The Art of Manliness - #518： The Quest for a Moral Life

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.940 Do you ever feel like you're spinning your existential wheels in life, that outwardly

00:00:14.340 you seem to be doing okay, but inwardly you feel kind of empty? I guess they would say

00:00:17.940 that you've got to move on from trekking up life's first mountain to begin a journey up

00:00:21.500 its second. His name is David Brooks, and he's the author of The Second Mountain, The

00:00:24.900 Quest for Immoral Life. In that book, David makes the case that there are two mountains

00:00:28.360 that we climb in life. The first is about the self, getting a college degree, starting

00:00:32.040 your career, buying a home, and making a mark on the world. But at some point, that mountain

00:00:36.460 starts to feel unfulfilling. That's when we discover there's a second mountain to ascend,

00:00:40.080 the path of selflessness, relationships, and greater meaning. Today on the show, David tells

00:00:44.000 us what he got wrong in his previous book, The Road to Character, and how the second mountain

00:00:47.700 expands his vision of the good life. We then discuss why the first mountain of life gets

00:00:51.220 more attention in the West, and how the hyper-individualism it encourages has led to an increase in loneliness,

00:00:55.940 anxiety, and existential angst. David then walks us through how we shift courses from the first

00:01:00.180 mountain of achievement to the second mountain of meaning by making commitments to things

00:01:03.820 outside of ourselves. We then discuss the four commitments he thinks bring us real meaning

00:01:07.560 and significance, and how we can seek and find them. After the show's over, check out

00:01:11.180 our show notes at aom.is slash second mountain. David joins me now by phone.

00:01:16.120 All right, David Brooks, welcome back to the show.

00:01:26.000 It's good to be back with you.

00:01:27.520 So last time we had you on was a few years ago to discuss your book, The Road to Character.

00:01:31.860 You got a new book out, The Second Mountain, The Quest for a Moral Life. Is this book a continuation

00:01:37.480 of your thoughts that you fleshed out in The Road to Character, or is it something different?

00:01:41.360 It's a bit of a correcting what went wrong with that one, or what are the limitations of that one.

00:01:46.120 And so both books are sort of about how do we become better people. And when I wrote that,

00:01:50.640 I wrote it about some amazing people. We still have a lot to learn from people like Dwight

00:01:54.700 Eisenhower and George Marshall and Samuel Johnson and Dorothy Day. And so I don't renounce that other

00:01:59.820 book. But when I was thinking about how people built their character, I think I was still stuck in

00:02:04.500 an individualistic mindset. And so to me, the way you build characters, you identify your core sin,

00:02:11.460 like you might have anger if you're Dwight Eisenhower, and then you work on it every day.

00:02:15.500 And so character building is about inner conflict. And I think there's some bit of character building

00:02:20.860 is about that. It's like you go to the gym, you work up your honesty muscle, your courage muscle,

00:02:25.160 you get stronger at those things. The problem is, I don't think most of us have the willpower to do

00:02:30.180 that. And so the question is, how do we really develop the willpower to become better people?

00:02:35.200 And I think we do that by falling in love with something. So for example, when my first kid was

00:02:39.740 born, we didn't know he had really low APGAR score. We didn't know whether he'd live or die that first night.

00:02:45.500 And I remember thinking, would it be worth it for his mom and I to have a lifetime of grief for him

00:02:50.860 to live just 30 minutes? And if you'd asked me that before he was born, I would have said, no way,

00:02:55.920 what, you know, why should two people suffer a lifetime of suffering for 30 minutes if a creature

00:03:00.280 doesn't even know he exists? But after the kid was born, I became aware of a level of commitment and

00:03:05.540 love that I didn't even imagine existed beforehand. And when you become aware of that level of

00:03:11.000 commitment and love, you want to make promises to the kid, I'll always be there for him.

00:03:15.060 And you start behaving a little less selfishly than you would have before. You might want to go

00:03:19.940 and play golf, but instead you care for the kid, push him around in the baby carriage, and you start

00:03:24.960 doing things for other people. And over time, I think you get a little less selfish. And so now I

00:03:30.740 think character formation is really about keeping up with our commitments. We fall in love with

00:03:35.140 something. We make a promise to it. And then we try to live up to the promises we make. So it's

00:03:40.060 much more relationship-centered and less individualistic. And did you have any experiences

00:03:44.200 or was this, you know, just talking with people after you wrote The Road to Character, where you

00:03:47.960 kind of realized that character formation is about relationships and about commitments and not

00:03:52.900 just sort of this sort of Nietzschean, you know, will-to-power, ubermensch mission?

00:03:58.660 Yeah. I mean, you get some stuff in books, but you only get a little, like books name things that

00:04:03.520 you experienced. Somebody once said, you can be knowledge, knowledgeable with other men's

00:04:08.360 knowledge, but you can't be wise with other men's wisdom. And you sort of have to go through stuff.

00:04:13.380 And I went through a period just at the time I was finishing Road to Character,

00:04:17.480 but I didn't really put it in the book because I couldn't understand what was happening to me.

00:04:20.580 I just went through a bad period of life. And we all go through periods in the valley and some are

00:04:24.620 not our fault. Like a couple of years ago, my mother died and that was a bad period in the valley,

00:04:28.720 but some kind of are my fault. And in 2013, I went through one that was at least partially my fault

00:04:35.040 and my marriage had ended and my kids were going away to college. And I had lost a lot of the

00:04:40.700 friends that I used to have in the, more in the conservative movement. And I realized I had

00:04:45.260 weekday friends, like the kinds I could talk to about work, but I didn't have that many weekend

00:04:49.660 friends. And I'd sort of gotten to a place where week, where work and all the amount of work I did

00:04:55.040 had sort of numbed over both the heart, the desire for connection with another and the soul,

00:05:02.000 the desire of connection to be good. And so there'd been sort of a moral numbing and a relational

00:05:07.140 numbing. And so I was down in the valley for a year or two and learned a few things down there.

