Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1175: Dr. Arthur C. Brooks

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Dr. Arthur C. Brooks a Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Arthur C. Patterson Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School and columnist for The Washington Post. Dr. Brooks has two New York Times bestsellers, a documentary on Netflix (The Pursuit) and a new book, Love Your Enemies. What can we do with the people we disagree with? (3:28) How shutting down competition leads to mediocracy. (5:37) Blurring the line with physical and psychological harm. (7:11) The concept of ‘nut’ picking. (9:30) Are we heading down a path of nihilism? (11:12) Why we must all have a civic creed that we believe and stand by. (14:00) How people ‘graduate’ into things. (17:01) The dangerous notion of nationalism. (19:49) The importance of getting in touch about how your family got to the US. (23:28) The misguided policy environment that we have in the US. (24:30) The social science between happiness and dignity. (26:46) You put in what you get out. (32:10) The better way to make work pay. (33:50) The significance and value of long-form conversations. (41:02) Respecting the frontier atmosphere. (44:15) Becoming the master of yourself. The premise behind ‘Love Your Enemies’. (48:13) The importance of effective communication, commonality and knowing where the person is coming from. (53:33) What was his last paradigm-shattering moment? (1:01:28) How morals matter more than systems. (1:03:43) How anger + disgust = contempt. (1:07:10) The misconception of love. (1:11:40) The four accounts you must put your energy in for your ultimate happiness. (1:18:54) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks)  Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurbrooks)  Twitter Website Podcast  Joe Rogan (@joerogan)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned Cyber Monday Specials: MAPS Bundles 25% off (Code “CMBUNDLES” at checkout) – MAPS Programs/Guides/MODS 50% off [except MAPS Powerlift] (Code “CYBERMONDAY50” at checkout) The Pursuit | Netflix Bishop Barron Presents | Arthur Brooks: Love Your Enemies Arthur C. Brooks - Amazon.com Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think The Dignity Deficit Fewer Americans are moving for work than ever This huge love crisis: Talking to Arthur C. Brooks You’re probably making incorrect assumptions about your opposing political party The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work - Book by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So in this episode of Mind Pump, we got to meet somebody that we have a lot of admiration for. Very, very smart individual. Dr. Arthur Brooks, he's a professor at the Harvard Business School. He's an economist, a social scientist, a very popular columnist at the Washington Post. He's written some bestselling books. And before joining the Harvard faculty in 2019, he

also served for 10 years as the president of the American Enterprise Institute. This is a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Now, again, he's an economist by training, but he's also spent decades studying culture and public policy. His work in topics from technical economics to the sources of human happiness has established his reputation as a best-selling author.

He's got two New York Times bestsellers. This guy is awesome. He's got a phenomenal documentary on Netflix called The Pursuit. He gave a talk that we got to witness live that was one of the most moving inspirational talks ever. His current book Love Your Enemies takes an incredible approach at a problem

that seems to be growing today. People on both sides of the political spectrum hate each other, they genuinely have discussed and disdain for each other and it seems to be getting worse. His approach is to love your enemies. You're gonna love this episode. Now you can find Arthur Brooks on Instagram at ArthurC. Brooks, his website is ArthurBrooks.com.

He has a podcast called The Arthur Brooks Show. I already told you about his documentary. Arthur Brooks dot com. He has a podcast called the Arthur Brooks show I already told you about his documentary. You gotta watch it. You guys will absolutely love it Oh, and he's also on Facebook and Twitter under the name Arthur Brooks go check this guy out You will not be disappointed now before we start the episode It's cyber Monday. It's another massive, massive sale day for us. This is it for the rest of the year. After this, there will be no more massive sales like this one. Here's what's going on. Okay, ready for this? Half, half off of all maps programs, except for one maps power lift. But other than that, everything is 50% off. Everything that we offer, all of our programs half off,

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It's a great time to set yourself up for all of 2020. Here's what you do to get the discount. Go to mapsfitinistproducts.com. And if you want the 50% off individual programs, I say you just want to buy one at a time, use this code, cyber Monday 50 that's CYB E are Monday 5 0 no space and if you want the 25% off the already discounted bundles, you want to just buy a lot of programs all together Use the code C M as in Mary bundles

Make sure you do it because this promotion is going on Monday and then that's it. I wanna start because I know that once I give Sal the reins, I'll probably never get a chance to get back. I know, or you mean for this one. But you three big personalities running the show. And that's amazing. It's amazing that it works, right?

That's what I think everybody's- We've killed each other yet. Always, always fascinating. But, and I'll probably totally brutally Destroy the quote, but it was such a beautiful thing that you said and we heard it the other the other day listening to you Have you ever read it? Yeah, I have a room down because I wanted to start you there because it was so it was such a Powerful statement that you made and I want to have Sal read it and then I want to ask why this is so important in today's climate and kind of start you that. It was, you had said in a talk that this was

something that your father had told you, it was the mark of moral courage is not standing up to the people with whom you disagree, the moral courage entails standing up to the people with whom you agree on behalf of those with whom you disagree. Yeah, such a powerful quote. Yeah, it emits, we live in this incredible time in this, the greatest country. I mean, the fact that we can, you guys could post on Instagram that you think that President of the United States is a clown, and there's going to be no knock on the night, no jack Buddha thought that's totally a historic.

I mean, it's unprecedented in the history of the world that you could just trash the chief executive of the country and there's like no problem. We have to appreciate that. We also have to use that. I mean, the whole idea that you should in a free society disagree and you should disagree in a way that's respectful and you should stand up for the people

with whom you disagree. I mean, that's how social solidarity should work. That's how we use the full blessing of a free society. And yet we've we're not exactly not doing that. We're so spoiled. And we standard the people with whom we disagree, trashing them. And then the people with whom we agree more or less, we're just like in total group think. I mean, that's exactly what's wrong. So the question then becomes, look, what can I do on behalf of the people who disagree with me? Because I think the competition per se is important. I believe there's a moral case for competition,

including in the competition of ideas. And that's where life really gets interesting. That's where people who are courageous really start to stand out. Yeah, currently at the moment, it seems like there are, because I agree with you 100%. I love disagreement. I love arguing and debating. I feel like that's the best way to get the best ideas.

It's just like any, like you said, like a market you want. Multiple products and allow the best product to succeed. But today what I see is rather than people trying to compete ideas, I see people trying to silence other people. As if they're trying to say, forget the fact that your idea is different, you can't even say anything different. We want to even let you speak. How do we approach that? Well, to begin with, that's like the Yankees blowing up the Red Sox bus on the way to the game. That's not competition. That's shutting down competition. And that leads to mediocrity. That leads to, I mean, the excellence requires

that we go ahead to head in a way that's fair and that respects the rules. Competition actually requires cooperation and that's not cooperation. That's basically saying, you know, I'm just gonna, that's cronyism, that's monopoly. That's trying to establish monopoly through sheer coercive power.

It's happening all the time on the right and on the left, it's happening on campuses, which is really shocking. I mean, college campuses, that should be the epicenter of the combination of ideas, right? Where the idea industries are really supposed to be most free, but you know, look, humans are humans. And if you can through coercive power, not have competition to your product line,

you're gonna get a bigger margin. That's just the way it is. And that's all that is a sheer power. So I don't have to deal with somebody whose ideas might or might not be better. What's interesting to me, and you mentioned it, college campuses, they used to be bastions of competing ideas and free speech.

And it seems like now it's changed dramatically. And what's, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the left used to be some of the strongest supporters of free speech. By the way, free speech exists because it's in the Constitution not to protect popular speech, which needs no protection. It specifically exists to protect unpopular speech. But it feels like the left these days are the ones that are Trying to shut that down as if just and they use words like that's you know, that's harmful that's

Hate speech a press oppressive and ensure it may be but to shut it down Are people not realizing the slippery slope that we could be going down by allowing stuff like that? It's a good question whether they realize it or not whether they think it's worth it but the whole language of safety is basically trying to blur the line between I mean in the the annals of free speech there's the whole that the idea that you're allowed to say what you want until you shout fire in a crowded theater. Why? Because you don't want speech to actually cause physical harm to others. So what you do is you blur the line, the strategy, the play is I'm gonna blur the line between physical harm to others. So what you do is you blur the line, the strategy to play is, I'm gonna blur the line between physical harm

and psychological harm. And I'm gonna say that if you do something that makes me feel unsafe, that makes me feel harmed, it's equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater. As such, I gotta shut it down. Well, that's just insane. I mean, it's just any little kid could say,

that's not right, that can't be right. And yet that's kind of straight out of the playbook. Now it's not just the left, it's on the right too, people are trying to shut each other down constantly. And it's mostly happening when you have a little bit of disloyalty on your own side politically. The problem that we have is there's about 5% on each side of the political spectrum

that are the kind of the outrage industrial complex that are gathering power by making sure they're not dissenting views and whipping up a whole lot of bad blood. And look, the four of us, we're not in that 90% that constitutes both sides together. We want, I want to hear everybody's point of view. I don't want, I'm a free enterprise guy, I'm a Catholic, I'm a, you know, I've had my whole life, people who aren't, I want to hear from them. Why? Because if I'm wrong, I want to know first.

