Speaker 1: With no fees er minimums. Banking with Capital one is
Speaker 1: the easiest decision in the history of decisions. That's banking
Speaker 1: reimagine what's in your wallet. Terms apply see capitolwe dot
Speaker 1: com slash bank Capital one NA member FDIC. Hi everyone,
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Couric and this is next question. Hi everybody, welcome.
Speaker 1: Once again, it's Katie plus one and I'm so thrilled
Speaker 1: with my date today. This time it's Kelly Corrigan. She's
Speaker 1: an author journalist. She's the host of the podcast Kelly
Speaker 1: Corrigan Wonders. She has written four New York Times bestselling
Speaker 1: memoirs in the last decade, earning her the title of
Speaker 1: the Poet Laureate of the Ordinary from the Huffington Post
Speaker 1: and the Voice of a Generation from Oh Magazine.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Kelly Yeah. She's worked in nonprofits for ten years. That
Speaker 1: decade created her worldview, which goes people are struggling, make
Speaker 1: yourself useful. She paints almost every day in her garage,
Speaker 1: often in her pj's like a crazy person, but a
Speaker 1: happy crazy person, and that's what's working, so she keeps
Speaker 1: doing it. Kelly, thank you for being my plus one
Speaker 1: on this podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm so happy to be with you the last
Speaker 2: time you were my interview subject on the PBS Show.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, And I actually should have mentioned
Speaker 1: the PBS Show, which is wonderful as well. And Kelly,
Speaker 1: I think you do have this every woman wisdom that
Speaker 1: people just gravitate to, and so that's why I thought
Speaker 1: you'd be the perfect partner for me to talk with
Speaker 1: David Brooks, who I have long admired, You've long admired.
Speaker 1: But before we open up the conversation and let David in,
Speaker 1: let's just talk very briefly about how we know each other,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a fun story because it dates
Speaker 1: back to the Today's Show. Can you tell everyone how
Speaker 1: we first connected.
Speaker 2: It's two thousand and four. I had just finished a
Speaker 2: year of cancer treatment. My hair was just starting to
Speaker 2: grow back. I was thirty seven, two little kids, and
Speaker 2: my dad had cancer at the same time I did.
Speaker 2: And it was the first day of Breast cancer Awareness Month.
Speaker 2: So the Today Show always does a big, full coverage
Speaker 2: of that topic, and so I was invited to come
Speaker 2: on with my dad. And it was so funny, Katie,
Speaker 2: because we were in the green room and we're all
Speaker 2: made up and fancy and I and my dad's a
Speaker 2: big character, like he really lets it rip. And I
Speaker 2: was like, you know that, this is like keep it,
Speaker 2: keep it in the pocket at first, like let's just
Speaker 2: try to like, you know, play it.
Speaker 3: Tighten it up down, Yeah, tighten it up, brother.
Speaker 2: And we get out there and you came right across
Speaker 2: the room like it was your home like that. That
Speaker 2: was my immediate sense was like, Oh, you're going to
Speaker 2: take care of us, like you're welcoming us into your space.
Speaker 2: You came all the way across the studio. You didn't
Speaker 2: sit in your chair and look at the teleprompter and
Speaker 2: get ready. You came to us, which I just thought
Speaker 2: was really lovely and doesn't always happen. And you said Hi,
Speaker 2: I'm Katie, and I was like, Hi, I'm Kelly. This
Speaker 2: is my dad, George. And my dad instantly said, Katie,
Speaker 2: my son went to Washington and Lee, which is where
Speaker 2: your husband, your first husband went, And he said, right,
Speaker 2: and he played for coach so and so, and you said,
Speaker 2: I don't think my husband really, I don't think Jay
Speaker 2: really liked him. And my father Zach Emmer right, and
Speaker 2: my father said, oh, he's a dick. And I was
Speaker 2: like Oh my god, Dad, this is exactly what I
Speaker 2: told you not to do, like we're keeping it in
Speaker 2: the pocket.
Speaker 3: And then we walked out.
Speaker 2: You'd laughed so hard, and we walked over and sat
Speaker 2: on the little sofa. And then you know, when you
Speaker 2: go on the Today Show, like they try to get
Speaker 2: it organized for you in advance, where they give you
Speaker 2: the questions and you practice answering them, and you know,
Speaker 2: they give you a little window of content. And the
Speaker 2: very first question you went off script, and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this is so cool, Like she's just going to talk
Speaker 2: to us because you know so much like to me.
Speaker 2: I was like, it would be so rude of me
Speaker 2: to be nervous right now because I'm talking to someone
Speaker 2: who has lost two people, You're two dearest people to cancer,
Speaker 2: and so I'm just going to talk to you like
Speaker 2: I would if there were no cameras, because heart to heart,
Speaker 2: there aren't any cameras, like this is my story, this
Speaker 2: is your story, this my dad's story, like and it
Speaker 2: was so wonderful, and I think we were on for
Speaker 2: like seven minutes or something like I remember after it
Speaker 2: was over all my cousins were like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: that was insane.
Speaker 1: Uh, and you were brilliant, and I think you know,
Speaker 1: your voice maybe emerged that day and led to so
Speaker 1: many other wonderful opportunities because of your honesty and your heart.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I was there when it all started.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're doing well and are in good health,
Speaker 1: and I'm so proud of what an important person you've
Speaker 1: become in the world. So many people, Kelly, Honestly, it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing to witness. Okay, Kelly, Before we go
Speaker 1: on and on, because it's a mutual admiration society, here,
Speaker 1: let's bring in David Brooks to talk about his new book,
Speaker 1: How to Know a Person, The Art of Seeing Others
Speaker 1: Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. David Brooks, Welcome, Kelly, and
Speaker 1: I both welcome you to the podcast.
Speaker 4: This is a double barrel of fun and willing and
Speaker 4: able look out.
Speaker 3: Mister.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk to you about this, and
Speaker 1: I think it's something that interests Kelly a great deal too. Kelly,
Speaker 1: when you heard about David's book, How to Know a Person,
Speaker 1: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply, Being Deeply Seen, what
Speaker 1: interested you about it?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a little bit curious about David's journey, because
Speaker 2: I once heard him say that in his house the
Speaker 2: ethos was think Yiddish, act British, and that I know
Speaker 2: you to be, you know, a journalist of the highest order,
Speaker 2: and a specific kind of journalist, which is to say,
Speaker 2: not like Katie, whose job it is to ask questions,
Speaker 2: but rather someone who's supposed to summon an opinion and
Speaker 2: present it, which is sort of the opposite of what
Speaker 2: you're asking people to do in this book. So that
Speaker 2: my deepest curiosity was how funny that you should come
Speaker 2: to this urgent message after a somewhat aloof life where
Speaker 2: you could be in a cerebral space nine days out
Speaker 2: of ten and not really have to operate on this level.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and thought about that way. But my whole life
Speaker 4: has been a journey to being more like Katie. And
Speaker 4: I'm totally cool with that.
Speaker 3: By the way, It's not a bad trajectory.
Speaker 4: Right, because I grew up, as you say, in a
Speaker 4: super intellectual world with my family, my answer professors, and
Speaker 4: then when I got to be eighteen, the admissions officers
Speaker 4: at Columbia, Wesleyan, and Brown decided should go to the
Speaker 4: University of Chicago.
Speaker 2: I laughed, at that, Lie David also.
Speaker 4: A super heavy place, and I fit right in.
Speaker 2: My joke is our fun goes to die right right.
Speaker 4: The best saying about Chicago it's a Baptist school where
Speaker 4: atheist professors teach Jewish students. Saint Thomas Aquinas so super intellectual,
Speaker 4: and I fit right in my joke is I had
Speaker 4: a double major in history and celibacy while I was
Speaker 4: at Chicago.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of connection, not a.
Speaker 4: Lot of connection going on there, and so I was
Speaker 4: cerebral and it, you know, it worked for me. But
Speaker 4: at some point you just want to get wise, right, Like,
Speaker 4: smart people know about things, but whise people know about
Speaker 4: people and life and life and the circumstances we find
Speaker 4: ourselves in. And so, you know, whise people have a
Speaker 4: sorehouse of knowledge about human nature. They're curious about other people.
Speaker 4: They're good at having conversations people remember for a long time.
Speaker 4: They're good at sitting with someone who's suffering. And so
Speaker 4: I just wanted to be more like that. I mean,
Speaker 4: one of the dualisms in the book is in every
Speaker 4: community there are some people who are diminishers and some
Speaker 4: people who are illuminators. And diminishers make you feel small
Speaker 4: and unseen and not curious about you. They stereotype you,
Speaker 4: and illuminators light you up with their care and they're
Speaker 4: just really good at making people feel seen, heard and understood.
Speaker 4: And now I'm intimidated. I'm in the presence of two
Speaker 4: pretty good illuminators. So that's when my life journey.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting, you know, David. I mean, I've so
Speaker 1: much to talk to you about. I really enjoyed your book,
Speaker 1: and I think you're very funny in it. I like
Speaker 1: when you said when it comes to spontaneous displays of emotion,
Speaker 1: I had the emotional capacity of a head of cabbage.
Speaker 2: And you really talk about how.
Speaker 1: Closed off you were to feelings, emotions, connections, and it
Speaker 1: made me wonder frankly, and I think Kelly and I
Speaker 1: both I don't know. I'd love to hear about your childhood, Kelly.
