← The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
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Support for the show comes from Panerai. For more than 150 years, Panerai watches have showcased the brand's rich heritage of Italian design and Swiss horological expertise, making it the perfect timepiece for modern heroes. So this is my weakness. I have several Panerai watches. It's the only watch I wear. And trust me, Panerai is the way to go. Panerai's new Luminor Marina timepieces honor the brand's storied legacy and history of pioneering innovation while enhancing iconic aesthetics, reliability and functionality. Visit Panerai to discover the world of Panerai and find the boutique nearest you. That's P-A-N-E-R-A I.com.
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Support for this show comes from Strawberry Me. Be honest.
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Are you happy with your job or are you stuck in one you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner.
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Go to Strawberry Me unstuck to claim.
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A special offer it's tempting to think.
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That if you have a good idea.
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And work hard, success is inevitable. But the truth is that no matter how brilliant the idea or how steadfast the founders, every company will encounter unthinkable obstacles that can make or break them. Crucible Moments is a podcast that takes listeners into the inflection points that made today's most influential companies what they are today. Listen to Crucible Moments and hear about unlikely triumphs at Supercell, Palo Alto Networks and more. Check out cruciblemoments.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Episode 377377 is the country code for Monaco. In 1970, snow fell in Miami for the first and only time and the rings of Uranus were discovered. My girlfriend thinks she's an amateur astrophysicist and is trying to convince me that no one is interested in exploring Uranus. Come on.
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B
Go go go.
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A
Welcome to the 377th episode of the Prop G Pod. What' this is our last recording of the year. Soon I'll be in Singapore and Australia for the holidays. Super excited. Last holiday with both my boys who are living at home. I trust it won't be or hope it won't be my last holiday with them, but it feels sort of majestic really. Enjoy Singapore. Have been there several times on business. It'll be nice to go Back with family. We're staying at that crazy hotel that has this huge pool at the top. That's not where I would choose to stay, but I heard you have to go up in a robe and slippers with, like tourists, but that's fine. But I think my kids will get a kick out of it. And I'm a huge fan of what Singapore's been able to accomplish. And I haven't been to Australia in 25 years. I think I would live in Australia if it wasn't so damn far. It would be disingenuous of me not to talk about what is very much on my mind, and that is the murders, the attacks on what was a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, Bondi Beach. I've been to Bondi beach and just some thoughts. And that is, look, there are going to be shootings all over the world and there are crazy people who will find reasons to fill a vessel of some sort of political cause with violence. But I do think this is different. And there are 2.8 billion Christians, 2.1 billion Muslims, 1.4 billion Indians, 1.2 billion Chinese, 355 million Americans, and there are 15 million Jews. And there is no special interest group, ethnicity, sect of 15 million people that has so much inbound hatred and flat out bigotry against that group, so much hate that nations all over the world are having to cancel events. But antisemitism takes on a different level of hate. That results, in my view, in more persecution and more slower trigger or faster zero to 60 in violence. And that is, it's not about excluding people. It's not about discriminating against them. It's about a belief that there's a conspiracy among those 15 million Jews, that in fact they are there and planning to suppress other people and that they in and amongst themselves are evil and that they require and warrant some sort of affirmative action against them. I should also add that the silver lining, if there is one here, is that a father, the father of two and a fruit stand owner, Ahmed Al Ahmed, is a true hero. And I find that the normalization of these types of attacks against Jews only increases. And that is, as of today, there will be. The Jews will be exactly where the world wants them. That is, they feel sorry for them and feign outrage. And maybe a lot of that outrage is genuine when they're dead. The world is comfortable with dead Jews. But the next day there was a pro Pali rally on Bondi beach and I would argue a lack of shame against those people and an acceptance And a normalization. I was at a dinner party just this past weekend in London where someone was trying to convince me of the difference between being anti Semitic and anti Israel. And I think there's some veracity there. I think you can be anti Netanyahu and believe he's bad for Israel, as I do. But generally I find it's a lazy argument to try and say I'm not a bigot, but I am a bigot, but we were too quiet 80 years ago. And it's the enablement and the quiet sort of nodding and the arguments around anti Semitism versus anti Israel that I find are nothing but a path towards this type of massacre and murder and justification of a level of hate that is so disproportionate to the number of people globally. They are not closing down Carnival this year because of discrimination against Mormons. They are not going to cancel New Year's in Alberta because of discrimination against illegal immigrants in America. There is injustice and bigotry everywhere, but this takes on an entirely different fucking level of hatred. I get a ton of text messages whenever I go on one of these rants from my Jewish brothers and sisters saying, we support you. And my attitude is, thanks and where the fuck are you? Where the fuck are you? And the general response is, well, I have shareholders or I don't have your platform. No, you don't. You probably have a bigger platform than me, so everybody needs to step up here. But even if Every Jew at 15 million spoke up against this, it wouldn't be enough. It's the hundreds of millions of people in the west who are making these bullshit arguments. And anti Semitism is not anti. Is not the same as being anti Israel or being anti Zionism is not the same as being anti Semitic. No, you're a fucking anti Semite and you are greasing the pads towards this type of hate where it's not only excluding people and discriminating against them, which is its own form of hate, it is creating cloud cover, momentum and justification for offensive action against them. Specifically showing up at a celebration of the lights of Hanukkah and killing people. Let me ask you this. What other group of people are globally, are afraid globally to celebrate their holiday right now? The level of bigotry and hate here is exceptional and singular. All right, sorry for the indignant rant there. In today's episode, we speak with David Brooks, an op ed columnist for the New York Times and a writer for the Atlantic. He's also the bestselling author of books including the Second Mountain, the Road to Character, the Social Animal, and his latest, how to Know a Person. And by the way, I'm just an enormous fan of David Brooks. I think this is the second or third time. I just think he speaks. He's a conservative. I'm not. I just find the guy just reeks of character and moral clarity. I just think he's a fantastic role model for young people looking to develop muscle memory around critical thought that kind of has this strong mix or overlay of character. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with David Brooks.
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David, where are you? I'm in Washington, D.C. where my normal home is.
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A
There you go. So, obviously a tragic weekend and would love to just get any kind of initial reactions to the shootings both at Brown University and in Australia.
