We’re used to hostile online encounters with total strangers. It fuels the digital economy. But what if there were a way to experiment with radical emotional honesty with an anonymous other—much the same as you’d experience at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? The anonymous founder of This Life, an audio-only app built on anonymity, joins For the Life of the World to argue that emotional and spiritual progress is still possible at scale. "What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you." In this episode with Evan Rosa, Justin Smith (a pseudonym) reflects on what he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, the genius of Bill Wilson, and why our voices carry so much emotional weight, and how sharing them—even (and perhaps especially) anonymously—can be a transformative experience of growth. Together they discuss anonymity as a path to honesty, the "spiritual hitchhiker," negative emotion as a force that wants to win, design as destiny, and becoming a neighbor. They also weigh technology's limits and whether spiritual and emotional progress can scale. Episode Highlights "What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you." "I believe we live in a society that has given up on the idea of emotional or spiritual progress at scale." "Honesty with yourself is a skill." "If you begin to look at unhelpful negative emotion as a force that wants to win, what you'll notice is that we're in a fight that we're not well equipped for." "Meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people." About Justin Smith "Justin Smith" is a pseudonym. The guest is the founder of This Life, an audio-only iOS app he describes as an experiment in emotional and spiritual progress, built around anonymity, self-reflection, and what he calls the "spiritual hitchhiker." A Christian shaped by his time in Alcoholics Anonymous and the writing of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, he draws on figures from Martin Luther King Jr. to E.O. Wilson and Fred Rogers to argue that honesty with others is the foundation of spiritual growth. By his request, and in keeping with the episode's premise, his real name, biography, and social accounts are withheld. Learn more about the This Life app on the iOS App Store. Helpful Links and Resources This Life: An Experiment (App Store) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/this-life-an-experiment/id6746807306 Alcoholics Anonymous (the "Big Book"), by Bill Wilson: https://www.aa.org/the-big-book The Twelve Traditions of AA (Tradition Twelve, on anonymity): https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-traditions "On Being a Good Neighbor," Martin Luther King Jr.: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-iii-being-good-neighbor Show Notes Anonymous guest, identity withheld "Justin Smith"—not his real name The neighbor can be anonymous Startup founders and self-help gurus—equally annoying How the app works: an audio-only experiment Spoken note—talk to yourself, your God, or both "Spiritual hitchhiker"—paired daily with a stranger One rule: no politics "A much more intimate and powerful sort of access to a human consciousness." The voice as the best vehicle for the spiritual Looks always color how we treat each other Design is destiny "We live in a Star Wars civilization with stone age emotions" (E.O. Wilson) Bill Wilson refused Yale's honorary doctorate "Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities." https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-traditions Negative emotion as a force that wants to win "Honesty with yourself is a skill." Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mr. Rogers—all struggled "Meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people." No longer "people in my way at the Starbucks line"—strangers with inner lives Personal responsibility and the courage to become a neighbor #Anonymity #SpiritualGrowth #AlcoholicsAnonymous #BillWilson #Loneliness #DigitalWellbeing #Neighbor #EmotionalHealth #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #Honesty Production Notes - This podcast featured Justin Smith (Pseudonym) - Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa - Hosted by Evan Rosa - Production Assistance by Noah Senthil - A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about - Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give
We’re used to hostile online encounters with total strangers. It fuels the digital economy. But what if there were a way to experiment with radical emotional honesty with an anonymous other—much the same as you’d experience at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? The anonymous founder of This Life, an audio-only app built on anonymity, joins For the Life of the World to argue that emotional and spiritual progress is still possible at scale.
"What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you."
In this episode with Evan Rosa, Justin Smith (a pseudonym) reflects on what he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, the genius of Bill Wilson, and why our voices carry so much emotional weight, and how sharing them—even (and perhaps especially) anonymously—can be a transformative experience of growth. Together they discuss anonymity as a path to honesty, the "spiritual hitchhiker," negative emotion as a force that wants to win, design as destiny, and becoming a neighbor. They also weigh technology's limits and whether spiritual and emotional progress can scale.
Episode Highlights
"What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you."
"I believe we live in a society that has given up on the idea of emotional or spiritual progress at scale."
"Honesty with yourself is a skill."
"If you begin to look at unhelpful negative emotion as a force that wants to win, what you'll notice is that we're in a fight that we're not well equipped for."
"Meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people."
About Justin Smith
"Justin Smith" is a pseudonym. The guest is the founder of This Life, an audio-only iOS app he describes as an experiment in emotional and spiritual progress, built around anonymity, self-reflection, and what he calls the "spiritual hitchhiker." A Christian shaped by his time in Alcoholics Anonymous and the writing of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, he draws on figures from Martin Luther King Jr. to E.O. Wilson and Fred Rogers to argue that honesty with others is the foundation of spiritual growth. By his request, and in keeping with the episode's premise, his real name, biography, and social accounts are withheld. Learn more about the This Life app on the iOS App Store.
Helpful Links and Resources
This Life: An Experiment (App Store) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/this-life-an-experiment/id6746807306
Alcoholics Anonymous (the "Big Book"), by Bill Wilson: https://www.aa.org/the-big-book
The Twelve Traditions of AA (Tradition Twelve, on anonymity): https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-traditions
"On Being a Good Neighbor," Martin Luther King Jr.: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-iii-being-good-neighbor
Show Notes
Anonymous guest, identity withheld
"Justin Smith"—not his real name
The neighbor can be anonymous
Startup founders and self-help gurus—equally annoying
How the app works: an audio-only experiment
Spoken note—talk to yourself, your God, or both
"Spiritual hitchhiker"—paired daily with a stranger
One rule: no politics
"A much more intimate and powerful sort of access to a human consciousness."