00:05:13.380 So this idea of valley, this goes back to this metaphor that structures the book. You make the

00:05:17.780 case that their life consists of two mountains. What's the first mountain like? And then let's talk

00:05:22.460 about the second mountain after that. Yeah. The first mountain is the mountain society

00:05:26.420 wants us to climb. You get out of school and you want to have a good career. You want people to

00:05:31.380 think well of you and you want to carve out an identity and make a mark in the world. And this,

00:05:36.340 this is what our meritocracy tells us to want to, you know, if I make enough money, if I have a good

00:05:41.780 career, people will think well of me and I'll be happy. And I think that's a lie. I think there are

00:05:46.720 certain lies embedded in our meritocracy. One is that career success leads to fulfillment. I can

00:05:51.780 guarantee you that's not true for most people. The second is I can make myself happy. That

00:05:57.580 happiness is an individual achievement. If I just lose a few more pounds, I get better at golf or

00:06:01.640 something. But if you talk to people on their deathbed, they say, you know, I was happiest when

00:06:06.860 I was least self-sufficient, when I was most dependent on others. And that's a living in

00:06:11.880 relationship. And then there are a bunch of other lies that you're not a soul to be saved. You're a set of

00:06:16.560 skills to be maximized. And the most pernicious lie of our culture is that people who have achieved

00:06:22.300 a lot more and a little smarter are somehow worth more than other people. And so you, you fall for

00:06:27.700 all these lies and, um, they sort of lead you in the wrong direction and they lead you thinking too

00:06:32.920 much about the desires, the ego, which are pretty simple desires, but bad and not enough about the

00:06:39.520 desires of the heart and the desires of the soul. So down in the valley, you sort of discover your

00:06:43.540 better desires and try to align yourself with them. So this basically it's created,

00:06:47.660 we have a culture of individualism. I mean, how did we, how did we get these assumptions in the

00:06:52.280 West that individualism will bring happiness? What's the history of that? The social history of

00:06:57.280 that? Yeah. Well, we've always been individualistic, like to talk, we'll talk about in the 1830s,

00:07:02.280 but we've always had another ethos, which balanced that. And sometimes that ethos was religion,

00:07:07.560 which was more about community and more about service to some good. Sometimes it was just like

00:07:12.440 bohemianism that you served art. There were a lot of different things that balanced it.

00:07:18.280 And in the 1950s, say we had a real belief in hanging together. We had to get through the war,

00:07:23.960 we had to get through before that, the great depression. And so there was a culture of,

00:07:28.040 we're all in this together. And if you grew up, say in Chicago, you didn't say I'm from Chicago.

00:07:32.680 You said I'm from 59th and Pulaski because it was your little neighborhood that really defined your

00:07:38.300 life. And that had some wonderful elements of really strong communities, but it became stifling

00:07:43.840 to people. And people thought I'm just a soulless cog in this conformist society. And so they rebelled

00:07:49.820 in the sixties and they said, I want to be free to be myself. And some of that started in the early

00:07:55.660 sixties and some in the late sixties, the Woodstock, but it was symbolized by a moment very early in my

00:08:01.620 childhood. The first football game I really paid attention to was Superbowl three.

00:08:05.440 And on one side of the field was a guy named Johnny Unitas from the Baltimore Colts.

00:08:10.020 And he was like a 1950s guy, very conformist, crew cuts, very unflashy. And on the other side

00:08:16.660 of the field, there was a guy named Joe Namath for the New York Jets. And he was very flashy,

00:08:20.820 long hair, $5,000 for coats. He wrote a memoir called, I can't wait until tomorrow because I get

00:08:26.740 better looking every day. And that was the culture of let's rebel. Let's be expressive,

00:08:31.760 not reticent. It's cooler to be young, not old. And so we created a much more individualistic

00:08:37.080 culture. I'm free to be myself. And that had a right-wing version, which was the economic

00:08:41.540 individualism of the 1980s. It had a left-wing version, which was the lifestyle individualism

00:08:46.800 of the sixties and seventies. So, but it was all individualism. And when you have a culture really

00:08:52.700 built on the self, self-satisfaction, self-sufficiency, self-happiness, you end up weakening

00:08:58.460 the bonds between people. And that's more or less what we've done.

00:09:01.900 And how is that manifesting itself in our culture today? What are you seeing? Like the downsides of

00:09:07.260 it? Yeah.

00:09:08.060 Yeah. We don't just have as good connections as we do. And so if you ask people a generation ago,

00:09:13.860 people entertained in their homes an average about 16 times a year. Now it's down to eight.

00:09:19.340 Only 8% of Americans say they have important conversations with their neighbors. And if you

00:09:25.360 ask people over 45, 35% of people over 45 say they're chronically lonely. If you look at the

00:09:31.580 suicide rate, which is really a proxy for loneliness, it's up 30% in the last 20 years.

00:09:37.160 If you look at the teenage suicide rate, it's up 70% in the last eight years. And if you ask people,

00:09:43.280 do you trust your neighbors? A generation ago, 60% of Americans said that my neighbors are basically

00:09:48.280 trustworthy. Now only 32% say that and 19% of millennials. So we've become a much lonelier culture.

00:09:55.420 Much more distrustful culture. And a culture that's much nastier. We're nastier to each other.

00:10:00.600 Right. You talk about the, also in the book, the rise of tribalism we're seeing in our political

00:10:04.420 discourse. Yeah. Tribalism seems like community because it is a way of bonding with others.

00:10:10.100 But to me, it's the dark side of community. It's not based on mutual affection for a town or

00:10:15.020 something. It's based on mutual hatred of some other. And so it's a scarcity mentality. It's a

00:10:20.160 zero sum mentality. It's always about fighting distrust and war. And that's pretty much defines

00:10:25.340 our politics and a lot else. And do you think social media and the internet has amplified all

00:10:29.500 these, these downsides? I do. I mean, I think when we're on social media, we're not really

00:10:34.340 communicating out of our depths. We're either on Twitter, which is a lot of people saying I'm

00:10:39.260 smarter than you are, or sometimes on Instagram, which is a lot of people saying I'm more fabulous

00:10:43.780 than you are. And it's just a shallow form of communication. It's not a deep form of

00:10:48.420 communication. And I think if you look at that teenage suicide rate increase, a lot of that

00:10:53.700 has to be tied to the smartphone. It just correlates so perfectly with that. And not only just the

00:10:59.200 actual technology, but the fact that it creates this mentality of I'm manipulating you to get

00:11:05.320 a response. I'm competing to get a better response. And so it's just a shallow form of

00:11:11.780 communication. I think the good news is we're trying to, I think we are figuring it out. Like

00:11:16.140 we all know the upside of the social media and the technology. And I think people are now

00:11:21.200 experimenting and trying to find ways where they can get rid of the downside by limiting the time

00:11:26.040 they spend on their phones or limiting what they do on their phones or trying to turn the thing off

00:11:31.080 one day a month. I have a friend who, he gets up and before he looks at any screen, he goes outside

00:11:37.000 and just looks at the sky for a few minutes and has a few thoughts. It's just a way of getting

00:11:40.960 things in the right order. But what's interesting, you, when I talk to people or whenever, you know,

00:11:45.960 newspapers interview young people, you can tell there's like this desire for meaning and significance,

00:11:51.900 but then you see how people look for that. It seems like they go about it at like trying to find

00:11:57.880 meaning and significance using that first mountain response, right? They don't actually go to the

00:12:02.380 second mountain. They think, well, I can just work really hard to find meaning. And that doesn't work.