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B
Yeah, and I would add the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. Somehow we wake up to three very violent stories. On the one hand, we shouldn't over exaggerate these things. The number of mass killings in the US in 2025 had been remarkably low. And so it's not like we've. I don't think it's fair to say we've entered a new age of violence. If you look at murder rates, they're down. You look at suicide rates, they're down. So you shouldn't extrapolate from these stories. Nonetheless, they're real. Something has happened, I think, since 2013. We've just entered dark, dark world is distrust. It's isolation. And as you write about and talk about a lot, the pain of this moment is not distributed equally. People with college degrees live 15 years longer than people with high school degrees. They're much less likely to die of opioid. They're much less likely to say they have no friends and guys in particular are getting hammered. And so if you're a single male without a college degree, your rate of having an affectionate touch, how many times somebody hugs you or kisses you or just a gentle pat. Large numbers of young guys go through weeks and weeks and weeks without an affectionate touch. And that may seem like a trivial thing, but a. I do not think it is. I think we are mammals who require touch, but it's symptomatic of a whole series of maladies that are afflicting people. And since 2013, we've not only seen the rise of social pain, we've seen the rise of conspiracy theory. And what inevitably accompanies that is anti Semitism. And so in Monde beach, obviously a clear case of antisemitism. And as several Reminder authors have been reminding us over the last few hours, when you use the phrase globalize the intifada, this is what you get. This is globalizing the intifada. I was in Israel during the second intifada, and it was one of the scariest times I've been. I've covered wars and done that kind of thing. But it was really scary because you never know when the next bus was going to blow up, when the next pizzeria was going to blow up. And so some people say intifado, that just means struggle. But that holocaust, when we use the word holocaust, that doesn't just mean a big fire. That has a specific historic meaning. And so to me, this is an example of globalizing the intifada. The intifada leads to violence in this way, which is not to be against the struggle for Palatinian statehood. I'm all for that, but the violent means are counterproductive.
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A
A couple things in there. One, I can't help but you say you used a date since 2013, and that's about the time that social went on mobile. Have you made the same connection?
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B
Yeah, it's very hard to look at the social indicators which turn south at the same time and not think it has something to do with social media on mobile. But it was also a time. And tell me if you think this is connected. I have trouble seeing the straight line between that. If you look at the rise of populism, both on the left and the right, it dates to about that time. And the initial populist movement was, I think, in Spain or Portugal, called the Indignados. And it was a group of people arguing, we do not accept your authority. And so the populist movement also happens in 2013. And was that driven by social media? I think partially, but I think partially not. Mostly not.
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A
I think it's a chaser effect. I think the core, though, the epicenter of the earthquake, is a transfer, a slow but elegant transfer of wealth from young to old. And that economic precarity across young people is bad for men and women, but it's especially hard on young men who are unduly evaluated based on their economic viability. And then you take them online where they're likely to find algorithms who will tell them it's not their fault to blame women for their romantic problems and blame immigrants for their economic problems. They become radicalized, and then you mix in polarization, access to guns, and it's this dangerous alchemy. But I would reverse engineer it. At the very core, the epicenter to a transfer of wealth from young to old because old people keep voting themselves more money. Your thoughts?
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Well, I've been arguing against old people who are my base. That's my base. Old people are my base. PBS NewsHour New York Times column. But we have basically taken money that should be going to young people on the way up and we've given it to people who are dying or old on the way out. And that's just a stupid way to run the country. And I used to get my AARP friends very upset with that. I want to focus in on the notion of precarity because I think there is precarity, but I think it's a little more I begun to think of it in more fine tuned ways. So young people feel that the American dream is dead. And some in my own family and that the old model, if you work hard, you get ahead, that's broken. And there are some studies that show 70% of Americans overall say the American dream is dead. So that's pretty terrible. But when you look at the data and the blogger Noah Smith runs chart after chart about this, Millennial and Gen Z have higher real wages than boomer and Gen X at the same age. And they have not two different home ownership rates. And we are now in a moment where we have the highest median wages in American history. It's about 88,000 bucks. And so some of the economic data are not that bad. And yet the feeling is bad. And so I was talking to a CEO a couple months ago and he said when my team comes to me and says when a customer says, this went wrong, this part of your product sucks, and my team says, no, they're wrong. We've got data on this. The CEO says, I always believe the anecdote over the data. And I think there's some virtue to that believing the anecdote over the data or at least trying to reconcile the two. And I think one of the things that's changed is when I was getting out of college, it felt like there were like nine jobs. You could be a teacher, a doctor, nurse, lawyer, cop, whatever. Now it feels there are a million jobs. And when I was getting out of college, there were pathways to the right jobs. And there was a clear steps you took. If you want to become a newspaper columnist, you tried to become a very junior associate editor at a small magazine. And then gradually you worked your way up. And that's exactly what I did. And now I feel those pathways are gone. Or worse, there are fewer pathways. So in a just society, there are many mountaintops. And different people got to climb different mountaintops depending on their abilities or tastes. But now we've rendered into one mountaintop. You have to get into a selective college. You have to get a job at a very small number of firms like Goldman Sachs or whatever, Bain, and that's the one route. And so you have millions of people trying to get into that route. And so suddenly you have universities rejecting 96%. And then at Goldman they have 3,000 internships every summer, but 300,000 apply. And so we've narrowed the range of paths upward and we've made it all chaotic. And at the same time, I would say we made courtship chaotic. I'm ancient, but I wasn't in the age back in the 50s when they pinned girlfriends in high school. But I was at the age where you asked somebody out, you dated for a certain amount of time and then you broke up and there was a structure to courtship. And that has been gone for 15 or 20 years. And so I think the precarity is often the uncertainty and the lack of clarity, lack of order. Even though the raw economic data show Millennial and Gen Z are doing pretty well.
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A
I mean, there's so much there, I would argue. So it's undeniable that the average middle class person is doing better and living a better life than the wealthiest person in the world 100 years ago, maybe even 50 years ago. Like I'll take Netflix and Novocaine over royalty, right? But the problem is the human brain doesn't work that way. It's a comparison culture. And every day, 210 times a day, young people have faux wealth vomited on them and it makes them feel that if I'm not in Ibiza at a rave or on a Gulf stream, I'm failing even if I'm doing okay. And there is some data that says they're not as doing as well as their parents were at 30. And I think some of the major indicators housing the average age of first time buyers is, I mean the data, I'll give you this, the narrative that all young people are doing poorly, that's just not accurate, right? There is some data that just flies in the way of that, but I think it's the. What you call, I don't know, people call it a vibe session. The thing I just want to reverse to that, you said that was so powerful and one of the things I admire so much about you is you're considered a conservative, but I find you so compassionate is you said something I hadn't even thought about, and that is the importance of touch and that we're mammals and that there are young men. I've always said a lot of young men, their first male role model is a prison guard. But the idea. And then I go to sex. One in three men under the age of 30 haven't had sex in the last year. 60% of households used to have a kid at 30. Now it's 27%. But I never really stopped to think about the importance of touch where mammals and just how important and restorative and healthy it is. Can you speak more about that? I hadn't heard that before framed that way.