The voice as the best vehicle for the spiritual
Looks always color how we treat each other
Design is destiny
"We live in a Star Wars civilization with stone age emotions" (E.O. Wilson)
Bill Wilson refused Yale's honorary doctorate
"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities." https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-traditions
Negative emotion as a force that wants to win
"Honesty with yourself is a skill."
Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mr. Rogers—all struggled
"Meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people."
No longer "people in my way at the Starbucks line"—strangers with inner lives
Personal responsibility and the courage to become a neighbor
#Anonymity #SpiritualGrowth #AlcoholicsAnonymous #BillWilson #Loneliness #DigitalWellbeing #Neighbor #EmotionalHealth #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #Honesty
Production Notes
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Evan Rosa: Hi friends. Before this episode, I just wanted to give another brief reminder that we're gonna be publishing just a few more weeks of episodes before taking a two month break, and we'll come back in September with brand new episodes. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions, requests, either people or series that you'd like to see featured on the show, you can write to faith at Yale dot edu and we will actually read it.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode from the Yale Center For Faith and Culture. This is for the life of the world, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.
Justin Smith: It's very difficult for me to think of somebody else who's had a better application of Christian doctrine in actionable form since Jesus.
Evan Rosa: He's not talking about a saint or a theologian. You're not gonna guess it. He's talking about Bill Wilson. Who's Bill Wilson? You might ask. Well, he's the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he's done a pretty good job of remaining anonymous, despite troves of people, so many people.
Citing him as the man that saved him.
Justin Smith: The most important thing that he did is he created a culture where people could connect and be honest. And to me, that combination, human connection and human honesty is the absolute building block of emotional or spiritual progress,
and I think it's just a really beautiful encapsulation of. Practical Christianity, and I think that Bill Wilson quote, it says, if we don't turn our interest to others, we will be torn down by our own negative feelings about the past. They'll come after us. It's only a matter of time.
Evan Rosa: Our guest, he's going by Justin Smith, isn't an expert theologian, he's not a philosopher.
He's an interesting guy with an interesting idea and an interesting app. Which raises interesting questions about what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves in the digital age.
Justin Smith: As EO Wilson said, we live in a Star Wars civilization with Stone age emotions, and I don't know anyone who kicks back at that for a second.
We've gotten nowhere. We're still as primitive emotionally as we ever have been.
Evan Rosa: And today in this episode, I'm going to have the first anonymous podcast guest that I've ever interviewed. He's the anonymous developer of this life. An experiment taking a cue from Bill Wilson. It's an app built around the principles of anonymity and the way that impacts our ability to connect emotionally and spiritually with other human beings.
Justin Smith: I really do think that the voice is the best mechanism we have for conveying and participating in the spiritual and in the emotional. No matter how decent or whatever a person you are, the looks of somebody is always going to. Play a part in the view that you bring to them. And I think if we really want to get to what actually matters, what's inside a person, take that away.
And again, this device gives us that. And the rest of the internet is pretty much the opposite, you know, especially a lot of the social sites. Look at how cool I am. Look at how funny, look at how good looking.
Evan Rosa: So Justin built an app with no faces, no names, no friending, no subscribing, no. Liking and only the briefest and most empathetic kind of commenting.
You record a few minutes of your present thoughts alone, talking to yourself, praying to God, maybe both. And the next day a stranger hears it. That's the anonymous spiritual hitchhiker.
I'll admit I was skeptical at first, but I did try the app because it was an experiment and I found that experiment interestingly profound.
Justin Smith: I think it re. Really has potential to pierce through and to connect to another human spirit because you are getting as close as you can to somebody's consciousness.
The person who's speaking themselves is getting as close to their consciousness as they might get, because in the quiet of our mind, it's difficult to develop long form thoughts and really explore how you feel.
Evan Rosa: The app is an embodiment of Xia love for the stranger, a kind of. Emotional hospitality in a digital environment that feels increasingly hostile and inhospitable.
Justin Smith: And if you don't get to know yourself better, it's very easy to get overwhelmed by the next crisis and the next thing and the next busy time with the wedding season, and the graduations and the bills and the job that you know have struggles with and the problems of that are happening in the wider world.
People need time to step back.
Evan Rosa: This episode is my first with an anonymous guest, Justin Smith. That is not his real name. He's the founder of this life, an audio only app. He calls an experiment in emotional and spiritual progress. In this conversation, we discuss the anonymous spiritual hitchhiker, the genius of Bill Wilson.
Honesty is a skill, the experience of positive and negative emotions and the force of both, and how to become a neighbor to anyone. In reach of our care, even a stranger. Thanks for listening today.
Justin, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.
Justin Smith: Thank you so much for having me, Evan. Really appreciate it.
Evan Rosa: Justin is not your real name, and we're not going to talk about your real name or real identity, and this is a fascinating way to start. Episode I, I've never started an episode with anyone like this, but I must say I'm pretty happy about doing this because the fact is there are anonymous others out there in the world that I consider to be my neighbor, insofar as they are in need and within reach of my care.
And in so far as we. Share the same species. I really do think that the concept of neighbor can be anonymous and it's just a fascinating thing to start an interview this way.
Justin Smith: Well, I really appreciate you, you honoring my request and I, I think there. There's the whole point of the app is so that people can be as honest with themselves as possible.
And I think that's the way people who are strangers can really, and people who are not strangers. Everyone can really create bonds that are meaningful. And I consider myself as another member of the app. I'm doing this as much for my own benefit is for anyone else's, and so I think it's. And there's two groups of people that are as annoying as anyone in the world, and it's startup founders who think they know how the world should work or how to save the world or make the world a better place.
And, uh, religious and sort of self-help gurus that also know better. So I, this kind of sits in the juxtaposition of both, or the intersection of both. And so I just wanna avoid that potential annoyance for people and for myself. So thank you.
