| Slogan | SoulPancake: Chew on life's big questions |
|---|---|
| Type of site | Interactive Website |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | March 2009 |
| Current status | Active |
SoulPancake is a new media company that seeks to provide platforms to explore "big think" topics such as spirituality, creativity, religion, arts, and philosophy. With a tagline of "Chew on Life's Big Questions," SoulPancake offers feature-length articles, exclusive videos, creative challenges, and interviews across its platforms. SoulPancake is not affiliated with any one religious or spiritual organization.
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The SoulPancake website beta-launched in March 2009 with an official launch in January 2010. By November 2010, the community had 50,000 active registered members and 1 million page views per month. SoulPancake was originally founded by actor Rainn Wilson of NBC's The Office and his friends Joshua Homnick and Devon Gundry in 2007. The original concept was a video series called "Metaphysical Milkshake." The founders deemed that the idea was too narrow and expanded it into a multi-platform media company.
SoulPancake.com offers discussions, blog posts, questions, creative activities, writing exercises, polls, interviews, columns, videos, and original art by up-and-coming artists. Discussions are open to all registered members, regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, etc. SoulPancake's internal content creators post one or two new pieces of content each day called Perspectives. In addition, there is a user-generated Questions that features questions posed by community members. The layout of the site has been criticized for not having a decisive direction [1] and was revamped in October 2011 to address these issues.
In the summer of 2009, SoulPancake was approached by several book publishers about developing an art and creativity book focused on 'Life's Big Questions'. The book, SoulPancake: Chew On Life's Big Questions, was published by Hyperion in November 2010 and became a New York Times Best Seller within weeks.[2] The book challenges readers to take a creative, action oriented approach to self exploration.[3][4] Since the release of the book it has gained attention from a diverse demographic of readers, and has even been introduced as reading material in an high school english class.[5] Rainn Wilson was invited to numerous talk shows to discuss the book, including Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon [6] and the Rachel Ray Show.[7]
In October 2010, SoulPancake signed with the newly developed OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network to develop a series of SoulPancake-themed short interstitials.[8] The series is currently in production and has been added as a segment to the series Super Soul Sundays.[9][10]