>> wednesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, attorney general william barr will testify before the senate judiciary committee on the mueller report. and on thursday, at 9:00 a.m. eastern, he'll testify before the house judiciary committee. live on c-span3, c-span.org, and listen on the free c-span radio app.

brian: david brooks, in your new book "the second mountain" you have this sentence. gina wondered if i was going woo woo about eight years ago. i hope she is satisfied with the brooks woo woo phase. david: i was writing about sociology in most of my books. i books have never been about politics. most of my books early on were about sociology. there was a book about the upper-middle-class. recently they've gone off into emotion, we call the social animal. now culture and morality. so "the second mountain" is deeper and deeper into spirituality and the inner life. brian: what got you out of the woo woo stage? david: we writers work on our stuff in public.

even if we pretend we are writing about something else, we write about what we are going through in the moment. i was going through a moment of how can i be a better person? who are the people leading beautiful lives and how can i emulate them? it was a process to try to be less shallow? brian: we will talk about the book. what will people get if they read this book? david: i hope they get a formula for rebelling against the culture of individualism. a culture that overemphasizes worldly achievement. i hope they will get a vocabulary of how to lead a joyous life. make a distinction about happiness and joy. happiness is what happens when you achieve a goal. self-expanse, you win the super bowl, you get a promotion, when life is going your way. joy is when the self disappears. when you are in nature and lose yourself in the woods. when a mother and daughter are enraptured by each other's love. by certain spiritual peek experiences. and the self disappears or you connect with something outside the self and there is a merger between the two. in the book happiness is good, but joy is better. if you orient yourself towards a life of joy, you'll have a -- a life of giving until you disappear you'll have a better life. brian: as you know there's religion in this book and this

one line i want you to explain. "the jews, by and large, did not know how to talk to me." david: i talk about my exploration of the christian faith. when i started exploring and asking people about that, every christian on earth started sending me books. this is like six years ago. got like 500 books. only 100 of wich were christianity. by c.l. lewis. judaism you are born jewish. you pretty much stay ewish. there is no evangelizing outside. there is no entry-exit for life. when i started to talk about how transfixed i was, a lot of my jewish friends had trouble, what's going on here? they didn't have language, i would say, at least for me, anyway. brian: later on in that area you say, is it fair to ask, did i convert? did i leave judaism and become

a christian? tell us, what is it? david: it does not feel that way. i was raised in a jewish home. both of my parents. i went to christian schools and i went to a christian camp, which was the core of my childhood. even as a young kid i was singing hymns and saying the lord's prayer. and singing in the choir and around these two cultures. it was not a problem because i did not believe in god anyway. they were just two cultures. later in life i came to faith. then they both seemed real to me. it did not feel like i was shifting ground, these two stories were in my head. nstead of seeing fictional stories, the exodus story becomes true as you live into it. it becomes the phrase i use as the ground of our being. i just felt i was deepening into place, suddenly taking god's presence seriously.

brian: when did all of this turn, or when did you get interested in christianity? as you're answering that, why do so many people read c.s. lewis' book? david: i always tell people to read cs lewis and george orwell because their pros are so clear. yet, they are doing a lot of literary things with it, so many metaphors are wrapped into their pros. the other thing good about them they wrote for radio. they wrote with a clarity you could hear with a ear, you don't have to read it. it was just a perfect prostyle. there has never been a blinding, shining road to damascus experience. it started with a fascination when i was probably 6 and sitting there in church, going to hebrew school and getting bar mitzvahed and then just

gradually a series of incremental deepening. i describe it in a book as, you you are in a train and everyone you're sitting across are talking and suddenly you look out the window and seems like nothing has changed but you've traveled a long way, there's a lot of ground behind you. and you've crossed a border and suddenly you think, well, i'm not anate nist, i am notting a nost -- and i am not an atheist, i am not agnostic. part of it is journalism. when you do journalism, i want to do the stories i do, columns i do about just a bag of genetic material. i've really come to believe that each human being has a soul, each human being has a piece of themselves which has no size, weight, or color, but it gives them infinity dignity and it's a yearning for goodness and that slavery is wrong because it's an assault on another human's soul. rape isn't an attack on just a bunch of physical molecules.

it's an insult into another eing's soul. once you get that sensation, then it is a shortly to the sensation that i think we are all joined by something and some transcendent realm. it is weirder than we can imagine. cosmologists have a theory that there are infinity number of universes. in one of those universes is we are talking. that is a weird theory. the idea of a creator is even weirder than that. i stay humble in that weirdness. brian: 15-plus years ago when gail collins talked about you coming to "the new york times," what do you think she was getting then? i know she no longer runs the op-ed there, but what do you think you're giving them now? david: i think she was getting more conservative voice. they wanted a diversity of voices so i was one.