Evan Rosa: Yeah. So Justin, give me a sense for how the app works. I want you to give the listener a, a nice description of, um, something they can't see but describing what the app is supposed to do.
Justin Smith: Sure. It's audio only. Right now it's available only on the app store. And we consider it an experiment in emotional and spiritual progress. There are three different experiences. The first is called a spoken note, and that's where you talk to yourself or your God or both, and you try to figure out what's going on in your life and how you can move forward in like the most productive and good energy way and reduce your vulnerability to negative emotion.
And then the next day, uh, you get paired up with one other person on the app that's called Dear Spiritual Hitchhiker. The only thing the two of you know about each other is that neither is a contact in neither other's phone. So it's gonna be a stranger, two of you, and for just that day until midnight.
You each get to hear up to three minutes of what the other person said to themselves the day before. And if you both choose, you can send each other a single text message of support just to say, Hey, I hope your mom's surgery goes well. Good luck with the new job, whatever. It's simple, easy. And then the final experience is called, uh, the one of the day some people aren't going to be comfortable speaking to themselves or out loud right away, and.
So either way, it's a nice way for everyone to have the experience of hearing one person's spoken, no one person said to themselves. And of course, we get that person's permission. And then there is this group experience where we're all gaining kind of knowledge of how one person goes about this very difficult and maddening process of trying to make spiritual emotional progress and live in greater peace with themselves.
As opposed to getting more weighed down by negative emotion. And we all get to learn from that. And, um, the other rule we have is no politics. We understand that's a major source of negative emotion for people these days, but it's just, it's so divisive rather than looking at yourself, which is really how spiritual and emotional progress happens.
It's looking at outside of yourself and saying. This person's to blame for my problems. And that's the opposite way we wanna hit, if we actually wanna live in greater peace with ourselves in reality. So, um, but those are the three experiences and individual with yourself one-on-one, and then, uh, group experience.
And I think all of those collectively are essential for, you know, spiritual health.
Evan Rosa: I mean, you call this life an experiment, like when you download the app, it's this life an experiment, and it feels that way to me as I've used it. But I want to drill down into what anonymity can do for honesty and I, I'll start by just narrating a little bit about my very first experience of listening to what you call.
A spiritual hitchhiker. This is an anonymous person to me. I don't know. In this case, I think her name and all I heard was her voice and, and I still remember what she said she, this was several days ago when I started using the app. She said, today I'm feeling a mix of hope and disappointment. And it took those few words for me to all of a sudden feel a dose of compassion for a stranger that I had not experienced in that way.
And I have experienced compassion for strangers before I have. But this was a surprising experience for me. And so I want to lay out some of the principles behind this life. Including and really formed around this idea of anonymity and spiritual hitchhiking, because I also have enjoyed just recording my own thoughts into it, of course.
But this has been a far more profound experience to me. I need the, these kinds of outlets, of course, like we all do, but my goodness, the opportunity to feel that way about somebody. Was remarkable and I'm grateful for it.
Justin Smith: Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that. And I, I think I thought about this idea for years.
It's like you try to work out your own issues, connect to what's going on in your life, control your own energy, take a step back, evaluate, and then as you. Allude to in spiritual hitchhiking, you get to hear how somebody else does that. And I had gone through and created a list of things that I thought were going to be useful about spiritus hitchhiking, including one that I think is still paramount in my mind, which is you get a break from yourself.
You know, you get a break from your own consciousness and you have the opportunity to feel empathy and concern as you described about somebody else. And it's, but the actual experience of it, like the actual, like getting to witness that such an intimate moment where you are not in the room and somebody is talking to themselves and you get to be a fly on the wall is really, even if it's with, I've done it and test.
You know, pilots with my friends, it's like they speak in a different way that I don't recognize when they're not speaking to me. It's a much more intimate and powerful sort of like access to a human consciousness. And I described it as like an emotional or spiritual tailwind. Even if the person
Evan Rosa: yeah,
Justin Smith: you know, is going through a difficult thing and doesn't come to some resolution or there's something about it that's, I care about another person and I want the best for them.
And that's so rare in the world in which we're living in right now, especially online, which is optimized to create division and attention and all the rest of it. It's just a nice reprieve to think, oh yeah, I, it's really nice for my energy to like people and to feel warm and to feel good thoughts for them, you know?
And, and I think it's really essential. A lot of the, you know, influences that I got more drawn into as I was working on this project really do focus on this question of how do we translate, you know, good ideas into practical action. And what dawned on me as I was working on this project is we have new tools and I think everyone reflexively because the tools have been designed in a way that are not optimized for human growth, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, whatever you wanna say.
Mm-hmm. I think people think. They're bad, but technology is just enables human ability. You know, it just enables us to do more than we can on our own. And so the tool can really facilitate. I think it, it has to, if we don't use connection at scale to facilitate good things, and we only allow it to drive negative thoughts and negative experiences, we, I don't see how we have much of a shot.
And so, and I think at the core of that, as you allude to, is this experience of the one-on-one. Yeah, it is such a unique situation and the anonymity that the tool allows us, you can't get that in a meetup group or whatever else. There's all sorts of weirdness and performance that goes into that. Mm-hmm.
And it's just, there's a lot of friction there. And so the tool can facilitate anonymity, and if you design it in a thoughtful way. Again, no one's performing for anyone else. Yeah, you are doing it just for you. How can I make my life better? How can I be a better person for the people in my life? What's going on in my mind that's holding me back?
Why do I feel overwhelmed by things? Work some of those things out and. You have to do that anyway, if you wanna make any spiritual or emotional progress. And then the second piece is, well, I've got this product anyway. Maybe it would be useful for someone else to hear what it's like to be a human from outside of themselves.
And that's such a rare experience in life.
