Best Of: David Brooks on the Art of Seeing Others Deeply

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Education, Social Sciences, Science, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New York Times columnist and acclaimed author David Brooks has been trying to learn the skills that go into seeing others, understanding others, making other people feel respected, valued, and safe. Such social skills may sound trifling, but mastering them, David believes, could help us all make better decisions, enhance our creativity, and maybe even repair our nation’s fraying social fabric. This episode first aired in November 2023. Host: Rufus Griscom Guest: David Brooks Book: How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen • Learn more about Weave: The Social Fabric Project at weavers.org • Sign up for a Next Big Idea Club membership today and get 20% off when you use the code PODCAST

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn Presents.
0:05.5	I'm Rufus Grisgham, and this is the next big idea.
0:09.7	Today, David Brooks on the art of seeing others deeply. I'm here this morning with my producer Caleb.
0:34.5	Good morning, Caleb.
0:35.2	Good morning, Rufus.
0:35.3	And the reason you asked me to be here is there's something you want to confess?
0:40.9	Indeed. Yes, there is. And this is something I've never told anyone else, Caleb. I haven't told my mother. I've never told anybody this.
0:48.1	Wow. When I was 11 years old, I stole a Kit Kat from a convenience store.
0:54.9	Whoa.
0:56.2	Did you get caught?
0:59.4	No, I actually got away with it, which made it worse.
1:04.1	I had to live in secret shame for 40 years, Caleb.
1:09.2	I know that sounds ridiculous since we're talking about a 50-cent candy bar.
1:10.7	That's what they cost back then.
1:16.0	Yeah, yeah, this is back in the 1980s, Caleb, when you were not with us.
1:20.0	And things were less expensive then, but 50 cents was a lot of money.
1:26.6	And seriously, that memory haunts me, along with a few dozen of my other moral failures from my past.
1:29.8	You know, various times when I've made selfish decisions or didn't take the high road.
1:32.4	And that's always how I've thought of morality,
1:36.3	these moments where were tested
1:37.9	and were proven to be either made of the right moral stuff
1:41.5	or the wrong stuff.
	...

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