My name is Rainn Wilson, and this is my last meal. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all got to eat and we’re all gonna die. Today’s guest is actor, author, philanthropist, and host of the Soul Boom podcast. And if it weren’t for one fateful job interview in 1985, he might be running his own Mrs. Fields’ cookie shop today. Rainn Wilson, welcome to the show. Thanks Josh. Thanks for having me. Of course. What made you uniquely unsuited to be a Mrs. Fields cookie chef on the Ave in Seattle? I didn’t pass muster. I went through a rigorous application process. They talked to me a lot about the spirit of Mrs. Fields’s cookies and I tried to play along and then they said, yeah, we’re gonna need you here at like, uh, five in the morning to start baking the cookies. I needed money. I didn’t have any money. I was like, okay, I’d love to and I went through a whole series of, of hurdles and um, I got rejected. Maybe I would’ve stolen the recipes and created Mr. Rainn’s cookies. Why did you refer to the hiring manager as quote a real life Dwight Schrute? He was very officious. He wasn’t very good at interpersonal skills or emotional intelligence. Mm-hmm. And he took his job way too seriously. I mean, he should have been like, let’s just make some GD cookies already. Have you thought about your last meal before? I had never thought about my last meal until confronted with this. Oh, wow. Challenge. What do you think the challenge was per se? Because I’ve never heard anyone identify it as a challenge. A series of dishes that define you and your life and kind of take you through a life story, you know, that you resonate to. Favorite recipes, stuff you love, but stuff that really has some, some meaning, you know, I had a hard time coming up with it. I’m not like a foodie or anything. This is not, some people will be like, oh, beef bourguignon, and the bougebognon, that’s, that’s not me. So it was challenging. How often do you think about death in general? Um, I think about death a lot actually. And, um. I had a company called Soul Pancake and we had a show about death directed by the very young and very talented director, Justin Baldoni. Incredible. Now famous for certain lawsuits. Um, poor guy, but he directed, created, and directed a show called My Last Days, and it was all about what life lessons can we get from people who are at the end of life? What did you take away from that show? Did you see commonalities that everybody towards their end of their life had? Absolutely. I mean, gratitude that every day, every breath is a gift, and we lose sight of that all the time, so a hundred percent. Well, I’m grateful that we get to share this lovely meal today. You ready to eat? I’m ready to eat. Rainn, for the first course of your final meal, we have our best approximation of your dad’s casserole. Yep. Now this features various amounts of onion, mushroom, ground, beef, and at least two different kinds of canned, condensed and creamed soups. Of course baked with tater tots and cheese on top. And then we have thematically similar macaroni and cheese with Turkey meatloaf glazed with a nice little, uh, balsamic vinegar, brown sugar and ketchup. May I serve you up some casserole? You may. But first let’s just take in the beautiful beige quality of this food and of so many classic American dishes. That really was the national color for a long time as far as our plates went. Yeah, this beige got us through the seventies. Are you? That’s the size of a human head. Yeah. What are you doing? Rainn, it is your last meal. You go to the big sleep after this be like the Buddha go, you know, fat and happy out. I gotta play tennis tonight. You thought the real challenge was like figuring out what’s important to telling the story of your life? No, no, no, Rainn. The real challenge is it comes to the real challenge giant casserole. Okay. The, the sound of, uh, forking the mac and cheese is like nothing I’d ever heard before. Forking the mac and cheese sounds like euphemism for something dirty. They put something like fancy, like a cayenne or cardamon or turmeric or something on it. Alright, I’m moving on to an approximation of my dad’s casserole. Robert Wilson, may he rest in peace, passed away about five years ago. Hmm. He made one thing and that was a tater tot casserole. This is close. I think it’s, this is way too gourmet. ’cause like this is like real cheddar. Yeah. And I think it was like. Four slices of Velvita. Nice. So I’m gonna actually send this back to the chefs. Send it right into my mouth. Hmm. This is pretty good. We do aim it please. It, it is evocative of the dish. It’s like in the matrix when Joe Pantoliano says he eats the steak and he’s like, oh, I know this is an illusion, but it’s so good. I know this is an illusion of my father’s tater tot casserole, but. Do you think simulation theory and theism are inherently incompatible? No, not at all. In fact, I think simulation theory, I think it was