We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created. As a member of Congress, I get to have a lot of really interesting people in the office. Experts on what they're talking about. This is the podcast for insights into the issues. China, bioterrorism, Medicare for all, in-depth discussions. Breaking it down into simple terms. We hold. We hold these truths. We hold these truths with Dan Crenshaw.

The angle has landed. Welcome back to Hold These Truth's greatest podcast ever. And for those

seeking truth and meaning and just some good information with some great guests like our

now third time or Dr. Arthur Brooks is with us. Dr. Brooks. Thanks so much for being here. Dan, it's wonderful to be with you again, in person for the first time. Yeah, yeah, I can't believe that. I mean, I've seen you in person. Yeah, we just haven't done the show in person. Yeah, well, this is much better. And you happen to be in Houston. So we're here. That's why the background looks a little bit different to where we're in a totally different office.

And we're going to talk about your book. You've got what is this your 16th? Yeah. 16th. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on how. Like, I mean, it depends on how you. Is it a real book? Is it not? Anyway, that's a early books are ambiguous. Yeah. Okay. was an academic but whatever it doesn't matter just yeah it's a lot of it's yeah i mean just

making us look bad i mean wrote one. That's a good thing to do. I mean, books are hard. It's a lot of people come, a lot of former CEOs. Yeah, former military people, former athletes, ask me, you think I should write a book? And the answer is no. No, because the world doesn't need more books. Yeah, yeah, unless you have something really important to say. You have to do it? Yeah, but if you don't have to do it, don't do it. Yeah, yeah. I would give the same advice. It's, that same advice with the podcast, you know, it's like, it's, it's, we, I think we came in with ours at the right time.

It would be really hard to start ours now. It's a very mature market. Yeah. And like, you just started a one, but it's doing well because I think you, you have a specific niche that I think people want to hear about. That's sort of what we're here to talk about today. I mean, at Harvard,

at HBS and HKS, you teach the, what's the, this is the name of the course, but you teach leadership and happiness. Especially the business school where I teach the MBAs, the science of

happiness class that's neuroscience, behavioral science, and philosophy altogether to understand

how science can help you build a half of your life.

How did you build a background in neuroscience?

So I got my PhD 27 years ago when behavioral scientists were not studying very much neuroscience.

Yeah.

It was, it was, there was not the idea that psychology is biology.

Yeah.

If anything, biology was psychology, you can wheel things away and that's

really changed. And so when I came back to academia, I was, I left academia in the middle of my career,

and I was the president of the American Enterprise Institute for 11 years. And when I came back in 2019,

the ground had really shifted. There was just way more biology in my field. So I started studying

it as if I were, you know, starting from zero. I started reading 15 to 20 papers a week. I was

reading textbooks on, on neuroscience. I was making friends in the neuroscience community. I just took

it as seriously as I ordered anything else. And I, I fitted it out to what I needed to do. Then, you know, I have a column that I write every week for The Atlantic about the science of happiness. And it was neuroscience in every single column. So, you know, at this point, I don't have a PhD in neuroscience, but I'm able to... What was your PhD in? My PhD is actually in public policy, but my fields are behavioral economics and mathematical modeling. So, behaviors, my thing. Human behaviors, my thing. Yeah, yeah. And you need some neuroscience to. You still into. Yeah, it's funny. You come from AEI, come from that background, very much economics-oriented. Yeah, yeah. A lot of other disciplines. So when you say how much you talk about neuroscience it's it's interesting

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