Join us
this new year for new conversations at the Commonwealth Club. Thank you for that introduction. Good evening. I'm really delighted to be the moderator
for today's Commonwealth Club program with my friend and former partner
Arthur Brooks. I'm pleased this program is in person
and that the club is planning on doing increasing numbers of in-person programs
in the weeks and months to come. To learn more, visit the club's website. W w w Commonwealth Club. Org. I also, on behalf of Arthur
and myself, want to say hello to everyone who's watching online. We're today here today
to have a discussion with Arthur. The two of us go back a while.
I serve on the board of the American Enterprise Institute
and have for many years. And Arthur
led our organization for a decade. Arthur is now a professor at the Harvard
Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School and focuses much of his work on how to live a happier,
more fulfilled life. Something all of us, no matter what one's
age, should aspire to. He's the author of 12 books. We're here to discuss his latest
book, From Strength to Strength Finding Success, Happiness
and Purpose in the Second Half of a Life. Now let's begin. So you don't have written answers? I have written questions. Your new book has rocketed to the bestseller list
and remained there for several weeks. Are you surprised at how well it's done? Thanks to all and thanks to all of you. For those of you who are in virtual land, looking forward
to seeing some of you in person soon. And for all of you
who've come out in person, so grateful to have this opportunity
to to talk about this new book. Tony, night, as you mentioned,
we go back a long time. We go back about 15 years. At this point,
we've become very close personal friends. We spent it's it's so great
to be back in person with our friends. And we spent a good part of the
day here together as well. You and I have been
talking about this book for a long time. This is a book project
that I started talking to you about about three years ago. And part of the reason is because you and
I always discuss whatever I'm working on. You're somebody who is a has consulted to
me, has been somebody who has helped me with my creative work
for a very long time. And I appreciate that a lot. This is a book about how
all of us can get happier as we get older. In other words, how we don't have to leave
happiness up to chance as we age. I'm a I'm a social scientist. I'm I've been working on behavioral social
science topics ever since I got my Ph.D. a long time ago as an academic, for sure. But ordinarily,
I don't train my toolkit on my own life. But I'm getting older, it turns out. And and I didn't want to leave
my own happiness up to chance. And I realize that I have studied
these topics for years and years, and I had the ability to actually look at the difference
between people who get happier as they get older and people get unhappier
as they get older. What's the difference?
What are the habits? What's the happiness for a1k plan
if there is one? That's what this book is. It looks at the big patterns
in people's lives. And my surprise that it opened to number
one on the New York Times bestseller list. Really surprised. As a matter of fact,
I wasn't going to publish it. It was going to be a folder of notes
to myself on what to do as I got older
and my wife, Esther, found the folder. What's this? She said, Yes, I'm going to try to
not drive you crazy as I get older. And she looked at it a little bit. She said,
You should publish this as a book. And I said, Nobody's going to want this. You know, I teach university students. She said, Oh, no,
this might be somebody interesting. People interested. It it turns out we're all suffering
from the same thing. We're all looking for the same truths. We're all looking for the way
that we can live better, happier lives. And we're all suffering, actually,
and which is not a bad thing. One of the things I talk about the book
is that how the importance of suffering for actually living a life
full of meaning in a life full of purpose, but it has to be toward
meaning and purpose. And so when I published it, it turns out
that a lot of people are having the same set of experiences that I am,
and they're benefiting from the book. And I'm still surprised. But I have to say, I'm truly, deeply, gratefully surprised
by how many people it's touching. Oh, you really shouldn't be. So there's a lot to discuss. Let's start with the problem as you see it
and the solution. Right. So the problem is basically this. Well, actually, the experience that led to this is something
that you and I talked about quite a bit. You read the book in manuscript, but
you also know the story that led to this when I was still running
the American Enterprise Institute and I was running back and forth
all the time, I was on the plane constantly. You know, my job when I was running
this big nonprofit was I had to raise $50 million a year
and give 175 speeches a year. So it's like running for the Senate
and never getting elected. It was my job and I was coming back from an evening flight
from Los Angeles to Washington. You know, one one night
it was a lot better, 11:00 at night. And I was typing away on my laptop
feverishly trying to get something done that seemed really important to me,
but is now completely lost to the sands of time in my memory
at least. And there was a couple on the plane
behind me having a conversation, and I couldn't see them. STARK
But I could tell by their voices it was a man and a woman, and I could tell
by their voices that they were elderly. And for a minute I could tell
they were probably married because of the conversation
that they were having. At least they knew each other really well. I couldn't quite make. The husband's words. He was sort of mumbling, but the wives, the wife's
voice was very penetrating, very piercing. And so he says,
mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble. And she says, Oh, don't say
it would be better if you were dead. So now they've got my full attention and I'm not trying to eavesdrop. But, you know, we got some pathos here. And again, I'm a social scientist,
so what's my laboratory? It's the plane. If I overhear you, I'm
going to write a book about it. Probably so, you know, careful. And and and then, you know,
he mumbles some more. She says, it's not true
that nobody remembers you. It's not true that, you know, nobody loves
you or even knows your name anymore. And it went on like this for 20 minutes. And I thought,
oh, this is a guy who's just disappointed. He's never lived up to his own potential. He hasn't done all the things
that you have the education, the jobs, the opportunity,
the companies that you started. And at the end of the flight,
the lights go on and everybody stands up. And I kind of curious. So I turn around to get a look and it's
one of the most successful, famous men in the world,
somebody that we all know. He's rich, he's famous. He's powerful
because of things that he did decades ago that stopped long time ago. But people admire him. He's a hero. Holy cow. And I thought to myself, look,
I study this stuff for a living. I'm a happiness specialist. And I'm thinking the same thing that a lot of people think,
which is completely wrong, which is if you play by the rules
and you work hard and you get a bunch of good luck
and you work and work and achieve and you achieve and your earning,
you succeed and you bank it. Then you can be happy for
the rest of your life and that's wrong. That is not the right model. That will not bring you happiness. So what will bring you happiness? That's what this book is about. That's what this book is about. The happiest people, what they do. And furthermore, it's
about the fact that about half of people subsequent to the age of 65
get happier and happier until the end, and the other half get unhappier
until the end. And I want to be on the upper branch. Okay, let's unpack this a little. You're
what some may call a renaissance man. You're a classical and jazz musician, a social scientist,
a student of Eastern religions. And I guess today
a bit of a self-help guru. But I'd like to turn to your work
and thoughts as a political philosopher. In particular, unhappiness. The 18th century name for
this would have been moral philosophy. Among the first moral
philosophers was Adam Smith, the giant of the Scottish Enlightenment. He talked about promoting human
flourishing and influence. The founders, including Thomas Jefferson,
who included the phrase life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
in the Declaration of Independence. So can you compare these formulations
with your own view and prescription for achieving happiness? Are they the same? If not, how do they differ? What is happiness? It's a big question. We think about happiness very differently
