David Brooks: America Has a Moral Problem, Not a Political One | Prof G Conversations
What this covers
David Brooks, a writer now at The Atlantic and a bestselling author, joins Scott to unpack what he sees as a deeper crisis in America — not political, but moral. They discuss the rise of resentment, why so many people feel a lack of purpose, and how institutions have failed to shape character and meaning.
They also explore how social media and AI are reshaping identity, why young people feel increasingly unmoored, and what it takes to build a life with purpose.
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Timestamps 00:00 - In This Episode 01:10 - What finally convinced you to leave and join the Atlantic? 03:02 - How have the topics that you write about changed? 05:14 - How do you reverse-engineer the forces behind Trump’s election? 10:08 - What’s driving the decline in moral judgment in society? 13:07 - How do we repair the decay of service and character among young men? 17:18 - Ad Break 18:32 - What is your approach to being a parent and a partner? 22:04 - Do men still struggle with emotional expression, and is that changing? 25:56 - How do we get more in touch with our emotions? 27:54 - How has your approach changed moving from writing to podcasting? 31:19 - Ad Break 33:44 - Could the next president reflect a shift toward empathy and decency? 38:02 - How much of Trump coverage is driven by media business incentives? 42:11 - What's your media diet when you wake up in the morning? 43:57 - How have social media and AI impacted media consumption? 46:48 - What is your approach to social media? 48:29 - What boxes are left for you to check, personally and professionally?
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Brooks argues that America's moral and spiritual crisis—rooted in the loss of moral formation, shared values, and humanistic education—is the deeper cause of political dysfunction, and revival requires cultivating character through exemplars, emotional literacy, and institutions that teach moral traditions rather than assuming people are naturally good.
- Moral inarticulation across generations prevents people from articulating why certain choices (like electing Trump) are wrong
- Privatization of morality without shared social roles left people without frameworks for ethical reasoning
- Educational institutions abandoned moral formation, assuming people are naturally good, creating a vacuum filled by resentment and nihilism
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Playing roles in theater significantly increases emotional awareness because it requires people to put themselves into the mind, heart, and soul of another person, making it a revelatory experience for many young people.
“the activity they can do in school that is most likely to increase their emotional awareness is trauma. Is uh playing a role in theater. And that really has these big effects cuz you have to put yourself into not only the mind of another person, but into the heart and soul of another person. And that that's a revelatory experience for a lot of people.”
John Bowlby's attachment theory posits that all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base, and people need emotional, moral, spiritual, and financial security to take risks and develop fully; without this secure base, people become fearful.
“John Bowlby who was a attachment theorist in the 20th century. Uh and he says all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base. So we all need that secure base. And that's emotional security, your attachment with your parent. But it's also moral security, a sense that you have a sense of what's right and wrong. It's a sense of spiritual security, financial security. You need that secure base.”
Emotional granularity—the ability to distinguish between adjacent emotional states like frustration, anxiety, angst, anger, and stress—makes people wiser about how to operate in the world, and learning to read your body is tremendously important.
“knowing a thing called emotional granularity, which is the ability to tell the difference between adjacent emotions, between frustration, anxiety, angst, uh anger, and stress. And if you can tell the difference between your different emotional states, you're just a lot wiser about how to operate in the world.”
Generativity (the desire to leave a legacy, give back, and contribute to society) emerges around age 55 as 'a new form of horniness'—a powerful drive that motivates work on cultural/social problems in ways that personal achievement never did.
“when you get to be about 55, there's a new form of horniness will come into your life, which is called generativity, which is the desire to leave a legacy, to give back, to contribute something to society.”
The 'mood meter' tool (developed by Marc Brackett at Yale) allows people to check their emotional state by assessing pleasure level (high/low) and energy level (high/low), creating four quadrants; naming emotions is a powerful tool that lets emotions be advisors rather than masters.
“by a guy named Marc Brackett, who's at Yale, uh uh called Permission to Feel. And he says uh you should check your out your mood meter, what he calls it. It's an opportunity to reflect your your probably either high pleasure or low pleasure, high energy or low energy. So if you're low pleasure, high energy, that's anxiety. Uh and so you you you if you just pause in the course of a day, say, "Where am I? Where do I put myself on the mood meter?" Which is basically a a chart with four quadrants.”
Until a certain point in world history, people's morality was shaped by their social roles (tailor, soldier, teacher, farmer), defining the standards of decency by how well they fulfilled their role. When that structure was removed and morality was privatized—left to each person to come up with their own—most people lacked the capacity to do so, and the loss of shared moral order created moral confusion.
