I'm Anny, I'm Noah.

This is Den and you're listening to no such thing the show where we settle ard arguments and yours by actually doing the research.

This week, do the boys need to find God?

No, there's no no such thing.

No such thing.

Touch Thank, Touch, Thank, touch Thank.

Today's episode was pitched by my wife and it's about religion and happiness.

The question is does being religious mean you're going to be happier.

Over the past few years, there's been something of a resurgence in young people attending church.

New data from the Barner Group, which is a Christian research organization, so you know, maybe biased, they it shows that Gen z and Millennials are more frequently going to church, outpacing older generations.

So this is out of people who are already church goers.

But in twenty twenty two, church going Zoomers and millennials went about one weekend per month.

Now that's up to just under two weekends per month, so it's pretty big obviously, COVID whatever, I'm sure there's other factors, but there's also been tons of other reporting on, you know, arise in religion over the past few years.

It's like the trad caath kind of oh yeah, trend these sorts of things that you can kind of see ambiance le.

So we want to find out if religion makes people happier.

To start, I guess why don't we all go around and explain our religious backgrounds.

Many, Well, my parents are very religious.

We are Catholic, Like we are a Catholic family growing up.

There's it's called like Eastern right Catholicism, So it's basically the brand of Catholicism in like the Arab world are in East Africa, but it's still them in Catholic it's like just a subsect of that.

I grew up Catholic Mass every Sunday, we went to like Sunday school.

We like did it all like first communion.

My confirmation saint was Saint Andrew because he was the saint of Lost the Items, and I was, I was, I was looking for my game boy at the time.

You pick that, Yeah, you have to choose who your saint is, and they like they kind of hold your hand through it and like you look through them and like here's you're here's the saints and what they're the saint of.

And I was like, okay, this makes sense.

Did you ever find Find the Game.

Yea, yeah, yeah, I think it was kind of loosely related to that.

Hey he's just Devin.

What about your background?

My background, My dad went to like Catholic school and his family, he grew up brothers.

But he had kind of the opposite reaction of like because it was like for down his throat as a kid.

He was like, I'm not going to raise.

Like we went to church who went to Mass every once in a while, usually around like I was baptized.

Yeah, some major holidays, we didn't go all that often.

So I would say there was like a vague Christianity in my life growing up, but like I didn't that wasn't confirm.

More just like a vig cultural thing like.

Yeah, you know, Christmas is about Jesus in some way, you know, something like that.

But yeah, we weren't overly religious.

I like I never belonged to like a specific church over like you know, we'd go, oh, this church is cool and go for like two months and then And I.

Feel like that's probably the average kind of relationship people have to religion, where it's like vaguely around the holidays kind of a reason, like some kind of like I don't know, amorphous glue to your family, but not something that you're like, yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't a weekly thing.

Do you you know, have faith than Jesus Christ?

Do I believe in Jesus Christ?

Are you I believe in God?

Sure?

No?

No?

Not not you do?

Wouldn't consider itself religious at all?

No, I don't believe in God.

What happens after Yeah?

What do I think happens after you die?

Nothing?

That's a whole other episode we should be.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just never like even going to church and stuff.

It's just like I never felt like I see what it does for other people and I'm like, oh that's cool, but like, yeah, for me, I like I don't feel anything.

I think I believe in God when I was younger.

I think it's something I grew out of with time.

So growing up, I mean, my family's Jewish.

We always consider ourselves very much more culturally Jewish than religious.

We would go to temple for like Passover and kind of the major holidays, and we celebrated Hanukah, but it was it was very much in the background and not you know, faith and belief hadn't really very little to do with it.

It was much more about family and kind of just doing traditions.

And I also just think at the time, like kind of politically and otherwise, like religion was a much seemed like a much bigger conversation as like I felt like there was so much music or other things about being not religious.

It felt like a bigger cultural touchstone to like kind of point out the hypocrisy of the Christian right and all that, you know, like stuff like that seems so much more popular.

We're making a documentary, but religion, Why doesn't he just obliterate the devil and therefore get rid of evil in the world?

Will he will?

And I think that helps explain why now younger people are exploring religion, because that's not like this big pervasive if you look at Pendulum, Yeah, it's like that used to be such a major thing of like pointing at you know, the hypocrisy of you know, Jerry Falwell or whoever, like these big religious figures.

Yeah, like that whole thing, and like obviously that's still there and people criticize those things all the time, so it's not like that's gone.