really the dharmic, uh, spiritual tradition of Hinduism and, and Buddhism that really, uh, first invented the idea simulation theory, that the world, the material world is an illusion. This illusion pulls you toward an attachment for it. Mm-hmm. Because we are hardwired to be afraid, to want to eat, to gather things, to have sex, all of those wonderful animal impulses that are hardwired into our nervous systems. But at the end of the day, we wake up from this dream of this reality and there is a spiritual reality that is much greater. It’s really interesting how. I mean very spiritually attuned, at least from my perspective you are today. But I know for a long time you had left spirituality for a while and sort of found your way back there. You’ve talked about your parents being able to preach this idea of, you know, love and expression, especially within that time period. But you said they didn’t really show that at home very much. Yeah. Is that part of why you sort of had a negative taste towards spirituality? This Turkey loaf is magnificent. Can I take some home? This is– Absolutely. This is kind of ridiculous. We have a whole chub of it. I don’t know if you know this, but they measure processed meat loaves in chubs. I measure life in chubs. I measure life in chubs right now. Right now. I’m kidding. I’ve tucked it back. You were saying your parents didn’t show you love in– Do you have a human resources department here? Uh, they’re working from home. It’s great. As I grew older and started to unpack. The peculiar bizarreness of my childhood, and we all folks, we all have a peculiar bizarreness to our childhoods. My folks were members of the Bahai Faith and the Bahai Faith is all about love and unity and building bridges and eliminating racial prejudice and equality of the sexes, and bringing social justice to the world and healing the world. And we would sing songs about love and peace and unity, and then. But then I got home and my dad and stepmom who I’m talking about, they really didn’t, um, love each other. And I bet a lot of people can relate to this. Yeah. You know, like, did you grow up in a, in a faith? So I grew up Jewish, but more like reformed Jewish, which was very, very secular. You the most Nazi looking Jew I’ve ever seen in my life. I know. Are, you know what’s crazy? You could literally play a Nazi in a movie about the Nazis, entitled Nazi. Somebody DMed me and said, uh, it’s weird that as a Jew you try and look like himler. And then I looked it up. He had these like exact same glasses. I mean these are one– And haircut. And hair. And forehead. I don’t know what to tell you. And I, and oh God, even the polo, oh no, I hate this. Uh, but anyways, as far as messaging about morality that you got growing up, did you take more, do you think, from your parents, Bahai Faith or Star Trek? I mean, the, the Bahai Faith and Star Trek were very similar in the sense that there was a kind of utopian ideal that we were striving for as a highs. Mm-hmm. And, and that they had, you know, actualized in Star Trek that humanity had solved world peace and healed the issues on the planet so that we could technologically become advanced and joined the rest of the species in the galaxy. Right? Mm-hmm. This is very similar to a Bahai ideal about a kind of spiritual imperative to strive to help move humanity forward in its maturity. Because imagine, Josh, imagine for a moment what world peace would look like. No, but what really look like, I’m not talking about an absence of war, world peace phase one is like there’s no more wars. Yeah. Okay. That’s fine. We can kind of imagine that. But then like peace, like harmony, where countries support each other and there’s a famine in one and they’re supported by another and they work together and they are trying to beautify the planet and live more in harmony with nature. We could, without all of those trillions of dollars in military budgets, we could cure cancer. Yeah, we could heal climate change, we could prolong human life. And not only human life, but human wellness. When you really think about it and you allow yourself to think about it, and we don’t do that very often because a lot of times it’s like eye roll, oh, world peace, whatever. Yeah. That concept of world peace, both from a Bahai perspective and from a Roddenberry perspective, are, are intertwined. Yeah. Uh, the upsetting thing about the Roddenberry perspective of world peace is that it comes after World War iii. Mm-hmm. Which, do you know what year World War III happens in the Star Trek cannon? It’s probably like 2020 or something like that. 2026. Yeah. So we are hurdling towards it. Alright. Do you think that humanity actually has a shot to come together before we hit a rock bottom and see what that actually looks like? No. Yeah, not at all. So we’re just, we’re racing to the bottom right now. I think we had that chance in the eighties and nineties. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the, the iron curtain fell, China was warming up to the west, kind of secular democracies had found some, some strength. I, I think there was a, there was a brief fleeting moment that we just felt to hell these, he said it, everyone ring the bell. What gives you hope going forward in the future then, especially like in your own lifetime? What do you wish to see if you’ve somewhat resigned yourself to the fact that we are headed towards a rock bottom of a species? I think the more systems fall apart, the more people will look to alternative ways of. Hmm. Interacting and, and maybe look for more spiritual solutions to, to big issues. Yeah. Uh, rather than just material ones. Hmm. I mean, that was certainly going on in your parents’ generation when, you know, world enders had just been invented from scratch with the atomic bomb going into the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam is all this social upheaval. And then you had a lot of people who were spiritual seekers. In a lot of ways. Hmm. Do you think that there’s a parallel to that right now? ’cause my fear is that people are just going to go to religious fundamentalism instead of actual spirituality. I think there’s probably gonna be some of that. Yeah. Um, but people have been trying religious fundamentalism for thousands of years and. Sure. I think as younger generations come up, hopefully they’ll, they will find the truth for themselves. Or at least that what Jesus and Muhammad were actually teaching in their seminal works were not to damn judge and kill nonbelievers. Mm-hmm. It seems like such in a weird, perverse way. Is this like really boring for your audience? Dude, they want to hear audience, is this boring? No, they, you guys want to hear like stories from The Office and Dwight Schrute, don’t you? Who got the stapler out of the Jello? Like did you see that– Toby. Was not like, Toby got the stapler outta the jello. I dunno. I don’t know what an [bleep]. Yeah. It seems like a much more attractive option, at least. History has told us that it is for people to just divert to tribalism and blame problems on somebody else. How do you actually make it a more attractive option that, hey, living in harmony is better for you? Well, I, I think we’re really stupid. It’s kind of like a, it’s kind of like a 19-year-old going to rehab. Yeah. You know, and they can be told all they want, oh, drugs is bad, and Oh, your life is out of control. But they kind of have to spin out and get in a car accident and kill someone in the passenger seat before they’re like willing to like go to rehab and be like, I’m sorry. You’re right. My life is [bleeped] up. I’ll do anything. So humanity kind of has to go to rehab and humanity is like a wild, threshing, rebellious 19-year-old boy right now. Yeah. Speeding around in a, you know, in a three wheeled Camaro. I’ll say an attractive pitch to me from your book, Soul Boom, where you diagram out the perfect religion was your 21st and final principle of the perfect religion. Potlucks. We’re here. I’m in, Rainn. Let’s do it Rainn, for the second course of your final meal, we have the Tahdig, Gour Sabzi, and one of my favorite dishes on the planet. Pheon June made with ground fried walnuts, pomegranate molasses, uh, and some fresh pomegranate seeds on top. Would you like to crack the Tahdig? I’ll crack the Tahdig. Speaking of euphemisms. All right. Yeah. There it is. And it’s Persian culture, so you always serve the other person first. Aw, thank you so much. Yes. And then if you say, uh, if you say no, like, like here, have some more, Josh, have some more. And then you say no. No, no, no, Rainn. Please, can’t. No, no. Really you must. No, no. Come on. No, please. No, no, no. You must. Rainn, stop taro thing and please just– How do you know that? That’s amazing that tou know that about Persian culture. A Jew in Southern California. Everybody in my Community was Persian for the most part, and I host a podcast with a Persian Jew for the last five years. Oh my gosh. Can I serve you up some fesenjan? Oh, no, no, no, no. Really please, Rainn, I insist. This is plenty. No, no, no. Really. This is fine. You’re looking so thin. This is, no. Oh, okay. Okay. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll take some. That’s Tarro. Ladies and gentlemen. Just say no 3 times. I’ve heard this about Iran is that these recipes, they vary from Region to region. Mm-hmm. They vary from city to city, but they vary from family to family. Yeah. So the idea is that you go to, into different people’s homes to really experience the, the truth of, of the recipe. Um, we’re, we’re eating with a spoon. Well, I lost my fork. I lost my fork too. Can we get two forks? This is, this sucks. The service at this restaurant. Jesus. Jesus. It’s, did you see the Yelp ratings? The check, please. I told you we shouldn’t come here. It has a 2.8 rating on Yelp. You always said, thank you so much, Damien. I appreciate you. I don’t appreciate you. Rainn, gratitude. You talked about gratitude. My Tahdig, this is kicking the ass over the titter tot casserole. Sorry dad. Mmm, mm. You’re a practicing member. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I’ll shut up when you’re ready to answer a question. You don’t have to. There’s no practice. Stop talking. Okay. Oh my God. That’s heaven. I know. Oh, now you can ask a question. Oh my God. Thank you so much. Baha Leader Abdul Baha once said that art is warship. The more you strive to perfect it, the closer you become to God, how seriously do you take that message? Even in inhabiting such a silly character like Dwight Schrute? In my twenties, I had left the Bahai Faith for a long time and then kind of went on a dark night of the soul spiritual quest. Mm-hmm. Long story short, kind of came back around to my faith tradition and embraced it. But during that time, I had been starting to tiptoe into TV and film. I was like, they seemed like these two very disparate kind of traditions, the spiritual one and the artistic one. But then I discovered quotes like you cite very masterfully, uh, recited here that had to do with the intersection between art and faith. That Abdu Baha also said that in a letter to a young artist, he said, I rejoice that thou has taken pains with thine art for in this wondrous new age. Art is the same as prayer. That is when you put your paintbrush to the paper, it’s the same as kneeling in the temple. Like if you really peel back the, the onion, you’ll see that in every faith tradition that it’s a, it’s a celebration of the divine. It’s a celebration of the human spirit. It’s a longing for transcendence. It’s creating something beautiful. It’s being of service to people, whether it’s a song or a dance or a graphic novel, or you know, a rap or whatever it is. This really opened my eyes to some new kind of spiritual possibilities that, hey, I’m playing this dumb, weird character on this sitcom and, and I’m also worshiping in the intervening years. So many people have come up and said, oh my God, that show meant so much to me. And mm-hmm. I loved Dwight Schrute and we laughed and my parents were sick and it brought us together as a family and it got me through COVID and all of that kind of stuff. So you realize like even making something just like silly entertainment, like The Office and I, you know, the Office is a step above just silly entertainment, you know? Um, it’s not like two and a half men or something like that. It’s kind of. Um, snap. Charlie Sheen. Uh, but it’s a, it’s another level of like, of artistry to it, I think. Yeah. I think one beautiful thing that you did in the book Soul Boom is that you had so many different quotes from so many different religions and faith traditions that were really saying the same thing. Mm. And even atheist, secular people really are saying the same thing when they’re saying they’re practicing their art now. Something just. Moves me when I’m painting and it’s like I’m not moving myself, but it seems like we all roughly want the same things. Is God necessary to that and the spiritual revolution, or is there an atheistic secular view that could get us to the same place? First of all, I. I would say, how do you define God? Because sometimes I’ll say to an atheist, like, I don’t believe in the God that you don’t believe in because like if God is like male, bearded, judgmental, angry, jacked, jacked, patriarchal, yeah. I don’t believe in in that God. And if the divine is in all of us. And out of all of us and beyond time and space and it has it’s closer akin to beauty or, or music. There might be that atheist would say, well, I believe in beauty. I believe in love. Well, why can’t those be a cousin of God rather than any kind of like man with superpowers. Sure. Why do you think God and religion have become dirty words? Well, people have turned away from religion for very good reason. Mm-hmm. And look what’s happening in Gaza right now. Uh oh. He said it. Ring the bell. Here we go. Be in a Gaza bell and they’re not. Shut this down. Well, I mean, look at Gaza. I mean, you have Islam, which means peace and submission, and shalom, which means peace. And, uh, two of the most ancient, peaceful religions in, in a lot of, in their teachings, blowing each other up. And there’s hypocrisy, there’s corruption, there’s scandal. There’s kind of us versus them othering that’s been happening for thousands of years in religion. It’s very understandable why young people would turn away from it, and of course they would turn away from from God. But more and more younger generations are now kind of saying, Hey, wait a minute. Nothing else is kind of working and communities kind of falling apart. Maybe we should kind of reinvestigate this, this idea. There’s a lot of really true, good and important ideas in religion. Building community, working in service to something greater than oneself. You know, I was talking to a woman