than the ancient philosophers did and even the Enlightenment
thinkers did. And the reason is
because there's been an explosion of research on the science of happiness
over the past 30 years among social scientists
and neuroscientists . And so on the first day, I teach a class at the Harvard Business School called Leadership and Happiness
that has two sections of 90 students, it fills immediately
with 400 on the waiting list because it's happiness,
you know, free candy, kids. Everybody wants to take happiness class. And on the first day of class, say,
what is it? And and they'll say, What's the feeling I get when you know that they'll say
something is wrong? Happiness is not a feeling
any more than your Thanksgiving dinner is. The smell of the turkey. The smell of the turkey is evidence
that there's something good going on. And the same thing is true with happiness. The happiness feeling that you get
is evidence of a behavioral and an environmental phenomena of which
there are three. You can think about it this way. Your Thanksgiving dinner is is that you can you can describe it
in terms of three macronutrients. This is kind of a clinical way
to think about Thanksgiving, which has a lot more to it than this,
but it's basically carbohydrates, protein and fat. The same thing is true for happiness. Happiness is made up of three
macronutrients. They are enjoyment,
satisfaction and purpose. And there's a big neuroscientific
and social scientific literature between behind
all three of those components. And if you understand those things,
you can actually master them. You can understand them and put them into practice in your life
and your happiness will rise. Now, what does it have to do with this legacy,
this philosophical legacy that we have? The fact
is that most of the happiness research, the good happiness research has happened
in the United States. Why? Because we have a legacy
of pursuing happiness. And we do. Because the Scottish Enlightenment
thinkers like Adam Smith did not have the this desiccated view
of economics and politics that we often do today, unfortunately. On the contrary,
they believe that these ideas were part of a more fulfilling life
where people had to live up morally to living a good,
having a good life well lived. And these were components of it. This was translated
into the American light through people like Thomas
Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Now, Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote
the Declaration of Independence, we know him
as this incredibly great writer. He was not. He was a great copier. And what he did for the Declaration
of Independence is largely cribbed. The document from George Mason's Virginia
Declaration of Rights, which talked about the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of property. Which doesn't it sounds sort of worldly
or it sounds sort of materialistic. It was not. That was a lockean formulation
where John Locke believed that that was a definition
of what it meant to live a good life is to be to have ownership
over something in the world. But Jefferson changed it
to the pursuit of happiness, not property, and was asked later
why he did so, and he said he was simply taking dictation
from the American mind. It's kind of interesting thing. In other words, this was what was on
the lips of the riff raff around him. And he basically made this claim,
which I wish we still all believe today. No, no, no. If I do my job over the next for the rest of my life,
I want more people to remember this, to believe this, that we are just
ambitious riffraff in this country. That's what makes us different. You know, even this audience here,
you're all different stories. You mean your grandfather was running
from some godforsaken shtetl? And, you know, my grandfather was,
you know, digging your or,
you know, raising pigs in Denmark. And many of our brothers and sisters were
brought to this country and voluntarily. But what we all have in common
is this the fact that we do proceed from ambitious riffraff,
and we do believe that we can pursue our happiness and define it. And that's a beautiful, wonderful thing. And all I'm doing is
I happiness scientist. All I'm doing is is saying what it is
that we're looking for. So I can make it a little bit easier
for people to apply it to their lives, to make habits
that will make it possible for them, and most importantly,
to share the ideas with others so they can pursue
their happiness as well. You started out with something called the
The Strivers Curse. And what do we do about it? What is it? Is it something that. Concerns your business students. Is that why your course is so popular?
Yeah. The Strivers Curse is a really interesting
phenomenon, and this is something that I found over the course
of doing the research for this book. I found that there's a natural trajectory in life to happiness as we age. We find that most people think I asked
my students, you know, they're 27, 28. I say, well, ten years from now
are going to be happier or unhappier. They all say, happier
because they're optimists. I mean, they're the Harvard
Business School. They should be optimists. I mean, life looks pretty good to them. I say, why ten years from now? They say, Well,
because all my student loans paid off and because the person I'm in love
with might be married to me, because I'll have my business life
figured out. Life will be set. Okay. 38 happier and 28. Good. What a 48? Maybe a little happier. Maybe a little happier. I say,
what about 78? Like, I don't want that. And I say, why not? And they say, because it's doesn't
sound like it's fun to be old. Okay. Okay. Let's look at the data. And I've data on hundreds of thousands of people
from almost any country that you want. These are not data that I gather, but
rather from two British economists named David Andrew Oswald
and and David Blanchflower. And they look at, you know, from India
and China and sub-Saharan Africa and Australia
all over Europe, United States, South America,
every place you can imagine. And all those the same thing. People actually get unhappier
over their adult lives from early twenties to early fifties.
Almost everybody gets slightly unhappy. There's lots of reasons for this.
Mostly has to do with having teenage kids. And then around
early fifties it turns around and almost everybody gets happier. From early fifties to late sixties,
almost everybody. It's like a renaissance. I'm 57 right now
is true. It's unbelievable and has a lot to do
with emotional regulation. You know, we all have the same basic
negative emotions in response to outside stimuli, you know, get angry or sad
or disgusted or afraid or whatever it is. But when you get older,
the consolation of age is that you know, that you're going
to get over a very quickly because of a neurological process called homeostasis,
where we always go back to our baseline. And when you're young, you think
I'm going to be heartbroken forever because somebody broke up with me. When you're old or somebody offends
you or rejects you, it's like, Yeah, I feel terrible right now,
but I'm pretty sure in a week I'm going to feel better,
so I'm going to get a head start. I'm feeling good right now. That's a great thing about being 57
compared to when I was 27, for sure. But then a weird thing happens in late
sixties, which is, as I mentioned before, you break up into two groups, half gets happier and happier
and half starts to go back down again. They go back down a lot, have a 5050. So who are the people who go up
and the people who go down? According to the way we normally
understand the world, if you're successful early on, you're going to be on the Upper
Branch banquet, man. I mean, it's like the hero on the plane. And by the way, almost everybody
we think about who's unbelievably successful early
on, they should die happy with a smile on their face, understanding
how successful they've been wrong. The more successful
you are early in your life, the more likely you are to be on the lower
branch later . I don't want to be true. I do not want that to be true. But it's unambiguously true. Why? Because what goes up must come down. You go up, you look. If you ever do anything rich in life,
you'll never know if it's over. But if you're a striver, you're a hard
worker, you're an ambitious person,
you're trying to do a lot. It's going to have to stop. And when it stop, it stops. It hurts, especially if it stops early. You're going to be chasing it
for a long time. And that's one of the big inspirations
for this book. What is it about that up
and coming up and coming down and is that your only success curve
and what can you do? And if you don't do anything about it,
you're going to get the strivers curse and you're going to be on the lower
branch. And I don't want to be on that lower
branch. Now, I have a lot of friends
who are not on a lower branch. You're in the upper branch.