Now last. You know, it was a little while ago. I saw a tweet that was shared by a, you know, I make no qualms. I let everybody know that I'm very much a supporter of free markets and free enterprise. In some cases, I'm left in some cases I'm right in terms of social issues and stuff like that.

But I saw a page share a tweet that was from the left and it seemed extreme and crazy. And I thought, oh my gosh, I can't believe people would actually say this. And then I realized I wonder if this right leaning page picked out the craziest tweet from the left to make the left seem crazy. Do you think that they're using strategies like that to make each other seem by picking out the

extremes of each other? Yeah, that's a strategy. That's called nut picking. You go for the nuts and you pick out the nuts. Say, this is the normal fruit from this thing. It's like nuts, not. That's an insane person. You know what? why? And so that's actually how you, how these extremes they work, how the outrage industrial complex works. It's like slinging arrows back and forth to the extremes and all of us are in the middle of, what, what, what, that doesn't, none of that represents what I think. None of it. That's the reason that, that people talk about these surveys that show that, that confidence in the United States and our institutions is the only institution in American life that's consistently increasing in prestigious military. All the rest of them are tankin. I mean, the judiciary, the Congress, the press, like in the toilet.

Well, why is that? That's because everybody's playing this game saying, if you don't agree with me, you're Hitler. If you don't agree with me, you're Stalin. Well, that's nuts. At least a mediocrity. That leads to failure, as a matter of fact. It's exactly the play. You picked it out. Are we heading towards, you're talking about society, just not basically losing trust in all these institutions?

Are we heading down a path of nihilism? And what's that going to look like? I think that it's actually pretty predictable. So there's a lot of research that shows that in the wake of a financial crisis, which is different than an ordinary recession. I mean, everybody listening to us knows that an ordinary session is

that happen every 10, 20 years. They're no fun. But you come back from a relatively quickly. Financial crisis happened two times a century. It's like the great flood. And what it takes 10 to 20 years to recover from a financial crisis. The 1929 stock market crash,

there's one at the end of the 19th century based on this huge bust in silver and railroads. And of course, the financial crisis that came from the real estate bust in 2008 takes a super long to get over those crises. And the net result is not that you have low economic growth, is that you have uneven economic growth, where 80% of the rewards from the recovery go to the top 20% of the income distribution. So I have data on 800 elections over 120 years and 20 advanced economies.

And what it shows clearly is that that effect, that asymmetry, that uneven economic growth leads to populism. That effect, causally, is related to a 30% bump in the voter share for populist parties and candidates. My friends, this is the problem that we see in political parties on both right and left today. That populism, that polarization, the outrage, is being fueled by this macroeconomic phenomenon. But the good news is that it wears off

because that energy can't be sustained. Americans are not envious people. I mean, you look at these data on, what do you think of Bill Gates? You know, the French in their survey data are like, let's steal this stuff and burn his house down. Right? And Americans are like, oh my kids, next Bill Gates.

I mean, that's how we're wired, man. I mean, it's like that the Stefanoes weren't like, getting out of some God-for-sake and village and Sicily, just because they thought, oh, you know, maybe America's got a better system of income redistribution. No, they came to the United States because they wanted to build their lives.

They had this funny entrepreneurial gene that made you, I mean, look at you. I mean, you're building this thing from nothing. The ambassador of hell. You are. I know. No, it's really great. But you know, this is, this is, you're the archetypal American because

somebody in, you know, and the people in your culture of your family. I mean, it's just that's the optimism. That's who we are as Americans. You know, we want to like each other and admire each other. We're not envious. You know, envy is to like each other and admire each other. We're not envious. You know, envy is like this bad deadly sin. The heavenly virtue is admiration. So, and that's where we naturally lie. That's what we got to get back to. I mean, I'm dedicating my career to take us from a country of envy to a country of admiration. Now, Dr. Brooks, the America was founded

on that principle. It was to come here was it was relatively easy, you could walk in, you got nothing for free, you worked hard, and you succeeded based off of your work, you had all kinds of different cultures coming over here, people from all over the world, but they agreed on one fundamental principle, which was liberty. They all agreed that they valued liberty and freedom.

Do you think that we need to at least all agree on that foundational principle for all this, all these different people to work together? It doesn't fall apart if we don't. We have to have a creed. For sure, we have to have a civic creed that a set of beliefs to it. It's funny. I just relatively recently finished as President of the American Enterprise Institute, which is the Think Tank in DC. I was a president of the place for almost 11 years. I had 300 employees, we're super mission driven place, you know, $50 million budget, we were machine.

And it was in the middle of these political and policy controversies in Washington. It was super hot and sometimes terrible. So what held us together? And the answer was we all believed in certain things. We also, we basically, we had to creed. We believe in the radical equality of human dignity and the limitlessness of human potential. Freedom, opportunity, and enterprise for people,

especially people at the margins of society. That's what we believe. I would hire a CFO, an accountant, a controller, somebody for the, you know, to do hospitality, somebody who's going to keep the books, whatever. And I would say, do you believe these things are not? You know, I don't care where you were raised, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what your education is, if you have enough education and skills to do this job.

But do you believe or not that everybody has equal human dignity and we have a limitless potential? Do you believe in freedom for all people all the time? Do you believe in opportunity, and do you believe in the free enterprise system? You're gonna be a warrior for it or not. And people like, I don't really, this is a American Enterprise Institute,

I could be an American Airlines for all I can. I'd say, well, next, next, because I need warriors. Every creed requires people who are willing to fight for that creed, or we won't understand who we are and the United States is This is the thing. You know, we've got this nationalist thing going on in the United States We say no, it's a country. It's got borders

It's identifiable who the people are which means who the people aren't Telling you I travel all the time. I'm in India a lot. I'm you know You find people who are Americans in their heart all the time and they would run, they would sleep on a bed of nails to get to this country because they say, that idea, it's like, that's me, that's me. And that's the Stefano's, man. I mean, they came here like, yeah, I want that, I want that, I'm willing to make huge sacrifices for it, all my capital at risk. I don't know the language, I don't know the people. I'm going to give it all up.

I don't care. The United States is an idea. And the idea is based on a set of ideals. And when we can articulate them and remember them and be proud of them and fight for them, then we're good and strong. Now what's happened with that message because you don't have to sell me on it.

I lived it with my family objectively when you look at how freedom works for people, not perfect, but far better than anything else we've ever tried. What's happening now where kids are getting pulled and socialism, for example, is getting more support than it's had in decades, and words like capitalism and free markets are getting less and less... And they also think that they're pursuing equality, like you're saying right now, through those ways though, right? Yeah, so what is that? Are we doing a bad job of explaining it and selling it? What's happening? Well, part of it is this is a knock on effect, the financial crisis. You know, a lot of people who are, they think that they like socialism a whole lot, they, they, they came out of college in 2010 or, you know, or they came out of high school in 2012 or something

in the job market was garbage. And they're like, yeah, look at these rich guys getting rich and, you know, I'm barely able to make minimum wage. That's not right. And they, they came out in a really, really unfortunate time. Here's a good news. Young people saying that the socialists and saying that capitalism is terrible, that number is actually, that percentage is not higher than it has been in previous generations. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. Young people just tend to talk that way. What happens is you see a massive difference between, you know, you guys are, you know, in your 30s, I'm in my 50s, you know, you look at people in the teens and 20s, and you see generational cohorts. It's not a set generational effect.

People get older. I used to do, I was in the classical music business for a long time, and people were always saying, oh, the audience is dying. Why? Because the neurofilamonic, everybody's like a thousand years old. It's like, oh man, they're all going to be dead, and there's no going to be here.

Well, it turns out there's going to be a new generation to a thousand years old, and people with a thousand years old like It's like, oh man, they're all going to be dead and there's no going to be here. Well, it turns out there's going to be a new generation to a thousand years old and people with a thousand years old like classical music better. People kind of graduate into things. One of the things you graduate into is the observation of the truth that freedom is better than servitude, that free markets are better than collectivism, that people telling you what to do with your money when you get to a point in your life, we actually are earning a little bit of it, is not that fun.

Now, some people are gonna be kind of collectivist in their sentiment forever, but I'm really confident that we're gonna see people, particularly as we truly move beyond this shadow of the Great Recession, and we get into times that are more optimistic with leaders, by the way, who are more optimistic. That leaders are sort of followers in democracy

and they're gonna be like, ah, right now, it's like everybody's mad, I'm gonna be mad. But pretty soon they're gonna say, you know, Reagan was a good politician. He said there's optimism on the wind. And he was an optimist, you know, Bill Clinton, same deal. It's, these were optimistic leaders in reaction to the circumstances of the time.

