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How to master the seven-step problem-solving process

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Kansas City has a problem with illegal street racing. Solving it is complicated

City ordinances outlaw watching or participating in street racing or “sideshows” where drivers engage in illegal stunts. But the issue persists.

The Kansas City Police Department rolled out its summertime Entertainment District Plan the first weekend of May, which means increased police presence in high-traffic entertainment areas like Westport and the Plaza.

The plan is partially in response to rampant street racing and '"sideshows," which are motorized stunt exhibitions on public streets.

KCPD is unable to pursue vehicles for traffic violations, such as sideshow participation, unless the driver is suspected of a violent felony.

“I’m not making excuses for why we can't do something, I’m really not, but that is the long and the short of it,” traffic division operations Sgt. Grant Ruark said on Up To Date. “I mean, if they don't stop, we can't pursue.”

In April, a joint operation involving police in Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, resulted in dozens of arrests and citations of sideshow participants. KCPD disabled 39 cars with stop sticks and towed three others.

Among those arrested was one of "the ringleaders," Ruark said.

"Unfortunately for him, he hit the stop sticks that we deployed as he was leaving the area and the helicopter was able to follow him to the point where his car finally just gave out and we were right behind him at about two miles an hour.”

Ruark said the Kansas City Council is looking into new measures to combat illegal street racing and sideshows.

• Grant Ruark , traffic division operations sergeant at the Kansas City Police Department

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How can physics help solve real world problems? – NEIL JOHNSON, Head of Dynamic Online Networks Lab

Education, The Creative Process Podcast

How can physics help solve messy, real world problems? How can we embrace the possibilities of AI while limiting existential risk and abuse by bad actors?

Neil Johnson is a physics professor at George Washington University. His new initiative in Complexity and Data Science at the Dynamic Online Networks Lab combines cross-disciplinary fundamental research with data science to attack complex real-world problems. His research interests lie in the broad area of Complex Systems and ‘many-body’ out-of-equilibrium systems of collections of objects, ranging from crowds of particles to crowds of people and from environments as distinct as quantum information processing in nanostructures to the online world of collective behavior on social media.

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Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand

The porn star testified for eight hours at donald trump’s hush-money trial. this is how it went..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

It’s 6:41 AM. I’m feeling a little stressed because I’m running late. It’s the fourth week of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial. It’s a white collar trial. Most of the witnesses we’ve heard from have been, I think, typical white collar witnesses in terms of their professions.

We’ve got a former publisher, a lawyer, accountants. The witness today, a little less typical, Stormy Daniels, porn star in a New York criminal courtroom in front of a jury more accustomed to the types of witnesses they’ve already seen. There’s a lot that could go wrong.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today, what happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of Donald J. Trump. As before, my colleague Jonah Bromwich was inside the courtroom.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s Friday, May 10th.

So it’s now day 14 of this trial. And I think it’s worth having you briefly, and in broad strokes, catch listeners up on the biggest developments that have occurred since you were last on, which was the day that opening arguments were made by both the defense and the prosecution. So just give us that brief recap.

Sure. It’s all been the prosecution’s case so far. And prosecutors have a saying, which is that the evidence is coming in great. And I think for this prosecution, which is trying to show that Trump falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal, to ease his way into the White House in 2016, the evidence has been coming in pretty well. It’s come in well through David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer, who testified that he entered into a secret plot with Trump and Michael Cohen, his fixer at the time, to suppress negative stories about Trump, the candidate.

It came in pretty well through Keith Davidson, who was a lawyer to Stormy Daniels in 2016 and negotiated the hush money payment. And we’ve seen all these little bits and pieces of evidence that tell the story that prosecutors want to tell. And the case makes sense so far. We can’t tell what the jury is thinking, as we always say.

But we can tell that there’s a narrative that’s coherent and that matches up with the prosecution’s opening statement. Then we come to Tuesday. And that day really marks the first time that the prosecution’s strategy seems a little bit risky because that’s the day that Stormy Daniels gets called to the witness stand.

OK, well, just explain why the prosecution putting Stormy Daniels on the stand would be so risky. And I guess it makes sense to answer that in the context of why the prosecution is calling her as a witness at all.

Well, you can see why it makes sense to have her. The hush money payment was to her. The cover-up of the hush money payment, in some ways, concerns her. And so she’s this character who’s very much at the center of this story. But according to prosecutors, she’s not at the center of the crime. The prosecution is telling a story, and they hope a compelling one. And arguably, that story starts with Stormy Daniels. It starts in 2006, when Stormy Daniels says that she and Trump had sex, which is something that Trump has always denied.

So if prosecutors were to not call Stormy Daniels to the stand, you would have this big hole in the case. It would be like, effect, effect, effect. But where is the cause? Where is the person who set off this chain reaction? But Stormy Daniels is a porn star. She’s there to testify about sex. Sex and pornography are things that the jurors were not asked about during jury selection. And those are subjects that bring up all kinds of different complex reactions in people.

