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The Rubin Report
Don't Be Fooled, This Isn't Normal. It's the Beginning of a New Crisis | Arthur Brooks
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- [00:00]
Arthur Brooks
Fear, anger, this is what will actually get the attention. The attention economy actually is trying to hijack the way that our brains work. And that's the reason you see such a disconnect between ordinary life, which doesn't get your attention. That's the point. And the fact that people are moving to more and more and more online is one of the explanations for why happiness is in decline. Everybody hates what they're looking at on their phones, but they can't stop. You know, you never met somebody who's a drug addict. And so, you know the secret of my happiness day? Meth. I mean, nobody's ever said that they do the thing, even though they hate the thing. We've rewired the way that our brains work to the. To the extent that we're. We do all kinds of interesting things and never find meaning. But then what do we do is we actually have to. What used to be ordinary is now extraordinary, and that's what we have to pursue. We could lose a whole generation, which is actually happening now for people who are 10 years younger than you and who are not falling in love. Not falling in love?
- [00:51]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [00:51]
Arthur Brooks
I mean, like, what else is there to do in your 20s? That's the point of your 20s, isn't it? I mean, so at the next dinner party, no phone.
- [00:58]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [00:59]
Arthur Brooks
And here's the first question, Dave, what are you most afraid of? And watch what happens. Oh, right. All right.
- [01:16]
Dave Rubin
Joining me today is professor and author of the upcoming book meaning of your life, finding purpose in an age of emptiness, Arthur Brooks. Good to see you again. How are you?
- [01:25]
Arthur Brooks
Good to see you too.
- [01:26]
Dave Rubin
I have to say, I think this is the earliest interview we have ever done. We don't do 8am interviews. But you said you had one slot. And I know you're a smiley guy, happy guy. We've chatted once in person before at ARC in London. I said, I'll do it. I will caffeinate.
- [01:41]
Arthur Brooks
What time do you get up generally?
- [01:43]
Dave Rubin
Well, I'm a pretty early riser in general, around six. But I was just mentioning, we just got back from an Australia tour and this jet lag has me out of whack. I'm up at 4am basically every day right now.
- [01:53]
Arthur Brooks
4Am is good. I mean, there's a whole lot of research on getting up before the sun is up, on how that's. In ancient Vedic wisdom is called the Brahma vihurta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time. And now there's this new neuroscience research that shows that if you're Actually doing something active while the sun is coming up. It gives you better focus and creativity the whole day.
- [02:12]
Dave Rubin
So I take it you're in early, right?
- [02:14]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah. I'm a 4:30am Guy. I work out from 4:45 to 5:45 every day. And then I go to mass every day after that. And so before I even have my coffee or any protein or anything, I've actually gone through several steps to ensure focus and creativity for the day. And also just to kind of anchor my soul a little bit. Because in the idea business, you gotta be on point and full of love. Right?
- [02:36]
Dave Rubin
You better be. And I think that that's what we're gonna get to today. That's what the book is about. It's also why, although we're taping this right now in November, we're gonna put this up around Christmas. Cause I thought it'd be a nice escape from some of the madness. So there's a host of things I want to talk to you about, but I want to focus on happiness to start. Because I was thinking in my daily life, I'm very happy. The people that I work with are happy. My relationships are good, all of that. And then there's a complete disconnect to what I see online, which is sort of misery and neurosis and endless craziness. And I don't think that's just me. I think that's an awful lot of people that are having this kind of disconnect between what happens online and what happens offline.
- [03:20]
Arthur Brooks
Right.
- [03:21]
Dave Rubin
Does that prognosis make sense to you? And what do we do about that?
- [03:25]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, no, the ordinary quotidian life is actually pretty. Going pretty well for most people. I mean, they have complaints for sure. Complaints about the economy, complaints about politics, complaints, et cetera. Plus the private stuff that people are going through all the time. I mean, people have health problems, financial problems, relationship problems. But for the most part, people will generally say that they're pretty happy about the way their life is going. Now, that is different than what you actually see. The outrage industrial complex is trying to stimulate the limbic system of the brain. The way that you get people, you get their attention and you get their followership is by stimulating the amygdala in their brain. So fear, anger, this is what will actually get the attention. And the attention economy actually is trying to hijack the way that our brains work. And that's the reason you see such a disconnect between the ordinary life, which doesn't get your attention. That's the point. And then the attention that people are actually getting when they're heavily online and the fact that people are moving to more and more and more online is one of the explanations for why happiness is in decline.
- [04:26]
Dave Rubin
So what do we do about that in a time when obviously the future is going to be more online and we're just at the AI horizon and robotics and all of these things that are coming. And yet I think most people sort of candidly know this. If you're sitting at dinner with a whole bunch of friends and your phones are away, everybody's engaged and happy and present, and then the second one person brings out a phone, everyone does it, and then you're lost for 10 minutes.
- [04:51]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. It interrupts the neurochemistry. There's also one of the things that this new book is about, the meaning of your life. It's actually fundamentally about how our brains have been changing in the era of heavily online life. And what it really comes down to is that you connect with other people in bonds of happiness and love. You connect with God. You have a sense of meaning. The mystery of life is actually a right hemispheric phenomenon. This comes from the work of Iain McGilchrist, who's a neuroscientist at Oxford. And he talks about hemispheric lateralization, which sounds really fancy, but it's just means that the two sides of your brain do different things. That's what we do in academia. Tenure is like. And the right side of the brain is mystery and meaning, and the left side of your brain is tasks and technology. So the more that you're actually looking at screens and thinking about technology and reducing things to googleable questions, the more you're forcing yourself away from the part of your brain where you can connect with other people, where you can connect in a meaningful and even mysterious way with the loved ones and the people in your life. That's what's so dangerous about that. That's what's actually happen. So your question is legal. What do we do?
- [05:54]
Dave Rubin
So what do we do? Yeah.
- [05:55]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. And the answer to what do we do? Is actually we have to live in the old ways. We have to purposefully live in the old ways. You know, the good old Grandpa Reuben, I guarantee you that he never said, you know, I had a panic attack behind the mule today. Right. I mean, his. His life was pretty boring, probably.
- [06:13]
Dave Rubin
He was a lithographer. He made 25 cents an hour for.
- [06:16]
Arthur Brooks
His first drink and before. And his dad probably was like running from some shadows, which is literally. But his life was extremely Meaningful, despite the fact that from outward appearances it was totally boring. Why? Because his brain was working the way that his brain was supposed to work. And we've rewired the way that our brains were to the extent that we do all kinds of interesting things and never find meaning. And that's a huge problem. That's what the book is about. But then what do we do is we actually have to. What used to be ordinary is now extraordinary. And that's what we have to pursue. We actually have to spend, spend the time with our friends to ask these deep questions that don't have answers. If you can feed a question into AI, it's not a meaning question. It isn't. It's a task and technology question. It's a closed ended question. If Google can answer something for you, it's not going to give you a sense of your life's meaning. But today, for example, my students, their 11pm dorm room conversations on Saturday night, which 30 years ago would have been like horribly pretentious, but that was wiring their brains toward meaning. And now it's. They're not even engaging, which is troublesome. That's the first. But then there's like five other things that you can just regularly do in your life without getting rid of your phone that will inject meaning into your life.
