The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:49:58 · David Brooks
[00:49:58] S2: You know, there's a guy named Tim Keller who wrote a book called The Meaning of Marriage. And he said, you get married, you marry this wonderful person. And about six months in, you realize that she's actually kind of selfish in some ways. And as you're making this discovery about her, she's making it about you. And marriage work when you realize, well, my kind of selfishness is the only selfishness I can work on. And he says, if you have two partners in a marriage who are working on their selfishness, then you're probably gonna have good marriage and not blaming the other. The other thing I'd say is who you marry is just tremendously important. And Nietzsche, who you don't think of as a particularly romantic guy, said marriage is a fifty year conversation. Pick the person you can talk with for the rest of your life. And so if you find somebody who you can talk on the phone with for four hours, that's a pretty good indicator. The second thing I'd add is that love comes and goes, but admiration stays. So stay with someone you admire. Pick someone you admire, and they will not let you down. And then the final bit of advice I give to college students in picking a marriage partner, which is to me the most... One of the most important decisions in life is there are three kinds of love according to the Greeks. There's eros, which is passion. There's friendship. And then there's agape love, which is selfish love. And if you're gonna marry someone, you should have all three kinds of love. If you just have eros, you have a hookup, but you don't have a relationship. If you just have Philly, a friendship, you have a friendship, but you don't have a romantic love. You should have all three. And so the bar should be pretty high. And and so that's some of the advice I give on making a marriage decision. I'm not sure anybody listens, but that's my advice.
00:51:44 · Scott Galloway, David Brooks
[00:51:44] S0: So you've been very generous with your time. I'm gonna do just a quick lightning round because, you know, you're a busy getting dude. So real quick, best piece of advice you've ever received? [00:51:53] S2: I guess know something about something. When you get out of school, find some field of expertise that you can really study, and then you bring that to the table. A second bit of advice I would give to young people is build identity capital. That... There's a Meg Jay who wrote a book called The Defining Decade about being in your twenties. And she had a patient who wanted to work at Starbucks, had a job offer at Outward Bound. And she said, go to Outward Bound because at every job interview, at every dinner party, people want to know what it was like to work on Outward Bound. That will give you identity capital. And so I find that's pretty good advice. [00:52:33] S0: Last piece of media that really moved you.
00:52:33 · Scott Galloway, David Brooks
[00:52:33] S0: Last piece of media that really moved you. [00:52:37] S2: Oh, I'm now listening on audiobook to Andre Agassi's memoir, which is one of the best modern memoirs I've ever read. He's a guy who hated tennis. His dad was an absolute monster who who forced him to do tennis, and Agassi hated tennis all the way through. And so to me, it's very... I found it tremendously moving. A guy who's really good at an activity that he absolutely hates. And the way he struggles with this hatred and this really imprisonment, I find his his courage and audacity really moving, and he's just a beautiful writer for a guy who dropped out of high school in ninth grade. He didn't have the benefits of an education, but he's obviously a brilliant guy. And it's just tremendously moving look at mastery and finding the things that you really want to do. And I I I just can't recommend that book enough. [00:53:27] S0: If you could go back in time and visit someone who's gone, who would it be, and what would you say to them? [00:53:32] S2: Well, I have a lot of questions for Jesus. So [00:53:36] S0: That's a pretty big ask. Yeah. Alright. Well, we'll stop. And then, you you talked about finding your purpose. Last question. What is David Brooks' purpose?
00:53:36 · Scott Galloway, David Brooks
[00:53:36] S0: That's a pretty big ask. Yeah. Alright. Well, we'll stop. And then, you you talked about finding your purpose. Last question. What is David Brooks' purpose? [00:53:46] S2: Oh, my purpose now is to, you know, there's a concept I figured who came up with it called the lake. We all pour into the lake. The lake is the our conversations. And we all are little tributaries pouring into the lake. And we learn, we listen, we listen to your podcasts, and we we learn, and we improve our lives just because we were... We're all learning from each other. And so part of my job is just to pour into the lake like everybody's job. But I think my my two core missions, if I have to ask, first is to try to defend a political ideology, belief system, this conservatism of Alexander Hamilton. I try to embody that. Second, I try to embody as just a civil way of being in the world. And third, I think American society is, as you can tell from my conversation in the last forty five minutes, is overpoliticized and undermoralized. I think we think too much about politics and too little about our moral and relational growth. And so I try to write books that are sort of about that, giving people tips and pointers of how to be better friends, how to be better listeners, how to be better conversationalists. And I think it's in those minute interactions of life that really the health of society is determined.
00:54:53 · Scott Galloway, David Brooks
[00:54:53] S0: David Brooks is one of the nation's leading writers and commentators. He is an op ed columnist for The New York Times and a writer for The Atlantic. He is the bestselling author of The Second Mountain, The Road to Character, The Social Animal, Bobo's in Paradise, and On Paradise Drive. He joins us from Washington, DC. David, I've admired you for so long, from afar. I feel as if I know you and I realize we've never met in person. And you bring this peanut butter and chocolate combination of your commentary as puncturing, unafraid, analytical, very strong, but you always feel like at the end of the day, you're a gentle soul. I think you're a wonderful role model for young men and really appreciate your contribution, not only to your domain, but just to to larger society. It was a real pleasure to meet you, and I appreciate your time. [00:55:41] S2: Thank you. I'm... I've always... I've been a fan of yours and a huge honor to be on this on this podcast, so I I really appreciate the invitation.