And so, when the prosecutors bring Stormy Daniels to the courtroom, it’s very difficult to know how the jurors will take it, particularly given that she’s about to describe a sexual episode that she says she had with the former president. Will the jurors think that makes sense, as they sit here and try to decide a falsifying business records case, or will they ask themselves, why are we hearing this?

So the reason why this is the first time that the prosecution’s strategy is, for journalists like you, a little bit confusing, is because it’s the first time that the prosecution seems to be taking a genuine risk in what they’re putting before these jurors. Everything else has been kind of cut and dry and a little bit more mechanical. This is just a wild card.

This is like live ammunition, to some extent. Everything else is settled and controlled. And they know what’s going to happen. With Stormy Daniels, that’s not the case.

OK, so walk us through the testimony. When the prosecution brings her to the stand, what actually happens?

It starts, as every witness does, with what’s called direct examination, which is a fancy word for saying prosecutors question Stormy Daniels. And they have her tell her story. First, they have her tell the jury about her education and where she grew up and her professional experience. And because of Stormy Daniels’s biography, that quickly goes into stripping, and then goes into making adult films.

And I thought the prosecutor who questioned her, Susan Hoffinger, had this nice touch in talking about that, because not only did she ask Daniels about acting in adult films. But she asked her about writing and directing them, too, emphasizing the more professional aspects of that work and giving a little more credit to the witness, as if to say, well, you may think this or you may think that. But this is a person with dignity who took what she did seriously. Got it.

What’s your first impression of Daniels as a witness?

It’s very clear that she’s nervous. She’s speaking fast. She’s laughing to herself and making small jokes. But the tension in the room is so serious from the beginning, from the moment she enters, that those jokes aren’t landing. So it just feels, like, really heavy and still and almost oppressive in there. So Daniels talking quickly, seeming nervous, giving more answers than are being asked of her by the prosecution, even before we get to the sexual encounter that she’s about to describe, all of that presents a really discomfiting impression, I would say.

And how does this move towards the encounter that Daniels ultimately has?

It starts at a golf tournament in 2006, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Daniels meets Trump there. There are other celebrities there, too. They chatted very briefly. And then she received a dinner invitation from him. She thought it over, she says. And she goes to have dinner with Trump, not at a restaurant, by the way. But she’s invited to join him in the hotel suite.

So she gets to the hotel suite. And his bodyguard is there. And the hotel door is cracked open. And the bodyguard greets her and says she looks nice, this and that. And she goes in. And there’s Donald Trump, just as expected. But what’s not expected, she says, is that he’s not wearing what you would wear to a dinner with a stranger, but instead, she says, silk or satin pajamas. She asked him to change, she says. And he obliges.

He goes, and he puts on a dress shirt and dress pants. And they sit down at the hotel suite’s dining room table. And they have a kind of bizarre dinner. Trump is asking her very personal questions about pornography and safe sex. And she testifies that she teased him about vain and pompous he is. And then at some point, she goes to the bathroom. And she sees that he has got his toiletries in there, his Old Spice, his gold tweezers.

Very specific details.

Yeah, we’re getting a ton of detail in this scene. And the reason we’re getting those is because prosecutors are trying to elicit those details to establish that this is a credible person, that this thing did happen, despite what Donald Trump and his lawyers say. And the reason you can know it happened, prosecutors seem to be saying, is because, look at all these details she can still summon up.

She comes out of the bathroom. And she says that Donald Trump is on the hotel bed. And what stands out to me there is what she describes as a very intense physical reaction. She says that she blacked out. And she quickly clarifies, she doesn’t mean from drugs or alcohol. She means that, she says, that the intensity of this experience was such that, suddenly, she can’t remember every detail. The prosecution asks a question that cuts directly to the sex. Essentially, did you start having sex with him? And Daniels says that she did. And she continues to provide more details than even, I think, the prosecution wanted.

And I think we don’t want to go chapter and verse through this claimed sexual encounter. But I wonder what details stand out and which details feel important, given the prosecution’s strategy here.

All the details stand out because it’s a story about having had sex with a former president. And the more salacious and more private the details feel, the more you’re going to remember them. So we’ll remember that Stormy Daniels said what position they had sex in. We’ll remember that she said he didn’t use a condom. Whether that’s important to the prosecution’s case, now, that’s a much harder question to answer, as we’ve been saying.

But what I can tell you is, as she’s describing having had sex with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is sitting right there, and Eric Trump, his son, is sitting behind him, seeming to turn a different color as he hears this embarrassment of his father being described to a courtroom full of reporters at this trial, it’s hard to even describe the energy in that room. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And it was just Daniels’s testimony and, seemingly, the former President’s emotions. And you almost felt like you were trapped in there with both of them as this description was happening.

