Ep. 545 — Arthur Brooks
The Axe Files with David Axelrod
CNN
4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2023
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Arthur Brooks has held many roles in his life: professional French horn player in Barcelona, leader of the American Enterprise Institute, and now a professor of happiness at Harvard. The author and social scientist has a new book on the subject, “Build the Life You Want,” co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, coming out in September 2023. Arthur joined David to talk about the science of happiness, the relationship between new technology and waves of populism, how America’s dignity gap influences its politics, and the need to rebuild human connection.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I sat down this week with Arthur Brooks, who's really one of the most interesting people |
| 0:22.7 | I know. |
| 0:23.7 | Some of you may have met him here five years ago when he told his story from college |
| 0:28.2 | dropout to symphony musician to Ph.D. in Behavioral Economics to President of the Influential |
| 0:35.1 | Conservative American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:38.4 | Today Arthur Brooks is a professor at Harvard and best-selling author focused on a different |
| 0:43.0 | portfolio, the importance of happiness in leadership and in our everyday lives. |
| 0:48.4 | Here's that conversation. |
| 0:58.2 | Arthur Brooks, it's great to see you again. |
| 1:01.0 | Nice to see you too, David. |
| 1:02.6 | Seven years ago we got together in the winter of 2016 right here on this podcast and |
| 1:11.7 | the world was a much different place and I so enjoyed that conversation because you |
| 1:19.2 | have the most remarkable journey of anyone I know from college dropout to French hornis |
| 1:27.3 | for the Barcelona symphony that President of the American Enterprise Institute, like |
| 1:31.7 | nobody could draw that up. |
| 1:34.6 | Yeah, no, it's not the typical path and this isn't a great thing about when you talk |
| 1:40.1 | to people in the United States almost everybody's got some weird story like that, right? |
| 1:43.8 | I mean yours is pretty weird too isn't it David? |
| 1:46.1 | It's not as weird, it's not as weird, it's sort of, it's sort of, you know, it's not like |
| 1:52.5 | going from the orchestra to the leading conservative think tank kind of thing, but it's, |
| 2:02.8 | but look, you and I both I think share something which is, I believe very strongly that life |
| 2:08.8 | is, it comes in chapters and it's, and chapters are scary and good. |
... |
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