“Alasdair MacIntyre who died about a year ago, within the last year. And he basically said, up until a certain time in world history, people had their morality was shaped by their social roles. I'm a tailor, I'm a soldier, I'm a teacher, I'm a whatever, a farmer, and my morality, the way I behave myself, the standards of decency, are defined by how well I fulfill my moral role. And he says, when we took all that away, then we privatized morality. We said, it's up to each person to come up with their own morality. Uh well, most people can't do that.”
The moderator argues that key fault lines in the loss of decency include: (1) absence of male involvement in young men's lives, as boys need men; (2) optimization for attention rather than service as an economic and cultural norm; and (3) Big Tech's algorithmic elevation of content that divides people and rewards coarseness and cruelty.
“an absence of male involvement in young men's lives. That I do think boys need men and um optimizing for um service as opposed to attention. And we have an economy that just tells everyone get attention regardless of how you get attention. And I do think Big Tech plays a role in elevating content algorithmically that divides us and rewards coarseness and cruelty.”
Emotion is not opposed to reason; rather, emotions assign value to things, and without emotional processing, people cannot make decisions. Cognitive science shows that people with lesions preventing emotional processing become unable to decide what they like, refuting the Platonic prejudice that reason is reliable and passions are wild horses to suppress.
“There was a prejudice which stretches all the way back to Plato that reason is reliable and wise, and the passions are these wild horses that run out of control. And your job as a rational person is to suppress the passions. The last 30 or 40 years of cognitive sciences have taught us that's complete nonsense. That if you people who suffer lesions where they can't process emotion, they're not super smart Mr. Spocks like on Star Trek. They can't make decisions. Cuz your emotions assign value to things.”
Exemplars are powerful tools for moral formation: reading about and studying great people (Pericles, Shakespeare, Martin Luther King, Frances Perkins, George Marshall) makes excellence admirable to young people and gives them models of how to be.
“the way you do that is first you hold up exemplars. Uh you you read about Pericles, you read about Shakespeare, you read about Martin Luther King, you read about you know, Frances Perkins or George Marshall. And you think, "Okay, I can be a little like that." There was an educator in ancient Sparta who said, "My job is to make excellence admirable to young people."”
George H.W. Bush (elder) refused speechwriters' requests to brag about himself while running for president, saying 'I'm not going to brag about myself,' and his mother called to tell him 'George, you're talking about yourself'—exemplifying the cultural norm that gentlemen do not self-promote.
“I had a friend who wrote speeches for George H.W. Bush, the elder, who was raised in that World War II era. And the speechwriters would write these paragraphs on how asking George W. Bush, H.W., to talk about himself, how what a great guy he was and how he was going to make a great president. And he would cross out those paragraphs. He said, "I I'm not going to brag about myself." They said, "You're running for president. You have to tell the country how good you are." And he finally did it. He read the paragraph. And his mom called him up the next day and said, "George, you're talking about yourself."”
Media and journalism originally was a working-class profession where many senior reporters had not attended college, but has become a college-educated and elite-college-educated profession, creating structural distance from the broader population.
“when I started as a police reporter in Chicago a lot of the reporters are the older guys I was working under had never gone to college. Uh and they were high school being a a reporter was a working-class profession. It was not necessarily a college person's profession. Uh and now it's very much a college person's profession.”
The shift in cultural values from the 1950s to the 1960s—from conformity and collective identity to personal liberation and individualism—happened very rapidly (evidenced by hairstyles shifting from all crew cuts in 1965 to mixed in 1968 to all long hair by 1975), showing that cultural transformation can occur in years, not generations.
“the shift in culture from the 1950s to the 1960s was epic. If you looked at the high school yearbooks in 1965 all the guys had crew cuts. In 68 half the guys had crew cuts half had long hair. By 75 they all had long hair.”
Male cultural conditioning teaches men to be stoic and view emotional expression as weakness, sometimes conflating emotional expressiveness with femininity or homosexuality, creating a gender norm that suppresses men's relational development.
“society teaches you to be a man and part of being a man is to be stoic and that somehow if you're emotive, it makes you weaker. That that emotional expression quite frankly sometimes conflated with being um uh you know, being homosexual. Uh at least that's how I was raised.”
Johnny Unitas (Baltimore Colts quarterback, 1960s) represented the old 1950s ideal—crew cut, traditional, traditional masculinity—while Joe Namath represented the emerging 1960s ideal—'Broadway Joe,' playboy, individualistic, writing a memoir 'I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow Because I Get Better Looking Every Day.'
“Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas crew cut 1950s guy. On my team Joe Namath Broadway Joe playboy swinger. He wrote a memoir called I can't wait until tomorrow because I get better looking every day.”
Media outlets have a corrupting incentive structure where metrics and ratings are visible, leading journalists to write what they know will get page views rather than what they believe is important, especially with constant Trump criticism which audiences reward even after 11 years of the same narrative.
“it's so easy. Like we all know that we don't we shouldn't write to the ratings. Like everybody in media these days knows how many page views or you can it's very easy to find out or what how many people, you know, watch the podcast. So you can you put metrics in front of people, they will follow them.”
Frances Perkins (Mount Holyoke class of 1905) exemplified the kind of character Mount Holyoke College developed: majored in her worst subject (biology) to strengthen character, and lived the school's motto 'Do what no one wants to do. Go where no one wants to go,' eventually becoming Secretary of Labor through a life of service.
“One of my heroes was a woman named Frances Perkins, who was Mount Holyoke class of 1905. And her worst subject was biology, so they made her major in biology. They said it'll be good for your character if you major in your worst subject. And then they had the phrase there, "Do what no one wants to do. Go where no one wants to go." And Frances Perkins spent her life traveling around serving the poor and became Secretary of Labor.”
In the 1980s, Spy magazine was dedicated to ridiculing Donald Trump because Manhattan real estate people looked down on him as 'a schmuck from Queens,' showing that Trump was not always seen as a successful businessman but as an outsider or social climber.
“I remember in the 1980s and there was an entire magazine called Spy magazine that was dedicated to ridiculing Donald Trump. And a lot of the Manhattan real estate people looked down on this schmuck from Queens.”
Conditional love from parents—where the 'beam of love' strengthens when children do what parents believe will lead to prestigious career success and withdraws when they pursue different paths—makes children fearful and risk-averse because they lack the secure base that unconditional parental support provides.
“I'd say 20% of them uh when they do something the mom and dad think is right and will lead to a prestigious career, the beam of love gets strong. And when they do something off course that mom and dad think will not lead to success, the beam of love is withdrawn. And so that's called conditional love. The most important relationships of their life are conditional. And those students are fearful and risk-averse cuz they don't have that secure base.”
Bryan Stevenson's effectiveness as a speaker comes from using stories constantly—'impossible to put too many stories in a speech'—and the educational principle is to find small stories that make big points, rather than making abstract arguments.
“I watched Bryan Stevenson, who uh I hope everybody knows who Bryan Stevenson is. He He frees people from falsely accused uh death penalties. Um I watched him give a speech, and I learned it's impossible to put too many stories in a speech...Parker Palmer, who's an educator, said, 'My job is to find little stories that make big points.'”
Moral formation means helping young people become better versions of themselves, which was once the primary job of schools including public high schools and colleges, but this mission has been abandoned in modern education.
“moral formation is a fancy word for...he's asked, um 'What's your goal for your football team, FC Richmond?' And he says, 'I don't need to win champions. I just want to help these young people become better versions of themselves on and off the field.' That's a good definition of moral formation. And it used to be every school, including public high schools, colleges, uh they thought our primary job is to turn out morally formed people.”
The Jesuit motto 'Preparing men for others' exemplifies a sound educational mandate that should guide how we raise young men and think about service, contrasting with modern meritocratic education focused on individual achievement.
“My friend George Hahn went to a Catholic boys school in Cleveland, St. Ignatius, and above and blazoned or carved into the archway at the entrance is it says, 'Preparing men for others.' And I love that. I think that's a decent mandate for fathers and for for I don't know, for trying to help young men”
Personal experience of cognitive offloading: Brooks once navigated complex routes using paper maps and felt he understood spatial relationships; now he relies on GPS and is confident he has lost the ability to use maps at all, demonstrating that cognitive skills deteriorate when not practiced.
“I am sometimes I'm on a road trip and I'm taking a whole bunch of turns, left turn, right turn, this exit, that highway, this highway. And I think, I used to have to do this using a map, a paper map. And that would to I think that's impossible. How did I ever do that? And I am 100% confident I am incapable of using a map to do a a complicated trip today. I have lost that ability.”
Resentment follows a pattern: it begins with feeling impotent because one lacks something or has lost social standing, then becomes a transvaluation of values where the resentful person decides what they don't have is not worth having, leading them to dismiss higher human qualities (kindness, generosity, honor) as fake and to assume only lower impulses (selfishness, venality, lust for power) are real.