I think it's coming back. I find it interesting that we're seeing things, maybe larger support, or it sounds like larger support for things like socialism or people against markets when we live in the age of information, the decentralizing powers of the internet is making or making markets, the barriers to enter markets are lower than they've ever been before, with things like Uber and Airbnb

and podcasts, for example. There's no way ever we would have been able to start this business in any of the way. So it's almost like, I think the numbers show they're more entrepreneurs than ever, but at the same time you have, for the first time at least in my life, politicians openly running a socialist. I've never seen this before in my life. I've never heard of, I remember I used to be a dirty word, if you said, if people said you were socialist, even though you might support socialist policies,

you're like, no, I'm not. And now you have people like Bernie Sanders, who are saying, oh no, I'm openly a democratic socialist. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's a very unusual thing in American life. It's also, it's equally unusual, more unusual, that Donald Trump calls himself a nationalist. That's even weirder.

I mean, that's like a very good, great point. Yeah, America's never called themselves nationalists. We're patriots. Patriotsism and nationalism are two different things. Now, scholars are killing themselves, but we all know what we're talking about here. I mean, nationalism is who we are and who they're not. And that's just, to me, that's just like so on American.

I just hate it. And so socialism is a way of trying to organize the economy. Nationalism is the way to try to organize people into in groups and out groups. And I think it's actually more dangerous. The socialist impulse is basically, I don't know, it's like maybe we should spend more money on government or maybe the taxes should be higher, okay fine.'t know, it's like maybe we should spend more money on government or maybe the taxes should be higher. Okay, fine.

For me, that's like this discussion of how many angels fit in the head of a pin. I don't like it, but I can deal with it. When people are talking, look, my wife's an immigrant, one of my kids is adopted from a foreign country. My life is organized around the idea of the ambitious riff-raff that want to be this country. So that's what I really care about. To me, that's the biggest threat that we've got against the American way of life right now. As you're saying that, I have to 100% agree with you. There's a very dangerous nationalism can get very dangerous very quickly and very tyrannical

very quickly. Historically we've seen that. Oh yeah, for sure. It just gets whipped up into this frenzy. Now, I don't think it's gonna. I think it's a huge opportunity for us to talk about what this is. I mean, you make this great point about the way that we have this new entrepreneurial economy that's fragmented into little tiny molecules all over the place.

That's a big opportunity to help people understand the way the new economy is going to go. It's this classical American economy organized in a new way. Our principles, they work, they just work in different ways at different times. So what I like, and I don't think listeners quite realize, I'm not just some random guest on the show, I'm a listener, I'm a consumer of this product, and I came to it organically. I didn't have somebody's like, ah, here are these guys. Now, Justin and Sal are these big free enterprise guys. I was like, I was asking people, what's the best fitness podcaster for me to listen to? And they said, oh, well you forgot like you.

You want the science, you want the fun talk, and you want people who are ideologically aligned and positive and trying to bring the best and every day start your day with that I mean I kept getting this recommendation sure enough That's why I'm a big listener, but that's what we can do. I mean you're you guys are representing what's Good about the American economy and you're positive feel good about it And I start my day feeling good when I listen to this podcast because of the philosophy as well as the you know The fitness tips you helped my lips. I wanted to say the because of the philosophy as well as the fitness tips you helped my lifts. I wanted to say the same about how you present capitalism and how me and my wife actually

watched your documentary and just how uplifting, you know, and how emotional that actually made us in terms of like coming back to those core values of, you know, people having that dignity and that ability to be able to create a life just by, you know, having the opportunity for it. So where did you grow up? I can't remember. So I grew up in Santa Cruz area. Yeah.

So you're in Northern California. How long has your family been in the United States? So we've been here. I don't know how long we've come from Scotland. So that was like our main, like it's going to be 1860. Probably Scotch Irish or something like that. Scotch Irish. Yeah, yeah, Scotch Irish. Yeah, I mean, it's really important for all of us to get in touch with how our families

got here and what they were thinking. Because when we lose track of that, it's like, I don't know, we always do the ice days. No way. Just a bunch of riff raff. We're just a bunch of immigrants just trying to make our way and do it a podcast or whatever way thing. I mean, it's just, it's incredible to me how, how, how, you know, easy it is for us to forget this along those lines when you were doing all your research for your documentary,

what were some of the most alarming statistics that you came across? Well, a lot of it is the stuff that we're talking about the attitude or, our, our hostile toward these great American ideals. When I was actually thought that I was going to find a lot more depressing stuff than I found, when I was making a movie I had this kind of epiphany, which is that because I was dealing with Western cultures and societies and towns and places that are that should have everything going for them, but people are very desperate. In Ainez, Kentucky, where 29% of the adults are in the workforce.

Think about that. Wow. And then I go to a place like Deravi in a slum in India. This is supposed to be the most, you know, unfortunate place in the world, where people are optimistic and everybody's working. And it's not perfect, but, you know, it's not, it's not the slum like we think about it. There, the kids have education and people have health care. And yeah, yeah, a family of four is living in one room,

but they're on their way up. And what you notice is that people who are optimistic and on the make, they feel needed and people who are going down and feel terrible about themselves, they feel helped. And it's like, this is this misguided policy environment that we have in the United States. And it's a problem with our culture

where we've gone from needing poor people. It's like, let's go get some place and come to God for a second village and get the shafers. And it's like, I want them here. I want them here. Why? Because we need them to actually float this experiment called the United States to sometime in the mid 60s. You know, I shan't for I don't know. There will help them.

But you know, the dignity difference in that, that was a, that really I have to say that was maybe the most illuminating point, but also the most depressing point was to see people who, you know, they live in America. And they feel just helped. They feel like liabilities to society and you go to other places around the world with like the most unfortunate circumstances and they feel needed and they feel like assets to society and they're like, yeah, yeah, of course I'm making clay pottery and a slum in Mumbai but, you know, my kid is an electrical engineer. That's like America, man.

There was an article you wrote, and you talked a little bit about this and how, you know, and we see this all the time, right? You're a high-level athlete, and then you stop competing in your sport, and even though you had all these great achievements, you feel like, okay, now what? Because you're not, you know,

contributing or producing, or you retire, or, and there's all those transitions, really it's about feeling like people need you. That's what gives you that drive. It's what it's about. Yeah, I've been writing about that a lot. As a matter of fact, when I have a book that I'm working on right now that my publisher

needs me to start working on more and faster about actually these transitions in life, such that we can actually live up to our full sense of dignity. What happens is that people in their, particularly in their 50s, they recognize that their skills are in decline. And it's not just people like the fitness industry

where look, I mean, there's limits. I mean, it's gonna be easier to build muscle mass when you're in your 20s than it is when you're in your 50s trust me. No. When you're in your 50s, but it's also true in the idea industry. Ideas don't come as fluently as they were, and there's a whole lot of science behind this.

This is not just, you know, I kind of observe, you know, there's the theories of crystallizing fluid intelligence and just the way that the brain is structured and all that. But if we actually can understand that people need us to do different things at different times in our lives, we can structure our lives in a way that we can serve others the best and understand the contribution that we're making. We can be necessary over the course of our lives. So this is basically a handbook for people of my age. I mean, it's extraordinary how life changes work.

By the way, here's how I think that this actually interacts with the world of fitness. I just quit my job. I was a chief executive for 11 years. And I was kind of felt like Mr. Bigg. And I've been studying the data. And when you make a big transition, especially away from one where you have a big leadership position, my life is sweet.

I'm a professor at Harvard. I mean, don't cry for me. But I'm traveling around life is great, but I don't have a big workforce. I don't have the same leadership position. What that will do in these transitions is it'll mess up your hormone levels. As sure as we're sitting here, you'll get a tank, your serotonin levels, it will affect your testosterone levels.

It just will. How do you fix that? Well, you can go into counseling, you can get a therapist, maybe that's a good thing to do. Get into the gym and do leg day. Why? Because it's funny, what's the natural free testosterone level of 8 a.m.

What would it be? That would be considered normal? 300 to 700 or so? It's like 300 to 700 or so. Yeah. It's a big range. And if you have a job where you feel really important and maybe your free testosterone levels are 550 or 600 and then they go down to 350, the doctor is going to say you're

normal and you're like, yeah, but I feel like hell. I'm a hot garbage man, I want to die. And so you have to recognize that, actually what I'm going to start doing is I'm going to start doing maps and a ball like. Oh yeah, perfect. Because that's the right program. For a 55 year old guy who just left at CEO job. Absolutely.

Right, so my world interacts with your world in this way and a very important way and it's important for our listeners to recognize that there's a lot of science behind happiness and dignity, it's not just platitudes and quotes from Winston Churchill. The social science behind this is very solid, but it also interacts with the world of fitness

in the way that you take care of yourself. Your physiology starts to match your mental state and your emotions and vice versa. And it can become a feedback loop. If you let's say you have low testosterone because of some physiological issue, now you feel bad, now because you feel bad and everything feels bad, testosterone levels start to plummet even more. And it can start to, and in the reverse, you know, you can have something like you said, you can move from a position of leadership and

feeling like people depend on you and you have all this responsibility to moving to a position where nobody needs me anymore, That can cause lower testosterone, which then makes you feel bad, which then causes that. That's exactly right. You have to break out of that loop. There are a bunch of different ways to do it. They don't require hormone replacement therapy or sitting 10 months on a psychiatrist's couch.