But it felt like he used to be like a major talking point and maybe not just our focus on just different things where it's like like yeah, I'm not going to argue with you about Jesus or whatever.

Talking about this kind of cultural swing back to people exploring religion, it's now I think like there's a backlash towards what used to be.

I think called like the Reddit atheist, which is pretty much that Bill Maher documentary where it's like okay, we get it, but yeah, you know, yeah, So.

It never really even occurred to me to earnestly explore religion.

I don't think now I'm I wouldn't consider myself religious, but I'm more interested in religion as like it's just when you look at the parallels between all the major religions and all these things are like I was just in Florence and you're looking at you know, painting over painting over painting over centuries, and it's all the same, you know, five scenes, and there's something at first you're you see you go those are really interesting, and then you see more and you go, okay, like it's baby Jesus again.

Then eventually I kind of hit a wall and I was like, okay, wow, it's actually kind of amazing, Like this is what this is like all people were talking about, were like painting about for forever.

It's like there's a power in that sort of thing.

And that got me kind of then thinking more like, Okay, there's obviously a real attraction to this, and then you know, reading more about history or different things and different perspectives on theology, whatever, it's like I'm more interested in an academic way, I suppose.

And then then kind of it's like wondering how many people who do go to church or temple or whatever every week believe in that stuff literally versus just like, Okay, these are good life lessons or whatever, which I think is probably more common or more common than maybe discussed where it's like, yeah, there's a community aspect of Okay, these are people who live near me who I can talk to or whatever, and you know, we're learning this or that from whatever scripture.

And in that sense, I get wanting to attend services and be involved in that way, even if you're not personally like looking for you know, redemption or whatever you pass this life.

So I think I'm a little more sympathetic I suppose to religion that I than if you had asked me maybe ten years ago or earlier than that.

Moving forward, Like my question with this and happiness is would you get as much out of going to church every week as you would by just joining a sports club or something else like any other recreational community thing, Like how much does the religious aspect play in versus just like having people around you who maybe aren't just your normal friend group but something else, and you're connected by something different.

I'd be willing to bet that although both the religious activity and the sports activity provide at its core, like a sense of community that's like nice and familiar and comfortable, I'd be willing to bet that the religious one feels more important to people because it's like kind of the higher calling, as you've heard before, or like something that might affect what you think happens when you die, versus like the bowling league.

It's really fun, but probably not going to get me into heaven maybe yeah yeah.

Or like you know, religion at its core is kind of like selling you on something right, like that this thing will happen if you do X, Y, and Z the right way.

Let's get our votes.

Are religious people happier than non religious people?

If I had the guess, yes, because it gives you something to look forward to, Yeah, especially now where things feel like they're so bad and it's just sort of like and it also gives I would imagine it gives your life some sort of even if you don't understand why things are happening, gives it some order.

Yeah, if there's some sort of thought that there is some sort of order and there is something beyond sort of the struggle of today, I would guess.

Yes, Yeah, same.

I think it's it has to do with the level of comfort that you get if you really believe that if you're a good person in your whole life and then you get to go somewhere special afterwards, that gives you level of comfort and it gives you some direction.

Yeah.

Even think about when people die, right it's like, oh, you've seen him, and it's like.

Yeah, yeah, I think I leaned towards yes as well.

My only other thought on it was like, if you're really like, let's say, extremely religious, Oh, I think you could turn and then it could turn where it's like you're looking around you at all these sinners and yes, kind of just disgusted by everything you see.

Then that could make you, you know, more of a recluse or like feel totally alone and isolated if you don't think other people are being you know, religious in the right way or religious at all, And it's what the hell, like, what the hell world is this?

So unless you then I guess maybe you get through to the other side.

It's like, well, this is what I have to bear to get through this.

And then but with that count is happiness.

It's hard to say, yeah, I'm purely like I'm going to church every week, and you know, I make these friends and we talk about this stuff that seems like a not positive in most cases.

Obviously, then there's issues with the church or whatever where not everyone's accepted, and a lot of people maybe because their upbringing then rebel against it and don't you know, definitely are not interested even if maybe it would help them in some way.

So I'm curious to find out what the research says.

That's a good point.

I feel like, like you said, it's yes, and then it's a no, because I think there are people get lost in it.

It's like, what is that called the bell curve?

Yeah, It's like it's like yes, no.

Yeah, I think if you hit the right medium level it can be probably very beneficial.