What did you do? Right. I mean, look, you're in the book,
not named. You seen yourself in the book. You're one of the case
studies of people who've done it right. I want to be like you
and not the guy in the plane. You know, this isn't about me, but a partial answer is
I met you when I was 65, I think. And I've said repeatedly, you changed
my life and I learned a lot about you. A lot of what we learned was in process leading to these insights,
which, by the way, we've traveled all over the world
together. We've been in Barcelona,
we've been in Japan, we've been in Dharamsala visiting
His Holiness the Dalai Lama in India. We've been all over the world
together. Yeah. And when the coronavirus is firmly behind
us, we'll be on the road again. Los Angeles. Okay, so Tacoma. So the problem you've described, the solution is we're transitioning from one curve to another curve
and use the C word. You talk about the curves,
how you make the transition, and then in your own case,
how did that happen? So the strivers curse is
there is a curve of intelligence that was that was identified by a social
psychologist largely in the UK, in the city in the 1940s. And it's a curve
called fluid intelligence. Now, due to the structure of the brain
and the training of all of our brains, we get much, much better
through our twenties and thirties at focusing and working
indefatigable hours of innovation, of the energy
to stay on a particular task. And the more we practice, the better
we get. If you were a really good young lawyer
or financial professional or pretty much an electrician or what
a bus driver, whatever you were doing, you got better and better at it
through your twenties and thirties. The reason was your fluid intelligence. The problem with the fluid intelligence
as it peaks in your late thirties or early forties, and for almost everybody it starts to decline and does
so precipitously through your forties and is falling like a rock
through your fifties. And that means that, generally speaking,
if you're a real striver, if you're really good at what you do,
nobody will notice when you're 45 except you. And the way that you'll notice is
you start getting a little bit burned out like I used to like this thing. I don't like it as much as I used to. Why don't I like it? Well,
because it's harder than it used to be. I hear this from 45 year old lawyers
all the time. Or, you know, people at Goldman Sachs. The classic thing is make a bunch of money
and I guess I'll retire at 49,
which is just a terrible idea. The reason is because it's not as fun,
because it's not quite as easy. And so they walk away because they don't
have to make the money anymore and they don't quite know why
they lost interest. It's because the fluid intelligence
is in decline. Now, that's the first part of the story. And if you stay try to stay in your fluid
intelligence curve, you're going to be the man on the plane
and you'll get the strivers curse. But here's the good news. The social psychologist,
led by a man named Raymond Cattell, and particularly in the 1960s, saw
there was a second curve behind it called crystallized intelligence,
crystallized intelligence increases. And again, this is a largely
a neurophysiological phenomenon, crystallized intelligence increases
through your forties and fifties and stays high in your sixties
and seventies and eighties. And as long as God gives you your marbles, you have this second success curve
waiting for you. If you know it's there and you get on it
now, what is that success curve? It's not as fast, it's not as innovative. You're not the ability to be the hot
solo litigator that you were before. What you have is the ability to be
the managing partner to make the teams. It's your wisdom curve. One is raw smarts. The second is the ability
to know which questions to answer. It's the ability to combine information
that other people have have created and harvest it
in a way that tells a story. It's incredible. I find that early on when I was a professor,
when I first, I finished my Ph.D. when I was 34, and I was writing these papers on early generation artificial intelligence using something called genetic algorithms, pretty sophisticated mathematics to to model decision making mechanisms
for public finance regimes. What did I just say? I don't even know what I just said. All I know is that wrote papers until they got published
in these really fancy academic journals. I can't read those papers now. I wrote them. I think it's my name now. I actually wrote a column
for The Atlantic that harvests the work
of all of the greatest social scientists and neuroscientists
writing work on happiness. And I combined their ideas together
to tell a compelling story and tell people how they can use it. Why? Because my first curve was my fluid
intelligence curve. My second curve is my crystallized
intelligence curve, which is my professor curve,
which is my teaching curve. And I found over the course of this research
that that's why it was easier for me to do those public intellectual things,
to explain relatively complex ideas like I'm doing right now than I ever
would have been able to 25 years ago. That's when I started doing this research. What was the really illuminating
bit of information for me was that I needed to change. I quit my job as a CEO
because of this work. Look, I got to eat my own cooking. I have to if I believe this thing,
if I'm going to write a book and I'm going to I want you to buy it
and do the things in the book. I have to do it, too. So I quit my job and I came back
to academia and I became a professor, but not a research professor,
a professor of practice writing for the public
about relatively sophisticated ideas. But in terms that that non-specialists
can understand, I wanted to use like crystallized intelligence. Those are the two curves,
and that's why I applied them in my life. Let's talk about some of the components
of this stuff. 1.1 thing about this. So let me talk to you about you
just for a second. So for those of you
who don't know, most of you, I serve
because you're a good example of this. So totally. Freedman was is one of the real pioneers
of the private equity industry. And those of you who live in
San Francisco, you know who he is. They started two firms here in San Francisco, Hellman, Friedman
and Friedman, Fleischer and Lo. Before that, he worked in
he worked in an investment firm in New York, and he was trained
as a lawyer and so forth. Early on, he was innovating
in the private equity industry. Later, as chairman of Friedman Fleischer, although his job was looking for talent
that could do the. Amazing technical things
at the forefront of the industry. That's a good that's good talent. That's good. Tell
what that's crystallized intelligence. You walked from your fluid intelligence
curve when you were starting the business with Hellman Friedman to when you were chairman of Friedman
Fleischer Low using crystallized intelligence and sort of the cynic qua
non of crystallized intelligence , which was why you were happy
and why you were successful. Getting back to you. Thank you. You talk about you have two numbers, the four habits of happiest,
the happiest people. And then you talk about a
for happiness for one K and the seven ways one can invest. And I assume there's a Venn diagram that covers this,
but talk about those two components. So one, when I
when I teach by my students or when I travel around, I'm doing a lot of talks
to various audiences and they say, Well, what do you teach in your happiness class
for the Harvard Business School? And I say, Well, I have an hour,
so here's an hour long version of it. And I talk about the genetic component of happiness
and the circumstantial component and how how, you know, it's
very hard to get satisfaction because your brain won't let you keep
satisfaction very long, etc., etc.. And some of these interesting facets
of the science of happiness. But then I say, look, when I've looked
at the 10,000 academic journal articles about the happiest people,
they all have four habits in common. There's lots and lots of little habits, and there's lots of academic
journal articles out there. You know, should you do more cardio or more resistance training,
you could have all kinds of marginalia. None of the stuff really matters
very much. There's four habits that will give you 25% of your happiness that will put it
entirely under your control. These are four accounts that you need
to put a deposit into each day. They are your faith, your family,
your friendships, and your work. By your faith, I don't mean my faith. I'm a Roman Catholic. It's literally
the most important thing in my life. But that's not what I'm saying, because the data say that
that's not what you have to do. The data say that you need to simply walk
a transcendental path and and focus on things that are bigger
than your day to day existence. Okay. That means
maybe that means a meditation practice. Maybe that means studying the Stoics. Maybe that means traditional religion.