i was a younger writer and more conservative writer than i am today. i don't think i changed. my heroes are still the same. edmund burke and alexander hamilton, basic conservatism that change should incremal and basic belief in the immigrant dream, that we should make a society where poor boys and girls can rise and succeed. and that hasn't changed. conservatism has changed around me. i would say with the advent of donald trump it's unrecognizable it was when bill buckley was my mentor. doctrinaire e less republican and somewhat of a never trumper. the other thing i have tried to do, my theories of culture is over politicized but never more allies. we talk too much about politics and maybe not enough about how we do our relationships, how we feel gratitude, how we do forgiveness. the things i think matter in life.

i think a lot of us, including myself, are morally inarticulate about. brian: what we first met you years ago you were with "the weekly standard" and i want to run a bit of an interview we had in 2015 and come back and ask you about "the weekly standard" and writing. [video clip] david: probably the happiest professional period was when i worked at "the weekly standard" and i had a group of my friends and we were part of a common project. i do think you change history in groups, not as individuals. magazines ought to be celebrated for that. [end of video clip] brian: in december 15 of 2018 you wrote the following. who killed the weekly standard in the new york times? i have only been around phil a few times. my impressions, on those occasions, was that he was a run-of-the-mill, arrogant billionaire. he was used to people courting him and he addressed them condescendingly from the lofty

height of his own wealth. why did you start off like that? that's not like you. david: i was angry. i would maybe take some of that back. brian: why were you angry? david: the magazine i have helped found with a lot of my est friends, andy ferguson, fred barnes, so many good friends, i thought it was a very important piece of the american piece of the conversation. it was a literary and i think intelligent conservatism. there was a conservatism that was not partyline. there was conservatism that allowed for internal debate. we were known as the magazine that supported the iraq war with crystal and bob cagan and others and max boot and i would say most of the staff didn't. there were a lot of differences and it was also just a fun place to work. i thought it was very important, and could still be the most needed time. in the era of trump so much of

conservatism has to be reargued. t was near its peak. he did a phenomenal job in the back of the book in the literary section. it is a loss for culture when a voice like that is -- and other people had written much more about this than i had known, it was especially cruel. brian: you write, they did not merely close it because it was losing money, they seemed to have murdered it out of greed and vengeance. david: i asked around while doing reporting, why was it closed? why wouldn't they allow it to be sold, because you could have find somebody to buy it. i think they wanted to harvest the list for another thing they were starting. so they could have said we don't want to own the magazine, that's fine, but then let somebody else keep it alive. brian: what's the value of a column or what's the value of a magazine like that and how many people care about words? david: a lot of people care

about words. it's a common heritage. i think the job of a columnist, i used to think a columnist, i'll write a column for certain immigration reform and the president will call me and say, i used to oppose this and now i support it. that will never happen. you don't tell people what to think, you provide a context in which they can think. with a column you're trying to provoke. a column is not influential for the policymakers. it's part of our common conversation. you are just trying to provoke a thought and maybe they like it, maybe they don't, but at least they're provoked into thinking. brian: in your book you have a chapter called "mastery." what is it about? david: i walk the reader through -- my theory is our life is made up of -- most of us -- four big commitments -- to a family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and then to a community. the fulfillment of our life depends how well we choose

those commitments and execute on them. mastery comes in the vocation section, choosing your career, what you're called to do in life. mastery is getting really good at it. uestion - i forgot the q -- rian: master, what's it about. david: once you have chosen your location, how do you get good at what you are doing? brian: we have some video that goes back quite a bit to the 1950's. you write about this in the book. it's out of context, people will say, what in the world is this doing here, but let's watch a man named ed sullivan, who hasn't been around for years. ed: we have a great all-star guy along but right now singing a medley of some of the songs you enjoy to the extent of boosting them over the million mark, here is -- elvis pressley! [cheers and applause]

♪ you ain't nothing but a hound dog who cries all the time you ain't nothing but a hound dog crying all the time ♪ ed: over and over again, in all of the correspondence and comments to the country, the unanimous opinion with your thoroughly nice youngsters. >> thank you. ed: that's the basis of tremendous popularity. brian: break it down? ed sullivan, do we have anyone like him? david: there were certain majority that a huge majority of america watched. it was hard to imagine one show getting the majority. here was "the honeymooners" ed sullivan hosted a variety show back in the 1950's. it relates to my book because a guy i admire, bruce springsteen.