Well, I think it’s important to try to understand why the prosecution is getting these details, these salacious, carnal, pick your word, graphic details about sex with Donald Trump. What is the value, if other details are clearly making the point that she’s recollecting something?

Well, I think, at this point, we can only speculate. But one thing we can say is, this was uncomfortable. This felt bad. And remember, prosecutor’s story is not about the sex. It’s about trying to hide the sex. So if you’re trying to show a jury why it might be worthwhile to hide a story, it might be worth —

Providing lots of salacious details that a person would want to hide.

— exposing them to how bad that story feels and reminding them that if they had been voters and they had heard that story, and, in fact, they asked Daniels this very question, if you hadn’t accepted hush money, if you hadn’t signed that NDA, is this the story you would have told? And she said, yes. And so where I think they’re going with this, but we can’t really be sure yet, is that they’re going to tell the jurors, hey, that story, you can see why he wanted to cover that up, can’t you?

You mentioned the hush money payments. What testimony does Daniels offer about that? And how does it advance the prosecution’s case of business fraud related to the hush money payments?

So little evidence that it’s almost laughable. She says that she received the hush money. But we actually already heard another witness, her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, testify that he had received the hush money payment on her behalf. And she testified about feeling as if she had to sell this story because the election was fast approaching, almost as if her leverage was slipping away because she knew this would be bad for Trump.

That feels important. But just help me understand why it’s important.

Well, what the prosecution has been arguing is that Trump covered up this hush money payment in order to conceal a different crime. And that crime, they say, was to promote his election to the presidency by illegal means.

Right, we’ve talked about this in the past.

So when Daniels ties her side of the payment into the election, it just reminds the jurors maybe, oh, right, this is what they’re arguing.

So how does the prosecution end this very dramatic, and from everything you’re saying, very tense questioning of Stormy Daniels about this encounter?

Well, before they can even end, the defense lawyers go and they consult among themselves. And then, with the jury out of the room, one of them stands up. And he says that the defense is moving for a mistrial.

On what terms?

He says that the testimony offered by Daniels that morning is so prejudicial, so damning to Trump in the eyes of the jury, that the trial can no longer be fair. Like, how could these jurors have heard these details and still be fair when they render their verdict? And he says a memorable expression. He says, you can’t un-ring that bell, meaning they heard it. They can’t un-hear it. It’s over. Throw out this trial. It should be done.

Wow. And what is the response from the judge?

So the judge, Juan Merchan, he hears them out. And he really hears them out. But at the end of their arguments, he says, I do think she went a little too far. He says that. He said, there were things that were better left unsaid.

By Stormy Daniels?

By Stormy Daniels. And he acknowledges that she is a difficult witness. But, he says, the remedy for that is not a mistrial, is not stopping the whole thing right now. The remedy for that is cross-examination. If the defense feels that there are issues with her story, issues with her credibility, they can ask her whatever they want. They can try to win the jury back over. If they think this jury has been poisoned by this witness, well, this is their time to provide the antidote. The antidote is cross-examination. And soon enough, cross-examination starts. And it is exactly as intense and combative as we expected.

We’ll be right back.

So, Jonah, how would you characterize the defense’s overall strategy in this intense cross-examination of Stormy Daniels?

People know the word impeach from presidential impeachments. But it has a meaning in law, too. You impeach a witness, and, specifically, their credibility. And that’s what the defense is going for here. They are going to try to make Stormy Daniels look like a liar, a fraud, an extortionist, a money-grubbing opportunist who wanted to take advantage of Trump and sought to do so by any means necessary.

And what did that impeachment strategy look like in the courtroom?

The defense lawyer who questions Stormy Daniels is a woman named Susan Necheles. She’s defended Trump before. And she’s a bit of a cross-examination specialist. We even saw her during jury selection bring up these past details to confront jurors who had said nasty things about Trump on social media with. And she wants to do the same thing with Daniels. She wants to bring up old interviews and old tweets and things that Daniels has said in the past that don’t match what Daniels is saying from the stand.

What’s a specific example? And do they land?

Some of them land. And some of them don’t. One specific example is that Necheles confronts Daniels with this old tweet, where Daniels says that she’s going to dance down the street if Trump goes to jail. And what she’s trying to show there is that Daniels is out for revenge, that she hates Trump, and that she wants to see him go to jail. And that’s why she’s testifying against him.

And Daniels is very interesting during the cross-examination. It’s almost as if she’s a different person. She kind of squares her shoulders. And she sits up a little straighter. And she leans forward. Daniels is ready to fight. But it doesn’t quite land. The tweet actually says, I’ll dance down the street when he’s selected to go to jail.