There are a bunch of ways that we can deal with these problems ourselves in very, very natural ways. Nothing against hormone replacement therapy or psychotherapy. But look, I mean, what you guys are doing, it's very important to point out that this is a positive lifestyle where we are contributing, where we have dignity, where we know who we are as men and women. I mean, this is not, there's a seamlessness between, you know, the social psych and the social science stuff that I'm doing and the fitness stuff

that you guys are doing. We have to have an integrated lifestyle to understand that self-care and care of others has to involve all of these parts of our lives. Yeah, yeah. The thing I love most about fitness, and I witnessed this when I would train kids, was it was a very easy way of learning.

If I put something in, I get something out, and then you can start to apply that to, you know, it was a very easy way of learning if I put something in I get something out and then you can start to apply that to you know it's a metaphor it's definitely it's a very easy clear metaphor it's I can communicate it to anybody you know I whether on the right the left does a matter one religion yeah it's real simple everybody's okay everybody understands that when I communicate fitness and they kind of they can take that information in and it contributes to that amazing attitude of, wow, I can... So along these lines, would you say then that one of the best things you could do to help someone is rather than give them something, ask them if they could do something for you?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, this is something that we often forget that when somebody, you know, how am I going to live my best life and be you know, be a charitable person and good person, I'm going to go help people. People, I don't need anything from, I'm just going to go help them unilaterally. But that's not how humans are wired. We're wired for reciprocity. You know, I don't want something for nothing. Nobody wants something for nothing. We think we do. You know, you, you, it's a party game. It's like, if you hit the lottery, and Adam, what would you do if you hit the lottery?

And it's always like, I don't know, and travel more, and you know, get my master's degree, whatever, right? And the truth is, I got the data. If you hit the lottery, which is just a windfall for doing nothing, except buying a ticket, you, I mean, not you, but generally people would,

I think I'd start off by, I don't know, getting taken advantage of by my friends. And then I think I'd get like a big substance abuse problem. And I think I'd probably marry somebody way younger than me who doesn't actually love me. And then I'd lose all the money and she'd leave me. I mean, that's actually the story of when people hit a lottery.

Why? Because we're not wired for hitting the lottery. We're wired to earn it. You know, so this is the key. I mean, that's how, you know, fitness is a metaphor. You put in, you get out. I mean, life is like that. And when we're treating people who are unfortunate, the key thing is you got to figure out a way that the best way that you can serve people in the margins of society is figuring out how they can contribute. We shouldn't

have any programs that disincentivize work. That's insane. That's dehumanizing people. And that pays a lot of public policy. So that reminds me of a place I want to take you that is controversial. And I would be mad at myself if I didn't have a go here with a mind like yours. Because when we talk about that,

what do you think of things like minimum wage and how debilitating is that to us economically? So the minimum wage is very controversial policy. Here's the reason, first I'll tell you why I like it and then I'll tell you why I hate it. The reason I like it is because it recognizes that it's important to earn your money. It recognizes that, I mean, it's not welfare. I mean, to say, now, forget the jobs.

Let's just give people a universal basic income. Or let's let people just apply for whatever welfare program we've got, that's coming down the pipe. That says that people don't have equal human dignity. I love my work. I want to help, I want to be contributing to society, but poor people, their jobs suck. That's what that says. It's completely discriminatory. It's not right. I mean, other data are very clear that above and below average income, college, no college, that

people love or like they're, or love their job at about 89% of the population. You know, they just to say that the guy McDonald's is a garbage job is discriminatory. It's not right. It's morally. It's It's not correct and it's is Disordered way to think because our brothers and sisters all find different ways to find their dignity and work at the center of that sanctified work So that's why I like the minimum wage it recognizes that and it's like let's make work pay fantastic The problem is that that the problem is that there And it's like, let's make work pay. Fantastic. The problem is that the problem is that there's a better, there are better ways to make work pay. Why? Because when you put in a minimum wage, what you do is you create incentives to chop the bottom of jobs off the ladder. I mean, work

is a ladder. Life is a ladder. You know, work more, climb more. And if you chop off the bottom rungs, you could create a disincentive for companies to create low-wage, low-scale jobs, you're discriminating. Now, 82% of minimum wage workers are not low-wage people. They're usually second and third earners from above average income households. My teenage kids are minimum wage earners. And like, it's like, I'm going gonna work in a sandwich place until I go to Princeton, right? And that's not everybody for sure, but 82% of minimal wage workers are not poor. That's an important thing to keep in mind.

The 18% who really are, they're disproportionally the ones who don't get jobs in the first place or lose their jobs. When you make those jobs more expensive, so it's great for my teenage kids to get a raise, but for people who are very marginalized, who don't come from a background with a lot of work, who don't have very much education,

who are not acculturated in the ways of work adequately. Those are the people we want to help the most, and we hurt them disproportionately. It's what we're pricing them out. It's exactly right. It's basic economics. It's basic economics. And so the problem with that is pretty obvious.

Now, a little minimum wage increase has a little effect on the market. A big minimum wage increase going to $15 an hour will be totally catastrophic for people at the very margins. So, question is, what are we going to do to make work pay? I mean, if we're going to have a whole policy that does that, what do we do? And there are tons of ways to do it better. Their earned income tax credit is a, I know it's a mouthful and it's super wonky and nerdy, but hey man, I'm a policy professor at Harvard. I get to be a nerd.

So we have you here. That's right. But that's a policy that basically says, if you work, we're gonna top up your wage. That's the government tops up the wage. It doesn't create any incentive to lay you off. And it's been incredibly effective, mostly because it goes to, you know,

women, single women with to you know women single women with you know kids in the home we need to expand it to to men explain how that works. The earned income tax credit is basically on your tax form you file your taxes and you pay negative taxes. So you get once or twice a year or quarterly or depending on how it's set up you know the government actually when you file taxes, says you deserve to earn more money than you got, and you get a refund even though you didn't pay taxes. And so it's paying, it's topping you up. Isn't this Milton Friedman had a Paul, that was his policy. That was his Paul Friedman. I mean, the great, the great St. Milton. I mean, he, I mean, he, he, he, he, he came up with this idea that you should have a negative, a negative income tax. And, and, you

know, that's a great way to do it. That's the best way of all to do it is to get more economic growth, to get more opportunity, to get more entrepreneurship, to get more optimism, to make it easier to form businesses, to cut regulation, to cut housing restrictions. That's the best way to do it. I always argue for lowering the barriers to enter the market,

get start getting rid of those barriers, minimum wage being one of them, or if you come in with no skills, or maybe you've been to prison or whatever, someone's not going to hire you for $12, but maybe they'll hire you for $8. That's what you have to bargain with, and then you can build up your skills and your resume. There's other barriers like permits, you know you got to go buy this license and that license just to start a business. Yeah, it's insanity actually because you know the whole idea of barriers to entry licensing requirements has exploded over the

past 20 and 30 years. The extent that we see something like a third of the economy requires professional licensing to function. And that's sort of easy for us. I mean, you guys have this incredibly successful business. You need to lower your higher lawyer. You need an accountant, you hire an accountant. I mean, those of us who are lucky in this economy, we can find we have a guy. No matter what it is, I got a guy, right? But it turns out that if you want to do hair braiding

in your home, then you don't have a guy. And you just have to figure it out. It's in Washington, DC where I live for a long time. If you want to be a lawyer, I mean, a realtor. You need something like 150 hours of schooling. Okay, a lot of little, I'm not sure. If you want to break literally, do African hairprating, you need 1,600 hours to get your cosmology license.

You got to go to school full time and it's expensive. And people don't realize that those, that was put forth by people in the hair business who are trying to reduce their own competition. Very true. They're the ones that are put in fourth like, oh no, you need to have all these requirements. You need to have four sinks in your office. You need to, I've read some of these for hair braiding.

It's insane. There was one woman I read about who was making a living supporting her, her kids. She was a single mom and they, they, she had to stop because she didn't have sinks because and she didn't need sink. She wasn't washing hair. She was just braiding hair because the license to said, no, you have to have three sinks in her play. It's insane.

It's straight up discrimination. It's straight discrimination against people of the margins. We don't want people coming in. We don't let that bury to entry. The really scary thing to entrench businesses that are not that great is riffraff, is hustlers. It's hard workers. I mean, so you guys in the podcasting world super successful, you've disrupted the way that we do communications, right? And the reason that they couldn't get in your way, you know, big radio couldn't

get in your way, is because they weren't there fast enough to shut down the riff right? Right? And so an entrepreneurship will out, but it has a ton of casualties in the meantime, unless we who are the lucky ones, we who are the chosen ones with respect to all the advantages of life, we got a fight for them. I wanted to ask you a little bit about that. Now that podcast is sort of taken off and long form conversations are sort of making a comeback.

Have you seen that effect politics at all in terms of them trying to explain themselves further and actually having a platform to do that? Yeah, not yet. I mean, in politics, generally speaking, they shy away from long form ideas. Could be a fact, you know what I mean? It's got, well, we can get the promise that somebody on the other side is gonna just gonna chop it up into, making, they shy away from long form ideas. Just, they don't even have a thought.