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Yeah. There's a guy, a scientist, named Reid Montague who studies this, and he studies how powerful touch is. When you look at our nearest animal ancestors, apes and such, they're constantly touching each other. It just has a tremendous calming effect. And I hug my wife and I hug each other many times a day. And it's not a big deal. It's just like. It's just something you do because intuitively we know it's true. But also it's a symptom of love. And one of the things I think is obvious, there's a great study called the Grant Study, a longitudinal study done at Harvard. And the founder of that or the director of that study, longtime director, a guy named George Valiant, said, after all my years, my lifetime of studying human flourishing, my answer is human flourishing is love, full stop. And so it pays to just fill your life with a lot of love. And I mean that as love for a person, love for another person. But I also mean that as what are our most obvious loves? We love our town, we love our vacation. People who are religious love God. And with our country, these are the obvious forms of love. Are any of these forms doing anything other than declining? The number of people in dating relationships is way down, way down. The number of people who go to church is way down. The number of people who express patriotism, especially among the younger generations, is way down. Civic life is less rich. So in a weird way, you could just say there's just a lot of less love in the world. And we don't usually talk in those terms because it doesn't sound very social science Y but I do think there's sort of. It's just as simple as that. People are, you know, you want to love your profession, you want to love what you do, you want to love the people around you. You want to live at full bore. One of my heroes is a guy named St. Augustine who not pretty famous. And he says, give me a man in yacht love. Give me a man in the desert who yearns for the pure waters. If I talk to a cold man, he just doesn't know what I'm talking about. And I do think there's wisdom in that Augustinian desire for ardor, for enthusiasm, for full commitment, for all the things that love entails. And just lack of that is just a horrible state to be in.
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A
I love the study you're talking about. And that's the opening line. Happiness is love, full stop. And I've been thinking a lot about, I had a friend who passed away and I wasn't close with him, but I was thinking about how much character one of our fraternity brothers demonstrated for him. Calling us, raising funds, finding out who has contacts at Cedars for his care. And there's this great line in the movie Magnolia. And William Macy is a bartender who's lonely. And he says, I have loved to give, but I just don't know where to put it. And one of the things that came out of that study that really struck me, the number of deep and meaningful relationships is kind of the whole shooting match, right? I think most people would guess that what shocked me, or I think the. The life hack is that being loved is great, but the happiest people find a lot of places to put their love. It's the people who love the most who are the happiest, not the people who are loved the most. And I thought that was so profound. So I guess my question would be, as someone who looks at society, how do we make it easier for people to find places to put their love? How do we create more opportunities for people to love something or someone?
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B
Part of the problem is the self. I recently came across a study where they asked a lot of people, how do you know when you're in love? And they said, I know I'm in love when I don't have to try hard. Socially, I know I'm in love when somebody makes me feel warm and appreciated. But the theme through all the comments was, I know I'm in love when I get to feel a certain way. It's not when I get to sacrifice and put their desires above myself. And we have gone in such a self oriented culture that love is about how do you make me feel? And that's really not what love is. Love is, you know, when you want someone, you want to devour them, but when you love someone, you want to serve them. And one of the things people say, love eliminates the distinction between giving and receiving. Because to give to someone you love feels like as good as receiving. And so I think partly it's the large self, partly young people just aren't dating as much anymore. And I'm not sure I can explain that one. But one of the most educational experiences I had in my life was falling in love with a woman when I was 18. And I remember it was May 5, 1979. We were at a campfire with friends and she slipped her hand into mine and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I remember it forever. And then that year I didn't go to the camp I just mentioned. I stayed home and worked as a janitor so I could go to her. She worked as a waitress. I'd go to her restaurant every lunchtime just to hang around her. And then she came, transferred to my college and dumped me. And I learned about the suffering too. All that experience of falling in love and feeling your heart expand in a way you never imagined it could, and then going through the rigors of a relationship and then going through the pain you experience when somebody dumps you. That is an education. And I loved my college. I had a great experience. It changed my life. But I would trade my college education for that romantic education. And it taught me to put your heart at the center of your life.
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A
Not your head, the thing there. The only thing I went through a very similar experience. I bloomed late. And having someone that you think is impressive, love you is just so. I feel like if I could give anyone that gift when they're young, this builds so much confidence. And I went through a similar thing. She also broke up with me. But I think the real learning is it might take a month, a week, maybe even a year, but then you're fine and you realize that you can get through these things. And I worry that a lot of young men choose a frictionless, risk free version of relationships and never develop the scar tissue or the calluses or the confidence to know if I apply for a job I'm not qualified for or apply to a college I'm not. I don't have the credentials or approach a stranger and express romantic interest who might be perceived out of my weight class that if it doesn't work, I'm going to be fine. Isn't some of it that we're trying to create, and I think it's through over parenting, quite frankly, concierge parenting, that we're creating a generation of people and encouraging them not to take any real risks?
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B
Well, certainly the college students I teach certainly often believe that if I have one failure, then my life is derailed. So one false step and it's over. And I try to assure them that that's not true. And your point of getting broken up with? I remember when I got broken up with, I went up to Water Tower Place in Chicago and bought some French Gitane cigarettes. If I was going to suffer, I wanted to suffer like Albert Camus. I was weirdly proud of my suffering because I'd never experienced suffering like that. And I was like, wow, I'm a deep guy. I'm so proud. But I got over it. It took years, frankly, but I got over it. There's a song on country music these days about a young woman who gets crushed by her boyfriend. Broken up, she survives it, and then he calls her later and wants to get back together. And the song is called what Doesn't Kill youl Calls yous Six Months Later. And I think that's a perfect country music song. And so you do learn. You can get over it. But I think the risk thing is the crucial thing. And I don't know if it's over parenting or what, but I think the decline in dating, it's a. You don't have to take a risk with a phone. It's always there for you. And asking a girl out is an enormous risk. Falling in love is an enormous risk. And I think there is some sort of social risk aversion that has settled as we've come to be more distrustful. And then the second thing that's happened is professionalization has become an urgent carve out. And so my students would always tell me, I don't have time to date, I'm just too busy. And I would tell them, you're doing it wrong. The data is pretty clear that the quality of your marriage is more important than the quality of your career in determining your happiness. And so you should focus on that. And I once had a student tell me, marriage is a box that'll come in the mail when I'm 35. And I was like, eh, wrong. It's very important to learn how to do relations. I don't advise getting married in college. The statistics show you should wait till 25.
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A
But.
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B
But it's really helpful to have had a whole repertoire of relationships so you're able to be a good partner to somebody. And it takes practice, just like anything else. And it takes skill building. The same woman who told me that marriage will come in the mail, she said, you know, I've had four boyfriends in my life and they all ghosted me at the end. Not a single one of them had the decency to call her up and have that conversation. And I think it's because, in part, nobody had taught them they had to do that. A decent person has a breakup conversation. And as important, no one had taught them that it's possible to break up with someone without crushing their heart, at least more than is necessary. And I think these are basic social skills that we have not passed on. And they're skills like how to ask for an offer forgiveness, how to listen really well to somebody, how to be a great conversationalist. And somehow social skills are neglected.