Maybe that doesn't. But the whole point is you need something
that will zoom out from your day to day existence on something bigger
and put you in perspective. This is really critical to your happiness. The reason is because if you don't, then your day to day
life will be my house, my car, you know. My television show. My friends. My money. Me, me, me. It's so boring. It's like watching the same sitcom
episode over and over and over again. Some concept of the bigger ideas of philosophy,
faith or spirituality are very important. Very important thing
that to to participate in. Second is family life. The ties that bind and won't break
that you didn't choose. God knows you wouldn't. In many cases. Maybe you had a tough Thanksgiving
with that march. You won't stop talking
about Trump or whatever. Got it. I mean, this is San Francisco. It's all anybody talks about
as far as I can tell. You know, and so. But but you know what? And Marge will take the call to
I am from you. And the truth is that one in six Americans today is not talking to a family member
because of politics. It is crazy. That is just voluntarily handing over our happiness
because we're so ideologically inclined. We've got our priorities wrong. I mean, these cases now, the cases of
abuse, that's a different story. But in cases of ideology, really. Third is friendship. We have a we have a loneliness epidemic
in this country that we can talk about if you want. But one of the things that we find
is that that there's a for strivers, in particular strivers,
some of the loneliest people in the world. And the reason is
because they have tons of friends. Deal friends, not real friends. And you know the difference. And finally, work and work has only two
characteristics that will bring you joy. Whether you're a college professor
or a politician or private equity manager driving the bus,
it does not matter for your happiness. You have to have two things in common. You have to earn your success,
which is to say that you believe that your skills
and your passions are meaning. You're being rewarded for your hard work
and personal responsibility. Number one. And number two
is you feel like you're serving others, that you're serving people who need you,
who honestly need you. If you have those two things, it's going to bring you joy,
faith, family, friends, and work. That is your portfolio. If you're missing something
and if you're a striver, you're probably over indexing on work
and under indexing on one, two and three, you need to get that portfolio in shape. That's one of the things I talked about. The second thing. The second part of that question is this
kind of basic happiness for a1k plan, which is these
these ideas, these investments that people make in themselves,
which is related. There is a Venn diagram, to be sure, but that comes from the Harvard Study
of Adult Development, which is an 84 year longitudinal database
that that follows people from many walks of life
from when they're teenagers until. Kill the dead and some of the original cohort
are actually still alive who are in their late nineties
or even past 100 at this point. But they're also following their kids
and grandkids and spouses, etc., etc. and they find that they all have
seven things in common. They have seven things that they're doing, seven investments
that they're making along the way. Pretty commonly the first for physical
for happiness, their physical. And it's pretty pretty. You know what you'd expect? Smoking, drinking, diet and exercise. And I don't know. I think we all kind of know
what the ideas in that are, although it's actually simpler
than we make it out to be. You, you know, intermittent fasting or,
you know, caveman diets. And I don't know, it's basically,
you know, eat a sensible diet, walk for an hour a day, you know, do things
that you're supposed to do that are physiologically sound,
that are not crazy, that are not hurting you, that are not hard to maintain,
that you that you kind of enjoy is what it comes down to. Those are the basic four. By the way,
if there's a most interesting thing this study is really is really down
on excessive alcohol consumption, it shows that that
that one of the biggest reasons that people lack relationships in their life
is because they drink, not vice versa. And so what the researchers say is
if there's if you wonder at all about your drinking or there's
you have near relatives who have problem drinking, you should consider abstaining. Smoking is just dumb. To stop is basically. And then the last three are behavioral. Number one is having
a good coping mechanism for problems so that not ruminating
not being an excessive worrier. And you know, this this transcendental
walk really helps a lot for that. But if necessary, seeing a professional about your ability to deal with problems
because that's a big predictor of unhappiness
and unwell is later in life. Next is lifelong learning. And that doesn't mean going to Harvard. That means reading an hour a day. And the last is, is what they say
is the most important of all, which is summed up by the guy
who ran the study for 30 years. Happiness is love. Full stop. You need friends. You need if you
if you have a successful marriage or a romantic partnership,
that's fantastic. You need people who are very close to you, who know you, who are intimate with you,
and that you can count on that. Love is the single most important part
of what they find in the study. Let's talk some more about faith. How does your Catholic faith limit
or enhance your friendship with the Dalai Lama and other friends of yours
who are followers of Eastern religions? I know you've spent a lot of time
in India. You spend a lot of time
with swamis, gurus, etc. sitting first. Yeah. So it's so you and I have met the Dalai Lama
together many times and the Dalai Lama I've been privileged to work closely
with over the past ten years. We've written we've coauthored together. He endorsed this book,
as a matter of fact. And we ordinarily in Non-Coronavirus
times, I would see him every year in his home in Dharamsala,
in his monastery in Dharamsala, and he has helped me to be a much better
Roman Catholic. It's interesting. And that's his objective, actually, that Mother Teresa,
Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Now, one time was asked, you know,
you work with Hindu teachers and masters and you have such a warm relationship
with the religions of of India, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. What gives? She said, Yeah, you know,
I love all religions, but I'm in love with Catholicism
and I kind of feel the same way, you know? I don't know if there are many ways
to come to the same conclusions. All I know is what my heart tells me
about my own faith. And and I have to say that I do love all faiths
and I have very substantial teachers. Every year when I go to India, I'll usually sit
at the feet of the Masters to learn. And I have to say, you know,
I've learned my meditation technique much, much more from Buddhist
than I have learned it from Catholics. And it's made me much deeper in my own
faith, and it could have been otherwise. And I actually kind of think that that there's no other way
that it could have been. I think these people were
put in my path for a reason with let's let's pull out a little bit. Are you concerned about our society, about what we're teaching our kids,
about norms and objectives? I'm really concerned, and I'm not concerned
for all the conventional reasons. I mean, there are lots of reasons
you can say, well, there's all the things that people are so anxious
about politically in this country. And the sure, I get that
and I don't like those things, but I'm really see that concerns me
the most is the data as a social scientist that it's very clear to me
that love is in decline in this country
and in fact around the world. And I mean all different kinds of love. There's less
and less friendship on display. There are worse relationships
between parents and their children. People are having fewer children
and romantic love, which is the most nuclear fueled of all of the sources,
