Modern Wisdom - #770 - David Brooks - Why Is Everyone So Emotionally Detached?

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times and an author. We’re often told to control our emotions, but is that actually what we want? Or do we want to be confident enough to feel them fully? Instead of becoming too detached, how can we reconnect with our feelings and actually embrace our experience and connections? Expect to learn why men have been conditioned to be so emotionally cut-off, why being stoic or aloof is perceived to be attractive, why so many people are repressed, how to accurately see people and make them feel comfortable, how to open up without triggering your fear, how to improve the energy you enter a room with and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code MW10) Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Get an exclusive discount from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is David Brooks. He's a columnist for the New York Times and an author. We're often told to control our emotions, but is that actually what we want? Or do we want to be confident enough to feel them fully? Instead of becoming too detached, how can we reconnect with our feelings

and actually embrace our experience and connections? Expect to learn why men have been conditioned to be so emotionally cut off, why being stoic or aloof is perceived to be attractive, why so many people are repressed, how to accurately see others and make them feel comfortable, how to open up without triggering your fear, how to improve the energy you enter a room with, and much more. This book is like, it's perfectly written for me at the stage of life that I'm in right now where I'm trying to integrate emotions, where I'm trying to actually feel feelings,

where I'm trying to embrace bits of me that I was worried about before, that I was fearful of before, that I was ashamed about before and David's arc and his insights here are really cool. If you're someone that's trying to become more emotionally integrated, to understand yourself better, to be able to relate to other people, this is phenomenal and I really hope that you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. You want to look good and feel good when you're in the gym

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and using the code MW20 at checkout. That's nomadic.com slash modern wisdom and MW20 at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. Protect your browsing online and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. If you are using the internet without a VPN, you are basically dancing in a muddy field without any shoes on. It is not good for you. If you use a public Wi-Fi network like a library or a cafeteria, the internet admin can see all of the data going back and forth between your computer and the internet, plus your internet service provider is tracking everything that you look at and then selling

your information to companies who will target you with ads on what you browse. Also, it means that you can't access the entire world's Netflix library and you can't use services like HBO Max or Amazon Prime when you're abroad. All of this is fixed by Surfshark VPN. It is available across unlimited devices so it protects and gives you access on your laptop, your iPad, your phone and even your smart TV. Plus there is a 30-day money-back guarantee and an 83% discount with 3 months free. All of that is available if you go to surfshark.deals.com slash modern wisdom. That's surfshark.deals slash modern wisdom. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Brooks. There's a lot of people in the world who find something I think attractive about being stoic or aloof or rational or cynical, emotions don't really get much room or honor.

Yeah, I used to be that guy. So I'm going to tell you a quick story. I love baseball and I've been to a thousand baseball games and I've never caught a foul ball. So about 10 years ago, I'm at Camden Yards with my son and the batter loses control of the bat, it flies into the air, lands in my lap in the stands. So I've got a bat and getting a bat is a thousand

times better than getting a ball. And so any normal human being is holding his trophy up in the air, high fiving everybody, hugging, getting on the jumbotron. I put the bat at my feet and stare straight ahead. Like I have the emotional at my feet and stare straight ahead. Like I have the emotional reaction of the turtle. And I, I look back on that guy and I think, show a little joy.

And I was, uh, through the early part of my life, even when I was four, my nursery school teacher apparently told my parents, David doesn't really play with the other kids. He just watches them. Which I guess is good for a career in journalism, but it's just an emotionally detached way of living. And I found it, um, that I was, I had emotions, but they were, I was a little, they were strangers to me and there was certainly no highway between my heart

and my mouth, so I couldn't express them. Uh, and I just found it a cold, uh, lonely, lonely, and detached way of living. And so I've sat on a journey for 10 years to become a little more emotionally vulnerable, a little more emotionally available and little less of a complete emotional idiot. What do you think compels people to not feel feelings? I think a group in a certain culture where feel feelings are not acceptable, especially if they're guys. Two, fear.

Feelings are sort of hard to control. Fear of vulnerability, desire for mastery. If you can reduce the world to systems and logical systems, then it's a world you can control. And people are just afraid of intimacy. I mean, the thing we want most in the world is to be seen in our fullness. The thing we fear most in the world is to be seen in our fullness. And so it's terrifying to open yourself up to people.

And I found moments of real, you know, scariness because, you know, who knows how much to reveal, who knows. It's scary to face yourself, But, you know, over the years I've become better at it, I think, and I've come to just totally appreciate this way of life. I was at a conference about two years ago in Nantucket, and we're at some venue and the speaker passes out these sheets of paper, and on each sheet of paper is lyrics to a love song. And the speaker tells us, find a stranger, stare into their eyes and sing the love song into their eyes.

And if you'd asked me to do that 10 years ago, I would have spontaneously combusted, but, uh, but I did it. And I'm, I wouldn't want to do that every day, but, um, I'm glad to be a little more loose than I used to be. Yeah. Describing the desire for mastery, control, uh, fear, uh, lack of safety around expressing emotions, if I managed to get you in the first statement, then you've managed to get me in that one because it's just, uh, I'm in therapy at the moment

properly for the first time and dude, it's so hard. Like it's fucking rough. And because you're no longer able to hide all of the things that you have. Glossed over with competence and achievement and reputation and, uh, willful ignorance or, or, or negligence or coping strategies or whatever it might be. And, you know, I'm like, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not dependent on it. Like it's, I'm not coping in any extravagant way other than all of my mental faculties trying to

come together to not have me be in a situation where I'm not in control. Must be in control. Always me. I'm the guy. I'm the one that's got the competent, I know the plan, I know the itinerary, this is what's going to happen and so on and so forth. And then you step into a relationship, like a therapeutic relationship, or one way you see somebody else deeply, or they see you, and it's not as predictable. You don't, you don't know where it's going to go. You don't really know what you're going to say.

The sentences that you say aren't always tied up with some nice bow. They don't come into land gently. Sometimes they nose dive and crash. Sometimes they bail out and you just lose them. And you're like, well, why did that aeroplane go? And you don't know. Yeah. Well, every relationship writer involves a loss of control.

If you want to get married, have a good friend, you're putting your heart in the hands of another and that person has the power to really hurt you. So I think it's important to be skilled at this process. I tell my students, my college students, one of the most important decisions you're going to make is who to marry. The studies show that the quality of your marriage is four times more important than the quality of your career to make, to how happy you are. Uh, and so you, you should spend a lot of time having boyfriends and girlfriends.

You get in practice. Now I had a therapist tell me, um, that therapy is story editing, that people come to her, uh, because their story, the story they tell themselves about their life isn't working. And her job is to go back over and over life and get, help people find a more accurate story. I don't know if that resonates with, with your experience.