People talk about like you know, people online and the like psychosist thing of like oh they see the devil and everything right, It's like, oh, actually that was that song.

Wasn't just bad this is the devil?

Yeah, trying that, It's like, okay, imagine living life like that.

So next up, I'm going to look into the research and find out if there is a positive link between religion and happiness.

And later I want to go to temple myself and hear from some religious people and maybe do some praying.

That's all all that.

After the break, we're back.

We're trying to figure out if religion makes people happier.

If I talked to doctor Harold Koenig, he's a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University.

He's in researching spirituality and health.

For about forty years.

I had been a nurse and then I became a family physician, and during that time I would ask patients how they're coping with their health issues.

It was part of what you know as a nurse we had been trained to do, and so I continued that as a family doctor, and many patients would talk about their religious faith.

So I thought, gosh, you know, we haven't been trained on this in nursing school or medical school, or family medicine or none of those areas.

This was completely new for me, and I thought, that's fascinating.

Let's do some research and just see how common this is and what impact it has on a person's health.

So that's how I got started.

So there are measures of well being and happiness, and they are often maybe ten questions or twenty questions, and so there are scales that you can administer to give you a sense of how happy a person is.

And then you can also measure religious involvement through scales that are assessing dimensions like intrinsic religiosity, a person's connection with God, the strength of their faith and their religious commitment, their frequency of prayer, of scripture study, those kinds of questions, and how often do they attend religious services.

These measures are all included in a questionnaire, along with the person's age, race, gender, their socioeconomic status, their social support, various other characteristics, and then we look at the correlation.

To get straight to it.

Here's what his research has found.

One of the first studies we did actually now probably over thirty years ago was looking at this exact question, was a person's level of well being or happiness was it connected with their religious faith and their religious practices, And in fact it was then that's kind of what's prized me and encouraged me that to continue to do research in this area.

So then we started looking at depression and anxiety, and then started looking at physical health including blood pressure, immune functioning, longevity, all sorts of different health outcomes, and they just kept coming up positively.

Is that those who are more engaged in a faith community, those who had a stronger connection with God, just seemed to do better in every way.

Their social relationships were better, you know, their blood pressure, as I said, was lower, their immune functioning it was better.

They were living longer, from seven to fourteen years, longer than those who were not part of a faith community.

It was just continually reinforcing what I had seen clinically as a family doctor.

That's wild.

The most fascinating part is how much longer you live if you are engaging in those kind of like regular religious activities.

Seven to fourteen years is nuts.

It's a long time.

Fourteen years.

I could I could pray a little bit for.

That that's part of the part of what you get out of this.

Well, that makes sense because if they talk about when you think about, you know, how deadly loneliness is.

Yeah, if you have this built in community, it's like a shorthand for community right to me, right of just sort of like you see a lot of people who you are regularly seeing you're leaving the house, right, like, if you're not doing too well, people who are going to be checking it up on you and you you know, you think about okay, especially as you get older.

Yeah, if people don't have their kids aren't around, right, see some older people where it's like, oh god, if that neighbored it and like just you know, get some sort of interest in that person that they would just literally be alone.

And some of those studies look into this too, like you're less likely to smoke and drink and gamble and other vices to accountable that are gonna hurt your you know, so it leads to other things.

Pew Research Center did a big study and released a lot of data on this in twenty nineteen looking at the correlation, and it bears out very similar results.

They looked at a bunch of countries, but for the US for an example, like the percentage of people who say they are very happy among those who are religiously active is thirty six percent versus people who are unaffiliated or inactive it's twenty five percent.

That is pretty consistent across the different countries.

Some countries like Mexico's much more religious, it seems like, so like there, it's like seventy one percent of active religious people are very happy to sixty one percent unaffiliated.

But it's pretty much about a ten point spread across the board.

It's huge, it seems like, which is yeah, pretty big.

And that also acts the same things as far as Health're more likely to be civically engaged too, so you're more likely to vote if you're religious, which makes sense, makes sense to knowing what we know, Yeah, and same with smoking in those things.

Religiosity is on the decline overall societally.

That that means we're probably going to see societal well being decrease.

It's interesting to think about too, because it's like I wouldn't necessarily argue that it's better for countries to be religious, yeah, you know, especially separation of church and state these like, but it's it's kind of an interesting thing like what's best for people, you know.

Yeah, which is what you hear from JD.

Vance and like all these kind of maga guys who are so against the idea of like a secular society.

Yeah, because they're afraid or they're pretending to be afraid that there might be societal decline if we move further away from a like church.