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A
I've seen some recent studies trying to understand why young people are so anxious and depressed. And a lot of it is they claim they have no purpose. And I sort of, for the first time, kind of made that connection to what you were just saying, that the ability to love others or love something. And as I think about, I think of my purpose is I want to raise patriotic, loving men. And what that means is my purpose is I just don't get as much back from my boys as they get from me. And I know that sounds terrible, but that's my purpose. And whether your purpose might be civil rights, but showing up to protests, raising money, getting all sorts of feedback or negative feedback or getting attacked online, it's because it's your purpose. You're going to give more than you're going to get. And do you make that connection between purpose that young people and. I don't know how we inculcate this or teach them that, but the whole point of parenting, in my view or of purpose, is you decide to just give more than you're going to get from this thing or this person.
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B
I encounter this all the time. I had a student who was a great student. I gave him his only A minus at Yale, and he was such a good investor that while he was in college, he had a Bloomberg terminal on his dorm room desk. He worked for a firm and they gave him a terminal, which is an expensive thing, and he got out. And he was an arrogant bro kind of guy, a wonderful guy. I really liked him. And he got out and he got fired. And he called me and his voice was utterly different because he had done what he thought. And when he was fired from that job, he didn't really know what his telos was. And I think he never knew. I think he just was going along with the system, what the system told him to want. And Nietzsche has A saying, he who has a why to live for it can endure any how. And if you know why you're put on this earth, you can endure the setbacks. But if you don't know your whys, then the setbacks are really devastating. And I found that many young people are what they call insecure overachievers. They have no foundation. They haven't discovered their sense of purpose. So they build very impressive towers up on top, but their foundation is rotten, and eventually the towers are going to crumble. And so I began teaching courses, really on how to find a sense of purpose. And the core theory of one of those courses was that every young person, not everyone, but most, are going to make four fundamental commitments in the course of their twenties, or maybe up to 35 or 40. A commitment to a vocation, career. A commitment to a philosophy or faith, a worldview they can believe in and hang their guide their life by some kind of family and to a community. And the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of the commitments you make and how you live up to those commitments. And a commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for when love falters. So Jews love their God, but they keep kosher, just in case. Keep them on the straight and narrow. I love my wife, but we have a legal and religious marital bond between us. So that's a structure of behavior for those moments when love falters. And that act of commitment making is a bit countercultural today because we live in a culture that values autonomy a lot. Freedom of choice. Keep my options open. Keep my options open. And commitment is about closing options. But in my view, there are two kinds of freedom. The freedom of no restraint, which is the way a lot of people define freedom now. But another kind of freedom is the freedom to do hard things. So if I want the freedom to play the piano, I have to chain myself down to the piano bench and practice. And in that sense, sometimes it's your chains to set you free. But these are countercultural concepts these days.
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A
We'll be right back after a quick break.
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Foreign.
- [32:16]
A
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- [36:09]
B
Well, in terms of, I think we're just in a moment of extreme anxiety, and that feeds on a negative economic sentiment. Even when I think if you look at the University of Michigan consumer data information, consumer sentiment is through the floor. And what's interesting to me is that 20% of Republicans think Donald Trump is responsible. And that's bad news for Donald Trump. My colleague at the New York Times, E.J. dionne, had a piece where he estimated that somewhere between 15 and 25% of Trump voters have changed their mind about him. And that's good news for me because I've maintained that all voters are reasonable. And that suggests a lot of Republicans are walking away from Trump. I think it's a little too early. Some of the people are out over their skis and thinking the Trump presidency is. Is in permanent decline. I think he's holding on around 40% approval, 42, which is his historic norm. But we are in a moment where people are prepared for the worst, quick to see the worst. I would say high threat perception, and then quick to blame the elites. And Donald Trump is now being seen a little more as one of the elites.
- [37:23]
A
You said you can measure authoritarianism by how high the price is to oppose it. Does the fact that institutions and voters seem reticent or actually less reticent? It seems like they're more willing to push back. Does this reflect. It feels like, I don't know if it's confirmation or, you know, I don't know which bias it is that I'm imposing here, but it does feel like this is a moment that there's been a bit of a pivot or that the dam is beginning to burst in terms of Trump's ability to hold this coalition together. Your thoughts?
- [37:55]
B
It's clearly fraying. I mean, there's just been a lot of negative news for Trump in the last time. The drop in his polls, especially the drop in his polls on economics, drop in his polls on immigration, the setback in all the different political races that have been held over the last year. The Indiana legislature beginning to rebel, I do think. And then even within the Senate, some of the attacks in the House on Speaker Johnson for basically disarming the Senate and the House both unilaterally disarmed. One of the things I was taught in political science class is that people go into politics because they want power. But I've learned as a journalist, people don't want power. Even politicians don't want power. They're happy to give away power if they can keep their jobs. And so they give power to the agencies, they give power to the president, and they give power to the party leaders. So Congress is run by four people. The speaker, the majority leader, the minority leader, and the. The Senate and House minority leaders. And so they run the place. And most other people are basically powerless, which is why so many people leave. But are they going to. When we begin to see mainstream House members bucking the president on important issues, then I'll believe his coalition is fracturing. Now, I think it's fraying around the edges, but not really fracturing.
- [39:16]
A
Curious what you think about. So trust in media and government, all time lows. Talk about the concepts more generally of as it relates to media or government or however else you want to explain these constructs or these themes. Talk about the notion of trust and experts.
- [39:32]
B
Yeah, well, trust is faith that you will do what you ought to do. And so it's a faith, it's a form of faith because I'm anticipating the future and I have faith in you. And faith, it's a moral kind of faith that you will do what you ought to do. And the ought relies on the fact that we have a shared moral sense that we agree what you ought to do. It also requires that we have shared norms of how to be considerate to each other, that if two lanes are merging on the highway, the right lane is going to go, then the left lane, the right lane, and then the left lane. And if you bump in line and cut, I'm going to honk because you, you violated the norm. And so over the last decades, that sense of shared faith and shared moral order and shared moral norms has deteriorated the most important statistic to me in all of politics is do you trust government to do the right thing most of the time? And through much of the 20th century, 70% of Americans said, yeah, I trust government to do the right thing most of the time. Now we're down to what like 15%. And the most socially important statistic is do you trust your neighbors? Do you trust the people around you? And it used to be 60% said yes, and now that's down to 30% and 19%. A millennial and Gen Z. So people have lost faith in each other. And I've been persuaded by Robert Putnam at Harvard that when you lose faith, it's usually well founded. When you are distrustful, it's usually because people have been untrustworthy to you. And I just think there's so it's in a weird way, trust is the moral barometer of society. And when people betray you, then you get distrustful. And one of the dumbest things Donald Trump is doing right now is going to people at rallies and saying, you don't need $32, you can get by with two dolls. That just makes people feel like he's flippant and he doesn't sympathize. And if there's one thing Americans want right now, it's to be seen by their leaders. And when they go to the supermarket and they buy like a medium amount and they walk out of there with $179bill and he says, buy two dolls, people are going to feel unseen. And that's part of what's happened here. And once you feel unseen, then you get more distressful because we evolved to be surrounded by 150 other people who saw us all the time. And when you get more distrustful, you're less likely to trust others and people will less likely to be trustworthy to you. And so trust is about spirals. You have a death spiral of distrust feeding into distrust, feeding into distrust. Or positively, you can have a death upward spiral of people who behave trustingly, find that people are trusting, are trustworthy, so they trust them more, so their relationships improve and they have more trust and more trust. And I have found in my life, I don't know about you, that I always lead with trust. I exaggeratedly trust people and often that burns me. Not often, but sometimes it burns me. I get socially betrayed, I get financially betrayed. Well, whatever. But I think on balance, if you lead with trust, most of the time, people will behave in trustworthy ways. But you have to lead with trust in the first instance And a lot of people are just too burned by life to do that.