00:12:06.320 Right. Like it's a homework assignment. Yeah. No, because that's the language. If we're raised,

00:12:11.560 you know, you started 15 or 16 and you get put in the college admissions process. And so you're

00:12:17.320 raised in an ethos of, well, I have to earn it. It's all about, you know, work, doing my homework,

00:12:21.980 working out. And then the thing that's, I think, most treacherous, or at least most treacherous for me

00:12:27.340 is you get this productivity mindset. And so much of our day is taken up by email and stuff like

00:12:33.780 that. So you're a little clock in your head says onto the next project, onto the next project.

00:12:39.640 And so you never actually sit down and have time for real relationships, which do take

00:12:44.060 incredible patience and time. And I found in my worst, I value productivity over people,

00:12:51.720 which is an illusion. But I would say among my students, I teach college, you know, they say we're

00:12:58.600 so hungry, like they're very open that we are so hungry for some sort of spiritual nourishment,

00:13:04.060 but we're not sure we have the vocabulary. We're not sure we've been given the path.

00:13:08.620 And I do think that's the fault of my generation. Frankly, we haven't passed along how to do the hard

00:13:14.200 things like have a good character, have good relationships. And often on the most important

00:13:19.420 subjects of life, we really don't know what to say.

00:13:22.280 Well, you mentioned the valley that you went through to get on to the second mountain.

00:13:25.780 Does everyone have to go through that valley, like a dark time in their life when they realize

00:13:29.680 that they're, they were, they weren't on the necessarily on the wrong mountain, but it's like,

00:13:33.420 it's not, it's not all the mountains of life.

00:13:35.900 Yeah. I don't think they have to. I know a lot of people, my wife included, who she started on her

00:13:40.480 second mountain, like the second mountain, the first mountain is, is about building up your ego and

00:13:45.380 acquiring things. The second mountain is about contributing things and giving things back.

00:13:50.600 First mountain, you're just trying to earn a good reputation. The second mountain, you're just

00:13:54.980 trying to pour forth and you get joy from the happiness you bring to others. And a lot of people

00:14:00.660 are just good somehow, just all the way through there. They were born in an environment, in a family

00:14:05.580 that emphasized the right values, that put relationship before self. And they're lucky ones to grow up in a,

00:14:13.780 in a nurturing family, nurturing culture. But I will say, I don't know anybody in life who hasn't

00:14:19.080 gone through hard times of one sort or another. And I was with a 94 year old guy not too long ago

00:14:23.900 who said, you know, when I look back on my life, I realize I'm, my whole life is defined by how I

00:14:29.260 reacted to my moments of adversity. And I do think that's true. And you ask people, you know, what made

00:14:35.060 you, if I asked you what, what was the event that really made you who you are? Most people point to a

00:14:39.540 moment of struggle and how they reacted to it. So I would point to my vow. I would point to two

00:14:43.580 things and one is good and one is bad. Now that I think about it, I went to a great summer camp from

00:14:48.540 age five to age 23 with the same group of people every summer for two months. And that was a great

00:14:55.500 relationship because it surrounded me in, in friendships, friendships I still have today.

00:15:00.620 And so that was, that was one thing that made me who I am and gave me a viewpoint. And then the

00:15:05.600 second was this valley I went through in 2013. And that was a hard thing I had to get through.

00:15:11.200 Yeah. And you give examples of different valleys people can go through. It could be a divorce. It 0.99

00:15:15.300 could be a sickness, could be a job loss, but it could also be, you know, your first mountain life

00:15:19.100 is great. Everything's on lockdown, but you just feel that existential angst or that soul sickness

00:15:24.320 that you think there's something more and then it knocks you off. And then you, you find that second

00:15:29.500 mountain. Yeah. There's a great concept that was popular in the middle ages, but we sort of don't talk

00:15:34.120 about it today, even though it's very common called acedia. And that's the loss of desire.

00:15:39.200 And some people like they were just climbing and they were hungry to get to the top.

00:15:42.740 And then somehow they just can't care anymore. They just, the passion is gone. And then they're

00:15:49.060 sleepwalking. I had a friend who was being interviewed for a job and he turned around at the end and asked

00:15:55.120 the interviewer a question. And the question was, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And the woman

00:16:00.460 burst out crying because if she wasn't afraid, she wouldn't be doing HR at that company,

00:16:05.300 but she doesn't know what to do with her life. And so she's just trudging through a life she

00:16:09.220 doesn't actually enjoy. That doesn't arouse her high desires. And I think there are people like

00:16:14.120 that. And there are people who, who, you know, feel, I don't quite know what to do. I'm kind of

00:16:18.900 stuck here. And that's a version of a valley and other valleys, you know, everything's going well,

00:16:23.180 but you get hit by something that wasn't part of the original plan. You know, you get a cancer

00:16:27.700 scare, you lose a loved one. And when you're in suffering over grief or something like that,

00:16:34.100 the desires of the first mountain, the desires of the ego, they just don't seem that important

00:16:37.920 anymore. And you have trouble mobilizing your whole life around. So you argue the second mountain is

00:16:43.460 all about commitment. It's the committed life. And this goes contrary to what our individual culture

00:16:48.160 tells us will bring us happiness. So how does, how does binding ourself through commitments give life

00:16:55.600 meaning and bring us joy? It's really the two mountain metaphors really, uh, as really about

00:17:02.420 two different value systems. And one value system is the individualistic one. And the second one

00:17:07.880 is the one where you, we make promises to each other. And so in my view, we're not going to go back

00:17:12.860 to the 1950s. You know, I defer to their organization. I defer to authority. We're not going back to that

00:17:18.560 culture, but we could build a culture around commitment making that our life is really defined by

00:17:24.400 the commitments we make. And so most of us make commitments to a several of four things or maybe

00:17:30.620 all four things to a spouse and family, to a community, to a vocation and to a philosophy or

00:17:37.360 faith. And my argument is that the fulfillment of our lives depends on how well we make and choose

00:17:45.300 those commitments. So a lot of the book is just asking basic questions like, how do you choose a

00:17:50.360 marriage partner? How do you figure out who to marry? And then once you've married them, how do you

00:17:53.940 figure out how to behave? So you make the marriage a full marriage or how do you choose

00:17:58.740 your vocation? How do you know what job is the right life fulfilling career for you? And not

00:18:04.040 things like that. How do you, how do you come to faith? How do you find a philosophy? How do you

00:18:07.320 serve your town? And so these are all very just practical questions of how you lead life. That's

00:18:12.900 about really committed to really buried life where you've, you've, you've chained yourself down to

00:18:18.320 something you really care about and you dedicate yourself to that thing year after year.