“resentment is funny. It starts with a sense you can't have something. You lack something or somebody else achieves something that you don't have and you feel a loss of social standing. Somebody doesn't see you and you want to be respected by this person, but they don't even know you exist. And so it starts with a feeling of impotence. But then it goes on and becomes a transvaluation of values. And by that I mean the person feeling resentful doesn't only uh wish he had what he didn't have, he decides that what he doesn't have is not worth having.”
Brooks' rule for public speaking is to begin with jokes to help audiences relax and decide the speaker isn't going to bore them, allowing them to lower their defenses and open to the content.
“I try to begin every speech with this some jokes, cuz when the audience is sitting there, when they first get there, they're they're unconsciously asking themselves this question, is this guy going to suck? And if you can tell a bunch of jokes in the beginning 5 minutes, yeah, then they can relax, and they can say, 'Okay, he's not going to suck.'”
A schoolmaster's historical motto—'Our job is to turn out graduates who are acceptable at a dance, invaluable at a shipwreck'—captures the goal of moral formation: producing people of character who can be relied upon when times are difficult and normal social performance isn't what matters.
“I read about a schoolmaster who said, "Our job is to turn out graduates who are acceptable at a dance, invaluable at a shipwreck." The kind of people you can count on when times are done.”
Writers are 'beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread'—working publicly on their own struggles and sharing useful insights they discover, hoping their audience is having similar struggles and will find the work useful too.
“One of my favorite saying is about writers is writers are beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread. And I'm just working on my in public. And if if what I'm going through is what other people are going through and I can have I have the time cuz I don't have a real job, I can find something useful that they find useful, too.”
Most Trump supporters Brooks knows had good reasons for supporting him, distinct from Trump's personal character; the issue is not primarily Trump supporters' depravity but rather structural economic decline and loss of social standing that drove their choice, making it important to reverse-engineer the conditions that made Trump electable rather than only condemn supporters.
“I make a pretty sharp distinction between Trump and Trump supporters. And so I think Trump is a monstrous human being. But I think most Trump supporters that I know had good reasons for supporting him.”
If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about?—a useful reframing of the vague question 'What do I want to do with my life?' that helps young people think about their trajectory without overwhelming abstraction.
“I mean in that circumstance I always say don't ask me what do I want to do with my life is too big a question. It My question is if the if the next 5 years is a chapter in your life, what's the chapter about?”
Sorting students by IQ at age 15-17 (or even younger, with testing in third grade) creates a bifurcated system: those identified as 'smart' are accelerated into high achievement, while those identified as 'dumb' check out and become apathetic, losing any pathway to engagement and self-worth.
“we have become so rationalist that we we sort people by IQ at age 15 to 17. And or really even sooner, the young people an 8-year-old who's been tested in third grade either knows the system thinks I'm smart or the system thinks I'm dumb. And the system thinks I'm smart, they go off into the the crazy stratosphere.”
Without words like 'sin,' 'redemption,' and 'grace,' it is very hard to understand your own inner environment and make moral judgments about others, because these terms structure how we think about moral transformation and human dignity.
“If you don't have words like sin, redemption, grace, it's really hard to understand your own inner environment. It's very hard to make moral judgments about others.”
Editorial staffs at major media outlets (Times, Post, Journal, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN) are dominated by graduates of the same 32 elite colleges (55% of employees), creating a ridiculously unrepresentative sample of the country and an echo chamber in elite professions including media, Hollywood, law, and corporations.
“somebody did a study of the editorial staff at The Times, The Post, The Journal, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and uh 55% of the employees went to the same 32 elite colleges. And that's not only true in the media, that's true in Hollywood, that's true in law, that's true in corporations.”
Exposure to multiple moral traditions (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, Rationalism) allows young people to see the range of human moral wisdom and to choose which philosophers and traditions fit them, rather than constructing morality from scratch as a private individual.
“What I got in my college at the University of Chicago was I said, "Hey, you're a peon, probably not capable of coming up with a moral philosophy, which was accurate. But, [snorts] you are the lucky inheritor of a whole series of moral systems, moral traditions. And so, we're going to teach you about those moral traditions and you see what fits you. And those are things like stoicism, epicureanism, Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, rationalism. And so, find the the the sort of leaders you want to the sort of moral philosophers you want to follow."”
The distinguishing factor between people is not their opinions, IQ, or ethnicity, but 'the ruling passion of their soul'—the core drive that shapes their life direction. Understanding your ruling passion at each stage of life (what distinguishes you morally and motivationally) is essential.