Yeah, certainly in, in part. And that's also a problem, right? That you think or you thought that you knew how the, the arc of you worked. I know where I began. I know where I was. I know where I was. I know where I am now. And, oh, isn't that nice and smooth? It's like this sort of wonderful idea.

And then you go, well, if that's the story that's true, why does this thing exist? And why does that thing exist? And why is that here? And why do I have that thought? And why do I cope with people in that particular way? Why have I got this particular pathology or dependency or thought pattern or loop or whatever.

And that very much kind of starts to tarnish this lovely, smooth round ball that you've created, which is the narrative. And then you try and roll it and it sort of jangles along a little bit and you go, yeah, fuck that. I don't think there's, and the other, the other reason, the main reason for me is that I just kept, I kept on seeing the same patterns come up in my personal relationships and the way that I deal with my business in how I feel when I record the podcast sitting in discomfort, especially emotionally, displeasing

people, um, a lot of these things. And I was like, If the same problems continue to show up in your life, the problems aren't the problem. You are the problem. And it was the same things. And I just don't like, there's this really phenomenal quote I took from Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True.

And he says, it's a quote from Ken P Rinpoche. He says, ultimately happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of our mental afflictions and the discomfort of becoming ruled by them. And for me, I want to be aware of every single one of them. I want to know all the dark corners. It's like this morbid curiosity about the dark corners of yourself. Uh, and that's good. It makes you grow.

But on the other side, it pushes you into sort of difficult places. And yeah, this sort of, you know, bowing at the, the feet of cerebral horsepower and cognitive effort and rationality and we're going to optimize. And which I'm a massive fan. I've done a series called life hacks on this podcast, but it can pull you away from, okay, and what are we here for? Like, are you here to just complete your to-do list and die or the option that you have of the experience of being an experiencing machine, like you can feel

a thing, the phenomenon of being alive and being sad or happy or elated or in dread or whatever, but you get to feel that and that's kind of color. Yeah, one of my heroes is a guy named Frederick Beechner, a novelist, and when he was nine, his dad committed suicide and his mom didn't even stick around for the funeral. She just took her kids and they split her Bermuda. And so he never had a chance to mourn,

never had a chance to have any kind of closure. He just walled himself off. And he walled himself off for the first 35 years of his life, until he realized that if you close yourself off from the hazards of the world, you're closing yourself off from what he said was the holy sources of life itself. And you know, our greatest joys are relationships, and that involves that level of emotional openness and vulnerability. I'm recording this. I'm sitting here on my dining room table at home and I was sitting here about two years ago at this very table and my wife walks in the front door, which is over to my right, and she's standing there. The door is open. It's summertime and the light is coming in behind her

there, the door's open, it's summertime and the light is coming in behind her. And she just pauses in the doorway and she doesn't notice I'm there. Cause that's the kind of charisma I have. And so she, her eyes rest on an orchid, which we keep by the table. And I look at her and I say to myself, this thought comes to my consciousness. I really know her. I know her through and through. And if you'd asked me to describe what I knew about her

at that moment, it wasn't like the traits of her personality or career or anything she'd achieved. It was sort of the whole ebb and flow of her being. Just the harmonies of her music, the incandescence of her personality, the occasional flashes of fierceness, the way she sees the world. It wasn't as if I was like, I wasn't only seeing her, I was almost as if I was seeing out from her.

And when I think of the how I was observing her at that moment, I wasn't like inspecting her. I was just the only word in English language I could think of is I was beholding her. I was just like, it's a warm, appreciative gaze. And it was a great feeling because it's someone you really know and love. And you've, you've built this relationship through the trials and tribulations of any relationship. And you have these moments of just joyous encounter.

And a couple of weeks after it happened, I told it to two older friends of mine. And they said, yeah, that's how we look at our grandkids. We just behold them. And so I would find, I found the highest and the lowest points in my life have involved relationships. And so, you know, I mentioned I've tried to loosen myself up. I've become a lot more joyous. I've also become a lot sadder. So I used to be like Mr. Steady Eddie. And so I'm not, when you touch this piece of yourself, you're almost making yourself, um, uh, dependent upon your own heart, which you don't really control and you don't really understand it and it does all sorts of

crazy shit, uh, and, um, but it, it's living, it's living. I often think about, you know, the Overton window, the concept of an Overton window. So, um, I guess an interquartile range that sits within all speech of acceptable speech, and I kind of think about the way that we experience emotions and comfort and discomfort, especially in the modern world, as kind of like that. We have a personal Overton window within which we, and some people have it up here and you go, oh my God, they're so fiery and they're so depressed and they're so

happy and they're so sad, you know, and at the absolute extreme, that's manic. Um, well, actually, you know, that's the, that they just have not to 25 and 75 to 100. They just, they don't have the middle section. Um, and I, I know precisely what you mean. And this is, I'm going to talk to Ryan Holliday about this the next time that he comes on,

you know, this whole sort of stoicism movement, a massive fan of it, Art of Resilience by Ross Edgeley, Ryan's book, Ego is the Enemy, Obstacles the Way, both been really formative for me. I think that appeals to a lot of people because it protects them. Some parts of that philosophy, if you don't go the whole way appeal, because it sounds like I can armor myself against the world, but I think you also army yourself against the beauty of the world as well. And I think what you're talking about there is like, if you're going to crack

yourself open, you will feel highs, but you're also going to feel lows. Um, yeah, there's a therapist have a phrase, um, some people need tightening and some people need loosening. Uh, and some people who are manic, they need tightening. I needed loosening. Uh, and so that was my process. But the problem, my, one of my problems was stoicism and I too have great admiration for it, uh, in general, but one of the great myths of Western civilization is that reason is separate from emotion and that if you're more, it's like a teeter totter, the more rational you are, the less emotional you are. That is a complete myth. There's a neuroscientist at USC named Antonio de Mazio, and he studied people who couldn't feel emotion. They'd had lesions in their brains,

and so they literally could not process emotion. You could show them the most horrific images. They had no reaction. And so were these people super smart Mr. Spock's? No, their life fell apart because what emotions do is they assign value to things. And they tell you, are you moving toward your goals? Are you moving away from your goals? And if you can't assign values to things, then you can't rationally calculate because you have no criteria upon which to make a decision.