Well, the problem is that somebody on the other side is gonna just gonna chop it up into, if you don't do sound bites, if you do full conversations, look, if somebody really wants to kill me, they can find stuff that we're talking about here and chop it up into a seven second clip and say, Brooks, he says minimum wage is bad. Minimum wage is bad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, why did I know that? You have to have a, you have to be in the circumstance

where people aren't, or have the courage to not worry about people trying to wipe you out. So it's a great medium for people who want to listen. And again, it's super portable, it's very flexible. It's mostly, I mean, I bet most people are listening to us or working out. And so you've got a ton of time. And you're like, that's the whole idea. I mean, the genius most people are listening to us or working out. And so you've got a ton of time and you're like,

that's the whole idea. I mean, the genius of this thing is you're getting in shape and you're getting smarter at the same time. Hence mind-pump. Yeah. I'll tell you what though, people like Joe Rogan, his podcast go two, three hours, he's getting more views and listens

than all the other news networks, the mainstream news networks combined. And I think that we might have misunderstood people. I think we thought for a long time that people only wanted short sound bites but the reality is the bandwidth was so small that that's all we got. And what we're finding is people actually like long form, they like explanations, they like intelligence that like smart people Explaining themselves because and the numbers are showing it people are leaving the mainstream Methods of communicating in flocks and they're moving over the new way, which is a lot of its long form

This would have not there's no way you would have done a two-hour show when there wasn't a limited internet bandwidth. Nobody would, no channel would have ever put that on. Well, in the market, it wouldn't have supported it either. I mean, so you guys are getting one and a half million downloads a month, something like that, right? And with maybe 20 to between 20 and 25 shows. Correct. Between 20 and 25 shows. That works out to not enough listeners per show. It's one of the most successful podcasts making good money, lots of people listening, but they have to be able to select into the environment with almost zero marginal cost. That's the only way the economics are going to work out on this. If you're trying to do something on a network with, you know, you've got offices all over

the country and you have staff. 100% of bricks and country and you have staff. 100% of, you know, bricks and mortar and all this stuff. You can't make the numbers. And so what we've been able to do is to turn this into micro businesses and some of the micro and so a micro business can be extremely profitable and really edifying. That's the, you know, what the, you know, did that? Capitalism did that. Yeah. Free enterprise did that. It wasn't some central plan. It's like, ah, you know what we need?

We need to get rid of the bricks and mortar so that we can have this thing called podcast. It's just, it's totally organic. That's the beauty of it. Dr. Brooks, I wanna get into your book, love your enemies. But before we do, I wanna make one more comment on this. And I don't wanna go too deep in the weeds because I can totally do this with this topic.

But, you know, because of the decentralizing power of the internet, the unlimited bandwidth, the fact that barriers to enter the market are disappearing mainly because there's emerging markets that are happening faster than regulators can regulate. For example, Uber is a great example. Uber would not have existed had they had to bring it forth and get it approved. It just happened. Now we love it. Now they're trying to figure out ways to regulate it, but people like it already. I feel like the future, whether we like it or not, things with 3D printers, where you're able to print your own products, you know, it was a great example. The difficulty of licensing and patenting, like I can go online and get

music and get things and it's very easy. So the only way to beat it is to out-compete it rather than make laws that get me in trouble. I feel like the future is so decentralized and capital and free market, no matter what. I feel like we can't, the cat's out of the bag, the toothpaste is out of the tube, that they're going to try to control it, but it just innovates too fast. It's always been the case too. It's always been the case in the American economy, and that's really the magic.

And it's funny because it countries kinda get old and cranky, and sometimes the thing I really worry about is that we find ways to slow it down in as other countries around the world that start getting ahead of their regulators. But the American magic was always like, you know, I want to go to the United States where nobody's going to bother me. It's not like nobody wanted to bother you. It's just that you can't. I mean, it's like here in some little town in Texas

and the cops are half an hour away. And so you just set up a gas station. Do you have a license for gas station? Oh, no. I'm still a gas. I don't know. And then pretty soon we'll figure out some way to regulate the market. And so staying ahead of it is really critical and important, but it's also remembering the ethos of that, remembering how important it is. And what I like are our politicians on both sides, whether they're more democratic, more liberal, more conservative, or whatever, who respect this frontier atmosphere, who want, you know, the people who are just running into the future saying, I don't know what's there, you know, and stop me if you can, but who respect that, who actually admire that. And you know, that's what worries me is that

all of us are trying to find a way to slow that down. I just saw these data. They're very interesting to me that are related to this, that Americans are less than half as likely to move for work than they were in 1970. So, you know, when I was a kid, a little kid, I mean, one in five families in your neighborhood would move in any given year for work. And today it's less than one in ten, and this is the lowest year that we've been actually moving for work. And that's why do I bring that up? Because that's actually kind of emblematic of the problem that we're seeing where people are stuck where people are just not willing to, you know, head west young man. And I realize that we're right. You can't you can't move west anymore. I remember California. I did. Yeah. But it's really important for us to remember that the frontier spirit has got to stay alive. You got to find ways.

And what that requires is the idea of entrepreneurship is not starting a company. Entrepreneurship is your startup life. And if we each one of us, and this is what I, what if I can do one thing to change American culture, it's going to be for people to say, what's my enterprise? Me, Arthur Brooks Inc. You know, and when there's an culture, it's going to be for people to say, what's my enterprise? Me, Arthur Brooks Inc. You know, and when there's an opportunity, I'm going to run toward it. I'm just going to say, I don't know.

I don't know. Run into the void all the time. Have confidence. Surround yourself with positive people. Remember that the startup is the startup life. And when we get away from that, it makes me feel kind of like we're getting old. Like we don't have the energy for it. And so they're going to want, we're going to want to regulate it. We're

going to want to put rules around it. That's what that's what actually kind of alarms me. So now your book love your enemies. I think the premise is absolutely brilliant. And I think it's at the perfect, perfect time. It seems like today people are more polarized than ever. If you're on one side, you hate the other side, or at least you think that they hate you. That's right. That's right. And you're presenting a different way of communicating with each other. And I'd love you to just kind of give us an idea what the premise of your book is and why it's so important. Yeah, so way back in 2014, I was starting to see trends in American life that were super

alarming in the way that we were just simply talking about politics. I've been going on for a while, but I was working on something called, in my research, called Motive Attribution asymmetry. That's the phenomenon where two sides in a conflict, they have this mutual belief that they are motivated by love, but the other side is motivated by hatred. That's an error. Both sides to a conflict can't simultaneously be motivated by love and hatred, which means that one side is wrong or the other side is wrong about the other side.

Usually we find, social psychologists, political scientists find that both sides are wrong. That we're just too siloed. So, of course, I love my country and you hate me. And therefore, I can't work with you at all. Now, the reason that really I was working on this is not because I was trying to find some new, something new about the Palestinian Israeli conflict or something which is characterized by this mode of attribution asymmetry, but because I, we were seeing in the data that Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives in America, were exhibiting

the same level of Motivation asymmetry, this mistaken belief that was making intractable conflict, the same level as the Palestinians in Israel. Well, so just as bad. Yeah, just as bad, just as bad. And that meant, didn't mean that we were going to going have settlements and people shooting at each other

and occupied territory, none of that stuff. What it meant was, we were simply not going to be able to have dialogue anymore. That's coming down the pike. This is where this is going, and sure enough, that's where we were heading in the 2016 election, and that's kind of where we are today. So how do you get out of that? And the answer is that we got to be entrepreneurs, and we got to subvert it.

Each one of us is responsible subverting it. How do you subvert motivation asymmetry? You'll look for the people that are profiting from it. Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I got the data that show that 93% of Americans hate it or participate in it, but hate it. And that means that 7% don't hate it. 7% of Americans are the outrage industrial complex. They're getting rich and powerful and famous by making us hate each other. And that's insane. You know, these are drug dealers, man. This is sort of the ideological myth in our society and in politics and in media.

I mean, turn on cable television at eight o'clock at night. You'll just wanna, I mean, it's very depressing. I mean, it makes you wanna cry your eyes out. This is our country, it doesn't matter with you what channel you've got it on practically. And so how do you fight against it? How do you fight against the outrage industrial complex? We stand up to it.

And the way that you stand up to it is not being by being pugilistic, not being militant and marching, although maybe you should. It's by doing exactly the opposite when they're saying, hate your enemies. That's your enemy, hate your enemies. That's what you see in major media about politics today. That's what you hear from these populist politicians all the time. Do the opposite. I mean, it's like it's rage against the machine. Love your enemies. It's like, I don't feel it. Who cares? I mean, are we the masters of ourselves or the slaves of our feelings?

I mean, that's what it comes down to. I don't have to tell, you know, three professional guys of fitness that you better not be a slave to your feelings because you're gonna stay in bed until nine o'clock in the morning and you're gonna eat a lot of carbohydrates and you're gonna feel like garbage. You must be the master of yourself and that is just as true, that's not just true in fitness, this is also true in our lives

and the way that we treat each other and this society that we're trying to build. If you are an entrepreneur of you ink, then it's incumbent upon you to be an agent for positive change. And that starts in our current climate by saying, they say, hey, your enemies, I say, sorry, not gonna do it.

