Rainn Wilson and Maya on Navigating Change and Identity

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. [upbeat music] Pushkin. [singing] Hey, everyone. Earlier this year, I did a bunch of interviews for the launch of my book, The Other Side of Change. One of them was with the actor and comedian Rainn Wilson, best known as Dwight from The Office. Rainn and I covered so much ground in this conversation. We talked about the science of language development, my experience creating a job in the Obama White House, Rainn's personal reflections on faith and meditation, and what led me to select each of the stories that appear in my book. I really hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

[upbeat music] Hey there. It's me, Rainn Wilson, and I wanna dig into the human experience. I wanna have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hi, Maya.

Hi, Rainn.

It's so nice to meet you.

It's so nice to meet you, too. Thanks for having me.

I've so enjoyed your new book. I'm really excited to talk to you about it.

Thank you.

It's-

That means a lot

... it's called The Other Side of Change?

Yes.

Okay.

Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans.

And you have become...

Many things. [laughs]

A podcaster-

[laughs]

... and a bestselling author, and a cognitive scientist on the other side of other plans.

Lots of other plans.

In, in a weird way, this just evokes for me something that I've been undergoing over the last few years in my 50s, which is my whole life was acting.

Mm.

As soon as I started, well, I started later, I started at, like, 16, 17, and then pursued it through college and went to, to tr- you know, a repertory school, and theater, and off Broadway, and tours, and, you know, just trying to build my career, get a little bit better agent, and get a little bit better job, and make a little money, and try and support myself and study. And, and then, uh, of course, with Dwight, here I am, like, having kinda hit this home run-

Yes. [laughs]

... of like here's a great memorable character that is in the cultural zeitgeist and consciousness. Apparently, it's the most shared, uh, person or character on, like, the, what are they called? The emojis or... What are, what are those called?

Oh, gifs?

Yeah, like-

Yeah

... it's the most shared, like, gif, uh-

Yeah. I'm one of the sharers.

You, you share a lot of Dwight gifs.

Of course.

So there's my big, weird face-

[laughs]

... being shared billions of times. And-

I mean, it was, it's just one of the most superb characters that exists on TV

And, and it's, in a weird way, my entire life led up to creating that character, 'cause that's, like I said, when, when I was in acting school-

It was just brilliantly executed

... I learned how to-

Yeah

... create characters and play absurd circumstances with great seriousness, and create kind of clown and inhabit the body, and do physical comedy that still felt, you know, grounded in the real world. Like, I had a lot of training that led up to-

Sure

... to Dwight, and a lot of different roles that... And since Dwight, I've played a ton of really cool roles that are very different than Dwight. Not a lot of people have seen those roles, but