And so Demasio, one of Demasio's patients, uh, couldn't process emotion. And so Demasio said to him, you know, do you want to come back next Tuesday or Wednesday? Well, what would be better? And the guy spent 30 minutes on the advantages of Tuesday and the advantages of Wednesday and Demasio calls his team over and they just watch the guy think it through. He can't render a decision because he has no

emotional valuation process. And so finally, Demasio said, how about Wednesday? And the guy said, fine. Uh, and so you're not, you're not going to be able to make a decision. You're not going to be can't render a decision because he has no emotional valuation process. And so finally, an Amazigh who said, how about Wednesday? And the guy said, fine. Uh, and so you're not thinking, you're not

turning Mr. Spock is a myth. Uh, humans need emotions and intelligent emotions on which to think rationally. And there's a neuroscientist named Lisa Feldman Barrett in Northeastern, who has a concept of emotional granularity. Some kids, they can't distinguish one emotion from another. So if you take a toy away from the kid,

the toy will scream, I hate you, mom, because the kid doesn't understand that there's been hate and anger. I'm angry with you, mom. And some of Barrett's patients, they can't tell the difference between anxiety and depression, even though anxiety is an upstate

and depression is a downstate. They just don't have what she calls the granularity to distinguish. But some people are emotional geniuses and they can tell the distinction between all sorts of emotions that are adjacent to one another, stress, anxiety, impatience, frustration. And they can clearly understand, they just have a finer tuned understanding of what they're feeling. And that's just a very helpful thing to have in life to know that you're feeling stressed, but not

frustration or whatever it is. And so it's, it's, I urge people to educate their emotions through reading literature and things like that. The going to plays is a fantastic way to educate your emotions and experiencing other cultures. Like lots of cultures have names for emotions. We don't have, um, the, the French have a name for, uh, I was, I walked on a,

I was taking a hike near a cliff and I don't trust myself not to throw myself off. Like that's an emotion. Somebody told me, I've never been able to check this out that the Danes have an emotion for, I feel badly for you because you just showed too much emotion in public, like that's one of their emotions. I feel badly for you because you just showed too much emotion in public. Like that's one of their emotions. Wow. I mean, that should be a British word.

That should add this sort of a second order, uh, like proxy cringe for someone else. There's a, there's a word in German that describes the sensation that migratory birds feel when they are prevented from migrating. Wow. That's a good word. I should say the culture of my family. I grew up in this Jewish home in New York and I always say, if you saw that

movie Fiddler on the Roof, you know how emotional warm and huggy Jewish families can be in, I grew up in the other kind of Jewish family. And so the phrase in our culture was think Yiddish act British. And so we were very stiff upper was think Yiddish act British. And so we were very stiff up really preserved. Yes, yes. Um, just rounding out what we spoke about the, this, uh, blending of. Rationality and, you know, a lot of people, myself included in a lot of the audience will love their capacity for executive function.

You know, they like the mastery and the competence that they feel about being able to make stuff happen in the world. They're not an emotional mass. They're not going through each day just at the mercy of whatever comes inside swipes them, but they also want to feel life more richly. How have you or other people learned to bring this balance in? Yeah, I found it just by getting closer to people every step of the way. Uh, and so I now, one of the things I have a friend named Nick Epley teaches

at the University of Chicago and he was commuting to his office and because he's a psychologist, he understands the things people enjoy most is talking to other people and so he's on the comm he understands the things people enjoy most is talking to other people. And so he's on the commuter train and he's looking around and he says, nobody's talking to each other. They're all on their screens. And so he pays them for about a month, find a stranger on the train and talk to them. And then he interviews them later and everybody, introverts and extroverts, say, this has been

a great ride, much better than looking at my screen. And people just take pleasure from each other. introverts and extroverts say this has been a great ride, much better than looking at my screen. And people just take pleasure from each other. And so I found the skill of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen is a skill that is a natural emotional education. And so for example, one of the things I try to do is make every conversation, not every conversation,

but a lot of conversations, memorable conversations. And the quality of your conversations is determined in part by the quality of your listening skills and how good you are at the skill of conversation. And so I asked conversation experts, give me some pointers on how to get better. And these are things like treat attention as an on-off switch, not a dimmer.

Like if you're gonna be with someone, give them a hundred percent attention or zero percent, but not 60%. Don't be a topper. If you say, oh, I just had this horrible flight. I, we were on the tarmac for two hours. My instinct is to say, yeah, I know exactly where you're going through.

I had a terrible flight. We were on the tarmac for six hours. And it sounds like I'm trying to relate, but what I'm really trying to do is let's turn attention away from your inferior experiences and onto my superior experiences. So don't be a topper. Be a loud listener. I have a buddy who when you talk to him, it's like talking to a Pentecostal church.

He's like, yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh, amen, amen, preach. And I love talking to that guy. And you don't have to use all those sounds. You can just nod. You can like show you're really into the conversation. And so you have deeper conversations. And the most important conversation, conversational skill is the ability to ask good questions.

I sometimes leave a party and I think, you know, that whole time, nobody asked me a question. And so I've come to think that like 30 or 40% of humanity are question askers and the rest are nice people, but they're just not curious about you. And so like when I meet somebody, I start them off, sometimes I always ask about their childhood.

People love to talk about their childhood. And then when I get to know somebody and there's some trust has been established, I ask slightly bigger questions. Like I asked a guy once, what's your favorite unimportant thing about you? And it turns out this guy who's a scholar and a theologian, he loves watching reality TV, trashy TV.

He's like, that's my favorite reality thing. And I told him, yeah, my favorite unimportant thing about me is I like early Taylor Swift better than later Taylor Swift. So like it's unimportant, but it's a thing. Um, and then as you really get to know somebody, you ask questions that they don't have the answers to about themselves, but if they think about it, they can come up with an answer.

So if the next five years is a chapter in your life, what's this chapter about? If we met a year from now, what would we be celebrating? What would you do if you weren't afraid? I had a friend who was being interviewed for a job and at the end of the interview, he turned to the interviewer and said, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And she started crying because she wouldn't be doing HR for that company, but she's afraid to leave. And so these are questions that are just big

questions. And then there's a guy named Peter Block who asked really deep questions. You really have to know somebody well to ask this question, but it's like, what commitment have you made that you no longer believe in? What skill do you currently have? What are your skills that you're not going to Peter Block asked really deep questions. You really have to know somebody well to ask this question, but it's like, what commitment have you made that you no longer believe in?

Uh, what skill do you currently hold in exile? What talent do you have that you're not using? And so, you know, these are questions that get you to explore. I was at a dinner party and I asked the group, how do your ancestors show up in your life? Like we're all affected by our heritage, by our ancestors. And so there was a Dutch family couple at the table and they talked about Dutch heritage.

