Valarie Kaur: Love Is How We Fight
PLUS — A preview of the new Soul Boom Workbook!
Greetings Soul Rebels!
This week on the Soul Boom podcast, Rainn sits down once more with that revolutionary lover of humanity, Valarie Kaur.
You might know Valarie from her viral TED Talk, her cross-country bus tours, one of her countless speaking engagements, or her bestselling books. Or maybe — just maybe — you remember her from one of her earlier visits to the pod. That’s right: Valarie has now achieved the rare Soul Boom trifecta — three appearances and counting.
In her first appearance on the podcast back in 2024, she introduced the Soul Boom audience to her vision of love as a force for social change — a world transformed by compassion and courage.
In today’s episode of the podcast (her third appearance on it), Rainn and Valarie pick up that thread again — this time in a moment when the world feels especially fragile.
Together they talk about the fierce urgency of love in an age of authoritarianism, polarization, and corrosive rhetoric. As Valarie puts it, the Revolutionary Love project is both political and deeply personal — a movement that begins with tending to the fire in our own hearts. “If we can learn to love ourselves,” she says, “we can love others. And if we can love others, we can remake the world.”
That, in many ways, is exactly the spirit that gave birth to The Soul Boom Workbook: Spiritual Tools for Modern Living.
And yes — we’re in the middle of a full-on Soul Boom Workbook moment right now (you might have noticed!). As part of this glorious blitz, we wanted to dedicate a special podcast episode entirely to the workbook itself. That’s why for Valarie’s second appearance on the podcast (just released this past Saturday) Valarie went through some sections of the Workbook with Rainn — because honestly, who better? Her Revolutionary Love and Soul Boom’s call for a spiritual revolution fit together perfectly — like chocolate and peanut butter (if peanut butter quoted Rumi, that is).
With all this talk about the workbook, perhaps you’re wondering:
Why a workbook? Isn’t one Soul Boom book enough?
Simply put, after Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, Rainn had hundreds of conversations with seekers, skeptics, and fellow travelers — and one question kept surfacing:
Where do we start?
How do we move from inspiration to practice — from talking about the inner life to actually living it?
This workbook is the Soul Boom answer. It’s not a sequel so much as a next step — a companion designed to turn the big ideas we’ve been exploring on the podcast into daily habits of wonder, gratitude, reflection, and action.
Rainn and his longtime collaborator Shabnam Mogharabi built it for everyone — the devout and the “spiritual but not religious,” the anxious and the curious, the deeply hopeful and the quietly skeptical. It’s not a manual for belief; it’s a playground for the soul.
When you open the workbook, there’s no sermon waiting — just questions and prompts. Gentle ones. Sometimes funny ones. Sometimes the kind that land in your chest and echo for a while.
One page might invite you to draw your soul — whatever that means to you. Another might ask what beauty looks like in your daily life. You may laugh at first, and then realize you’re actually learning how to see again.
One of our favorite gems is a little game called “Beauty Emergency.” You start a group text with friends and send each other photos of things that unexpectedly stop you in your tracks — a patch of sunlight, an overheard laugh, a tree doing its best impression of Beyoncé. It sounds simple, but it’s powerful. As Rainn notes, having an eye for beauty is one of the essential steps to living a richer life.
And that’s what this workbook really is: a way to train the eye — and the heart — to notice what’s sacred, right where you already are.
The book also offers space to process the hard stuff — on your own or with friends. As Valarie and Rainn worked through it together, a story from her early life rose to the surface: a cruel inner voice that formed in childhood, and how she learned to meet it with compassion. “I had to learn to mother myself,” she said. Rainn nodded: “That’s what we’re all trying to do.”
Moments like that are exactly what the workbook is meant to foster — learning to listen differently: to yourself, to others, and to the still, small voice within.
But of course, it wouldn’t be very Soul Boom-y if it stayed inside.
The workbook eventually turns outward and asks a few soul-stirring questions:
What kind of world do you want to help build?
What gifts do you already have that might serve that world?
Because a spiritual revolution can’t stay contained in one person — it has to spill out. That outward-facing section invites you to sketch, imagine, and write about the communities you long to create — not abstract utopias, but ordinary spaces where love and service might take root.
While the workbook explores some deep themes, it’s definitely not going to make you feel like a dour sourpuss. It’s full of humor, doodles, and detours — because joy is the point. You’ll bump into questions like: If your soul had a theme song, what would it be? Finding the fun in the soul’s journey is what it’s all about. Laughter and insight aren’t opposites — they’re twins.
Every page is approachable. You can spend ten minutes or ten months with it. You can do it alone, with your family, or start a virtual Workbook Circle with friends. It’s designed to meet you wherever you are — curious, doubtful, busy, burned out — and help you reconnect with what matters most.
When Rainn went on Morning Joe earlier this week, he joked, “Why the hell is the guy who played Dwight writing about spirituality?” He told the truth: in his twenties, he was drowning. Anxiety. Depression. Addiction.
Spirituality was Rainn’s way out of those dark places. And he wanted to share the tools that helped him heal and grow.
And that’s what this whole enterprise is all about: healing and growth. Personal, collective, planetary. Not through dogma or perfection, but through practice: noticing, creating, laughing, serving, loving.
It’s the same sage warrior path that Valarie speaks of — one that begins in the heart and ripples outward into the world.
We hope you’ll take this journey with us.
Start wherever you are. The spiritual journey begins exactly there.
With revolutionary love,
The Soul Boom Team
Thank you - for the reminder that love is more powerful than hate; for a space to explore, think, write, contemplate, heal, and share. And thank you to the Universe for once again providing exactly what I’m looking for when I need it.
Hey, there, I started the workbook this morning and have breezed through the first nine pages. I find that picking it up the very first thing in the morning (after feeding pets and making coffee, of course) will work best for me. Also reading a question and then writing the very first thoughts that come into my head. I never knew I was such a deep thinker! I'm somewhat profound, if I do say so. Thanks for the playful way the workbook is written. It feeds directly into my playfulness superpower.