and, and she was like, you know, I joined this church and I didn’t really even care about the church. But you know, when I, when I joined the church, my husband got sick and every day there was a hot dish delivered at my doorstep. Mm-hmm. You know, like the church did that. They brought hot dish daily while someone was, was struggling. Yeah. And no one does that other than religious institutions. Cul-de-sacs don’t do that. Yeah. Housing complexes don’t do that. Schools don’t really do that. We should be examining what we’ve lost by turning away from religion and, and maybe look at what’s true about, uh, various faith traditions and what we can adhere to. Rainn, for the third course of your final meal, we have the soup Joumou. This is a pumpkin and beef based soup. Then we have the Haitian style curry goat, the fried plantains or bon deuce, and then just some fresh cooked greens with a little bit of garlic and lemon. Wow. Amazing. You haven’t had soup Joumou the show before. I bet. We never have. I’ve never had soup Joumou in my entire life, and I’m very excited to share it with you. You know, this is all referring to kind of a Haitian chapter in my life. Uh, my wife and I, uh, started working in Haiti after the work earthquake in 2010 and started volunteering there and even co-founded a nonprofit. That, uh, does girls education, uh, in rural Haiti. So we used to go two or three times a year, at least for many, many years, and fell in love with, uh, Haitian food along the way. Incredible. I mean, please dig in, you know, Haiti having, you know, kind of the first ever really successful slave revolt Yep. Since Spartacus then taking over as a sovereign nation. Mm-hmm. And, uh, slaves in Haiti used to have to grow pumpkins, but were forbidden to eat them. So this, a pumpkin soup is eaten as a celebration for like, Hey, oh wow, we kicked out the white colonizers and we can now finally eat the pumpkin. I didn’t, I didn’t even know that. That’s amazing. Yeah. Oh, look at this, Josh. Mm. I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Wait, Rainn, take that home. Really? Yeah. Take it. Feed it to one of your many eclectic pets. My pit bulls would love this bone. I was thinking the zaki. I don’t think the zaki would know what to do with this bone. Why do you hate the word charity? I was working with a education nonprofit called the Mona Foundation, and I learned a lot working with Mona Foundation. They’re just a beautiful charity that, oh, I said it beautiful, uh, nonprofit that funds educational initiatives all around the world. Mm-hmm. Finds really select amazing. Uh, educational initiatives at schools and training programs that are already working, that are grassroots. They’re not like someone coming in and, and putting it onto a territory, but they, it sprung out organically from that, that location. But charity in implies kind of like, oh, I feel bad for you, and, oh, here’s some money. There’s a kind of like a, a pity aspect to it. Yeah. You know, there’s a difference between like pity and compassion. Like pity is like, oh, I feel sad for that poor homeless person, or something like that. But compassion is like, it literally means to feel with compassion, I feel with that person. And if you feel with that person and you feel like what that person is feeling, then you want to do something for them. Yeah. It seems like there’s almost a very one-sided relationship in the term charity. Right? It’s like I, oh, I give to charity. I, I wrote a check, I did something. Mm-hmm. Whereas it seems like there’s a desire with you to actually like connect with another person. What have, like you learned about the feeling that you yourself get when acting in service to others? We talked about art being worship. Mm-hmm. And in the Bahai concept, and I really truly think that in all the faith traditions. There is some element to service, to others is also a form of prayer. A form of worship. Yeah. So Balah, the founder of the Bahai Faith says that work in the spirit of service is worship in the eyes of God. Hmm. So if you’re doing this like get a claim and a paycheck and you know, gift cards to Chipotle, like. They are nice. That’s not, they’re nice, but that’s not. Service. Yeah. But if you are doing it because you love having great conversation and you wanna hit topics that you think your audience will love and that will uplift people and open their hearts and entertain them and teach them about new and interesting foods, mm-hmm. Then that’s a beautiful service and that is an act of, of worship. So I can’t give the Chipotle gift cards back, hand them to me, just hand them to me. Uh, we’ll take care of them. Early days of Twitter, I did some tweet about Chipotle. And they sent me a Chipotle black card. Wow. And it had, thank you for the greens. Absolutely. It had for years. I would go into a Chipotle and I’d order and I’d give ’em the card and they’d be like, whoa, I’ve never seen this. And they would just