dpDavid Brooks, a Presidential Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and a staff writer for The Atlantic, will host a new weekly video podcast, “The Permanent Questions,” which debuted today.
The podcast, produced by The Atlantic in partnership with Yale, will feature conversations with academics, teachers, and other experts on the fundamental questions of the humanist tradition, inviting listeners to think deeply about the purpose and meaning of their lives.
“I’m excited to see how David and his guests will welcome the public into the questions and conversations being pursued at Yale,” said Yale President Maurie McInnis. “Everyone has a stake in the enduring quandaries of the human condition. I have no doubt that this podcast will inspire people from all walks of life to participate in the endless work of asking questions, seeking answers, and deepening human knowledge.”
Brooks is the inaugural Presidential Senior Fellow, a program McInnis established to bring to campus experts who encourage respectful debate and bridge the academy with society at large. The aim is also to expand access to the transformative work of universities. Brooks’ five-year appointment began Feb. 1.
As part of his role, Brooks is developing a variety of programming to increase public engagement with the liberal arts. This includes the podcast, as well as a series of popular talks, first hosted last spring on campus, that have found an even wider audience on-line. (The next two in the series are scheduled for Sept. 22 and Dec. 1. Pre-registration is required.)
Brooks is the author of seven non-fiction books addressing topics in ethics, neuroscience, sociology, and psychology, and a prominent political and cultural commentator. He was an op-ed columnist for The New York Times for 22 years and is a regular contributor to PBS NewsHour. His stories and essays for The Atlantic offer keen observations on major shifts in governments, institutions, and social structures.
He previously served as a senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School from 2012 to 2018, and again from 2021 to 2022.
“David has always had a gift for making complex ideas feel urgent and personal,” said James Levinsohn, the Charles W. Goodyear Professor of Global Affairs and dean of the Yale Jackson School. “I saw it firsthand when he taught here as a senior fellow, and our alumni are better thinkers for having sat in his classroom. The upcoming events and podcast are natural extensions of that: taking the kind of rigorous conversation we prize at Yale Jackson and opening it up to the New Haven community and the public at large. We are proud to host him.”
Brooks sat down with Yale News before the podcast’s launch to talk about the need for a humanist reaction to our culture of technological optimization, the power of a great conversation, and his deep appreciation for great university teachers. The conversation has been condensed and edited.
The podcast is called “The Permanent Questions.” What are they?
David Brooks: They’re the big ones, like, how do you find a purpose in life? How do you think about your own death? How does that change how you live? These are just basic questions of, where should my priorities be? What do I really desire? Anything that touches the subjective nature of our being. If we want to live full lives, we all have to answer these questions.
I’m going to have a conversation with Shelly Kagan [the Clark Professor of Philosophy in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences] about whether humans have souls. That’s a pretty big question. I’m hoping to talk to the psychologist Daphne de Marneffe, who wrote a very good book called “The Rough Patch,” about how marriages survive rough patches. And we will have an astronomer and cosmologist to talk about what the universe can tell us about our ideas.
Will these mostly be topics that address some of the perceived societal woes — like our loss of a humanistic core and a moral order — that you have often written and talked about?
Brooks: Yes. I think if you look through history, whenever there’s been a big technological advance, there’s been a humanistic counter reaction. For instance, in the 19th century with the industrial revolution, you had all sorts of people like Matthew Arnold, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, ‘You’re not going to turn us into machines. We are human beings, and we’re going to preserve our humanistic core.’ And now we’re in the middle of a big period of technological advance with social media and AI and all that, and I don’t think the humanists have staged their reaction. We’re swept up in a culture of optimization, productivity enhancement, all the different mechanisms that turn us into numbers, that rank us. I think it’s worth pushing back and reminding people that there a lot of things about human beings that can’t be quantified, and they tend to be the most important things. We should be articulate about defending them.
So, the podcast in one sense is a platform for humanists?
Brooks: That’s part of my own meta-analysis of it. But the overall purpose is to help us all lead better lives. I’ve spent my entire career working out my stuff in public, trying to become a better person. My books are all versions of that. I wrote a book about emotions so I could learn more about my emotional life. I wrote a book about character formation so I could try to be a better person. I wrote a book about suffering and coming back from hardship. I wrote a book on how to know a person, how to build social connections. It’s all trying to make David less shallow.
You had these awakenings over time. Do you think it’s important for college students to think about these big questions now?
Brooks: It’s the best time to do it. Partly because they’re malleable and also because they’re already thinking about big ideas. Their minds are just electric.
This current generation has been handed a bit of a raw deal. They’re suffering from mental health issues at higher levels than previous generations. They’re more pessimistic. There’s less love and romance in their lives. More broadly, marriage rates are down, fertility rates are down, patriotism is down, religious observance is down. All the things we normally love — family, kids, community, country, God maybe — are declining and that can’t be good.
You mentioned some of the thinkers you’ll be speaking with. Are you actively seeking out people whose views differ from your own in order to expand the conversation?
Brooks: Yes, it makes it more interesting. With Shelly Kagan, for example, I definitely disagree with him — I do think humans have souls, and he does not. It makes the conversation more fun.
In the first episode I speak with Megan Sullivan, a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame, about whether a Great Books’ education can change a life. I will press her about that — it’s just a bunch of talk in a classroom, how could that possibly change a life? Hopefully, we’ll both come up with some answers.
In that same vein, can a thoughtful podcast change a life?
Brooks: Well, words are really powerful. A great conversation can be the basis for a lasting friendship. I fell in love with my wife because we had a phone call that lasted around 12 hours. It burst into love. Conversation can have that effect on people.
You gave a series of talks at Yale last semester called Yale Conversations where you addressed some big topics, like “How to be Ambitious Without Being a Jerk.” They’ve proven exceedingly popular on YouTube. Will you keep doing them?
Brooks: I was startled by how many views they’ve gotten, and so I am going to keep doing them. If people are interested, I’ll keep talking. I’m going to do one earlier in the term on the war for America’s soul. What’s going on in our culture?
One of the nice things about the talks is that the in-person audience is about two-thirds older people from the broader community and one-third students. So, I also want to give a talk on how to feel young when you’re old, and how to be wise when you’re young. Sort of linking the two generations.
Do you hope to reach a similarly broad audience through the podcast?
Brooks: I’m definitely hoping the podcast will reach that younger audience. One of the reasons we’re doing a video podcast is because young people do watch podcasts. Personally, I have never watched a podcast. I listen when I’m driving or walking. But there are generational differences, so we’re shooting for them.
Why is Yale a good place to ground the discussion?
Brooks: I’ve been teaching at Yale off and on since the ’90s, and I’ve always felt at home there. I have been critical of elite universities, mostly for their admissions criteria and the pre-professionalization that subsumes the students. But there’s a lot of great stuff that goes on at universities. I visit about 30 a year and you meet these phenomenal teachers. There are a lot of academics who are famous because of their published work, but the people I really want to talk to are the great teachers, the classroom people. I’d like to show the rest of the world what really goes on in an elite university, which is a lot more diverse set of activities than the public reputation.
