By now, Rainn Wilson hardly needs an introduction. Since his breakout role as Dwight Schrute on the legendary sitcom The Office, Wilson has had a steady stream of acting, directing, and producing roles (he's also, unsurprisingly, one hell of a ). In 2008 Wilson cofounded SoulPancake, a multimedia company built on the philosophy of making the world more spiritually connected. His new audiobook, , distills the spiritual lessons he's gleaned through his various projects in one place, with his unmistakeable voice as guide. While he was in the studio recording, Wilson graciously answered our questions—check out his video responses, lightly edited in written form, below.
Audible: You published your memoir, The Bassoon King, in 2015. How did writing Soul Boom compare to that experience?
Rainn Wilson: It’s interesting. As I wrote , I realized that in my life story there were a lot of questions that needed exploration and answering. There were a lot of metaphysical, and philosophical, and spiritual issues that came bubbling to the top as I told my kind of relatively comedic life story; there was some stuff around my faith journey and mental health journey, and struggles and failures. And this really sparked me when I finished that book, like, “Oh, there’s another book here, and that is what I learned along the way."
So, if Bassoon King was my life story, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution is everything that I’ve learned over the last several decades about how we need a spiritual solution to our own issues and problems—but how also humanity needs a spiritual solution to overcome the difficulties that we are confronted with as a species on a planet spinning through space. So it went from kind of sillier stories about youthful failures and rejections and funny stories on the set of The Office to a more profound kind of journey of self-discovery. And who knows where this will go next?
Much of your work in Soul Boom and the media company you cofounded, SoulPancake, is in the service of breaking down barriers between people and creating a more connected world. How did you get involved in this work?