Evan Rosa: The one-on-one element and the fact of, I wanna say the audio only experience as well. Which should feel familiar to anyone listening to this as an audio only experience? Well, I, I, I would put it this way, not being forced to understand a person through the kind of outer veneer of, as you say, performance or just like presentation or facade.
Instead, you get right to the voice. There's something intimate about listening to a person's voice only. It's like the kind of orality that's built into long oral tradition of passing on human stories and sharing life together. There is a kind of vulnerability that comes through with someone who does feel the space, to be honest.
Another, another note that I received in a one-on-one, I listened to a dad. I'm a dad to. To teenagers and he was talking about his two teenage kids and a miserable night that he had, and the conflicted feelings he felt about desiring quality time with them. So much hating the phones that were keeping them up in their room and hating the honestly, you know, resenting their, ignoring his invitation.
To help make dinner and it was so mundane. It was so quotidian and normal feeling and real because of that. And it's the kind of thing that too often during the day when we're gainfully seeking employment and so on and so forth, it feels like you don't have the time for something like that. How trivial.
I heard him, I just, it, it cut through and I heard him and I needed to hear this random stranger who I will never know. And I just sent, I sent back what, whatever note I could of just reception and just I hear you. I've got teenagers myself. Please be. Well, I mean, what, and that was the written note that I sent back.
Yeah. And I wanted to highlight at least these two stories of my own personal experience in the app because. It just, it did fill me with empathy and compassion and also a feeling of not being alone. And that's, that was maybe a more surprising element of this thing that I believe that you've stumbled on, um, is that there's something very, very curious about.
Even though they're anonymous, I feel less alone. Yeah. I feel less alone in this.
Justin Smith: Absolutely.
Evan Rosa: To know that there's a community that you've already built around the app, that people are using it and that people are doing it and sharing. I can see how this could get, well, we'll talk a little bit about this too, but addictive, like it's in a good way, the kind of thing that that creates that kind of habitual pattern of seeking a compassionate experience of the other instead of what is the norm, which is like the unknown troll.
The feeling like seeing someone in an Instagram post, in an Instagram comment section, a Substack comment, a local newspaper comment, and you think, I don't know you, but I don't like you. Just to be frank, this is a totally different experience and I bet let's just remember that it's possible that I've heard somebody.
That also made those comments that might also be making those comments on Instagram subs, local paper, website, and it's an interesting experiment for me.
Justin Smith: Well, I really do think that the voice is the best mechanism we have for conveying and participating in the in the spiritual. In the emotional. And I think no matter how decent or whatever a person you are, the looks of somebody is always going to play a part in the view that you bring to them.
And I think if we really want to get to what actually matters, what's inside a person, take that away. And again, this device gives us that, and the rest of the internet is pretty much the opposite, especially. A lot of the social sites, look at how cool I am, look at how funny, look at how good looking, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think it really has potential to pierce through and to connect to another human spirit because you are getting as close as you can mm-hmm. To somebody's consciousness. Somebody, the person who's speaking themselves is getting as close to their consciousness as they might get because. In the quiet of our mind, it's difficult to develop long form thoughts and really explore how you feel.
And if you don't do that, and if you don't get to know yourself better, and if you don't get to know and develop a theory of what this experience is and what you wanna get out of it in terms of life.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: It's very easy to get overwhelmed by the next crisis and the next thing and the next busy time with the wedding season and the graduations and the bills and the job that you don't have struggles with.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: And the problems of that are happening in the wider world. It's like you need, people need time to step back. Mm-hmm. And what I think is really nice about. About being able to do this is that it doesn't matter what time of day it is or what you're going through. Yeah. Everyone always has their phone.
You, you, all of your friends on the West coast or east coast could be asleep. Something happens. You need your therapist. What, whatever it is, you always have your phone and you can step back and begin to make sense of it yourself. Mm. And then again, one of the things that's really central to the idea when I started and as I developed this over time, was the idea that unhelpful negative emotion behaves like a force that wants to win.
And if you act and that that goes along, it's another way of saying a lot of like ways that people in psych psychology or therapy talk about you. You wanna observe your emotions, you don't wanna just experience them as you. So getting that sort of analytical distance, but I think it's better achieved if you look at it, is there's a force with, it's not just, I'm not my emotions or I'm not my what I'm feeling.
Who am I? But if you think, okay, well there's a negative force within each of us and all major religions care less about the metaphysics of this, I don't think it's worth time, like wasting time with it. But nonetheless, as a Christian, you know, I have my own belief system, but I don't think people should get bogged down on it.
Just run that model for a bit and see how it works out.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, whether it's samsara or original sin. Or what, whatever. Like there's
Justin Smith: the devil, there is
Evan Rosa: that commonality. Yeah.
Justin Smith: Every culture is recognized this as a sort of feature of being a human.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: And then, you know, we have two main sort of avenues by which we can approach, how do we try to make progress and navigate this force that we're stuck with?
And one is. We stick mainly to ourselves, maybe to our little family unit in which there's some honesty, but even within the family unit, when you're married, you don't wanna go to your wife every day and there's, you have things that come at you every day that are less than pleasant that you had to deal with, that you have to motivate yourself for, that you have to navigate.
Like you, you probably don't have. You, you obviously don't spend 12. No one spends 12 hours a day with their spouse. So you get only a small amount of time and you wanna spend that time not dumping your problems on your significant other, which are going to be there the next day. And they're, you're not sure the worst of 'em, you're not sure you can get over.
And so it's, but other people have problems too. And it's, now this becomes, that's why it is an experiment if. Our society. It, I don't think I, I haven't talked to her to anyone in a very long time, which is a very strange phenomena that feels like things are headed in a good path.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: Emotionally at the societal level.
Yeah. And so if that's kind of consensus. You don't even have to say it anymore because it's so dominant as an opinion. Well, it's in time to run experiments. I, I believe we live in a society that has given up on the idea of emotional or spiritual progress at scale.