And Daniels goes off on this digression about how she knows that people don’t get selected to go to jail. That’s not how it works. But she can’t really unseat this argument, that she’s a political enemy of Donald Trump. So that one kind of sticks, I would say. But there are other moves that Necheles tries to pull that don’t stick.

So unlike the prosecution, which typically used words like adult, adult film, Necheles seems to be taking every chance she can get to say porn, or pornography, or porn star, to make it sound base or dirty. And so when she starts to ask Daniels about actually being in pornography, writing, acting, and directing sex films, she tries to land a punch line, Necheles does. She says, so you have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?

As if to say, perhaps this story you have told about entering Trump’s suite in Lake Tahoe and having sex with him was made up.

Just another one of your fictional stories about sex. But Daniels comes back and says, the sex in the films, it’s very much real, just like what happened to me in that room. And so, when you have this kind of combat of a lawyer cross-examining very aggressively and the witness fighting back, you can feel the energy in the room shift as one lands a blow or the other does. But here, Daniels lands one back. And the other issue that I think Susan Necheles runs into is, she tries to draw out disparities from interviews that Daniels gave, particularly to N-TOUCH, very early on once the story was out.

It’s kind of like a tabloid magazine?

But some of the disparities don’t seem to be landing quite like Necheles would want. So she tries to do this complicated thing about where the bodyguard was in the room when Daniels walked into the room, as described in an interview in a magazine. But in that magazine interview, as it turns out, Daniels mentioned that Trump was wearing pajamas. And so, if I’m a juror, I don’t care where the bodyguard is. I’m thinking about, oh, yeah, I remember that Stormy Daniels said now in 2024 that Trump was wearing pajamas.

I’m curious if, as somebody in the room, you felt that the defense was effective in undermining Stormy Daniels’s credibility? Because what I took from the earlier part of our conversation was that Stormy Daniels is in this courtroom on behalf of the prosecution to tell a story that’s uncomfortable and has the kind of details that Donald Trump would be motivated to try to hide. And therefore, this defense strategy is to say, those details about what Trump might want to hide, you can’t trust them. So does this back and forth effectively hurt Stormy Daniels’s credibility, in your estimation?

I don’t think that Stormy Daniels came off as perfectly credible about everything she testified about. There are incidents that were unclear or confusing. There were things she talked about that I found hard to believe, when she, for instance, denied that she had attacked Trump in a tweet or talked about her motivations. But about what prosecutors need, that central story, the story of having had sex with him, we can’t know whether it happened.

But there weren’t that many disparities in these accounts over the years. In terms of things that would make me doubt the story that Daniels was telling, details that don’t add up, those weren’t present. And you don’t have to take my word for that, nor should you. But the judge is in the room. And he says something very, very similar.

What does he say? And why does he say it?

Well, he does it when the defense, again, at the end of the day on Thursday, calls for a mistrial.

With a similar argument as before?

Not only with a similar argument as before, but, like, almost the exact same argument. And I would say that I was astonished to see them do this. But I wasn’t because I’ve covered other trials where Trump is the client. And in those trials, the lawyers, again and again, called for a mistrial.

And what does Judge Marchan say in response to this second effort to seek a mistrial?

Let me say, to this one, he seems a little less patient. He says that after the first mistrial ruling, two days before, he went into his chambers. And he read every decision he had made about the case. He took this moment to reflect on the first decision. And he found that he had, in his own estimation, which is all he has, been fair and not allowed evidence that was prejudicial to Trump into this trial. It could continue. And so he said that again. And then he really almost turned on the defense. And he said that the things that the defense was objecting to were things that the defense had made happen.

He says that in their opening statement, the defense could have taken issue with many elements of the case, about whether there were falsified business records, about any of the other things that prosecutors are saying happened. But instead, he says, they focused their energy on denying that Trump ever had sex with Daniels.

And so that was essentially an invitation to the prosecution to call Stormy Daniels as a witness and have her say from the stand, yes, I had this sexual encounter. The upshot of it is that the judge not only takes the defense to task. But he also just says that he finds Stormy Daniels’s narrative credible. He doesn’t see it as having changed so much from year to year.

Interesting. So in thinking back to our original question here, Jonah, about the idea that putting Stormy Daniels on the stand was risky, I wonder if, by the end of this entire journey, you’re reevaluating that idea because it doesn’t sound like it ended up being super risky. It sounded like it ended up working reasonably well for the prosecution.

Well, let me just assert that it doesn’t really matter what I think. The jury is going to decide this. There’s 12 people. And we can’t know what they’re thinking. But my impression was that, while she was being questioned by the prosecution for the prosecution’s case, Stormy Daniels was a real liability. She was a difficult witness for them.

And the judge said as much. But when the defense cross-examined her, Stormy Daniels became a better witness, in part because their struggles to discredit her may have actually ended up making her story look more credible and stronger. And the reason that matters is because, remember, we said that prosecutors are trying to fill this hole in their case. Well, now, they have. The jury has met Stormy Daniels. They’ve heard her account. They’ve made of it what they will. And now, the sequence of events that prosecutors are trying to line up as they seek prison time for the former President really makes a lot of sense.