00:18:22.440 And what's interesting is you highlight in the book, as you commit yourself to something

00:18:26.340 bigger than yourself, you can actually, that's how you find yourself. I think oftentimes in

00:18:31.260 America, we think, well, I'm going to go off into, I'm going to drive in a van, sleep in 0.69

00:18:35.580 a van. I'm going to find myself that way. But really, no, it's, it's submitting yourself to

00:18:40.040 something larger is how you can develop an identity.

00:18:43.540 Yeah. And everybody says you should serve a cause larger than yourself, but cliche is always

00:18:47.360 around, but nobody tells you exactly how, and you got to realize you have to chain yourself

00:18:52.840 down. And so there are two, um, two definitions of freedom that are out in the world. One is

00:18:58.240 freedom as absence of restraint. I can do whatever I want. And then freedom as freedom of capacity.

00:19:03.980 To have the freedom to play piano, you have to chain yourself down and practice so you can really

00:19:08.560 play. And a lot of your life is determined by what sort of definition of freedom you have

00:19:14.080 unconsciously in your head. And so, you know, I'm, I'm a writer, so I pay attention to how other

00:19:19.520 writers work. And one of the things they do is they tend to have very rigid routines. They get up

00:19:24.420 at nine. I think it was Toni Morrison used to go to a hotel room. She kept in the hotel room. There

00:19:29.860 were only four things. There was a typewriter, a Bible, a desk, and a bottle of brandy. And she just

00:19:36.560 locked herself in the room and wrote all morning. And that commitment to writing seemed like a

00:19:42.000 restraint. And it was a restraint, but it really set her free to, to do what she was meant to do.

00:19:47.260 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:19:50.620 And now back to the show. Well, let's talk about some of the commitments you talk about in the book.

00:19:54.900 Uh, the first one's vocation. I think we've all heard that word before, but I think we often confuse

00:20:00.260 our careers for vocation. Or in other words, we call our career, our vocation, but that's not,

00:20:05.480 our career is not necessarily a vocation.

00:20:07.360 Yeah. A career is something you, you look at the skills you have and you look in the marketplace and

00:20:13.160 you say, well, how can I get the most return on my skills? And so I'm good at math. Somebody needs

00:20:18.740 to do accounting. So I'm going to become an accountant. And so that's a career and it doesn't

00:20:23.560 really involve your heart and soul necessarily. It's how you trade your skills for money.

00:20:28.100 But some people are called and in a vocation, you're not, it's not like a choice. You're called

00:20:33.820 and you find something incredibly beautiful. I read about this guy, EO Wilson. When he was seven,

00:20:40.360 he was out in the beach for the first time in his life. He got to see the ocean and he saw jellyfish

00:20:45.860 and animals he'd never imagined. He saw stingrays and he was called by the beauty, like was entranced by

00:20:52.100 the, what he found. And his whole life has been about becoming a naturalist. Read an interview

00:20:58.540 with a painter and she was asked, why'd you become a painter? And she said, I just love the smell of

00:21:02.980 paint. My daughter, when she was five, she went into an ice hockey rink. She just felt at home at a

00:21:08.320 rink and now she teaches hockey in California. It's more a sense that there's some beauty out there

00:21:13.680 that calls you to do what you were meant to do in your life. And it could be accounting. I mean,

00:21:18.160 it could be, I know a guy who just, he finds beauty in spreadsheets, just in the mathematical

00:21:24.620 elegance of the numbers being in the right place. But it's, it's not really a choice. It's more

00:21:30.060 submitting to something outside you that just seems entrancingly beautiful.

00:21:34.140 And your, your calling might not necessarily be the way you make your living. You might have a day

00:21:38.620 job, but then in the afternoon or the evening, you, you work on your calling.

00:21:42.280 Yeah. There's a great quote in the book that says, sometimes I've been paid for my work

00:21:46.840 and sometimes I haven't been paid for my work, but I'm always doing my work.

00:21:51.100 And I think that's a nice distinction. You know, I, I know some people who were,

00:21:55.360 they're just great at hospitality and sometimes they might do that as a job and say the hotel

00:22:00.260 business, but oftentimes they do it by organizing barbecues. And I have a friend who says that she's

00:22:06.160 aggressive. She's an aggressive friend. She's aggressively friendly. And that means she's in the 0.94

00:22:11.260 friend group. She's the one organizing everything. She's the one putting together the giving circle

00:22:15.480 or putting together the regular dinners that people have. And she just gets great pleasure

00:22:20.700 from cooking and hosting people. And you can do that as a career, or you can do that just for fun,

00:22:25.920 but it's still your vocation. And if you ask somebody like, who are you right down? Who are

00:22:30.960 you at, you know, if I, what's your identity? You know, I, part of my identity is being a writer and

00:22:36.480 sometimes I get paid for it. Sometimes I don't, but it's what I am.

00:22:40.180 Right. And I guess the way you figure this out is, you know, it, like you feel it, like,

00:22:44.000 you know, like EO Wilson, like you just feel entranced by the animals, like look for that thing.

00:22:48.420 And that's going to lead you to what your vocation possibly is.

00:22:52.340 Yeah. And Nietzsche said, write down the four most beautiful moments of your life and then see if you

00:22:58.100 can draw a thematic line through them. And that's how you discover that what he called the law of your

00:23:02.440 very nature. And so sometimes you get to the point of the double negative. It's like, I can't not do this.

00:23:08.860 This is why I'm a teacher. Like if you get called, you know, often we stumble into the things we do

00:23:14.420 because something happens to us. And sometimes it's a very bad thing. Like, you know, that we're in a

00:23:19.680 town and I know a woman, she was a healthcare executive in New Orleans and she got shot in the

00:23:25.780 face by two boys, 10 and 11 years old, who had to shoot somebody to be as part of their gang

00:23:31.740 initiation ritual. And she remembers she recovered and she remembers look at the look on their face just

00:23:38.020 before they shot her. And it was a look of pure terror. And she realized they were really terrified

00:23:44.180 too. They were put in a situation where to be in a gang and have friends, they had to go shoot some

00:23:49.320 random person. And she said, well, I was collateral damage, but they're the real victims. And so she

00:23:54.660 realized at that moment, her calling was to deal with boys and girls who were in gangs. And so she

00:23:59.680 quit her job as healthcare executive and now works with gang members and works for the city of New 1.00

00:24:03.860 Orleans. And sometimes you're just called by bad circumstances, but you get to the point where you

00:24:08.160 say, I can't not do this. So I'm going to do it. I think you talk about Viktor Frankl asking that

00:24:13.200 question, like, what's my responsibility here? Like, what is life asking you to do right now?