bruce springsteen was 7 and he was living in freehold, new jersey. he, like the rest of america, were sitting around watching "the ed sullivan show" and saw that moment, saw elvis pressley. it was like he saw out of the world of gray, suddenly as he run," is book "born to fun, fun appeared. you look at the guy behind him, in suits and ties, and pressley isn't like him, he doesn't dress like them, doesn't sing. his whole affect is completely different. that was a cultural revolution. spreeng steen at that moment said, that's what i want to be. i have things enunesiation moment. something that happens in life that prefigure all the rest. for einstein when he was 4 his dad gave him a compass and he saw the magnetic forces and thought, while, there are unreasonable forces in the universe. i want to study those, when he was 4. ian wilson, i talk in the book, a scientist when he was 7 saw

his first jellyfish and saw the wonders of the ocean and game a naturalist at that moment. i am a lesser figure than them. at 7 i read a book called "paddinton bear" and wanted to become a writer. springsteen told his mom he wanted a guitar. it was hard. he was watching the "ed sullivan show" and saw the beatles and he picked up the guitar again and the rest is history. he had no plan b. he's been playing guitar since. brian: in my experience you are an elvis fan or beatles fan but never both. were you old enough to watch them? david: probably too young. seeing r as a kid not the beatles. i was aware of "yellow submarine" when i was little.

i think in retrospect i was more rolling stones than elvis. brian: what impacted somebody like ed sullivan or elvis or the beatles had in this country? david: they defined a culture and gave as you cohesive culture. elvis was important in part, also relating to the book, the culture you see of ed sullivan is the culture of the 1950's and it was very collective institutional culture. they would do big things like when world war ii, fight the depression, and they needed a culture that says we're all in this together. and so you didn't want to stick out too much. you wanted to dress the same. there was a culture of self-afacement. i am no better than anybody but nobody is better than me. and people found that -- it was a good community if you were in those days if you were in chicago, you didn't say i'm from chicago. you would say i'm from 56th and poe las key, because the neighborhoods -- polaski because the neighborhoods were super tight. it was too conformist and too boring. the food was really boring. it was racist, sexist,

anti-semitic. alongs came elvis and said i am breaking out of all this and the beatles were breaking out. we will create a different culture. it was much more individualistic, much more open. it was cool to be young and not old, to be a rebel and not institutionalist. to be expressive, not modest. it shifted from elvis to woodstock and we needed to go through that change. it was good for america. we had 60 years of hyper individualism ever sense. now we are at a point where all that individualism has torn us apart as a society and the bonds between us have grown weaker and our narcissism about ourselves has grown stronger. brian: you say in the book you say you change your mind about this. david about? brian: individualism being more interested in community. what happened during that period to change your mind? david: well, i think you know history solves problems that --

of that moment. so i can't remember i quoted in the book social theorist who says history moves according to a ratchet, pivot hatchet. culture is a problem. we have to win world war ii. let's have a collective problem. they ratchet it up. they solve it it works for a while but then it stops working. you have to hatchet it up, chop it up. because people are ingenuous they pivot over and find something else. suddenly the problem is society's too conformist. we pivot over to elvis. he gives us something new and we live more in his way. now we are at a point where we're chopping up the hyperindividualism of 60 years and people are reverting to tribe as their attempt to find community. i think that's a poisonous direction to go to. tribalism seems like community. bonds people together but it bonds them over mutual hatred, not mutual affection. brian: go back to the title of this chapter "mastery."

what more do you want to say about it? david: i think the first thing that comes about, people sometimes think, i should find what my skills are. and i should just go and do whatever my skills tell me to do. am an artist or whatever. you should go to where your desires are. skills are plentiful, but motivation is really scarce. the question becomes, what are you so fanatical about you will basically devote your whole life to that thing? i think the research we know, even people like mozart, he said it's not because they were natural geniuses, they just worked from a very early age phenomenally hard for a long time. spreeng steen worked on that guitar and -- springsteen worked on his garr tar and his music his whole life. he did things to remain true to what started him. one of the things i admire most about his life choices is that -- his third album, which was the big superstar blowup album

called "born to run" he could with de a bigger album national sound and becoming global celebrity. instead he went back to his hometown and wrote a very spare, very particular album called "darkness on the edge of town" about his own place. instead of going big he went back to his roots, the thing that motivated him. the idea that the core of each of us, there is some question that nags at us. there is some desire that drives us. it can be anesthetic. i quote a woman who i think painter.ard who is he asked, why are you a painter? she said, i love the smell of paint. there is a guy named tom boyce who has a book. they say some kids are dandy dandelion children.