There was a black couple. They talked about African-American experience. I talked about 5,000 years of Jewish history. And it was fun. It was just fun. And we had to sort of figure it out together. How do our ancestors show up in our life? And we learned about each other

and we learned about ourselves. I'm not sure how familiar you are with British culture. And I don't know how much this ports across elsewhere. It can't be non, but it's very strong in, in the UK. There is a, um, like a lack of earnestness, especially amongst young people. Um, and I always struggled. I always used to, I like being honest. I have to work harder to be like playful or silly

or whatever. And maybe part of that's because I want to be seen as intellectually or academically sophisticated. And there's something about not, it's like, oh, that's not what someone of a good academic standing would say, or that's not someone who's insightful would do things. So I'm like both learning to loosen up whilst doing that.

But yeah, I remember a lot of the time there's a term banter in the UK, which is not the same as just crack back and forth. It's usually this sort of jibbing, jibbing, usually sardonic sort of cutting back and forth between often guys, but girls probably have it too. And I found that that actually shut down my ability to open up because I think a lot of the time I wanted to have a deeper conversation about things, but if you tried to do that in the wrong context, you get burned because it's that gay. Like who says that?

And that, what does that teach you? And I'm not going to lay my like performative autist emotional retardation at the feet of like my British culture. Queen Elizabeth. Yeah, exactly. Damn you. Um, but I, you know, you've got your predisposition, you've got your fears that come about naturally from not wanting to be too open or vulnerable,

you've got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then culture washes on top. And yeah, again, so much that you've just said there is something that I've learned through the show, which your episode 760 or something like that in six years. So I've had a lot of time talking to people and it's interesting what you said about the, mm-hmm, yeah, keep hmm. Yeah. Keep going.

The power of a nod is so insane and people can go back and listen to the first ever episode I did on the show. And it's, it's painful because I wasn't able to give a nonverbal confirmation that I was still paying attention because I hadn't learned the power of a nod. And then I watched a bunch of Oprah and there's even a meme about Oprah where she has like different categories of nods. And there's like the, yes, I'm still listening nod. And there's the, Ooh, that's interesting nod.

And then there's the, Hmm, yes, that must've been difficult nod. Like, you know, there's all of this different repertoire. And for a conversation like this, where a lot of people just listen, you don't want to interject. You want the person to just keep going, they're in their flow, but you want them to know that you're still paying attention. But when you do it in person, it really works as well. You get people to be, you know, their sentences are 50% longer because they know that you're just there nodding away. So I feel

like I might get my editor to look at all of the non-me angles of episodes and try and create this glossary of different nods that I've got. But yeah, nonverbal. Yep. Continue to nod. I'm here with you. I see what you're saying. It did a, and then the topping thing.

I really wanted to bring this up to you. I've been excited to bring this up since I knew that you were coming on. Sean Strickland and Theo von had a conversation. Sean's a UFC champion. Theo's a comedian. Sean has a really difficult emotional moment where he's, he's really, really, really grasping, sort of crying, shaking. He's got this bottle of water in his hand.

This bottle sort of shaking all over the place. And Theo says, it's okay, buddy. We don't need to talk. I can just sit here for a while if you want. And it's like the most insane. It's the most you it's like David Brooks synthesized into a sentence. Like this most recent book of yours synthesized into a sentence. Doesn't try and one up him, doesn't try and rip him out of it, doesn't try and say stop, doesn't minimize, doesn't try and...

I once had this thing or whatever, and he just holds space for this guy. And it's phenomenal. And, uh, Charlie Hooper, one of my friends did an amazing breakdown and I watched it. And it just, yeah, between your book therapy, that video, I'm just like, I'm, I'm all in, I'm all in on feeling feelings. Yeah. I know that I used to think wisdom was like the ability to be like Yoda to say smart maxims now I think it's the ability to receive the stories

that people are telling you in a way that holds space for them. I had a student named Jillian Sawyer. I had her as a grad student. When she was in college, her dad got pancreatic cancer. And so he died after college. And she was then invited to become bridesmaid of a friend of hers.

And so she's a bridesmaid at the wedding. And she watches the father of the bride give her this beautiful toast to his daughter. And then it comes time for the father daughter dance. And Jillian thinks, I just can't take this. I'm just going to go to the ladies room and have a cry. And so she goes to the ladies room, has a cry, comes out in a few minutes.

And every single person at her table and joining the Jason table was standing in the hallway and she said, they, they didn't try to validate my grief. They didn't say a word, just all of them in succession gave me a quick hug. Even the new boyfriends who I knew less well, and it was exactly what I needed. And that's just the art of presence. boyfriends who I knew less well, and it was exactly what I needed. And that's just the art of presence. I have another friend, an old friend who lost a daughter in Afghanistan. And I said, like, how do I talk to you about that?

Like, what, what do I say? And she said, some people don't want to raise Anna with me because they think they're bringing up a bad subject, but they should know that Anna is always on my mind. And so you should raise her. And if I feel like talking about her, I will. If I don't, I won't.

But you're not introducing a bad subject to me. So that's just being present. And then she had another daughter who had a horrible bike accident and she was nursing her to health. And she said, you know what was the best thing that happened to me that a friend did for us? They came and they brought a casserole or whatever. And then they went to the bathroom and while they

were in the bathroom, they noticed, um, there was no shower mat. And so they went out to Target, they bought a shower mat and they put it in and they didn't even tell me, and it was just like a practical thing that I needed done. And so sometimes you can be a profound friend, not by having the deep heart to heart conversation with your friends, but by having a conversation They didn't even tell me. And it was just like a practical thing that I needed done.

And so sometimes you can be a profound friend, not by having the deep heart heart conversation, just by the mere act of presence. If this is so important, why are we not all doing it already? Why are we not seeing other people deeply if the rewards are as great as you say? Yeah, if somebody's culturally diminished in British culture, I mean, I think we built up defenses because it is vulnerable and it is a little scary. And I know British culture reasonably. I remember I used to watch the show. I don't know if it's still on called Have I Got News For You? And the people on that show were so quick and so funny,

a spontaneous wit. And I think British culture doesn't get enough credit for being a very comically gifted culture. People are just genuinely funny. But it does become a defense mechanism. And I've seen it again and again and again. It becomes a way. So there's that cultural thing.

And then, you know, we evolved to live in bands of 150 people when you, and you really got to know people, I'm assuming in, you know, 100 gatherer bands. Uh, now we, we live with lots of like hundreds and hundreds of people. It's much easier to slide by and do the surface aloof thing and just sort of like cheery bonhomie. Second, getting to know someone takes time and

I'm trying to be a very efficient person. And I've got a little clock in my head so that when somebody, when I'm, I pull over the gas station to pump gas in my tank, I'm thinking, oh, I got 90 seconds here. I can get two emails done. And if you could, you have that clock in your head, then the, the patience of building a relationship just doesn't seem worth it.