It starts with what Stormy Daniels says with sex in a hotel suite in 2006. It picks up years later, as Donald Trump is trying to win an election and, prosecutors say, suppressing negative stories, including Stormy Daniels’s very negative story. And the story that prosecutors are telling ends with Donald Trump orchestrating the falsification of business records to keep that story concealed.

Well, Jonah, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Of course, thanks for having me.

The prosecution’s next major witness will be Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer who arranged for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen is expected to take the stand on Monday.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a defiant response to warnings from the United States that it would stop supplying weapons to Israel if Israel invades the Southern Gaza City of Rafah. So far, Israel has carried out a limited incursion into the city where a million civilians are sheltering, but has threatened a full invasion. In a statement, Netanyahu said, quote, “if we need to stand alone, we will stand alone.”

Meanwhile, high level ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been put on hold in part because of anger over Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

A reminder, tomorrow, we’ll be sharing the latest episode of our colleague’s new show, “The Interview” This week on “The Interview,” Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with radio host Charlamagne Tha God about his frustrations with how Americans talk about politics.

If me as a Black man, if I criticize Democrats, then I’m supporting MAGA. But if I criticize, you know, Donald Trump and Republicans, then I’m a Democratic shill. Why can’t I just be a person who deals in nuance?

Today’s episode was produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Lexie Diao, with help from Paige Cowett, contains original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

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Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jonah E. Bromwich

Produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Lexie Diao

With Paige Cowett

Original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

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This episode contains descriptions of an alleged sexual liaison.

What happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump?

Jonah Bromwich, one of the lead reporters covering the trial for The Times, was in the room.

On today’s episode

Jonah E. Bromwich , who covers criminal justice in New York for The New York Times.

Background reading

In a second day of cross-examination, Stormy Daniels resisted the implication she had tried to shake down Donald J. Trump by selling her story of a sexual liaison.

Here are six takeaways from Ms. Daniels’s earlier testimony.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state criminal courts in Manhattan. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

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In search of self and something bigger: A spiritual health exploration

At a glance.

• Spiritual health encompasses having meaning in one’s life, a sense of connection to something larger than oneself, and a sense of purpose. Finding this meaning is associated with strong mental, social, and physical health.
• While assessment of spiritual health ranges widely across ages and locations, McKinsey Health Institute’s Global Gen Z Survey in 26 countries found that across generational cohorts the vast majority of respondents said spiritual health is “somewhat” to “extremely” important to them.
• Social, public, and private stakeholders can explore ways to help people find purpose and space to reflect on their lives. This includes employers seeking to help individuals find meaning in their work.

In McKinsey Health Institute’s (MHI’s) vision of a modern understanding of health , spiritual health is not a “nice to have” but a core dimension, along with physical, mental, and social health. But spiritual health can be hard to define. For many, it invokes a variety of feelings. There are those who see it as inseparable from religion, as well as those who associate it with following an internal moral compass or finding peace and calm through meditation. While those feelings can overlap, MHI’s concept of spiritual health 1 The subcomponents of spiritual health have been recognized for decades, as discussed in “ Adding years to life and life to years ,” McKinsey Health Institute, March 2022. For more, see S. K. Chaturvedi, Neera Dhar, and Deoki Nandan, “Spiritual health, the fourth dimension: A public health perspective,” WHO South-East Asia Journal of Public Health , January 2013, Volume 2, Number 1; Francesco Chirico, “Spiritual well-being in the 21st century: It is time to review the current WHO’s health definition,” Journal of Health and Social Sciences , March 2016, Volume 1, Number 1; Christina M. Puchalski, “Integrating spirituality into patient care: An essential element of person-centered care,” Polish Archives of Internal Medicine , September 2013, Volume 123, Number 9; Giancarlo Lucchetti et al., “Spirituality and health in the curricula of medical schools in Brazil,” BMC Medical Education , August 2012, Volume 12, Number 78; South-East Asia Advisory Committee on Medical Research, “Spiritual aspects of health: Global strategy for health for all by the year 2000,” World Health Organization, March 1984. is not necessarily tied to religious beliefs but rather to meaning in one’s life, a broad sense of connection to something larger than oneself, and a strong sense of purpose. These can be found within a community, a calling, a form of divinity, the ability to feel rooted and mindful in the present moment, or all of the above. And those who are able to develop their spiritual health often see positive overlaps with the other dimensions of health.