ultimately of, you know, the power of happiness
in our lives that is in just freefall. I mean, we find, for example,
that people in their twenties are 35% less likely to be married
than. Were when I was there was my age. Okay. And you're thinking, well,
what about cohabitation? Also less likely. What about dating? Also less likely? What about sex? Also less likely? What about being in love? 30 percentage points less likely than when
I was in my in my twenties in the 1980s. I mean, when I was in my twenties,
what else was there? I mean, I missed good stuff out there,
like music and, you know, paying my rent. But I wanted love. I mean, I was
that's what I was interested in. And and the most exciting
entrepreneurial venture of my life was falling in love
with and desperately trying to convince a woman who didn't speak a word of English
to marry me. And I didn't speak a word of Spanish. So I literally moved to Barcelona on a wing and a prayer to try to convince
this woman that she should marry me. Took me a year and a half
and I closed the deal. We've been married 30 years. I mean, that's what we did. Those of you who are my age and older,
that's what we did. You did it, too. I mean, we're crazy. We did crazy things. And one of the things that I see
among my students and among young people is this reluctance,
this fear, this this force that's driving people apart, this polarity
in our culture of fear and hatred. And it really worries me a lot
because there's not a good future for people under these circumstances. Look,
I mean, there's there's always bad things and there's always conflict
and but there's nothing new under the sun. Every ten years, there's a major crisis
that's completely unexpected. Right now is coronavirus. Ten years ago was the financial crisis.
Ten years before that, it was 911. Ten years before
that was the end of the Soviet Union. Ten years from now, it can be some. But if we don't have love,
we can't get through this. We can't get through this because that's the only source of true
happiness and strength that we have. So related. Everyone thinks there's
there's there's general agreement. There's a loneliness
epidemic in our society. Are you concerned about that? What about the level of anxiety? How how does that relate to
what you're talking about here? So the fear that I'm talking about that I see among my students is palpable
and really quite real. And and there's a lot of research
that asks. Number one, is it true? And the data are unambiguously true
that young people today are more afraid than people have been in the past? That's what actually leads to. That's what crowds out love so loud to,
you know, the author of the Daodejing about 500 years B.C. or for that matter, the Apostle John and
the New Testament in the Christian Bible. So the perfect love drives out fear. And they both said
almost exactly the same words. And the reason is because
the cognitive opposites and the philosophical opposites,
for that matter, are love and fear. It's not love and hatred. Hatred is a side
effect of the downstream effect of fear. And this fear epidemic
that we actually have in our society is what's actually leading us to be driven apart,
is leading to all kinds of loneliness. Now, fear of what? And the answer is fear of everything. It's just extraordinary. When I see that,
I see fear of failure among my students. I see a fear of irrelevance, fear
of of being alone, of being together,
fear of intimacy, fear of rejection. I see all of this fear
that that is making it impossible for people to actually take the chances
that they need. I mean, think about it. The single most entrepreneurial thing
that anybody that ordinary people do in
their lives is not starting a business. I mean, that's great, but that's not that
scary compared to falling in love. That's the most entrepreneurial thing because it puts the most capital at risk,
which is your heart, right? And having your heart stomped on
is no fun. Way worse than a bankruptcy. And okay, but but that's part of life
is the whole thing. And we don't have a culture in which people
actually know how to do that because they're so debilitated
by fear. Why? Well, there's a whole bunch of theories about
why there's so much fear in our culture. One theory is this kind of polarity theory
that says that you go between love and fear polarities in any family,
any company, any culture, any society. And we're in a fear polarity. And what we need is leaders
that actually change the polarity. Well, we don't have political leaders
certainly are doing that. We have political leaders on the left
and the right today. They're trying to fire us up
to all, be afraid of everything and telling us that they're the only ones
who can protect us from the bad guys through the people in the house
next door who vote for the other party, which is insane. That's a big mistake and
that's a disservice to them, to America. That's number one. Another theory of this
is that that we have social media, which is pulling people apart,
putting people in in silos, and it's actually making giving people
less and less experience interacting with each other
in real life, which is no joke. And we see this certainly among teenagers
who have this kind of social junk food of social media, where they don't
have actual direct contact, which has strong I mean, extreme
neurophysiological consequences, starting with a neuropeptide
that functions as a hormone in the brain that you've all heard of,
maybe called oxytocin. Oxytocin is produced in. Gorgeously, intensely, intensely pleasurable
in response to eye contact and touch. And that will soothe your fear
and it will make you feel love and it will make you feel warmth
and contentment. And all you're looking at is Instagram. You're not going to get
it is the bottom line. And last but not least, is this theory
that people that, you know, people my age have screwed up
the next generation in two ways. Number one is that we've protected them
from from any sort of conflict by by nannying them and and hyper parenting them
and safety ism and and all the things that we've done
to them on campuses. And the second thing is, is that we've made them into child
soldiers and a baby boomer culture war and said, you know,
the real problem is the people disagree. They're evil,
they're stupid, they hate America. They're denying your identity if they disagree with anything
about your lifestyle. And, you know, young people are very
vulnerable to these to these arguments. I'm I'm pretty sympathetic
to all of these arguments. But I do say that we have a fear and loneliness epidemic on our hands
as a result. You talk about fear of aging
and intergenerational friendships, and you also also connect this
to diversity. I thought that was one of the more
interesting parts of the book. Can you go back and talk about this? Yeah, I was doing a talk
at a Silicon Valley firm. A few years ago, three years ago or so, when I was first starting out
on this book and I was talking about happiness to the employees
of this firm down on the peninsula. And afterward when somebody asked me
about, you know, my views on the big diversity problem in their
engineering profession, which is real, you know, women and people of color, etc.,
underrepresented in that profession. But then I said, said, speaking of
diversity, how many old people work here? And they're like over 30 punk. So and and I said, look, if you one of the biggest problems
that we have in our in our economy today is that we are hyper
abundant in fluid intelligence. Look, we're the epicenter of the universe
in fluid intelligence and tech. Right. Big ideas, tons of innovation, hustle, culture,
all of those things are are part of abundant when you have fluid intelligence. The problem with all fluid intelligence,
though, Crystal, is intelligence means lots and lots of brains
and no wisdom. How can social media and tech
go from the most respected, most admired part of capitalism
to near the bottom in 15 years? How do you pull that off? And the answer is by looking selfish,
looking childish, doing things
that you would never put up with. You can say that's anti-competitive.
