The disillusionment of David Brooks

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2019

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

2013 was David Brooks’s worst year. “The realities that used to define my life fell away,” he says. His marriage ended. His children moved out. The conservative movement was undergoing the crack-up that would lead to Donald Trump, and to Brooks’s excommunication. For Brooks, the past few years have been a radicalization. His new book, The Second Mountain, is an effort to work out a more service- and community-oriented definition of the good life. But on a deeper level, it’s a searing critique of meritocracy, of productivity, and, as I try to get him to admit in this podcast, of capitalism itself. But is Brooks really willing to embrace what that critique demands? If you liked the “Work as identity, burnout as lifestyle” episode a few weeks back, you’ll love this one. Book recommendations: Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thinking is not for truth finding, thinking is for bonding.
0:03.9	We want to be liked by our peers, and so we say the thing that will make us liked.
0:10.6	Hello, welcome to the Client Show on the Box Media Podcast Network.
0:23.0	My guest today is David Brooks, New York Times columnist, the author of the new book,
0:26.3	The Second Mountain, which is an interesting book.
0:28.8	It's very personal in the way his past books have not been.
0:31.8	It's a book that emerges out of a spiritual and personal crisis he has, and is about trying
0:37.2	to understand how to live a better life and how to attach yourself to values and to
0:41.7	pursuits that are more external and less internal, more about other people and less about
0:47.6	yourself.
0:48.6	There's a lot of interesting pieces to this book and a kind of critique of capitalism
0:53.0	that I didn't quite expect in this book.
0:55.2	And so this is a conversation that goes in a lot of different places.
0:58.6	It's about religion and it's about capitalism and it's about how we make decisions and
1:03.8	the meritocracy and political identity.
1:07.2	It's also just about being human and the ways in which I can sometimes go awry and the
1:11.5	ways in which a lot of grace and a lot of healing can be found in each other.
1:17.0	So I think this was an interesting one.
1:20.7	As always, you can email me with feedback, guest suggestions at asorkindshowadvox.com.
1:25.0	But here's David Brooks.
1:26.0	David Brooks, welcome to the podcast.
1:27.0	It's a pleasure to be with you.
	...

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