The 3 macronutrients of happiness and how to build them into your life | Professor Arthur Brooks

Dr Rupy: What is the biggest mistake people make when thinking about how to be more happy?

Professor Arthur Brooks: The first mistake that people always make is thinking it's a feeling.

Dr Rupy: Uh-huh.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Because they have feelings of happiness and they have feelings of unhappiness. But most people are not brought up as kids learning about the functioning of the brain's limbic system. I mean that's that's that's not standard educational fare. But the limbic system is the console of tissue inside your brain between 20 and 40 million years old. It predates Homo sapiens. It's really a it's a it's a mammalian feature of the brain. That's the console that creates emotions, which are signals that that you have ascertained a threat or an opportunity. I mean we we sentimentalise our emotions, feelings, feelings, feelings, feelings, right? As if that what makes us human. No. Feelings don't make you human. Feelings keep you alive. And it keeps your golden retriever alive and it keeps the mouse alive in much the same way. And you have positive and negative emotions that signal to your brain, that are signalling to you that you've that that you've perceived a threat or an opportunity. You know, that's what it's all about is what it comes down to. Now, when things are pleasant, when you you've seen an opportunity, when something inspires you and you have a positive emotion, you mistake the positive emotion for the happiness itself. And that's an error because if you go searching for for happy feelings, I mean, you're going to go it's a vapour. You're going to go to bed at night saying I sure hope I feel happy tomorrow. That's a hell of a way to live. That's not good living is what it comes down to. So you have to get beyond that. Now the way to think about it is this from the culinary aspect because this is, you know, we're the Doctor's Kitchen after all. You you feelings and happiness are related much the same way that the smell of your dinner is related to your dinner. Feelings are evidence of dinner. They lead you to do particular things and they they're they're you know something special is going on at mum's house because of the smell, but it's not good enough to contain yourself with the smell. You got to go for the dinner. And so therefore, you you describe dinner, what you would, I mean, how we would talk about it as, you know, people involved in science. Dinner itself, if you wanted to be nutritious, filling and good, you talk about its macronutrients. You define food and that's what we do with happiness is to define happiness.

Dr Rupy: Okay. And so what would be these macronutrients of happiness?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Macronutrients of happiness. And by the way, this is sort of the basis of my work, which is when I when I moved fully into the happiness space, the problem with the research from a psychological perspective is it just it it defines happiness as feeling happy and knowing that you're happy or something that's completely unhelpful in this way. So I went back to the nutrition literature actually to to to create a definition for happiness that is both accurate and helpful. You don't want to tell somebody, go be happy. It's unhelpful. What you tell somebody is do things so that happiness can find you. Live in a particular way. So don't go be healthy. No, eat in a particular way and health will find you. Right? Right? This is kind of how this is how you talk, right?

Dr Rupy: It chimes very much with the way I talk. Because we already have the inherent knowledge and our body knows what to do with the macronutrients when you provide an environment where they are.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can you tell somebody who's trying to, you know, basically get in shape but they're trying to be efficient about it. You know, stay to, I don't know, maybe 2200 calories a day and get 175 grams of protein and and then eat clean and and a few other things with your micronutrients and health will find you. You know, your lipid profile will improve, right? The same thing is happiness. So the the the macronutrients of happiness, the thing that we really want to pursue are are the protein, carbohydrates and fat of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.

Dr Rupy: Okay.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Those are the three things. And and how do I know that? You when you when you look at the well-validated studies and and good survey data on happiness and unhappiness, the happiest people have those three macronutrients in balance and abundance. So what I spend a lot of my time on is, you know, I'm going into companies and I'm talking to people and I'm teaching my students at the university and I'm giving them tests to see where they're deficient. I'm giving them nutritional tests for their happiness. And I can tell based on these tests if you don't enjoy your life enough. Now, the problem is also, I mean, this is more complicated because most people don't even know what enjoyment is. So I said define the macronutrients, right? Most people have no idea what satisfaction is and they especially don't know what meaning is. So that goes into the education behind all of this stuff and it gets super interesting. But once you know and then you know where you're deficient, you can put together a life plan and your life gets dramatically better.

Dr Rupy: Let's talk about this idea of like rewiring our brains for happiness. Why does boredom help rewire our brain for happiness?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. You know, this is really paradoxical because there's so many things in in in in our lives that we don't like but we need. Right? There's so many things like that. This is, you know, when when you're a kid and and your mother said eat your vegetables. When you're a little kid, you probably don't like them. I personally, I was nuts about vegetables. I've been I've been eating broccoli since I was a little boy. I would eat literally every meal.