“Another professor said what distinguishes people is not their opinions, it's not their IQ, it's not their ethnicity, it's the ruling passion of their soul. And so it's really important for us all to know is at this moment in my life, what's the ruling passion of my soul.”
Great podcasters set an emotional tone that shapes the conversation more than the guest does; different podcasts have different emotional tones (warm, learning-focused, argumentative, life-sharing), and the host creates that environment.
“I find one of the things great podcasters do is that they set an emotional tone. Uh that it's so powerful to do different people's podcasts, cuz they totally different emotional tones. And some people it's a warm some people in some podcasts where we're the students, where we're learning with each other. And some where the arguers, where debating each other. and some were just sharing each other's lives.”
AI (specifically Claude) is a useful thinking tool when used to surface existing intellectual history—asking AI to identify major thinkers on a subject, summarizing their positions, recommending books—but not for original thinking, making it valuable for research without the risk of cognitive substitution.
“I've had so many good conversations with Claude over the last couple months. Uh yeah, I had one yesterday. I'm writing about resentment and um it introduced me to a thinker I'd never Well, when I I'm I prompted with "Who are the major lines of thought on this subject?" And then it gives me them and I say, "Please summarize these people's thoughts." I never ask it to think for itself. I just want it to think Tell me what other people have been thinking.”
News Items (Substack by John Ellis, former TV producer) is a curated news aggregation site focused on substantive reporting without Trump bashing, covering AI, war, Chinese efforts, and linking to quality sources (FT, Times, Post, Economist, academic reports)—Brooks's preferred media diet.
“My first read is something I've become addicted to called News Items by John Ellis, uh which is an agglomeration site uh by a guy who was a long-time TV producer, and basically he does no Trump bashing. He does the substantive issues of the day.”
Young people intuitively understand the dangers of cognitive offloading through AI and phone use—they don't need expert warnings. Young people understand that not using AI for simple tasks preserves cognitive capacity, and they are supportive of phone bans in schools because they recognize they lose decision-making ability when they don't practice it.
“I find like your son a lot of young people understand what's happening. They They don't need Jonathan Haidt for God bless him for what he's doing, but they don't need him to explain what's happening. And I visit a lot of high schools every year and I've never met a student who's not happy with the phone bands. They love the phone bands.”
It is difficult to have Trump supporters on media staffs not because of ideological discrimination but because many Trump supporters reject the professional standards of journalism itself ('screw you, elite') and the epistemological frameworks journalists work within, making it hard to find Trump supporters willing to follow the rules of honest journalism.
“we do not have enough Trump supporters on our staffs. And that's not necessarily cuz we want to, but it's very fun hard to find Trump supporters who follow the professional standards we demand. And cuz a lot of Trump supporters said, "Screw you, elite." And not only that "Screw you, the whole uh epistemological modest uh theory you walked in on. I'm not going I don't play by your rules."”
Kate Bowler is an exemplary podcaster because she uses the medium to share her lived experience of cancer and its emotional/spiritual meaning, not to perform expertise, creating a tone of vulnerability and authenticity that allows deeper connection.
“I have a friend named Kate Bowler, who's a great podcaster, and she just like she went through a really and she's going through rough cancer, and so it's just sharing of a life.”
Brooks' parenting approach focused on providing a secure base where his children felt supported regardless of external outcomes; his children chose positions in sports that were 'maximally humiliating' (pitchers and hockey defensemen), and his role was to ensure that criticism from the world did not become self-criticism because he would unconditionally support them.
“my kids happen to gravitate despite my gene pool, they were all good athletes. And they um they gravitated toward positions that were maximally humiliating. So my two boys were pitchers. And when you're a pitcher and the other team is scoring runs, you're just alone out there on the mound. And then my daughter was hockey and she played defense...my role was the world may be criticizing my kid for this or that, but that will not be me. I'm just there to support. I'm just there to support.”
During Obama years, Brooks wrote columns that were personally meaningful but didn't get big readerships, and when several underperformed, he felt antsy and wrote columns he knew would do well with audience metrics, revealing that he too has been susceptible to the metrics-driven corruption of editorial judgment.
“when I was a columnist, I would write some columns that wouldn't get, you know, they were columns that meant a lot to me. Then sometimes during the Obama years, I would write a column toward one person, toward Obama and they wouldn't necessarily get big readerships. But if I read a few in a row which are not like super popular, I feel a little antsy. Like, oh, I want to be up there on the leaderboard and so I would write one that I I would know would do well with audience.”