00:24:18.020 Yeah. And in commencement, we give a lot of garbage advice. And one of the pieces of garbage advice we 0.99

00:24:22.860 give is you should ask, what do I want from life? That's too vague a question. You never come up with an 0.97

00:24:28.860 answer. The better question, Frankl says, is what does life ask me of me? So what's the big problem

00:24:34.880 that my generation or I am called to deal with? And what problem am I uniquely suited to deal with?

00:24:43.020 And I gave a commencement this year and I said, listen, if you're graduating from college now,

00:24:47.600 the big problem your generation faces is the social fragmentation, the political division,

00:24:53.440 lack of connection. So some generations are called to fight wars or battle depressions,

00:25:01.620 but your generation is called to build really strong relationships with one another. That's

00:25:06.560 a pretty good calling. That's a pretty good responsibility to have. It's hard to do, but

00:25:11.720 it's better than some of the alternatives that earlier generations are called to have.

00:25:15.880 So the next commitment is marriage. And it's not just marriage. You say we need to commit

00:25:20.160 ourselves to maximum marriage. What do you mean by maximum marriage?

00:25:24.560 Yeah, there's a style of marriage that's prevalent today that sociologist Eli Frankl calls

00:25:30.060 it's sort of a minimal marriage, the self-expressive marriage. That's two people. We care for each

00:25:36.680 other and we both have our individual projects in life that we're going to do. And we're going to get

00:25:41.920 married and we're going to help each other on our individual projects from time to time. But our life

00:25:46.580 is still mostly about the individual projects. And I'm not sure marriage can survive that. I think

00:25:51.280 marriage is tough and you have to be all in. Tim Keller is a pastor in New York says,

00:25:57.100 when you're in marriage, you get into marriage and about two years in, you realize that the person

00:26:02.120 you married, who you thought was completely perfect and completely wonderful, is actually kind of

00:26:06.500 selfish. And as you're making this realization about her, she's making it about you. And so you have

00:26:12.540 a decision to make, you can either have a truce marriage, in which case you won't talk about each

00:26:16.780 other's flaws and you'll just have a kind of superficial marriage, or you can decide you're

00:26:22.840 going to deal with the flaws, but you're going to realize that, you know, she seems kind of selfish,

00:26:27.180 but actually my own selfishness is the core problem here. I'm going to be alert to my own selfishness.

00:26:32.820 It's my own selfishness is the only selfishness I can control. And Keller says, when you have two people

00:26:37.780 who see their own selfishness as the core problem in the marriage and who are working on it, then you

00:26:43.340 have the makings of a great marriage. But that requires you like to totally throw yourself into

00:26:47.840 it to defeat the ego, to serve the marriage. And that's a tough thing to do, but that is the

00:26:52.680 essential moral challenge of marriage. And do you have any, based on your research and your writing

00:26:57.420 and talking to people, any advice for people who aren't married, but want to get married to find that

00:27:02.200 kind of marriage partner who also wants a maximum marriage? Yeah. The first thing I always tell my

00:27:07.620 students is marriage is a 50 year conversation. So you have to be able to talk to the person 0.55

00:27:12.020 forever. And so you better have very pure communication. It should be the sort of person

00:27:17.260 that you just love talking to on the phone for hour upon hour. But then there's obviously been

00:27:23.080 a ton of research on how to make this decision and it falls into three buckets. The first is the

00:27:29.600 psychological bucket. What traits does the other person have? And the shorthand answer is go for

00:27:36.260 kindness and avoid neuroticism. And kindness doesn't seem particularly exciting. Sometimes

00:27:41.380 we're attracted to the bad boys or the bad girls, but it's really useful in a marriage. And neurotics, 0.92

00:27:47.180 people are making drama out of everything. The research suggests those people never change.

00:27:51.880 They never stop making drama. So kindness is really valuable. Then there's the passion lens,

00:27:58.820 which is what kind of love do you have for this person? And the Greeks used to say there are three

00:28:04.080 different kinds of loves. There's philia, which is friendship. There's eros, which is real passion,

00:28:10.660 lust, and that kind of thing. And then there's agape, the desire to give your selfless love away

00:28:15.300 to the person. If you just have philia and maybe some lust, then you have a relationship, but you

00:28:21.000 don't have a marriage. If you just have agape, you really want to give yourself to this person,

00:28:25.800 but you don't have lust, then you just have sort of admiration. It's best to have all three kinds

00:28:31.320 of loves. And then the final lens is the moral lens, which is, you know, love is going to come

00:28:37.140 and go, but admiration is pretty stable. And do you admire the person? Do they do things that you

00:28:43.320 find morally admirable? A marriage can survive a lot of things, but one thing it cannot survive

00:28:48.520 is disrespect and contempt. So pick someone you really admire. And then the one other good piece

00:28:53.880 of advice I was given was, you know, when we think about getting, marrying someone, we ask a lot of

00:28:59.780 questions about the other person. Are they the right person? We don't ask enough questions about

00:29:04.080 ourselves, which is really, am I ready for this? Am I ready to lead a very different kind of life?

00:29:10.560 Because until you get married, you can live with the illusion that you're easy to live with.

00:29:15.440 But when you get married, somebody is watching you and you become aware of exactly all the ways 0.99

00:29:19.860 you're crazy and selfish. And so you got to be willing to be changed. 0.94

00:29:24.100 And I imagine as if you've been married for a while, being, keeping that idea or being willing

00:29:30.860 to change, keeping that up will help strengthen your marriage as the years go on.