Evan Rosa: So much of this, I mean, it makes me want to dive into some of the principles that helped to ground.
You are cultivating this, and I think what I want to first appreciate is that there are principles even behind your app, that it's not a pure capitalist enterprise, that you are not seeking recognition for making it. It's a gift that you're giving to the world to do it in just such a way, and I hope it does contribute to your own wellbeing, but.
But the principles behind it I think are really powerful. And the way it fits into the concept of becoming a neighbor to each other really comes. Well, I think I, I feel like where I most deeply resonated with it is in your reliance on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, bill Wilson.
Justin Smith: Mm-hmm.
Evan Rosa: And so I wanted to spend some time.
Working through his understanding of Alcoholics Anonymous and the proof is out there in the success of that program which grew so far beyond himself. I would just start with a quote from him and it's, it is speaking directly to anonymity, and this is still in keeping with the spiritual hitchhiking and anonymous one-on-ones.
Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions. He's talking about AA traditions ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. And I think you've already made great points about this already, but I also want to point out that's a direct quote. From a letter he wrote back to Yale University when they offered to confer upon him an honorary doctorate in law.
He never finished his doctorate or his degree in law because of the alcoholism, and he said no. He said no in order to fulfill. This kind of principle, and it's just a profound thing to do. And I believe he, he said no to other honor, honors and honorary degrees and all sorts of, uh, praise.
Justin Smith: Absolutely. Yeah.
I just think he's, I think he's, in my mind, uh, it's very difficult for me to think of somebody else who's had a better application of Christian doctrine in actionable form. Since Jesus,
Evan Rosa: you're not crazy for saying it.
Justin Smith: Yeah. And I think it's unfortunate that at a time when our society, as I said earlier, I think has given up on emotional or spiritual progress.
It, I don't even think it's on the radar at scale.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: Because it seems so impossible.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: But as I think I told you before, I worked with a guy who was very bright and he had this great phrase, design his destiny. Within human systems, within systems that connect us or shape our environment, I really believe that's true.
They create and facilitate the interactions in certain ways. Great architecture, a great vibe in a restaurant. It brings up the mood of the people, and what we've designed so far in the internet has been designed for people to stay on longer and to click. Yeah, and to get upset. 'cause that's what drives, that's what keeps people busy.
So if we can change that fundamental design from like a, from a, that, that allows people at a grassroots level to connect with each other and themselves in a different way, then change at scale shouldn't be impossible. Thomas Edison had a simple insight on this with, when there's no experimenting, there's no progress.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: And if we're not A, we have to identify the problem and then B, we have to start running experiments. And so if this project led nowhere, other than to get out the idea that it's an important time in human development and human history, and we have new tools to do it, to run experiments.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: In trying to help each other feel better about ourselves in reality rather than.
More negative emotion and given all that humans have accomplished in the history, in our history, and people are now seriously talking about going to new planets. Yeah. From where we came from, where we came, and the idea that like a problem that we all share. Trying to feel decent about ourselves and the experience of life.
Mm-hmm. A problem that we all share. That's one that we can't get, make any progress on whatsoever. As EO Wilson said, we live in a Star Wars civilization with stone age emotions, and I don't know anyone who kicks back at that for a second.
Evan Rosa: No.
Justin Smith: Right. And so knowing that is
Evan Rosa: brain still. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
Justin Smith: We've gotten nowhere. We're still as primitive emotionally as we ever have been. And so I think to look back to people like Bill Wilson and say, okay, he took a group of people who seemed least likely to be able to make emotional or spiritual progress. They're, they were incurable ate, who were destroying their lives and the lives of everyone around them.
Alcoholics. Mm-hmm. Chronic alcoholics.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: And I've never seen so much. Spiritual emotional progress in a group of people, and they worked very hard for it, that they go to meetings every day. And what the most important thing that he did in that paragraph that you read about anonymity. What's so critical about it is he created a culture where people could connect and be honest.
Yeah. And to me that is that combination. Human connection and human honesty is the absolute like building block of emotional or spiritual progress. And again, just to define that term.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: There it is a progress and feeling greater peace with yourself and reality as opposed to greater negative emotion.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: And those are the only two choices we get with how we experience life emotionally or spiritually. And ultimately that's what this experience is. That's how we experience life. I believe we're called to make progress during the course of our life, and I think it's very much in our best interest collectively and individually to try to do that.
And we live in a world that is increasingly antagonistic to that. We live in a world that is aimlessly competitive and becoming more competitive by the second. And now we're talking about technology that really has a way to ramp that up so that most of us are not needed, apparently. And so going back to your concept of neighbor, that that's again the building block of Christian faith.
You try to love God and you try to love your neighbor. That's the only, those are really it. Mm-hmm. That's what it comes down to.
Evan Rosa: That's right.
Justin Smith: And there it's very difficult. Martin Luther King talks about the story of the Good Samaritan. And he says, I understand why those other folks pass by. It was dark at night.
It's narrow street. It's scared. It takes courage. It takes courage to love your neighbor In any fashion, the person might think you're weird. They might be off, put off by it. They might try to cling to you too much. There's a lot of things that go wrong when you go in person one-on-one and try to help somebody with whatever, anything.
Evan Rosa: Yeah,
Justin Smith: people are just like, why is this person coming to me? So how do you basically remove that friction layer for people to be to our neighbors? Co humans on the, they share the same breath and the Kennedy language and moment in time. Okay? Mm-hmm. How do we enable that? Again, we have a tool that can allow the passage of emotional experience, most intimate emotional experience one can capture without physical connection and.
It, it in fact, physical connection likely diminishes people's ability to be honest. Because again, you're looking at the person, how, what is this person? Do I wanna crisis this person? Do I wanna even spend time with this person? All of that fades away. It's not done for the other person, it's done for each one of us.