Brooks's current work involves finding amorphous subjects (like 'how do you think about your desires?'), studying them deeply through reading and research, then distilling them into concrete, story-driven insights that he can communicate to audiences in ways they find useful and actionable.
“my little form of trying to do something good for the world is to like figure out how to modernize our thoughts about moral formation and how do you find your purpose and how you think about your own desires. And so I love taking amorphous subjects, like how do you think about your desires? That's in a very amorphous subject. And I love reading and studying and researching so I get it down to some something concrete that I can communicate through stories. And then if I say it to a group of people, I see people writing it down cuz they find it useful.”
A young, intellectually gifted student at Yale told Brooks his class on inner life and character development 'made me sadder,' which Brooks considered 'a total win'—because the student had been good at playing external games but had no one demanding he develop his internal life, and recognizing that gap is the beginning of growth.
“I was teaching a young man, very brilliant young man. It was about your inner life. It was how to develop character. And at the end of the class and he was he was going to go off to a road scholarship, really smart kid. He said, "Professor Brooks, I I want you to know your class has made me a lot sadder." I was like, "Yes, this is a total win." Cuz he had was good at playing the game. But working on his internal life, he had nobody demanded that of of him.”
Women's increased cultural power and demands, along with neuroscience discoveries about emotion's role in decision-making and value-assignment, have driven the shift in masculine norms toward greater emotional expression and openness.
“I think it's changed in part because women are more powerful in the culture and they demanded it. But it's also changed in part um because of what we've learned about the brain.”
Parents optimizing too aggressively for traditional success—pushing children toward elite colleges through constant discipline ('slopa' or small acts of discipline compounding into success), testing, and achievement pressure—undermine their children's ability to explore and develop authentic purposes.
“I just know I fall into the trap of trying to put them on this path to what is seen as traditional success. I'm too obsessed with the getting them into an elite college. I'm too obsessed with creating what I call slopa, and that is connecting small acts of discipline every day to success.”
Brooks did not provide strong emotional expressiveness to his children while raising them, though he did provide unconditional support (not conditional love). He believes he should have been more emotionally open and expressive, something he's trying to correct now but finds difficult because relational patterns established early are hard to break.
“The thing I would do differently it's taken me really my adulthood to get out of my head and into my heart. Uh and to be a little less cognitive and a little more emotional and emotionally expressive. And that was not how I was raised, you know, I was not I had a I think we had a loving home, but we never said I love you to each other.”
Life is long—people will likely work until 75—so parents should let children explore and try different paths in their 20s (three adventures a decade) rather than pushing them toward a single prestigious trajectory early, giving them time to discover what they actually want to do.
“if you have children in your 20s, chill out and let them have their adventures. Life is long. They're probably going to be working till they're 75, so let them have their adventures so they figure out what they really want to do.”
Great teachers (who teach in classrooms and know how to communicate great truths to young people) are rarely interviewed in media, yet their insights are valuable and could contribute meaningfully to public discourse if given platforms.
“on my podcast, there are a lot of great researchers who we all interview in the media. There are a lot of great teachers who never get interviewed. And these are the people who are great in the classroom, men and women who just know how to talk to young people. They know how to communicate great truths. And I'd love to spend my a large part of my podcast talking to them and seeing what they have to offer us.”
Brooks reads widely on Substack (Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias, Damon Linker, Andrew Sullivan) because these independent writers escape the metrics-driven editorial constraints of mainstream media and can write what they believe is important.
“I read a lot of Substacks. I mean, I read some of the most common ones, um Noah Opinion, a guy named Noah Smith, uh Matt Yglesias, people like that. There's a guy named Damon Linker, who I like. And so, a lot of my reading is off the normal media diet, and two people I really have come to like, like like Noah Smith or Damon Linker or Andrew Sullivan, people like that.”
Brooks models speeches and podcasts on Bruce Springsteen concerts, which use emotional pacing (happy songs, sad songs, crescendos) across 3-5 minute emotional moments; how you structure emotional moments determines whether you give a good speech or bad speech.
“I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan, so I model my speeches on Springsteen concerts. When does he do a happy song? When does he do a sad song? When does he build to a crescendo? And so, a speech, like a concert, is a series of 3 to 5-minute emotional moments. And so, how you structure those emotional moments determines whether you're giving a good speech or a bad speech.”
AI will create a cognitive caste system: 20% of humans with high need for cognition will use AI to amplify thinking and become cognitive superstars, while 80% (cognitive misers) will use AI as a substitute for thinking, lose the capacity to think hard, and become cognitively backward, resulting in massive stratification.