Don't do that. That's bro culture. Don't do that. That's that's
that's exploitative and dangerous product. Don't do that. I mean, old
people know this. Older people. And by the way, that's me now. We like we look at things
that is dumb on its face. And so one of the things
that I'm talking about these days is the diversity that we need in companies with lots of kinds of diversity in company
because it makes us stronger teams. But the one kind of diversity we really,
really need, especially in tech, is every C-suite
should have somebody over 70 on it. Every product team, every marketing team
should have more people over 70. We should have an aftermarket
for over 70 executives who are superstars that can save young people from themselves
under these circumstances. And and by the way, they can quite
frankly, they could save America. Commonwealth Club is an older crowd. Yeah. So back to let's call a deal friendships
versus real friendships in the workplace. Talk about workplace workplace friendships and the sort of the ideas there
and how you feel. Yeah. So I do a lot of work with the Gallup
polling organization, which shows just outstanding data analysis and data
gathering, especially in workplaces. And what you find is that most people get most of their friendship at work. 58% of people say
they wouldn't take a higher paying job if it meant leaving their friends at work. 70% of people have a best friend at work. 17% of spouses meet at work. It's incredibly important to people. So this is the most amazing thing
in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic
where companies are trying to say, look, you know, people are unbelievably
productive on Zoom. Let's just never get back together again. That is crazy. You know, people will say, yeah,
I want to stay at home because the first law of human
resource physics is that people that employees at home
tend to stay at home. Right. Because a convenient to be sure. But we're way lonelier
and way more depressed than we think. This is the biggest mental health
crisis wave. It's a tsunami coming at us right now because people don't realize how depressed
they are or in ordinary times. About 9.5% of Americans
are exhibiting symptoms of clinical depression right now as 28% will stay home from work forever. Is good. Seems pretty good. I got to move back to Albuquerque
and be near my grandparents. So it's all good, right? But the truth is,
you need to see humans every single day and in the context of work where this
common striving is especially productive. And so that's really important. Workplace
friendships are incredibly important. Now there's one group
that doesn't get workplace friends, and that's the boss,
that's the real striver. And this is one of the things,
one of the reasons that the boss, who's never alone, is often
the loneliest person in the workplace. And nobody feels sorry for the boss
like the world's smallest violin. Right. But I have data that show
that that is the average, most unpleasant part of a worker's
day is spending time with her boss. And, you know,
I remember reading those data. It's a study by Danny Kahneman,
who's a psychologist at Princeton, and they're really well-done study. It's a beautiful study,
as a matter of fact. And the paper came out
not long before I took over at AEI. And I was wondering why
every time as president of AEI, I mean, these are my old colleagues,
my old friends, these are people that I worked with
for years. And every time I'd go after
I became president, every time we go to the lunchroom,
you know, people stop talking. It's like,
what the you know, and I realize it. They didn't start. They didn't like me. It's just it's not that fun
to have lunch with the boss. Why? Because you don't.
People don't like being bossed. People don't like being evaluated
all the time. They want to just relax. And that's one of the reasons that bosses are unbelievably lonely,
because whereas all of their colleagues who are working there have real friends,
the boss only has deal friends. And so one of the things I talk about
in this book and I talk about a lot
is I'm coaching executives and I'm working with companies,
is making sure that managers and people with supervisory authority,
that they're going outside of their workplaces to cultivate
and establish real friendship. Okay. We have a related,
I think, online question. Yeah. What do you think about the pandemic
and happiness? Is the news over? Yeah, the workplace pandemic. Yeah. So the pandemic has been unambiguously, really hard on happiness
in the United States. And this is exacerbating a trend
that we've seen going back to the late 1980s, where happiness has been in gradual decline
in the United States for a long time, has been in gradual decline
in United States for more than 30 years. Just gradually. Just a little bit.
A little bit. A little bit. There's a lot of theories
as to why that is. But let me fill you in. Faith, family, friends and work. That's the reason,
is because we have not been going after these institutions and we've been
we have a culture that saying these institutions are less important
than they were in the past. That's the reason I think this most plausible reason. But the coronavirus epidemic
dropped the bottom out of this. During the coronavirus epidemic,
you saw so much mental stress, you saw such high levels of anxiety,
you saw so much alcohol and drug abuse
that we've never seen before, which is nothing more
than self-medication. I mean, virtually all addictive activity, whether it's workaholism
or alcoholism, is self-medication. In the vast majority of cases
that we saw that really on the rise, we have not come back yet for the happy from the unhappiness
from the coronavirus epidemic. But we actually do see some signs of life. And what I'm talking to people about an awful lot is trying to figure out
what in that experience can actually be cultivated into it,
into a deep source of purpose and meaning. And the reason for this is, remember
I told you there are three macronutrients, enjoyment,
satisfaction and purpose. Purpose
is a very paradoxical part of happiness. You know, one of the one of the reasons
that people who have teenage kids that they're not enjoying life is, well,
that's obvious why they're not enjoying. Life goes, you know, teenage kids. But what they get from that after they
move out is lots of purpose and meaning. It's an incredible thing. And you learn a lot about yourself
from actually suffering through relationships that are attenuated
with the people that you love. Well, the same thing is true with almost
any source of suffering, of any source of of challenge that we have, that we have to the tests our resiliency. You cannot actually find purpose
and meaning with with psychological hedonism,
which is a real phenomenon where a lot of young people fall
prey to this. It's like, I'm told that all of my energy trying not to be unhappy, all of my energy
trying not to suffer. It's kind of like the opposite of the Woodstock generation, which is it
feels good. Do it now. If it
if it feels bad, treat it. If it feels bad, stop it. That's a bad strategy. If you want to have purpose in your life
because you see suffering is what can be. It can be too much
and becomes a medical problem. But for art, under any circumstances,
suffering is very sacred and it's something that helps us
understand who we are as people. And we don't have to go looking for it. It will find us, but we can't waste it. And this is what I ask
people all the time. What did you learn during the coronavirus
epidemic? Don't talk to me
about what you hated about it. Don't talk to me about what
you missed during it. Talk to me about what you didn't miss. The toxic relationships, the materialism, the wasted time that you're
not going to go back to because you learned about yourself. Talk to me
about the things that you love during it. Like I got to eat lunch with my wife
every day. It's crazy. For a year, my wife
and I eat lunch together every day. It was great. I love it. Much of my wife, I didn't know that. And that was a beautiful thing. As a matter of fact.
