"We're living in this collective illusion where the extremes are mischaracterizing who we are as a people."

More than 70% of Americans — across every demographic — say their deepest aspiration is to contribute to the lives of others. Most of them think they're alone in that. They're not. Brian Hooks, Chairman and CEO of Stand Together, joins the show to make the case that the country's most urgent challenge isn't changing who people are. It's giving them permission to be who they already want to be.

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Key Takeaways

You can't have the I without the We. Hooks challenges the framing that pits individualism against community. Drawing on Abraham Maslow's concept of synergy, he argues the selfish and the selfless aren't in tension — when they merge, you get a flywheel of progress rather than a zero-sum fight.

We're living a collective illusion. Neuroscientist Todd Rose's research reveals that most people privately want to contribute to their communities — but assume they're outliers. That self-silencing lets a loud minority misrepresent the country's character. Naming the illusion is the first step to dissolving it.

The challenge isn't persuasion. It's permission. Hooks argues Americans don't need to be convinced to be better citizens — they need social permission to act on values they already hold. When people see someone just like them doing it, they follow.

Frederick Douglass as a North Star for coalition-building. Hooks returns repeatedly to Douglass's vision of the Declaration as "saving principles" — not yet fulfilled, but aspirational in a way that can hold very different people together. Shared direction, not agreement on everything, is what makes diverse coalitions work.

Stop picking a side. Start building policy coalitions. Stand Together learned the hard way that partisan politics leads to being taken for granted. Americans for Prosperity now pursues a policy-coalition strategy — working with Republicans and Democrats alike, and holding both accountable.

It's hard to hate up close. Whether it's StoryCorps' One Small Step project or Stand Together's work in 1,300 communities, the pattern holds: when people work side by side on real problems, the tribal labels fade fast. Don't debate online. Go grab a beer.

About Our Guest

Brian Hooks is Chairman and CEO of Stand Together, a philanthropic community of more than 700 business leaders and philanthropists working to remove the barriers holding people back. He is also President of the Charles Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute. Stand Together works with over 1,000 professors, tens of thousands of K-12 teachers, 200+ community-based organizations, and millions of grassroots activists. Hooks is co-author (with Charles Koch) of Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World.

Links and Resources

Stand Together: standtogether.org
Be the People: bethepeople.org

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Thanks to Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org) for making today’s conversation possible.
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The exhausted majority is waiting for permission to show up.