00:29:35.480 Yeah. Some of it is just like practical stuff. Like I pass a lot in the book. I take a lot of

00:29:40.180 the best bits of advice I've read from others and I just pass them along. And one of the things I read

00:29:45.060 was like, sometimes when you're in a relationship, they say never go to bed mad, but sometimes you're

00:29:50.560 just tired. So you just go to bed and that's, you know, go to bed tomorrow. You wake, make waffles

00:29:56.000 together. Things will seem better. Another bit of advice I got for women in marriage was if you feel

00:30:01.880 encouraged to bitch about him to somebody, bitch to his mom and not to yours because his mom will 1.00

00:30:08.320 forgive him, but yours never will. And so these are just like little practical things and commitments 0.99

00:30:13.240 are lived out every day. And so there's just got to be practically committed to not just, it's not just

00:30:19.020 theory. So the third commitment is to philosophy and faith. And you make the case that reading the

00:30:25.620 great books of Western civilization or just studying Western civilization can be a way to commit yourself

00:30:30.820 to the intellectual life. How so? And how can that, how can that transform you? Yeah. So I happened to

00:30:36.240 go to college where they taught the great books. It was the University of Chicago. And so we read like

00:30:41.000 Tolstoy and Aristotle and Plato. And the thing about the geniuses of those times is in some ways they

00:30:48.080 are very different, but in some ways they know us better than we know ourselves. And so they really

00:30:53.840 broke things down. How do you become a virtuous person? How do you do forgiveness? How do you

00:30:58.060 experience grace? Or even like George Eliot or Jane Austen, like, how do you think through the

00:31:02.820 marriage decision? George Eliot wrote a lot about that. And so they are very practical advice.

00:31:09.020 And then they also, they, they touch you on a level that's deeper than, you know, I read for the

00:31:13.800 newspaper book. Newspapers don't really touch you on the level of your soul or your heart.

00:31:18.080 But if you hear, you know, Mozart's, you know, if you hear Ode to Joy, if you see Shark Cathedral,

00:31:24.460 if you've read, you know, Tolstoy, you've been touched on a much deeper level. And I think one

00:31:30.440 of the things they do is they educate the emotions. And so we all have some crude emotions, but when

00:31:37.120 you've touched, been touched by art, your emotions get much more refined. Now, here's one trivial

00:31:42.560 example. I once saw Taylor Swift interviewed on 60 Minutes and the interviewer said, you know,

00:31:48.940 you write a lot of sad songs. And she said, well, actually there are about 17 different kinds of

00:31:54.300 sadness. And she said, there's your boyfriend rakes up with you sadness. And she played a little tune.

00:31:59.120 Your mom is mad at you sadness. She played another tune. You've lost your dog sadness. She played

00:32:03.420 another. And she is an expert on sadness. And if you go through life, you want to go through life

00:32:08.580 with a lot of different repertoire of emotions. So you can feel the right kind of sadness and a

00:32:12.920 different kind of sadness. And you can understand your own feelings a little better. And that's what

00:32:17.020 I think happens with the great books. And you can do this together with other people. I mean,

00:32:21.520 one of the most significant things, you know, meaningful things I've done in my life in the

00:32:25.580 past few years is we have a men's group here in town in Tulsa where we've been reading the great

00:32:29.980 books and, you know, started at the Iliad. We're at Shakespeare now. And it's been great meeting with

00:32:34.220 these guys once a month to discuss these ideas. Yeah. And one of the phrases I passed along is

00:32:40.040 there's no such thing as thinking for yourself. Like even the language we think in is a creation

00:32:45.520 of the group. And when you get together and just debate these issues, that to me is one of the

00:32:50.600 great pleasures of life. And just having just you're in the moment and you each are building on

00:32:56.040 each other's thoughts. That's one of the great gifts of friendship. And I'm in a group like that.

00:33:00.260 And we're sort of sensitive that nobody should talk too much. And a lot of the book is a lot

00:33:06.240 of my book is just things we discuss together as, as a group of guys reading a bunch of books that

00:33:12.080 have made us a little less shallow than we otherwise would be.

00:33:14.860 Let's talk about the commitment to faith and religion, because that's a hard sell

00:33:18.080 in a culture that's becoming increasingly secular. I think the number of people who describe themselves

00:33:22.740 as none when it comes to religious affiliations, the highest it's ever been.

00:33:26.580 And how are you defining spirituality in this book? Are you advocating for something like,

00:33:32.280 you know, that spiritual but not religious? Or are you talking about religion as well?

00:33:37.300 I'm leaning toward religion. I get being a nun since I spent most of my life as a nun,

00:33:41.440 not believing in God, even though I was around a lot of organized religions. But I guess,

00:33:47.520 at least for me over time, my categories, which were pretty atheistic, became inadequate to

00:33:53.620 reality as I experienced it. And so there were just moments of time that seemed mystical,

00:34:00.220 that seemed like there was a presence that couldn't be explained by just material causes.

00:34:06.640 And often that presence was in other people, like I'm a journalist, I cover other people's lives.

00:34:11.940 And I just couldn't care about the stories I write about if people were just sacks of genetic

00:34:17.260 material or being blown around by evolutionary forces. I see them as creatures with souls that

00:34:24.200 have something in them that is of infinite value and dignity, something in them that gives them

00:34:29.560 moral responsibility to either behave well or behave badly. And so I said, you know, the people I read

00:34:35.400 about have souls. And we all have souls. And you don't even have to believe in God to believe that

00:34:40.800 there's some invisible piece of yourself that has no size, weight, color, or weight,

00:34:45.560 but that gives you infinite value and dignity, that slavery is wrong because it cuts over another

00:34:51.100 person's soul, and that the soul yearns to lead a good life, which I think we all want to lead a

00:34:58.260 good life. We all want to lead a meaningful, purposeful life. And so once you get that sense

00:35:02.760 that other people have souls, and at every second of every day, their souls are either getting a

00:35:08.440 little more holy or a little more degraded, their souls are getting sick, their souls are yearning,

00:35:12.780 then it's a short step, or at least it was for me, to believe, well, maybe the material world is not

00:35:18.600 the only world, but there's something else as well. And so in the book, I just try to describe

00:35:23.920 a very boring, gradual process toward faith.

00:35:27.340 And what does that commitment to faith look like, for you at least?

00:35:31.680 Well, partly it's faith is change, as one of the writers I quote says. It's not like,

00:35:37.400 you know, some people, when they talk about God, they say, you know, I prayed and God told me to

00:35:41.600 move to Arizona instead of Nevada. And I respect people who feel they have that contact with God.

00:35:48.280 I can't tell you I've ever felt it that specifically. To me, it's seeking the beauty

00:35:53.460 of certain things. Like, there are certain stories in the Bible that are just morally very beautiful.