And that is the journey that each one of us has to go through. But the neighborly aspect of it is what's really kind, is to care about somebody else, and then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, this brings out the honesty stuff and the, and I think the, I love the, honestly, what I think plenty of folks would feel, at least intuitively controversial around, yeah.
I mean, being in someone's physical presence does diminish the capacity to be honest. All of a sudden, there's huge pressure to appear a particular way in front of them. And so by cutting that out and by making it anonymous. It just facilitates one's own ability to open up, to tell the truth about their, even about something like, like I was mentioning earlier, just utterly mundane, but it's the entry point, right?
This kind of rigorous self-honesty to, to start removing whatever self deception. Whatever rationalization, whatever kind of denial, whatever stuff keeps us in our negative spirals. And of course that is straight out of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's gonna be directly related to any kind of substance abuse, but it also di directly affects our emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
This, that's what's, I think another surprising element here is just like it's an experiment in honesty.
Justin Smith: Yeah, it, uh, thank you for saying that. I, I really agree that's, that that's at core what it is. Right. And I, a couple of things that I've learned about honesty, or one main thing, which is like honesty with yourself is a skill.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm. And
Justin Smith: it's, that should be known from the outset. I think people just think of honesty as a binary, and I think most people think of the binary as if I'm being honest. I'm basically dumping on myself, tearing myself apart for the things that I don't like about myself that I've been avoiding by engaging in the bad habits compulsively that I engage in.
When I deal negative, emotion come down on me and then I kind of twist and turn and try to steer away from it with it. Whatever distraction I can avail myself.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, just self laceration.
Justin Smith: Or just even just, you can throw yourself into be being busy with other people or being busy with work or any sort of distraction.
But self laceration is definitely a popular one. And then if you're not lacerating, maybe you're destroying yourself with some substance or some other behavior being online, 17 out, whatever it is, unlimited time on to just not have to run from it. You know, and neither of those two modalities get you anywhere other than a, a building sense that you are stuck and it, you're a hopeless cause and you, and you're getting older.
Evan Rosa: Yeah. Give me more about what you have found inspiring about the tradition of AA Bill Wilson's principles and how that kind of has informed. Some of the, like, some of the build for this life.
Justin Smith: Yeah. I, I think one of the things that, that really impressed me about AA was like, what I learned by, by, I was in it for a while, I didn't.
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: I had, I would say, a spiritual problem and I, it manifested as me drinking sometimes destructively, you know, but I had no appetite for drinking regularly and most of the time I. I never over drank, but it was, it was it occasioned enough? It happened enough where I thought, you know what? This is worthwhile looking into.
Yeah. And I'm so glad I did I, because I did learn things that I could not have learned by just studying it from the outside. Right. And one of those things, and I think this is at least I grew up in the Catholic church, but. I think it's common in, in other Western philosophies, especially as Christianity in certain respects.
When I was growing up, it didn't seem like a path to true enlightenment, more the Eastern religions did for people.
Evan Rosa: Hmm.
Justin Smith: And so I think I had thought about my own spiritual or emotional development really, as being like a fully inside job. You know, I had to meditate, I had to focus on my own self and what I learned.
AA was, I really think meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: There's no other way I would've learned that other than seeing it for and experiencing it firsthand and having it wash over you. And the same thing that you're talking about with regard to, you heard somebody from three or four days ago, it's like, how many conversations do you remember from three or four days ago?
But this thing, because it paired honesty with an emotion was so powerful for you. The, the experience of having. The person's voice, plus the honesty, plus the emotion, I think creates a different memory in our mind than normal conversation or somebody lecturing or speaking to an audience. And I think there's.
It's not quite Jesus talking in parables, but it's, there's something that sticks in the mind at a much deeper level when you hear people experiencing real emotion, and I think your mind subconsciously knows this is information that that actually can serve me. It's not that people don't know the right things to do.
Yeah, it's that people don't have the perspective and the motivation to go through it. And I think having this opportunity to learn from pe other people from the outside without having to have the experience of our ourselves and having the reminder of, oh, yes, you can see in other people so much more clearly the patterns and struggles that we're all up against than you can in yourself.
The identification becomes so close of here I am messing up again. It's so, it's such a dominant blocking force, and that's why I say if you begin to look at unhelpful negative emotion as a force that wants to win. What you'll notice is that we're in a fight that we're not well equipped for. It's a more powerful force against us one-on-one.
Everyone is outmatched. And as I said to you in an earlier conversation, I wasn't sure that was the case until I studied the lives of the most virtuous people I could think of. And the ones from the 20th century that I spent some time on were Nelson Mendela. Mother Theresa and Mr. Rogers and all of them struggled with significant negative emotion at the end of their lives.
And so there's no way out of it. And so we can only cope with it. And I think what AA to bring it back to that taught me was this is impossible outside of a group and out or outside of a. A group, like not just one person, but like a group that you can be honest with and there's a culture of honesty and that you can learn from each other, and that you then, that each other's efforts can help motivate one another to actually continue to try when it seems like it's pointless and hopeless and all the rest of it, which inevitably that weight falls on all of us.
The,
Evan Rosa: the fact that just simply listening, not exploiting someone for more information, not having some standard of like, you know, what are you going to, what kind of contribution are you gonna make? To me, it's just a simple act of listening to the other, and it has this way of restoring trust, but it's built on, built importantly.
On the assumption of honesty, and then, and I can, so many of us could just, I'm sure, speak the same thing, but I can speak for myself confidently in saying that it's difficult to open up about things we're bad at in public. It's difficult to admit our failures, where it's soaked in shame and the way that.
The simple act of honesty with another person rather than trying to sort it out privately. There is something to privacy, of course.
