Hey, this is Trey. Thank you for joining us for another Tuesdays with Trey. I recently

had our next guest on our television show, but I knew who he was long before that. We have several friends in common and the consensus among all those who know him is that he is smart and kind and an effective communicator.

Any of those three qualities alone would make you successful, but when you have all three of those that that's pretty good. Arthur Brooks is a professor and author who used to run.

What I call a think tank or a public policy tank might be more apt.

I wanted to have him on because our country is at an inflection point or so we're told most don't like to track we're on most are worried about the institutions we once relied upon and that can lead to fear and anger and isolation.

I had a colleague in the house who rose to the highest levels of government before he got out of politics altogether and he used to say he wanted to do more than simply manage the decline of this great experiment self-governance that we could do better and that our best days might possibly be ahead of us.

Do we still believe that managing the country might be a heavy lift for most of us or why don't we just start with managing ourselves and see if we can be the best us we can be with that welcome doctor author Brooks.

Thank you, Tray. Great to be with you. Great to be with your audience. Thank you for having me on the television show. Well, that was quite something I we recorded it a few days before and then I started getting all people from all walks of life started texting me and you know Sunday night and it gave me great satisfaction and other people.

I'm just going to let people know that the world is going to be a big part of the world.

I'm just going to let people know that this is a great moment.

So I think that's the first thing I want to do is I'm going to have people tuning into your show and such numbers.

Well, you're kind of saying that it would make me wonder why I had so many friends that weren't watching pro football. That's what I wonder when my friends on Sunday night.

I'm going to say that they're all of those. Yeah, absolutely.

There seems to me. I don't know what the right word. I'm going to use the word angst. There seems to be an angst among the citizenry of belief that our best days are behind us. And to that you would say what?

I would say it's a natural thing for people to believe because there are a lot of people in very powerful positions that make a lot of money and get a lot of power and get a lot of followers by instilling fear.

I mean, there's kind of an outrage industrial complex in this country that's taken hold, particularly over the past 10 years, giving us a fear polarity in American politics.

So it's very normal if you're just going about your life watching the media listening to politicians, God forbid lurking on social media to think that everything's going to hell.

I mean, that's just what you're being told constantly. I mean, it's the same thing is what we regret about kids in schools today.

That's what we were talking about on your show and the television show. I mean, yeah, it's like kids in schools are being told that the world is a dangerous terrible place and they should be very, very afraid. So guess what?

That's what they are. Well, the same thing is true for the adults in this country. And if we want it to get better, we need to reframe the entire debate.

Number one, based on facts that this is still the greatest country and it still has incredible promise. And number two, mobilizing ourselves to live up to that promise. Those are the challenges.

Right. You said something that I think I first heard sometime within the past decade. I can't remember who said it probably one of your friends or may have been you.

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