Speaker 1: I have been always extremely empathetic and attuned to the
Speaker 1: emotional well being of people around me, to a point
Speaker 1: where it's a lot. You know, if I see someone
Speaker 1: by themselves, I always go and talk to them. When
Speaker 1: there was only one African American girl in my piano group,
Speaker 1: I said to my teacher, I hope she wins the
Speaker 1: prize today because I felt that she felt lonely and different.
Speaker 1: So I've always been that way, and it made me
Speaker 1: wonder is empathy the result of nurture or nature because
Speaker 1: your parents obviously were not particularly touchy feely. But I
Speaker 1: feel like it's more than that. It's almost something you're
Speaker 1: hardwired to be. And I'm curious what you found out
Speaker 1: about that, David.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think empathy is like it's like athletic ability.
Speaker 4: Some people are born with more of it others, but
Speaker 4: everybody needs training and everybody does better if they work
Speaker 4: on it. And so to me, empathy is three skills.
Speaker 4: The first is mirroring, and that's catching the emotion right
Speaker 4: in front of you, and that's the natural you're comfortable
Speaker 4: with your body, you send somebody else emotions and you
Speaker 4: share it, you feel it. That's mirroring. The next one
Speaker 4: is mentalizing, and that's the ability to see, Oh, I
Speaker 4: had an experience like she's going through, so I sort
Speaker 4: of know what she's going through. So like on the
Speaker 4: first day of the job, I remember, Oh, on my
Speaker 4: first day of the job, I was nervous, I was excited,
Speaker 4: I was overwhelmed. I had all these scattering of different emotions,
Speaker 4: so I'm mentalizing, I'm projecting what I think. And then
Speaker 4: the third thing is caring, the ability to accurately care
Speaker 4: and so kids like, if you come home from work crying,
Speaker 4: your two year old will hand you a band aid,
Speaker 4: which is sweet, but it's not what you want. So
Speaker 4: you have to effectively care. And so there's a guy
Speaker 4: named Rabbi Elliot Kukla who wrote about a woman who
Speaker 4: had a brain injury. So she fell on the floor.
Speaker 4: She just fell down sometimes, and she said people are
Speaker 4: always rushing to lift me up because they're uncomfortable seeing
Speaker 4: an adult on the floor. Sometimes they just need to
Speaker 4: get down on the ground with me. And so empathy
Speaker 4: is knowing sometimes you just have to get down on
Speaker 4: the ground with someone. And I put in the book,
Speaker 4: I'm going to read out a little empathy test so
Speaker 4: you can tell how naturally talented you are at empathy.
Speaker 4: And I'll read you a few statements and see if
Speaker 4: you agree with them. First, is I find it hard
Speaker 4: to know what to do in social situations. It doesn't
Speaker 4: bother me when I show up late, people say I
Speaker 4: went too far and driving home. My point, if those
Speaker 4: apply to you, you probably you're naturally a little lower
Speaker 4: on empathy. Interesting, here's some other statements. Interpersonal conflict is
Speaker 4: painful to me. I mimic the mannerisms of those around me.
Speaker 4: When I make a social blunder, I'm extremely disturbed. And
Speaker 4: so if you say yes, this sort of applas to me,
Speaker 4: that's a sign you probably have higher empathy. And so
Speaker 4: we have it. We're born with a certain level, but
Speaker 4: we on need training to get better at it.
Speaker 3: I have two questions.
Speaker 2: One is do you think that life experiences accelerate change,
Speaker 2: Like you had a really hard period in your life,
Speaker 2: your marriage fell apart, and you did a little self
Speaker 2: evaluation and didn't really like the results. Katie has obviously
Speaker 2: been through a terrible loss twice over sister husband. I
Speaker 2: had cancer in my thirties. It took two years to
Speaker 2: get rid of. So I wonder about those big moments,
Speaker 2: and then I want to drill down on mentalizing. But
Speaker 2: first I'm curious do you think that if you are
Speaker 2: sort of not a great empathizer by nature, do you
Speaker 2: think that an ordinary life can get you there or
Speaker 2: it takes something extraordinary?
Speaker 4: Well, I have a pretty ordinary life or really a
Speaker 4: blessed life. But I've had moments of suffering. I used
Speaker 4: to tell my kids, my students, you know, you can
Speaker 4: be knowledgeable with other people's knowledge, but you can't be
Speaker 4: wise with other people's wisdom. You have to live through it,
Speaker 4: and you know, suffering. One of my favorite sayings about suffering,
Speaker 4: it's from Paul Tillic in nineteen fifties theologian. He said, suffering,
Speaker 4: moments of suffering, phases of suffering interrupt your life and
Speaker 4: remind you you're not the person you thought you were,
Speaker 4: and that he says, they carved down through the basement
Speaker 4: of what you thought was the floor of your soul,
Speaker 4: and they carve through that and reveal a cavity below.
Speaker 4: Then they carve through that and reveal a cavity below.
Speaker 4: So you see, at least I think most people do.
Speaker 4: They see into depths of themselves they didn't know existed
Speaker 4: in moments of suffering, and they know only spiritual and
Speaker 4: relational food will fill those depths. And so people have
Speaker 4: a choice, which is they can be broken or broken open.
Speaker 4: And some people are broken, they get bitter, they get hard,
Speaker 4: they close in on themselves. But some people get broken
Speaker 4: open and they feel more, they get more vulnerable, they
Speaker 4: have greater empathy. And I do think that after you've
Speaker 4: been through suffering, you'd come out of it if you
Speaker 4: use those horrible moments well with a certain sort of knowledge.
Speaker 4: There's a phrase quotation I left from Thornton Wilder, which is,
Speaker 4: without your wound, where would your power be? It's your
Speaker 4: very remorse that makes your low voice tremble in the
Speaker 4: hearts of men in love service only Wounded Soldiers conserves.
Speaker 2: That Thornton Wilder, he could write that guy.
Speaker 3: You get a nice twist of phrase that one.
Speaker 1: Before you talk about mentalizing, though, I'm curious, David, so
Speaker 1: it seems to me this has been a life long
Speaker 1: something that you have wanted to improve for some time.
Speaker 1: Or was it exacerbated by, as Kelly said, a life event,
Speaker 1: the fact that your marriage didn't work out, or was
Speaker 1: there an event or a series of events that really
Speaker 1: precipitated this longing and this search, or is it just
Speaker 1: something that you felt was missing in your being?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I felt something was missing so frankly, and the
Speaker 4: story of telling the book Big Baseball Fan, and I
Speaker 4: never all the big games I've gone to, I've never
Speaker 4: gotten a foul ball, And.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, This is a funny story.
Speaker 4: I go to the game in Baltimore with my youngest
Speaker 4: son and the batter loses control of the bat and
Speaker 4: it lands at my feet. It flies in the stands,
Speaker 4: and I've got a bat, And any normal human being
Speaker 4: would be jumping up and down, high fiving, hugging everybody
Speaker 4: around me, getting on the JumboTron. But I just put
Speaker 4: the bat at my feet and like sit there like inert,
Speaker 4: like a turtle.
Speaker 2: That's when you would describe you having the emotional capacity
Speaker 2: of ahead of cabbage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm like show a little joy man. And
Speaker 4: so that that's the aloof reticent version of me. And
Speaker 4: I did it. I tried to improve myself for change
Speaker 4: the universe Chicago way. I write books about it. So
Speaker 4: I wrote a book about emotion. Then I wrote a
Speaker 4: book about a character formation, and I wrote a book
Speaker 4: about suffering. And this book is really about how to
Speaker 4: be wise about people and how to make them feel
Speaker 4: lit up. And so that's you know, I have, you
Speaker 4: know work. Writers are usually working out their stuff in public,
Speaker 4: and I'm working on my stuff and I'm trying to
Speaker 4: share what I learned with others. One of my favorite
Speaker 4: phrases of writing is we're beggars who tell other beggars
Speaker 4: where we found bread. And so when I find something
Speaker 4: that's useful, I shared, and that's like my highest satisfaction.
Speaker 4: And I'm going to name drop to show that I've
Speaker 4: made progress in life.
Speaker 2: Oh I know this story?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Oprah?
Speaker 2: Yeah all right, so you're gonna pull out the big
Speaker 2: oh whatever.
Speaker 3: Special to David.
Speaker 4: If you ladies want to praise me, I'm happy to
Speaker 4: put your story in place.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, David.
Speaker 4: I didn't know I was going to walk into this
Speaker 4: amount of rivalry now.
Speaker 3: Never, you know, just being honest, He goes a thing.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the Oprah story that one, Sorry I missed it.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'll tell my Anne Hathaways for instead.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 3: I know we like that one.
Speaker 4: So the Oprah story is that she interviews me two times,
Speaker 4: once in twenty fourteen and once in twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 4: after twenty nineteen, after the taping, she pulls me aside
Speaker 4: and said, I've rarely seen someone change so much in
Speaker 4: middle age. You were so emotionally blocked before. So that
Speaker 4: was for me, that was like graduation day. I can
Speaker 4: show that, you know, I've made some progress in much.
Speaker 1: That is I all kidding aside I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously she's so highly perceptive and intuitive. Just you know
Speaker 1: that goes without saying. But I think for her to
Speaker 1: recognize it, And did you feel obviously, as you said,
Speaker 1: you felt validated. But do you think she was right?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think there's a way you carry
Speaker 1: yourself differently, that you talk to people differently, that your
Speaker 1: body language, that everything about you has opened in some way.