he is a dandelion kid. his sister was an orchid. she achieved a lot, but depression and suicide to occur. the comparison between the two has been the animating principle. to me it's just working on that craft over and over and having the desired to wake up and do the same thing over and over. brian: this comes from your chapter "mastery." i am going to show some video and there are three clips. one of them is a guy named forrest mcdonald. unfortunately he's deceased. this is from 1994. the next one is shelby foot, he is deceased, from 2001. andcasey shift is alive. that is 2011. over the years i have asked questions about how people right when they write and it has gotten most people's attention that like this stuff. let's watch this. i will ask you about your chapter. [video clip] brian: if we could see you in

your environment writing this book, what would we see? >> you would see me writing in the nude most of the time. we live in total isolation out in the country. they don't read the electric meter because they couldn't find it. we have to read our own meter. we have wonderful isolation. it's warm most of the year in alabama. and why wear clothes? they are just a bother. brian: you say you write between 500 and 600 words a day with a dipped pen on paper. how many words can you write each time and demonstrate just for a minute how that would work. >> the reason i like writing with a dipped pen is because it takes my time. instead of doing the typewriter and reversing the drum. i don't want anything mechanical between me and the page. brian: what do you write on? >> you ask an embarrassing question. i write with pencil on a legal

pad. brian: pencil, not a pen? >> mechanical pen. when i write on the computer, it's longer. it's softer. it doesn't have the coarseness it could have. once i have the first draft then i will enter into the computer and edit subsequent drafts from there. brian: you write about some of this stuff. avid: the first story reminded me of john cheever. he would get up in his apartment, put on a suit and tie, take an elevator to the basement where he had a building, take off the suit and tie and write in his boxers and at 12:30 he would put his clothes back on and make himself lunch. not quite nude but getting there. brian: did he talk about that? david: i came across that story and it impressed me. somebody else. afraid who it was. toni morrison had a hotel room where she had a bible, typewriter and it bottle of

brandy. i like that story too. my writing, i am not a computer or with a pen or at least not at a table. what i do is i have random thoughts that come to me out of order and i write them on little pieces of paper, post-it notes, or slips of notebook paper, then i put them into a big pile, then i take the big pile and, for, say, a column, which is 850 words, may i have 200 pages of research material that i marked up. i late it on the floor of my living room or office on the carpet there and there is a bunch of piles. and each pile will be a paragraph of my column or the book. for me, the writing process is not typing on a keyboard, it's crawling around the floor organizing my piles. i tell my students, your paper should be 80% done by the time you start putting into the keyboard. writing is about traffic management and structure.

you have to get the structure right. for me, the piles are the structure. i don't have clarity about what it is until i've physically see it laid out on the floor. i pick up a pile, write the paragraph, throw out the paper. pick up the next pile and throw it out. if it is not flowing, i don't try to fix it, i just start over with a new structure. if it does not feel like it's flowing, it's a structural problem showing up unconsciously. brian: how about a book, when you write a book? how do you do that, same way? david: it's the same way. except thousands of piles. they get into ever smaller piles. so i'll just have drawers and drawers of notebooks. ilhave this chapter, that chapter, that chapter. each sentence has a piece of paper. i pick up the paragraph and lay out the sentences and copy them down to the computer. brian: here is your column that you wrote about your own book. it was april 15, 2019 in the

-- in "the new york times." it's "five lies our culture tells." by the way, do you write those? david: yeah. brian: you say, we've created a culture based on lies. explain. david: i wrote the word character four years ago thinking our culture was sort of ok and it had some problems. most was internal. culture has been revealed by the events of the last few years, our culture has bigger problems than i understood. i think a lot of them, as i said the culture of individualism. that life is an individual journey. and i quote this book "other places you'll go ", the dr. seuss book that they give students on graduation day. it's a solitary journey without marriage, friendships, relationships. it's a sole person going into life. that's not how life is or how life should be. he second thing is the

meritocracy, you are what you accomplish, and there is a view which we deny it but our society points to it which is that people have earned more, work more are worth more than other people and that's created such poison in society. and then there is the lie we tell our students that success ill make you feel fulfilled. and you really should point your life to career success. we take them at 16 at least the most privileged ones and shift them to the college admissions process and tells them success and status will be a percent of their lives. i now see the effects of all that shaping, just creating this culture of fragmentation and anger. we lost the ability to treat ourselves well. brian: what triggered this? david: it grew up gradually out of the culture of individualism. somehow the meritocracy got purified. it was rebellion against -- it was harvard by the president

and said, you know, we have a ench bunch of -- it was around 1950's, we have to fight the soviets. harvard, we are the same part of the blue-blood protestant families going to harvard for the last 200 years and we have to change that. he was absolutely right. the s.a.t. were part of the tool they would use so it wouldn't be inherited sons of rich men. they would do it on the basis of merit. on the s.a.t. and grades. from 1950, i think your dad went to harvard, the chances of getting in were 80%. and by 10 years it changed. and those are the right things do it. it made society fair. the pressure of the meritocracy and natural individualism that has always been part of america, we have taken good ideas and taken them a little too far. if you want to solve the whole