Dr Rupy: You sound like my son.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I'm crazy about broccoli, but that's unusual, right? Eat your vegetables. Why? Because you don't like it, but you should is what it comes down to. There are all kinds of things where we have aspirations that don't are not of accord with our immediate animal impulses. Short-term, long-term, big goals, you know, it's like satisfaction in the short-term versus the goals that you actually want in life. And you know, you want the pizza. You want the potato chips. You call them crisps. Chips you call them are french fries. I mean, it's so confusing over here, right? You want that stuff because it actually it it it feeds the dopamine circuits in your brain telling you you're getting these really easy calories, which is your Pleistocene brain from 250,000 years ago, but you know that that's maladapted to the current milieu where we have an abundance of calories and we have all kinds of nutritious food around us. And so you don't do all the things that you actually want is is the way that this works. Boredom is just like that. Now, when you're now boredom, it's maybe not the right word. It's lack of distraction. When you're undistracted, what turns on in your brain is a series of structures called the default mode network. That's a bunch of structures that you use in concert with one another. It's like a little symphony in your brain that gives you mind wandering and flights of fancy and weird recursive thoughts. And that's what you need to start understanding the meaning of your life. Now, if you if you're never distracted, you'll never actually turn on the parts of your brain that you need to consider the most important things. It doesn't feel important. I mean, you're sitting on the train and your phone is out of battery or something, which is like hell for young people. You know, if you if you die and go to hell, it's like you're holding your iPhone and it's it's out of battery forever. And it's stuck to your hand, right? So imagine you're on the train and this is actually happening. You got nothing to do, you got nothing to read. And so you're just looking out the window. Sheep, trees, right? That it feels like a waste of time and and it's actually unpleasant in the short term, but your brain needs to do that. Mother nature wants your brain to do that. And for the longest time, you naturally did. I mean, my my great-grandfather, Leroy Brooks, born in 1862 in Olathe, Kansas. This is Americana. It was generations before that they came from, you know, Lancashire. They snuck out at night in 1630 and came to Massachusetts and then went west, west, west. Very American. And Leroy Brooks had no iPhone. He had no podcasts, not even yours or mine. Shocking. He had nothing to do. Um, and and his he was just behind the mule all day long. But I guarantee you he never came home to my great-grandmother, Mary Ellen and said, honey, you know, I had a panic attack behind the mule today because his brain was working the way it was supposed to. He wasn't his HPA axis wasn't flooding. He wasn't having this weird adrenal effects actually happening, which happens when your brain isn't working the way it's supposed to. When you're actually never you never have these flights of fancy, when you never have these this mind wandering, when you're never able to calm yourself. Now, the biology is what we're studying right now, but the the reason that we have to study this biology and why people are having so much anxiety and so much depression and panic attacks has everything to do with the fact that our brains are broken in no small part because we're never bored. And so I have to prescribe boredom to my students. It's amazing. And and and for anybody who's still unpersuaded, um, Leroy, his his life moment to moment was objectively boring, right? He was looking at a mule's butt, right? Hours. But his life wasn't boring, right? His life overall wasn't boring at all. He didn't say on his deathbed, honey, that was boring. It wasn't boring. It was a huge adventure. His life was, he was living and loving and having kids and having grandkids and making a living and talking to his neighbours and and he was alive, going to church. He's fully alive, right? People today, young people today, young people, but also, you know, I'm no young guy and I know a lot of people my age, they're never bored moment to moment, but their lives are grindingly boring. That's the irony that you must be bored moment to moment to have an interesting life. And that's what you need to understand meaning and purpose and and be happy.

Dr Rupy: I I've recently started doing a lot more dives into Ayurveda, um, you know, getting back to my roots, understanding where a modern scientific lens can actually provide some clarity as to why certain practices are beneficial. And one of them is silence. So I every year now for the last couple of years, I do silent retreats where there's no talking, no reading, certainly no phones, no email. Um, you just walk around, usually in like places that are stunningly beautiful, like the Lake District or I was recently in Devon a couple of months ago, for four or five days and I sit on a bench, I eat some food and that's about it. And I just allow my mind to wander and I sort of unpack loads of things like my childhood and what things make me happy and you know, ponder some of these questions. But without the extreme of doing something like a Vipassana, um,

Professor Arthur Brooks: That's hard.

Dr Rupy: It is hard for a lot of people. And I, you know, I mentioned this to my wife and that sounds like hell to her. Like she she she famously tells me

Professor Arthur Brooks: She's an Australian. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, so are you, but she's like, she's Australian, right?

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, she's Australian, Italian by background, but you know, 30 minutes of like boredom for her is like, wow, you know, even that, even that. So how would you prescribe boredom to your students or the folks listening to this?

Professor Arthur Brooks: So I usually do it with respect to not using tech because this is really what we're talking about is not using tech. I mean and and again, we could back up and say, okay, 20 years and say don't watch too much TV or you could go back and before that and say stop listening to the radio all the time or you could go back and and you know, Einstein one time said that people read too many books. And and part of the reason was because deep learning doesn't come from reading five books a week. That's just an overload of knowledge. That's a there's an ancient philosophical concept called concupiscence. And that's just idle curiosity. And a lot of so-called intellectuals, they just want to flood themselves with information all the time, more, more, more stimulus. And and part of the reason is because they don't want to be lost in their thoughts to process what they've learned and figure out what it means. And so when you read a book, you should read a book and then you should put it down and you should take some notes and you should think about it and journal on it a little bit and and and go walk around and figure out what the book means. That's the way to learn. Right? That's the whole idea. Now, fast forward to the present, it's gotten easier and easier and easier to distract ourselves to the point that we have this perfect anti-boredom device. I mean, we've mastered anti-boredom and broken our brains completely. I mean, it's like, I would love to be back in the problem of books, right? So I have protocols that are, you know, based on, there's a lot of research on this. You don't have to throw your phone in the ocean. You don't have to actually become a monk. I um, I interviewed for my own show a hermit in the Himalayas last year. You know, a Tibetan a Tibetan hermit and he sees human other humans two times a year for the past 27 years. Yeah, he gave me he granted me an interview. It's just me and the hermit and a bunch of monkeys. Wow. Yeah, so his friends are all these monkeys, right? And he meditates all day and he reads and he studies and you know, he lives the Tibetan Buddhist life. And then, you know, when he's asleep, you know, people from the who who who who serve the hermitage will come up the mountain and leave some food, you know, once a week or something and and yeah, yeah, it's pretty interesting. But okay, you don't have to do that.

Dr Rupy: Sure.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I'm not going to do that.

Dr Rupy: I thought my Vipassana was extreme, but that's another level.

Professor Arthur Brooks: That's my point. And by the way, that's that's that goes from solitude, which you need to isolation, which is really, really hard and bad for a lot of people that you become very lonely. So what I recommend based on the science is that there's really only kind of three things you need to do. Number one is is tech-free times, ideally every day. The second is tech-free zones, physical zones. And then the last is tech fasts, like what you've done. Like what you did with Ayurveda. So the tech-free times that really matter the most are number one, the first hour of the day for neurocognitive programming. A lot of young men write to me and they nobody writes to me and says, hey man, hey professor, you know, I just I just want to write and say I'm feeling super happy and I wanted you to know. I mean, they don't come to you and say, doctor, I feel great. People write to me because they're unhappy, right? And they ask for advice. And a lot of young guys, my heart goes out to them. You know, I'm living with my mum, I graduated from college, I can't find a job, I'm smoking a lot of weed, you know, and all these things are not good. You know, I don't care what anybody says, smoking weed's bad for you, right? Euphorics are not good for you, as a matter of fact, because they're they're they're they're anaesthetising you from the experience of living because you're in distress. It's what it comes down to. So, so what the first thing that I recommend to them is something that in India is called the Brahma Muhurta. Have you ever heard of this? The Brahma Muhurta? It means the creator's time in Sanskrit.