Like when I leave a party, I leave in like 30 seconds when my wife, who's very relational, leaves a party, it takes her like an hour. Cause she has. See, there was an article that came out recently that said, uh, people who do Irish goodbyes at parties save themselves up to two days per year. I see that would be me, that would be me. But on the other hand, people really like my wife and me, they're okay with me. But, uh, uh, so, uh, I think that's the thing.

And then it's, there's always a sensation that, uh, this personal think I'm prying that I'm getting too personal, too vulnerable, too fast. And of course that is a danger. Like somebody is really vulnerable right off the get-go, then you're like creeped out. On the other hand, I interview people for a living like you. And how many times in my life have I seriously asked somebody to tell me some piece of their life story?

How many times have they said none of your damn business? The answer is zero, zero. People love to tell their story. There's an academic at Northwestern University named Dan McAdams. He studies how people tell their life stories. He pulls him to his lab for four hours, tell me your high points, your low points,

your turning points. The end of the four hours, he gives him an envelope with some money to compensate them for their time. And a lot of the people say, I'm not taking money for this. This has been one of the best afternoons of my life. No one has ever asked me these questions. And so people have a need to tell their story.

And you're giving them a great gift by asking. I think we assume that other people have got their life together more than we do, or at least I certainly did for a very long time. You know, I always presumed that anybody else's judgment of me was because of some perfect insight into my malignant, broken programming. And they were perfectly rational and I was deficient in some sort of relative way. And what that means is that you assume that they, they talk about their life all the time, they've got friends that, or, you know, someone, I don't know what

it is, maybe they've been on a Netflix documentary or whatever the, whatever the fuck it is that they've done. They have conversations like the ones that I'm yearning to have all the time. And if I bring it up to them, that highlights to them, the fact that I have a scarcity of that and them being someone who has a surplus of that will see me in a deficient light somehow. Yeah. Well, of course it's a truism, but it's a true truism, like a lot of truisms that

even when we know someone, we only seen 10% of them and that everybody has demons. Everybody has something deep down that you don't know anything about. And everyone's gone through some struggle that you don't know anything about. But I have found that I've never met somebody who said, yeah, I have too many people to talk about important things with.

I've never met that person. And so there used to be a journalist named Studs Terkel who did these oral histories. And he said, if you listen, if you listen, they will talk. They will always listen cause no one has ever asked in their life story. And so I think there's way more people who never have the chance because there's a bit of a social stigma. And again, I don't want people spilling their guts. I was at a party and there was a journalist and she was grilling me about my spiritual life

and she was giving me nothing, like nothing about her. It was just like, I felt like I was on trial. Interrogation. Yeah, and so that was awful. But you know, a conversation that moves halfway, halfway, halfway is a beautiful conversation. In the book I draw this distinction between diminishers and illuminators.

And diminishers are people who are not curious about you. They stereotype you. They do a thing called stacking, which is I learn one fact about you and then I make a whole series of assumptions about you. And so illuminators, on the other hand, are people who just make you feel seen. They really care about you and they make you feel lit up.

And one of the stories I tell is of Jenny Jerome, who would go on to become Winston Churchill's mom. But when she was a young lady, she was at a dinner party in London, in Victorian England, and she's seated next to William Gladstone, the Prime Minister. And she leaves that dinner thinking that Gladstone is the cleverest person in England. And then sometime later, she's at a different dinner party and she happens to be seated next to Gladstone's great political rival, Benjamin Disraeli.

And she leaves that dinner thinking that she's the cleverest person in England. And so if you can make other people feel entertaining and funny and clever, you've done a little noble service for the world. I want to talk about the felt sense of you as an individual, not the art of seeing others deeply, but the art of being deeply seen talk to me about going from this protective autism, hyper rationality world, the step by step. There will be people listening. There will be a lot of people listening who think,

this sounds like me, the control, the order, I like to be competent and to get things done. I don't like to be out of control. What is the felt sense that you went through of beginning to open up and how do you cope with the discomfort of that rising? And how can people also do that? How can people become more comfortable with feeling feelings? Yeah, well, I went through, you know, a reasonably ambitious person, so I went through a phase that a lot of us go through called the career consolidation phase of life.

You're trying to build your career, build your identity, achieve things, make a difference in the world. And in my experience, a couple of things happen. One, you achieve success and it's not as great as you thought it was going to be. And, you know, I remember the first time I got a call from my agent saying one of my books was on the bestseller list. Like I had sort of dreamed about writing a bestseller and I felt nothing. I just felt nothing. And I've had way more career success than I thought I would, but, and I've, I've

found that it spares for me from the anxiety I might feel. I just felt nothing. And I've had way more career success than I thought I would, but, and I've, I've found that it spares for me from the anxiety I might feel if I thought I was a failure, but as far as positive good, it doesn't lead to that much, so there's it's created this dissatisfaction of a deeper life, or you don't achieve success, you fail. In which case you're in the valley or something happens in life that wasn't part of the original plan. You get cancer, you lose a child.

And so there's a theologian in the 1950s named Paul Tillich who says, moments of suffering interrupt your life and they remind you you're not the person you thought you were. And he says, they carve through the floor of the basement of your soul and they reveal a cavity below and then they carve through another floor and they reveal a deeper cavity below. So in those bad moments, you see deeper in yourself than you do in normal life when you're happy. And you realize only spiritual and relational food will fill those cavities.

And so in my case, I went through a bad period. I had a divorce, my kids were leaving home. I had under invested in intimate friendship and good friendships. So I had, I had work friends, uh, but I had no weekend friends, like the people I really wanted to hang around with you. I could call it two in the morning.

And so I just realized this gap in my life. Um, and I'm, I'm a little eccentric. I'm sort of a super university of Chicago intellectual, so I wanted to learn about emotion. So I wrote a book about emotions I'm sort of a super University of Chicago intellectual. So I wanted to learn about emotion. So I wrote a book about emotions called The Social Animal years ago. So like I did it the Chicago way, I wrote a book.

But more it was a, and then I found when you're, you're in one of life's valleys, you can't pull yourself out. You have to rely on somebody else to reach in the valley and pull you out. And so around about 2014 or so, I'm in DC, reasonably lonely, and I get invited over to this couple's house.

They're named Kathy and David, and they have a kid in the DC public schools who's got a friend, his mom has some issues, and he often has nothing to eat and no place to sleep. So they said, James can come over to our house. And then James had a friend and that kid had a friend, that kid had a friend. And by the time I go over to their house in 2014 or so, uh, there were 14 mattresses in the basement and there were 40 kids around the dinner table.