Speaker 4: I think that's accurate. I do. I hope it's accurate.
Speaker 4: I'm still not all the way there. I'm not like
Speaker 4: the most since I'm not a naturally gregarious person, as
Speaker 4: you know. But if you come up to me with
Speaker 4: a problem, I'm comfortable enough with your pain to sit
Speaker 4: with you in your pain a little more. And so
Speaker 4: I used to like freeze and fear because I didn't
Speaker 4: know what to do. And I've learned to storify life
Speaker 4: to try to get stories. So there are two ways
Speaker 4: of thinking. There's the paradigmatic mode, which is making an argument,
Speaker 4: which is what we do if we're making a strategy
Speaker 4: memo or writing a newspaper column. And then there's the
Speaker 4: narrative mode, which is getting people to tell your stories
Speaker 4: and so like, even in political journalism, I'd only ask
Speaker 4: people what do you believe about this? I ask people,
Speaker 4: how did you come to believe this? And that way
Speaker 4: they're telling me about somebody who shape their values or
Speaker 4: some experience they have. There we're in story mode.
Speaker 2: I asked Sarah Palin that question, David, and she didn't
Speaker 2: have a very getting right.
Speaker 1: I said, what newspapers and magazines do you read? And
Speaker 1: actually all of them, honestly, I know all Kitdting decaught.
Speaker 1: It was looking for some kind of deep answer that
Speaker 1: helped me understand what shaped her, what shaped her values,
Speaker 1: what shaped her outlook, her worldview? And you know, it
Speaker 1: was an unsuccessful inquiry, but it's interesting because that's really
Speaker 1: I was genuinely curious about what leads someone to have
Speaker 1: a certain political ideology. You know, sometimes your parents sometimes
Speaker 1: I thought she could say William F. Buckley or you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: even the Bible. I just was looking for what was
Speaker 1: a very formative experience that made her the woman she
Speaker 1: is today.
Speaker 4: It's very curious that she couldn't answer that question. Well,
Speaker 4: was she genuinely lack a story about the values that
Speaker 4: formed her. Did she think, oh, I can't tell that
Speaker 4: in public, it might not be helped me politically, or
Speaker 4: maybe nobody had ever asked her and so she didn't.
Speaker 4: A lot of people no one's ever asked them those
Speaker 4: basic questions.
Speaker 1: Well, remember when Roger Mudd asked to Kennedy why he
Speaker 1: wanted to be president and Teddy Kennedy was speechless.
Speaker 4: I was just thinking exactly of that episode, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think she just didn't read much and had no
Speaker 1: intellectual curiosity, honestly, and I think she got tripped up
Speaker 1: on naming things and I kind of left it wide open.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's really interesting. I'll be right back with
Speaker 1: David Brooks and my special Plus one guest Kelly Corrigan.
Speaker 1: With no fees or minimums. Banking with Capital one is
Speaker 1: the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier
Speaker 1: than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast,
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Speaker 1: Kelly and I are back with David Brooks.
Speaker 2: So I just wanted to loop back on mentalizing, because
Speaker 2: what you were suggesting is that if a person comes
Speaker 2: through with a certain shape of a problem that you
Speaker 2: could identify and say, oh, I've had something similar, I
Speaker 2: know what that might feel like. But that bumps up
Speaker 2: against the UT research that you unearthed for the book,
Speaker 2: which is pointing us toward this terrible interpersonal arrogance where
Speaker 2: we have too much confidence in our ability to read
Speaker 2: body language and expression and gesture. And it brings up
Speaker 2: one of my all time favorite concepts. We did a
Speaker 2: series on it on my pod last year about intellectual humility.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about the UT research and what
Speaker 2: it points out about our over estimation of our own
Speaker 2: perceptive skills.
Speaker 4: Yeah. First, I love that phrase interpersonal arrogance.
Speaker 3: That's that is what were yours. Take it run with it.
Speaker 4: It was stolen about thirty seconds ago. So the research
Speaker 4: is guy named William Mikes who's at the University of Texas, Arlington,
Speaker 4: and he finds that when we meet a stranger and
Speaker 4: have a conversation with him for the first time, we're
Speaker 4: accurately reading each other's minds only twenty percent of the time,
Speaker 4: and some people when we are with friends and family.
Speaker 4: We are accurately reading each other thirty five percent of
Speaker 4: the time, and so some people are pretty good at
Speaker 4: it fifty five percent they're accurate. Some people are terrible
Speaker 4: zero percent and they think they're one hundred percent. But
Speaker 4: the point is we're all sort of creative. We all
Speaker 4: have our own distinct point of view. We all see
Speaker 4: the world in our own way. And while it's important
Speaker 4: to mentalize to try to think, well, I've shared this experience,
Speaker 4: you probably have to. We have to be humble and
Speaker 4: know we probably can't imagine our way into somebody else's mind.
Speaker 4: The only way in is ask. And that's why to
Speaker 4: me that the central humanistic skill is the ability to
Speaker 4: be a great conversationalist, not just a good one, but
Speaker 4: a really great one. And this is another area where
Speaker 4: we're not as good as we think we are. We
Speaker 4: all think we're good conversationalists, but being a conversationalist, I mean,
Speaker 4: you guys do it for a living. But it's a
Speaker 4: high art form. And I've been in over the last
Speaker 4: year I think back, I've been in some phenomenal conversations,
Speaker 4: and I've been in some terrible ones that I don't
Speaker 4: really remember. And the phenomenal ones invariably revolved around some
Speaker 4: big question. Somebody put a big question on the table
Speaker 4: and it allowed us to explore it altogether.
Speaker 2: I think about that bringing intellectual humility into our most
Speaker 2: important relationships. So I have a twenty year old and
Speaker 2: a twenty two year old, and I think my job
Speaker 2: is to say, tell me more, what else? Go on
Speaker 2: until we unearth the thing behind the thing behind the thing,
Speaker 2: because otherwise they're presenting and you're speeding to a point
Speaker 2: of view, and you're advising with your clever advice, and
Speaker 2: as soon as you start talking, they're tuning out. They're like,
Speaker 2: she literally doesn't even know what I'm talking about. I
Speaker 2: haven't even told her that the real reason I'm upset
Speaker 2: is because parents weekend is coming up and I don't
Speaker 2: know who we're having dinner with on Saturday night. But
Speaker 2: what I told her is I felt a little anxious
Speaker 2: in mad class, and now she's talking to me about caffeine.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's fantastic, that's fantastic. Yeah, the rule is asked three times,
Speaker 4: like your job is to stand in their standpoint, is
Speaker 4: to say, Okay, what was that? And then ask it
Speaker 4: the same question different phrasing than the third time. The
Speaker 4: third time you actually are beginning to get some answers.
Speaker 1: In many ways, I think this book is a blueprint
Speaker 1: for everyone on how to be a better person, how
Speaker 1: to be a better partner, how to be a better friend,
Speaker 1: how to be a better parent. And I think everybody
Speaker 1: wants that. And what do you think are some of
Speaker 1: the you know, obviously we can't view the whole book, David,
Speaker 1: but what are some of the key things that you
Speaker 1: need to do to really know someone to make sure
Speaker 1: that person is really seen just parenthetically. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you all, but whenever I go to a funeral,
Speaker 1: I leave and I think, Gosh, I wish I had
Speaker 1: known this person better. I never knew this. I never
Speaker 1: asked them about that. A friend of mine recently died,
Speaker 1: and I have to say she believed nothing should be
Speaker 1: left unsaid. She always told me, we always told each
Speaker 1: other how important we were to each other in our lives.
Speaker 1: And she saw me and knew me deeply, and I
Speaker 1: think I knew her deeply too. I didn't have that
Speaker 1: feeling at her service, but so many other times I
Speaker 1: feel like Gosh, I had such a superficial relationship with
Speaker 1: this person? Why didn't I know them better? And I'm
Speaker 1: just curious a if you guys ever feel that way
Speaker 1: when you go to funerals And again be David, what
Speaker 1: are some of the ways we can we can feel closer,
Speaker 1: more connected and see people who are important to us?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean the nicely about funerals is they talk
Speaker 4: about people talk about what matters. And when I had
Speaker 4: this earlier book where I made a distinction between the
Speaker 4: resume virtues and the eulogy virtues right right, and the
Speaker 4: resume virtues of the things that make you good at
Speaker 4: your job, and nobody talks about that at a funeral.
Speaker 4: They talk about whether you're a courageous, honest, capable of
Speaker 4: great love. And so you know, I think, as I say,
Speaker 4: big questions are the way you get to know somebody,
Speaker 4: Like you're having coffee with someone, you're at a dinner table, whatever,
Speaker 4: And we're shy about asking questions, but there's some questions
Speaker 4: you can ask that lift people out of their day
Speaker 4: to day life and get them seeing themselves from thirty
Speaker 4: thousand feet. So it's like, what crossroads are you at?