Methodology

To gain a better understanding of Gen Z in comparison with other generations, the McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) conducted an internet-based survey in May 2022 in ten European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom), with approximately 1,000 completions per country. In August 2022, an additional 1,600 completions per country were collected from 16 mostly non-European countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Vietnam). In total, the survey collected responses from 42,083 people, including 16,824 Gen Zers (mostly 18- to 24-year-olds and including a negligible minority of 13- to 17-year-old non-European respondents), 13,080 millennials (25 to 40 years old), 6,937 Gen Xers (41 to 56 years old), 5,119 baby boomers (57 to 75 years old), and 123 from the Silent Generation (76 to 93 years old).

Within each country, the survey applied weights to match the distribution of age cohorts, gender, and share of population with tertiary education in the sample to the country’s national census. The sample was drawn from populations with access to the internet, which made the samples more representative of Gen Z respondents. With this age cohort, nearly all individuals with access to the internet are active technology users; however, for other generations, this is less likely to be the case. This analysis reflects self-reported results in 2022.

Considerations for cross-generational surveys

The survey focused on how respondents—mainly Gen Z—were feeling at the time they were surveyed. Therefore, we cannot determine whether differences in answers between age cohorts are caused by an intrinsic difference in attitudes and behaviors or are merely induced by age differences: it is possible that Gen Z will eventually think and behave like millennials, Gen X, or baby boomers, when they reach those ages.

Considerations for surveys conducted online

The survey was conducted online. Therefore, it may not accurately reflect the behaviors or attitudes of individuals who don’t have reliable online access. This can be particularly significant in various aspects of life, given that the internet can have a profound impact on the information we access and how we process it.

Considerations for cross-country surveys

Cross-country, sociocultural differences can affect perceptions, scale of use, and other factors that may influence responses. However, we cannot automatically conclude that these differences are objective. The variations in answers on an agreement scale, for example, may be due to the respondent’s inclination to agree or disagree and their propensity to choose extreme answers such as “strongly disagree” or “strongly agree.”

Although we relied on cultural experts and youth reviewers to ensure equivalence of meanings across languages during translations, some observed differences across countries may still be induced by the translations.

To measure differences, we computed country averages and used them to calculate simple averages across countries. By doing so, we treated each country equally, regardless of its population size.

For more on physical, mental, social, and spiritual health definitions, see the interactive, “A modern understanding of health,” in the MHI report, Adding years to life and life to years .

However, there are differences between generations as to how they report spiritual health. MHI’s recent Global Gen Z Survey—a cross-generational survey that oversampled Gen Zers in order to yield insight into their generation, while still sampling all other generations for comparison purposes—highlights the complexity of how spiritual health is perceived and practiced around the world and the way spiritual health affects overall well-being. 2 The survey asked questions based on the four dimensions of health: mental, physical, social, and spiritual. MHI then analyzed differences and similarities across generations and countries, with the hope of informing the broader dialogue around Gen Z mental health. Additionally, while Gen Z tends to report worse mental health, the underlying cause is not clear. There are several age-specific factors that may impact Gen Z’s mental health independent of their generational cohort, including developmental stage, level of engagement with healthcare, and familial or societal attitudes. Among 41,000 respondents across generational cohorts in 26 countries, the vast majority said spiritual health is “somewhat” to “extremely important” to them (see sidebar, “Methodology”). This finding is similar to those of previous MHI surveys . This survey also highlights the varying global perspectives regarding the importance of spiritual health. More than 80 percent of respondents in Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Vietnam said spiritual health was very or extremely important, for instance, compared with less than 45 percent of respondents in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Understanding how much spiritual health varies in level of importance could create better understanding in a globalized world, including for those working in the social, public, or private sector.

This is also an area with potential for more research: an MHI analysis found that about 75 percent of studies related to health primarily measure physical health, while just 12 percent measure mental health, 6 percent social health, and 1 percent spiritual health. 3 “ Adding years to life and life to years ,” McKinsey Health Institute, March 29, 2022. MHI has conducted multiple global surveys to understand how individuals perceive the four dimensions of health and what gaps exist. In a recent MHI survey of employees , for example, more than half of respondents across 30 countries reported positive overall holistic health, but respondents reported the lowest proportion of positive scores when it came to spiritual health. This may indicate that some employees, regardless of country, may be struggling to integrate meaning into their lives and work, which could, in turn, affect their physical, mental, and social health.

The series of insights below illustrate what cross-generational respondents said about their spiritual health in the Global Gen Z Survey, how to better understand the differences based on age and country, and how everyone has a role to play in helping people have lives with purpose. This can begin by understanding how spiritual health intersects with other dimensions. MHI highlights Gen Z specifically because of the many challenges young people face in the transition to adulthood, and how insights into aspects of health can lead to better resilience.

While the Gen Zers who have good spiritual health appear to be doing well in all dimensions, those with poor spiritual health may be struggling (Exhibit 1). Individuals reporting poor spiritual health were up to about four times less likely to say they had good or very good mental health than those reporting neutral or good spiritual health. In addition, those with poor spiritual health were about two times less likely to report good social or physical health.