Well that's the classic thing of like you take away something and then you don't feel devoid.

Right, So it's like the country is becoming less religious and you don't build in.

Other ways for people to kind of you're also.

Shutting down the bowling alleys yeah, community, yeah, you know, and it's it's the class that you know.

It's like if you talk about conservatives, you know, getting rid of government programs and saying rely on your churches for that sort of thing, right, I'm just sort of like, yeah, the church is supposed to fill that void in a lot of conservatives' minds, and which makes sense based on the study, right of like the people who are partaking in this stuff are doing better.

But it's like it's crazy to.

Be like, actually, the only way for you to live longer is you got to figure out you got to be a lot of one of these religions because we as a government, we're not going to do anything for you.

So yeah, well that yeah, I know.

The church.

Is also a part of the study where it says, like I'll read this.

The data presented in the report indicates that there are links between religious activity and certain measures of well being in many countries.

The numbers don't prove that going to religious services is directly responsible for improving people's lives.

Rather, it could be certain kinds of people tend to be active in multiple types of activities, secular as well as religious, many of which provide physical or psychological benefits.

Moreover, such people may be more active partly because they are happier and healthier rather than the other right around.

Which makes sense, Like it's correlation versus cause.

Yeah, Like some total loner who doesn't go to church probably might not go to something else or be involved in something else too, So it's yeah, it's like which is the start or which is the cause.

It's interesting, like, and I think a valid point to make for sure.

Yeah, I wanted to know how the social community factor weighed against the faith element by itself, because the benefit coming from having a community, or does belief itself impact health outcomes?

If I go to church every week, but maybe I don't personally believe in God per se, I might still reap some benefits of being involved in my community and all this.

How do you kind of balance those things or what do you see when you look into that.

I think they're both going on in terms of the mechanism.

So being part of a faith community reinforces your belief and your commitment, and of course your belief and commitments are reinforcing your engagement in a religious community, so they are mutually reinforcing.

Social activities are part of it.

So that's part of the mechanism, but it only explains about twenty five percent of the effect that religious involvement has on happiness.

A lot of it has to do with a personal connection with God, you know, believing that life has purpose and meaning and that you're part of God's plan in the world.

That this gives you a sense of energy, and that's a big part of it.

So, I mean, you couldn't replace church going with say, joining the bowling league.

You're probably going to see different effects.

You are, You're going to certainly derive benefits, social benefits and physical benefits from joining a bowling league.

But it's not to have the same impact that religious faith has simply because you know, not only is religious faith dealing with with behaviors and beliefs and social interactions in this life, it's talking about life after this life, you know, life after death, kind of the spiritual world that is in some ways maybe connected with with the physical world that we live in.

So it goes far beyond just the social or even the behavioral and the cognitive aspects of it.

Because religion really has power in it.

There are very few things that people will die for, you know, but religion is one of them.

I was thinking about the community aspect because it's like, all right, well, I'm picturing now like some not like a monk necessarily, but basically like a recluse who is very devout.

Is that person going to be as happy as someone who is, you know, maybe not involved with their church but has more of a social life.

Obviously there's going to be a million different factors to control.

Many many different factors a play there.

But yeah, you know, a recluse who has a strong religious belief is probably gonna be happier than a recluse without such a belief.

Yeah, fact, you know.

But but certainly the social interaction is a significant part and that's what the scriptures teach.

They teach to love your neighbor, and you can't do that unless you're around your neighbor.

Well, I'd like to disagree with the notion that bowling is not a religious Maybe that's just me.

You haven't you haven't bold game like a bowl?

Yeah, that turkey, you're gonna be frying after that?

God, God, right, because that was my probably my biggest question I was wrestling with was like that kind of extreme end of it where it's like if you're totally isolated or something like, how does that benefit you or not?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I was thinking about, you know, a total you know, recluse who is religious and then a recluse that isn't.

Before this episode, I might have thought that the recluse that's religious might not be that as happy.

That doesn't seem very happy to me.

Yeah, but if you're compared to a recluse, like maybe maybe that person's like content, you know, like with living their life that way.

But it does make sense the kind of the higher calling the life after death that he's referring to that that it makes sense that would drive you towards a contentness.

Then I was also curious about his work with veterans because I wanted to know how religion does come up in those context and you know, like I was curious, like does he actively encourage it and how he kind of approaches that.

So typically, in a clinical situation, I would not encourage people to turn to religion.

