#841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred

Arthur C. Brooks is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. His next book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, will be released on March 31, 2026.

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Timestamps:

• [00:00:00] Start. • [00:02:33] The vascular Arthur Brooks returns. • [00:03:07] Brahmamuhurta and why Arthur studies happiness. • [00:06:20] Arthur’s morning workout protocol. • [00:09:58] Why Arthur does Zone 2 cardio without headphones. • [00:10:38] Quantifying progress as the secret to happiness. • [00:20:50] Post-workout holy half-hour. • [00:22:25] Creatine, caffeine strategy, and 60-70 grams of protein for breakfast. • [00:29:50] Four hours of distraction-free deep work and Hemingway’s protocol. • [00:32:21] Alcohol kills sleep to borrow happiness from tomorrow. • [00:34:36] My ketosis, intermittent fasting, and morning protocol. • [00:39:34] Experimentation is king. • [00:46:29] David Baszucki, metabolic psychiatry, and ketosis: the poet’s protocol. • [00:48:20] Four affect profiles: mad scientists, cheerleaders, judges, and poets. • [00:54:13] Why Arthur was moved to write The Meaning of Your Life • . • [00:55:52] Psychogenic epidemic: technology isn’t the problem, it’s what we’re not getting. • [00:59:33] Macronutrients of meaning: coherence, purpose, significance. • [01:03:38] Search vs. presence and the trap for seekers. • [01:07:53] Marine rule: get to 80 percent and choose. • [01:12:07] Significance at micro, not macro level; cult of activism as substitute religion. • [01:17:22] Transcendence: from me self to I self; Harvard’s Astronomy 101. • [01:19:35] Two dimensions of transcendence: upward (worship) and outward (service). • [01:21:48] Maslow revised: training awareness so the mundane becomes miraculous. • [01:28:45] Flow state as self-forgetting; beauty as transcendence. • [01:32:12] Living in the simulation: complicated vs. complex problems. • [01:37:55] Left hemisphere vs. right hemisphere. • [01:42:18] Your suffering is sacred: pain times resistance. • [01:46:30] Pilgrimage as metaphor. • [01:55:42] AI as left-brain adjunct. • [01:57:18] Arthur’s evening protocol: Psalms and Neruda. • [02:00:13] The oxytocin protocol for marriage, break glass plan. • [02:04:31] Happiness is love and other parting thoughts.

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