run it to the machine. They’re like, it’s all free. And they’re like, here. I ate for free at Chipotle for years I was making lots of money on the office, but I had l free Chipotle card. I should have given it to a college student or something. One day I went in and got a bunch of stuff and they’re like, bleep, it’s not working. I’m like, ah, screw it. Sir, your card has been declined. But dear people of, of Chipotle, if you are watching, I love your delicious foods. You’ve reinvented the fast food experience, and please consider sending Rainn Wilson the Chipotle Black Card. Incredible. Oh, and let’s try this goat. Goats, Goats running all over Haiti. People have goats in their backyard. And then guess what their favorite food is? I’m guessing it’s goat. I do. Do you see anything inherently weird with that? Hm. I need a minute to chew my goat. Go for it. That’s what she said. I can’t believe we just got a ‘that’s what she said’ in the wild from Rainn Wilson. You’re welcome. We are. We’re in a simulation. I’m not gonna charge extra for it. We did hear that from your people that you charge 40 bucks a pop for. That’s what she said. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 65 for a Bears Beach Battlestar Galactica. Yeah. We’re like, we can’t afford that. And this economy, sometimes people do kind of take their phones and go, say a Dwight line. Can you imagine? Do you say a Dwight line? You say, idiot, it’s, it works on a lot of different levels. Yeah. It’s gotta the best of all worlds. The fried plantain. One of the world’s great foods. Give your ode to the fried plantain. An ode to the fried plantain. There is an alternate history. In which humans subsisted on tubers and nuts as opposed to grains. In this alternate history, the agricultural revolution would not have happened in the way that it did, and I think in ultimately ways that led to the industrial revolution and then the atomization of society. I think if fried plantains, tubers, and nuts, two birds and nuts keep going. Two birds and nuts. If fried plantains cas, Brazil nuts, macadamias, inhabited more of our diet, more of our psyche think we genuinely would have a more tribal together society. Nuts. I don’t think we would have all of these insane revelations and fears about a nuclear future. I think we would simply be eating tubers and nuts. That has been the battle of tubers. Nuts, everybody. Thank you. I’m gonna just take a minute and not talk and eat a piece of goat. Hmm. Do it. ’cause it does take a while. Rather hot sauce. There’s a Wow. I’ll shut it too for your mouth to get through it. That’s what she said. It’s 80 bucks. Hmm. That’s good goat. That was a good goat. Do you think that we as a culture avoid death? Thinking about avoiding thinking about our pet die or the natural life cycle and how animals come before food, do you think we just avoid our own death for fear of the unknown, or do you think there’s been a title change in how we think about that throughout history? Do we get a dessert menu? We can cobble something together. Do you know what the next course after this is? Do you remember? Oh, there’s sushi. Yeah. And fish? Mm-hmm. Oh my God. I’m gonna stop eating right now. We can talk about death avoidance then. I just avoided death successfully by asking for a dessert menu. You know, 150 years ago there was a 50% child mortality rate. Mm-hmm. Think about that. If you had like six brothers and sisters, half of them would not make it to, you know, infancy. Yeah. Where do you think those bodies went? Like where were they kept? Where they stored? Like you’d put ’em in the, in the barn overnight and then, and you’d dig your own hole and put ’em in. Like, you know, if granny died, she’d be in a coffin in the living room like we were around. Bodies and death way more 150, 200 years ago and now we’re so disconnected with it. One of the really most powerful things my father passed away about five years ago, the creator of the tater tot casserole with mushroom cream of mushroom soup is, uh, I got to prepare his body for burial by washing it, wrapping it in a linen shroud, and saying prayers over it. And, uh. Humans have been doing that for a hundred thousand years. I don’t know about the linen, but it’s incredibly powerful and it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. Like it’s the, the reality of the human body that is lifeless, that is, you know, devoid of the spark of life. Yeah. And it became very clear that his essence, his spirit, his, his, his soul. Was just no longer there, but it, it hadn’t been extinguished. It had just moved on. This vessel was now empty. I, for the first time, it was my grandma for the first time, lived to 101 years old, surrounded by family, all holding hands of each other, holding her hand. As we physically watched, like you said, the spark of life, leave her. And we were all talking to her and we were told that she wasn’t conscious at the time, but she might still be