- [42:57]
A
I would argue that the culprit around the erosion in trust and faith in our institutions is that we have attached a profit motive to algorithms who figured out a way to get us to mistrust each other, that we're actually not that divided. But we have the s and p. 40% of the s and P has a vested interest in dividing us. I'll go online, I'll read the comments. And, you know, everyone has addictions. I'm convinced everyone has a certain amount of addiction. I have two addictions. One is to money, and one is to the affirmation of strangers, which is just stupid at my age. But I'll go on YouTube and people will say really aggressive, mean things about both of us and the reason why. And then I'll find that half of them, especially the really vile ones, are dog mom312 with three followers. It's a bot meant to create engagement. Or from someone who sees a vested international interest in dividing America, whatever it might be. But essentially, we've created porous platforms and an algorithm and attached a profit incentive that's gotten so big, it may be the dominant force in our economy that sees an inverse correlation between trust and profitability. Your thoughts?
- [44:05]
B
I think that's part of it. But the trust numbers really began to go south about 30 years ago. The federal trust numbers began to go south in the 70s that. Do you trust government? But the social trust began to go south 30 years ago. So I think that's a big part of it. But I think it's mostly it's social disconnection, it's shrinking family size, it's shrinking friendship circles, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm sort of interested by the fact that you go on and look at the reaction to you because, I don't know, I must be psychologically weaker than you. I avoid that because it's damaging. I can't take it.
- [44:42]
A
Made you stronger. I'm the heroin addict. It's like just my last day now. I go on and I look at them and I try to stop at a certain point, but I think yours is a much healthier approach and a much more confident approach. Yeah, I go on and look at these things, and it takes me out of my head, and I lack presence around my family, the people who I should care about. But your data is hard to argue with. Do you think it's. I mean, it's a variety of things, and you talk a lot about this when I See on television, lack of church attendance, lack of. Well, let's move to solutions. One idea I love, and I'm curious. I would love to see mandatory national service. Your thoughts?
- [45:22]
B
100%. I mean, it's astounding to me that it's not there, because all you have to do is mention. If you're talking to a group of people and you mention the phrase national service, you get applause, spontaneous applause. And I think we all have a sense we would be better off. A, people have a sense of purpose if they got experienced the sensation of giving. B, it would be great if somebody from Berkeley, California, had to room with somebody from Birmingham, Alabama. It would just be fantastic. I actually, in 2017, I launched a nonprofit. Exactly on the subject. The idea that social distrust was underlying a lot of the problems in our society. And so the project is called weave, the Social Fabric Project. And we just go to towns and we say, who's trusted here? And people list names, people in the neighborhood. It could be some. Some of the people have. Are just sort of the people in the neighborhood who spontaneously organize things. We met somebody who said, I practice aggressive friendship. And she's the lady on the black who has the July 4th party. She's the lady on the black has New Year's Eve parties. So everyone looks to her, and they know that she's a community hub. Some people are just nonprofit leaders. So they run the community organization. They run the homeless organization. I was in Watts, and I ran into an organization called Sisters of Watts. And it was just like a bunch of moms. And they did whatever the neighborhood needed. So if the kids were going home hungry, they had backpacks filled with food to send them home with. They cleaned up the empty lots. They gave showers to the homeless. They just did what the community needed. And I found that whatever town you go into or whatever neighborhood you go into, and if you say, who's trusted here, you'll get a list of names and everybody. They're everywhere. And we call them Weavers because they're weaving communities together. They are the people who build trust. And trust travels at the speed of relationship, and that's slow. But if you can shift norms, you can really produce big change all at once. So in the 70s, we shifted norms around littering, and it used to be a perfectly fine to litter, and then it was not. Then we shifted norms about smoking. The MeToo movement shifted norms about sexual abuse and harassment. And you can shift norms. And so what WEAVE does is we give financial support to Weavers so they'll be more effective. And we give them access to each other. We give them chances to tell their stories on media, and then we bring them together. And the goal is to create more people's. And identity is really powerful if people say, you know, I'm going to be a little more like those people. A culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy. And so I've spent the last seven or eight years around the most beautiful people in America, and it's kept my mood up when politics is trying to destroy it. And if we could shift norms around that kind of behavior. Just one final story. We ran into a lady in Florida, and she was helping kids across the street after elementary school, one in the afternoon. And we asked her, do you have time to volunteer in your neighborhood? And she said, nope, I have no time. We said, well, are you getting paid to do this? And she said, no, but I help the kids cross the street after school because it'll be safer for them. And then we said, what are you doing the rest of the day? And she said, well, on Thursdays, I take food to the hospital so the patients will have some nicer food to eat. And we said, do you have time to volunteer in your neighborhood? And she said, no, I have no time. And she didn't see this as volunteering. She just saw it as what neighbors do. And if we could shift the norm so people redefine what a neighbor is, then suddenly you'll see a lot more trust in society. And it has to start at the ground up, but it also has to happen at the top down. It's really hard to build trust to the ground up when somebody in the White House is trying to destroy it every day from the top down.
- [49:10]
A
One of the. I learn a lot from you, and I like that you challenged my thinking, because you have argued against a purely material explanation for our political crisis, that throwing money at people isn't to solve, and that there are moral, relational, and spiritual issues at hand here. What do you think that progressives, including myself, misunderstand about economic redistribution? That it's not a good substitute for cultural repair?