Dr Rupy: Okay, no.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Ancient idea. It's it's it's probably it's between four and 6,000 years old. And so it's very kind of from the the idea of, you know, Lord Krishna practiced in Mathura practiced the Brahma Muhurta, the creator's time. That's getting up a muhurta is 48 minutes. The Brahma Muhurta is two muhurtas before dawn, an hour and 36 minutes before dawn.

Dr Rupy: Okay, okay.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, getting up an hour and 36 minutes before dawn. Now, modern neuroscience is very clear that getting up before dawn is super good for you. If you're if the sun is warm when you get up, you missed you you you lost the first battle. I know everybody's like turning off the podcast right now.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, especially in British summertime where you have to get up at like 3:30.

Professor Arthur Brooks: That's a problem. I know. I mean, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. This is from, you know, from cultures that are pretty close to the equator. So yeah. And so you're really far north in Europe. I'm from Seattle, so it's the same thing as the same latitude. So, um, but basically it's getting up early and then without your phone. Now, some people, like you're running a business, if you're a journalist, whatever, you got to look to make sure nothing's on fire, but that takes five seconds. Boom. And then the whole first hour, which is the most important hour for neurocognitive programming. You know, so people have OCD or people who have nervous tics or something like that. The only way that you're going to break tic-like behaviour is by the only time that willpower is actually helpful in that is the first hour of the day because you neurocognitively program yourself. The only hope you have if you have something that's obsessive and compulsive is to not do it the first hour because you're not going to break that tic at 4:00 in the afternoon. So the first hour of the day is a magic hour. It's the creator's time. And so using that, and I'll tell these young guys, go for a walk without your devices while the sun is coming up and the air is cool and and and let your mind wander. Yeah, but I'm thinking about stupid nonsense and I'm thinking about that girl and and who knows? I will have thought obsessively. I don't care. I don't care. People don't understand meditation. Westerners are horrible about meditation. The Dalai Lama told me that Westerners do it wrong. Right? They it's like they it's like you guys just want to be all spaced out. The Dalai Lama, right? He says, and you also you just meditate so you can feel better. You should meditate so the whole world feels better. That's very profound.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, no, it is. Yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: So don't worry about it. You know, let your brain do what it's supposed to do the first hour of the day. Second, tech-free time is when you're eating. And there's there's special properties. I I recommend that you eat alone as infrequently as possible. It's very good to eat with another person. And this is actually the according to evolutionary biology, this is when we get a lot of oxytocin because we communicate with our kin while we're eating. We're sort of evolved to sit around a campfire and talk to our kin while we put, you know, pieces of yak meat into our mouth or something. That's a normal thing to do. Sometimes you do eat alone, but you should really never scroll while you eat. You should not eat mindlessly. And especially when you're with somebody, the phone shouldn't even be on the table face down because that will interrupt the oxytocin exchange that you have. The third is the last hour of the day. And that's really, really important for sleep architecture. And that's all the stuff that everybody who watches the show already knows. I mean, the functioning of the pineal gland because of blue light and endogenous melatonin production and structure of sleep, etc. But it's also highly spiritual and social. You know, the last hour of the day, you and your wife need to be together.

Dr Rupy: Yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Right? I mean, that's a holy hour. That's a really big deal. And you know, the worst thing you can do for your marriage is scroll your phone looking at stupid reels individually while you're lying in bed. That's such a waste of a marriage. You know, I really recommend that people read to each other and then look into each other's eyes and have a little conversation for five minutes before they go to sleep. This is really, really good for your sleep. This is super good. I mean, don't read individually, read to each other.

Dr Rupy: Yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Right? I mean, that has special properties and the science backs it up, but you know, anybody who's in love right now is like, I know, I know. Right? You know, so for me, it's like my wife reads to me and and in this exotic Barcelona accent, it's like pharmaceutical grade narcotics. Addictive indeed, but it actually won't put me in an early grave. It might actually keep me alive. So those are the three tech-free times. Is first hour, last hour, meal times. Tech-free zones are number one is the bedroom. You should not have your phone in the bedroom. It should be locked up and plugged in downstairs. From an hour before you go to bed until an hour after you wake up. Never look at it during the night. Now, if you do that for six weeks, you'll be out of the habit of ever looking at it at night. You can even use it as your alarm clock after that, but you got to break the habit. And the second tech-free zone is schools. And and I'm a real advocate for this. There shouldn't be any iPhones in any schools from kindergarten through PhD.

Dr Rupy: Totally.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I mean, it's so insane that we abuse children by by, you know, putting predators on their screens and hijacking their brains this way. It's made so many kids depressed and anxious by having unfettered access. They're so lonely. And especially during lunch, by the way, they shouldn't have their phones. And so we have all kinds of technologies to lock them up at the beginning of the day and unlock them at the end of the day. Um, then the last is tech fasts. And I recommend 96 hours a year.

Dr Rupy: 96 hours a year.

Professor Arthur Brooks: More is better, but I mean, I mean, for most people, you can't. But 96 hours a year, I mean, just a four-day fast is it's the first day you're it's like lost children screaming in your head. The second day you're calming down, you're your autonomic nervous system is starting to and then the third day you like it and the fourth day you wish it were longer. That's the typical experience. And then if you go longer or do it more frequently, you can really, really set reset how dopamine is working in your brain. And Anna Lemke's stuff is really good on that. You know, she wrote Dopamine Nation. And she talks about how long it takes and it's a little bit longer than that. But 96 hours a year, those are the things that you can do.

Dr Rupy: So you know what, it sounds simple and almost, you know, laughable that we're even talking about this, but the number of people who do scroll back to back or scroll at the table is shockingly high. And I don't think people understand the gravity of what these habits are doing to steal their happiness. And this is why I wanted to talk to you about rewiring your habits for for for happiness. One thing that I've definitely been doing a lot more of is finding micro moments in the day to experience boredom because running a business and doing the social content stuff, I'm running from screen to screen. And I think a lot of people do that in the workplace as well. And so I'm even trying to steal like 60 to 120 seconds where I go outside and I just look outside. In fact, I did it just before this.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Boredom snacks.

Dr Rupy: Exactly, boredom snacks. That's actually a good way of framing it, you know?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, yeah. I mean, more and more what we're actually finding in the, you know, the the psychology literature, but also just basic biology because psychology is biology, right? Fundamentally, is that almost anything good for you is really good in snacks. And so, you know, Ronda Patrick, right? You know her show. Do you know have you been on her show before?

