How Soul Boom And Companion Arts Are Reimagining Spiritual Storytelling
Afdhel Aziz, Ford Bowers, Shabnam Mogharabi and Rainn Wilson discussing Soul Boom at GOODcon LA 2025 | @Kacie Tominta
In a world where loneliness is rising, trust is fraying, and timelines are flooded with doom, stories that uplift the human spirit can feel like a rare resource. Yet there is a growing constellation of creators who are trying to change that, not by ignoring the darkness, but by offering more meaningful light.
Soul Boom is one of those efforts. The spiritual media project created and hosted by Rainn Wilson has become a playful yet profound space for conversations about meaning, psychology, and the life of the soul. Around it stands a small but committed ecosystem: producer, writer, and collaborator Shabnam Mogharabi, and Companion Arts, the media studio led by Ford Bowers that helps bring Soul Boom and other values-driven projects to life.
Together, through Soul Boom, The Joy Brigade, and Companion Arts, they are trying to build media that is as entertaining as it is spiritually nourishing.
Shabnam Mogharabi | Soul Boom
Why Stories Of Hope Matter Right Now
Mogharabi is clear about the stakes of this cultural moment.
“We live in strange times, sociologically and psychologically,” she notes. “A quarter of the world feels lonely regularly. Trust in others is at an all-time low. Adults report feeling more angry, dysregulated, and overwhelmed than ever before.”
She connects that to what younger generations are feeling. “We have rampant misinformation and a proliferation of doom in our headlines, social reels, and films. It is no wonder more than 40% of young adults feel hopeless about the future. Yet hope is an unlimited resource. And moving, inspiring stories rooted in ancient wisdom have the ability to plant seeds of hope in the human heart. We need storytelling to ignite and boom our beautiful souls now more than ever,” she continues.
Bowers has built Companion Arts around that conviction.
“That is exactly why Companion Arts exists because we believe people are inherently noble and deserve media that appeals to their higher nature, to their compassion, and their sense of purpose,” he explains. “We want to elevate, but that only matters if we have first earned your attention. If it is a Companion Arts project, it is because it is engaging, whether that is emotionally moving, intellectually stimulating, or simply entertaining. This is also why Soul Boom is a perfect flagship for us. It beautifies the cultural discourse, but it is also just a lot of fun. It is Rainn Wilson, after all.”
Storytelling As A Spiritual Practice
Ford Bowers | Companion Arts
Across Soul Boom, The Joy Brigade, and Companion Arts, there is a shared belief that creating is an act of service.
“I think all of us treat our work as an act of service. Our processes and everything we help create are done in that spirit,” Bowers reflects. “We do not treat attention as a commodity; we believe your attention is sacred. We want to contribute meaningfully to the cultural conversation, to foster understanding and not partisanship or contempt. For us, creating becomes a spiritual practice when it is done for the enrichment of the world and not just oneself. Companion Arts is about bringing people together and honoring the dignity of all.”
Mogharabi sees The Joy Brigade and Soul Boom as expressions of the same spiritual impulse.
“For me, The Joy Brigade is about joyfully marching towards the uplifting and unifying power of a story well told,” she shares. “And Soul Boom’s entire mission is to create playful, practical, and profound media that sparks spiritual conversation.”
She is blunt about the rest of the media landscape. “There is plenty of slop out there already. And AI will make that slop pile even larger. But the telling of beautiful human stories – whether on cave walls, in Bible parables, epic novels, or cinematic worlds – is a vital part of the human experience. Our company missions are all tentacles of our deeply personal and spiritually rooted desires to honor the art and beauty of storytelling,” she adds.
Operationalizing Values In The Business
Turning those ideals into operating principles is not easy. Mogharabi has spent years wrestling with that question.
“I spent years at SoulPancake and later Participant trying to operationalize values and let me tell you, it is hard. Full stop,” she reflects. “What I have ultimately learned is that the best way to build a business model with integrity is to hire kind, caring people, lead with transparency and a service mindset, be clear about expectations, and always try to do the right thing. And when you make mistakes, own up to it. A company’s culture boils down to its people and processes, so if you nail those, the rest tends to fall in place.”
Bowers is evolving Companion Arts’ model along similar lines.
“At Companion, we are also trying to innovate our business model in a way that coheres with our ethos. Our model is creator-forward,” he explains. “We invest in creators and in their IP without demanding control. Creators retain ownership and creative freedom as long as we are in an ethical covenant about the kind of content we want to make. We then partner with brands whose products our creators would be proud to represent. Our mission is not to extract value from creators but to support them in making work that uplifts the culture.”
Humor, Curiosity, And Vulnerability As Superpowers
One of the reasons Soul Boom connects with such a wide audience is that it refuses to treat spirituality as dry or overly serious. Humor is not an add-on; it is part of the DNA.
“Humor is one of the last acceptable ways to push boundaries of conversation. It disarms and reveals truths,” Mogharabi observes. “A well timed joke can relieve tension and discord. It is kind of a magic bullet for breaking through barriers authentically, if done well.”
Rainn Wilson’s presence is central to that.
“That is Rainn in a nutshell – funny, curious, disarming, and genuine. It is why he is the right person to engage people in spiritual conversation,” she adds. “He is curious and on his own spiritual quest. He does not purport to know the answers and enjoys learning from great minds. Who would not want to have a conversation like that in today’s world?”
Bowers sees the same balance at work in the way Soul Boom shows up on screen and across platforms.
“I think that is why Soul Boom has been so successful,” he notes. “One of the theses behind it is that many people turned away from spirituality because, for them, it lost its approachability. Showing Rainn riding a unicorn through the cosmos is our way of saying this is not going to be preachy or self-serious. But it will always deliver meaning and poignancy. Humor disarms, curiosity connects, and vulnerability invites depth. That mix lets us speak to different generations and across platforms. The point should not be the format. It is about speaking to the human being across from us with honesty, joy, and an open heart.”
Soul Boom Workbook: Spiritual Tools for Modern Living | Soul Boom
Planting Seeds Of A Movement Around Meaning And Joy
Looking ahead, both creators see Soul Boom and Companion Arts as part of a much larger wave toward more soulful storytelling, rather than the center of it.
“We have a clear shared conviction: people are noble, and they naturally crave content that nourishes the soul,” Bowers explains. “The movement toward meaning and joy is already well underway and will proceed with or without us. We are not here to contrive a movement or save the day. It is simply our pleasure to be on this journey with creators and brands who align with those values and who want to build a thriving and deeply connected community. One of those creators being Rainn, so I will let Shabnam speak to the specific projects she is collaborating with him on.”
Mogharabi outlines a slate of Soul Boom projects designed to deepen that journey over the next few years.
“Soul Boom has a few tentpole projects that will be coming out over the next two years that lay a deep foundation for the soul-nourishing conversations Ford just described,” she explains.
One of those projects is the Soul Boom Workbook Spiritual Tools for Modern Living, which she describes as “a creative journal (think The Artist’s Way for the soul) that brings the ideas of Soul Boom to life in a practical, interactive way.”
She also points to a feature-length documentary that will be hosted by Rainn called The Notorious G.O.D., exploring whether we need God in the modern world, and a forthcoming book from Wilson about the meaning of life, which she jokingly frames as “no biggie.”
For readers and viewers who want to learn more as these projects go live, Mogharabi’s invitation is simple – go to soulboom.com and sign up for the Dispatch newsletter, and stay tuned as this next wave of soul-nourishing storytelling unfolds.
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