“My main concern is that let's say 20% of humanity are uh will have what they call the high need for cognition. Uh they like to think. And if if you're on a train or a bus and you look over and somebody's doing a really hard puzzle, that person likes to think. They like hard mental challenges. And I think that 20% will use AI to think a lot more and their mental and cognitive capacity and productivity will be astounding. I think 80% of humans, I'm just guessing, don't like to think. They're what the psychologists call cognitive misers. So, they'd rather not.”
America faces a deeper problem than politics: a loss of humanistic core, a crisis of purpose and meaning, with 58% of college students lacking any sense their life has purpose.
“I think America's problems are less political and more sub-political these days. That we've sort of lost our humanistic core. Uh a sense of a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. People are filled with resentment, spiritual crisis. 58% of college students don't have a sense they their life has purpose.”
Young people today are morally inarticulate—they lack the language and concepts to articulate moral dilemmas or understand their own inner moral life. Research shows college students cannot name what a moral dilemma is, and young women report feeling 'icky' after sexual experiences without being able to articulate why, even unable to articulate the difference between rape and a nosebleed.
“Christian Smith, who's a sociologist at Notre Dame. When he would he went to college campuses and asked young people, when's the last time you faced a moral dilemma? And most of these young people couldn't name what a moral dilemma. They didn't know what it was. A moral dilemma is when two values you cherish clash. But they would say things like, you know, I I pulled in a parking space that didn't have a quarters.”
Moral formation means cultivating people to become 'better versions of themselves'—not primarily through abstract ethics but through concrete social skills: how to criticize someone respectfully, how to sit with someone who is grieving, how to break up with someone without crushing their heart, how to exit a conversation gracefully.
“moral formation is a fancy word for a scene I once saw in the first season of Ted Lasso. He's asked, um "What's your goal for your football team, FC Richmond?" And he says, "I don't need to win champions. I just want to help these young people become better versions of themselves on and off the field." That's a good definition of moral formation.”
The fundamental challenge for American democracy is that humans are 'kind of amazing and wonderful, but really selfish a lot of the time,' so the founding fathers understood that democracy requires deliberate institutional work to cultivate moral behavior, not just constitutional structure.
“Our founding fathers took a look at human beings and said, "These people are kind of amazing and wonderful, but they're really selfish a lot of the time. And if we're going to build a democracy out of these people, we have to do moral formation."”
Brooks left the New York Times after 22 years (at age 64, with about 10-11 years of full-time work remaining) because he believed changing environments and situations is a good way to change thinking, and he wanted to spend his remaining career on deeper questions about meaning and purpose rather than daily politics.
“Well, first of all, I'd been there 22 years, and I'm 64. I figure I've got about 10 or 11 years of work full-time work left in me. And I thought I'd be disappointed in myself if I didn't change. I I do think changing environments, changing situations is a good way to change your thinking.”
Trump 'rarely smiles unless it's for a fake smile and never laughs because he can't trust himself to have a spontaneous emotion'—showing emotional damage or incapacity at his core.
“And that that's the emotional tone that will be opposite of a guy like Trump who rarely smiles unless it's for a fake smile and never laughs because he can't trust himself to have a spontaneous emotion.”
Social media (especially TikTok) is too addictive for Brooks to use, leading him to minimize social media consumption (no Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok) despite following Twitter for political and AI discourse and some Mets baseball Twitter.
“I did a lot. Um I said I said some stupid stuff which got me in trouble, so I scaled back after that. And then once Elon took over, it it sort of all fractured. And so I'll I'll follow Twitter. I'll especially follow I do political Twitter. I force myself to have half my people are blue, half are red, and some of the MAGA people really annoy me, but it's important that I I encounter them. Um and then I do AI Twitter and I do New York Mets Twitter, which is my baseball team. So, I do that. I don't do I haven't been on Facebook in years. I've never been on Instagram. I'm not on TikTok. I find it too addictive.”
Donald Trump is the essence of a resentful person because he does not acknowledge the higher registers of human nature, as evidenced by his calling fallen soldiers 'suckers,' his inability to understand John McCain's heroism, and his dismissal of Catholic social teaching as meaningless.
“Donald Trump is the the essence of a resentful person. I remember in the 1980s and there was an entire magazine called Spy magazine that was dedicated to ridiculing Donald Trump. And a lot of the Manhattan real estate people looked down on this schmuck from Queens. But he exemplifies resentment in that he does not acknowledge the higher registers of human nature. You remember in his first term he went to Normandy and he was like, 'The war dead are just suckers. Why would anybody risk their life for country?' It just didn't make any sense to him uh because he had cut off the higher registers of human nature. John McCain, his heroism did not make any sense to him.”