Dr Rupy: I haven't been on her show, no, no.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Oh, she's great. She's smart, she's nice, she's deep, she's philosophical.

Dr Rupy: We're big fans of her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, she's great. And and she talks about exercise snacks. You know, so a little just, you know, you could do 10 air squats once an hour. Do 10 air squats once an hour. It has huge benefits for your I mean, for your I mean, they've done studies on your lipid profile when you do 10 air squats every hour during the work day and your lipid profile gets better. I mean, you have less placking in your arteries. Crazy stuff that you can actually see. And it's better than a lot of other things. So for sure, boredom snacks. That's a really, really good thing to do. And just if you need to, put an alarm on your phone, you know, and once an hour, you know, get up and go look out the window.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, we had um, Andy Galpin on the pod uh, a couple of months ago.

Professor Arthur Brooks: He's awesome.

Dr Rupy: He's awesome as well. And like, he we were talking about volume and intensity uh, when it comes to exercise. But you don't need to do that all in like an hour and an hour and a half every single day. You can actually spread that out. And as long as it's across the week, you get enough volume, you're going to have those benefits for for muscles and.

Professor Arthur Brooks: For sure. I mean, actually, you know, one of the things I talk about because I'm very, very interested in in health and fitness as it relates to happiness, but also it's just a big, big part of my life. I have physical protocols that I actually walk people through. You know, five, 10 part protocols for, you know, the beginning of the day, the ending of the days because people need guidelines is what it comes down to.

Dr Rupy: Let let's talk about those.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, for sure. But and but for people my age, you know, when I was your how old are you?

Dr Rupy: I'm 41.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Oh, you're a mere child. I have to think about that. Beautiful head of hair. Black hair. Unbelievable. I remember those days. But so I'm 62 at this point. And you know, Andy Galpin's stuff is really. But I've figured out how to to to both stay in shape and stay healthy. And the way that you do that, for example, with exercise is doing exactly what Andy Galpin is talking about. You know, when I was your age, I was doing bro splits. Do you use that expression over here? The bro split? And so you know, Monday is national chest day. Right? And then you get one leg day. It's like using Mike Mentzer's Mentzer's, you know, is you're just going to wreck your joints, right? And so I went to when I was your age, I was going to I've been on the road forever. I've been I've been touring since I was 19 years old. So I travel all the time. I would every city I would be in, I would go to the oldest iron gym I could find, right? It's like those old school weightlifting gyms.

Dr Rupy: With the picture of Arnie on the.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, totally, totally. And I would find those guys who knew him at Gold's Gym in Venice Beach. And now they're like 100. But they're still lifting. And I would go to them and I would say, teach me, sensei, teach me, right? And they they will, right? And so they they gave me all these practices. And one of the things that I learned way before guys like Andy Galpin were talking about it are you need to the older you get, the the less the bro split's going to work for you, the more you need to do full body training and spread out your volume over the course of the week. And so instead of doing leg day once a week, then it became two times a week, then it's three times a week. And it's paradoxical because I work out for I work out an hour a day, seven days a week. I can lift seven days a week. I just have to spread everything out and my then my joints don't hurt. And I get the same amount of volume. That's the whole point. So you got to have the protocols that are appropriate for your age.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. I love how we're we started this conversation talking about happiness and now we're talking about bro splits. But it's really important to spread it out, just, you know, on whilst we're on this tangent, um, because when you do get older, you're you've got anabolic resistance is the first thing. So, you know, the protein that you consume is not going to have the same desired effect and the same uh goes for muscle stimuli. But it doesn't mean that you can't have that stimulus. But the other thing is you really got to be careful about injury. I mean, I I'm realizing this now at 41. I can't do some of those intense exercises back to back anymore. I do need to spread it out over the week.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Your CNS works differently. I mean, it's just you feel things differently. Not just the mechanics of it.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, for sure. So a lot a lot of a lot of my work to actually become, look, what we want is to be happier people with more well-being overall. And that requires that you pay attention to your temple. I mean, you have to take care of your body is what it comes down to. So what I put in my body, what I do with my body, also what I think about and how I worship and how I love, it's all one thing. Actually. So which is one of the reasons that my students in the science of happiness class, I'm giving them exercise protocols.

Dr Rupy: I love that. Yeah, no, that's great.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I know, and they're super interested in it, right? They thought they wanted to exercise so they could look better in their bikini or something like that. No. It's so that you can look in the mirror and not start crying. So you can actually right? And so you can actually feel better about your soul is really what it comes down to. It's not all about what you put in your body. It's not all about how you move, but it's all integrated. It's all really one thing is how it comes about. So I do have to give them step by step by step protocols, how do you start your day, how do you end your day, etc. How do you if you have a relationship, what do you do? What are the, you know, the protocols, daily practices to make sure that you don't just get married, but you stay married.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Um, on the subject of uh, temples, um, and soul, one of the things that I I took from the book was this idea of being made to feel small every day. Like be aware of like how insignificant we are to to use your words to transcend. Why is this important for for rewiring our brains for happiness?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. There's a lot of new literature on on consciousness. Have you read Michael Pollan's new book?

Dr Rupy: I haven't read the new one, no.