book in one sentence, ameritocracy is individualism, we have the merit system that's different so you have beater moral system and the book is an attempt to survey philosophers and say here is a moral system to balance capitalism, not replace it. so we are not morally corrupted by capitalist it's. brian by now there are people watching this interview and saying, ok, what is that on his lapel? david: so, i talk about this in the book. not only in the book. i think culture changes when a small group find a better way to live and we of copy it. elvis was one of those people. we copied him. we have a crisis of social isolation in this country and i created something -- we, the social fabric process, and it was based on the theory the problem of isolation and fragmentation and division is being solved on the local level

by people we call weavers and some of them have served organizations. some behave as neighbors. like they don't think -- some of them really there is a woman named sarah hemminger in baltimore made an organization called thread which surrounds students with volunteers and creates this social fabric around them. it's a beautiful program. that's like a formal rganization. brian: you mentioned baltimore and we don't need to get into this a lot. the mayor of baltimore -- and there have been a couple mayors of baltimore. th cases are women that have -- what's the word you want to use to describe what they have done. it typical leave of absence because she was a part of -- i don't want to make any accusations that i can't define, but she basically made a tremendous amount of money off of book sales that never really happened.

you know what i am talking about. how can a kid growing up in that environment? david: change will not come from politicians, it will come from the bottom up. brian: but they still are out there and those are the people we see. david: politics matter and we should have honest politicians, but i do think change will come when we have a shift in culture, but then a shift in community. all of us live a little more for our neighbors. we adopt different habits. you don't change your life and go and be a teacher in an urban school. if everybody in our society invited their neighbors over for dinner, if everybody checked in on old people during the heat wave, if we had a shift in our manners so that we all joined in organization, joined a club that put us in contact with people unlike ourselves at least once a month, all those millions of changes would have an effect on the social fabric.

it would make people embrace a different lifestyle. maybe join an organization. sometimes it's informal. most care in society is informal. we ran into a -- i have a friend who ran into a lady in florida who was helping kids across the street after school. he said, do you have time to volunteer, she said, no. i have no time. he said, are you getting paid for this, she said, no. what are you doing after this? bringing food to the hospital to the ill. he said, that's not volunteering, she said no, i am just neighboring. most people do that, they just neighbor. we lost the art of neighboring. so we take the weavers who are great at it. they are great at relationships. we take their values and we try to lift them up and illuminate them and just say -- brian: where did the term weaver come from? david: we just thought of it. the term is important because, in 1960, nobody called themselves a feminist. by 1975 millions of people said they were a feminist.

it's a great power to name something. to me, i look at all the millions of weavers around the country that don't know it's a movement. we had the feminist movement solve gender equality. we have the civil rights movement. we have a community problem but no community movement. we are trying to help rally that thing. brian: you mentioned aspen more than once and you talk about it in the book. i've got some video. chitaqua. lk about i want to roll this and just ask you how many people really have an opportunity to go to this kind of an environment? this is in new york. how do you get access to that? it costs lots of money, the same thing with aspen. the prices in aspen are just astronomical and very fee people can enjoy that. so when you talk about these places, you know, enormous number of people in the united states could never participate in some of this kind of thing.

david: aspen is very expensive but it's important to know that aspen itself is 40 programs and policies that reach all across america and really across the world so aspen idea festival has become famous in what they are known for. 95% is out in america. jeant runs our rural program and every time i was in nebraska, wherever you go, they know janet across rural america so most of what aspen does is not the aspen festival. some of that is just financial. hat's where our donor base is. chataqua runs little cottages there. those two places are probably more above average wealth. what you have to do and one of the things we've done in weave is go to where the problems are and go where the people are and over the last -- well, first, i spent a year in 2016 trying to understand why i got the trump election so wrong.

then i spent the last year and a half with the weavers in north carolina, in nebraska, in new orleans, all across america where normal america lives. in youngstown, ohio. that has been a very great experience. while politics has gotten ugly, to be a weaver in youngstown, i met a really good guy who really loves youngstown and started his activism by .tanding in the town square i have met the most amazing people not motivated by money, status, they are motivated to do good. life is really hard for them. they have taken on heavy burdens. they don't have a lot of money, but they lead very inspiring lives. i have heard so many stories. one woman i met in new orleans, lisa fitzpatrick was her name,

she was in health care. health care executive. she was driving and saw two scared young boys, 10 and 11, and they held up a gun and they shot her in the face and she recovered and she decided, you know, i wasn't the only victim here. they were victims of something. they didn't start. she started doing work with gang members and then she moved into a neighborhood and young kids started knocking on her door who needed community. she let them in. one day she found herself in her 50's surrounded by 35 young kids, teenagers who were hanging around her house. playing with legos. she said, why do you hang around with a middle-aged lady like me, they said, because you open the door. so many people are hungry for community. the people who really can create it, they get a lot done. brian: here is some video from february the 21st of this year. it is only 30 seconds. you will recognize the individual. this is another part of your book.