- [07:38]
Dave Rubin
Do you see this as kind of the great divide of how humanity will go going forward, meaning certain set of people? And I think it's going to be the bulk of the people will kind of go the direction you don't want. And in a weird way it won't be their fault. It's just because we've been handed the Pandora's box in our pocket all the time. And then there'll be a smaller set of people who will understand what you're talking about, who will escape that kind of madness? Yeah, I mean, it sounds almost cliche or.
- [08:05]
Arthur Brooks
It doesn't sound cliche. It just sounds an awful lot like in medieval times when the Irish monks kept the candle burning in the window and that's how these Christian values were propagated. When it could have, when the light could have gone out. There is. I think that sometimes. But I actually have a different kind of prediction which is that there's going to be a wholesale rebellion. And I think that people will learn to use the technology in a way that doesn't make their life worse. I mean, we really have a choice. AI, for example. I mean, AI is the next big thing. Before it was the Internet, before that was personal computing. We always have these technological revolutions, and what happens is, at the beginning, they make life worse and then they make life better. I mean, the telephone. And in 1895, people were predicting that nobody's going to go out of the house because of the telephone.
- [08:50]
Dave Rubin
Right, Right.
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Arthur Brooks
And when I was a kid. I'm older than you, but when I was a kid in the. My mom would be like, get off the phone. It's a beautiful day. Which sounds an awful lot like the Internet today.
- [08:59]
Dave Rubin
Don't sit too close to the tv.
- [09:00]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, don't sit too close to the tv. It'll eat your brain. And that sort of thing. And we learned how to use these technologies for the most part. Not everybody. The trouble is in the breach, in the between times, we could lose a whole generation, which is actually happening now for people who are 10 years younger than you and who are not falling in love. Not falling in love. I mean, what else is there to do in your 20s. That's the point of your 20s, isn't it? It's actually fine. Is to fill your heart with these relationships. To not even have an interest in finding God.
- [09:34]
Dave Rubin
So what do you think that is? Is that also just a function of technology in that everything's been so atomized so that they can be on hinge or whatever the apps are?
- [09:41]
Arthur Brooks
Well, that's basically the brain reprogramming. That's what's going on. They think that if they go far enough left, they'll find the right. When you actually find tech leaders saying that you're going to get the singularity in which you're actually going to be able to define the meaning of life with quantum computing in which we will have. The heart actually is in the AI. That's complet wrong. Your brain knows. Your brain knows hemispheric lateralization. Even if it's passing the Turing test. If you're using AI as your therapist or friend or lover, you're gonna get more sad, more anxious, more lonely, and you won't know why. And that's the big problem, I'm afraid. We're gonna lose a generation of people while we're actually finding our way.
- [10:18]
Dave Rubin
What have you seen sort of in the attitudes of your students as this has all changed? Cause you've been teaching for quite some time. You just mentioned, you know, 30 years ago they would have been doing this on Saturday night Talk, talking philosophy. Now they're doing this. How. How has that affected their happiness and anxiety?
- [10:34]
Arthur Brooks
It's terrible. It's actually really terrible. So I. I left academia for a long Time I've been, I've been an academic since the 90s, so before that I was actually a professional classical musician. So I made my living playing the French horn all the way through my 20s until, until my early 30s. So I have, I've changed careers a lot and, and so, you know, I was in a pure right brain world of classical music and just as the advent of personal computing was starting to come around. So by the time I went to college and graduate, we were using computers for the first time, which was a really weird experience for me because I had no background in it. Then when I got my PhD in the mid-1990s and became a behavioral scientist, then I was teaching and it was a pretty happy time. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s where college was happier than ordinary life.
- [11:21]
Dave Rubin
I was there from 94 to 98.
- [11:23]
Arthur Brooks
There you go. Where'd you go?
- [11:24]
Dave Rubin
Binghamton.
- [11:25]
Arthur Brooks
Binghamton, yeah. And it was a good solid state school and people wanted to be there. And you made a bunch of friends and goofed around ground and your, your screw ups weren't too catastrophic.
- [11:35]
Dave Rubin
A little too much weed.
- [11:36]
Arthur Brooks
But there was a thing. There was weed at Binghamton.
- [11:39]
Dave Rubin
There was weed. That was all there was in Binghamton.
- [11:43]
Arthur Brooks
Binghamton, we've got weed.
- [11:45]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, that, I mean, that was pretty, you know.
- [11:47]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I taught at Syracuse for seven and a half years.
- [11:51]
Dave Rubin
I used to go to the Carousel Mall.
- [11:53]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [11:53]
Dave Rubin
Usually stoned.
- [11:55]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, you're mostly buying, you know, getting a smoothie or. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So, you know, during that period, college was happier than ordinary life. And then I left at the end of 2008 and I went to run a big organization, run the American Enterprise Institute. I did that for 11 years and man, I was super all in, working 80 hours a week and I was not paying attention to my old home. But by the time I retired from that in my mid-50s, so 11 years later, I actually went on this vision quest on what I was supposed to do with the rest of my own life because I was kind of feeling a lack of meaning, quite frankly. I didn't know why I was very aligned because life. And I walked the Camino de Santiago, which is that long walk across northern Spain that people have been doing for 1,100 years with a quest to understand their life's mission. And it found me. I was going to spend the rest of my life back in my home as a behavioral scientist, lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love, using science and ideas. That's what I was going to do for the rest of my life. So I took a professorship at Harvard and I came back to academia.
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Dave Rubin
How'd it come to you? How did it come to you? Was it a burning bush?
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Arthur Brooks
Was it a happens with. You mean the information, the mission, the actual. Yeah, so the belief is. The Catholic belief is that the information will find you when you're beaten into submission. The reason you walk for hundreds of miles is because you need pain. You need to open the aperture of your awareness by no longer having your defenses, which are metaphorical, and the physical defenses, but just it's body and soul. And so you're walking and praying and walking and praying and walking and praying for days and days, and you're in pain and you're hot and you're sore. And then you enter into Santiago de Compostela in the ancient city in northern Spain. And the belief is that that's when your mission will find you, because you're in a state of submission, ready to be found. You know, this is an ancient Jewish and Christian belief that you need to be. That truth will find you, but you have to submit to the will of God. You know, you can't go find the will of God. You have to submit to the will of God, which is a very different kind of concept. And so this is a metaphor in walking action. It's visceral, it's physical. I said, I'll give it a try. You know, I did it with my wife. She didn't want to do the full 33 days from the French border. Because she's like, no, because she's a sensible person. So we did the last eight days, which was 160 kilometers, and, you know, it's enough to. You feel it. And sure enough, on the last day, there was this. It wasn't this burning bush. It wasn't. I'm not a mystic. I wish I were, but I really felt that this truth had come to me and that I had sort of prayed and walked my way into it, you know, and we can open ourselves up to these states of awareness and openness. You know, that's what a lot of people are trying to do in the use of hallucinogens, which is a lot of this modern research. Right?
- [14:48]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [14:49]
Arthur Brooks
And what are we doing? And the answer is, what we're trying to do is we're trying to. You put your phone away and you're with your soulmate and you're doing a hard thing. You're opening up the right hemisphere of your brain. That's neurophysiologically what's going on. And you're not all on the left, you're on the right instead of on the left. And that's really, really important. And of course I wasn't thinking about the neurobiology at the time and now I understand. Ah, ah. You know, you open up the door to the right hemisphere of your brain, you don't know it's going to wander in. You know, careful.