Professor Arthur Brooks: A world awaits. It's a really, really fine book. It's good. He's a journalist, so he's not a scientist, but he he he he's adjacent to science and knowledgeable enough and he's a beautiful writer that and and consciousness is a hard thing to write about. You write a book about consciousness, it's like, you got to be a good writer to pull that one off, right? But there's a paradox about you know, consciousness is the experience of life. It's the it's the experience of being you. You know, it's like it's like something to be you. It's your interiority. It's the inner conversation, it's the awareness of you. And it's a huge paradox because neuroscientists have never figured out the part of the brain where you experience self-consciousness. I mean, you do all kinds of other things where you're aware of other things. We know the parts of the brain that do that, where you have feelings, we do that. Those are lower forms of consciousness. The highest form of consciousness is you being aware of you. But paradoxically, too much of that makes you deeply unhappy. So William James, the great the father of modern psychology, um, um, who taught at my university in in the the late 19th century. So my colleague, William James, right? How pretentious. He talked about the two selves, the I self and the me self. The I self is what you use to look out at the world and the me self is your consciousness of yourself, looking in at yourself. So one is your the subject and one is where you're the object. The I self is I'm, you know, I'm looking at you right now. I'm thinking about you and this conversation right now. But if I were thinking, I wonder how I'm coming off and the things that I'm saying right now, just now I boomeranged it back on myself. So the highest form of consciousness is the me self. And it's your dog isn't doesn't have any me self. I mean, it's like you're you're you're sitting there with your dog on a park bench and you're thinking about my job and you know, what I'm going to do next year and you know, prospectively and all my hopes and dreams. You're not here. You're not that happy. Your dog is thinking about, I'm sitting with my master right now. Right? I'm not thinking about me, I'm thinking about what what actually is happening. And that's what you're trying to get with mindfulness practices and all that, that sort of thing. The easiest way to get that is this is is what philosophers called transcendence. See, you you have to have the me self or you'll get run over by a car. You have to have self-awareness. Or you'll be divorced in a week. You know, you have to be paying attention to yourself, but not too much because it'll make you miserable because then it's me, me, me, me, me. And back to the internet, by the way, that's all it is is a mirror. Like how many likes do I have? You know, how many followers do I have? What did people think about my post? Right? You know, how, you know, that that famous movie star, how do I relate to that? You're thinking about yourself all the time. So you need fewer mirrors and you need to stand in awe of things that are bigger than yourself. That's transcendence. To transcend yourself is to be more purely in the I self in the state of observation. You know, Zen Buddhism, have you studied Zen Buddhism at all? Zen Buddhism, of course, which is the Buddhist component which is largely in Japan. It's it's less a religion. And now the Zen Buddhists are all going to write into the comment section now. It's more an attitude of observation. I'm going to observe life. Vipassana is very much like this too, by the way. You've done that. I'm going to observe what's going on with me without relating to me. It's like Arthur's feeling sad and unhappy right now. What's happening? You know, and just with a with a detachment to it, right? The ultimate detachment that you want is standing in awe of the universe. Now, maybe that's by studying philosophy that blows your mind. Maybe that's listening to the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer who ever lived. Right? I'm an old musician, so it's my opinion. Um, maybe that's walking the Brahma Muhurta without devices. Maybe that's a Vipassana meditation practice, which I strongly recommend. Or maybe that's practicing your religious faith, which is the easiest way for many people to do it. You know, a lot of people wind up reconnecting with their faith because they realise they need more transcendence in their life. And then they have an actual experience of the of the of God. And so they have a deep spiritual awakening. They have a deep sense of divine love, but they go there because they need the I self more. They need to they need to be in transcendence more. I mean, I'm a traditionally religious person. Before we did the podcast, I I went to mass. I go to daily mass, right? I I I need it. I need it. I need to stand in awe. I need to be separated from me because it's just too hard. Every day.

Dr Rupy: And so every day, I mean, it was great that, you know, you mentioned that you went to mass today. If someone isn't traditionally religious or doesn't have a, you know, wasn't brought up in a faith, didn't have the opportunity to stand in awe, how might one start that with with regards to actually feeling this sense of getting out of their their their their me self?

Professor Arthur Brooks: That's why so many young people say, I wish I could do more meditation is because they have a natural hunger to get out of the me self. And they think that single point meditation where you're looking at that thing and getting all spaced out, they're looking for relief. They want relief. I want relief is what they're saying. They want the but that's too too hard for most people. Most of the meditation among the Tibetan Buddhists, I've worked for a long time with the Dalai Lama. I've sat in meditation with his monks many times in his in his monastery in Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills. And most of what they're doing is actually contemplating a passage of Tibetan scripture. And that's the I self. So you don't have to stare like do soul cycle and you know, have an intention and I mean, you don't have to do that. I mean, more power to you if you can actually pull that off, but I got the monkey mind too bad. And so, you know, like single point meditation, it's not for me. But I you can do that by by by the contemplation of a of an idea. You know, what does this mean? Turning it over in your head, you know, two sentences, what might it this actually mean? Some people will actually do that through the study of something intensive or a particular activity. I've heard people talk about this through golf. It's like not my thing, man. I'm not a golfer. I'm never going to be a golfer. It's like, it's so boring. Are you kidding? Also kind of irritates me. I think I'm philosophically opposed to it. That's but that's just my own hang ups. Now the golfers are writing in, right? Yeah. Um, so much for the the golf constituency for the Doctor's Kitchen. They're gone. They're gone. They're out of here, man. No more sponsorships from Top Golf. We love you guys. So, yeah. It's a, you know, people find this in different ways, but you need to get away from yourself. You need to find ways to get actually get away from yourself. That that Brahma Muhurta is a really sort of a wonderful way to do it in its own way. After you get sort of experienced, at the very beginning, your flights of fancy and mind wandering are kind of me self. But you can get better at it under those circumstances. There are a number of ways. People just should experiment.

Dr Rupy: One of my friends took me to a Baha'i temple just outside outside of Chicago. Have you been to that temple?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Oh yeah, it's up in the northern suburbs. It's in Wilmette or some place.

Dr Rupy: Yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, yeah. I have I have one of my great friends is Baha'i and so I've and I've written about the Baha'i faith quite a bit.

Dr Rupy: It's incredible. Yeah. Like it is, I mean, talk about a way in which to get out of yourself. Just going there. So for for listeners who who haven't seen it, just look up, you know, Baha'i Temple, Chicago. And it's just this dome structure that you could imagine somewhere in the Middle East. And it's perfectly symmetrical. The architect, I think, was really well renowned and it's the Baha'i faith is just really interesting, you know, from an intellectual perspective of, you know, this sort of uh, um, combination of all these different faiths with this this idea of oneness. Um, and I mean, that's how I try and remind myself to, you know, experience awe and experience that this this idea of like, you know, transcending.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, for sure. The the Baha'i faith is a 19th century faith that came out of Persia. It's a Persian, it's a Persian belief system that's quite universalist. It's monotheistic. It believes that there is one God. Um, it's highly structured and moral in its way. The prophet of the Baha'i faith, his name was Baha'u'llah. And and he wrote lovingly about the about the universe. So one of my great friends is is is Rainn Wilson. I write about him in this in the in the meaning book about suffering. For those who don't know, because you're we're in the UK, he was in the office, the American version of the office. And he's it was a character named Dwight Schrute.