Speaker 4: Often we're at a moment of transitional life it's interesting
Speaker 4: to ask what crossroads you at. Other questions are like,
Speaker 4: if this five years is a chapter in your life,
Speaker 4: what's the chapter about, what's the commitment you've made that
Speaker 4: you no longer really believe in. I was at a
Speaker 4: party with a political scientist. He said, I'm eighty, what
Speaker 4: do I do with the rest of my life? And
Speaker 4: that was a great conversation about his interests or how
Speaker 4: you do old age well and what you should do
Speaker 4: in the year's approaching death. And so we went on
Speaker 4: for like ninety minutes talking about Wow, various things that's
Speaker 4: spun off from that, and it's just like you think, oh,
Speaker 4: it's just a memorable conversation, But I'll never see him
Speaker 4: the same way. I know a lot more about that guy,
Speaker 4: and I had the pleasure of really seeing into the
Speaker 4: interior of a very wise person's life.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be fun to do a game.
Speaker 1: I think they have this like conversation starters or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never I've been given it and
Speaker 1: I've never used it, which may be part of the problem.
Speaker 1: But maybe do a list of big questions that will
Speaker 1: open up a conversation. So actually, when you're at a
Speaker 1: dinner party, it becomes much more meaningful and worth your
Speaker 1: time than a bunch of small talk with the person
Speaker 1: to your right.
Speaker 2: I think it's almost like there's an awkwardness. You feel
Speaker 2: like a goon. Like we used to do those conversation
Speaker 2: cards and put one under each plate, and then at
Speaker 2: any point during dinner you could lift your plate and
Speaker 2: take the card and ask somebody next to you, like
Speaker 2: what's your biggest fear? Or if your high school did superlatives,
Speaker 2: what would yours have been? Or if your mother wrote
Speaker 2: a book about you, what would it be called? Is
Speaker 2: there anyone you would like to apologize too? Like there's
Speaker 2: so many juicy questions, and most people have like a
Speaker 2: little bit of a guard up and they feel goofy
Speaker 2: trying to take it from like you know, the kid's
Speaker 2: soccer game or your Christmas plans to something much deeper. Well, David,
Speaker 2: I think David writes Kelly that we're not taught how
Speaker 2: to do this, and I think that they're in life
Speaker 2: the rub right totally. And there's whole generations who think
Speaker 2: asking these types of questions is completely rude. Like my
Speaker 2: mother would say, oh, for God's sake, like, you know
Speaker 2: you know how every now and then on Instagram or TikTok,
Speaker 2: it's like, ask your mother these seven questions before she dies. Like,
Speaker 2: I can't even I sent that to my daughter recently.
Speaker 2: I couldn't even ask one question before my mom's cut
Speaker 2: me off and said, oh, for god.
Speaker 3: Sake, Kelly, who wants to talk about that?
Speaker 2: So, like, not everybody's playing the same game here, and
Speaker 2: not every generation is used to operating on this level.
Speaker 2: But we do have this million dollar opportunity where many
Speaker 2: many more people have read many many more of these
Speaker 2: types of books, have been to therapy, have sat on
Speaker 2: dorm room floors like bearing their Soul. We're just more
Speaker 2: practiced in it, and hopefully it will lead to like
Speaker 2: a different kind of societal conversation, although it sure doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be trending that way.
Speaker 4: David Brooks, Yeah, well I do agree with you and
Speaker 4: I you know, obviously you've got to pace it so
Speaker 4: you don't want to walk in meet somebody, you know,
Speaker 4: how do your ancestor show up in your life?
Speaker 3: Like, Hi, I'm David. When was the last time you cried?
Speaker 4: You know? I start just with like, uh, where'd you
Speaker 4: grow up? And we just want to get people talking
Speaker 4: about their childhood. People are fantastic talking about their childhood.
Speaker 4: And so I travel a lot, so I've probably have
Speaker 4: been to the place and we can have a conversation
Speaker 4: or even like where'd you get your name? Like gets
Speaker 4: people talking about their family and stuff like that, and
Speaker 4: then you know the shallow conversations like I once asked
Speaker 4: a group of people, tell me about your most enjoyable,
Speaker 4: unimportant thing about yourself. And so I learned this austere
Speaker 4: academic guy loves trashy reality TV. So it was like
Speaker 4: a window into them, and I got to talk about
Speaker 4: my obsession with early Taylor Swift's albums.
Speaker 2: Really wait, slow down, mister, give us a leerless, give
Speaker 2: us a lyric or two.
Speaker 4: Hey, you're cheercime. I'm on the bleachers. You're the cheer captain.
Speaker 2: Did you relate? Did you meet that?
Speaker 4: That's so you know I'm a what's her lyric? I'm
Speaker 4: your nightmare dressed as a day dreams?
Speaker 2: I so relate, I thought, so, well, my god, it
Speaker 2: all goes back to Taylor Swift. Here's what David Brooks
Speaker 2: is a swifty like just yeah, let's stop the presses.
Speaker 3: We're breaking news. David Brooks is a.
Speaker 1: Swifty A good friend of mine today said Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: isn't a singer, she's a lifestyle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's a religion at this point she is.
Speaker 4: She has a lyric that from her new album Let's
Speaker 4: See if I can redress it. That's it's narcissism dressed
Speaker 4: up like altruism, like some sort of congressman. I think
Speaker 4: that's a fantastic, pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's brilliant.
Speaker 1: Well wait, so so you're talking about interesting ways in
Speaker 1: to get to know people, and I love it. And Kelly,
Speaker 1: I imagine you and I probably do stuff like that
Speaker 1: because we are just naturally curious and interested in other people.
Speaker 1: But I feel like you could always I could always
Speaker 1: hone those skills even more. And to pick up on
Speaker 1: Kelly's last point, David, I think you know when she
Speaker 1: said things aren't trending this way. Society is not making
Speaker 1: this easy, these deep connections, meaningful relationships. And you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about that, how the way we live is
Speaker 1: almost antithetical to creating these deep friendships where people feel seen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that was in some ways they impetus
Speaker 4: by the book. Not only might desire to personally grow
Speaker 4: but looking at society around me, and we're in the
Speaker 4: middle of some sort of social and emotional and relational crisis,
Speaker 4: and so you know, rising mental health problems, rising suicide rates.
Speaker 4: Fifty four percent of Americans say that no one knows
Speaker 4: them well. The number of people who say they have
Speaker 4: no close personal friends is up by four times in
Speaker 4: the last twenty years. Thirty six percent of Americans say
Speaker 4: they feel persistently lonely. Forty five percent of teenagers say
Speaker 4: they feel persistently hopeless and despondent. The number of people
Speaker 4: that are not in a romantic relationship is up by
Speaker 4: a third. It's just like one statistic after another where
Speaker 4: we're just in an emotional and relational recession. And I
Speaker 4: think it's caused by this rising cycle of distrust, and
Speaker 4: distrust has caused because people haven't been trustworthy, and especially
Speaker 4: young people feel that others have betrayed them. And I
Speaker 4: used to talk about the levels of distrust with my students,
Speaker 4: my college students, and one woman said to me, well,
Speaker 4: have you seen our social life like you can imagine
Speaker 4: you go through life, you're getting ghosted by somebody who
Speaker 4: thought was your boyfriend or your girlfriend, you're getting savaged
Speaker 4: on social media. People are cruel to you, and so
Speaker 4: you have this rising level of distrust and to me,
Speaker 4: the only way to fight it is with the skills
Speaker 4: I'm talking about in the book. And some people think,
Speaker 4: like the stuff we're talking about is like woo woo
Speaker 4: and squishy, but to me, it's the only practical way out. Like,
Speaker 4: it's not woo woo to like, lead with curiosity, it's
Speaker 4: not woo woo to lead with respect. And the only
Speaker 4: way you get out of our social mess is by
Speaker 4: acting in this way.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about I guess you were giving a talk, David,
Speaker 1: and you've got a question on an index card that
Speaker 1: you said has haunted you for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was in Oklahoma and it's one of those
Speaker 4: talks where at the end of the talk they don't
Speaker 4: ask questions face to face, they just give you index cards.
Speaker 4: So I'm running through the cards and most of the
Speaker 4: questions are like politics or something, and then I turned
Speaker 4: to one card and says, what do you do if
Speaker 4: you no longer want to be alive? And that to
Speaker 4: me was like a window into a lot of the
Speaker 4: pain that's out there in America, and at the moment,
Speaker 4: I didn't know what to say, and so I let
Speaker 4: it go without even answering or without even acknowledging it.
Speaker 4: And I think if I could go back, I would say,
Speaker 4: first of all, I want to salute you for your
Speaker 4: courage and your endurance, because you are still here, and
Speaker 4: you're in a lot of pain, but you're still here.
Speaker 4: And then I would like to repeat to you something
Speaker 4: Victor Frankel said in Man Search for Meeting, which is
Speaker 4: that life is not stopped expecting things of you, and
Speaker 4: that there are still many good things you can do
Speaker 4: in the world. And then I would say, and I
Speaker 4: mentioned I have a chapter in the book about losing
Speaker 4: my oldest friend to depression. And you know, I would say, listen,
Speaker 4: there's no words I can utter that can heal your pain,
Speaker 4: but I can assure you that we're never leaving. We're
Speaker 4: here for you. And I think when you're dealing with
Speaker 4: someone who's suffering from that much pain and depression, all
Speaker 4: you can say is I acknowledge the reality of the situation.
Speaker 4: I'm here for you. I'm not leaving. I'm just here.
Speaker 2: When you described your embarrassment at a dinner the very
Speaker 2: next night. What happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the woman who was at our house for dinner said, well,
Speaker 4: my brother committed suicide a few months ago, and then
Speaker 4: I mentioned it. I have my bunch of buddies and
Speaker 4: I get on a zoom call every Thursday, and I
Speaker 4: mentioned it to that group, and like half the people
Speaker 4: had some sort of suicide in their family and their life.
Speaker 4: And then, you know, as I mentioned later, I lost
Speaker 4: my best friend to it. And it just feels like
Speaker 4: the pain in society is something pervasive that it's touched
Speaker 4: everyone who has lost someone to addiction, to suicide, someone
Speaker 4: who has a kid who's suffering with mental health issues.
Speaker 4: It's just like rivers of pain in society. And it's
Speaker 4: hard to have a healthy democracy when your society is
Speaker 4: rotting from the foundation. And this is what I worry
Speaker 4: about most, this social fragmentation.
Speaker 2: I think about sometimes the increase in therapy and antidepressant
Speaker 2: medications and the decrease in mental health, like those two
Speaker 2: lines are not working together to take us to a
Speaker 2: better place.
Speaker 1: I think David talks about that Kelly, because he says
Speaker 1: looking within can lead people to become vulnerable narcissists and
Speaker 1: I've wondered about that too, because when you look at
Speaker 1: surveys about happiness, it's really and I've interviewed people about this,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure all of us have. It's really about
Speaker 1: service to others and not being so self absorbed and
Speaker 1: self focused that leads you to happiness. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, David, you could talk about what happened after
Speaker 1: World War Two and how sort of the focus on
Speaker 1: the individual and now the uber focus on our own
Speaker 1: quote unquote well being has impacted our ability to form
Speaker 1: deep relationships.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think we've just got a much more
Speaker 4: individualistic culture. I mean when America was founded, that the
Speaker 4: founding fathers had a pretty realistic view of human nature
Speaker 4: that we're generous, well, we're also self centered, and so
Speaker 4: they had the idea that if we're going to build
Speaker 4: a country, a democracy out of these people, we need
Speaker 4: to do moral formation. And moral formation is a pretentious word,
Speaker 4: but it's really three basic things. One is it gives
Speaker 4: you tips for how to control your natural selfishness. Two,
Speaker 4: it helps you find a purpose in life and ideal
Speaker 4: to organize your life around. And three it teaches you
Speaker 4: the skills of being considered in the complex circumstances of life,
Speaker 4: and so how do you ask for an offer forgiveness?
Speaker 4: How do you break up with someone without crushing their heart?
Speaker 4: These are basic social skills, and I think we've forgotten
Speaker 4: how to teach them, how to pass them along to generations.
Speaker 4: And then we just live in a much more individualistic
Speaker 4: culture where people decide I don't need to pay attention
Speaker 4: to some external morality. I just need to get in
Speaker 4: touch with myself. And my basic rule is you're happier
Speaker 4: when you're thinking about other people, and you're less happy
Speaker 4: when you're thinking about yourself. It's just like that simple.
Speaker 4: And a lot of our happiness industrial complex gets people
Speaker 4: thinking about themselves, and I think it's self destructive. And
Speaker 4: there is research that show that people who spend their
Speaker 4: most time thinking about happiness are least happy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: And so this is my mom's whole opinions. So my
Speaker 2: dad sold ad space in women's magazines, and so we
Speaker 2: had women's magazines in our house, going back to like
Speaker 2: McCall's and then Get how Keeping whatever, and she would
Speaker 2: look at them, and even though her whole life was
Speaker 2: being underwritten by these magazines, they drove her bananas, because
Speaker 2: she was like, the answer is go to church and volunteer.
Speaker 2: That's the answer. Like what is all this nonsense, all
Speaker 2: this lumination, all this self focus, all this me me me,
Speaker 2: and I need a bath every day and I need
Speaker 2: to have my massage massageer for my shoulders. She's like,
Speaker 2: that is nonsense, Like, get your ass in church and
Speaker 2: go help somebody.
Speaker 1: Well, I do think there's a happy medium, you know.
Speaker 1: I do think kind of quote unquote self care. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea of putting your oxygen mask on first so
Speaker 1: you can be a better person to those you love.
Speaker 1: I do think there's some legitimacy to that, but I
Speaker 1: do think the pendulum has swung a little too far,
Speaker 1: and I think it's honestly, I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: a modern day medicine for loneliness that if you can
Speaker 1: spend your time worrying about your pores, then it's actually
Speaker 1: just taking time that it makes you feel better because
Speaker 1: you're thinking about something other than your own misery.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, No, it's just loneliness is a perversity because
Speaker 4: no one wants to be lonely. And yet now, as
Speaker 4: I said, thirty six percent are persistently lonely. Why don't
Speaker 4: they just get together with the other loner people. But
Speaker 4: one of the problems is loneliness distorts your view of
Speaker 4: reality and it makes you suspicious of other people. So
Speaker 4: you begin to fear what you long for most, which
Speaker 4: is human connection.
Speaker 1: But also our sense of community has unraveled, David. I
Speaker 1: know with your Whole Weave project, you're looking at people
Speaker 1: who are developing a sense of community. But you think
Speaker 1: about church attendance and religious services. The attendance has declined
Speaker 1: a lot, and there aren't like rotary clubs and Kuwanas clubs,
Speaker 1: and you know, people don't seem to get together as much.
Speaker 1: So these things that gave us a sense of community.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was exacerbated by the pandemic. So I
Speaker 1: think bringing some of those institutional structures back is really
Speaker 1: important too, Because you say, I'm curious, you say loneliness
Speaker 1: leads to meanness, so you know it's not only distrust,
Speaker 1: but it's actually meanness.
Speaker 4: How So, well, if you feel invisible to the world,
Speaker 4: there's nothing crueler than indifference, and so if you feel
Speaker 4: you're not seen by the world, you regard that as
Speaker 4: an injustice, which it is, and so you want to
Speaker 4: lash out. You decide the world's a very dangerous place,
Speaker 4: and you want to lash out. And I think what
Speaker 4: a lot of people have done is they've taken loneliness
Speaker 4: and they've taken really a moral vacuum they find themselves in,
Speaker 4: and they've tried to fill it with politics. And so,
Speaker 4: in a healthy society, we have the politics of distribution,
Speaker 4: like where should we put the resources of money, how
Speaker 4: hi shad taxes be, what should we spend money on?
Speaker 4: That's a healthy society. We have the politics of recognition,
Speaker 4: where we want to have a politics where my side
Speaker 4: is elevated and respected and your side is shamed and destroyed.
Speaker 4: And so politics gives you the illusion that you are
Speaker 4: living in a moral landscape. There's us good guys and
Speaker 4: those bad guys. Gives you the illusion you're doing moral action.
Speaker 4: I'm getting indignant about those people who are ruining the country.
Speaker 4: It gives you the illusion of community, like you're in
Speaker 4: a party. But these are just illusions, like you're not
Speaker 4: really in the community. You're not getting to know somebody,
Speaker 4: you're just hating the same people together, and you're not
Speaker 4: really in a moral landscape, which is about the line
Speaker 4: between good and evil runs through every human heart, not
Speaker 4: between groups, and so you've traded your moral vacuum for
Speaker 4: sort of culture war and moral war. And I think
Speaker 4: that's one of the reasons why everything in society has
Speaker 4: gotten so politicized.
Speaker 1: But also so black and white and so lacking of nuance.
Speaker 1: You quote a researcher named Ryan Streeter, he's director of
Speaker 1: Domestic Policy Studies at the AI American Enterprise Institute that
Speaker 1: lonely young people are seven times more likely to say
Speaker 1: they are active in politics and young people who aren't lonely.
Speaker 1: And I think this is elaborating on what you just said.
Speaker 1: It gives them some sense of community to be with
Speaker 1: like minded people. It's almost their little tribe of people
Speaker 1: who they can feel connected to. But what you're saying
Speaker 1: is they're not really connected to them.
Speaker 4: They're just sharing their Twitter feeds, and you know, they're
Speaker 4: not really doing good. They're not sitting with the poor,
Speaker 4: serving a widow. They're just registering their feelings or their
Speaker 4: emotions about some political issue. And so to me, it's
Speaker 4: like a very impoverished way to live. Cover politics. We
Speaker 4: care about politics, but politics is not more important than family.
Speaker 4: Politics not more important than your friendships and your relationships.
Speaker 4: And when I look at the rise of misery in
Speaker 4: this country, I could tell a lot of stories, Like Katie,
Speaker 4: you told the sociology story, we just aren't active in
Speaker 4: civic life. I could tell the social media story, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, social media's driving us all crazy, which I
Speaker 4: was also a true story. I could tell economic inequality story,
Speaker 4: we're just more separated from one another. I can even
Speaker 4: tell the coddling story, where overprotective parenting leads to kids
Speaker 4: who are not resilient in the face of challenge. But
Speaker 4: to me, the core story, and the one I addressed
Speaker 4: in the book, is we're just not treating each other well.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're just at a basic human level. We
Speaker 4: find ourselves in the world that's distrustful and brutal, and
Speaker 4: the meanness comes up. You know. I was at a
Speaker 4: restaurant in New York a couple months ago, and I
Speaker 4: happened to be chatting with the owner and he said,
Speaker 4: I have to throw people out of this restaurant every
Speaker 4: week now for rude behavior. A friend who's a nurse,
Speaker 4: and she said, I have trouble keeping staff because the
Speaker 4: patients have gotten so abusive, that the nurses want to
Speaker 4: leave the profession, and so there's just been this rising
Speaker 4: tide of hate crimes. You know, the incidents on airplanes.
Speaker 4: COVID made it all worse. But loneliness leads to meanness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, an accompaniment like in the Pote Francis way, is
Speaker 2: a very advanced move, like for a human being to
Speaker 2: be able to do that, because accompaniment is sort of
Speaker 2: antithetical to the fix. What do you mean by accompaniment?
Speaker 2: It's just like, I'm just gonna sit with you. Like
Speaker 2: you can just tell me your weirdest, hardest thing. You
Speaker 2: can say I think my marriage is ending. You can
Speaker 2: say I don't. I'm as much money as I pretend
Speaker 2: like I have. You can say I think that my
Speaker 2: daughter is suicidal. You can say these horribly difficult things,
Speaker 2: and I will not dive in with my smarty pants solution.
Speaker 2: I'll just sit with you. I'll just sit right down
Speaker 2: with you in it. But that is like very advanced,
Speaker 2: Like not that many people I know in my life
Speaker 2: are that good at biting their tongue because it's so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not. I always try to fix things, yes, people,
Speaker 1: or that's my immediate impulse. How can I fix this
Speaker 1: problem for you? Yeah, and I think you're right.
Speaker 3: Let's tell me more. What else go on?
Speaker 2: Like those seven words will take you so far, And
Speaker 2: it's so relaxing to be like, I'm actually not formulating,
Speaker 2: we're not taking turns talking. I'm actually just absorbing and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let Like I remember talking to Claire, my daughter,
Speaker 2: during the pandemic, and she was such a she was
Speaker 2: so bright eyed the whole time she was baking and
Speaker 2: learning Spanish and like doing the pandemic, like getting an
Speaker 2: a and pandemic. And then she cracked one day and
Speaker 2: I said, what else? And she said lacrosse? Like we
Speaker 2: can't play lacrosse, which means I'm not getting any exercise,
Speaker 2: which means like I'm sluggish all day. I'm like, what else?
Speaker 2: She's like, there are no parties, like I just watched
Speaker 2: fash times at Ridgemont High. None of that is like
Speaker 2: my high school experience. My high school experience is sitting
Speaker 2: in my bedroom. What else go on? Everybody's fighting over
Speaker 2: who can go to parties and who can't?
Speaker 3: What else? I mean?
Speaker 2: She must have had twenty five things and all we
Speaker 2: did was let them surface and I had no answers
Speaker 2: at all. It was just like let the river run
Speaker 2: and Claire like say it all. I don't care. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to stop you. We need to talk to
Speaker 2: Kelly Moore. David.
Speaker 4: I know, I know there's a thing called the midwife
Speaker 4: model that your job in some conversations when somebody's hurting
Speaker 4: is your job is not to be the You're not
Speaker 4: giving birth, You're just the midwife. You're helping the person
Speaker 4: give birth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Accompanyment is a noble aspiration person to person. I've never
Speaker 2: even heard of that, so I'm going to think about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like a pianist accompanying a singer, Like the
Speaker 4: pianist is paying attention to the singer and he knows
Speaker 4: he's not the star, but he's doing what he can
Speaker 4: to make her shiney.
Speaker 2: Like coming up underneath.
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: After this shortbreak, David, Kelly and I get very pragmatic
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Speaker 1: Capital one NA member fdic Kelly and I are back
Speaker 1: with David Brooks. I wanted to ask you, I just
Speaker 1: you know, everything you've talked about, of course, is surfacing
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of those horrific barbarian attacks in Israel
Speaker 1: that were just honestly so unspeak I don't even I
Speaker 1: think words failed to even describe what happened in Israel,
Speaker 1: and now of course the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding
Speaker 1: and Gaza. I think words failed there as well. But
Speaker 1: the reaction, David has been so intense, so angry, so
Speaker 1: lacking in humility. You know that maybe you don't have
Speaker 1: all the answers, And I'm curious how you've seen that
Speaker 1: in light of writing this book and are afraid social relationships,
Speaker 1: how you've used your lens to watch this and analyze it.
Speaker 4: Thank you for asking that. It's obviously been a very
Speaker 4: intense period. I guess at first I've sometimes had the
Speaker 4: thought that we're in this epic battle between the forces
Speaker 4: of dehumanization and the forces of humanization. And if you
Speaker 4: want to know dehumanization, the ultimate form is somebody who
Speaker 4: can go to a music festival and murder and rape
Speaker 4: innocent teenager, very young people. I mean, that is the
Speaker 4: essence of dehumanization.
Speaker 2: It's like they were characters in a video game or something, right.
Speaker 4: It's the failure recognized the humanity of the people right
Speaker 4: in front of you, and to cackle while you're killing them.
Speaker 4: And then, Frank, I saw the Israeli defense ministers say
Speaker 4: we're going to war against animals, and I think Hamas
Speaker 4: is evil, but they are human beings and we just
Speaker 4: shouldn't call human beings animals. First of all, it's not
Speaker 4: fair to the animals. They're not going around committing genocide.
Speaker 4: But also it's just we should always respect there's another
Speaker 4: human being on the side here.
Speaker 1: Well, I think more importantly is that Palestinians are you know,
Speaker 1: Hamas doesn't represent all Palestinians. I mean, honestly, the way
Speaker 1: they behaved, and maybe this is wrong. I had no
Speaker 1: issue with him calling the people who committed these crimes
Speaker 1: animals because they were subhuman. To your point, David, But
Speaker 1: I think the mistake is tarrying all Palestinians living in
Speaker 1: Gaza as such.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and some people, you know, you have to fight
Speaker 4: iron with iron. You can't like reason with hamas like,
Speaker 4: you just have to fight them. And that's the grim reality.
Speaker 4: But you know, I was late at night one night,
Speaker 4: I was doom scrolling through Twitter or whatever whatever's left
Speaker 4: of it, and I was seeing all the videos of
Speaker 4: the kids were killed in Israel, the bombings and Gaza,
Speaker 4: just ream of dehumanization. And then I scroll and somehow
Speaker 4: in my Twitter feed there I come across a video
Speaker 4: of a short interview with James Baldwin, the great novelist
Speaker 4: from the fifties and sixties, and he's saying, there's not
Speaker 4: as much humanity in the world as one would like,
Speaker 4: but there's more than you think there's enough. And you
Speaker 4: have to remember when you walk down the street and
Speaker 4: you look at the other people, you have to remember
Speaker 4: you're looking at you. That could be you. You could
Speaker 4: be the cop, you could be the monster, you could
Speaker 4: be the cruel person. And you just have to make
Speaker 4: a conscious choice to decide not to be that. And
Speaker 4: so in the midst of all this dehumanization. When you
Speaker 4: see Baldwin, you see a defiant humanist, a person who's
Speaker 4: not going to put away as humanity in the midst
Speaker 4: of conflict, in the midst of racism, which is dehumanization,
Speaker 4: who's going to try to extend end up for the
Speaker 4: human dignity in the human mind. And I just found
Speaker 4: that defiant humanism in the face of dehumanizing circumstances is
Speaker 4: so inspiring. It's like Mendela coming out of prison in
Speaker 4: South Africa. It's like gold in my ear in Israel,
Speaker 4: in the Middle East, it's like Gandhi in India, like
Speaker 4: in brutal circumstances, discovering your humanity. And I'm a big
Speaker 4: fan of a woman named Eddie Hillissom who was a
Speaker 4: Jewish woman and grew up in Amsterdam the thirties and forties,
Speaker 4: and when the Nazis occupied Germany. At that point she
Speaker 4: was twenty five and frankly self indulgent and a little spoiled.
Speaker 4: But over the next few years she was transformed into
Speaker 4: someone who was basically a human saint who spent her
Speaker 4: time caring for those other Jews in Amsterdam who are
Speaker 4: in danger of getting shipped to Auschwitz, and she was
Speaker 4: remembered as this warm, glowing, other centered person, and her
Speaker 4: biographer wrote of her, she changed by paying attention. She
Speaker 4: paid close attention to the people who were suffering, and
Speaker 4: by power of that attention, she sort of grew by looking.
Speaker 4: And so she understood the anxiety in some of these voice,
Speaker 4: the fear in somebody else's, and in that way she
Speaker 4: was transformed. And I've always found her example of somebody
Speaker 4: who refused to get numb by bitterness, and who insisted
Speaker 4: on being open and available and giving and accompanying people
Speaker 4: even in the most brutal time.
Speaker 2: I actually think that goes to the single most important
Speaker 2: line in your book, which is that our greatest moral
Speaker 2: act is the quality of our attention.
Speaker 1: You also quote Peggy Noonan saying people are proud of
Speaker 1: their bitterness.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, in every one of Peggy's columns there are
Speaker 4: like three or four sentences you want to clip out
Speaker 4: and say forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, isn't it? But it is depressing. And
Speaker 1: you know, I have been chagrined that this whole idea
Speaker 1: of practicing dialectical thinking holding two opposing views at once. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Israeli policies towards Gaza have been in some cases inhumane,
Speaker 1: and this attack was unconscionable and deserves universal condemnation. And
Speaker 1: it just doesn't seem like people can hold those two
Speaker 1: thoughts at once. Some people can, but they're even being
Speaker 1: accused of being complicit if they're holding these two thoughts.