- [15:20]
Dave Rubin
What do you make, what do you make of the hallucigen part of it, since you brought it up? Because, you know, that's obviously huge in the podcast world right now. The line that I always love on halluc hallucinogens was what I heard Jordan Peterson say when we were on tour years ago. He would always say, because he would get this question a lot, can you use this to find intermediate. And he would always say, be wary of unearned wisdom. And I sort of think that's what you're saying. There's a reason for the walk versus you gotta earn it quick.
- [15:46]
Arthur Brooks
So probably neurobiologically the way that the research will go when it marries up, when we triangulate to the hemispheric lateralization research, they're not married up yet. There's all the hallucinogen stuff and then there's the hemispheric lateralization stuff. When they meet, it'll probably be that some forms of hallucinogen therapy are enhancing the activity in the right hemisphere of your brain. And so therefore you're opening up that aperture manually by doing this, the unearned part. I'm hip to that totally. Right. What I worry about is what we don't know about the long term effects of using hallucinogens. There is at least some preliminary suggestive evidence that if you have any psychosis in your family, don't touch it. Don't touch cannabis. I mean, stay away from alcohol if you've got trouble with psychosis in your family because psychosis is highly heritable. And so, you know, I have a lot of mental illness in my family and I've dodged the bullet. But I don't want to, I don't want to roll the dice. I don't want to roll the dice on this. I mean, the life is short. I'm 61 years old. I don't know how many years I have left in my career using my noggin. I'm an idea guy. The last thing that I need is to go bonkers because I wanted to do an AYAHUASCA experience someplace in the jungle that just.
- [17:03]
Dave Rubin
Are you thankful in a weird way for to have some of that history in your family because it kept you in the sort of focus that you wanted to be in that led you to where you at?
- [17:12]
Arthur Brooks
Probably.
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Dave Rubin
I guess it's a little bit of bizarre question.
- [17:14]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. No, no, no. But early in my life I drank very heavily. So as I was a musician. Yeah, you know, it's like that's.
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Dave Rubin
You're a jazz musician.
- [17:22]
Arthur Brooks
No, actually it was a classic musician. I did spend two years on the road with Charlie Bird, the jazz musician. Guitar player.
- [17:26]
Dave Rubin
Wow, that's cool.
- [17:27]
Arthur Brooks
On tour. Yeah, that was an interesting experience. I learned a lot that I hadn't learned before. One of the things that I learned is I'm not a jazzer, but he taught me so much. But the whole.
- [17:36]
Dave Rubin
Was that more about the lifestyle or the music, just out of curiosity?
- [17:39]
Arthur Brooks
Oh, no, the music. I mean, it's like to be a jazz player is a completely different ethos. It's different set of techniques and. And classical music is about fine motor skill and total technical domination.
- [17:49]
Dave Rubin
Right.
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Arthur Brooks
That's really what's. And there is expression, but the table stakes are not screwing up. No missed notes.
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Dave Rubin
Right.
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Arthur Brooks
And that's a hell of a life. Right. But result of it is that it's a highly anxious lifestyle. And there are two groups of people that drink too much, people who are bored and people who are anxious. So if you're basically a bored slacker, you're probably going to drink too much. And if you're an anxious striver, you're going to drink too much. This is why it's kind of a barbell effect on alcohol abuse. And I drank way too much. And then I finished music and I went to graduate school and I drank too much and it was ruining my relationships and it was ruining my creativity. And I quit.
- [18:24]
Dave Rubin
Quit.
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Arthur Brooks
My dad died and I said, I don't want that. And so I quit. And now I'm about the age where my dad died and my health is super good as a result of that. But I recognize that there was damage during that that would have accumulated along those lines. And now I actually see the dark place where the use of euphorics actually goes, especially if you have mental illness in your family. So the advice I give to a lot of young people, because that's the question I get after every talk. I'm on tour all the time too. The big question is, what about hallucinogens? You, professor, is this the short path? And the answer Is be very careful, I say. I'm not morally against that. Wait five years, Just wait five years until there's more evidence about. It's kind of like cold plunging in its way. Right? I mean the evidence is, the science is.
- [19:11]
Dave Rubin
I'm building one in the master bathroom right now.
- [19:13]
Arthur Brooks
I mean, the science is pretty settled. About sauna?
- [19:15]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [19:16]
Arthur Brooks
About heat therapy. It's great for your happiness, it's great for your health. Cold plunging, the science hasn't caught up yet. And so you don't know. I mean, how old are you?
- [19:25]
Dave Rubin
49.
- [19:26]
Arthur Brooks
Okay. If I had that hair, I could be President of the United States and that's all I want. Gabe, I'm a simple man.
- [19:33]
Dave Rubin
Prp, you know, they spin your blood and they can jam it back in your head. It helps.
- [19:37]
Arthur Brooks
Does it help?
- [19:38]
Dave Rubin
Well, I don't know that it can. You might be past the point.
- [19:41]
Arthur Brooks
It doesn't do miracles. But the whole, you know, cold plunging, not to get off topic, but the whole point is that, you know, we don't really know the long term effects of stimulating the HPA axis. I mean, maybe extra cortisol, which makes you feel wonderful with the dopamine, et cetera, et cetera. It might age you. I just don't know. I don't. I'm not confident enough yet. And I'm even more scared of what hallucinogens would do to open up the right hemisphere of my brain. Some people have had miraculous effects, but there are non trivial numbers of cases where it's been catastrophic.
- [20:16]
Dave Rubin
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- [21:45]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. So what they want is to be right on the right, but they're looking for it on the left. They're looking for the protocols. They're looking. And look, I've done shows on podcasts.
- [21:55]
Dave Rubin
It'S become a giant protocol.
- [21:56]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah. And it's like I've done my six morning protocols. I had a million and a half viewers on my six morning protocols. It's like, why does somebody want to know what a 61 year old college professor does? You know, what he eats for breakfast? Because it turns out people, they know I'm super healthy and I know the science and so they want the edge. I get it. And that's good to have this information. But you're not going to find truth, you're not going to find beauty, you're not going to find love, you're not going to find mystery, you're not going to find meaning and what you really want by going farther and farther and farther and left. You don't get to the right by going further and further left, which actually has political connotations too, doesn't it?
- [22:30]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, there is some weird political way it makes sense. Probably not in spiritual ways.
- [22:34]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, you and I know. I mean, you and I started out as sort of politically on the left.
- [22:39]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [22:39]
Arthur Brooks
And you go further and further to the left and you realize that you're not getting to where you need to go, so you try something else.
- [22:45]
Dave Rubin
So I don't want, I actually don't want to do much politics with you, but I am curious, what do you make of, of how everything you've talked about here translates to our political sort of paralysis or obsession that we're all in right now?
- [22:58]
Arthur Brooks
Unhappiness will be reflected in the political system. And we've been in a Process of gradually declining happiness since about 1990 with periodic. So there's a climate of the climate problem, which is gradual declines in faith and family and friendship and work as a culture calling. Those are the four big areas that lead to a climate crisis and happiness. Obviously that's a metaphor.
- [23:23]
Dave Rubin
Right, I got it.
- [23:24]
Arthur Brooks
Then there's weather problems.
