons as well.

I'm just curious why or how did you come to that exploration for discovering what the solution to the crisis is?

So for everybody who's listening right now, we have probably a wide spectrum of people at different points in their life, some feeling fulfilled, a lot probably feeling this low grade of numbingness in their life.

This malaise.

Yeah.