[video clip] >> as desperate as i am for the church to do what was it founded to be, in my life and in the life of the society what i am concerned about, the church does not only need to be confined to hallowed halls. in fact, what i discovered in our time, in this democracy, there's a whole bevy of organizations, large and small, institutions old and new, famous and nonfamous that share a common language of personalism and relationality, hospitality and recognition of the human soul. end of video clip] brian: who is that woman? david: she is my wife. we were married about two years ago. little less than two years ago. she's a writer. and she is -- just had a book -- she spent a -- she's a writer too. on some similar subjects but differently. i write about individual character. she wrote a book called "the

fabric of character," it's about organizations that turnaround lives. she went to a moving company in salt lake city that takes men d women out of prison and is reformed so they come out two years later totally transformed. it's humbling to be around these people. the funny thing about them is some of them are former burglars. they are good at getting things out of buildings. their slogan is, we used to take things out the window, now we take it out the door. they does that work. happily married. brian: in your book you tell us about your divorce. we talked about it the last time you are here. you say you and your ex-wife have an agreement not to talk about your divorce. but then you tell us everything about your new wife, how you met her, she was your researcher, she is 23 years younger than you are. and then the love story and all that. why did you decide to do that? you get a sense that divorce

was a real blow to you, but you won't talk about it. but you'll talk about the -- david: i don't feel i tell our love story. i tell my journey of faith. as you can tell from that clip, ann is christian. at a crucial moment, it was really only a two-month window in august or september of 2013, we were working on this book "the road to character" and i would write her these emails trying to understand what dorothy day believed, what was all the stuff. she would write me long emails back, that sort of explained the exploration of faith. she got a job in houston. writing about the immigrant experience and moved away. that was, like, pivotal. and then my journey of faith continued for the ensuing three, four, five, six years now. brian: you say in the book, and if you did not talk about all this people would be cynical and that story would be told.

how much of a fear did you have that you hired a woman conservatively younger than you? david: it was a fear. it's not a good situation. i worry very much about predeceasing her. so we -- you know, this we went through a lot of discernment, especially yan did. and eventually it just became frankly the love came too powerful to deny. we couldn't go through life -- eventually this happened more in 2017 than 2016. you couldn't go through life without that person out there and not be without that person. it would ruin every other relationship. eventually what had seemed impossible -- first, you don't think about it when you are just working together and being friends. but eventually what seemed impossible and the age gap, especially, it just seemed unavoidable. brian: ok. this is another small item.

your first wife's name was jane, she was a christian and converted to judaism. david: i wouldn't say she was christian. brian: she changed her name to sarah. as a jewish man, you married a woman who is a christian. it is just the opposite. does any of this stuff bother you? david: i called the chapter on religion the most unexpected turn of events and, believe me, it was the most unexpected turn of events. brian: you mention and tell us you will mention a lot of different people and quote a lot of different people. let's start with dorothy day. david: she led a remarkable life. she was a writer. she grew up in san francisco and chicago, then she came to new york thinking she would be a radical socialist writer. on the birth of her child she was flooded with joy. she said, i need somebody to thank for this. so she became a catholic on the spot.

she formed something called the catholic worker movement. she founded a paper called "cast lick worker" and then founded homeless shelters. then she founded communes and then a whole series of organizations, really, not only to help the poor and homeless, but live amongst them. she paid herself no salary. she embased a life of poverty. she is a life of someone who really gave her life to others. i suspect she will become a saint before too long. she wrote a book which i highly recommended called "the long loneliness" about her own early life. it's a deeply moving book for anybody, whether you're reoigous or not religious, -- religious or not religious, who the burden of being poor out of the sense of this is what i am called to do. i teach it in my classes at yale. all writers are very moved by her. brian: i had the pleasure of interviewing you for years. you don't seem to ever change when you are sitting in that

chair. if you read this book you go back to the period where you say you were lonely and you're in an apartment, had no -- didn't care about anything, had a hard time. what's the difference of that feeling you had then, after your divorce, and the feeling you have now every day when you get up? david: as i say, i devoted my life so much to work. had workday friends and had lunch with and talked about politics. i had no weekend friends. somehow that was the way life had become. when the kids left to college, and elsewhere, i just suddenly all had nothing. his vast expanse of loneliness in the weekends, and i realize the void was in myself. i hadn't really fed my inner life. so i was writing a lot of articles but i wasn't really living an eternal life of attachments or devotions. i think you become ashamed and