- [23:25]
Dave Rubin
You mean you don't want to do the climate crisis right now?
- [23:27]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, you know, I'm not a physicist, but then there's the weather problems in happiness, which are the, you know, the downdrafts, the micro bursts, the things that have forced us down, we didn't come back up. Which was the way the technology changed in 2007, 2008, 2009, which was the advent of the small screen in everybody' which was catastrophic for the way that it was used, leading to the things we've talked about. It was a crisis of polarization, which is we're basically in an environment where politics has been co opted in the political parties by activists, where activism has taken over politics. And that happens very regularly. Periodically, but very regularly. It's like on a cycle of 50 year cycle, where politics becomes an activist thing, where academia becomes an activist thing, as opposed to an inquiry thing. Right. And then last but not least, Covid, which was the catastrophe that was a reaction to Covid. I mean, there's some nice things. We're in Florida now instead of California.
- [24:30]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [24:31]
Arthur Brooks
In your case. Right, right.
- [24:33]
Dave Rubin
So how do you disconnect then that activist form of politics that we seem to be in that so many people are upset by? I mean, that's one of the, you know, people, wherever I go, people want to talk politics with me.
- [24:46]
Arthur Brooks
Right.
- [24:46]
Dave Rubin
And the way I do my show is kind of fun and light and I try to make it, you know, anyone can analyze politics. So I want to do it in a, in a light, fun way. So most of my audience responds that way. But then they'll always say to me, everything's making them crazy or I need a break from politics or something. And yet, and yet it's dangling in front of them at all the time.
- [25:02]
Arthur Brooks
They can't stop. It's the same thing where everybody hates what they're looking at on their phones, but they can't stop. And the reason is the same reason for those two things. It's like, you know, you never met somebody who's a, you know, an alcoholic who says, you know, or a drug addict. He said, you know, the secret of my happiness day, meth. I mean, nobody's ever said that, right. It's like. And they do the thing even though they hate. Hate the thing. And the reason is because the cycle of wanting, learning and craving, which has everything to do with dopamine, the neuromodulator dopamine, where you learn to scratch that little itch. And you have a craving to scratch that little itch. But you know, your moral aspiration as a human being is to not have to scratch that itch. My animal impulse is to scratch the itch of politics, but my moral aspiration is to be above that itch. And so people are like, I hate it, but let's talk politics, right?
- [25:50]
Dave Rubin
You know, so it's like you basically know it, but you're sort of in the things. You're in the rat race so much that you can't even. Yes.
- [25:56]
Arthur Brooks
The same thing when you're trying to. Were you ever a bad eater? Did you ever have, you know, bad eating habits?
- [26:01]
Dave Rubin
Not, not terrible.
- [26:02]
Arthur Brooks
Actually.
- [26:03]
Dave Rubin
I'm extremely good now, but. But never terrible.
- [26:05]
Arthur Brooks
But for me it was drinking.
- [26:06]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [26:07]
Arthur Brooks
You know, it'd be like, I don't want to be a drinker, but today I'm gonna drink.
- [26:10]
Dave Rubin
You know, it's interesting. So I, so I do drink. I actually have my own tequila. It's sitting, sitting behind me over there. But I'm not, but I'm never, but I'm never an abusive drinker at all. And one of the things that I've realized over the last couple years is I never did drink when I'm unhappy. So you know, in all the movies, when you see somebody, they're pissed off, some bad business deal and they pour the whiskey and they sit there alone. I never do that. I never drink alone or I'm depressed. To me it's whatever you could say a social lubricant or whatever. If I'm with people that I love, you know what I mean? Which I think is probably just has something to do with my wiring more than.
- [26:42]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, it means you're a healthy drinker. I mean 90. So about 40% of Americans don't drink at all. About 50% of Americans drink 10% of the alcohol. And about 10% of the Americans drink 90% of the alcohol. And so you can actually see that these are completely different phenomena. Drinking is not drinking is not drinking. Right. I mean, it's like the difference between the 50 year and the 50, not the 10. And the 10% is actually drinking largely because of boredom and anxiety. They're self administering something because of something they don't like. And you just told me I don't drink when I'm unhappy. Which means you're not self medicating to actually get away from something you don't like. On the contrary, you're augmenting an experience. You're having fun with friends and you're perfectly fine when you don't. And that's the way it should be if you can't do it that way. Here's the test by the way, for everybody watching us. Because by the way, problem drinking is one of the biggest predictors of winding up horribly as you get older. It's one of the big, big, big predictors. That's from the Harvard Study of Adult Development which has been tracking people over 85 years problem drinking. And now it's really all problem use of euphoric substances.
- [27:50]
Dave Rubin
Right. Do you mean that more on the physical level or on the mental level?
- [27:53]
Arthur Brooks
Or is it 53? Because you want the quadrant of both happy and well. Because it's a four quadrant diagram of life. There's well and unwell. Physically there's happy and unhappy. You want to be happy and well when you're 90. That's what you want in what Peter Attia calls the marginal decade. In the marginal decade you want to be happy and well. And one of the biggest predictors of not being in the happy well decade is misuse of euphorics. That's like that. People will often say when I'm unhappy and unwell then I use euphorics. No, it's the opposite. If you want your marriage to melt down, misuse euphorics.
- [28:26]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [28:26]
Arthur Brooks
That's the best way to do it. And then you'll be, you'll be alone and then you'll get unhealthy, et cetera, et cetera. So the way to one of the, one of the tests because people are always like, I don't know, you kind of know if you're kind of questioning. It's a big tell. If you can stop at two drinks, you don't have to if you need to. If you can't stop at two drinks you need to go to zero.
- [28:49]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [28:50]
Arthur Brooks
That's what it comes down to. So you'll put it as sort of a bubble sort. As a behavioral scientist, I'll put it in order. You have three choices, zero to drinks, two drinks and six drinks. Put them in order in, in order of, of what you most want.
- [29:04]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [29:05]
Arthur Brooks
And you know for you it's going to be on a fun nights too. Most nights zero, never six.
- [29:10]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [29:11]
Arthur Brooks
It's almost Never six.
- [29:12]
Dave Rubin
Our Christmas party last year was a bit much.
- [29:15]
Arthur Brooks
Once a year.
- [29:16]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [29:16]
Arthur Brooks
But for anybody who's going in the wrong direction, number one is six. Number two is zero because number two is zero because two drinks is just enough to piss you.
- [29:26]
Dave Rubin
You off. That's probably right.
- [29:28]
Arthur Brooks
What.
- [29:29]
Dave Rubin
What do you make of the age component to this? We've sort of talked about college students. You said you're 60, is that what you said?
- [29:35]
Arthur Brooks
61.
- [29:35]
Dave Rubin
61, yeah. So you're 61. I'm 49. I have found that my 30s were better than my 20s. My 40s were absolutely better than my 30s, and I'm really looking forward to 50 now. I never thought 50 used to seem old to me. And now because I've taken care of myself and all those, then I'm happy in my career and life and family. Like, I'm really looking forward to my 50s.
- [29:53]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [29:54]
Dave Rubin
Have you seen a sort of change as the decades have gone? I mean, not only with you, but are you seeing that? Largely?