I mean, there are lots of problems. Are the coronavirus.
I really got in her nerves. She's like, Oh,
I wish you didn't travel so much. And then during coronavirus, she's like,
No trips. You know? But but, you know, it's really important because these are the questions
that we all need to ask if we want to find the purpose and meaning
that actually came from this induced and uninvited period of of of change. Okay. From an online viewer. Could you say something about those of us
who have physical limitations? Very few family. No religion in their background or serious
financial problems. Yeah. I mean, that's almost. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people fall
into at least one of these particular categories and falling into
all four is is tremendously hard. Yeah. I mean, these are
these are real barriers. And one of the things that we
we study in the science of happiness is not just the sources of happiness,
but the sources of unhappiness . They're not the same
and they're not opposites. Like light is the opposite of darkness. Unhappiness
is not the opposite of happiness. They're cognitively processed
and physically. Different parts of the brain in different hemispheres of the brain
is matter of fact. However one turns the other off. You can't be processing happy and unhappy
cognition simultaneously. One of the greatest sources of unhappiness
is the blockages to the sources of happiness
is what we're talking about here. And one of the things that I think
that what we need to do as people,
as those of us who who don't face all of these
or even many of these barriers, is be looking for our sisters and brothers
who are one of the greatest services that you can you can provide for somebody
else is taking away their blockages to happiness. Ask about the people in your life, your neighbors, your friends,
your loved ones, your family, about the blockages
they have to their walking, their spiritual path,
whether religious or not, about their the financial needs that would make it
actually possible for them to to live at the,
you know, the most basic of circumstances. These are in a Catholic church called
the Corporal and Spiritual Acts of Mercy. But there's just basic human decency
and there's incredible opportunity for all of us to lift each other up more. Now, for people who don't have anybody
who is doing this in their lives. One of the most interesting things that you find is that those who are happy,
notwithstanding these barriers, these are the ones
who are actually serving people, even though they have these barriers. It's an extraordinary thing that I've done in my research
that I found that some of the most generous people
that I've ever met, they look like the people who are most
marginalized in their society, the people who have the least
are some of the people who give the most. And why? Because they've cracked the code. They've cracked the code to love. And so this is one of the things
that I often talk about with people who who really, really are,
you know, stuck in some of these margins is how they can actually be part
of other people's lives more effectively. Now, before I ask my final question, I'm
going to invite the audience again to submit any other questions you have. Put them down on the cards,
send them up and online. I think there's a way to do that. So let's let's it's the end of our piece. Let's talk about timing. Why wait for the second half of your life
to find a purpose? Is it ever too late to turn for money,
power or pleasure and fame? Is there hope for Donald Trump? So I talked about the. Virtuous for investments,
which is faith, family, friendship and work
where you serve others. But there's a kind of a vicious four, too. These are the things that your brain
and Madison Avenue in the entertainment industry
and your neighbors tell you that should give you satisfaction
and happiness , which is money, power, pleasure and fame. And by fame, I don't necessarily mean fame
like Kardashian fame. I mean prestige and admiration
of other people, because this is what we all want. We want to be admired by other people. It would be absurd, would be strange. It would be unnatural
if we didn't want this. These are the things that always promise
everything, but they don't deliver. And the amazing thing is we don't learn. It's like, Oh, yeah, you know,
it's like and I mean, I remember, I remember you told me this one time,
you know, you said it was interesting. You said, you know, you thought that you would get
real satisfaction if you bought a mercedes and you bought a mercedes
and you're like, Huh? He's not that great, right? And I thought, well, let me try this. But, you know. But why? Because these are the these are the idols,
according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. These are literally
the idols that we seek. And what we need to do is to migrate
systematically over our life. This is the secret to getting one
of the great secrets that all older people are happy to have as they migrate
from money, power and pleasure and fame to faith, family, friends at work,
faith, family, friends to work and work doesn't
mean earning money. Mean work means your human endeavor
serving other people. That's what it comes down to. So that's what we actually need to do. The sooner you start that migration,
the better off you're going to be. Just like, you know, I'm an economist,
so if you ask me about your 401k plan, I would say, Well, talk to a financial professional
like Kelley Friedman, but I will tell you that
the sooner you start to save, the better off
you're going to be when you retire. The same thing is true for your 401k plan
for happiness. The earlier you start thinking
about the right institutions, making the right investments,
making the prudential judgments about actually what will make you happy,
what's written on your heart, the better off you're going to be. Does that mean that it's never too late? No. As long as you've got breath
in your lungs and life in your body, start doing those things, start
making those investments. And no matter what, I'm
not going to promise you'll be happy. But I can promise you you will be happier. And life is in progress. That's really what it comes down to
and what comes out of Donald Trump. I'm waiting for him to call me
and ask for my happiness advice, and I'll be happy to dispense
at that point. Okay. I think we've got some questions on Ruth. Say something. Yeah. Filibustering. Yeah, it's it's interesting. You know, I've been talking an awful lot
about this particular book, and I have to say that I learn more
and more about what actually strikes people
the most in in this particular book. And it's funny because it turns out that probably the last thing in the book
catches people the most, which is I say, you know, it's you know,
when I read a book, I can't remember it. So what I really always want when I'm reading a book is
I want the author to sum it up. Just give me a little formula
at the end for the whole book for Alison. And they never do that.