humiliated. i write books about life and i am not doing well. i was humiliated. life gives us valleys. that's a valley i caused. you know, my mom died two years ago. that was another valley. life gives us valleys. i was with a 94-year-old who said, life is defined by our moments of greatest adversity and how we react to it. so the value, you are either broken, in which case you turn bitter by life's trials, or you get broken open, in case you get more vulnerable. hopefully i have tried to get more vulnerable. brian: what about life today? when you get up every day, is there a different feeling? david: i have a joyful life. partly that's luck. i have fallen on some warm communities where they demand you show up in a loving way. i love these people. partly it's being blissfully happy in my marriage. and then partly it's trying to

work out these issues through the book. we really try to write our way to a better life. i enjoyed writing this book. it was stressful because it was tough to organize and all that, but it allowed me to be in touch with smart people. who i quote a lot. some jewish, some christian. c.s. lewis. scientists, einstein. i just take the wisdom that i found and try to pass it along. this book is almost me not being a writer but as a teacher. these people have wisdom, i have harvested it for five years and handed off to the reader. a lot of it is not me. it's other people's wisdom. brian: another writer you mention is matthew, from the bible. why? david: well, to me -- well, all the books of the bible -- people say there are all these miracles in the bible. to me the miracle is the bible. that somebody, some group of people thousands of years ago could come up with genesis or

exodus or matthew is a miracle. parting the red sea is nothing compared to the depth and complexity of these books. matthew, specifically, is sublimely beautiful. just the idea and the revolutionary idea is expressed in the attitudes to a certain amount, that to me is just a beautiful miracle that is -- it's a revolution. as someone -- i quote in the book -- the celestial grandeur shines through in those words. brian: you came from canada and graduated from the university of chicago in history. david: yes. brian: the reason i mentioned it, you say at the time you were in college, you despised edmund burke. but you no longer despise him. who was he? i see this all the time, edmund burke is my guy. why? what did he write that matters? david: i was a college freshman and the good thing in chicago

they assign you books you don't want to read and they make you take these courses, you have no choice. and so i was assigned a book called "the reflections and the revolutions in france." edmund burke was part of part limit in the late 18th century and supported the american revolution, but oppose the french revolution. this was a book against the french revolution and against the revolutionaries. and the fervor that was happening for us. brian: what was the difference? david: he thought the american revolution was a conservative revolution. our revolution was defending our proper rights. the problem with the french revolution, it was an attempt to wipe the slate clean of society and create a new society out of nothing. the key phrase i take from urke, or his key thesis is,

revolution was a conservative revolution. we were just defending our rights. the problem with the french revolution was an attempt to wipe the slate clean and create a new society out of nothing. the key phrase i take from burke, or his key thesis is, epistemological modesty. society is really complicated, so we should be careful in how we think we should change it. you should do change, but do it incrementally and constantly. he is suspicious of revolution and of rewriting society. he put his faith in the acquired wisdom of the ages that is embodied in institutions, customs, and in the traditions of the past. he said when he wiped away those traditions you're asking for trouble. when i was in 18 her old kid i thought it was horrible. but then i went off as a police eporter in chicago and i saw cabrini green and these housing projects were they hope to improve the lives of the poor nd they made it worse. when they tore down the old neighborhoods, they tore down he connections of the social

capital. these products are awful places. the unintended consequences of good intentions. now those projects have been torn down and those places are much better. brian: i know you have written some about donald trump, i know you don't want to go over all of what people have said about him. i do want to ask you this, when he is gone, weather at the end of 2020 or another four years, what you think will be the legacy? i'm not sure that is the word, but what will have changed in our system at that point? david: i think culture really shapes history. some people think technology, but i think culture, values and ideas. donald trump will have put a tear in a lot of our norms in the culture of how we are supposed to behave. what are the values we are supposed to -- brian: give me an example. david: you would not to off -- tweet off nasty stuff as president of the united states. you would not pay off a stripper and be unabashed about it. but he does all of this. without shame.

