Brain Rot and Soul Food

The church had some good words. Heavy, old-fashioned words that asked something of you. Penitent. Reverent. Edifying.

They’ve gone out of fashion in the secular world, too starch-collared, too Sunday-schoolish, but lately I’ve been thinking maybe we shouldn’t have let them go.

I first started thinking about edifying after a conversation on my podcast, Fifty Words for Snow, where my co-host Emily and I talk with guests about words from different cultures and subcultures. We interviewed pastor and philosopher Cedric Lundy about “wise church words,” and he said that in the Black church, edify was used for all kinds of things: “If I’m gonna teach you something, you’re about to receive some edification.”

It wasn’t just about being educated; it was about being elevated. “Within a Christian understanding,” Cedric explained, “edification is the spirit of God working in harmony with truth.” It’s not just head knowledge; it’s something that builds you up from the inside out.

And that, I realized, is a word we still need.

What Feeds You

In secular life, we don’t really ask if something is edifying. We ask if it’s “good,” or “worth our time.” But edifying is different. It asks how something leaves you. Are you more whole, more generous, more aligned with your better nature? Or are you emptier, smaller, or vaguely anxious afterward?

On our Teen slang episode of Fifty Words for Snow, we learned a very different word: brain rot. It’s what teens call the state of doom-scrolling or binge-watching something so stupid it numbs the soul. Brain rot isn’t the opposite of edifying exactly, but it’s definitely not it.

When I first heard the term “brain rot,” I thought, Oh, I know that feeling. That little crash after a social-media spiral or a “trashy TV” night that leaves you foggy and hollow. It’s not that these things are evil; sometimes you need a little rot to compost your brain. But the question is whether, overall, your attention diet builds you up or wears you down.

It’s Not That Simple

Growing up in church, edifying was often used like a warning label: that show isn’t edifying, that music isn’t edifying, that skirt isn’t edifying. As a kid, it felt like a scold, an outside limit. But lately I find myself asking the same question on my own, quietly, privately, while watching television: What do I feel like afterward?

Sometimes I watch a film and feel more aligned with my purpose, more tender toward the world. Other times, I feel depleted. And it’s not as simple as books, opera: good; television, TikTok: bad.

Edification isn’t about genre or delivery system. It’s about effect. You know it when you feel it, the way people used to describe pornography, only inverted. To one person, a show might be brain rot; to another, it’s soul food.

The Spirit in the Jazz Club

Cedric said something that has stayed with me: that he often feels closest to the divine not through church music but through jazz. He loves Miles Davis, Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, artists who blend improvisation and revelation.

It reminded me of a documentary I once saw, The Devil’s Playground, about Amish teenagers during Rumspringa, their brief window to experience the outside world before deciding whether to return. One boy fell in love not with alcohol or nightclubs but with Miles Davis. When he went back to his community, forbidden from listening to secular music, he said the thing he missed most was Miles.

Golden Girls and Easy Streets

In my memoir Easy Street: A Story of Redemption from Myself, I write about how I became the legal guardian of Joanna, a 55-year-old neurodiverse woman (more here), and how Joanna finds the television show The Golden Girls supremely edifying. “For Joanna, Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sofia were both teachers and friends: a reliable source for the assurance that the universe can be good, even in old age.”

Joanna can quote every line of Dorothy Zbornak, and when she laughs, it’s not ironic, it’s reverent.

At first, I thought she was just a fan. But over time, I realized she was absorbing a moral universe. Those four women live in a world where friendship outlasts romance, where honesty is rewarded, where aging isn’t failure but evolution. Every episode restores her faith in humanity a little.

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That’s edification. Not sermons or self-help slogans, but sarcastic, witty ladies laying down truth over cheesecake. Sofia: “Life is short. Eat the cannoli.” Rose: “You can’t lose what you never had, but you can miss it all the same.” And, of course, “Thank you for being a friend.”

Golden Girls cheesecake dinner: Joanna, author, and husband.

Source: Jim Vallely/Used with permission

Joanna and I sometimes even make cheesecake from a Golden Girls cookbook and share it with my husband. A true breaking of bread... informed by the spirit of four ladies on 6151 Richmond Street.

Hard Edification

Not everything that edifies feels good. Sometimes the most edifying experiences are hard to watch—films that break your heart open or conversations that scrape against your ego. Cedric reminded us that edification isn’t about “nice.” In church, he said, it can mean telling someone something they don’t want to hear but need to.

I think of that when I watch a tough documentary or read a book that humbles me. They don’t just inform me; they transform me, sometimes against my will. They till the soil of the soul.

There’s a difference between something that flatters you and something that grows you. The first is entertainment; the second is edification. If edification means being built up in spirit, then anything can be edifying—a podcast, a true crime series, a cheesy movie from the '80s—if it brings us into alignment with truth or tenderness.

A Secular Benediction

In secular culture, we rarely use words like edifying. They sound dusty, moralistic, or, heaven forbid, judgmental. But I think we lose something when we abandon that kind of language. We lose a way to ask the deeper question: Is this building me up or breaking me down?

I don’t mean that every choice has to be virtuous. Some days I need a little brain rot, like spiritual fast food. But I also need the word edifying to remind me to check in with myself: What am I feeding?

Because the truth is, whether you’re religious or not, we’re all constructing something with our days: a mind, a heart, a way of being. The question isn’t just what you’re learning, but what you’re becoming.