And so I've visited and I hold out my hand, I meet a kid at the front door the first time. And he says, we're not really allowed to shake hands here, we just hug here. And I'm like, not the huggiest guy, but I joined this little extended family, this sort of chosen family and those young people who are 17, 18, they like beamed emotional openness at you

and they demanded it back. And I think that getting into that kind of culture was part of my education of knowing how to, to you really be open. And so you joined a different culture where, where being emotionally available is the norm. And by process of hismosis, um, I think you, you do, you don't even notice, I wouldn't say I noticed the change. I wouldn't say like, Oh, I've gotten 60% more emotionally available. Like that's it's, you don't even notice. I wouldn't say I noticed the change. I wouldn't say like, Oh, I've gotten 60% more

emotionally available. Like that's it's, but the spirit is opened. And I wrote in the book, I can prove it to you, but I have to name drop. So I've been interviewed by Oprah twice in my life. And the first time in 2014 and the second time in 2019, and after the taping in 2019, she pulls me aside and said,

David, I've rarely seen somebody change so much in middle age. You were so blocked before. And she should know, she's Oprah. And so there's just a flowering of the spirit that happens to people. And I think it often happens as people get older, that career consolidation phase ends. And another phase, uh, called generativity, the desire to really

be of service to the world, that sort of kicks in. I think when people hit, especially if they hit like 50 or 60, I say, remember when you were 13 or 14 and horniness entered your life? Well, around 50 or 60 generativity enters you life, this intense desire to give, and I'm oversimplifying it, that you don't have to be 50 to experience this. You can experience it when you're a parent at 25. But I do think that desire to be of service to the world and to just be more, to cry more easily.

Yeah, that's something that I'm quite ashamed about. I'm ashamed about how emotional I am. I think I've cried on this show maybe twice, maybe two or three times. Usually when I'm telling some like quite happy story, it doesn't tend to be something that's sad. But if it's me on my own watching a Christmas movie, good example. I watched two quite sad Christmas movies. One of them is Klaus,laus, which is phenomenal animated children,

kind of like children's thing, but it's really deep and meaningful. That's outstanding. And then there was another one, which was an animated version of a night before Christmas. And at both of these, I'm like, you know, weeping, fully weeping at the end of it. And I find that happens when I tell,

like when I think about stuff, when I reminisce, so on and so forth, But the discomfort that I feel and that desire to like clamp down on emotions, I totally, I totally understand what you mean. And there's something, there's another part, you were talking before about how we're in different sized tribes and now we're in, there's more people. So we kind of flip through the conversations a little bit more. I think another element of it is that has decreased our level of security,

especially since social media, because if you only have 150 people to be open and vulnerable with, fucking 10 of them are your kin, 20 of them are your extended kin, half of them are older than, are gonna die within the next decade, so who cares? Another half of them are babies, so they don't know.

There's just not that many people that would use, and also it's not cemented on the internet for the rest of time. So I think that given that so much of our communication interpersonally, and even people use video journals, diaries, vlogs, et cetera, writing, that is a very personal approach, that I think there is a fear that that will be used as some sort of cudgel to batter us

with at some point later in life by a person who isn't as earnest by a person who is going to be more cutting or sardonic or doesn't feel things so very deeply. There are people out there that I think just don't feel that they don't, don't feel them don't necessarily have the capacity to feel them and don't have the desire to have the capacity to feel them. I'm not one of those people. And yeah, I genuinely feel like I'm on the same train, similar train tracks to yourself, just a little bit further behind. And, uh, one of the other things again, and an Oprah bit, I haven't learned

like everything from Oprah, but, uh, two things that I did learn, uh, first being, uh, develop a nice repertoire of nods. Uh, and the second one, something that I know that you're a big fan of is the use of silence. Yeah. No, I, I w for researching this book, I would watch Oprah, uh, turn the sound off. I just watch her. Uh, and I noticed like she did this, uh, Harry and Kate famous interview. And, um, when they're saying something happy,

she's verbalizing, yes. But when they're saying something sad, she goes quiet. And it's like creating an emptiness for them to continue their talk. And so I think that's part of the process. But the other thing I'd mention is that doing this, being good at social skills, social life, it is an absolute skill.

It's like, it's, it's, it's a skill like learning carpentry or learning to play tennis. And you can get better by learning the skills. I mentioned some conversation skills before. And so you just have to know what to say. Like I tell the story in the book, one of my friends got very terrible depression. And I just literally did not know what to say to a depressed person. I thought I was reasonably well educated, but I didn't know what depression was. Not really. And I learned you can't understand depression by extrapolating from your own moments of sadness, if you're, if you're lucky enough not to have experienced it.

That a friend of mine, another friend said that depression is a malfunction in the instrument you use to perceive reality. And so depression, like my friend, the one who got depressed, he had these lying voices in his head, like you're worthless, nobody would miss you if you were gone. And he was literally seeing the world through lying voices. And I just made mistakes, which were just skill mistakes, nothing to do with my heart or anything. I wanted to do the right thing, but I didn't know how. And so the two most classic mistakes that I made, which I'm told other people make,

is I tried to give them ideas on how to get out of depression. Like you used to go into these service trips to Vietnam, you found it so rewarding, why don't you do that again? And I learned if you're giving people who are depressed ideas about how to get out of depression, you're just showing you don't get it, because it's not ideas they're lacking,

it's a lot of other things they're lacking, but not ideas. And the second mistake I made was called cognitive reframing, which is trying to remind people how many good things they have in their life. Great marriage, great career, great kids. And if you too, uh, if you try to convince a person who's depressed that their life has all these positives, you're making them feel worse.

Cause you look at all of the things I'm taking for granted. Oh, how much shame that I don't have these problems and yet I still feel like shit. Right. And, and I'm not enjoying the things that are enjoyable. Why, why am I not enjoying these things? Oh, there's something really broken with me. And, and I'm not enjoying the things that are enjoyable. Why am I not enjoying these things? Oh, there's something really broken with me. Yeah, right. And so it's, these are just like knowing what to say, what not to say. And you could just learn how to show up for people in these

circumstances in ways that are more graceful than not. If that's what not to do with someone, I think this is probably quite specific to depression, but maybe we can broaden it out into people who are sad or have had a, you know, going through a tough period. How can people be better seeing others that are down? Yeah, first, and I learned this the hard way over three years. First, acknowledge the reality of the situation. This sucks.