Dr Rupy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: In the office. I think the American version is way is way funnier. Now we now we lost Ricky Gervais. I bet he's a viewer too. My wife would agree. It's super funny. It's still actually the funniest show on television even though it went off a long time ago. And uh, and you know, the Baha'i faith really has saved him. It really he he grew up in it. His father converted in like the 60s because a lot of hippies did that. And there's still 175,000 Baha'is in America.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: We're so religious. We love religion. I was really surprised that there were that many uh followers in the US. I've never heard of it before. It was just by chance I was in Chicago and my friend told me to go to this temple and I was like, wow, yeah, no.

Professor Arthur Brooks: People should check it out. It's very, very beautiful faith.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, no, it's incredible. Um, okay, so we've got boredom, we've got these morning routines and feeling small every day. Leisure. Yeah. Leisure, when I think about leisure, I think of things like golf, even though I don't play golf, but sports and all the rest of it. But why is leisure helpful from the perspective of happiness? And what do we what do you mean when you say leisure?

Professor Arthur Brooks: When I talk about leisure, it's largely leisure, as you say, leisure. Leisure. I'm talking about leisure. You know, it's a it's uh I I work a lot with strivers. I mean, I teach at fancy business schools and you know, people who want to are going to be the masters of the universe and I work with, you know, CEOs and entrepreneurs and people like you. I mean, you work all the time, don't you? You're super hard worker, aren't you?

Dr Rupy: I love it.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, of course you love it. You're obsessed with it, right? But also it can become a pathology. And part of the reason is because your loved ones will say you need more work life balance, but you don't want work life balance. You want your work to be part of your life and your life to be part of your work. You want work life integration. And you recognise you don't want to marginalise your relationships. What you want is to have better relationships and to love your work and to live it all. You know, there are a lot of people out there who don't live that way. Many, many people, they're not going to be watching the show typically, but there are many people out there. It's like, yeah, I want to work for the post office and I want to work, you know, eight hours a day, if we're in the UK, it's, you know, three hours a day if it's France. And and you want they they want to work a kind of a moderate amount of work and then they want to forget their work when they come home. But that's not what I'm talking about here. People who are looking for a deep integration of life and work, um, they they often get into a pathology that that we often refer to as workaholism. And the only satisfaction that you actually get is from work. And what what I prescribe to a lot of them to have a better life and better relationships is to understand the true nature of leisure. Leisure is not chilling on a beach. You know, it's just it's not. It's not like, you know, it's actually the people who are, you know, as as sunburned as lobsters down on the on the coast of Brava, those Brits who are down there all the time, they're actually working in the post office, right? But real leisure isn't that. That's what the Greeks would have called acedia, which is just kind of torpor, which is sort of a laziness. They the Greeks were not they they were not very uh they they they were not in favour of chilling on a beach. What they really wanted and what the the German philosopher Josef Pieper talks about, he's a 20th century philosopher, a really beautiful, um, deeply soulful writer. He thinks that leisure properly understood is the basis of a culture. And so what I prescribe a lot, I don't do clinical work, but I I'm a teacher to people who don't know how to relax is to understand leisure properly. And in so doing, your work will become more meaningful. So that's the inducement to all the workaholics and success addicted, self-objectifying people who, you know, it's like, if I work harder, will you love me more? You know, is that your work will be much better if you understand actual leisure. Now, leisure is something that's extremely generative and productive, but they don't pay you for. That you're not going to get worldly rewards for. That you're not going to get famous for. That won't give you more power. We'll do anything for your bank account, but it's really, really productive. So the way to think about it, according to Josef Pieper, is to do one of three things. Now, again, this your results may vary. Figure out which one and then vary it in a way that's you got to experiment on yourself, right? Like anything else. We talked about caffeine and you know, the metabolism of caffeine and the half life, etc. Figure out yourself by experimenting on yourself. The three areas are deepening relationships very purposively. Like doing stuff to improve your marriage, doing stuff to improve your relationship with your friends. The second is to deepen your spiritual life. And that means like go read the holy books. I mean, have you read the Bhagavad Gita? A lot of people haven't. Go read if you're especially if you're Hindu, go read that. It's unbelievably interesting and study that. Go study the writings of Baha'u'llah if you're Baha'i or even if you're not, right? And and and for a Christian like me, that's actually reading holy scriptures every day or and and praying every day and getting a really a serious spiritual practice. And and if it's not a spiritual practice, it's something transcendental. The third is learning something new. Learning something that you don't need to learn. Maybe you need to learn how to paint. That's what Churchill did. Churchill learned how to paint. Nobody said, you know, let's elect him again because he's a painter, right? He was learning how to paint because that was actually leisure for him. And he wanted he said, and and he was so interested in it and he said, if I go to heaven, which is debatable, um, I mean, he's a great leader, but imperfect man. If I go to heaven, the first million years, I'm going to really learn how to paint. But and for other people, it's learning how to golf. For other people, it's actually learning to to do math. For some people, it's actually learning about the science of happiness. For many people, it's actually watching your show and actually doing the recipes. That's a really wonderful form of leisure, as a matter of fact, because it's so generative. Those three baskets, if taken seriously, and that means doing them seriously, that means setting aside time, that means having a proper Sabbath on the weekend, perhaps, to do those things, your work's going to improve.

Dr Rupy: What are you doing yourself for for leisure as you as you pronounce it?

Professor Arthur Brooks: So for my leisure largely is a lot of it has to do with my physical fitness practices, which is really important. I mean, it's and it's not just because I want my I mean, it's not like because I'm trying to be beautiful, that ship has sailed, man. It's because I want to be healthy for my family and I actually want to feel good and I want to be productive. But also because it's something I'm just really interested in. Nobody's going to pay me for biceps. Like God knows. That's number one. The second thing is I'm serious about practicing my religious faith. I want to know more about it. My wife too, by the way, she wound up getting her graduate training in theology. Sacred scripture because she wanted to know. I want to know. I need more. She said. And I've learned so much from her and we we we do, you know, deep spiritual practices together and we both attend mass every day and and that's leisure according to Josef Pieper. Most people don't think of church as leisure. It is if you understand it properly. And then we work we work seriously on our on our on our marriage. And one of the things that we've actually done is we've taken to my wife and I, we've been married 35 years. We've started um touring together talking to couples about how to stay married. And it doesn't pay as well as me going out on my own. It doesn't pay as well as the, you know, the typical keynotes, etc. I don't care. I don't care because it's kind of blending work and leisure in this because we're working on our marriage. We're deepening our relationship. One of the things that long married couples, the the reason that they cool on each other is they start with this big project, kids. Right? You've got your little 20 month old. Boy, girl?