00:36:00.320 And I'd like to have opinion my life more on the beauty that are in some of these stories,

00:36:05.820 rather than the ugliness that's in the world. And so I have a sense of what grace is. I just,

00:36:10.500 this joyous love that you can't earn. And I'd rather pin my life toward that than pin it toward,

00:36:17.180 you know, going to the casino and hitting the jackpot. And I don't know, it's an aesthetic

00:36:22.760 sense of what is truly morally beautiful. And I make a distinction in the book between happiness

00:36:27.600 and joy. And happiness happens when you get a promotion, your team wins the Super Bowl,

00:36:32.360 it's the expansion of self. Joy happens when the barrier between you and something you really care

00:36:39.120 about disappears. And so there's joy when you're with your kids and you're just playing. Sometimes

00:36:43.780 there's joy in work, where you totally lose yourself in your work and you experience flow.

00:36:49.260 Sometimes there's joy with someone you love, and you're just so delirious to be together.

00:36:55.420 Sometimes there's joy in nature. You feel part of the natural surroundings. You become one with

00:37:00.220 the forest as you're hiking through it. And one of the messages in the book is happiness is good,

00:37:05.700 but joy is better. And the ultimate joy is transcendent joy when you've surrendered yourself

00:37:11.480 to some pure good. And you're not even thinking about yourself anymore. You're doing something

00:37:16.100 just because you think it is morally beautiful.

00:37:18.780 Yeah. And I imagine the faith you're talking about too, the examples you gave, it was all about

00:37:24.500 leading back to other people, right? Even the faith you're talking about is not sort of this

00:37:29.480 personal salvation. It's a faith that leads me towards action that transcends myself and wants

00:37:37.400 me to love others and love my group, love my family, whatever that is.

00:37:41.980 Yeah. I had a camp counselor who then became a friend who was an Episcopal priest. And he was just

00:37:47.540 like a holy child almost. He lived till about 60 and he saw some really hard things. He worked in

00:37:54.680 Honduras among the poor. He worked with women who suffered domestic violence, but he spoke in this

00:38:00.040 enthusiastic, he would always interrupt his sentences, whistles and pops and laughs. And he

00:38:06.220 just didn't think about himself. He was just grateful for every person he met and he treated every person

00:38:11.520 he met as sort of a miracle. And so he really did live a life of selfless love. And I run to such

00:38:18.720 people who are just glow with joy, maybe once a month or so. I get to work, I've got this project

00:38:24.920 at the Aspen Institute and I get to work with Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist. And that guy is just happy all the

00:38:30.880 time. And he just delights in his work. He delights in the people he meets. He's filled with gratitude and

00:38:36.720 you know, he's got as much fame and money as he could ever handle. And so he's going around the world

00:38:41.980 playing in order to bring angry people together and out of anger. And it's, I'm sure it's hard to be

00:38:47.800 traveling around the world all that time, but he's serving a cause he really believes in and he's

00:38:52.760 just happy. He's just laughs a lot. It's amazing. All these individuals, they're there, you can tell

00:38:56.900 they're outside of their head. Like they're not neurotic. They're not constantly thinking about

00:39:00.320 themselves. And whenever you see that, you're like, I want, I want that too. I don't want, I'm tired of

00:39:05.660 like journaling about my, my terrible thoughts. I just don't want to even have to think about it

00:39:09.000 anymore. Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things I learned as I described this in the moments in the

00:39:13.760 Valley is people go out into the wilderness. And if you're the sort of person who's spent a lot of

00:39:20.220 life, you know, trying to be popular, wanting to be liked and performing for others out in the

00:39:24.520 wilderness, the rocks don't care. So there's nobody left to perform for. And then you, if you get

00:39:29.940 called to do a task, maybe you call to be a community worker in something, maybe you're called,

00:39:36.320 you love a certain company you're starting up and you think it'll really do some good in the world.

00:39:39.900 You're so busy caring about the commitment you've made. You yourself seem much less important.

00:39:45.680 And I've always thought that you can't replace a bad with a, but you can't replace one thing with

00:39:50.900 nothing. You have to replace it with a better thing. And so finding a better love, like something

00:39:55.480 you love more than you love yourself is just the way to do that. Let's talk about the last commitment,

00:40:00.280 which is to community. You mentioned earlier that you think that the rebuilding community is

00:40:06.440 probably the great challenge of my generation. What for you, what does an ideal community look

00:40:12.300 like to you?

00:40:13.360 There was a book by a woman named Jane Jacobs, which was written somewhere around 1962 called

00:40:18.060 The Death and Life of Great American Cities. And she lived in Greenwich Village in New York in a

00:40:22.960 little, little community, a little neighborhood there, which was then a middle-class neighborhood.

00:40:26.260 Now it's really rich, but back then it was middle-class. And she was looking out her street,

00:40:31.440 at her street from her second story window. And she realized that her street was like a ballet.

00:40:36.440 That early in the day that people picking up the trash would come by, then the people would

00:40:41.680 taking their kids off to school would come by, then the shopkeepers would open their shops.

00:40:46.220 And it was like all this movement on the block. And there was always something happening,

00:40:50.900 teenagers hanging out, people heading off to the bars. And she said, all this movement is just

00:40:56.600 like a ballet. We're all sort of moving around each other and keeping an eye on each other.

00:41:00.320 And at one point she's looking out her window and she sees a guy tugging on a nine-year-old girl,

00:41:08.280 pulling her to where she doesn't. The girl clearly does not want to go. 0.99

00:41:12.300 And Jane Jacobs wonders, am I watching a kidnapping? And she's about to go down and intervene. 0.97

00:41:17.960 And then she says, oh, wait. And she sees that the fruit vendor has stepped out of his store. The

00:41:23.320 locksmith has come out of his store. Two other people have come out. And she says, the guy didn't

00:41:28.340 realize, but he was surrounded. And there were just eyes on the street. We're all watching each

00:41:32.660 other. We're all taking care of each other. And it turned out to be only a dad pulling on his nine-year-old

00:41:37.200 daughter to do something. But that's to me what a community is. It's like a ballet, a collection of

00:41:43.720 people who are moving together organically and dynamically, but keeping an eye on each other

00:41:48.280 and helping each other out when that has to happen. And I'm afraid what's happened in our societies,

00:41:53.640 we don't have a lot of those dense places where people live on a street and really can look at each

00:41:58.040 other. We're locked in the privacy of our own homes. And I don't know about your neighborhood,

00:42:02.420 but in my neighborhood, if you went on to somebody's home unannounced at 830 at night and knocked on the

00:42:07.900 door just to hang out, that would be considered an amazing violation of privacy. And so we've put

00:42:13.880 privacy above community and sometimes work above community. And so as a result, the social capital

00:42:19.440 is much lower. And what I admire are people who go out of their way to build community. And sometimes

00:42:26.340 they do it by organizing annual dinners or your book club or there are a zillion ways that you can

00:42:33.480 have a whiskey club and that's a fun way to have community. Community should be fun and not just

