meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The Good Fight

David Brooks on Knowing Others (and Ourselves)

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6907 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2023

⏱️ 75 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Yascha Mounk and David Brooks discuss the role of character development in building strong liberal societies. David Brooks is a writer and a columnist at the New York Times. He is the author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Brooks discuss how he came to coin the term “bourgeois bohemians” (or “bobos”); whether today’s elite shares any traits with the bobo elite that first succeeded the WASPs; and how we can inspire stronger and deeper social connections between individuals of all backgrounds. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Amazon Shipping is changing the game for retailers and e-commerce sellers everywhere.

0:06.0

No matter where you sell, Amazon Shipping delivers your products.

0:11.0

It's reliable parcel delivery for any e-commerce sales channel.

0:15.0

We pick up your packages from a warehouse and deliver them to your customer's doorstep.

0:21.0

Their favorite products delivered their favorite way.

0:24.7

Amazon Shipping. Parcel delivery your customers already trust.

0:29.4

And when you leave people naked alone without a moral landscape, they try to find one and they find it in politics.

0:38.0

Normal societies have what I call redistributive politics.

0:41.5

We argue about tax rates and where we should spend money, but

0:44.0

lonely societies and socially ill societies have the politics of recognition. Everybody's

0:48.5

hungry to be affirmed. They're hungry for heroes who will shame and humiliate the other side. And so politics

0:54.3

seems to offer them a moral landscape, us good guys on this side, those bad guys on the

0:58.3

other side. This recognition politics seems to offer a sense of moral action.

1:03.3

I do good not when I sit with a widow or feed the hungry.

1:05.8

I do good when I hate the other side.

1:07.3

And so to me, people have turned to politics

1:09.4

to fill the moral vacuum that the rest of culture has created.

1:13.1

And of course it doesn't work.

1:14.4

Politics doesn't really give you communities.

1:16.6

You're just a bunch of co-beligerence.

1:18.5

Doesn't really lend you to do the things that make you generous.

1:21.5

It just envelopes you in this culture work.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Yascha Mounk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Yascha Mounk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.