Dr Rupy: Boy.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. You've got your son. Your son. That's a big project, man.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Big project.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. And and they grow up and it and it it gives you a lot of satisfaction, joint satisfaction, which is part of a happy marriage. Satisfaction is the joy from an accomplishment with struggle. That's a big part of happiness and a big part of marital happiness is jointly accomplishing something with struggle together. And what most people do to get that is having children, but they grow up, you'll see. And they move away and they have their own lives. You better have a new project. And so we help people and what should you be doing? You should be training for a triathlon together. Should you be learning how to cook together? Should you be learning? For us is we give talks together. We're doing a bunch of talks together in Barcelona um this this weekend and next week.

Dr Rupy: That's incredible.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, yeah. So that's that's that's leisure for me.

Dr Rupy: You know, it's so interesting. So many people who join the Doctor's Kitchen app have actually stated that they're older couples and they wanted to get healthy together. And so usually, I mean, I'm not making um generalisations here, but it's usually the female in the in the household who sort of like comes up with the idea, but then naturally by way of them practicing together, they start cooking the recipes and then the the husband or partner just like chimes in and gets involved. And then like sends us messages like, this is great and like, you know, I'm feeling healthier and more energetic and stuff. So it's great.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I'm running off with my with my reception.

Dr Rupy: Hopefully not. Kind of the antithesis to happiness. I think we've generated more.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Good, good, good.

Dr Rupy: It was interesting what you were saying about Einstein and how uh books were being distracting, you know. As you were saying that, I thought in 40 years from now, are people going to be saying that about phones? Like I wish we were back in the day where it was just tech like phones that we could physically remove.

Professor Arthur Brooks: As opposed to the chips they put into our brains when we became cyborgs.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. Well, I mean, that's on us. Yeah, yeah. That's on me and that's on us. I mean, there are all kinds of good ways to use the the the the coming AI for a greater well-being, but there are all kinds of ways to use them that will destroy our well-being too. And we have to be really, really prudent about this. The whole point is, you know, the Pope just put out an encyclical, which is a letter to the entire, you know, worldwide two billion person Catholic Church about AI.

Dr Rupy: Okay.

Professor Arthur Brooks: And he said, here's the point. Here's the point. I mean, he's the Pope, so he's not like he's a technologist, you know, but but he is working actually with a couple of people from Anthropic. He said, AI is fine if it makes you more human and not less. And this is kind of the point of all technology. Does it make you more human or less human? Now, there's science on how to understand that. The human brain is hemispherically lateralised, which means it has two hemispheres and they do different things. The left hemisphere is the complicated side that does information and facts and stuff and how to and what. That's how your car works is a left hemispheric problem. The right hemispheric problem is the complex side that's easy to understand problems that you can't solve, you can only live. That's mystery, that's meaning, that's love, that's purpose, that's happiness. So your your car is left hemisphere, your marriage is right hemisphere. I promise you right now, young man, you'll never solve your marriage. You'll think, you know, people are like, we still fight, can you believe it? Yes, of course you do because you're two humans, two dynamic. That's being fully alive together, right? That's the dynamic of two human beings actually walking into the future is two right hemispheres working simultaneously, trying to understand the relationship without trying to solve the relationship. Technology is good for your left hemisphere. It's terrible for your right hemisphere. So if you use it to, you know, make your work a little bit easier, good. If you're using it as your best friend or to get the girlfriend experience or as your therapist, don't do it. Because your brain knows the difference. You'll get more depressed, more lonely, more anxious. And the moment it'll be like, yeah, pornography is pretty good. The more you use it, the lonelier you get because you're not getting the right hemispheric experience that your brain demands, that your soul demands.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr Rupy: One thing that I wanted to ask you about was this pursuit of meaning. In in the context of people who perhaps haven't actually considered it at all as something to even ponder on. Why should we be asking ourselves these difficult, esoteric questions? Like what is the purpose behind that? Like can't I just live my life, remove the phones, eat well, love my wife?