This really sucks. And so just show that you're there with them. Second, just a burst of goodwill. I want more for you. I want more for you. That doesn't mean that you'll make any difference. Cause frankly, I've learned the words of very limited utility in these circumstances, but you can at least say, I want more for you and then constant touches.

A lot of people who are depressed are terrified. Their friends will leave them because they're not fun to be around. And it's just like, I'm thinking of you. And I wish I'd sent my friend like more texts here and there. I read about a guy whose brother was depressed and he was a world traveler. He sent postcards from everywhere he went in the

world, no response necessary. I'm thinking about you. And that it's just a constant set of light touches. And then there's a, constant set of light touches. And then there's a, I read about this later from the classic book, which I hope everybody's read called man searched for meaning by Victor Frankl. And he's in the death camps, the Nazi death camps, and he's confronted with a lot of people contemplating suicide.

And so his advice, what he said to them was life has not stopped expecting things of you, that you still have responsibilities to the world. There are still things you can contribute. Uh, and one of them is credibility with suffering. Uh, and you know, I, I often think when someone tells me they're contemplating suicide, first thing I think is you're so brave.

Cause you're going through some horrible stuff and you're still here. And so I just admire the courage with which you're, you embrace life. Uh, and so, uh, these are things I'm not sure it'll make any difference, but it's a way of being a graceful friend to the person, uh, and never asking why just I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. What are some of the ways that we make ourselves less easy to see? Uh, well, a, by invulnerability, uh, B by egotism.

Uh, cause we, we want to, the reason a lot of people don't question is that they, they want to perform and the performance is a performance. I mentioned earlier, Fred Bigner, the novelist, and he says it's important from time to time to tell some secrets about yourself, because it'll remind you you're not the person you pretend to be for the world. And he says it'll make it a little easier

for others from time to time to tell secrets to you. And so we do that. We all put on a show, and you mentioned social media. My view in social media, it's judgment everywhere, understanding nowhere. And so of course you put up walls. And there's books out now, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and Girl, Wash Your Face. And these are all books that say, don't mind what other people are saying. Like, do not mind. Because so many people have that so consciously on their mind, I'm being judged all the time.

And of course the truth is that people aren't thinking about you that much, so be who you are. But I do think we put on that show. And then finally, just, you know, I'm a practiced escape artist. And so if you came up to me with a problem 20 years ago, I would look at my shoes and then pretend to have an important appointment with my dry cleaners. I'm like, you know, I was an escape artist. And it's just a way to like glide because I was uncomfortable.

If somebody was getting too personal, I just was uncomfortable and I guess a little fearful. And so that's one of the ways. And, you know, it's just a question of, um, you know, trust and you'd mentioned trust earlier. And I have found that if you're open in the world with your friends and acquaintances, you will absolutely get betrayed. Cause people will sometimes take advantage of

your vulnerability and they'll use it against you. And look, I'm in political journalism. It's kind of a rough business. Uh, and yet I found it's better to lead with trust and be betrayed occasionally than to not trust people and to wall yourself off. I think that is one of the huge trade-offs that people feel uncomfortable about. And I see this a lot in comment sections. You know, I talk a lot about the problems of men and there is a lot of advice for men,

especially around vulnerability. How much should you show? How much should you not? If you do this to your partner, it's immediately going to make her unattracted to you. The full gamut. And then people saying that you can do this. You just need to find a partner that's, you know, in the right place to be able to hold space and so on and so forth. attracted to you, the full gamut. And then people saying that you can do this. You just need to find a partner that's, you know, in the right place to be able

to hold space and so on and so forth. Um, but there is this perennial, um, concern around if I show my vulnerabilities, especially to a female partner as a man, uh, but also to the world, generally that's associated with the kind of weakness, uh, it is a vector of attack that can be used in future. It is inadvisable for a whole host of reasons. And it makes you, it makes you diminished in status, both to yourself and to other people.

And, um, I grappled with that for a long time because that is me. My background is in running nightclubs, not exactly the most emotionally mature, um, environment to grow up in. And, uh, I, I, I'm still playing with this idea, but I, you're still going to feel feelings. Ultimately, you're still going to have these thoughts. And I, I really struggled to see how. Pretending that you don't feel them or not showing them is braver than actually doing it. Like to me, the bravest thing that you can do is to, you don't need to tell

everyone about everything about your fucking athlete's foot or your chronic flatulence or like, you know, whatever, like the door hinge that squeaks in a noisy, but it's, that seems to me like the, the, the real hero's journey. It's that, that seems to be the thing where you think, wow, that that person is not only sufficiently brave that they're able to be the thing where you think, wow, that person is not only sufficiently brave that they're able to verbalize this, but that they're doing it because they think that they can overcome it. Uh, and again, you know, do you want to be ruled by your mental afflictions?

Are you, do you want to become aware of them? Yeah. I've known a lot of women who dumped guys and I've never had one tell me, you know, I dumped him because he was just too vulnerable. The main reason women dump guys is because they don't communicate and they don't feel like it's a mutual open loving relationship. And so I do think, you know, that vulnerability is just like not only a good strategy for life, but it's a good strategy for building a relationship.

But of course you got to do it at the right pace. I remember when I was dating the woman who's now my wife, we were like emailing and we were like emailing in ways where we would slightly cross a trust threshold and it would like minute and like, and I remember I sent her an email, which is a little more intimate than the emails we'd sent before. It was just like 5% more. And then, so I get on a flight, a cross country flight and I think, okay, I can't wait to see how she reacts.

Does she push me away or is she like welcoming? And of course the flight had no wifi. And so I'm like for five or six hours, I'm sitting there. Wow. What a terrible open loop. Yeah. Yeah. So, but it turned out well, we're married.

How can people end a conversation more effectively? Yeah, I think the, I sucked at this. So I remember I went to my fifth high school reunion and my only trick for ending a conversation was I've got to go to the bar. And so I was so hammered after 20 minutes of that, that reunion that I had to leave the reunion. But I think the way I've learned is like, you have a conversation. Uh, and I say, I say I've learned is like, you have a conversation and I say,

I've really enjoyed talking to you. I particularly enjoyed your analysis how British culture might've made you more inhibited. And that was great. So in other words, a positive burst, I really enjoy talking to you and then mention a couple of things the other person said that particularly struck their interest and then say it's really, it's been great.

And then you can leave, but it's that positive burst with specificity. And then people leave thinking, wow, that was, that was good. It really listened. Yeah. Yeah, that's lovely. Uh, you also talk about improving the energy that you walk into a room with. And, uh, since moving to America for all of the flaws that it has, I find myself flourishing here because you're an enthusiastic bunch.