hearing. What you said. And I asked her time alone with her, and as I spoke to her, I, I saw a small smile creep on her face and a single tear fall down. And it was the first moment where I actually looked at somebody or had an experience where I said, I think there is a God. And I think there is a soul, and I think there’s more to this. And it was only from being there firsthand and, and seeing that. Wow, that’s a powerful story. Yeah. I, you know, feel that with your dad of seeing the Yeah. The body there and like this can’t. Be all that there is. Yeah. Yeah. You ready to get to dessert? Let’s see that dessert menu. Rainn, for the dessert course. The final course of your final meal on this earth, we have the miso roasted black cod from Nobu in Malibu prepared fresh in the mythical kitchen, as well as an assorted sushi boat. You did not ask us for the boat. We thought it was a beautiful stig and metaphor for you, transversing the realms. And I’ve never been a part of a stig in metaphor before. First time for everything. Absolutely. Check this out. We have the bluefin toro, that’s fatty tuna belly with some caviar and, uh, slimmed row. We have the lean tuna, and then we have the albacore role. That’s nice. Oh, this does feel powerful. Uh, that’s cool. Yeah, I got tea. You want some tea? Yeah, I’ll take some tea. We got a nice green tea. Oh, beautiful. They got a ratio. Miso cod is one of the great creations. Did, did Chef Nawa invent Miso cod? Yes, I believe he did. The [bleep] I’m gonna take tomorrow morning. Hell yeah, brother. We text each other pictures. Totally. Randy said something really profound in Soul Boom that I never thought about. He said that you can’t legislate away evil, as in we got rid of segregation. We can tax polluters. That doesn’t actually change the original sin of racism and hatred and corporate greed. Why is the only way to change the hearts of man through a spiritual revolution? That is maybe the the best question I’ve ever been asked on Soul Boom in two years since the book came out. Thank you. I’m not kidding. Thank you. How, how does something like racism get solved? This is so ridiculous. You need to entertain them while you’re talking about real stuff. If I eating sushi in a silly way, racism is one of the greatest gorges ever known to humanity. Watch this. How do you solve a problem like Maria? Um, is that a reference? I don’t get it. Sound of music. How do you solve a problem like Maria? Shocking that I’ve never seen it ’cause I would’ve just tried to dress like the people of South. I know you would’ve played a great Nazi. You look like Rolfe, the Nazi boyfriend. Hey, I would’ve been a Nazi husband. I would’ve committed honey. You can pass as many laws as you like in and around racism. And a year before I was born in 1965, there wasn’t even like the the, the Rights Voting Act. You know, it’s not that long ago. All of this. You can try and do through legislation. It’s, it’s not, it’s not gonna address the underlying cancer of racism. Mm-hmm. So how do we heal that? It’s easy to kind of say, well, I’m not racist. We, you know, we love, you know, people, but we are in great denial about how virulent racism is in the United States, whether we cancel DEI or not. Mm-hmm. And again, to heal that. We can’t shame people, right? We, we have to bring people together. We have to create bonds of love that supersede tribe. So, lemme give you an example. One of the greatest experiments in human history was the dawn of Christianity. In the early days of Christianity, the first couple centuries. Anyone who accepted Christ as their savior was accepted. Churches were usually outdoors, but they were slaves, former slaves, harlots, Roman centurions, Jews, merchant Marines, you know, farmers, whomever, whatever you think of. All different races and tribes gathering together. And they were like, Jesus is my savior. He died for our sins. And it was this incredible human experiment, uh, experiment maybe for the first time in human history. Mm. Where. People of different tribes, colors, classes, ethnicities, backgrounds, you know, whose families had come from different faith traditions were coming together united towards something transcendent. So faith has the power to bring disparate people together for the love of God, the love of something greater. So we need a spiritual revolution if we’re really going to treat the underlying disease of something like racism. Yeah. Thanks for coming. What do you think happens when you die? Uh, I know what happens when you die. What do you know happens when you die? As father Thar de Chardin says, we are, uh, not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. So my spiritual beingness. The spiritual being part of myself when my body keels over ’cause I’ve eaten too much sushi, uh, will continue its journey toward meeting the creator, toward meeting the source, you know, the divine, the, the cosmic force and what is exactly what that looks