00:42:37.780 like a chore. Yeah, I definitely think it's going to be, it's a skill that has to be relearned because

00:42:42.060 I think a lot of particularly young people, they don't know how to do this stuff. Here's a pretty

00:42:45.780 great example. My mom, my parents still live still in the neighborhood that I grew up in when I was a

00:42:50.700 kid. And when I was a kid, there was a very active mother's association. So there was Christmas parties,

00:42:55.060 Easter parties, 4th of July parades, Halloween parties. And then after all the kids my age

00:43:01.100 graduated and left home, that stuff stopped and it wasn't there for 25 years. And so my mom,

00:43:09.240 so they're all grandmas now, my mom and all her friends in the neighborhood decided we got to get

00:43:13.340 this going again. So they started the mom's organization again. There's these grandmas and

00:43:18.620 they're teaching these young millennial moms how to organize an Easter party or an Easter parade. 1.00

00:43:24.120 And like, they're loving it. And these, these young moms are like, we don't know how to do this. 0.99

00:43:27.520 We're so grateful that you're showing us how to do this.

00:43:30.000 That is great. I've never heard of anything quite like that, but that is fantastic.

00:43:33.720 There are just tricks people can do to build community. I have a friend who was in college,

00:43:37.280 he's probably 34 now. And he said, I've got a really good group of friends here in college.

00:43:42.580 I'm terrified I'm going to lose them as we, you know, we drift apart in life.

00:43:45.660 And one of his professors said, well, start a giving circle. All of you put money into a pot

00:43:49.640 every year and every year get together for four days and decide where you're going to donate that

00:43:56.140 money. And the charity is sort of the pretext together to get together. But the reality is

00:44:00.760 they are now 13 years out of college and every year they get together and they're

00:44:05.780 walking through life together. And so you got to invent something. There's got to be some

00:44:09.520 technology of convening that will pull you into community. But it's just a question of finding

00:44:15.080 what your best technology is. Does a person need to like have all four commitments in their life to

00:44:20.060 have a meaningful life or is it, it can just have one or two or there's going to be, you know, one

00:44:25.040 in one part of your life and another part in your other life? Yeah. I mean, a lot of people never get

00:44:29.440 married and they live very fulfilled lives. So I would not say you have to have all four. And then

00:44:33.960 sometimes are in different phases. Some people really serve their communities. You know,

00:44:40.480 they work at the Y or do something later in life. And sometimes, especially if you have small kids,

00:44:46.260 that swallows up your life. So that's a commitment that swallows up a lot of time. But I do think

00:44:51.620 being committed to something all the way through and a commitment is to me, the best definition of a

00:44:56.920 commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for

00:45:01.300 those moments when love falters. Because we all, you know, we all have moments where we're feeling dry.

00:45:05.820 We don't want to go to church or we don't really care about the mentoring program we're in. But if

00:45:12.060 you build habits around that thing and you just go by the habits, it'll carry you through those

00:45:16.640 moments. So I always say Jews love their God, but they keep kosher just in case, just because the 1.00

00:45:22.520 structure of kosher law sort of pulls them through the moments when, you know, they don't feel the

00:45:27.720 presence of God and they're just going about their way. It's about instilling habits.

00:45:31.880 And you also talk about this in the book, create an environment where it makes those habits are

00:45:35.760 easier to follow through on. So have a community where you can, where you have that social pressure,

00:45:41.860 where it's just the normal thing to do. And you're going to do it because you're with those group of

00:45:45.660 friends that are doing the same thing.

00:45:47.380 Yeah. I mean, this is sort of the model of Al-Anon or anything else, or probably even your book club,

00:45:52.760 like, would you really read the book? But if you got to go talk about it with your friends,

00:45:56.440 well, I'll show up and read the book. And so with, and that's, I think people who are dealing

00:46:02.920 with addiction find the same thing that they're really doing it because they, they care about

00:46:07.780 those people. They don't want to let them down and they want to set a good model for the people

00:46:11.680 they're in group with. And we're just such contagious creatures that if six people around

00:46:17.580 you gain weight, the odds that you're going to gain weight are extremely high. If they start smoking,

00:46:22.060 you'll probably start smoking. If they stop drinking, you'll probably stop drinking. We're

00:46:25.980 very, we think we're not connected creatures, but we're extremely connected to each other.

00:46:30.200 Plato says we're mimetic animals, mimesis. We copy others. Right. Well, David, where can people

00:46:35.640 go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:46:37.820 Well, they can go to the Amazon webpage to get the book. And then the community stuff,

00:46:42.120 I've got an organization at the Aspen Project called Weave, the Social Fabric Project,

00:46:46.460 and they can go to weareweavers.org. And that's there they can learn about some of the most

00:46:51.460 amazing people I've met over the last few years who really are building community on the ground

00:46:56.580 level and leading really lives that I would love to copy. Well, David Brooks, thanks so much for

00:47:01.380 your time. It's been a pleasure. Oh, thank you. My guest name is David Brooks. He's the author of

00:47:05.200 the book, The Second Mountain, The Quest for Immoral Life. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:47:10.160 everywhere. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash second mountain, where you find links to

00:47:14.440 resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:21.460 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

00:47:26.960 artofmanlios.com, where you find our podcast archives. There's 500 of them there, as well

00:47:30.880 as thousands of articles written over the years on personal finance, philosophy, how to be a better

00:47:35.760 husband, better father, physical fitness, you name it, we've got it. And if you'd like to enjoy

00:47:39.460 the Art of Manlios podcast ad-free, you can do so only on Stitcher Premium. For a free month of

00:47:44.180 Stitcher Premium, sign up at stitcherpremium.com and use promo code manliness. Once you've signed up,

00:47:48.700 you can download the Stitcher app for iOS or Android and start enjoying the ad-free Art of

00:47:52.780 Manlios experience. Again, that's stitcherpremium.com, promo code manliness. And if you haven't done so

00:47:56.980 already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps

00:48:00.660 out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend

00:48:04.560 or family member who you would think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the

00:48:07.780 continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only listen to the

00:48:11.120 AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:48:18.700 AOM.

00:48:24.760 AOM.

00:48:24.960 AOM.

00:48:28.960 AOM.

00:48:29.640 AOM.

00:48:30.720 AOM.

00:48:34.300 AOM.

00:48:35.060 AOM.

00:48:36.640 AOM.

00:48:37.180 AOM.

00:48:40.580 AOM.

00:48:44.560 AOM.

00:48:45.120 AOM.

The Art of Manliness - June 19, 2019

#518： The Quest for a Moral Life

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript