From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Saving America From A "Deficit Of Love": Revisiting A Conversation with Arthur Brooks

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

During an election year that's dividing many Americans, it's safe to say prioritizing love wouldn't be the worst thing. That's why Sean and Rachel are revisiting their conversation with Professor and New York Times Bestselling Author Arthur Brooks as they discuss the science behind happiness, why the nation is facing what Arthur calls a “deficit of love,” and how people can find light when the world feels inescapably dark.   Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's so great to be back. And we're talking about a subject that everybody wants. Happiness. And so we're bringing in a friend of ours. What a great guy. Arthur Brooks. He has a new book out and it's called, I want to make sure I get the title

exactly right. Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier. Arthur Brooks, welcome to the kitchen table. We appreciate you joining us. Well, thank you. And it's nice to see both of you. I haven't seen you in person in a couple of years, as a matter of fact. Yeah. Been a while. Next time you come to the kitchen table, you've got to bring the beautiful Esther with you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. She would love it. And she would love it.

It's a good thing to get out of the Eastern Corridor from time to time, I have to say. Yes. I've done about that. Absolutely. Well, listen, this is such an interesting topic. And it's such a great collaboration, you and Oprah working together. And so what is the secret to happiness? You're putting science behind it. We talk a lot

about it, by the way, Arthur, on the show, things that we think make people happy. But let's talk about your book and what you've learned through the science of happiness. Yeah. I mean, I dedicated myself when I left my last job. I was the president of a big think tank in Washington, D.C. But I'm trained as a social scientist. My Ph.D PhD is in behavioral economics, as a matter of fact. And so I study human behavior. And I thought, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? Well, I want to be happy and I want to bring more happiness to other people. I want to lift people up and bring them together. But I'm a social scientist, meaning that I'm not going to just do internet nostrums. One weird trick to try to get happier. I'm going to actually use my training.

And so when I left Washington, DC and I took a professorship at Harvard University, I said, I'm going to study seriously this and bring it to the largest audience possible. I started writing a column on the science of happiness in the Atlantic and reading and speaking about it all over the place. And I wound up working with Oprah Winfrey. And we published this book for ordinary people to understand this basic science of happiness. And it starts with the biggest mistake that people make. The biggest reason people are not as happy as they could be is because they think happiness is a feeling and happiness isn't a feeling. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Just like the smell of the turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. It's not the same thing as your Thanksgiving dinner. Your happiness is a combination of enjoyment of your life, satisfaction with your

accomplishments and the meaning that you get in your life. And the whole book is about how to get those three things in higher and higher amounts without trying to fool yourself into thinking you'll never be unhappy again. So, Arthur, when we look at, and in your book, you talk about, you know, real connections, real lifelong friendships, real relationships. And, you know, today we have the internet, so much social interaction on apps, social media platforms. And there's a lot of connection. There's a lot of, you know, friends that people have, a lot of conversations that they have back and forth, a lot of liking of different commentary. But the more we look at those kind of interactions, the more we see people becoming less happy and more unhappy.

Right. Right. No, that's true. And the truth of the matter is that happiness has been in decline in the United States for a number of decades. It's mostly sort of the climate of people declining in their faith, declining in their family connections, declining in the number of real friendships that they have, kind of a dysfunctional relationship they have with work. But then there were these storms. So that's kind of the climate of happiness. And there's kind of the weather of happiness. The big storm in happiness that pushed us down was the advent of social media and the use of screens. This was really horrible. One of the things that we talk a lot about in the book is the brain science of human connection. There's a hormone that we

produce in our brains called oxytocin. It's a neuropeptide that functions like a hormone. It's human connection. Now you two have a bunch of kids and you remember when each child is born and you have eye contact with your newborn baby for the first time, it's like the 4th of July inside your head. That's oxytocin. Evolutionary biologists say that's so we bond to the baby and don't leave the baby on the bus or something like that. But the truth is, it's actually magic. I think it's the hand of God giving us this connection to the people that we love the

most, our family members, our closest friends. You only get it from eye contact and touch. When you're really lonely, you look for it in other places like social media, like screens, but that's like getting all of your meals at fast food joints. It's like eating three meals a day at 7-Eleven. I mean, it'll satisfy your hunger a little bit, but you'll become really malnourished really quickly. So that's why people who binge on social media, they get lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. And that's one of the big sources of our unhappiness in this country and around the world. Yeah, there's no question, especially with teenagers, that there's an addiction.

I am guilty of it myself. Sometimes Sean gets so mad at me because I consume so much media on my phone because that's how I pretty much read articles. I don't have a laptop, so it's always on my phone. And I try and tell Sean that there's no one I'd rather scroll next to, but that doesn't seem to satisfy him. So, yeah, we all have to work at that. When I read your book and everything that you're putting forward, you had these 11 principles.

And I thought it was interesting, because when i looked at the principles to me at their core they sounded very catholic um and i don't know if oprah proves but uh it's definitely to me a lot of it at its core is very catholic this idea that you know go you know when there's negative things that happen, I mean, as Catholics, we believe you're a Catholic, that suffering is part of life, that we actually learn from that. Talk to me about those principles and how much of your own experience as a Catholic man and a devout Catholic man from a Catholic family had played into some of these lessons. Well, a lot. My Catholic faith is at the center of my life, is the most important thing in my life.

But this is a book really based on social science, and it turns out, not very coincidentally, that the Christian life is very, when it's pursued seriously, as a matter of the person that people were trying to be, it's really very, very good for happiness, which is good news, I have to say. And one of the big things that you just brought up

that's critical for us to understand. Look, I told you that the first big mistake that people make is thinking that happiness is a feeling. The second big mistake that they make is thinking that happiness is a destination. That you can be ultimately happy. You can't be. Because that would be eradicating bad feelings and bad experiences. And suffering is a normal part of life. Unhappiness is a very important part of life,

partly because negative emotions keep us alive. And if we're, you know, we're afraid sometimes of things that are threats and we get rid of all those things, we'll be eaten by a tiger in two seconds or run over by a car in modern life or whatever it happens to be. But it's also that we need negative experiences to teach us about our own resiliency, to teach us about who we are as people. And, you know, we understand that as Christian people, you know, the people who are watching us or from other good, you know, very, you know, pro-social religious backgrounds or even secular backgrounds, they know perfectly they need to have suffering so that they can be fully alive as people. So one of the things that

I urge my students at Harvard, because I teach a big class at the Harvard Business School in the science of happiness, don't be afraid of unhappiness. Don't believe that if you're feeling unhappy, something's wrong with you. It means something's right with you. If you were never unhappy, then you need therapy, quite frankly. Then you actually need to seek help immediately if you're happy all the time. It means something's actually wrong, and you won't find the meaning in your life that will actually reward you for the rest of your life. Unhappiness is not the enemy. It's like when we talk about people who say, we never fight in marriages, and they always end up divorced. Because that's part of it.

You're never at bliss all the time, right? And life is not bliss all the time, to your point, Arthur. But in the book, it seems like there's a lot of internal strategies of how we deal with unhappiness, how we look at it on a spiritual path, how we try to share happiness with the rest of the world. But is there a hand in glove of the choices that we make in our life, whether we go to church, whether we get involved in our community, whether we get off of social media, and then how we respond to the unhappiness or the troubles that come into our life. Are those things tied together, Arthur? The choices we make, but also how we view the things that happen to us in our life and how we address them?

The way that Oprah and I have set up this book is the first part of the book is about emotional self-management. You need to understand the science of what's going on between your ears so that your feelings are not managing you, that you can actually manage your feelings. And with just a few ideas and a little bit of practice, everybody can get better at that. People are so mystified about what's going on. And when you do, you find you have tons of time. You're not scrolling social media nearly as much as you were. There's no more shopping therapy because you're not distracting yourself from your

discomfort when you can manage yourself and then you're you're free to actually pursue the sources of real happiness to pursue the habits of the happiest people your happiness 401k plan to put the investments in those accounts and those accounts are very simple there's really only four your faith your family your friendship and your work that serves other people. You're less distracted from all the dumb stuff, the outrage on television, the politics, the social media, the cancel culture, you know, all the, you know, the social comparison, all that ridiculous stuff. That's all it is doing is numbing you because you're so uncomfortable with your emotions. And then you can put a deposit in your faith account and call your mother and actually develop your friendships and gear your work towards serving other people

and you will get happier. So I'm fascinated by you having a happiness course at Harvard. And I want to ask you what you're seeing in this generation and what what are their troubles in finding happiness? What are the things they hope to get out of this course? I had an opportunity to speak once to Sean's kindergarten teacher. And I've also enjoyed speaking ever since that time. I've enjoyed speaking to older teachers who have seen young kids through the generations. And they all tell me the same thing, Arthur.

They say that, and this was even before, you know, I think social media, you know, I think that's such an obvious thing. But they just said they're so lonely. They're so sad. They come to school with so many problems that other generations didn't have. And so much of that, I mean, it just breaks my heart when they tell me these things. And so much of it is because of the breakdown of the family, that these children just want their moms and dads. because of the breakdown of the family, that these children just want their moms and dads. And so whether their parents are working too hard so they don't actually see their parents, because then after school they go to aftercare, and then by the time they get home and they eat,

they're in bed, they really don't get much parent time, or there's divorce and a lot of pain and dysfunction. There are kindergartners that are coming to school in a way that kindergartner teachers didn't recognize 30, 40 years ago. It's fascinating and sad. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, my students are by and large in their mid-20s, but I'm dealing with people all over the country. I'm doing 175 talks a year outside of the classroom,

and I'm writing books and talking to all different generations. And the biggest problem that we have is the same for everybody, for kids, for adolescents, for 20-somethings, millennials, all the way up to, you know, you know, I'm the last year of the baby boom, you know, the last surviving gasp of the baby boom. And it's the same thing for people who are my age as well, that there is a deficit of love is what it comes down to. That's why you notice that the four happiness habits, the 401k, faith, family, friends, and work, they're all different aspects of human love that are in decline. Love of the divine, love of your family, love of your friends, your real friends. And by the way, the apex of friendship and family life is spousal love.

There's nothing more magical than that. I mean, the two of you, I'm sure you fight like cats and dogs. Esther and I do, too. She's Spanish and you know, she's Spanish. I know it's just, it's just, it's just basic communication. He's yelling. I know. Yeah. It's love. I try and tell him that too, Arthur. I know. I know. I know the first five years were tricky, but you know, you know, 32 years in, I think we're good to go. And then there's your horse, love for everybody. I mean, the two of you, what you've done in public life, but now in the media, this is a gift of love to other people. Every time you go on the air, it's an opportunity to send a love note to the people out there as you earn your daily bread, as you sanctify your daily work.

It's really, really important that we think about this. And our culture is militating against this. And part of the reason is because we have a minority of leaders in this country that's think about this. And our culture is militating against this. And part of the reason is because, you know, we have a minority of leaders in this country that's feeding off hatred. They are. They want to drive us apart. They want us to be at each other's throats because that gets clicks and links and viewers and money and followers and just jollies from people. But remember, when we don't love, when we hate, somebody else is profiting. And it's time for us to have, quite frankly, I'm going to sound like, you know, the Berkeley 1968 Summer of Love hippie, but we need a rebellion of love in this country. It's time for young people

to say no more. And that's what my students say. They're in the class because they're like, give me a better way, man, because this cancel culture nonsense, all it's doing is making me unhappy. All this politics and stupidity. I don't care if it's the right or the left it's no good we'll have more of this conversation after this fox news radio on demand on the fox news app download the app and just click listen when you swipe left you can listen to your favorite fox news talk shows live swipe right for the latest fox news radio newscasts on demand fox news radio on the fox news app download it today and and arthur i think it's a really good point so what i found is again there are the the the view that americans have of where this country should go is very very different there's not a lot of common ground um and i think

a little bit of a long history of this of debating policies and direction and i think that's a good thing the problem that i when i saw when i was in congress and i got to get to know you and you're We have a long history of this, of debating policies and direction. And I think that's a good thing. The problem that I saw when I was in Congress, and I got to get to know you and you're at AEI, which you did a great job as the head of AEI, was that instead of debating ideas and issues and fighting over those things, we started to make it personal. So I use the example of Maxine Waters, who is very liberal. She's a congresswoman from California. We don't agree on anything. Right. But I kind of considered her a friend. I got along with her really well. I didn't have to hate Maxine Waters because I

really disliked her ideas. I actually could like her and dislike her ideas. I didn't make it personal. And I think when people start to hate, it becomes a state of mind. You start to hate a whole bunch of things as opposed to going, I don't like the idea, but I can see the goodness in that person. I can see that she comes from a good place. I don't agree with it, but she's trying to do what she thinks is best. Yeah. And the amazing thing to a lot of young people today is when you say something radical, like you can actually fall in love with and marry somebody from the other political party. Well, we've done a lot of shows on this, Arthur. We're going to have to come to a disagreement on that.

No, I want to make the case. Yeah, well, you're just trying to go after me. Okay, here, let's hear what you say. So what happened is that you find, if you go back to 1960, only 6% of parents cared about the political party of the spouse of their child. 6%. Now it's 60%. 70% of dating profiles contain information suggesting that a person would not date a person of the other party. Why? Because politics has become a cult in this country. People are actually getting their identity from politics. You shouldn't, you know, you're not your opinions. I got my opinions. I'm a political conservative.

This is well known. You know, I'm, you know, the full spectrum, just like you, just like the two of you. We agree on everything, I'm sure. But the truth of the matter is it doesn't matter. My parents, they were super liberal. My whole family were super liberal. They were great family, great people. They brought me up with all the values that matter for, you know, the idea that everybody in the world is my sister or brother, that I'm going to be a Christian until my dying day, that the last breath I take, I'll be looking at the, you know, the wife of decades after decade, after decade, after decade. I mean, this is the stuff that really matters. And yeah, yeah. They thought taxes should be

higher than me. Yeah, I got it. You know, but I'm not talking about taxes, though. yeah yeah they thought taxes should be higher than me yeah i got it you know but i'm not talking about taxes though but it's not taxing you're an economist so you think like that but i what well you go ahead i was gonna say well if you if you want to marry someone and again i hope that you're right because i think that would be great and i i would like to live in that world again i want to be wrong but when there's a disagreement on are there more than two genders and should kids transition or um abortion you know what's the history of america are we are we fundamentally bad and racist or you know were we flawed but we've strove we strive to be better i think what we do with crime i mean i think there's some

fundamental issues that if you don't agree on those basic concepts of life i think that can rip people apart and i i hear now more, I hear now more from people that a lot of liberals are like, if you support Donald Trump, need not apply. And I hear that less from conservatives. But how do you how do you, you know, come together on the fundamentals? Should we really care if Rachel thinks there's 10 sexes? I think there's two. Can we still love each other? I think so. But it has permeated every aspect of life today, which means that's going to overcome, you know, I think she's a beautiful woman and she's really nice and she's a great cook. And, you know.