I'm gonna love my enemies. Forget civility, that's garbage too. You know, civility. It's a totally low standard. I'm gonna love, I'm gonna bring unity where there's warm, bringing peace, just sorry, that's the way it's going to be. And then it's infectious because a couple of benefits from it.

Number one, nobody has ever been insulted into agreement in human history. It can happen, right? So you have a chance of being persuasive, you love your enemies. You will be happier. I got the data on this and actually actually how it changed the structure of the human brain is when you answer hatred with love, contempt with warmheartedness. You will be happier. I mean, nobody's ever said, yeah, maybe not. I wish I were more of a jerk. You know, that's not how it's about to say, I could have been a jerk and I wasn't. My mother would be really proud. You know, that's it. And you

have a chance of making other people happier and changing interactions. And if you don't, if you're part of the 93%, which almost everybody listening to us today is part of the 93% that hates how divided we become as a country and as a society, you have a chance of being a tiny micro part of the solution instead of adding to the problem. So loving your enemies is just an easy way of remembering that this is your subversion. This is a way for, this is your single entrepreneurial act for today.

So what does that look like? I'm talking to somebody, we totally disagree. Yeah. Hey, I think we should have, healthcare for everybody, I think the government should pay for it. No, I think it should be free market. We're arguing with each other. How do I love this person or how do I exhibit

that? How do I show that? The first thing is to start with why you're interlocutor. By the way, it's almost Thanksgiving. There's a lot of people who are offered conversations are coming. I don't know what day we're air right? But it's like, maybe it's like Chess Day and you're in there going, I'm thinking about Uncle Joe, he's gonna be a jerk at Thanksgiving. You know, you're just dreading what's going on Thursday, right?

I was like, you know, my Uncle Joe. This is gonna be a tough at-mars, he's a socialist. I can't handle it. This is gonna, you know, I know, I know, I know, right? So, how do you start that conversation? You could actually have a rule around the Thanksgiving table, no know, I know, I know, right? So, so how do you start that conversation? You could actually have a rule around the Thanksgiving table, no politics, no religion.

Okay, okay, if that works for you, but that's just weak, it's unnecessary. When you're talking to Aunt Marge, understand Aunt Marge, Aunt Marge, she believes these things, not because she wants to hurt America, she wants these things because she wants to help people, because she loves poor people, because she wants to bring us together She wants these things because she wants to help people, because she loves poor people,

because she wants to bring us together and she thinks there's injustice. Listen to Aunt Marge and say, so is this what motivates you is love? Is what motivates you something better for everybody? And tell Aunt Marge, ask Aunt Marge if this is what's really written on her heart, and it's like magic. Aunt Marge would be like Marge if this is what's really written on her heart and it's like

Magic and Marge would be like yeah, exactly exactly and say yeah, I I want those things to I want those things to And I see things a little bit differently, but I tell you I just really appreciate that I mean, it's just we got it we got it going on in common That's totally subversive and it's not just a technique to get your point in who knows, maybe we're wrong. You know, and if we're wrong, we should know first, not last. And so that's a beautiful way of actually finding common purpose around solidarity and brotherhood and love toward all of the people. Now, sometimes it'll be somebody whose values are in the 7%. And it's like, okay, fine, But it's good to know that too.

It's good to articulate that. It's good to say, yeah, I really just really disagree with that. I really, but with good humor and with happiness. And at very least, somebody's going to say, yeah, sell the stuff. I know. I mean, he's a big, free enterprise guy. I totally disagree with him. But he's a really nice person. He's somebody, he's a kind, he listens to me, at least he listens to me. That's what we have to a little love. And that's, if you want any shot of persuasion, that's where it's got to start.

If you want any shot at interchange, at brotherhood, at a little bit more love in our lives and in our families and our societies, that's where it has to start. When's the last time you've had one of those interactions with somebody and what was the conversation about? It's a lot of it because I teach it at major university and my views about collectivism,

about free enterprise are not the prevailing views. They just aren't. And for a long time, I was a little bit reluctant to go back to the University of America. I thought it another university for a long time before I went around this Center, right, this conservative think tank, this free enterprise arena think tank and when the time came I resigned as president I said, what do I want to do and I prayed about it for a long time, you know, it's this prayer of discernment Lord Not what do you want me to do? What do you want me to want? Right?

Because you know, I'm back up. What do you want me to want and it was kind of in my heart I wanted to go back and the reason I wanted to go back is because I wanted to, I wanted to hear from people. I wanted to talk about big things. And I wanted to put my ideas in action. I just published this book and I called Love Your Enemies. I'm lashed to the mass. It's best seller. Love your enemies. And like, when you write a best seller, call Love Your Enemies. You better love your enemies. So I thought, not my enemies, but people who disagree with me, where can I go where there's a lot of people to talk to and who might hear these ideas for the very first time, couched in the language of love and affection,

of mutual brotherhood, of trying to lift each other up. And that's back in the academy I thought. And sure enough, I'm having a lot of these conversations. I'm hearing all the time and it softens me. When we're only talking to each other, I mean, the four of us, we really agree. We see the world much the same way. And I love it. It's great. It's like sustenance. It's relaxing, right? But if it's only that, then we can start talking about them who disagreed with us. Them. It's not them. It's us, you know, and so surrounding yourself with it, I think it makes you tender.

It gives you a different kind of spirit And so I have those conversations literally every day. Yeah, I feel like if you you feel so strongly about your ideas you're you should be driven by wanting to communicate them effectively to other people and there's no way you're gonna convince anybody just by I Mean what you push against only gets stronger if somebody comes up to me and calls me an idiot, I'm going to stand much stronger in my position and not want to hear what the other person has to say. You know, it's, he's making a good point. I kind of am an idiot. I should rethink everything.

No way. Never happens. Yeah. I had a client years ago who, she was so good at discussing different topics. And I asked her, I said, how did you get so good at being able to debate and discuss things? And she said, I learned the opposing view as well as my view. And she said, what happened from that was either a, I became more confident in my view, or sometimes something exciting would happen, which was, b, I changed my opinion

because I found a better answer. And I thought that was the most brilliant thing ever and that's something that I've always tried to do but I'll tell you what what you say makes a lot of sense. It's hard. Yeah, it's really really hard to discuss and debate with someone that you disagree with and and also remind yourself that they're good. They're coming from a good place. Yeah, it's a very difficult thing to do. Yeah, and you know We also have to remember that we don't have to talk all the time about the things we disagree with. And the internet culture can be very corrosive in so far as the people on social media all the time.

Always talking about controversial stuff. It gets you more clicks and so therefore it gets you more hits a dopamine. I mean, that neurotransmitter of the brain of immediate reward, like a cigarette. You know, I got, oh man, yeah, I said something really outrageous. And I got 30 likes or 3,000 likes or whatever. That's, that's, that's an addiction. And it's a very unhealthy addiction. We shouldn't be talking only about things that we disagree with on all the time. It's funny when I bring people together, Democrats and Republicans who disagree and we're going to have a hard conversation, a facilitate those conversations many times, the first thing

I'll ask them to tell each other about is their kids, right? Because that's this weird point of commonality. And you know, it's very disarming. Yeah, totally. And when you have teenagers, it's like common enemy. Yeah. That's how you're being.

And everybody's got the same problem. Everybody's got the same problem. And you know, it's a conversation based on mutual love and mutual challenge and it's fun and it's funny and they just can't hate each other or retrievalities like tax policy. I mean, I care about tax policy. I wanna get it right, but it's not as important to me

as being a father. It just isn't. I mean, it's not one of my loves. And so you talk about the important things first and create commonality based on that. And then you can get into other things as well. And I got, it's so, it's interesting. You know, when you create a culture around that, then people are just looking for ways to be more generous in their disagreements.

That's the healthiest culture of all. That's one of the things I like about the faculty at Harvard. I'm at the Kennedy School, which is the policy school. And there's this culture where you want to show all the ways that you've changed your mind. It's literally this culture is like, yeah, let me tell you tonight, well, I can now do that. I can tell you 10 ways that I've changed my mind. And that's, that's cool.

It's great. It's a culture of intellectual humility. It really creates a lot of happiness because that's that vulnerability that you can get from actually learning. And that's what we're trying to pass on to our students. That's actually where I was gonna go, I was gonna ask you, because we talk on the show a time about

paradigm shattering moments for us in the fitness space, things that we believe to be true and then later found out we're not true. What was the last paradigm shattering moment for you in your field? That's a, it's, yeah, paradigm shattering moment for me. I have become a lot less sort of stark in your field. That's a, it's, yeah, paradigm shattering moment for me. I have become a lot less sort of stark in my views about the role of government.

I have to say, I mean, I'm not, I always believe that the private sphere of human activity and initiative really has to conquer all. And then, and in point of fact, love is more important than policy. You know, I have a PhD in public policy. So I should have thought of that before I, you know, suffered through, you know, many years of schooling, but, you know, love is the 95% life and life and policy is only over the 5% margin.