I would listen to them, take a spiritual history and try to learn what's been their experiences in the past with religion.

You know, have they left their home religion because of you know, hurt and because of their lifestyle now, et cetera.

I would want to learn about that, just see how religion currently and in the past has influenced their their health and mental health, and pretty much just walk alongside of them as they're going through various things.

I might support whatever religion is there, you know, but I wouldn't necessarily introduce it.

That a lot of people, you know, maybe have a very religious upbringing and then reject it because maybe the you know, the religion doesn't accept their lifestyle or other reasons, and then they kind of move away from it and never kind of look back.

What would you say to someone like that, whether they maybe don't want to go back to whatever they grow up in or are a little nervous about exploring something new, what's your kind of response to that sort of angle.

Yeah, well, you know, there are so many different options in terms of different churches, different religious faith traditions that you could go into.

You know that that may be different from the faith tradition that you grew up in, and so there are a lot of options out there.

One thing we didn't cover was the fact that religion doesn't always make people happier, and sometimes people manipulate religion in ways that is hurtful for them and for others around them.

So, you know, it's anything very powerful can be used in a negative way to create unhappiness and poor health.

It happens, people get abused by clergy, you know, there are a radical religion, or people kill other people or their religion.

But again, if you look over all, it does seem to have a benefit when it's done in a sensible way, in a committed way, and in a way that most encourages love of God and love of neighbors.

I think you've got to have both of them in balance.

There's obviously tons of stories and studies about the decline in religiosity, what's caused that?

And then the second part is how do you think that could be restored?

Well, I think the the increase in science, which has certainly provided tremendous benefits, you know, to humanity, and the science world has kind of become the new source of truth.

You know, for a long time, it was the clergy and the ministers that were you know, influencing you know, sources of truth in the world.

But that's all changed now.

Now there's technology and science that are that are providing you know, us with great ability to control things in our world, and that's becoming more a source of truth as opposed to you know, a person's religious faith.

What do we do about this decline in religious involvement?

You know, religion is hard too, It's not like an easy pathway to follow.

You have to be self disciplined, you have to control your natural desires and all of these things, so it's hard to follow.

So what do you do about it?

Well, I think you want to keep an open mind, keep an open mind that you know what we're seeing and feeling and going through right now in this physical world.

This may not be all there is.

There may be something more, something that intersects with this physical world in some way that is that it's maybe impossible to study.

And recognizing that eighty percent of the world's population believes in God or a higher power, and so if you're looking at you know, beliefs in terms of you know, the supernatural, most people that there is something beyond just this life.

So just keep an open mind, and you know, life will teach you lessons if you let it.

If your mind is open, and consider maybe attending a church.

You know, if you've been part of a faith community before it, you know, you might consider going back and and seeing if if that fits for you.

And even if it doesn't fit for you, maybe ought to force yourself to do it, because you know there are tremendous benefits to your health and and you know, maybe even your life after death with regard to this, And it's a it's a pretty easy risk to to take because if there isn't anything after death, you know, you're not going to be any worse off.

You'll you'll just never know, uh, you know, and if there is something, then you'll be better off.

So you're you're you're not losing anything by developing a and engaging in a practice.

And we know that these practices do have a very positive effects on your health, your relationships, and and even your your physical health and your longevity.

So overall, I mean, what do you guys think of this?

Does it change your views or like your outlook on religion.

Not really, but it did.

It provided a lot of insight about like how people think about this.

I think all three of us said that we think that religions probably makes you more likely to be happy if you believe in it.

But it is interesting to hear about the faith part of it versus the community driven and part of it.

Where like if you ask someone who grew up Catholic, for example, just to keep using this example because it's my experience in America, they're probably not that religious today.

It's like a common trope.

Yeah, it's like they become less religious, right.

But there is probably like if they do, if they have kids or whatever and they felt like they wanted to be a part of some community, there does exist like a default way to do that.

I guess, yeah, versus like trying to find at like an art club or something like that.

Like at least you know that there's gonna be something around the corner from you where you could go do that if you wanted to.

Yeah, it feels less kind of feels less about the praying and the worship and more about like being a part of a community.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely tied into so much just cultural stuff in like how people are raised, even if it is pretty secular really in practice, Devinny, any takeaways from this, Yeah.

I guess to me, what it brought to mind is like, okay, religion has It's like it's this template for these things that, especially as you're getting older, can help you in life.

Like you're talking about community, belief in something beyond yourself, right, like drive towards something.