So I'm going to do that. Right. Okay. How can I sum up the wrong thing to do
in just a few words and then the right thing to do
in just a few words. Okay. So then okay, the wrong thing to do. Here's the wrong formula. Here's the formula for getting on
the lower branch of the happiness curve. Try to use people. Love things and worship yourself. Right. And that's
what the whole world tells you to do. You know, the limbic system of your brain
is your automatic lizard brain. Right. It tells you to do that. And social media and entertainment
industry and all of media is kind of a large digital, distributed
limbic system of the brain that's driving you
to your animal instincts. Use people for your own satisfaction
and purposes and getting ahead love things because you get the boat. You'll finally be happy and satisfied
and worship yourself because you're the you're
the you're the center of everything. That's completely wrong. Here's the the right
formula is suspiciously similar. It just changes the verbs in the nouns,
the right formula. My whole book is in these seven words. Love people, use things and worship
the divine. And all will be well. These are worth waiting for. All right. Okay. All the 19th and 20th century historical
figures you referred to are white men. How is the history of the philosophy
of happiness influence different for women
and nonwhite poor in European communities? Yeah.
So there is a lot of research on that. And I do in the book I do
talk about people who are not white men, just as there are women in the book
and there are people who are not white in the book. And I was very conscious about doing that
because one of the things that I know about studying happiness for a living is that actually all of our experience
is largely the same as human beings. But you have to prove that. You got to prove that by looking at people
in different walks of life from different cultures, from different
sets of experiences who have had good and bad experiences based on what
the slings and arrows of society for sure. And what you find is that largely
this set of experiences are the same. However, one of the big
differences that you do see, non-negligible
differences, I should say that you do see, or that of women who are in their sixties
and seventies today. And part of the reason is because of that are more of a conventional family
background. They were unlikely to experience
the fluid intelligence curve in terms of their success at work
the same way. Now, one of the things that you find
is one of the reasons that women in the sixties and seventies
tend to be some of the happiest people in our society
is precisely because of that. Now, I want everybody
to have the same opportunities. I'm a warrior for equal opportunity,
complete warrior for it. But I have to recognize that if you don't
get stuck on the fluid intelligence curve and you can be in your
your grandparent curve, which is your crystallized intelligence curve,
you can be more comfortable with that. You can actually be feel much more successful
and better about your life later on. So there's kind of almost as if a lot of women in the sixties
and seventies have cracked the code. And we can learn from them. They can learn from them
about playing to their own strengths and not being regretful about some job
that's long past. Now, what happens then? In among my students,
my students are 50% women, 50% men. And they're all I mean, the women are
they're they're they're killing it. They're going to get
they're going to have the same leadership opportunities, same leadership
responsibilities. They're going to the same operatives to express their fluid intelligence
the same way that men do. And they have the same fluid intelligence
as men. Don't get me wrong, they're the same. I mean, the structure of the brain
is negligibly different. And so these the fluid intelligence
curves are pretty much the same. Let's remind men and women today
to not make the mistakes of the hero on the plane. And one of the people, by the way,
that I interviewed, I interviewed some professional athletes for this book. And one of the people I interviewed for
the book was Dominique Dawes, who was an Olympic
gold medal gymnast from 1996. And her struggle and struggle and struggle
to figure out what she's supposed to do after getting off the food
intelligence curve and what she was doing
early on in her career and really cracked the code with faith,
family, friendship and meaningful work where she's serving other people. And so that case study is in
the book is is emblematic of somebody who didn't have the conventional experience of women who are
currently in her sixties and seventies. The bottom line is this
We all want happiness. We're all going
to get the same cognitive patterns. Our experiences may differ, but the more that we know
about the commonalities that we have as human beings with the same hearts, the better off
we're all going to be in a better. We can share these ideas with others. I think I heard you answer this question
from the audience at Brown University
in front of a initially very hostile audience sitting like this at Brown
University Hostel. And you talk about helping. I think this person is looking for help with a family member
where there's a political divide. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you deal with a family member
who is where there's a political divide? I mean, this is, again,
one in six Americans is not talking to a family member because in politics today, there's
no there's nothing strange about that. The main reason
that there will be a complete estrangement between parents and their adult children is not because of the way
that their adult children are living, which might be completely contrary to the values of the parents,
is not because of that. That's almost never the case. It's. Because of the rejection
of the parents values. Because that feels like a personal attack
in every particular case. And a lot of those cases,
weirdly, it's ideological or political. And so how do you repair
something like that? And part of that is keeping in perspective
how important these things actually are. One of the things one of the great mistakes that we've made is a society
that's in a fear polarity. And again, the last book that I wrote
before this one was called Love Your Enemies, and it was about
repairing these differences. So I've given this
an awful lot of thought. The biggest mistake that we make
is that we we have these values and we all have our values, but
we use them as a weapon and not as a gift. Look,
if your job is to if you believe something truly in your heart,
it's really important to you. You should want to persuade other people. You shouldn't want to alienate them. Because one of the things you all know is that nobody in history
has ever been insulted into agreement. It's almost absurd truism. And furthermore,
we love people who disagree with us. We don't love their opinions, but
we love the people who disagree with us. Why would we not want to give them
the gift of our values? And the way that you give people the gift of your values is by starting
by listening to theirs. That's what it comes down to. Even if it's obnoxious,
even if it's difficult, we actually should have the strength
to be able to do that. But what are we hearing all the time? Look, if somebody says something that's that's obnoxious to you,
then they've denied your right to exist. Or, you know, all these just completely
blown out of proportion ideas. We can actually listen to people in ways
that we were much more resilient. We've been in
the past and we've actually a a fighting chance. And again, I'm talking to people
all the time who disagree with me. I have tested these ideas
in the laboratory with the strongest Sanders and Trump supporters. How do you do that, by the way?
How do you do that? How do you get them to talk to each other?
Listen to each other? You ask them to start by
by talking about their kids to each other. And when they realize
that they have the same hearts and they have the experience, love
in the same way, and if they have teenage kids,
they're the same kind of common enemy that they actually realize. They can put their political views
in perspective in a way where they can listen to each other
in a way that's more comprehensive, that's more interesting,
that's more interested, where they can be more persuaded
and even more persuadable. And that's how we start. I think that's a great, fun place to him. Thanks very much. Thank you. Totally.
And thanks to all of you.