- [30:00]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. There's a huge amount of research on this. And so most people think when they're in their late 20s that in their 30s and 40s they're going to be happier. Most people aren't. Most people are less happy in their 30s than they were in their 20s and less happier in their 40s than they were in their 30s. Now, there's a reason for it. And by the way, there's millions of data points on this from every part of the world. Most of the comparisons of happiness across the world are nonsense. Like we're all supposed to live like Swedes or something like that. All that is is propaganda so that we'll live like Nordic Social Democrats.
- [30:29]
Dave Rubin
Right. They've got their own problems for sure.
- [30:31]
Arthur Brooks
And like, God bless them, I love. You know, my ancestors are from Norway and, you know. But they came here for a reason, Dave.
- [30:37]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [30:37]
Arthur Brooks
Which is that, you know, they wanted to start a farm and, and. And live a entrepreneurial life.
- [30:42]
Dave Rubin
They got killer saunas, though.
- [30:44]
Arthur Brooks
They got all the sauna. Goose. Yeah. We in the sauna. Then you go, jump in the North Sea. I've done that.
- [30:49]
Dave Rubin
Oh, have you done it?
- [30:50]
Arthur Brooks
Oh, it's great. It's great. But, you know, the funniest thing is because it's always like this, like this Danish hippie.
- [30:56]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [30:56]
Arthur Brooks
You know, and he's. He's in the sauna saying, feel the spirit of your ances. And it's like, oh, man. It's like my ancestors would be like, why are you doing this? It's like, go Work in the fields, they feel much better.
- [31:08]
Dave Rubin
I've done that in Mexico for the last couple years, once a year, like, you know, a sweat lodge kind of thing. Yeah, Temescal, they say. And I've had some interesting experience, sure.
- [31:15]
Arthur Brooks
I mean, you'll be able to change your consciousness doing this, because any really strong things like this, you're affecting your biochemistry. Psychology is just biology in every case anyway. So we're on this, the decade, Decades. Right. Don't trust any studies that compare countries with happiness. But there's a lot of research that comes from David Blanchflower at Dartmouth, where he looks at pretty much every place in the world and finds there's this U curve of happiness. Now, the way that it works is that most people think they're going to get happier through their 30s and 40s. They get unhappier. But we know why. It's not actually an unhappiness problem. It's a trade off between the macronutrient components of happiness. Your enjoyment of life usually falls from your 20s to 30s and 30s to 40s, but your meaning rises. Meaning is a long term happiness play and enjoyment is a short term happiness play.
- [32:07]
Dave Rubin
Does it also depend on how people define enjoyment? I mean, if your enjoyment is just that, I can go out every night or I can just do whatever I want all the time, that, well, obviously that's going to dip in your.
- [32:17]
Arthur Brooks
That's obviously going to dip and that's real enjoyment for people. I mean, I'm enjoying my life when I can actually, you know, I have more freedom. You know, the kids are not yelling all the time, screaming all the time. You know, I don't have a marriage that has ordinary tensions and problems. I'm not trying to write a business, run a business, I'm not paying a mortgage. I'm not trying to build my career. I mean, that stuff isn't inherently enjoyable for most people, but it's incredibly meaningful. And so what happens is in your 50s, then meaning explodes because of all the things you did right or wrong. So in other words, you're meaning craters. And those are the people who just are completely miserable. Those are the people are who die. You'll see the first round of your buddies from Binghamton are going to die in their 50s because what happened? They made a bunch of really bad decisions. They didn't know the difference between enjoyment and pleasure. And they sought to hit the ventral tag mental area of their brain again and again and again and again. And they've been pursuing pleasure and they're unhappy and unwell, in their 50s, and they have no meaning and they just fade away. And you're going to see this is like, did you hear Bobby died? He'd be like, what? And that starts to happen because of this. You, on the other hand, what it means is that your meaning is going to explode, especially in your early 50s, all the way till 70. You know, if you don't have mood disorders that are untreated, if you don't have alcohol or drug abuse that's untreated, you're meaning your life's going to get so much better in your 50s and 60s is phenomenal, is the way that this is going to work. Plus the fact that you're kind of an outlier because you've been conscious of your life getting better in your 30s and 40s. Fantastic. Yeah, it's pretty good times lie ahead for you. But for all the people watching us who are like, yeah, I don't know, man, I thought I was going to be way happier when I got the job and the raise and the promotion and the money and the marriage and the kids and the white picket fence and I don't know, I don't really enjoy it that much. You're normal. It's good. Make the, make the investments in the meaning of your life. And better times are really, really coming.
- [34:13]
Dave Rubin
So, okay, so now you get to 70, and now the health, let's say, is starting to change a little bit. And it's just the next.
- [34:19]
Arthur Brooks
It's like a secret society at 60, you'll see.
- [34:21]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. Of the ones who are.
- [34:24]
Arthur Brooks
And he says, yeah, it's an engineering problem, the lumbar. The whole thing's like, nobody told me. He says, we all know.
- [34:30]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. Well, one of the things I'm very aware of is my audience hears me talk about this all the time, but I love basketball. Playing with this great group of guys that ranges basically from early 30s into mid mid 60s, even into late 60s. I'm 49, so I'm right in the middle. So, you know, even the guys in the 30s, they're not in. They're not in the best shape of their lives anymore for the most, most part. But you got guys in their 60s who are still busting their ass. Now we all have problems this, that.
- [34:55]
Arthur Brooks
You know, none of us are running.
- [34:56]
Dave Rubin
Like we're twenties, but, but, but it's very, I've realized it's very, very important to me also. My kids are three, so it's very important to me. Yeah. At 49. So it's very important to me to stay in good shape so that I'm able. Because these guys bring their kids now sometimes.
- [35:10]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [35:10]
Dave Rubin
And I'm playing against 20 year olds and I want to be able to do that with my own kids.
- [35:13]
Arthur Brooks
Totally. So that part totally super important. And, and you can kind of stop the clock. So, you know, going forward, just on the, on the biology of in much better shape at 61 than I was at 31. Part of it, because I was leading a different kind of lifestyle when I was 31 years old. I'm much happier and I'm in much better physical shape. My back hurts because I have a 35 degree scoliosis because I was holding a French horn for 22 years. Okay, I got it. But now I'm under 7% body fat. I eat 200 grams of protein a day. I work out for an hour every day. My health is on point and the result of it is that I'm in really much better shape than I was before. You can do that. You can fight sarcopenia, you can fight weakness, you can do all kinds of stuff. Until you can't. Because sooner or later. Right.
- [36:02]
Dave Rubin
So that's where I was going with the question. So now let's say you're. I mean, obviously you want to push this as far as you can, but somewhere, what would you say? Somewhere by late 70s, mid-70s.
- [36:12]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. Your results may differ is kind of what it comes down to.
- [36:15]
Dave Rubin
Obviously.
- [36:15]
Arthur Brooks
Because of genetics. Yeah, because of genetics and because of the things that you did early in life. It really matters how you live in your 40s and 50s to how you're going to be living in your 60s and 70s and 80s. I work a lot with Peter Tia, who's, you know, he's not my doctor, but, you know, we've done stuff on his show before and we share ideas a lot because I'm working on the. I have a physiological approach to human happiness. Right. And he uses that stuff an awful lot because he wants overall medicine 3.0. What are the things that you can do such that in your marginal decade you're a lot better off? And so I study a lot of this stuff and it really matters, the decisions that you're making, but it's never too late to actually start getting happier and getting healthier and doing a lot of other things. Right. And the great thing about the Internet is that you're not going to find meaning by all these protocols, but you're going to learn a lot. I mean, it's this information that was secret in the old days. Just Isn't secret anymore.