The Gen Z survey is not the only research being done to find out how spiritual health can overlap with other dimensions. Spiritual health has been correlated with multiple dimensions of quality of life in other studies, 4 WHOQOL SRPB Group, “A cross-cultural study of spirituality, religion, and personal beliefs as components of quality of life,” Social Science & Medicine , March 2006, Volume 62, Number 6. and there has been growing discussion on the role of spiritual health in holistic medical care. 5 Tracy A. Balboni et al., “Spirituality in serious illness and health,” JAMA , July 2022, Volume 328, Number 2. This can include the role of spiritual beliefs in mental health, with some studies finding that higher spirituality scores correlated with fewer depressive symptoms or that spiritual health and perceived social support is associated with less death anxiety in the elderly. 6 Benjamin R. Doolittle and Michael Farrell, “The association between spirituality and depression in an urban clinic,” Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry , 2004, Volume 6 Number 3; Mehrdad Hajihasani and Nahid Naderi, “Death anxiety in the elderly: The role of spiritual health and perceived social support,” Aging Psychology , 2021, Volume 6, Number 4.

Other studies have found that spiritual and physical health are strongly connected for some patients, with a 2011 US study finding that 41 percent of patients desired a discussion of religious and/or spiritual concerns while hospitalized. 7 Joshua A. Williams et al., “Attention to inpatients’ religious and spiritual concerns: Predictors and association with patient satisfaction,” Journal of General Internal Medicine , July 2011, Volume 26, Number 11. There is also some evidence of the connection between spiritual, social, and mental well-being, with a 2017 study finding that seniors in Iran who had spiritual behaviors and good social health were more likely to have self-care capacity. 8 Mahboobeh Mohammadi et al., “Assessment of the relationship between spiritual and social health and the self-care ability of elderly people referred to community health centers,” Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research , December 2017, Volume 22, Number 6.

Overall, Gen Z respondents reported challenges with spiritual health at a higher rate than non–Gen Z respondents; about three times as many Gen Zers reported poor spiritual health as did baby boomers. 9 Erica Coe, Andrew Doy, Kana Enomoto, and Cheryl Healy, “ Gen Z mental health: The impact of tech and social media ,” McKinsey Health Institute, April 28, 2023. Gen Zers with poor mental health were three times more likely to report a lack of meaning in their lives than those with good mental health (Exhibit 2). And while Gen Z reports struggling the most with spiritual health, it’s not the only generation where spiritual and mental health are connected: non–Gen Z respondents with poor mental health were more than four times more likely to report a lack of meaning in their lives, compared with those with good mental health.

While the survey findings across countries affirmed that those with lower spiritual health had lower mental health scores, the perception of that connection varies by country. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in Indonesia, for instance, said positive spiritual health helped their mental health, while only 15 percent of respondents in Japan agreed with that sentiment. 10 As with all cross-cultural research, differences in scores across countries can be driven by the following two factors: true differences between countries on variables of interest and differences between countries because of artifacts such as within-country response styles or context-driven stigma. As an example, in our current survey, we observed lower scores across many variables of interest in Japan compared with other countries. When reviewing cross-cultural findings, we recommend the reader considers the cultural context of the country and region. That means it may be harder in certain countries to make the case that investment in better spiritual health can improve mental health.

By encompassing 26 countries, the Global Gen Z Survey offers insight into distinct regional differences in the way individuals perceive spiritual health (Exhibit 3). Respondents in higher-income economies, for example, were substantially less likely as those in lower- or lower-middle-income economies to indicate spiritual health was “extremely important” to them (27 versus 43 percent).

While spiritual health is not confined to religion, these complex differences around the world sometimes correlate with religious observance. Under half of respondents in France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden, for instance, said spiritual health was extremely or very important to them, compared with 85 percent of respondents in Nigeria. But it’s relevant to remember that many evaluate their spiritual health outside of traditional religion: in 21 of the 26 countries surveyed, the majority of respondents in each country said spiritual health is important to them, while far fewer reported regularly practicing religious habits, such as going to a faith-based service.

Recent Pew research supports this idea that there is a middle ground between the absence of spiritual beliefs and full religious or spiritual practice, finding that almost a third of US respondents say they are atheists (17 percent), agnostic (20 percent) or list “nothing in particular” (63 percent). Almost half of “religious nones” said their reasons relate to disliking religious organizations, and a third gave a reason related to negative experiences with those who described themselves as religious. Yet in this group, almost half said spirituality is important or that they considered themselves spiritual. 11 Gregory A. Smith et al., Religious ‘nones’ in America: Who they are and what they believe , Pew Research Center, January 2024; when asked about their beliefs regarding the presence of spirits or spiritual energies in the following, 69 percent of “religious nones” and 71 percent of the religiously affiliated chose at least one of the following when answering whether they believe the following can have spirits or spiritual energies: animals other than humans; elements of nature such as mountains, rivers, and trees; graveyards, cemeteries, or memorial sites; certain objects such as crystals, jewels, and stones.

