Nir Eyal

They're really effective when it comes to illness.

And so you can actually practically use many of these tools, both things that look like pharmaceuticals, like pills and injections and treatments and potions, but also rituals, right?

So for the first time in my life, I started to pray.

I didn't pray since I was a little kid.

And now I started adopting prayer in my life because it's incredible.

Like if you look at the research,

People who pray, they live longer, they are a lot healthier, they are happier, they have lower incidence of depression, anxiety.

Now what's really crazy is that turns out the studies show that you actually get a lot of the same benefits from prayer even without faith.

And that really blew my mind.

And I think this is exactly what I'm trying to address here.

This crisis, this epidemic that I think we're seeing of loneliness, disconnection, anxiety, all kinds of maladies, I think are coming from the fact that we've become more secular.

In the States, 30% of Americans today identify as none.

It's the largest religious group in America.

N-O-N-E, not N-U-N, not the Catholic none, but N-O-N-E, people who don't affiliate with any religion.

And in fact, many of them call themselves spiritual, but not religious.

You probably heard this a ton, right?

You're in Austin, you have a lot of people around you who call themselves spiritual, not religious.

Well, those people are the worst off.

They have the highest incidences of anxiety and depression disorder than other groups.

So you're more likely to suffer if you say you're spiritual and not religious than if you just say you're a free thinker or agnostic, or of course, if you are religious.