Speaker 1: And for me as a journalist, honestly, it's been very,
Speaker 1: very difficult to cover this because I get angry DMS
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven from both sides. And do you
Speaker 1: think they're people who are able to try to look
Speaker 1: at to have empathy for both places or are those
Speaker 1: people in the minority?
Speaker 2: And could we potentially gin up some empathy for the
Speaker 2: people who are so drawn to certainty, Like could we
Speaker 2: say to all the people in your DMS, of course
Speaker 2: you want it to be black and white. Of course
Speaker 2: you want it to be clear as day. Of course
Speaker 2: you want it to be unequivocal, Like we want that
Speaker 2: every time everything comes across our transom, that's what we do.
Speaker 2: We're sorting as fast as we can good or bad,
Speaker 2: good or bad, good or bad.
Speaker 1: But things aren't good or bad. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you're talking about factor fiction, but things are messy right,
Speaker 1: they're nuanced, They're complicated totally. And people are so righteous, yes,
Speaker 1: and you can understand that. And I want to be empathetic,
Speaker 1: as you say, Kelly, to those who are righteous, because
Speaker 1: I think they are bearing the burden of, you know,
Speaker 1: decades of oppression or decades of fear, decades of anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: or decades of being thought you're less than because of
Speaker 1: your circumstances. So I get it. It's just so hard
Speaker 1: to navigate.
Speaker 2: David.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I covered it for twenty years or so,
Speaker 4: and it was the hardest thing to write about because
Speaker 4: people are so polarized about that as issue. But I
Speaker 4: remember once I was at a dinner at when Shimo
Speaker 4: and Peiz was president of Israel. Heated dinner with like
Speaker 4: forty or fifty people, and he invited the Palestinian leadership
Speaker 4: was there. I remember Abu Allah, who was a lead
Speaker 4: Palestinian negotiator, and then the Israeli people who had been
Speaker 4: in the peace process for all their lives. It was
Speaker 4: a un named Dan Meridor and others, and a bunch
Speaker 4: of journalists were invited, and there was such a warmth
Speaker 4: in the room that it was as if everybody in
Speaker 4: the room was like a bunch of old guys who
Speaker 4: were in the peace process business, and they had been
Speaker 4: through crises, they'd been through years and decades of negotiation,
Speaker 4: and I remember that warmth and there. This was back
Speaker 4: in the nineties when it really did seem like peace
Speaker 4: was at hand, and those were people who were just
Speaker 4: dealing with the complexities of the situation, like how do
Speaker 4: we have a settlement where the Palestine get sovereignty over
Speaker 4: the Aluxeamosque and the Jews get sovereignty over the Western Wall?
Speaker 4: How do you do that? How practicality is how you
Speaker 4: do it? Now, nobody's talking about practicalities. Frankly, it's all theater.
Speaker 4: It's all terror theater, and people are just trying to
Speaker 4: get their message and their narrative across without just the
Speaker 4: elements of like how actually would you have a two
Speaker 4: state solution? And I think what's happened is that both
Speaker 4: sides have given up on practical thinking. They just have decided, well,
Speaker 4: we'll postpone when we get but we're going to get
Speaker 4: it all. Someday we're going to get it all. We're
Speaker 4: going to wish that the other side didn't exist. And
Speaker 4: that's just not true, and the other side is going
Speaker 4: to be there forever and ever, and yet we're into
Speaker 4: the just I want to make a statement on Instagram
Speaker 4: and that's how I wage my politics these days.
Speaker 2: And that's what wins. I mean nobody. I have this
Speaker 2: scientist friend, Lisa Feldman Barrett, who I think you know, David,
Speaker 2: and she's often quoted. She's like one of the top
Speaker 2: one percent of scientists quoted in other people's reach, but
Speaker 2: she's never in the paper. And I said, why aren't
Speaker 2: you in the paper? And she said, because I won't
Speaker 2: say unequivocal things. And that's not what anyone wants to hear.
Speaker 2: So the journalists hang up and they call another scientist
Speaker 2: who will say, oh, yes, it's always this or it's
Speaker 2: always that, like black and white cells, and nuance is exhausting,
Speaker 2: like vitriol is very energizing. Righteousness you talk faster, you
Speaker 2: sit up higher, you draw people to you. It's like
Speaker 2: a total ego buzz and like sitting around saying like, Eh,
Speaker 2: this is really complicated. Look what are you going to
Speaker 2: do about that?
Speaker 1: Well, it's an engagement through enragement, right, I mean exactly
Speaker 1: the whole name of the game. These days, you know,
Speaker 1: David Kelly, and I I think could talk to you
Speaker 1: all day. But I'm curious as you look to the
Speaker 1: future because i hate to say it, but I'm very pessimistic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, you know, in terms of solving
Speaker 1: these issues and changing it on a macro level. So
Speaker 1: when all is said and done, is the best thing
Speaker 1: you can say to people is change your life on
Speaker 1: a personal level. That developing these bonds and these friendships
Speaker 1: will somehow bubble up and make the world a kinder,
Speaker 1: gentler place. To paraphrase George Bush Senior.
Speaker 4: You know, I think we need top down change, Like
Speaker 4: it's very hard to have a calm society when your
Speaker 4: political leaders are ripping it apart, ripping it to shreds
Speaker 4: from the top. But we also need bottom up And
Speaker 4: when you look at moments in world history where in
Speaker 4: societies have really turned themselves around, and there are examples
Speaker 4: of this and written in the between eighteen thirty and
Speaker 4: eighteen forty eight. In eighteen thirty, it was like a
Speaker 4: totally screwed up society where alcoholism was rampant, domestic violence
Speaker 4: was rampant, poverty and cruelty, and by eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 4: you know, it was suddenly no longer acceptable to get
Speaker 4: drunk and beat your wife the way it was acceptable
Speaker 4: thirty years before that, And so you had the beginnings
Speaker 4: of Victorian morality. And this country between eighteen ninety and
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty or so, we took a society that was
Speaker 4: pretty brutal, filled with economic uncertainty, and we became a
Speaker 4: much more trusting society. And so you need top down
Speaker 4: political change, like in the our case, the progressive movement
Speaker 4: in nineteen tens, but you also need bottom up civic
Speaker 4: and relational change and cultural change. And so to me,
Speaker 4: you can't have a society at the top with democracy
Speaker 4: if you don't have trust at the bottom. And two
Speaker 4: generations ago, if you ask people do you trust your neighbors,
Speaker 4: it's sixty percent say yeah, people my Neighborho's are pretty trustworthy.
Speaker 4: Now that's down to thirty percent and nineteen percent of
Speaker 4: millennials and Gen Z. And so the only way to
Speaker 4: fix that is trustworthy behavior, showing up for each other,
Speaker 4: having a sense that as I go through my life
Speaker 4: in the casual encounters of life at grocery store, at
Speaker 4: a coffee shop with somebody buying a cash register. There's
Speaker 4: a little hint of recognition with each other, and then
Speaker 4: better relationships with my neighbors, better still relationships with my
Speaker 4: close friends. And so I'm enmeshed in this dance, this
Speaker 4: dance of people who are looking at me and are
Speaker 4: hearing me in big ways in little ways, and then
Speaker 4: you begin to feel calm. Then you really kind of
Speaker 4: establish a trusting work relationship. But it requires those minute,
Speaker 4: daily interactions of life.
Speaker 1: When I ask the barista, how are you, she says,
Speaker 1: I'm good, Thank you for asking. I mean, it really
Speaker 1: only takes very simple interactions to have an open heart
Speaker 1: and to actually care in big ways but small ways
Speaker 1: as well, you know, to smile at the person on
Speaker 1: the street, or I don't know, I've always been that person.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is about me, but I
Speaker 1: see part of my job is to make somebody's day
Speaker 1: a little bit better. And I sound like Shirley Temple
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: No, that's why we love you.
Speaker 2: Kaddun with you and you are making so many people.
Speaker 1: But Kelly, you too, and now David you too. I
Speaker 1: think it takes a little bit of effort. It takes
Speaker 1: a second, you know, And John gets mad at me
Speaker 1: sometimes when people occasionally approach me or they want a
Speaker 1: selfie or whatever. He says, exit question exit questions, because
Speaker 1: I do end up sort of hearing their life story
Speaker 1: in some cases. But I think, you know, if I
Speaker 1: can make someone happy or feel seen coming back to
Speaker 1: the book and feel important and they are by the way,
Speaker 1: I feel like that small amount of effort is so
Speaker 1: worth it. Plus I don't want them telling their friends
Speaker 1: I was a real bitch.
Speaker 2: They're sad as well. All altruism is self servey.
Speaker 3: You see, Taylor was riped. It all goes back to swift.
Speaker 2: Isn't there some great social science around the value of
Speaker 2: weak ties?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's. First, as Katie was talking, when my youngest
Speaker 4: son was nine, somebody came up to me on the
Speaker 4: street to say that my work whatever. And my son
Speaker 4: looks at me afterwards and said, you know, they come
Speaker 4: for you, but they stay for.
Speaker 3: Me, so right, So right? Is he a stand up?