By exploring the differences in spiritual health’s importance across countries or regions and by understanding the varying feelings on religion, organizations and individuals could potentially have a deeper understanding of how to advance holistic health.

This can invite conversation within social, public, and private settings on factors that influence spiritual health. For example, asking someone, “What ways do you find purpose in your life?” or “How are you helping others find meaning?” can yield fruitful discussions.

While finding pathways to pursue individual spiritual health is important across generations, our data suggest that this is especially important for Gen Z (Exhibit 4). When surveyed, Gen Z was the least likely to endorse positive statements about spiritual health: over a third of respondents reported a lack of meaning in their lives. Gen Zers were also the least likely to report finding a sense of purpose in their work and having personal beliefs that give them the strength to face difficulties. One potential explanation is that individuals in this phase of life may still be actively developing their sense of purpose, which lends credence to supporting younger generations in this important element of their health.

Earlier MHI work has highlighted the challenges among younger generations in maintaining their health and how employers can play a role in improving it. For example, workplace interventions that promote positive behaviors and limit negative ones can help create organizational climates that promote holistic health. In the search for meaning, some individuals may find a sense of purpose in their jobs. Others, however, may feel strongly that work is an intellectual or necessary part of life but that their primary purpose comes from volunteering in their communities, raising a family, creating art, engaging in activism, or doing other actions.

Spiritual health can be deeply personal, but MHI findings suggest that the workplace may be one of many places where individuals experience a sense of purpose and positive spiritual health overall (Exhibit 5). A person may find their job unfulfilling, but the flip side could also occur: people can find deep fulfillment in paid or unpaid work. About two-thirds of Gen Z respondents, for example, said spiritual-health considerations, such as a purposeful mission statement and opportunities for pro bono work, were “very important” or “important” when it came to selecting an employer. Seventy percent of millennials and 66 percent of Gen X reported the same.

However, having a sense of purpose at work cannot override negative elements, such as toxic behavior and burnout. 12 Jacqueline Brassey, Brad Herbig, Barbara Jeffery, and Drew Ungerman, “ Reframing employee health: Moving beyond burnout to holistic health ,” McKinsey Health Institute, November 2, 2023. Additionally, individuals may prefer not to seek purpose in the workplace; instead, they may turn to avenues like volunteering, helping family members, participating in a religious or spiritual community, or all of the above. Still, recognizing the role the workplace can play in promoting spiritual health is an element of total employee holistic health, and creating opportunities for purpose in the workplace may be essential to the future of work.

Spiritual health can be framed as part of an individual’s overall well-being. Seeking purpose and meaning, connecting with what matters, and acting with intention can be a lifelong journey, much like the need to regularly assess one’s physical, mental, and social health. “Some of us are more predisposed than others to feeling spiritually connected. . . .  But we can all cultivate this natural capacity and build our spiritual muscle,” notes Lisa Miller , researcher on spiritual health and author of The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life (Random House, August 2021).

Similar to mental health, while spiritual health is personal to each individual, strong communities can be essential to increasing spiritual well-being for people around the world, along with other dimensions of health. Social, public, and private stakeholders can explore ways to help people find purpose and space for self-reflection in order to boost holistic health. These ways may include ensuring city residents have access to natural or green spaces that provoke reflection or exploring how community-level endeavors can improve people’s overall well-being. Another consideration for employers is how to better convey their appreciation for mission-based work to employees or how workplaces can encourage a holistic view of health. Other potential actions may simply include decreasing stigmas about discussion of spiritual health.

For those who want to cultivate spiritual health, the path may begin with recognizing its role in overall well-being. And starting the conversation on spiritual health could be an important first step to improving the health of ourselves and others.

Erica Coe is a partner in McKinsey’s Atlanta office and a McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) coleader; Kana Enomoto  is a partner in the Washington, DC, office and the MHI director of brain health; Jacqueline Brassey  is an MHI coleader of employee health and a senior fellow in McKinsey’s Luxembourg office; and Victoria Bennett is an MHI fellow in the New York office.

The authors wish to thank Manish Chopra, Alexandru Degeratu, Ignacio Fantaguzzi, Anna Hextall, Kai Grünewald, Abhishek Mahajan, Yukiko Sakai, and Claudia von Hammerstein for their contributions to this article. They also wish to thank Shri Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University, McKinsey alumnus Tom Latkovic of Backrs, Lisa Miller of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, Columbia University, Teachers College, Shekhar Saxena of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Moitreyee Sinha of citiesRISE for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Elizabeth Newman, an executive editor in the Chicago office.

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