Justin Smith: Mm-hmm.
Evan Rosa: But the gift of honesty is a kind of freedom, and it restores connection. It can restore trust. And my goodness, I mean, there's just not enough of it because there's so much fear about admitting to failure and so much fear about appearing weak.
Appearing vulnerable. I mean, it's gendered. Mm-hmm. It's racialized. It's definitely a matter of class, and it's just a hard thing to do and that's why it's just like to tell the truth, to be honest. To represent oneself just as you are is like this fleeting gift. It's all too rare. Yep.
Justin Smith: Yeah. Well, I really like everything you said.
It's, it's. I feel lucky to be working on a project that I believe in, and I think you're exactly right. I think within a group, being honest is, I don't even like it because you know, especially with an ai, it was fine because it's normal, but within a group that's not completely normal. It's, I don't want people coming up and saying, oh my gosh, Justin, you are so.
You are so brave. You know, it's like, I, I, I don't wanna hear people be brave, you know? It just, it all feels performative to me. And then on the one-on-one, and then it's like, what do I get some sort of artificial high that I confess to a group, and then people come up and they give me a condolence and hug and say, that was great.
And then I go back to my life and then one-on-one. It's like most of the problems that we all have, as you say, laced with shame and darkness and all the rest of it. If we thought we could reasonably springboard out of them just by telling somebody else we would've done that. A long time ago. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
We know that the things that we are, what we're unhappy about ourselves are real battles that we're, and for the ones that are the worst, that we're not sure we'll even ever get over there, that's, we're on this precipice of like, how is, how am I gonna, am I gonna be heroic or am I going to be defeated by this thing?
Evan Rosa: Mm-hmm.
Justin Smith: Everyone has that. Everyone. And so why would you burden somebody with that? When do you know? I know what I have to do. I just have to find the other mo, the motivation telling this person, yes, it might help and sometimes it's, it is a good idea, but to have that as a, you need that constantly. And so I think as you say, this ability to unburden yourself of that, you can say just a to yourself, that in itself is very valuable.
Not being bottled up with the things that are overwhelming and frightening you and bringing you down and then. B, another human being hears them and you're still alive and fine. And in fact you hear some aspect of that and another person and the two of you can now come together in what I do think is like properly called the spiritual moment.
And support one another. And I think every time I hear somebody, it's been, man, it's nice to know there are other decent people in the world and I wanna try more because there are more, there are decent people in the world and I wanna be in a position to help them.
Evan Rosa: Here's another Bill Wilson. We have to turn our interests toward others, lest we be overwhelmed by our own conflicts and difficulties, which rise out of the past to tear us down. And I feel like that is right in the sweet spot of what we're currently talking about, which is just simply open up and, and. I think it's sort of that mutual gift of connection, that it is a kind of unburdening of the self, but also an unburdening of the other.
And when there's truth between you, it, it somehow becomes innocuous. The failure can become like, like dissolved again or real, but can no longer tear us down. Real, it's true from the past. It is a real failure. It has to be said as such. That's part of being honest about it, but it has this flavor of reconciliation, of forgiveness, of like removing shame, uh, of removing and separating a person from the wrongs or from the, from the pain.
And that's, I don't know, that's incredible to me. I think that's a, an amazing psychological. Human fact about us.
Justin Smith: Yeah. I, I just wanna return thank you to the Bill Wilson quote that you started with, and. To me, it talked that I just love, he's such a brilliant writer. He was such a brilliant speaker. It's everyone should, who cares about making spiritual, emotional progress?
I blame Alcoholics Anonymous a little bit. Selfishly wanna keep him to themselves because they do rightfully feel like this man has been the most important man and person in my life. This is the person that saved me, you know? And so, and he's ours. And somehow we, we all have to learn from him. We all have to learn from him.
We all have the same problems.
Evan Rosa: I think I'm realizing that. Yeah. And that's why I wanted to do more with you on this. I think you're helping me see that a lot more.
Justin Smith: Yeah. And I think it's just a really beautiful encapsulation of practical Christianity. It's, I think for lots of people, religion or morality or whatever else can come down to, well, this is the, this is the right way to to be because it's just the right way to be and it's nice to be nice to people and you should treat each other well.
And I think that Bill Wilson. Quote, it says, if we don't turn our interest to others, like we will be torn down.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: By our own negative feelings about the past, they'll come after us. It's only a matter of time. And so I think that is like a prescriptive, like being decent to each other, whatever, you know, idiom of religion that comes through all, they all say that is not a way to get into heaven.
Maybe it is, but it's a way to not make this a hell ultimately. Right. Because every other way doesn't work. And so in, again, returning to that question of like how Martin Luther King would talk about like how do we have to learn to love each other? We have to learn to love each other. That has to actively happen.
You know, just like people in their own individual eyes feel like somehow it'll work out. I don't know how, but I'm a good person, blah, blah, blah. We have the same collective feelings. It's beginning to melt off. 'cause the, it was tied a lot to, oh, things will get so much better with technology that life will just ne naturally get better.
And we're beginning to, as we get the first glimpses of a really new human existence with AI and robots. And the potential speed at which this all could occur. And it's probably been in the ether for at least since 2012. But technology is not making things better. It's, it didn't flat. In fact, the coin is flipping and now it appears it's gonna drive things into a horrific, like free for all because it becomes too much of a winter take all environment.
And people don't like to live on subsistence. So we've got real dangers. I do think if we don't start now, if we don't like become conscious now and not through phony self-aggrandizing, people coming out and saying, I've got the answer and here's how we have to live and everybody follow me, it's, but just helping each other.
And then the question is, how do we remove the friction from doing that? How do we take that principle and actually practically apply it? And again. My sense is we have to start running experiments and because so many people are so removed from each other in terms of like people you don't know, strangers to each other, and because these devices are driving us further apart, physic like literally, you know, we just spend less time together because we're looking at our phones and politically in all sorts of different ways.
