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Raising Good Humans

The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness w/ Professor Arthur Brooks

3/13/20261 hr 18 min

In today’s episode I sit down with professor Arthur Brooks to explore what actually makes a life feel meaningful in a culture obsessed with achievement, optimization, and measurable success. We talk about why happiness is more than a feeling, the difference between pain and suffering, how meaning is built through coherence, purpose, and significance, and why so many high achievers still feel empty. We discuss practical ways to resist the pressure to turn ourselves and our kids into “human doings,” and instead to just love ourselves are our children for who they are, not just for what they accomplish.

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Produced by Dear Media.

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Clips

Conspiracy Theories As Cry
Living In The Matrix
The Math Of Suffering
Microwave Your Marriage
Pleasure Isnt Happiness
Love Isnt Earned
Happiness Is Hard For Me
Get Smaller To Be Happy
He Learned Manhood From Prayer
Callings Gut Check Ratio

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Arthur Brooks· Guest0:00

    The following podcast is a Dear Media production [upbeat music] Welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast.

  2. Aliza Pressman· Host0:11

    I'm Dr. Aliza Pressman, and I am so honored and excited to share with you my episode with Dr. Arthur Brooks. You might know him from the many bestselling books that he's written, including one with Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want. But in addition to that, he has a new book coming out called The Meaning of Your Life. Also, I love this conversation because not only are we talking about meaning at a time when it is really hard to find it, um, and the concrete ways to, to really live this life, but also my daughter, my, my college-age daughter, Penelope, gave me questions because she saw Arthur Brooks speaking and she said, "I have some questions that I want you to ask as well." So it was really fun at the end of the episode to do, like, a Q&A in the mind of what a 19-year-old wants to know about, not just what we wanna know about.

  3. Arthur Brooks· Guest1:09

    The number one most popular topic in my MBA class on happiness is falling in love and staying in love, and the second is actually how to get along with your parents.

  4. Aliza Pressman· Host1:18

    Really?

  5. Arthur Brooks· Guest1:19

    Yeah. Third is making friends, fourth is finding God.

  6. Aliza Pressman· Host1:22

    Huh.

  7. Arthur Brooks· Guest1:24

    Those are the topics that they really want. And they're all about love. They're all love-related topics.

  8. Aliza Pressman· Host1:28

    I mean, how many kids do you have?

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