Good mother. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of, Sean, it depends on how important those things are to you. You know, if you put too much emphasis on those things, absolutely. So you find, by the way, the dating profile literature is really interesting.

71% of liberals won't date a conservative. 41% of conservatives won't date a liberal. That's right. Yeah, the reason for that is actually it's women versus men. And it just shows that men have lower standards. But the important thing for us to remember is that, you know, I know tons

of couples that differ on abortion. I know tons of couples that differ on, and the reason is because their love and their family life and their religious belief transcends the importance of that as an issue. They're willing to say, this is my view, but I might be wrong, and I love you more than I care about that policy. And that's the most important thing, as far as I'm concerned. And we got to get back to the relative importance of these things, even when there's major disagreements. Okay, so we've done a lot of podcasts, Arthur, on dating and love and marriage. It's sort of like our little space, too. And so here's my thought on it. So first of all, I think politics reflect values. So for me, as a Christian Catholic woman who also takes her faith very seriously, an issue like abortion, it would be very hard for me

to be married to somebody who didn't believe that the child growing inside of my womb was a real human being and that other children deserve a right to live. Super fundamental. And so so that's that's a big thing. I think values politics matter. I think in the 1980s, I think there was a lot more overlap of of ideas and thoughts and politics. And I think and of course, I bring my bias to this. I think that that liberals have become so radical that even Democrats don't even recognize them. So I think things have gotten off the rails to a point where I don't think there's a lot of that space. And I think marriage is so important. And there's so many other things to fight about that I want to have.

You know, I think you should find as much in common as possible to start your marriage. And that means, you know, faith first and foremost, of course. But then I think, you know, because politics has become such. I mean, it's interesting you say this. What I want to ask you about the kids in your class, because so many young people I find are so intolerant and so many of them tend to be more left-leaning. It doesn't surprise me, by the way, that more conservatives are willing to marry or date liberals than liberals to conservatives. And I don't say that with glee at all. It makes me sad. But so that's my theory on it. complex in this cases of, you know, the, the students. And one of the things that I tell them is that they've been led astray into thinking that, that they need commonality, lots of commonality. The research shows that you need a baseline on values. Like you're talking about, it's lower than you think that baseline is lower than you think. And then a successful

marriage is based on complementarity. I mean, look at the two of you. I mean, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, Rachel, you're not a Wisconsinite from your background. I mean, look at the two of you. I mean, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, Rachel, you're not a Wisconsinite from your background. I mean, there's no, you know, and I married somebody from halfway across the world who literally didn't speak English when we met. We spoke no words in common. The truth is that the happiest marriages have a baseline of commonality, a baseline of common values, and then tons of complementarity, tons of differences. That's what the happiest marriages are based on. And what you find is in the culture today is that young people are being told they need to find somebody who's their sibling, which is my adult kids would say is not hot.

That's one of the biggest reasons that young people today are loveless. And we find that, you know, people in their 20s are about 50% less likely to be married than they were when I got married in the 90s. They're about 50% less likely to be cohabitating. They're even less likely to say that they're in love, about a third less likely to say they're in love. And a big reason for that is that they're not as attracted to each other. And the reason they're less attracted to each other is because they're looking at a picture in the mirror. You got to look for somebody who's really different than you. So what I tell my students, by the way, is I say, don't put anything about politics in your dating profile. I mean, actually find somebody to set you up. That's more important. But if you can't,

I agree with that a hundred percent. Yeah, totally. You got a human because humans are really good at setting you up with somebody who's your match, who's your compliment. Is that alike enough? And then different enough. But if you do your dating profile, then take all the politics good at setting you up with somebody who's your match, who's your compliment. Is that alike enough and then different enough? But if you do your dating profile, then take all the politics out and put a moratorium on it so that you're not actually going to talk about politics until the fourth date. By then there's a neurochemical cascade in your brain that's making you fall in love if you're still dating after four dates and that will be less important. That will actually take its natural place in the

progression of importance in your life because your brain chemistry is going to be taken over but arthur that's if that's if that's the people that we deal with we're like listen politics is a secondary issue there's all these other things that are more important to me in my life right um i can find someone that agrees with those things uh with me on i think that could actually work and i think the problem that rachel and i talk about is the politics has become so important find someone that agrees with those things with me on, I think that could actually work. And I think the problem that Rachel and I talk about is the politics has become so important. And I hope that your students listen to you and go, you can find commonality and love outside of politics. And if they listen, that's wonderful.

You know, what I love about, and I think you've talked about this since you're at AEI, and I've thought about Arthur Brooks a lot in my life as I've thought about gratitude. I mean, that we have air to breathe, that I have a roof over my head, that I'm not hungry right now. There are simple things that I can be grateful for and an attitude of gratitude,

which Rachel says to the kids all the time, I have an attitude of gratitude. When you're grateful, all of a sudden your perspective on life can can kind of change and i love that you always talk about gratitude because everybody that you're alive you should be grateful for that you can always find something to be grateful for and i love that that's always part of what you talk about and you talk about that in your book as well yeah there's almost nothing it'll make you more grateful than your mom telling you to be grateful however you know we all do that we can't help a bit we see poverty i grew up in the third world

i know what it looks like and i i can't understand why they're so entitled no i know they're like okay mom send my sandwich to africa you know so yeah but you know it's important you're making this really important point and this is one of the things that we talk about an awful lot. Human beings are evolved to look at the negative. That's called the negativity bias. It's literally a phenomenon that's, that's a force of nature because, because negative emotions keep you alive. Threats, the perception of threats actually keep you alive. You have more brain tissue dedicated to negative emotions than to positive emotions. You know, when you're in a room full of people, a sweet smile from across the room is pleasant. A negative face frowning at you from across the room

might be your demise outside, you know, on the street if you're not paying attention to it. So that's why the human brain is evolved to have negative emotions and look at the negative side of things, but it's maladapted. You know, today, we have the same basic ideas or emotions about Twitter that we do about

being cast out of our tribe and wandering the frozen tundra by ourselves. You know, on Twitter, it ain't the tundra. And so we need to actually intervene in this process and make conscious attempts to have strategies to override these natural tendencies. And one of them is counting our blessings is what it comes down to. So I ask my students to make a gratitude list on Sunday nights at the beginning of the semester. And they write down the five things they're most grateful for.

I don't even care if they're stupid. My team won, I ate a piece of pie, whatever it happens to be. Maybe very profound, the Lord loves me, whatever it is. And then look at it every night over the course of the week, update it every Sunday. And by the end of 10 weeks, they are on average 12% happier.

Because they've been overriding their negativity bias systematically. This is something that Oprah and I, in the book, we call emotional substitution. It's like drinking coffee, which blocks the adenosine molecules in your brain. You choose an emotion that's more appropriate to your circumstances. And when you do that, you have an amazing effect. The other thing is when you feel resentful or sad, making a joke, that's a classic way of doing it as well. When you're feeling pessimistic, say something that's hopeful. There's so many ways that you can use emotional caffeine, emotional substitution to change your point of view. Yeah. You said something earlier that really resonated with me as a fellow Catholic, and you said sanctify your work.

I wonder if you could expound on that, because that's what meant a lot to me when I was an at-home mom for 14 years. Yeah. And you don't get a lot of kudos. I get, you know, people tell me how great I am on TV. They also say a lot of negative stuff to me, but I can handle all that. And I love the praise. But when you're an at-home mom, for example, you don't get praise except for Sean, who is always so wonderful and always came home and thanked me for being an at-home mom when I did do that. to find my work and to say, you know, wiping a mouth, tying a shoe, you know, cutting an apple that, that I was doing this, um, that I was doing this for God, that my little kids were like Jesus, you know, and I was doing it for them, but that's easy, easier to do as a Catholic. We live in a secular world. And I would guess most of your students, for example, don't have that kind of background. Um, talk to me about sanctifying

work in a secular world. I mean, that's what, you know, Mother Teresa always talked about, that life is full of little things with great love. Yeah, do small things with great love, I think she said. Yeah, it's a really, really important point, of course. And, you know, so for Catholics or for Christian people, for religious people in general, you can put a supernatural, you understand that there is a supernatural dimension to everything that you're doing. Yes. Right? I mean, what are we trying to do?

I mean, your children are literally the poor people who are closest to you every day. So as you did for the least of these, you did for these, my brothers and sisters. I mean, this is Matthew 25, 44 is no joke when it comes to raising little kids. They're poor. They got nothing. They know how to do nothing. They're completely vulnerable. And so you're serving the poor when you're raising your children, even if you're- Charity starts at home, Arthur. I think that's another Mother Teresa thing. Yeah, for sure. And so that's a really important thing to keep in mind. But even for people who are not, that don't have this overtly supernatural dimension

of their life, you know, as a social scientist, I will tell you that when you dedicate everything to the spirit of love to other people, when you offer things up, when you're earning your success in the context of serving other people, and there's so many ways to do it. You know, I talk to people all day long

who will say, my job is boring. I feel like it doesn't matter. I'm sitting in a cubicle doing something that any, I'm a drone. I feel like it doesn't matter. I'm sitting in a cubicle doing something that any, I'm a drone. I feel like it's insignificant. I'll say, you know how to inject a supernatural dimension into your work. Go to the break room, get a fresh cup of coffee and bring it to the person in the next cubicle when they didn't even ask for it and say, you know what? You look like you, you could use a fresh cup of coffee. And watch the look in their eyes. It'll be like, what just happened? What that was, was a little moment of grace. And what you become is the guy

or the girl who does that. You're the person who actually does that thing. And pretty soon, you're not going to be able to stop doing that. You're going to be the person who is, how can I help? How can I help? It's just acts of kindness, acts of love. And you'll weirdly start loving your job more. Arthur, one last question before you go. Obviously, you are right of center. Oprah is left of center politically. I wouldn't have put you two as dance partners on a book. But here you and Oprah are writing a book together, which is, again, maybe the message of the book in your point of view, which is we can all love and see common ground together, and especially on happiness. It's a human condition.

Tell me just real quick how it was to write the book with Oprah. It was a great experience. And, you know, I got to know her because she's been following my work for a long time. She reads my column in The Atlantic. She read my last book, which is called From Strength to Strength. And I went on her podcast, Super Soul. And we just really hit it off because we have this, you know, basically my mission in life is to lift people up in the spirit of love and happiness and bringing them together. That's my mission. And I have a particular way of doing it as a social scientist.

And she's been trying to do that through her work in the mass media for a really long time. And she suggested, why don't we do something together? And I said, heck yeah. I mean, I didn't believe it when she first called. She said, this is Oprah Winfrey. And I'm like, yeah, and this is Batman. Yeah, I mean, it was a wonderful collaboration. I've gotten to know her and she's become, you know, somebody I really admire a lot as a person and knowing her as a friend now.

And it's been a wonderful collaboration, I have to say. So it was super fun. You know, we text all the time about how the book is doing. And you know, you never know. We write a book together. Right now it's number one in the New York Times bestseller list. A book on happiness, my friends. There's hope. Yeah, it definitely speaks to what people are desire in life. We all want to be happy. I love that you're collaborating. I love seeing these ideas, want to be happy. I love that you're collaborating. I love seeing these ideas, which I know are grounded so much in our common faith, being out there in the culture for all to use and improve their lives. You've been a great example out in the world, and I just love that

you're doing this. And that's why we wanted to have you on. And we just wish you all the luck with this and with your beautiful family and your new grandbaby and um and again the book is build the life you want the art and science of getting happier arthur brooks that's a lot of pressure to write that book at home and then every time you're not happy everyone's like why aren't you happy i know now i'm in the airport i better not have anybody see me being unhappy. That's all I can say. This is a great gift for Christmas, too. So if you want a Christmas season, give this book to everyone you know because we all want to be happy. It is the aspired

human condition. Arthur Brooks, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us at the Kitchen Table. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. God bless both of you. God bless your whole family. And all my best from my beautiful wife, Esther, to the two of you. Right back at you. All right. Right back at you.

See you later. Bye. Bye. We'll have more of this conversation after this. I gotta tell you, Rachel, I enjoyed the conversation with Arthur and got to know him when he was at AEI, when I was in Congress. And this is a theme he has always had in life of studying happiness. And I think when you see more Americans becoming unhappy,

it's a great space to play and to go, what did we do 100, 250 years ago where people were happy? They had less money. They worked really hard back then, but they were happier. And so what can we learn? Real skill sets to make people happier if they employ them in their life.

Yeah, it's an incredible topic because as we said, everyone wants it. You know, there's some things we didn't get to get to with him that I thought were really important. He talked about conflict, especially in relation to families and marriages and how you should not avoid conflict. And he talked about family.

I mean, family is such an important part of happiness. And I think that's the component that, to me, when I taught, like, for example, I brought up, you know, talking to kindergarten teachers for that kind of generational perspective of where kids were at and, like, the kind of problems that six-year-olds are experiencing at home. I mean, that they never had, you know, back in the seventies and sixties, for example, or set our eighties, even this sort of the, the idea that we say we value families, we talk about families, but everything in our culture is set at everything from like easy divorces to, you know, the kind of language. I mean, frankly, let's be honest, that kind of, you know, people like Oprah bring up sometimes,

which is like, that's toxic. You know, you're toxic. So I can't, you know, you know, I need to get that out. Toxic is the out of my life. Sometimes that's your sister, you know, and you got to work it out. So I think that, you know, by the way, it's not my sister. I love my sister. But me and my sister argue and fight and work things out, just like you and I argue and fight things

out. And I think when you don't value family, when everything seems so, whether it's marriage or family ties seems like optional and transitional and not permanent, I think that's one of the things that happens. And like when you realize that, you know, no matter what happens, no matter how many fights we're in, no matter how angry you are at me, no matter how angry I am at you, we're here together forever. It changes the way you argue. It changes the way you're going to approach things. And it goes for every relationship in your family, whether it's with your kids or your parents. I just think that if we could get family right, and frankly, I'm sorry, government has done a lot to ruin families.

And so that's just sort of what I took away a little bit reading his book. So it comes down to people sometimes think that money can make you happy or fame can make you happy. Now, I do think money can help you be happy because you may be able to do the things that Arthur Brooks talks about in his book. If you use it for those purposes, but money itself doesn't make you happy. Fame does not make you happy. Actually, you see people who are rich and famous oftentimes not happy at all. They're some of the most miserable people you'll ever meet, and their lives are disasters.

And so when he was talking about family and friends and faith and a purpose in your work are the four things, I look at that and go, you know, I left Congress. And again, we left because we had the baby with Valentina and Downs and the heart condition. And nine kids. That was a tough job. It's a lot.

But again, I always said that I was a U.S. congressman and I couldn't change that much. The greatest impact and the greatest happiness that I have in my life is my family, is my relationship with you. And if you're doing things that are taking you away from your family and your relationship with your kids and your spouse, your faith, that's a problem. And you're probably not going to be happy. I do think also the issue of faith. People have, and you made this point, are falling away from their faith. People are going to church.

And maybe it's simple. Try to get a friend, a real friend that you're humble with he talks about humility and friendship which is true go to church and try to be nice to your spouse and your kids or to your parents and build up those relationships there's nothing more humbling than knowing

that you're not the most important person because there's God right just getting that relationship in order is super important you know what i mean yeah i mean the only requirement to become a christian is to know that there's a god and that you're a sinner that's right and that enough you know if you really take that seriously if you really take that in um that becomes, that's a real path to happiness. And he said that at the beginning, he said, it's not coincidental that if you live a devout, you know, Christian life, Christian life, if you take the Christian life seriously, it does lead to happiness. And all the

data proves that. All the data shows that. I mean, that's why they say conservatives are more more. I don't think it's a political thing. I think it has a lot more to do with conservatives and their faith life than I think it has to do with politics. You know, we had that disagreement. I stand by my I stand by it. You know, Arthur Brooks may have some PhDs and, you know, after his name. But I stand by that at this point in politics, at this point, as you said, Sean, the divide is so huge between where left and right is. And it has so much to do with values. Politics reflects values. It would be very hard for me to have a happy marriage and and and have that same, you know, commonality that one would need

to get through life with somebody who didn't respect life. That's just for me, it's too much. It's too much to overcome. Now, maybe if he was ambivalent, he said he was pro-choice, but he didn't really know, you know, and I could tell that he just didn't know and I could, you know, help educate him. And maybe if we had a baby together, he would actually see it's a baby. That would be one thing. But to me, that would be really hard to overcome. Yeah. And I think if what Arthur was saying is the ideal world in which you would live, where politics would be secondary or third, and these common themes that you could build a relationship on were primary, that might be

possible. Today, that's not possible because politics has been self-defining. It defines who people are. Maybe we wish it wasn't that way, but it is. And again, I think whether it's abortion or there's, you know, a hundred genders and you can be a fuzzy and whatever these genders are versus someone who's like, there's only two genders. I mean, it's pretty hard to reconcile that relationship. Do you remember what he said? It was so interesting. And you guys went off on a different subject.

And I was so we'll just bring it up now. But he was saying, you know, you need to have enough differences so that there's attraction. Right. He kind of mentioned that. He said it in a different way, but essentially said, it's not hot to marry your sister, right? Because she's so much like you. So you want these differences. The main difference between you and me, and he brought up Wisconsin.

I'm not trying to argue with Arthur. I love him to death. But he brought up, well, you're not from Wisconsin. That's true. I'm not from Wisconsin. But the main difference between you and me is that you're a man and I'm a woman. And we bring that to our marriage all the time in the way we view things, in the way we approach problems, in the way we approach anything in life. when he talked about the Harvard students being, you know, trying to find happiness and they don't have love lives. I think it's because so many of the women want their men to be like women. They want these beta men.

Let men be men. Let women be women. And I bet that we would find more commonality and more attraction and more love in the world. Am I crazy? No, you're not. I think you're crazy. I wanted to bring that up with Arthur, but you guys went off on a different subject. What I love is that Arthur is having these classes at Harvard. I do. I love that. Arthur might get mad at me for saying this, but maybe it's a little subversive, right?

There's all this progressive liberal stuff. And you have this guy coming in who's a right-of-center guy who's like, listen, let the politics go. Talk about what makes you happy. And he starts to talk about happiness. And maybe there's a slight rewiring of brains at those kids in Harvard who have been indoctrinated for so long. They come to his course. Maybe they're like, huh, maybe this guy makes some sense. And maybe Arthur Brooks can save Harvard. One man by himself could save save America. You know what? The secret sauce to Arthur is that Arthur was a liberal. Yeah. Arthur was a liberal. And so he knows how they think. It's a little bit like Donald Trump. If I told him that he probably wouldn't like that. But but, you know, liberals, no liberals.

He was a liberal and he did this study on charity and on, you know, people's psychology and also the economy, the economics behind charity. And he found that liberals talk a big game about helping others. And yet it was conservatives that were the most generous with their money, which, by the way, on Fox and Friends, I see see it all the time we can put up a picture of somebody in need and that day i mean i can't even tell you how many people do you know how much money do you know how much money will kane raise for maui through our viewers that's just through our viewers 2.5 million dollars that's amazing it's amazing we have the most generous amazing audience and it is obviously a conservative audience. And when you took Valentina to the to the Downs, to the Navarro Farms, which, by the way, I'll say it was in it's in Illinois, like outside of Chicago.

It's called Navarro Farms. It was a farm for basically Down syndrome. They raised over $100,000. I did a story on I went to this farm and here's what they do with with with Down syndrome teens because they age out of so many of the programs after high school and there's there's not a lot for them sometimes. And so it was like a social. Anyway, I went I took Valentina. I went to their Christmas party that they had one hundred thousand dollars or more later. That is how generous conservatives are. And so anyway, Arthur Brooks wrote that first book and it was, you know, somebody finally, and he didn't expect that conclusion, I think, which is what's so interesting. And then he slowly had this transformation where

he became more of a conservative and he wrote about the conservative heart. He had a famous book about the conservative heart. And now he's teaming up with Oprah. I think it's wonderful. They sell a lot of books. Oprah sells books. You know what's interesting, too, is we all have feelings on politics. We have feelings about happiness, what makes you happy. And he said this at the start of the interview.

He said, you know, I'm a social scientist at heart. And I wrap it around economics. It's economics and social science together. And he's actually looking at data. Yeah. He's trying to take data and the science to go, these are the things that you can do to make yourself. He says, is that a guru?

That's got a pair of broken stocks on a writing a philosophy book. No, he's actually studying it. And by the way, the themes to the, through the years of studying that he's done are consistent with a lot of the themes he's brought up in the past. Yeah. Because these are human traits of things that make you happy. Again, your family, your friends, your faith, and purpose in your work. And you can find purpose in your work. Do those things.

Can I read you what he says, Sean, about this is the way? Because his book is like, here's what happiness is. Here's what it's not. And then it's like, here's how you can build a life of that you want of purpose and happiness. He has 11 principles. He says happiness, as he mentioned before, is a direction, not a destination. Unhappiness is not your enemy. Choose your reactions, not your emotions. That's a really hard one for a Hispanic to do. You can substitute the emotion you want for the one you feel. Focus less on yourself. Talked about that.

Your family problems can save your family. I wish we'd asked him about that. You know what, I'm going to have him on Fox & Friends. I'm going to ask him about that. We'll start by that. But you know what, that actually, oh my gosh, that's the story of your family. When your brother Timmy was going through rehab and the whole family went to therapy and it ended up saving your family in many ways.

It was really good for that family. And that incident, I always give Timmy credit for making our marriage better because you ended up the benefit of all the things that your parents went through and it helped our marriage better because you ended up the benefit of the benefit of all the things that your parents went through and it's helped our marriage. So, wow, I'm going to read that again. Your family problems can save your family. Powerful. Look for real friends, not deal friends. Your work can be love made visible. That's we talked about that sanctifying your work. Find your spiritual path. Talked about that. Become a happiness teacher, which is that example he gave of the guy who

goes to the break room. He doesn't find purpose in his work, but he just goes and gets a coffee and gives it to his friend next door in the cubicle. And that, that, that kind of bringing levity and light and love into all the work you do. I really, truly believe in that. And remember, happiness is love in action. Again, that's another, that's another you do. I really, truly believe in that. And remember, happiness is love in action. Again, that's another that's another Mother Teresa. I feel like I feel like Arthur Brooks was going into the Teresa vault, Mother Teresa vault, because it's full of stuff. You know, she says, you know, do small things with small things with great love. Charity begins in the home. Happiness is love in action. What book did you read? And I

think you're getting this wrong, that you told me about the guy that was in the concentration camp where he was in and he was laying bricks, being worked to death. And he decided that, you know what, I'm going to, I'm working, how many hours a day, I'm going to be the best bricklayer that I can be. His name is Victor. I get the name. It's Man's Search for Meaning. It's a wonderful book. Our son was reading it.

I decided to read it with him. And yeah, I mean, if you can find your dignity, love, and even happiness, even moments of happiness that you can hold on to in a concentration camp what the hell labor and forced labor what what the heck can we people who become bitter about what they have to do and and are just focused on the injustice of what's happening to them and we've all had injustice to obviously that's about the apex of injustice that you could face right being put in a concentration camp because you're you're of your faith and your religion and who you are and immutable characteristics. That's the worst.

But that is what Arthur's talking about. You're right. You're right. That's a great book. And life. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, listen, I appreciate Arthur joining us and unpacking the book. Again, a book with Oprah Winfrey.

If you don't have it, get it. Yeah. And if you want to give gifts for Christmas, I think it's a great gift because we all strive to be happy. Yeah. And some tools that Arthur lays out will help with that.

And again, he is a happy warrior himself. He is a happy warrior. He's always been a happy warrior. So listen, thank you for joining us at The Kitchen Table. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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