Professor Arthur Brooks: That's actually a pretty good strategy right there. I mean, that is because doing that, especially removing the phone and loving your wife and eating right and getting to the gym and and playing with your kids in the park, you're going to have the boring interstitial moments. You're actually going to your brain is going to work right. That's how my great-grandfather, Leroy, that's how he lived his life. You know, he also went to church and read his Bible and did all those things, but those were ordinary life. The point is that today that's not ordinary life. The problem is that that that life that you just described is anachronistic. That sounds like life 20 years ago or 30 years ago. For somebody who's listening to it today, they're like, yeah, that's my grandfather. You got to recreate that is how that comes about. And to recreate that, you have to be purposeful. You know, my great-grandfather, he didn't he also didn't go to the gym because he was picking up heavy things all day long. And what am I doing in the gym? I mean, I was at this like anytime fitness and you know, in Central London today and and what I was doing was I was I was pretending I was my great-grandfather. Like picking up a heavy thing and putting it down and picking up a heavy thing and putting it down. It's pathetic. Right? And so in all sorts of ways, we have to recreate that existence that where where meaning came naturally. In all the things that we do, you know, pondering things that we can't understand. I mean, there there was no internet, so you couldn't you didn't know many things and so you had to ponder things. And that ponderance per se made your brain work right. It was mind wandering. It was also the the stimulation of the right hemisphere of your brain where meaning exists was on that. So every major philosophy and most religious traditions are based on on on unanswerable questions. Right? You find that, you know, the ancient Hindus would ask questions that can't be answered. That's what the Greeks called aporia was a practice of puzzling questions. The the Zen Buddhists have koans. They'll ask questions to the junior monks. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Right? Things ponder this. It's the it's a famous koan of a junior monk walking down a a path, his mind wandering in the forest and he sees a senior monk coming toward him and he he greets the senior monk and he says, where are you off to? And the senior monk says, I don't know. He says, why don't you know? And the senior monk says, because not knowing is the most intimate form of knowledge. Ponder. And so it doesn't make sense in its way, but the more that you the more that you think about it, the more that it makes sense without without actually solving the riddle. It it it's a deep understanding. It's the Dalai Lama's contention that you shouldn't you shouldn't meditate so you feel better, you should meditate so the whole world feels better. That's something that actually is worth pondering because in so doing, you will you will open up the right side of your brain and and once again, don't go find happiness. Do something so that happiness finds you. Don't go find meaning. Do something so that meaning finds you. And doing those questions, meaning will it's like, I don't know what it is, but I get it. And that's what we want. Your brain is supposed to work that way.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. You've certainly convinced me. Um, you know, for for people who are listening to this and granted everyone's got their own starting point. Um, but if there is a commonality with where you think people should start. You know, if they they put their AirPods down or whatever they're listening to whilst they're listening and watching this as well, you know, where where would you say most people should start?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. Most people should start with eliminating more of the problem. So we have a big addiction problem and we have something that's impeding our ability to live the way that we want. And and if you went to the doctor and there was something like that, I mean, if you're basically, you know, you went to the physician, you went to you and and and if I were, you know, 100 pounds overweight, which is happening all the time in the UK and the United States, are two very fat countries. Um, and and I said, I I really want, you know, I want my I want my blood profile to be better and you know, I want to live longer and I've got all these health problems and my joints hurt and all that. The first thing you'd say is like, we've got to take off this weight. You have to and and to do that, you have to stop doing the things that are making you overweight. So that's the place that we need to start. You can't actually start down the road to finding greater happiness and meaning until you get rid of the thing that's making it impossible to be on that road in the first place. And that means a better relationship with the modern world. That means raging against the machine a little bit. That means having a proper ordered relationship with the thing that is actually crowded out a lot of your actual relationship. Your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your kids, your relationship with God. The phone's in the way of those relationships right now. And that means getting a proper ordered understanding of it. That's why this meaning book, the first thing that I do is I say, what does meaning mean? What are we looking for? The second thing is, why is it harder to find? Do the science. And then say, before we can actually do these practices that used to be automatic and now aren't, now stop doing the thing that made our life change in a deleterious way. Not completely. Stop it enough. You can start being fully alive.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, just out of our own ways.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, and all the protocols we've talked about here. It's not complicated. It's beautiful, as a matter of fact.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, prepare to be in love, folks.

Dr Rupy: I know, absolutely. That's why I keep on telling my wife about my silent retreats, you know? Like it sounds scary, but that the whole point of it is the uncomfortableness, is the boredom. Um, so yeah, I'm glad.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Even the suffering, you know, the suffering, which which is another way to another way to find meaning is to suffer, is to understand your suffering.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm really intrigued by your trips to India and given the how often you go every year or something like that?

Professor Arthur Brooks: Every year.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. How long do you spend there?

Professor Arthur Brooks: I usually spend a week to two weeks a year. And I'll do some public speaking, I'll do some filming, I'll you know, interview some people, but I I usually do, I'll tape some stuff with the Dalai Lama at his monastery and then we'll share it with 13 or 14 million of our closest friends.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, amazing.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, no, it's great. It's a real privilege, an incredible privilege. I met him 2013 for the first time and I just got in contact with his with the people around him and said I want to come and and interview him for an hour and a half and they granted me an audience in Dharamsala, which is it was it was hard to get there in those days. It's a little bit easier now. Um, but we it was interesting because the first time I met him, um, I didn't know what it was going to be like, but he he it was like talking to an old friend. As a matter of fact, he said, hello, old friend.

Dr Rupy: Really?

Professor Arthur Brooks: It was it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was like a it's a very soulful thing and and and the result is that we've had a a a friendship and a and a collaboration ever since. We've written together and

Dr Rupy: Amazing.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. No, it's a beautiful thing. I'm very grateful for that.

Dr Rupy: Do you travel around India at all? Have you been to the Golden Temple?

Professor Arthur Brooks: I have been to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Yeah, I've been to been to Amritsar. I love the Golden Temple.

Dr Rupy: You're from a Sikh family.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to get back out there. I haven't been for like, I want to say eight, nine years.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Sikhism is really deeply beautiful. I mean, it's obviously a monotheistic religion. It's highly compatible with Hinduism in so far as that big Hindu families traditionally would often raise their first son as a Sikh. You're aware of this, right?

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: And so wait a second. So your oldest son you're raising him in another religion. It's really weird for Christians. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so our oldest son is a Buddhist. But it's uh, it's uh, no, it's really, really beautiful and it's a highly non-hierarchical religion that but what a lot of people don't understand is that to to militate against the caste system, people wound up with the same largely with the same surname. So you can't tell what caste.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Singh is basically it's like, you don't know.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, there's so much symbolism within that, you know, even within the Amritsar and the Golden Temple and the, you know, the 5Ks and stuff and the

Professor Arthur Brooks: And it's the best food in India. Let's not get sidetracked.

Dr Rupy: It's incredible. It really is. I mean, just like it's made with so much love and actually the next time I go, I need to spend a lot more time in the kitchens because the fact that they they feed 100,000 people every single day is just like mind-blowing.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I've eaten at the Golden Temple.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's you have to. You have to eat there. Yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Yeah. Eat with the pilgrims.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: No, it's really, really beautiful. I love it.

Dr Rupy: No, that's right. I'll let you know the next time I go.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Please do. Yeah, and maybe you join me in Dharamsala one of these times too.

Dr Rupy: I would love that. That would be an absolute privilege.

Professor Arthur Brooks: I took Rich Roll last time. I took Rainn Wilson. We were talking about a little bit earlier and yeah, I've taken a number of scholars and friends with me along the way. Yeah.

Dr Rupy: I'll be there in a heartbeat. Maybe with my little boy now.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Thank you, Arthur. That was great.

Dr Rupy: Thank you. I really appreciate it. And thank you for your work and

Professor Arthur Brooks: Oh, thank you. You're making people's lives better and they're living better and enjoying their lives and

Dr Rupy: Trying to.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Cooking together and staying in love.

Dr Rupy: Yeah.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Love it.

Dr Rupy: That's amazing. Amazing. Thank you, man.

Professor Arthur Brooks: Absolutely. Thank you.