like. I don’t know, but I do believe that this physical world is a metaphor for the spiritual world. Mm-hmm. So. Christ said, man cannot live by bread alone. So there’s, there’s spiritual food. Mm. Right. And, uh, what does food do? It nourishes us. It gives us energy. Uh, it tastes good. So in whatever next plane of existence we go to and we all go, there’s no heaven or a hell, that’s silly. Um, we’ll be tasting of the reality of the metaphor. We’ll be tasting of the reality of spiritual food. Yeah. Um, when we continue and we continue this discussion. In heaven with, uh, the metaphorical reality of a sushi boat. But no gold flake on the toro, right? It would be, uh, angel jizz. Have you ever had cod jizz sushi? Don’t say that. It’s really good. It’s so, it’s called shirocco. How do they jerk off the cod? It’s like how they do it. I just hope it’s humane. That’s all. I hope the cod gets to enjoy themselves. Uh, no. They slaughter the cod and they just open up the spermatic cord, but they put– Do your imitation of a cod having an orgasm. Oohh. Very short refractory periods caused you So even like 30 seconds, just like, Rainn, you ready to get in the lightning round? No, it’s, it’s like this. Ahhh. It’s so much better. Rainn, who is the, who’s the one person dead or alive you’d want to share your actual last meal with? Jesus. I know it’s a lightning round. Can you elaborate on why? ’cause that, that’s the first person that said that, and that’s the only correct answer. Uh, it’s the person that has caused the, the largest reverberations in, in human history. Jesus Christ. Jesus. Not swearing Christ. Yeah. What song do you wanna be played at your funeral? God, I, it’s really cliche, but it just popped into my head. It’s gonna be knocking on Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan. Nice and segwaying into the Guns N Roses version. Love it. Uh, which of Jim Halpert’s office pranks would make real life Rainn Wilson the maddest? I would have to say probably putting my desk in the bathroom. Who’s your dream eulogize at your funeral? I’m gonna go with Oprah Winfrey. Oprah, if you’re watching, I would like for you to say the eulogy at my funeral. If you’re still alive. Who is the most powerful D&D character? Ragnell the radical, Quequag the monk, or your Elvin thief that took second place At Nor Westcon? I would say Quequag the monk. Um, ’cause monks at the higher level, they, they have incredible powers and they get to fight with a bow staff, but they also can do like vibrations, they do like the hand of death and stuff like that. What’s your biggest fear? Uh, obsolescence. Which other actor that auditioned for Dwight do you think would’ve played the character best? John Krasinski. He was supposed to audition for Dwight, but he never did. He, he’s, he’s like, I don’t wanna play Dwight. I wanna play Jim. But he would’ve been a really good Dwight. And you auditioned for Michael Scott? I did. So there’s a whole, there’s another universe in which I’m playing Michael Scott and John Krasinski is playing Dwight. If you believe in multiverse theory. Yeah. That exists. And it got canceled after four episodes. It’s true. It probably wouldn’t be. Uh, what’s your greatest regret in life? My greatest regret, um, is times when I was a dick. Mm. Do you want, do you wanna apologize for Damien when you called him an idiot for not having a fork? No. How could you not have a fork? This is a food show. What are you thinking? So fired. Ah, finally. Rainn, are you happy? I am happy, yes. You seem happy. Are you happy? I am. You seem giddy, but not necessarily happy. What are you seeing? Just the pain behind the giddiness. I think you’re doing all right. I am doing all right generally, and as I get older and I think about these things more, I have conversations frankly with people like you, and I realize what I actually find important in life. Oh. Um, that has led to a lot more happiness. Amazing. So, well, this experience has made me very happy. Uh, this has been wonderful. This has surpassed every expectation. Likewise. You’re an amazing host too, by the way. You’re an amazing guest. I mean that I am, except you did the cod orgasm thing. That was a little bizarre, but I did love it. There he goes. Rainn, if you wanna deliver your last words to that camera right there. Bucner, the theologian said, where you come alive is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. So find your place of your deepest gladness that intersects with the world’s deepest hunger. How’s that? I thought it was gonna be. Ooh. Rainn, thank you so much, man. This is truly an incredible experience. Thanks Jerry. Everyone make sure to check out the Soul Boom, podcast, Rainn WIlson, where else can people find you? At my house, which is I’ve already dug through his trash. If you thought you were gonna do it, I’ve been digging. The perfect way to elevate all of your meals. The last Meals Bar set is available now at mythical.com.