But, you know, but that said, there is a role for policy in fixing things. And I think that the idea that there's something so morally inherently disordered about a policy that does something I don't like, I imbued too much of the morality to government intervention in our lives than I should have. And I'm just a lot softer on that than I was. So, there are things I don't like, but it's okay, so I don't like it. It's not the end of the world. I just, more, it's funny, because I, I've, I've public finance as an economist

that did a lot of work in public finance and tax systems. And so as if that 5% were actually the 100%, that's wrong. I've relegated it more into that 5% space. And if I disagree with somebody about the incentives that are created about tax policy, I don't worry about it nearly as much as I did before. It's like, okay, yeah, there's, there's, yeah, it might have problems. You know, who knows, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it wouldn't. So for example, you asked me about the minimum wage. You know, if you asked me 10 years ago,

I'd be like, always bad, all the time must stop now. And I'm like, well, it's actually motivated from a really good place. And small increases in the minimum wage actually have really small impacts on the labor market. And who knows, maybe the good things outweigh the bad things. That would never would have come out of my mouth.

It just wouldn't have. And part of the reason I'm older, I'm 55 years old, and so I'm less sort of manician, sort of black and white in my thinking. Most stuff isn't black and white. It just isn't, and I'm also more interested in what matters, which is love. So the more research that you've done,

the deeper that you've gotten, the more positive you've gotten, the more hopeful you've gotten. Yeah, I have to say that I get more positive and hopeful as I get older. It's, and part of it is just because scholars who are talking about bad public policy for a living, it's a kind of a stick to be permanently pissed. You know, it's like a pissed off guy, PhD.

Right? Let me tell you all the things that are wrong. And so early on in my career, I was always talking about policy, bad policy, how do you do policy design? And then when you get older, I mean, I first got tenure at a university so that you know, you can tenure means

you can kill a dude and not get fired practically. I mean, it's just like it's permanent employment and I thought to myself what is the purpose of tenure and the answer is to do things that matter more so I went through this process of trying to discern What's what are the most important issues in life? And that's when I actually my beat turned from Tax systems to love and happiness and literally turned my focus of attention as a social scientist to love and happiness on the basis that I'm still really interested in public policy, you guys have seen the documentary.

That's a lot about public policy, but fundamentally, it's about the equations of human existence, which are all about the way that we treat each other. That's softened me a lot. It's softened me the way that I talk to each other, talk to other people and appreciate their, I mean, I do debate sometimes, so I'm not very interested in just besting somebody.

You know, I kind of, I'm more want to hear what they have to say. And then see if I believe it, see whether I can work it into my own personal philosophy, I'm trying to lift people up and bring them together. I still do debates in case I got a big one in Toronto. Who are you debating? Um, uh, Verifacus, who's the old finance minister of the Socialists of Greece and Katrina Vander Hovel Who is the editor of the nation magazine and and it's a two it's a two on two debate David Brooks and I Not my brother, but same last name and David Brooks the New York Times

Callumist and I are are we are our position that Capitalism should be preserved and there is that capitalism should be abolished. And you know, I'll go into the, but the way that I'll argue it is not that socialism has subjugated millions and led people to death count. Which is true. It, yeah, I mean, as far as it goes.

But it was actually people who subjugated others and used socialism. See, this is the key. I mean, morals matter more than systems. And so the key thing I would have said 10 years ago, again, to your question is I would have said socialism kills people. No, no, people kill people. They use socialism or nationalism or anyism or monarchism or, and the truth of the matter is that we can use capitalism in a way that that subjects people to conditions that we don't think are

appropriate to. We can twist any system into something that we don't like. And so the way that I talk about capitalism now is if you've got your morals in order, if we're all brothers and sisters, and we want to lift each other up, capitalism properly understood with cooperation and without predation with proper rules, that's the best way to get people about the billions, brother. I mean, that's the best way to get people about the billions, brother. I mean, that's the best way to do it.

I mean, two billion people have been pulled out of poverty because of free enterprise since I was a kid that are not starving today or have not starved to death because of the free enterprise system. So it's a humanitarian venture. And then the only reason I care about it is because of people. That's how I'm, that's my argument. How will they argue that?

Yeah. I know. Very curious. Two and a 10. So spicy. people. That's how I'm that's my how will they argue that yeah very curious tune in at 10 something something you said that was really powerful yesterday when we watch you talk as you talked about how anger isn't the problem or nothing to really be worried about and you talked about how in marriages it's not about anger that causes divorces and anger isn't gonna cause problems in society. It's contempt. Explain that.

Yeah, contempt. So anger is a hot cognition. It's an emotion that says, I care what you think and I wanna change it. It can be very destructive because if you're out of control, you can say things that you don't believe and you can hurt another person. So anger puts you in a very vulnerable position

to do things that you don't wanna do. That's the reason that in leadership positions, you have to be very judicious about anger, never use anger because you have been threatened, only ever use anger on purpose on behalf of people who have less power than you. That's a core characteristic of how people see leaders. You're seen as weak if you use anger because you're on ego, and strong if you use it judiciously, and sparsely on behalf of other people. Okay. So that's it. But anger per se says, I care about something.

The problem is when you move that to, I don't care about you because I think you're worthless. That takes this element of disgust, the social pathogen, which it freezes it. And that turns to, so anger plus disgust equals contempt. And we do it all the time. We act as if we have contempt for people. You are worthless. There's the definition of contempt is to the conviction of the worthlessness of another person. We do that.

We have a habit of rolling our eyes, of talking with sarcasm about the thing I just heard is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard. That's a contemptuous thing to do. That literally is the most important characteristic that breaks up marriages. So anger and divorce on coral letters, you just correctly pointed out contempt is what leads to divorce. And that's from the best research on this.

What did Godman say? The statistics on that was like 90 or 80 something. What's one of the things he could say? He could predict it with 97% accuracy within five minutes of counseling a couple. That's crazy. Yeah, and he looks for eye rolling. Eye rolling. You know, it's like, and so they're talking, you're talking about something with your wife that is contentious. And whatever it is, you know, the kids or money or, you know, you're on a

town all the time or something. And if when she says something that you think is wrong or at least, or maybe you think it's right, but you don't want to deal with it. You shut it down, but you always say that. And it's always the same with you. That is to say, what you're about to say is not right. It's not worth hearing. And when you say that to the person that to whom you owe love and respect,

that's like saying you are worthless. It's almost like it lights up and illuminates the same part of the brain as physical abuse. And they know this from FMRI machines when you are, there are a bunch of cognitions that are non-physical that illuminate the brain in the same way as physical pain. And you're doing that, you treat somebody with contempt.

It's like they experience the equivalent of physical pain. Well, no wonder it's gonna repel them. That's what drives people apart. The problem is, no, the opportunity, there aren't any problems. The opportunity is that that's not how you feel. It's basically you feel threatened, and so therefore you're nuking it with contempt. And so that's what actually breaks marriage

as a part of mutual contempt. But it's basically a smoke screen for, I love you and I don't want this pain. And so I'm acting in this particular way. So John Gottman, the greatest expert in the literature on marital reconciliation, he brings couples back together again by just simply helping them to remember and express what's really written on their hearts. And so when you're angry, angry, angry, angry, don't let it turn into an expression of contempt. So I just, I love you.

I just love you. And it doesn't come out naturally, but it gets easier and easier. It's easier. Oh, yeah. And you know, it's funny, you know, my wife is Spanish. And that's an anger culture. It's a love culture too.

And she's just, she's willing when we're just really, really going hammer in tongs. She's just willing to say, I love you so much. It's magic. It's magic. And it's really, and if all of us can, we, if we master that, if we're willing to, to master ourselves to go against these feelings of, of contempt, which are stimulated by a part of the brain called the nucleus of Cumbins, that's the reward center that governs all habits. And we say, no, no, no, I will not be your slave. I'm gonna stop when I feel that contempt,

and I'm gonna do the opposite no matter how I feel. You'll ingrain new habits. It's a huge source of power. Well, to that point, and since we went the direction of love like that, I think it's so important that you touch on, I think the misconception of love, so many people mistake it as a feeling when it's really an active will, right? Absolutely.

It's a discipline. You know, and a lot of people who, it's funny because I know a lot of people who are very, very disciplined about their physical routines. I mean, it's like, for 45, ding, ding, ding, I'm up out of bed, right? I'm making a shake. I'm going to the gym. I know what day it is I've got routines. I get it done. I don't rest more than one day a week whatever, right? And yet they have no discipline over themselves in other areas of their lives that are gonna be the difference between the success and their failure between their happiness and their unhappiness between

the success of relationships or the disaster that's happening all around them They can't figure out that you need to have the same discipline when it comes to your psychological and your emotional hygiene that you do with your workout routines. If something is, there's all kinds of things that we want to do. I mean, my bed is warm at 4.45 in the morning, right? I mean, pizza's tasty. I mean, it's like, but you say yes to the first and no to the second. Well, the same thing is true when you have impulses. Your psychological impulses that tell you if it feels good, do it. That is insanity. That's a, you know, you're a useful idiot.

I mean, if it feels good, do it might be some good way to pass on your genes in the very near term, but is absolutely not the secret of happiness and good relationships and bringing harmony to life and being a successful person. Just not the way. You could even argue that getting up part is and going to the gym when you don't want it. That's an act of love for yourself by doing that and not supporting that. Right.