- [49:42]
B
Yeah. One of the differences between liberals and conservatives is cultural liberalism grew up in power. I think modern liberalism grew up in the New Deal when there was levers of power that Democrats controlled that they could advance their agenda. Conservatism more or less grew up out of power. And so when I was a young conservative, we had neckties. And some conservatives wore Adam Smith neckties, some wore St. Augustine some wore Edmund Burke. But the lodestars of being conservative was philosophical and it was out of power. It was a group through the 60s until Ronald Reagan was in exile. And so I found it in those days. Things have all changed now, of course, as a more conservatism was more philosophically oriented and progressivism was more programmatical and more reliant on planning and economy, economics. And if you were in government, then it's natural to think, well, what do I have in government that I can use to make society better? I've got money. And that fed into what really was descending from Marxism. And I think a lot of people are influenced by Marx, including me, who are not Marxists. But Marx was really about economic and material determinism, that material conditions determine consciousness. And as a conservator, I think consciousness has a large influence on material conditions or at least the causal arrow goes both ways. And so it was very easy, both in the Great Society and in the years since to believe. If we just throw money at a problem, then that'll go a long way to solving it. And that has failed in my view. In the school system, we've thrown a lot, increasingly more money at schools and scores are dropping rapidly. And it's especially in efforts to create social mobility. If you give poor family money, they're better off, so I'm for it. They can buy more groceries or whatever else they need. But what you were hoping when you gave a poor family basic income or whatever was that their long term outcomes would be different, that they'd have higher high school graduation rates, they'd have higher incomes later on. And that's not true. That doesn't happen. And that's been. I just saw another study with the same finding today because if you come from a poor family and have parents with an extremely strong work ethic, you're probably going to be okay. And it's that work ethic that is necessary along with some resources. And I think a lot of people don't want to mention that work ethic because it seems like you're blaming the poor, you're blaming the victim here. But the people who are poor are completely aware of how important a work ethic is. And everyone has complexities in their life to explain their circumstances. But I do think it's possible to talk about things like work ethic, self control without saying, oh, you poor people are bad, which is certainly not true.
- [52:46]
A
We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from rippling finance teams can waste weeks chasing receipts, reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across a slew of disconnected spend tools. And it's what Rippling is here to fix, helping you keep your spend under control without the busy work of clunky finance software. Rippling is the unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance. They've helped millions replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system designed to give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling removes the bottlenecks, busy work and silos your software can create automated, perfectly in sync and seriously simple to use. With Rippling, you can run your entire hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill in the gaps in your software stack. And right now you can get six months free when you go to rippling.com propg learn more at R-I-P-P-L-I-N-.com profgu that's rippling.com profg for six months free. Terms and conditions apply. Zoe, the mall's about to close.
- [53:58]
B
It's impossible to do anything in 15 minutes.
- [54:00]
A
Oh, it's possible, Harvey. I mean, you can switch to T mobile in just 15 minutes. So you think you can find your auntie a sweater? Come on, you spent an hour buying jelly beans. I know. I do love jelly beans. Trust me.
- [54:10]
B
Now you can switch to T mobile.
- [54:11]
A
In just 15 minutes.
- [54:12]
B
Plus he'll get America's best network. No, no.
- [54:15]
A
Maybe I should switch to T Mobile right now.
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B
This holiday. Switch to T mobile in just 15 minutes from your phone.
- [54:21]
A
Check out in 15 minutes or less per line. T Mobile is the best mobile Network in the US based on analysis by.
- [54:24]
B
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- [55:14]
A
We're back with more from David Brooks. The term I keep hearing and it's become almost a badge of honor. People are consistently saying I'm politically homeless and there's different levels of homelessness, right? There's people who don't have a static address, they qualify as homeless. There's people living in their car and there's people living under a bridge. I think of David Brooks as a guy living under a bridge. I can't imagine a more politically homeless person right now. The way you meld conservative ideology, money doesn't fix the problem. It's values. And at the same time, you talk about the importance of touch among young men. I mean, you really are sort of an island of one. Or let me ask you this. Who in the Republican or the Democratic Party or where do you find a home in terms of our leadership, who do you think? Who does David Brooks want to be president? Who are you impressed by?
- [56:10]
B
Yeah, well, first, just work my home. I think I'm pretty consistent now. I'm a personal faith, but until my 50s I had no faith. But I did read the Bible. And the idea that the strong should serve the weak and the rich should serve the poor was pretty squarely in the center of both Old and New Testament. And so that seemed like a good value to embrace then. One of my heroes is Edmund Burke. And the key phrase for Burke is epistemological modesty, that the world is really complicated and you should be very humble about what you think you can know. And so you should do change, but you should do it cautiously and incremental. You should perform on society. Burke wrote the way you would perform surgery on your father, very carefully. And I think a lot of the planning that progressives did and the plan big projects that the progressives did over the course of the 20th century, a lot of them just backfired because no one is smart enough to navigate complex change. And then my third hero is Alexander Hamilton, who's a Puerto Rican hip hop star from New York City. Now, Hamilton, there are three traditions in American life, even though we only have two parties. One of them is a progressive tradition, but believes in using government to enhance equality. Very legitimate tradition. The other is a more libertarian tradition that believes in reducing government to enhance freedom. And then historically we've had a third tradition, which starts with Alexander Hamilton. It goes up through Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and the Whig party with the American system. And then it goes up through Abraham Lincoln, who was a Whig, who gave more speeches on banking than he does about slavery in the course of his career. And then it goes up to Theodore Roosevelt. And then it goes up and probably dies with John McCain, at least the first McCain race of 2000 and would include the Rudy Giuliani version, the 2000 version of Rudy Giuliani, not the contemporary version. And that tradition believes in limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility. As Hamilton or Lincoln would have said, it's about creating a world in which poor boys and girls can rise and succeed. If we don't have social mobility, if we divide into a class structure, then that's curtains. And so the way you do that is you use government in limited but energetic ways to help people become good capitalists or good whatever they want to be. And that's good human capital policies, that's good education policies, that's job training, that's earned income tax credit, that's baby bonds, whatever, to help people rise and succeed. To me, my tradition, the Whig tradition, is a legitimate tradition in American life. It just happens to have no political partisan home. But I think I see bits of it on the moderate side of the Democratic Party, which is where I now consider myself. I'm just watching, for example, Rahm Emanuel begin his presidential campaign. And some people think Rahm is, he's the old guard, he doesn't have a chance. And maybe that's true. I think he's very realistic about what his chances are. But he is talking about the American dream and he is talking about education. And the way Democrats have walked away from that issue is astounding to me. Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama wanted education reform, and now the Democrats, Kamala Harris basically did not have an education plank in her platform because she didn't. I don't know, I don't know. She didn't care. She thought it would be divisive for the party. And the problem with that is right now Republicans are kicking Democrats asses on education. The best education states, as has been written about a lot of, are Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia. Those are the states where the gains are being made. And one, statistics should upset every Californian that in California, 28% of black kids are reading at grade level, 28%. In Mississippi, a much poorer state, 58% of black kids are reading at grade level. So what the hell's going on California? So my party would, if it existed, would care a lot about that.