Yeah, And like I'm not religious.

I don't plan on becoming religious anytime soon, you know.

When I have kids, I don't plan on, you know, certainly enjoining a church or whatever.

So that it brings to mind to me, Oh, how are what are ways for me to instill these things into my life, my children's lives that are not tied to a church that you know, it's going to take a bit more work, Like man is saying, I can't just show up somewhere and be like, all right, these are we're all going to be a community.

And you know, like I think, you know, I don't go to church, but like I go to therapy and like I try to work on myself in different ways.

So I think in some ways, I'm already doing a version of like I don't have that thing, so like what is my thing or my way of doing this?

But it is like there's not as much structure to it.

Yeah, and it's certainly it's certainly not the case that if you're not religious then you can't be happy.

And it's like there's like that's a whole different thing.

Now.

To wrap things up, I'm going to try to connect for the local synagogue here in New York, go to a service and talk to a rabbi to get their take on the value of religion in these modern times.

Beautiful blessed right.

Everybody, All right, I'm back.

This is Noah.

What you're hearing right now is the Shabbat service.

I went to a congregation base in Katsurah.

I thought it was important for the episode to check out a religious service myself.

Not that I was expecting to have a major epiphany, but just to go in with an open mind and really see how it felt.

I'll write up some more thoughts on my experience for this week's newsletter, but for now, I wanted to share some bits of my conversation with the ten Sad rabb by Jason Klein about the role of religion in people's lives today.

Rabbi Clin broke it down three tenants Belonging, behaving, and believing.

I'm Rabbi Jason Klein.

Since July of twenty twenty four, I've been the senior Rabbi of Congregation bets Sinkata.

Rad Werkai Kaplan, the founder of the Jewish Reconstructions movement, kind of took the words belonging, behaving, and believing and really centered them around how people have religious experiences.

He talked about Judaism as a civilization, and often it's that belonging piece that sometimes gets saved for last when people talk about religion, because people somehow go right to God, God, God, God God, or what happens when I die?

Die, Die, Die Die, you know, instead of the piece that often really comes first, which is, have I just found a group of people with whom I'm happy to connect, a community where I feel like I can be myself, a community where I'd want to celebrate simply happy occasions in life, or figure you more, or even struggle together.

Sometimes I think that ritual gives us a framework to stop and mark certain moments.

Right, If I'm someone who prays three times a day, then no matter what.

I'm doing, there are going to be three times during the day where at least for a couple of minutes, I stop, I put my feet together, I face Jerusalem and say nineteen blessings.

And maybe that's sort of like a little baseline of something, but it's it feels powerful that even when I feel like the most distracted or the most stressed, that there's a little, a little gift in there to myself, you know, maybe a little focused connection between me and the divine.

And sometimes I think that when we talk about words like spiritual practice, right, this idea of practice is that, you know, not every time that we do a certain act like prayer, does it makes sense to expect to have this like earth shattering, transformative spiritual experience.

But by making room for some of these things, we do open the possibility that something different will happen, that we kind of shift our miliu for a moment.

Maybe that's what leads into the third piece, the third bee of believing, which is possibility coming to a mentality where we have choices in our life, where there's not just like a simple end of despairing position and instead creating a space to think about something in a different way, creating knowing that there could be rituals to mark moments of joy, to really stay in them and not just kind of move on to the next thing.

I think some of that ritual behavior can create opportunities.

I'm not even sure if the word is to quote unquote be happy, but I do think that only cultivate the awareness of our happiness.

That does something to our brains, and we can kind of come back to that to that place.

So the practical difference between like, Okay, that was delicious piece of caracake, now let me move on, versus like that was a delicious piece of karakeke.

I'm just gonna sit here for a minute and think, like, wow, how was really specials.

He's no such thing as the production of Kaleidoscope Content.

Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and make Guest Shot Secure.

The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devon Joseph.

Themon credits song by Manny, mixing by Steve Bone, Thanks Steve.

Our guest this week are doctor Harold Koenig and Rabbi Jason Klein.

Special thanks to Congregation Baits and Katsurah and Stephanie Kramer at the Pew Research Center.

Visit No Such Thing dot show to subscribe to dig into the research and see some other info on the subject.

If you have feedback for us or a question, our email is Manny Nodevin at gmail dot com, or you can also leave us voicemail by calling the number in our show notes.

Thanks, Hell's raids, Hell's rams, Hell's as Hell's No Such Thing.