Speaker 4: He wanted to be at that age he wanted to
Speaker 4: be a stand up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 4: There is. Yeah, the strength of weak ties is like
Speaker 4: if you want a job or you want an opportunity,
Speaker 4: the people you know well know all the things you know,
Speaker 4: but the people you don't know well know things you
Speaker 4: don't know, and so it's it's those weak connections. And conversely,
Speaker 4: you were talking about being nice to the barista. If
Speaker 4: if somebody at a cash register is cruel to me
Speaker 4: or aloof or cold and clearly pissed off at the world,
Speaker 4: it dampens your day. I mean, these these minute interactions
Speaker 4: are weirdly powerful and shaping how you go through, you know, life.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I have to nudge myself to look someone right
Speaker 2: in the eyes, Like I just did it yesterday, taking
Speaker 2: this oil painting class, and it was the last class,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to thank the instructor, and rather than
Speaker 2: I put a lot of words on it and do
Speaker 2: a big show, I just made sure that I had
Speaker 2: her eyes, you know, for two or three seconds, and
Speaker 2: I just said thank you so much. I've loved this
Speaker 2: and it was like a thing like eye contact, like
Speaker 2: real eye contact. Iyebought eyeball is more rare than I
Speaker 2: wish it was, because it's way more impactful than a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of words.
Speaker 1: Well, I love this book, and David, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan.
Speaker 2: And I always have been.
Speaker 1: I find you're writing more often than not, Like Peggy
Speaker 1: Noonan's more than a phrase. I find the things you
Speaker 1: say really profound and really influenced me in a positive way.
Speaker 1: So I would like to say thank you for all
Speaker 1: your writing, thank you for being so vulnerable and honest
Speaker 1: about your desire to grow as a person, because I
Speaker 1: think all of us want that despite all the societal
Speaker 1: things that are swirling around us that are actually working
Speaker 1: against that. And you know, all I can say is
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to see people even more because
Speaker 1: I think we can always do better at that. And
Speaker 1: I think I'm also going to focus on my really
Speaker 1: deep relationships because I think for me, I have so
Speaker 1: many friends and so many acquaintances, and because I'm interested
Speaker 1: in everyone, sometimes I'm spread too thin and I can't
Speaker 1: be a good friend to the people who really really matter.
Speaker 1: So I think that's important too, because there just aren't
Speaker 1: enough hours in the day to have this kind of
Speaker 1: relationship with people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that things were of being spread too thin. I
Speaker 4: was just talking to my wife about this, Like, we
Speaker 4: have a friend who her marriage split up, and we
Speaker 4: learned about it a couple weeks so, and we like,
Speaker 4: you should break everything and be there for her at
Speaker 4: that moment. But then we got this obligation in that obligation,
Speaker 4: and so I think we were thinking, you just have
Speaker 4: to be ruthless. Like whatever obligation we're going to have
Speaker 4: to break, we won't remember it, but we will remember
Speaker 4: being there for her at that moment, and I will say,
Speaker 4: it's just such a pleasure to be with you. Guys.
Speaker 4: You guys are the superstars of this skill I'm trying
Speaker 4: to learn. And Katie, where you just did there? Like
Speaker 4: one way one of the things I learned is how
Speaker 4: to end a conversation is you thank somebody for their time,
Speaker 4: but then you specify something you really appreciated they told you,
Speaker 4: and then you say it thanks, it's been great to
Speaker 4: be with you. And when they end the conversation gracefully
Speaker 4: in that way, it's like they put a cherry on
Speaker 4: top you feel. You feel, oh yeah, what they liked
Speaker 4: about me is when I said that interesting thing about
Speaker 4: or told that interesting story and you think, wow, that
Speaker 4: person's a great listener. So another discreete tip on how
Speaker 4: to end conversations gracefully.
Speaker 2: All right, so here's my ending for you. I was
Speaker 2: gonna say, I don't want it to end go ahead, Kelly.
Speaker 3: I like that you've been willing to.
Speaker 2: Modulate in public, Like I think that there's real fear
Speaker 2: of people public figures saying I was wrong or I
Speaker 2: changed my mind, and I think it's to the great
Speaker 2: detriment of society. Like people should change their mind as
Speaker 2: new information becomes available, as new evidence surfaces, we should
Speaker 2: adjust accordingly, of course, And for some reason, it's sort
Speaker 2: of not done with public figures. And the way that
Speaker 2: your feelings about your party, the Republican Party have evolved
Speaker 2: over time for all of us to see, I think
Speaker 2: is a model for other people whose feelings might similarly
Speaker 2: be evolving over time. And it's essential that we set
Speaker 2: each other free in this way.
Speaker 3: So thanks, thank you.
Speaker 4: You know, I've always thought politics is a competition between
Speaker 4: partial truths, that in most issues both sides have something right,
Speaker 4: and the key is to try to find the balance
Speaker 4: in that circumstance. And you never, I found you never
Speaker 4: want to be too especially as a journalist, to be
Speaker 4: too associated with one party or not. And so I
Speaker 4: was conservative. I was never really Republican because I didn't
Speaker 4: want to be part of a team, because that like
Speaker 4: limits your thinking. And now one of my heroes is
Speaker 4: this guy at Philosopher, Isaiah Eberlyn. He said, I'm on
Speaker 4: the right word edge of the left word tendency, and
Speaker 4: so that's where I am these days. I'm on the
Speaker 4: right word edge of the left wore tendency. So happy
Speaker 4: to be there.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, a whole other podcast about what the
Speaker 1: hell is happening with the GOP, David, But that'll have
Speaker 1: to be for your next book or your next column,
Speaker 1: because what a mess. But we'll lend on a happier note.
Speaker 1: Good luck with the book, David. I really hope people
Speaker 1: will read it because I do think it'll improve their lives.
Speaker 1: And are you doing a big book tour? Are you
Speaker 1: talking to a lot of people? How are you getting
Speaker 1: the word out?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I get to go on a tour of America.
Speaker 4: I tell my musician friends, imagine a rock tour with
Speaker 4: all the fun taken out, and so it's like, I mean,
Speaker 4: the fun part is I get to meet people and
Speaker 4: give talks and you know, do signings.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and Kelly, what a treat to
Speaker 2: have you with me anytime.
Speaker 1: David, You're the best. My love to Anne and thank
Speaker 1: you for writing this book.
Speaker 4: Thank you for doing this. Of course, deeply appreciate both
Speaker 4: of you, LEAs.
Speaker 2: So Kelly, that was so fun. That was so fun.
Speaker 2: I know, I loved it. It was great.
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing this with me. I loved that conversation,
Speaker 1: and I honestly I loved having it with you.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll do it anytime. I loved it too, and
Speaker 2: I love seeing your little face. I was just thinking
Speaker 2: that the one question that we didn't get to fall
Speaker 2: into was the male female side of this, which is
Speaker 2: to say, it's really quite different in terms of potential
Speaker 2: impact for this kind of content to be coming from
Speaker 2: a conservative male columnist rather than say, a female psychologist, right.
Speaker 2: And I was also laughing sometimes when I was reading it.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, Oh, this is going to be so
Speaker 2: funny for Katie and I to be talking to him
Speaker 2: about this, because you and I are like holding people
Speaker 2: in the supermarket checkout line, you know, because they're telling
Speaker 2: us things on a street corner that he is just
Speaker 2: now learning how to elicit from a person. And I
Speaker 2: just wonder if many female listeners will agree that we
Speaker 2: have a tremendous amount of practice in this kind of conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a distinct advantage yeah, and well, I think
Speaker 1: men are conditioned to keep a type less emotionally attuned
Speaker 1: to people. So I think I hope men read this book.
Speaker 1: And although I really think everyone could use it, I
Speaker 1: think yes, women are I think more emotionally available. Although
Speaker 1: you can't generalize too much, but I think all of
Speaker 1: us could learn. I mean, I feel like I could
Speaker 1: be better. And I also think the bottom line of
Speaker 1: what David talked about, which is kind of captain obvious here,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to say it anyway, is is ask questions.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're in a social situation, or you
Speaker 1: are out on a date or with people. If you
Speaker 1: ask questions, if you are interested, people love to tell
Speaker 1: you their story. They love to talk about themselves. And conversely,
Speaker 1: if somebody doesn't ask you a question, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're out on a date or something, you know, I
Speaker 1: say this to people I know who are single and
Speaker 1: the person doesn't ask you a question, check please, because bbye,
Speaker 1: you know no kind of empathy or interest or curiosity
Speaker 1: about you. So I think whenever you find yourself in
Speaker 1: a sticky situation or you're at a party, just ask
Speaker 1: questions and everything else will follow. It's so simple. But
Speaker 1: something that I think people are not necessarily taught. So
Speaker 1: that would be my closing observation and instruction to everyone listening,
Speaker 1: be interested, be curious, and ask questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I would double down on that,
Speaker 2: which is is you're you're like one great question away
Speaker 2: from something new, Like you're one question away from learning
Speaker 2: something that you don't understand right now, or from a
Speaker 2: feeling that you haven't had in a while, or the
Speaker 2: beginning of a friendship like it's you're literally.
Speaker 3: One question away.
Speaker 2: It couldn't be simpler or cheaper, and it couldn't be
Speaker 2: more impactful.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
Speaker 1: a subject you want us to cover, or you want
Speaker 1: to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
Speaker 1: reach out. You can leave a short message at six
Speaker 1: oh nine five point two five five five, or you
Speaker 1: can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Next Question is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
Speaker 1: Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Marx,
Speaker 1: and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Speaker 1: Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
Speaker 1: or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
Speaker 1: go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
Speaker 1: us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
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