- [60:13]
A
So I used to think the best way to predict the future was to make it, which is sort of this ego driven action orientation, like Tarzan trope. But I now think the best way to predict the future is to look at incentives. And do you believe that? So I think as a percentage of gdp, generally speaking, across the west, especially in Europe, we've seen social service spending Go up. And at some point the incentives are quite frankly, not to take risks, not to work. Do you think that part of the failure of progressives is that we've, in an attempt to grab social virtue and show empathy for our brothers and our sisters, that we've created an incentive system that creates a smaller tax base and slowly but surely inspires this downward spiral?
- [61:01]
B
Yeah, I guess I do believe obviously in the power of incentives, but again, we look at issues somewhat differently. It's interesting because I think you and I agree on a lot, but we think differently. And so I think what matters is your intrinsic desires and incentives to me feel like extrinsic desires. Like a performance pay plan sounds like an extrinsic desire. And I think one of the things the research shows, if you pay kids to read, they'll begin to regard reading as work and do less of it. And I think this is even true among bankers that some of the performance pay programs that they thought would boost productivity didn't really boost productivity. And I would say what really makes people work hard is to get back to our original subject is doing the thing they love to do. Doing the thing they are wired to do. I read this biography of Walt Disney recently and when he was making Snow White, the first full length feature animated movie, he hired artists and art historians to come to Disney studios and teach his cartoonists to draw like Michelangelo and Rembrandt and people like that. And he worked on this movie three years before even drawing this first cell and was hour upon hour, seven days a week of doing the voices. What should the look of the movie be? What do we do with grumpy and that? 3 years of prep work, bringing in. He brought in, I think, Frank Lloyd Wright to come to the studio to talk to the artists about lines. And it made no economic sense to do all this stuff, but he did it because he just wanted to do the thing he wanted to do. He loved drawing and he wanted to do the great project and it made no economic sense, but he was totally driven and frankly it economically eventually paid off. But. So I think people will become entrepreneurs when it seems challenging and cool to be entrepreneurs. I think again, I gravitate a little more to the incentive, to the cultural piece than to the incentive piece. I don't know if you think I'm wrong about that.
- [63:07]
A
I just grew up in an environment where not having money, then being very focused on economic security, teaching at a business school, being an entrepreneur, raising capital, being on boards. I. One of my real weak points is I tend to think of things through an economic lens. And also, and by the way, I think the idolatry of the dollar in America. I think America is basically becoming a trading platform. It's like losing almost any sense of self around what it means to be a society. We're just a trading platform to try and get rich. And character seems to take in a distant second. And character and grid are conflated with the size of your bank account, full stop, is how I see it. And so the incentives among young, young people is just disproportionately towards doing whatever's required to find money and skipping over the purpose, the relationships, the things you were talking about, touch that are so important. And you end up maybe with some economic security, but you end up economic, end up anxious, obese and depressed at the age of 35 with an inability to. To attach to anything. So, yeah, I do. I think about incentives a lot. And that is, whenever I look at a situation where the behavior just. I can't figure it out, I go right to the economic incentives. But part of that, again, is proximity bias. Those are the people I teach at a business school, I don't teach at the Sociology department. What do you make of. And I hate even using his name because I worry I'm adding to the problem by platforming him. And I think that I'm hoping Andrew Tate is just going to fade into the distance when people realize just how stupid and nihilistic he is. But what do you think of Nick Fuentes? And does it say anything about the Republican Party? Or is it going to be. And Andrew Tate or Yanni Monopoly? I forget his name was just kind of. The algorithms love him for the short term and then he goes away. Do you think this is something bigger?
- [64:54]
B
Yeah, I do. I mean, I. I do think we're in a moment of sort of nihilism, which produces a right wing reaction, which is fascist. Comes close to fascism. And so the. I think we entered a stage in the 1980s or 1990s of what we call moral relativism. The prevailing ethos, as Alan Bloom wrote in the closing of the American Mind, is you do you, I'll do me. We each come up with our own values. And I think that led to a lot of people with no shared values. If you tell everybody to come up with your own values, unless your name is Aristotle, you can't do it. You come up with nothing. And so I think we entered a phase where people were just morally inarticulate and unclear on values, and everything was kind of Wishy washy. And they were weak. And then when you get a counter reaction to that, there's a book by a guy named Rusty Reno called the Return of the Strong Gods. And his argument was that after World War II, people wanted weak belief because they thought strong belief produces the Nazis. And so they went for weak belief. Karl Popper, open society, everything should be open. And so there's reaction against that. To have strong gods, strong nations, strong man, strong orthodox faith. With that goes true fanaticism. Because if you're trying to, trying to shock the bourgeoisie, the weaklings, the elites, one of the things you wanted to do was have a strong position and you want it to be somewhat dangerous and romantic and manly. And so then you had that love for Rome, Roman Empire that spread throughout the alt right. But it's inevitably going to lead you to conspiracy theories, it's inevitably going to lead you to racism, it's inevitably going to lead you to anti Semitism. Because once you adopt that logic that I'm going to have the strong belief that the establishment doesn't like, then you've got to keep upping the dosage. And that's what Nick Fuentes is. He ups the dosage and the audience demands the higher grade of heroin. They want the pure stuff. And he offers a little more pure. Andrew Tate offers a little more pure. But you can't return to the earlier dosage because it seems boring. And so you have this cycle of self radicalization with these young guys rising, spewing the most hateful stuff, and it still somehow seems cool to people, I guess, because I think the alt right and my friends and family members who are really in that world, they say it's just getting crazier and crazier.
- [67:22]
A
And you brought up a word just as we wrap up here, manly. And we think about this a lot. And again, this is a genuine question, not a question posing as a comment, but I tend to reverse it almost everything, including the instability in our society to a lack of economic and romantic opportunities for young men. And that's not to say that it's not terrible for young women, but young women don't pick up AR15s or start revolutions, typically. I mean, they're part of the movement. But I would argue the most unstable, violent societies in the world all have the same thing in common. And that is a disproportionate number of young men who are economically or relationally challenged, if you will, isn't. I mean, can a lot of our problems be reverse engineered to young men feeling no sense of purpose. And again, I'll use the term economic precarity.
- [68:10]
B
Absolutely, I agree with that 1,000%. And you know, this is not a new problem. Dostoevsky wrote a book, Notes from the Underground, about a nihilistic young man who feels invisible to society and draws the right conclusion that if society started World.
- [68:23]
A
War I. Yeah, right. A 19 year old. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
- [68:27]
B
And so if society hates me, I'm going to hate right back. And I think that's part of it. Just supplement that. So some, I would say some of the lonely young men do the. They basically want to commit suicide and take others with them when they go. That's basically what a mass killing is. And so there's that segment, but there's another segment that's reacting. I was really struck by this in a survey I saw sometime in the last couple of weeks where they asked young people, if you want to have a successful life, what are the most important pieces of that for you? And for Trump voting young men, the number one answer was having children. And the number three answer was getting married.