- [37:09]
Dave Rubin
So if you, let's say you basically are the avatar for kind of doing it right up to 61, I hope.
- [37:15]
Arthur Brooks
Until about 77, which is when a lot of people sort of lose a step. But that's again it really, really, definitely.
- [37:22]
Dave Rubin
Most are losing the step before that.
- [37:23]
Arthur Brooks
But yes, many are losing a step before that. Generally speaking, they weren't taking care of of their brains. People who are, that's the key thing. They were not active mentally. So there's kind of seven things to be thinking about. Okay. It's diet, exercise, drinking and smoking. Those are the four big physical things to be thinking about. Diet is making sure that your macronutrient profile is not insane. You're not eating like an 11 year old is what it comes down to mostly in the United States is not getting too many highly glycemic carbohydrates and getting enough protein. And you know, anybody who doesn't is not paying attention to the fact that you need to be eating a higher protein diet as you get older. Older is just not paying attention. Watch one podcast by Gabrielle Lyon or Peter Attia or Andrew Huberman or whatever and you're gonna actually learn this stuff.
- [38:07]
Dave Rubin
We got a lot of carnivore going on in this room.
- [38:08]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [38:09]
Dave Rubin
Something close to carnivore at least.
- [38:10]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, for sure. And there's a lot the way you can do it. My buddy Rich Roll, I mean he does actually as a vegan, but it takes more work. But you can do this whole thing. And as things are available that just weren't available, the resources that aren't exercise, you gotta stay active. You don't do anything else. Walk. I mean we're an ambulatory speaker species. Get out of the house and walk around. And you can do that even in the winter. You can do that in Fairbanks. Most people actually can because they're mobile. But I really Recommend, especially after 40, everybody should be lifting weights. You should actually be doing resistance because sarcopenia is no joke. It's 1% of muscle mass on average every year after 40, unless you fight it. And even into your 80s you can fight that off by actually doing resistance. There's not a dude watching us who shouldn't be lifting weights is the bottom plus it's hugely important for your mental health to do that. And then smoking and drinking. Most people are very responsible with euphoric substances. But if there's anything in your family or you have any doubt, just stop. Just stop. Don't use euphorics. All euphorics are neurotoxic and that means very responsible use is okay. Just like not driving the safest car can be okay. But if you're worried, then don't do it is what it comes down to. And, and then. And, you know, and then smoking, obviously. I smoked until I was 26.
- [39:32]
Dave Rubin
Never. I never smoked. So that.
- [39:34]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, no, it's great. But it's so dumb. I mean, it's like. It's so dumb. Right? But of course. And most people don't, you know, in my time as a musician in the 80s and 90s, playing in an orchestra in Barcelona. Well, you know, you were.
- [39:50]
Dave Rubin
One way or another.
- [39:51]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah. And I quit because, you know, I was, you know, getting married and I burned 10 holes in my bed. Bed at 4:00 in the morning, falling asleep in a cigarette. And I'm like, might. It's one thing to kill myself, it's another thing to kill her.
- [40:03]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [40:03]
Arthur Brooks
And, you know, she wakes up and she's like, what's with the holes?
- [40:08]
Dave Rubin
I mean, this sounds insane, but I knew a girl that I grew up with who thought she was being attacked by demons at night because she was waking up with burn marks, and it was because she was an alcoholic who was smoking cigarettes, I mean, literally.
- [40:17]
Arthur Brooks
And she was kind of getting attacked. Right, right.
- [40:21]
Dave Rubin
She was talking about, you know, monsters with tails.
- [40:23]
Arthur Brooks
Exactly. So that's the big four. And. And then. And then it's the protocols around that are something I talk a lot about in my work, in my columns, in my writing, et cetera. And you can get very granular on that. Those are the big things. But then there's the big three that are not the diet, exercise, smoking and drinking. Number one is constant learning. The way that you keep your brain alive is by learning, learning, learning, learning. You don't have to keep going to Harvard Extension, but you should be reading and you should be learning the way that you learn. A lot of guys don't learn very well by reading, but you and I are teachers. Fundamentally. This is this incredible blessing of the teaching space. Don't fritter away your Internet time on dumb nonsense. Do things where you're actually learning, which is super important, and learn for the rest of your life. Every day. You should be spending at least an hour learning, is what it comes down to.
- [41:12]
Dave Rubin
But that's probably not just scrolling Instagram. No, you're not watching, watching the videos where you're supposedly learning about something. But that's not the.
- [41:19]
Arthur Brooks
You're anesthetizing.
- [41:20]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [41:21]
Arthur Brooks
And you all Know, I mean, it's like, people, it's like, am I learning or anesthetizing? And let's just. And you know, if I'm actually scrolling because I'm bored or I'm scrolling because I was stressed and I'm actually trying to feel better, if that's a problem. On the other hand, it's like, I want to learn about a thing. Make a list of the nine things that you wish you knew more about, and then go looking for information on it. Books and videos and podcasts. And it's humble. It's a total adventure.
- [41:48]
Dave Rubin
Right. Because it's the scrolling in and of itself that's keeping the aperture closed. It's like you used to meet a friend at a restaurant, and before cell phones, you'd have to wait outside and just stand there and people. Right. And your brain could be open.
- [42:01]
Arthur Brooks
I know.
- [42:02]
Dave Rubin
And now it can't.
- [42:02]
Arthur Brooks
I know. Totally. Totally. And you're wasting all kinds of opportunities to learn from each other, too. I mean, so at the next dinner party, no phones.
- [42:10]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [42:10]
Arthur Brooks
And here's the first question, Dave, what are you most afraid of? And watch what happens. Oh, right. Give me my phone. It's like, people are going to be. No, but seriously, I mean, you'll have the most interesting dinner party you've ever had, and the people who can't handle it.
- [42:26]
Dave Rubin
Good.
- [42:27]
Arthur Brooks
Now you know. Right, Right. But that's huge. And the next one is having your technique for dealing with the trouble in life. Right. You never want to eliminate your suffering. Don't eliminate your suffering ever. That's the worst possible technique for mental health, happiness, and wellness. Suffering is a sacred part of life. It's an incredibly important thing. It's your teacher. And there's a lot that I talk about. I talk about unhappiness as I talk about happiness. And I believe in unhappiness. I'm a big fan of unhappiness because you're not going to live life. And the biggest problem for young people today is they go to the campus counseling center and say, I still feel sad and anxious. They say, we got to fix that because of liability. That's bad. Because if you try to eliminate your unhappiness, you will eliminate your happiness. You will be not experiencing a full range of emotion. You'll feel bad about your emotions, and you will not learn and grow from your negative experiences. So you need to understand how to manage that, and there's lots of ways to do it. For me, it's prayer and fasting, man. It's my Religious experiences for many people. Some people it's therapy. I mean, therapy is not my thing. But for some people it's actually really valuable. For some people it's vipassana, insight meditation for self management of emotion. But you have to get good at it.
- [43:45]
Dave Rubin
How worried are you that we've already drugged probably two generations of kids so that they can kind of never get through that because they're 20 years into being put on ADHD medication and all the other stuff?