brian: hold on with the stripper thing. go back in history and name a president. lyndon johnson, john f. kennedy. go back over the list, we just did not know about them. david: but if we did know it would have been a scandal, so there was certain norms. there was a norm about keeping t quiet between us boys. there was a sense that if a president lied a lot then there would be a price to pay. brian: is there any difference between what donald trump did and what bill clinton did? david: clinton had his affairs, but trump is open and flagrant about it. there is not even paying homage to the norms. i was friends with clinton at -- i was upset with clinton at the time, but this is a different order of magnitude. brian: what will have changed? david: the crucial question to me is, what happens after? s this the new norm? it was clarified for me in the first republican debate in the primary were he already attacked

carly fiorina for her faith. -- her face. then he went after rand paul, and said i will not go after your looks, but i have a lot to work with. and you take away the norms of politeness and civility than everything becomes dog eat dog. i worry about the decay of ivilization. it is the core belief of conservatism that the crust of civilization is thinner than you think. if you tear away that crust and unleash things you don't like. brian: are there other things? david: more than we talk about ften, our attitude towards china has changed. he has probably changed it in a

correct way. china has become the more threatening presence in the world. brian: what about military intervention around the world? david: he continues their retrenchment in a different way that had began with president obama. whether we stay in this posture is an open question. the famous vietnam syndrome happened in the 1970's. by the 1980's we elected ronald reagan and america was more active in the world. merica tends to feel they need to be active in the world. the next president will find himself or herself as president and america will have to act and be active. we are talking and there is a refugee crisis on the southern border, it is because we have ignored and now defunding some of those countries like honduras and el salvador. things turn bad when america is not active in the world, trying to maintain basic decency. brian: have you seen the column written by robert simmons?

about your book? david: no. i am a big admirer. brian: he says, dear david, the eadline gives it away. "david brooks, let me respectfully suggest: lighten up." he says, i am a big fan, you write beautifully and have insights about lifestyles and beliefs that others had missed. then he says, as a rule, i rarely respond directly to other columnists, it's a good rule because it would make commentary more personal and shrill, but sometimes rules need to be broken and this is one of those times. let me respectfully suggest, lighten up. to be sure, most of your insights are true, but they are also utopian. let me stop there. what do you think?

david: i'm not sure where he is going with that. it is about cultural anxiety. i think we are in a culturally perilous place. 40,000 people are killing themselves a year. people dying of opioid addiction. brian: he said, here are a few omments on the lies. he said ambition is america's blessing and curse. it has people try new things. what do you think? david: maybe i was exaggerating. a lot of the things that i think i call lies are really truths taken to an extreme. i believe in alexander hamilton, ambition, and social mobility. but i think we have taken it to such an extreme that it has destroyed our culture. if i sat down with him, we would probably say. yeah. brian: here's another one.

he says happiness is not a practical goal of public policy. david: i do agree with that. the government can offer services, but we offer each other care. that is where happiness comes in. brian: he says the meritocracy criticize is not so sinister as portrayed. david: we might differ on that. i live in the meritocracy, i have felt its teeth and embody t. i think the lack of social trust, social division comes from a meritocracy that has lost some of its values. i see his point. brian: finally he writes, finally there is a matter of work, everyone complains about

it, but without it most of us would die of boredom. learning new stuff is inherently rewarding and you and i are paid o do it. the virtues outweigh the vices. his last sentence, let's keep perspective, we don't live in an ideal world, and never will, but things could be worse, let's try to avoid that. david: i agree with that. i have a chapter in the book on vocation. i think work is one of the pillars of life. but i think you should do it as, what am i contributing here. i don't think you should do it just because it makes you money or makes you famous. brian: when you sat down to write this book, who did you have in mind reading it? david: myself. you really try to work out your problems. my books, popular or not, popularity comes not as you are a genius, but i have common problems. i say them in the book that i am an average person with above

average communication skills. when i go through a problem, a lot of people are going through it. i am very typical. if there is any popularity it's because there are a lot of people going through the same thing. it's my averageness that is the key. brian: our guest has been david brooks. he is a new york times columnist. the name of his book, "the second mountain: the quest for a moral life." thank you very much for joining us. avid: thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2019] >> all q&a programs are available on our website, or on the podcast at c-span.org. >> next sunday on q&a, a discussion on c-span's the presidents, with contributors. that's next sunday at 8:00 p.m.

eastern and pacific time on c-span. >> former vice president joe biden kicks off his campaign for the democratic presidential nomination this afternoon in pittsburgh. president trump tweeted this morning, sleepy joe biden is having his first rally in the great state of pennsylvania. he obviously doesn't know that pennsylvania is having one of the best economic years in its history, with lowest unemployment ever, a now thriving steel industry, that was dead, and great future. we'll have live coverage of the joe biden rally here on c-span. but we'll have to leave for live house coverage at 4:30 eastern. however, c-span3 will have live coverage until the end. by the way, you can also find it live online at c-span.org or listen live with the free c-span radio app. when the house begins legislative work at 4:30 eastern today, members will debate three bills, including one allowing states to use federal funds to build local public shooting ranges.