- [69:14]
A
And it was 11 for progressive women.
- [69:16]
B
Right.
- [69:16]
A
And so it didn't even make the top 10.
- [69:18]
B
It was second and third from the bottom. And so to me, this is like, I think it's frankly healthier. I think the people who think marriage is not important, listen, a lot of people don't get married. A lot of people, marriage is not for them. A lot of things, life happens. But as I said earlier, dating and marrying are vastly more likely to make you happy. I saw a study, I think the Institute for Families studies that among liberal women who get married, 96% say they're happy. And among unmarried, 66%. So it doesn't mean you're going to be unhappy if you're unmarried. It's certainly not. We all have single friends who have built great lives for themselves. But the odds are a little better if you, if you have a life partner.
- [70:03]
A
The odds are a little better if you have a life partner. David Brooks is one of the nation's leading writers and commentators. He's an Op ed columnist for the New York Times and writer for the Atlantic. He's a bestselling author of the Second Mountain, the Road to Character, the Social Animal and How to Know a Person. David, I don't know if you feel this heat or if you can sense it. You are such a role model for me because I love how you are just unafraid and you bring this peanut butter and chocolate that I don't see anywhere else. And that is conservative values or what are thought of as conservative values. Wrapped in emotion, wrapped in. Wrapped in love, wrapped in character. I don't see anyone. I don't know if it was. The last person to do this was w. I just don't see anyone doing this. And I think you're just such an important voice and such a great role model for young people, specifically young men. Very much appreciate your time today and your voice.
- [70:56]
B
I have never been compared to a Reese's peanut butter cup, but I. I take it as a great honor and so I thank you. And I. One of the nice things about doing this show is for that of kind several weeks, lots of people are going to come up to me saying, hey, I saw you on Professor G show.
- [71:30]
A
Algebra of Happiness. I've had such a blessed year. My oldest is applying to college, which has been both stressful and really rewarding. He got into school. It's kind of like when your kid gets into college. It's similar to when my partner, her water broke with our first kid. I didn't ever believe that was going to happen. I couldn't imagine. Or my dog Zoe, for some reason, I couldn't imagine that my dog Zoe would ever pass away. I just didn't believe it. There's just certain things you believe are never going to happen. I never believed that my kid was actually going to get into college. I just couldn't imagine him actually getting in. And he did. And that was just such an enormous highlight and a culmination of so many things, not least of which was his hard work and discipline. But it was just so kind of meaningful. But the year has had a bit of an overhang or I don't know what is on my mind today is that distinct of all my blessings, there is definitely a cloud. And that cloud is the following. My friends are dying, and it's very strange. My closest friend in New York, a guy named Scott Sabah, died about 18, 24 months ago. Went out to dinner with him. He had a bump on his head. He said, yeah, I'm getting it checked out. Ended up it was leukemia. They thought they could treat it with pills. Pills aren't working. Went to chemotherapy that didn't work. He went through a stem cell transplant from his son that didn't work. And, you know, diagnosis to death in about six months. And this was a guy that was in his. He was 54, healthy, handsome. And then my roommate from my freshman year, Craig Marcus. Again, great shape. Diagnosed with Ghislaine Barr syndrome. I think it's called a nerve disorder that you can recover from. Everything was going fine. His limbs started swelling. Back in the hospital, on his way to get a X ray, and his heart stopped. And then this past week, another fraternity brother, Brad Luff. There's a picture of eight of us kind of core friends. This really optimistic, really nice, super handsome kid. Like, no one ever said a bad thing about Brad. Passed away from. He got a stroke, and then they found out he had cancer. And then he ultimately decided to refuse treatment and went on hospice care. And it's very. Obviously, it's really rattling, and you're kind of at that age or now there's two of the eight of us are gone from this picture, and we're not that old. At least we don't feel that or think of ourselves as being that old. And a couple things struck me. One, if you lined up all eight of us and had an insurance agent say who's most likely to go first? These guys would have been towards the bottom of the list. They were both really good shape, good genetics. It just didn't make any sense, and it's just so fucking random. But other than me feeling sorry for myself because I'm losing my friends, that's not. I don't have a Hallmark moment around this, but the thing that strikes me about all of this is that one of the guys in the group, this guy named David Kingsdale, who was actually president of our fraternity and was also one of these incredibly impressive guys, super handsome quarterback of our fraternity football team, a real leader. And David stayed very close friends with Brad. And over the course of the last 12 to 24 months, I would get a call from David, and this could not have been easy for David. David and I are friends, and we have this shared history, but we're not close. And he'd say, do you know anyone at Cedars? We're trying to get Brad in, and they're trying to ship him to another hospital in Ventura. He'd call me and say, do you know anybody at this physical therapy? I mean, the key to living long or longer across all these studies say even hospitals and doctors will say this is, does the person have an advocate looking out for them, helping them navigate the circuitous, sometimes blunt instrument that is the American healthcare system? And this is a guy with his own family, his own career, his own parents to take care of. And he was essentially Brad's advocate and his family and raising money for Brad's care. And it's not fun to call your friends and say, do you have contacts Here we're raising money and he did it. I think it was just such an incredible lesson around character that we all miss Brad and we all cared about him. But there was one of us who said, okay, that's nice, but I'm going to step up and tangibly make his life. I'm going to offer him comfort. I'm going to offer him hope. I'm going to spend time and energy finding the right access, the right care and the resources. And it is not fun to do this. It is hard and time consuming and probably even a little bit embarrassing. But he did it. And it's more than just friendship. It's character. And I wrote a book on happiness. And one of the things that really struck me so the net net of happiness is the number of deep and meaningful relationships. That's not surprising. But the unlock that I found most insightful and probably the biggest takeaway for me from writing the book is the happiest people aren't the ones who are loved the most, but the ones that have the opportunity to develop relationships such that they can find places to put their love. And that, as rock stars, are happy, it's great to be adored. You're happier to be loved than not to be loved. But the happiest people are the ones that develop relationships such that people trust them enough that they're able to help them and love them. The happiest people on earth are caregivers, the people who have such good relationships with people and are such good people that that person will let them demonstrate that kind of concern, that kind of love. There's a great movie, Magnolia, and the bartender of the movie is breaking down and says, I have love to give. I just don't know where to put it. Anyways, David Kingsdale found a place to put love. He was one. He was the guy amongst all of us in our fraternity who really stepped up and demonstrated a great deal of concern and love for Brett and has demonstrated and been a real role model around what it. What it means to have real character. My holiday wish for you is that you form enough relationships that you have the ultimate blessing, and that is you find places to provide and give comfort and love. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Gennair. Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the propg pod from PropG Media.