- [43:56]
Arthur Brooks
Well, you know, I'm very, I'm enthusiastic, sanguine and even enthusiastic about the advances in psychiatric medications that saved lives. You know, my mother's life was saved because of psychiatric medic medications. It just wouldn't have been possible for her to live a life. And she was a wonderful mom in spite of tons of mental suffering that she had had since she was a teenager. But I think that there's a tendency to see this as a remedy for everything. You know, sadness and anxiety is evidence that you're alive. It's not evidence that you're pathological or broken. And that's the key thing. And so always goes too far, you know. And it's very easy when you have a boy in school. Either your kids boys?
- [44:36]
Dave Rubin
Both.
- [44:36]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, both are boys. You got boys?
- [44:37]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, It's a lot of craziness around here.
- [44:39]
Arthur Brooks
Tell me. But I got four grandsons now and yeah, two of my three kids.
- [44:43]
Dave Rubin
Another reason you have to stay young. I mean that literally.
- [44:45]
Arthur Brooks
And they live in my house. They live in my house. Yeah, yeah. We're like a Catholic family in 1940, you know, because we did it on purpose. Because I got the data right. Yeah, that's cool. And this is the way to. This is the way to live. It's great. Phenomenal. I love it. But the whole point is that with boys in particular, they think tend to be highly kinetic and they're not learners in the same way. That's really efficient with respect to kind of the industrial education system where everybody goes in all the same age in groups of 30, quietly sitting in front of a teacher. It's like one of my boys, my son Carlos, he was not that kind of learner. He loves to know stuff. But he. And so the first thing they said is, I know, don't know, I don't know. It's like I think he's got some attention deficit. And the thing with everybody watching us was a son with attention deficit disorder. Yeah, I got it. There's insufficient dopamine in the prefrontal cortex to make him focus adequately on things that they find boring. I understand how it works. I mean the biology of this is pretty clear at this point. But that's not necessarily a liability, Right? Right. I mean my son, he wanted, it's.
- [45:53]
Dave Rubin
Only a liability, I suppose, in a system that can't, they can't figure out.
- [45:57]
Arthur Brooks
How they learn and what they find interesting. ADHD kids, they have, they have the super strength of the liabilities. They can't focus as well as you and I can on stuff that's actually literally boring. What they're really good at is finding the things that they find interesting. And they have better than average attention for the things that they find interesting. So my son Carlos became a sniper. He was a scout sniper in the U.S. marine Corps and the Marines three, five out of Camp Pendleton. And he would sit for three hours, hours in 110 degree heat in the desert, in a bush, behind the scope of a rifle, with a tarantula walking across him. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, super interesting. I can't handle that. I wouldn't be able to handle that. I wouldn't find that interesting. And he's like, that's super interesting. It's his thing. And the result is he's unbelievably successful after he's gotten out of the Marine Corps, everything he touches, because he knows to go to the part of that thing that he finds interesting. I mean, ADHD kids have an incredible, incredible gift. But we have to work as parents and as educators to figure out that gift and deploy it in a certain way. That's to all of our advantage. And we're not good at that.
- [47:00]
Dave Rubin
So is that just a function of a broken education system that you just, you know, if everyone's going to public school and you got 30 kids in a class and you got two kids that are like that, but you're trying to keep everybody at the desk? I mean, yeah, totally.
- [47:11]
Arthur Brooks
It's efficiency again. The left brain world that we're all working ourselves into is made manifest over the past hundred years in the way that we, we've turned and we mechanistically treat human beings. If you're turning people into machines and treating them as not individuals, as human individuals with a soul. You're a left brain person and you're looking at life as a series of things, not as a bunch of people. And that's a lot of what we've done. We have a Bismarckian Late 19th century education system which before that you wouldn't say, let's take kids in groups of 30 and they're going to go all with the same age people all the way through, all studying the same thing at the same time in the same way. And if they can't, they're screwed up.
- [47:55]
Dave Rubin
It's kind of crazy that it worked to whatever extent it did work for.
- [47:58]
Arthur Brooks
Most people because machines kind of work, but they don't work for everybody. And it turns out the extraordinary weirdos are the ones that inflect society. Right. It's not the. That doesn't inflect society, that keeps society pacified and peaceful, but it's the Carloses that are putting society great advances and big problems and all of it.
- [48:24]
Dave Rubin
One thing we're very good about that I also learned from Jordan Peterson, is we try to exhaust them by the end of the day so that when they go to bed, they're ready to go to bed. Like it's not a fight to go to bed. Let's just keep them like right now it's a little cooler in Miami. We were out building a fire last night at like 8:30pm cause it's fun. But also, cause it was like, let's just keep them as energetic as possible. And then the second second they're done, they'll look at us and be like, I'm tired, let's read a book. And it's like, I feel like that's just gotta be the best way to do it.
- [48:51]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. And. And for everybody who's watching us, who it's not their kid, it's them. Be more tired.
- [48:57]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [48:57]
Arthur Brooks
At the end of the day, be more tired. How are you not going to be tired by sitting behind a stupid screen all day long? Because you're going to have too much pent up physical energy. Your body's not built for that and your brain is part of your body. You actually need to be more kinetically active. Most people need to act more like, you know, Grandpa Reuben or great Grandpa R. Who was probably behind the plow.
- [49:17]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. That was the guy running from the shtetl. Let me ask you something else.
- [49:22]
Arthur Brooks
Who never had a single panic attack?
- [49:24]
Dave Rubin
I'm sure he did. You did. Right. Because you literally didn't have time for it. Panic attack.
- [49:29]
Arthur Brooks
Panic.
- [49:30]
Dave Rubin
What?
- [49:30]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [49:30]
Dave Rubin
So let me ask you something that's actually quite applicable to what I've been going through in the. What I'm seeing in the Internet world right now, which there's a portion of the Internet right now that is just laced with conspiracy theories. Theories and just sort of an endless rabbit hole of insanity. And I think there's a Lot of reasons for that. Mainstream media has failed us. The algorithms, you know, boost this type of stuff. But I think it's doing something very dangerous to people's brains. Does that sound kind of right to you? And what would you say is the best way to get someone out of. When they've gone down this crazy rabbit hole and you see it sort of infecting their entire life, what's the best way to get someone out of that?
- [50:10]
Arthur Brooks
We crave meaning. That's the point of my new book. The reason for depression and anxiety exploding for people under 35 years old. Is that their brains are rewired to not find meaning. And they want meaning. It's not just that the screen is creating the problem. The screen is actually making it impossible for them to get what they want. There's always something behind it, and that's the meaning crisis. Meaning is part of happiness. It's the most important macronutrient of happiness. Without it, you die, and they can't find meaning. Now, what's meaning? Meaning has really three parts to it. It's significance. I matter to somebody. It's purpose. I have something to do. And it's coherence. Things happen for a reason. That coherence, when people don't have meaning in their lives. Is the reason that they grab onto conspiracies. Conspiratorial thinking is a way to find coherence science.
- [50:57]
Dave Rubin
Because it's sort of an endless story.
- [50:58]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, totally. It explains everything. Coherence is a way to explain things. I'm a traditionally religious person, so I'm not immune to conspiracy theories. But I'm not very open to them. You know, you give me conspiracy. Also, I've had a top secret clearance. And so I realized that it's like, wow. It's actually. I can't really hide anything.