It is with other people. I think Adam said in terms of not being a feeling, I think a lot of us think, this person, I don't feel the love for, no, no, no, it's an act of will. To will the good of the other, St. Thomas Aquinas defined love as to will the good of the other. Nothing about to feel the good of anything. I mean, that sentimentality is a disaster. It's the road to perdition.

You're just not gonna be successful in the business of love. And another way to think of it is to will the good of the other as other. Like, what's best for Adam? I wanna fight for that. That's love, that's friendship, that's real brotherhood, right? And that means you got, I mean, that's gritty, man. That takes strength, that takes discipline,

and it also gets easier with reps, like anything else. And so remembering that's really quite critical. I mean, you can think about it. How do we, I mean, how long have you, saw how long you've been married? Oh, I was married for 15 years. Now, I'm not anymore. I'm not anymore.

It's been about two years. It's been about two years since you had forced. And, you know, the long and happy marriages are based on this on acts of will and acts of discipline, right? Oh, yeah hindsight 2020. I mean understanding and learning this looking back I can clearly see all the mistakes that I made during that period of time. Well, I love the The Gottman's five to one rule. I mean, I think how many how many relationships and not just like married I think you know friendships and just encounters if you were to practice that every time you feel that way to sit down and write five positive

things or things that you really appreciate about that person before you get to the criticism. For sure. Adam, you're talking about, you know, God must fight a one role is it every time, repair a relationship, you have to not say the critical thing first. And so the way that he does it, he makes these couple of walk around with notebooks that are in counseling. And they want to say something nasty to each other. Fine, right now. You can't say it until you say five beautiful things first. Now, there's a lot of literature that suggests that for Americans, it takes five compliments to actually to balance one criticism.

In Korean, Japan is two to one because of different cultures, right? They can take more credit more cultures of constructive criticism but in the United States we're all complimenting each other I said I did your jack you look great because you're awesome the show is awesome everything's awesome more but it's like you need criticism it's who's not enough I'm so injured I'm so interested so anyway so with and with couples is particularly the case and so if you do five you you got to say five beautiful loving things which by the the way, there are five things. And it's more than five to one,

I think about my relationship with my wife. It's like a hundred day with a marrieder, if that was the case, right? I'm 28 years, I'm completely in love. I'm complete, it's like the first day. It's just that I don't act that way. I act, I'm a jerk, I'm undisciplined, I'm being subjugated by my own feelings, or like,

I'm insecure, I'm tired, or whatever. And you know, I came home from work the other day, and I had a really rough day. I mean, it was like, I had lectured for six hours, and I had a bunch of meetings, and there's problems, and the whole thing I got home, and you know, my wife is late, and she's like, she was your dinner, and I'm like, I don't want it. And she looked at me like, what's wrong with you? What is, were you raised by wolves? I made you dinner and you turned it down. And I thought it was pure petrol in some of my part.

It was like a two year old kid. No, no, man, it's like my wife, the love of my life made me dinner. I should be like, thank you sweetheart. This is like you're making my day. And it's because I was forgetting that. I was forgetting that. And so once you get to the,

Godman says, right now in the five beautiful things before you're gonna get to the nasty gram, and you're not gonna get to the nasty gram because you build up this reserve of love and you don't feel the nasty part anymore. It's just a question of discipline. Yeah, no, you know, this conversation about about how anger's okay. Love is well. I mean,

it's funny. We were on the way home after listening to you speak and on the way back to the hotel, I should say. And in our business, you know, mind pump, behind the scenes, we have big argument, blow out conversations. He did. And he did debates all the time over the business. I mean, you know, we've gotten into it and it's the last part and it's But at the end of it it's there is no contempt We respect and value each other and we know we want to go in the same place and it works It works every time and people say how can you guys all be partners and you all such strong personality? That's like because we all comes from that it comes from love. Yeah, yeah, no, that's how good partnerships work

That's how friendships work, ultimately. It's a funny thing for guys, however. And this is one of the things that, and so you guys are all 30s. I just turned 40. Close 40 in January. You guys are all turning 40. 38, 39, 40. Yeah, man. Yeah, that's great. Why is not bad? Why is not bad? Great. Why is not bad? Why is not bad? Why is not bad?

I know it feels a little weird, but I'm 55. It is harder to keep mass on. It is harder and harder. I was actually walking the Camino de Santiago this last summer. This is this long spiritual walk across Northern Spain. That's in the, you know, that martenshin movie the way. Yeah, yeah. That's what I was doing the last summer.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. Everybody's got to do it. It's unbelievable. Change your life forever, right? But here's the problem. Yeah, yeah. That's what I was doing in the last summer. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Everybody's got to do it. It's unbelievable. Change your life forever, right? But here's the problem with no gym. And so, and what I'm doing is I'm walking 30K a day. No lifting. And no lifting.

And practically not eating is like, holy cow. And this last week I lost 10 pounds. All mass. It's like, I'm already, you know, it's thin. I'm like, you know, stick man to begin with with and so anyway, so anyway, my point is that, well, my point. We were talking about the cargo. Oh, the problem with the friendship.

So I look at, there are really four accounts you got to put your energies into every day to be the happiest person you can be. Don't worry about your baseline mood because 50% of your happiness is genetic. And your baseline mood is based on your genes fundamentally. So if you're kind of a gloomy person, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. If you're a happy person, lucky you, but don't take credit for it. And then a quarter of your happiness is largely circumstantial.

It's like, oh, or I'm super happy right now. We got 1.9 million downloads on MindPomp Awesome. You know, the Arthur Brooks episode broke all records, you know. Right? And it'd be fantastic. And we'll all be soon to have that circumstantial. Right? But the 25% that you can affect has four elements.

You got to put a deposit in four accounts per day. Your faith, and that does not necessarily mean my faith. I mean, if it were, I would tell you, I mean, I'm a Catholic, I'm a practicing Catholic, I take it seriously, I love it. But the data show that a transcendental philosophy, something bigger than you, that's not just the here and now, something that's more important than you,

that's really other focus that has, you know, love for something bigger than you. That's hugely important. The transcendental. So I just call it faith for short. Family, friendship, and work. And work has to have two elements. It has to be sanctified.

It has to have, I feel like I'm earning my success, and I feel like I'm serving others. That's why you guys are so happy about your work, by the way, because this thing is getting, you're earning, you're saying, yeah, I built this thing into succeeded. Achievement, you know, accomplishment, reward, and you're serving other people. I mean, I know you can guarantee it. I'm a guy sitting around the table with you guys. You have served me and made my life better. This is, and so that's still rewarding. The problem that guys year age and especially my age, I'm 15 years older

you guys, is friendship. We have this undiversified portfolio. And when you're in college or in high school, your friends come real easy because, you know, we're good at friendships, you know? Bros, it's great, right? But we get worse and worse and worse and worse at it. We get married, we have children. You don't hang out with your buddies

because that's stealing from your family. Friendship requires practice. It's a skill and your wife gets better and better at friendship. And so by the time your wife is 55 or 60, she's got tons of friends and you're, you don't have any. And so 60% of six year old men

say their best friend is her wife. 30% of their wives say their best friend is her husband. Contemplate those statistics. Wow, it's the story of unrequited love in a big way. It's very important that we recognize that what you guys are doing, this is not a business partnership, that's ancillary what's really going on. You guys are brothers and you have a friendship and you're cultivating a relationship of love, understanding that if you don't have disagreements, it just means that the partnership isn't right.

I mean, you have to have disagreements. You have a competition of ideas, but fundamentally, the friendship, the bones, the scaffolding around this thing is one of love. The advantage that you guys have because of this business is by the time you get to 55 or 60, no matter what you're doing for a living, you will have stayed in practice for friendship.

And people listening to us, the guys who are lifting a loan in the gym right now, and they're gonna go to work, and they're gonna work, they're gonna bust their pick all day. And then you say, be a good citizen, a good worker, and highly sociable,

and then come home, and there's kids, and hi, honey, and they don't have real friendships. That's gotta stop. That is a big mistake, because you're not gonna be putting anything in that account, and that's got to stop. That is a big mistake, because you're not going to be putting anything in that account, and that's like the same baseball and unforced error.

You're just simply not going to be as happy as you should be if you don't actually start fixing that. Dr. Brooks, this has been phenomenal. Yeah, absolutely phenomenal. And to find out that you're a big fan of our show, it's got to come to the point. So I'm going to have you in our place. I would love to see your place in San Jose with the big comfy couches. And I've seen the pictures of our show. You've got to come to the show, I'm fine. You've got to have you in our place. I would love to see your place

as I was able to say with the big, you know, comfy couches. Yes. And I've seen the pictures of you guys. And I love the show. It's a huge service and it's really fun and it's really interesting. And I'm really glad that you're successful.

Thank you. Because it shows that capitalism works. It shows that our values matter and it shows that quality is rewarded. So I'm going to keep listening. And again, I'm in this transition point of 55. I need maps quality is rewarded so I'm gonna keep listening and and again I'm in this transition point of 55. I need maps at a ball You're doing great work man keep doing what you're doing. You're I think you're changing

Lives and minds and just keep doing it. God bless you guys Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com.

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