The Wall Street Journal is doing very well journalistically (comparing millennial to boomer incomes, showing that millennials are not uniformly worse off), and Brooks gravitates toward stories that give big social pictures rather than daily Trump coverage.
“I think the Journal's doing very well, by the way. I could say that now that I don't work for the Times. Just that they'd had a story, for example, the other day on comparing millennial incomes to boomer incomes. And in many ways, even though we think millennial and Gen Z are doing much worse, in many in some ways they are, in a lot of ways they're not.”
America has a healthy historical pattern of oscillating political direction—trying one approach, then reversing to try the opposite; having 'Thai food, now let's try Mexican' rather than repeating the same meal—making a cultural swing away from Trump likely in 2028.
“I think America has a very healthy tendency to to go the other way. We're like, okay, we we tried this, now let's try this. And we're we're like, okay, we had Thai food, let's I'm up for Mexican, you know, we just don't do two two meals in a row.”
In the 2028 election, America will hunger not just for a policy opposite of Trump, but for the moral opposite, social opposite, and emotional opposite of Trump—someone who embodies warmth, compassion, positive spirituality, and upbeat optimism rather than resentment and suspicion.
“when I think about what's about to happen in the 2028 election, I think America's going to say, "Enough." I don't care if you like Trump or don't like Trump, but this walk through carnage and contention and bitterness and corruption, enough. We want the exact opposite. And I think what America's going to hunger for is not only a policy opposite of Trump, but the moral opposite of Trump, and the social opposite of Trump, and the emotional opposite of Trump.”
Jumaane Williams (a New York politician) exemplifies the emotional tone that will be opposite of Trump: he 'smiles when he talks,' 'is having a good time,' and is 'upbeat'—the interviewer would vote against him on policy but has 'warm feelings' because of his emotional tone.
“If I I don't live in my home city of New York, if I did, I would vote against Jumaane all day. Uh cuz I disagree with him on every issue, but I really have warm feelings toward the guy cuz he smiles when he talks. Like he he is a he's having a good time. He's an upbeat kind of guy.”
Joe DiMaggio exemplified the old masculine restraint: when he hit a home run, he did not do a bat flip, showing self-effacement and dignity—a cultural standard that has largely disappeared with newer norms of display and performance.
“Joe DiMaggio, when he hit a home run, he did not do a bat flip. So there was that emotional reticence had an upside.”
Brooks learned how to exit conversations gracefully only much later in life; at his fifth high school reunion, his only strategy was to say 'I'm going to go get a drink,' resulting in him drinking six drinks in twenty minutes, showing the lack of basic social competency when not explicitly taught.
“Nobody ever taught me how to get out of a conversation gracefully. I remember I was at my fifth high school reunion and my only move to get out of a conversation in a cocktail party-like setting was say, 'I'm going to go to the bar and have a drink.' And [snorts] 20 minutes in my reunion, I'm so drunk I have to leave the reunion cuz I had like six drinks in 20 minutes cuz I would just say, 'I got to go get a drink.'”
The moderator (Scott Galloway) has a 15-year-old son who is 'good' but he's unsure if he is Michigan material, needing well-connected people to help him gain admission, suggesting pressure to get children into elite colleges.
“So, I need that in writing as I have a 15-year-old David who [laughter] who is good, but I'm not sure he's Michigan material. So, I need well-connected people.”
Brooks recently appeared on Oprah's show (in addition to this interview with the host), suggesting his ideas about character, purpose, and moral formation have broad appeal to major media platforms and audiences interested in deeper questions.
“but you know, she sets a she exudes a kind of warmth that um that that's So, I I think the it's really more of the host who probably sets the emotional tone than the guest. Um you're the first, obviously. [31:04] And um not to name drop, but uh the second most uh famous person who interviewed me this week was Oprah.”
At the University of Michigan, Brooks holds an office near the president's office, positioning him to influence institutional priorities toward humanistic values and moral formation—placing himself within educational institutions where the work of revival can happen.
“I am at the University of Michigan. I'm at an office they stuck me in a few steps away from the president's office. So, if you need me to get any student into the University of Michigan, I can just pop over and talk to them.”
Gavin Newsom is 'being an idiot' for trying to be Trump-like on the left, misreading what voters actually want in 2028, which is not more of the same aggressive style but its opposite.
“I think Gavin Newsom is being an idiot for being Trump-like on the left.”