Everyone is kind of maybe not everyone, but many people are like excitable. And, you know, they, they, they, they want to stay here. What you've got that's going on. Maybe it doesn't go particularly deep, but especially, you know, you've got something good, here's some good news. I've got, dude, that's amazing. It was in the UK that would be like, Oh, all right. You must think you're a little bit special. Um, again, like banter, um, talk to me about how people can improve the

energy that they come into a room with. Yeah. Well, we are, um, I noticed like I used to live in continental Europe and when you pass somebody in a hiking trail in a forest, nobody says hi in Europe, but here in America, we always say, hey, hi. And that was a, this is just a small thing. I had a friend who moved here from Africa and she said, uh, my first few years here, my cheeks hurt because I had to smile so much.

You people smile ridiculously. Resting smiling face. And so when we first meet somebody, each of us is unconsciously asking a question, which is, is this person going to be nice to me? Am I a person or this person? Am I a priority to this person? And the answers to those questions will be answered by your eyes before any words come out of your mouth.

And so the power of that first gaze, and the Simonve, who was a French intellectual in the world war II era said, attention is a moral act. It calls forth people, things into being. And so the way you, you, you treat each person as just this reverent creature. Tell a quick story that I put in the book. Um, I'm in Waco, Texas, uh, which must be close to Austin. How big could Texas possibly be?

Yeah, it's only, it's, it's, it's Waco's, Waco's an, which must be close to Austin, how big could Texas possibly be? Yeah, it's only, no, it's, Waco's an hour from where I am right now. So I'm having breakfast at a diner with a woman named LaRue Dorsey, who's like 93, and she's like a drill sergeant type. She had been a teacher and she said, you know,

I loved my students enough to discipline them. And I'm a little intimidated by this lady who's like tough. And in the diner walks a mutual friend of ours, this pastor named Jimmy Durell. And Jimmy pastors to the homeless in Waco, among others. And he comes up to our table, he sees us there, knows us both, and he grabs Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders. And he shakes her way harder than you shouldsey, Mrs. Dorsey, you're the best. You're the best. I love you. I love you. And in an instant that formidable drill sergeant lady I'd been talking to turns into a bright, eyeshining nine year old girl.

And Jimmy, with the power of his attention, created, called forth a different version of her. Uh, and so if you see the world objectively, people will be, be surprised by the world, because forth a different version of her. Uh, and so if you see the world objectively, people will be objective. If you see the world, uh, critically, people will feel judged and you'll see, you'll see judgment, you'll see flaw. But if you see the world, you mainly, you'll see people doing the best

they can in difficult circumstances. So the way you cast attention determines what you see the world, you mainly you'll see people doing the best they can in difficult circumstances. So the way you cast attention determines what you see. Yeah. I think I find myself very much being a mirror to the energy of other people, but not so much the first mover. And I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be more of a first mover with like really stepping in, uh, my friend George, actually the guy that first told me about your book, uh, that then resulted in this episode happening.

Um, he often, when I, when I sit down with him, what I hope for him to, I think for him to, but just at our best, it's exactly what I want to be. It's open. It's about ideas. It's hopeful. It's funny. It's, it's all of those things. I'm like, well, why am I not like that with everyone? Because it's still me, I'm the common denominator between these things.

And why do I need to wait for somebody else to determine, you know, are we doing foxtrot or salsa this evening? It's like, no, like you, you get to choose, you get to choose and maybe they're waiting for you to do that. Not just being, it's different to holding space. It's not like being a vessel for them. It's, it's like folding around the weird conventions and it's not breaking step with stuff.

Um, so just to recap, let's say again, someone listening, big on the cerebral side of things loves the rationality and thinks, I like the idea of stepping into this more emotional realm. What's your starter kit for good questions to break people out? It's maybe the first time with an existing friend that they've done this, or maybe it's the first time with someone that they don't know quite so well. Now, like they wanna pivot the conversation

towards something they think is a bit more deep or meaningful, what's your favorite run through? Yeah, I would say the thing that comes immediately to mine is, is storytelling questions, uh, people are just better when they are in story. Uh, and so as a political journalist, I no longer ask people, uh, what do you believe about this instead? I ask them, uh, how did you come to believe that? And that way they're telling me a story about their,

the person or the experience that influenced how they think. And so you want to get them into the story mode. There's a classic example of this I read about in a book called You're Not Listening by a Woman named Kate Murphy. And she's describing this focus group leader who's reading, who's leading a focus group. She's been hired by supermarkets to figure out why people go to the grocery store late at night. And so she's, she could have just said to the focus group, why do you go to the grocery store late at night?

Instead she said, tell me about the last time you went to a grocery store after 11 p.m. And there was some lady in the store who, in the focus group, who hadn't said anything and she said, well, I smoked some weed and I needed a menage a trois with me, Ben and Jerry. And so you get a little glimpse into her life and she gets them in a story mode. I have a friend named David Radley who started three successful businesses

and owned for time the Atlantic magazine where I worked part-time. And his genius is hiring people. And he hires on two basic criteria. The first one is spirit of generosity. And the second one is extreme talent. And so he defines talent, talent very narrowly. He doesn't know, are you a good writer?

What kind of writer? Are you a synthesis writer? Are you a narrative writer? So he defines talent very narrowly. But how does he find spirit of generosity? Is a method he calls the take me back method. He says, when people are presenting themselves, especially in professional circumstance or in a job interview, they start in the middle, they start

at the beginning of their career. He says, no, take me back to your childhood. Tell me what your home life was like. And he has a theory, which I'm not sure I agree with, but he says, everybody is who they were in high school somewhere deep down. So if you were unpopular in high school, you still are carrying around those insecurities. And so he's, he wants to know who were you in high school and how has that changed? And so he, that method take me back. Suddenly he's getting people into narrative mode.

And the final thing I'd say is one of the tips I got from the conversation experts is make people authors, not witnesses. People don't go into enough detail when they're telling you about some event in their life. So if you ask them, where was your boss sitting when she said that to you, suddenly they're deep in the scene and they're telling you a much richer narrative. So I've learned to try to make as many conversations possible, storytelling conversations and not argument making conversations. David Brooks, ladies and gentlemen, David, honestly, I, I, I adore the book. I adore this transformation that you've been on.

I think it's very aspirational in a very non-typical aspirational way. And, uh, I love it. I really, really a very non typical aspirational way. And I love it. I really, really love it. Why should people go? They're going to want to keep up to date with everything you do. Where should they head? They can head to the New York Times web page and I'm there once a week and I'm at the Atlantic and they can go to Amazon and buy my book. Hell yeah. David, I really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much for today.