How people are less inclined to, to bump into each other in the physical world. So we have to use these devices. And then what could possibly make you not dislike somebody and actually feel something good towards them? And how do you love one another? If you don't really know each other, you can't.
Evan Rosa: Right.
Justin Smith: You like the idea of just a human being that, you know, kind of looks like Evan or whatever it is.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Justin Smith: And, but how do I actually love you unless I get to know you at a deep level? And why would we ever do that? There's nothing better in the world than meeting good people, but we have the opportunity to love the proverbial neighbor, like the pe, the strangers, we don't know because.
After you have a few handful of those experiences, you don't walk. It changes, at least from my experience, how I walk around and look at regular people in life. I no longer think of them as just people in my way at the Starbucks line or people that are posing for Insta-famous photos in front of the cool spot in the city.
It's just those are people with these internal lives that I can imagine because I've experienced other people's internal. Intimate life at a very deep level. And so it just enables and breaks down that first level. And then I don't think the online connection is gonna be the end all be all. But I don't think if we don't start with that, then I don't think we have a serious chance of spreading a movement that is designed to help people help each other with this most central challenge.
And the one is that it's going to decide the fate of our species more than anything else. And so don't take these stories. From the past and including, and especially Christianity as anything but what they are, it's, this is like existence. This is like a very, like what we are in a spiritual or emotional battle between a negative force and a Transcendently peaceful force.
And a loving force. Yeah, and we can talk about that till we're blue in the face. We have to figure out ways to live that. And living that requires each other's help or the religions that we have wouldn't be focused on the central truths in which they're focused on, which most everyone knows in their hearts when they live that way.
We have to use this advantage that we have of empathy with other people to make ourselves better. We've got a lot of things going against. Us in terms of making progress on this spiritual emotional challenge.
Evan Rosa: All of this is a kind of invitation to personal responsibility, the kind of personal responsibility that I want to challenge myself. And your app helps with this to become a neighbor to others. And it starts with a kind of this acceptance of personal responsibility, an acceptance of the challenge, to be honest.
And just like experiments in being, it's an experiment in being, which politic till it takes courage to be and, and to find that, I think your app is helping to create that space. It's creating a space for people to become courageous in their being. Take responsibility, reach out, genuinely be a neighbor to the other.
It's a matter of urgency that we become neighbors to each other.
Justin Smith: Amen. Amen. And yeah, I really think that on the, I think it's like it's, I like to think of it first as you are, you have to, you, you have to want to do well in your life emotionally and spiritually. Once you acknowledge that's the case, that's your ultimate goal is you've got this pretty long, 70, 80, whatever years in 90, if you're lucky or something like that on Lucky.
I don't know. You've got this span of time and it's increasingly clear how to spend that span. Well, and so I think. But you wanna have a, as you say, personal responsibility, discipline within your own life so that you can achieve things and then also be able to show up for others in a way that's really helps others rather than brings them down.
And, but I like to think about it as wanting to create a life that you feel decent about. Personal responsibility will follow once you decide that's, I'm serious about that first goal. And then for therefore personal responsibility, it doesn't feel like just like a daily chore that one has to do X, Y, and Z and not eat and go to the gym and be focused while they're foc, while they're supposed to be at work.
And all of the myriad of. Any one number of things that could trip us up and lead us into feeling, oh, you've done it again, Evan, or, oh, you've done it again Justin, you might as well get quit now and eat the entire bag. And so I think it's like how, if I wanna live in a state of honesty with myself, because I think that is the only way to get to life that I feel decent about, some peace about, then personal responsibility will naturally follow.
All and so many other good worthwhile things. And then I think again, when you do this, it, there is a danger to it. Like you can kick the hornet's nest and all of a sudden all of these sort of skeletons, these things from the past that Bill Wilson talk about do come back to, to tear you down. Mm-hmm. And so that's why I think the connection to the other is so.
Essential and so useful. And I think, again, when you look at unhelpful negative emotion in the way that I spoke about at the outset, which is like a force that wants to win, one of the things that I noticed is that's what it wants to convince people is like they cannot be useful. And that's a really poisonous idea.
But when you're weighed down by negative emotion, it's. It's kind of true. Mr. Rogers talks about this on love. It's like, uh, he talks about wanting to be the best receiver of love that he possibly can be.
Evan Rosa: Oh yeah.
Justin Smith: And, and that's why it's the best p most piercing version of it you could get is an undiluted experience of somebody else's emotion in real time as it's experienced and spoken.
Because it is such a nuanced challenge, it gives you such a unique view of it and an indelible memory of here's what we're up against and, oh yeah, I like people and I want the best for them. And that, that, that's all really good for people's emotion.
Evan Rosa: It's a permission to just simply. B and, and it, and it can remove a lot of the obstacles that would otherwise really cloud out the space and overly complicate it.
But the simplicity of simply being in front of another anonymous other is, it's a surprising thing, but it's, it's a lift and it's, and if it does move us toward, yeah, becoming the kind of neighbor that can re receive as well as give that love, it's a gift we're giving each other. Justin, this is such a unique conversation to have with you.
I'm so grateful for. The creativity that you brought to this. Um, it's truly unique and a wonderful experiment. I'm gonna enjoy continuing. I,
Justin Smith: I can't thank you enough, Evan, I've, I'm a fan of the podcast and I love the energy that you bring and. To have the opportunity to tell your audience about this. I just think you're a really good dude and it's really nice to meet nice people who are working in this area.
And I respect what you're doing immensely and I suspect that you have an audience that that feels similarly, and I would love those people to come on and check us out.
Evan Rosa: Well, I agree and I recommend it.
Justin Smith: Thank you so much.
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