- [51:15]
Dave Rubin
Right. It's not as exciting in a weird way.
- [51:17]
Arthur Brooks
Well, yeah.
- [51:17]
Dave Rubin
No.
- [51:17]
Arthur Brooks
All the stuff.
- [51:18]
Dave Rubin
They've got the answer.
- [51:19]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. All the sexy stuff is not classified. All the boring stuff is classified. That makes you very immune to conspiracy theories. There have been conspiracies. I get it. I mean, it turns out that there was a lot of stuff that was going on during COVID that was trying to suppress a lot of opinions about it. You've talked about this a lot. But that wasn't a huge. Like, these people, Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, all this. You know, the Bohemian Grove. I don't know, whatever it is, is.
- [51:45]
Dave Rubin
It some version of we can't separate. Like, what would be the grand conspiracy the endless sort of thing that's that everyone's always going for. There's just this crazy thing out there versus that systems just kind of don't work. People have all these selective pressures. Like that's what Covid seems to be. It's not. I do think that there were probably some string being pulled and w. There might be some. But that it might just be like a bunch of people who were over their skis and what they were doing who had all sorts, you know, Fauci had all sorts of pressures and. And then it just becomes a conspiracy in a sense.
- [52:14]
Arthur Brooks
A lot of really, really, really good people thought they had to act and they had limited knowledge. A lot of. That's how a lot of so called conspiracies happen. And we suppose they have all the knowledge when they actually don't have any knowledge to your point.
- [52:27]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [52:28]
Arthur Brooks
Is what it comes down to. But that's this, that's what people crave is coherence. Because what they want is meaning because is happiness. And if you don't have something that provides coherence in a healthy way, like God or science, or in my case, God and science, you're going to grasp onto something that some person on the Internet is telling you actually explains everything because your brain doesn't work. Right. Unless you have a sense of coherence. A clock spring is going to come bursting forth from your forehead if you don't have a sense of coherence.
- [52:59]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [53:00]
Arthur Brooks
And so that's what people are looking for.
- [53:02]
Dave Rubin
Do you ever find that the. I mean this is sort of the age old question but that the God and science portion of these things. Do they, do they come into conflict in your mind anymore or have you reconciled all of that?
- [53:11]
Arthur Brooks
I've reconciled that. But they do come in conflict for a lot of people. I'm a. I'm a behavioral scientist by background. My father was a PhD biostatistician, so he comes from a harder science background. So I grew up with a lot of. My mother was an artist. My father was a biostatistician. So I had the two sides, right and left man a lot. Yeah. But my father was a very religious guy and I remember this. So I sat at the knee of a great man, a great man who really loved the Lord and who really loved science. And so our dinnertime conversations were math problems. That's what we'd be talking about. But we were. But every night before I went to sleep, he was on his knees next to my bed, bowing before the Lord. This had A huge impact on a little dude. There was something bigger than my dad. Something bigger than my dad. There's something. Something. There's a lot of stuff he didn't know because of the science part, which he always said, this is a mystery. And there were things that were bigger metaphysically than my dad. And so that really wired into me an important concept, which is that there's the Creator in the creation, and you can't find the Creator in the creation. If you're looking to science to find God as an exercise in futility. And if you can't find God in science, it's not evidence of absence. It's not. It doesn't mean that God is absent. On the contrary. If you're an art historian and you specialize in Picasso, you need to know two things exhaustively. You need to know about Picasso's paintings, and you need to know about Picasso. I don't care how long you stare at Picasso's paintings, Guernica, you're not going to find evidence of Picasso. The man in there. When Garamon Titov, the second man to orbit the Earth, the Russian cosmonaut, was actually asked, what did you know, being in space, what did it do to your atheism? He's a Soviet. He's an atheist. That was his official position. Right. He said, I stared all day into space and I saw neither angels nor God. That was the dumbest thing ever. That was absurd.
- [55:05]
Dave Rubin
Something man.
- [55:07]
Arthur Brooks
Our mutual friend Bishop Aaron talks about this. Right? I mean, that's. Of course. I mean, you can be an atheist for sure, but the evidence supporting your atheism is not the absence of God in God's creation. You can't look at it that way. They're inherently not in conflict. As a behavioral scientist, probably 17%, at least last time I saw the data, believed in a greater power. 17% natural scientists, 51% natural scientists. Under 45, 61%. There's a reason for that. We think everything is socially constructed.
- [55:41]
Dave Rubin
So when you explain that and you give me some of those stats, I mean, is that the odd part, that people seem to think these things are so at odds with each other? I've never felt. And I think, actually, I think because growing up Jewish, it wasn't really at odds in a weird way, because the Jewish mind tends to be scientific in some sense. And then there's this long history there also. So it never was at odds. So I find it a little strange that so many people have this weird.
- [56:06]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, no, it is. And that's a kind of A torquing of the enlightenment mindset, you know, the whole idea that we would go, science would deliver us beyond that. And it's interesting because some of the greatest minds who've actually talked about this, you look at Tolstoy, for example, in his autobiography. And Tolstoy, he was actually a modern guy. I mean, people think of him as like, I don't know, something in the ancient past. He was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature three times. He's that new. But he was in Russia, which was pre revolution, and it was a lot of really, really simple people. But he was this big intellectual. He was rich, he was famous, he had 13 kids. So his life was pretty much on point. But he wanted a 51 to kill him himself because he said his life had no meaning. And he couldn't find it in working harder. He couldn't find it in his ambition, he couldn't find it in his wealth. And so he went to science and he couldn't find it in his science. And so finally, at wit's end, Tolstoy, as he tells it, goes out to this little village. It's like someplace in Siberia someplace. He goes to some little village and it was just these simple people who were illiterate, and what they did was they pushed the plow and they had dinner and they had these little parties and dances and they went to chur, they went to Eastern Orthodox liturgy and they loved the Lord and they prayed their prayer ropes. And he said that was it. He said that was it. It was in the simple things of life. And he wrote. It's interesting in Anna Karenina, he writes about the secondary. There's two stories going on. There's Anna Karenina and her travails, and there's Levin, Konstantin Levin, who's this secondary story that's going on. And Levin ends the novel. And Levin can't find meaning. And Levin can't find meaning. Finally, Leaven gives up and goes back to his farm. And he just loves his wife and he loves his kids and he loves his employees, and he raises the wheat and he dies happy. And so the whole point is, and he worships God. And so the whole point is, even Tolstoy found that when he stopped trying to find what he was looking for, the metaphysical truth in the left brain realities, what he was saying is only when he opens, opened up the right could he appreciate the left and did his life have meaning. That's true for all of us. And so if you're looking for it on the left and you're not going to find it. The meaning will elude you, and you'll chase your tail for the rest of your life.
- [58:34]
Dave Rubin
I think we opened up the aperture a little bit because this was literally, I think, the quickest hour I've ever done. Oh, my God. I could do this for the rest of the day. We're done.
- [58:41]
Arthur Brooks
This is 63 minutes. It was such a pleasure. It was. Yeah. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for what you're doing. Yeah, thanks.
- [58:46]
Dave Rubin
This was great.
- [58:47]
Arthur Brooks
You've opened the aperture and for me for a long, long time, and I. I get to be part of it.
- [58:50]
Dave Rubin
What an honor. What a nice way to start the day. I love it.