Leading eye with the intellectuals and colonists and tv commentators and authors. His new book is tonight. How may people have read this book . How many people are goingan to read it after this is over . How many people are going to get autographed copy from david brooks today . So david, thanks for doing th. Before we go into this book, the Second Mountain which have read and its a very good book, will go through it id like to go through about your background. You grew up in new york . Lower side of new york. About, hippies would go just to be. And one of the things they did was they threw their they put the garage can garbage can on fire, i saw 5dollar bill in garbage can and i reached in the fire and grabbed money and ran away. That was my first step to the right. At age 8i read a book calling paddington the bear and decided that i wanted to become a writer and ive been writing pretty much every day since and in high school i wanted to date a woman named bernice and she wanted to date another guy, i was like what is she thinking, i write way better than the other guy. What did your parents do other than being hippies . 1950 progressives but my father was teaching at nyu, scholar of victorian literature and my mother scholar of victorian history. The phrase was think british, act british. So what they did was gave their kids names, super english names like norman, irving, milton, sidney thinking that no one would ever they they were jewish. So your last name jewish names, brooks. Brooks was changed in world war i because it was too german. I was a b minus student. How did you get in the university of chicago . In those Days University of chicago admitted 70 of applicants and i went to chicago because the Admissions Officers at colombia decided i should go. You didnt get in. What did you want to study . Political theory, chicago in retrospect, chicago was the turning point because of great culture, the best thing about chicago is a Baptist School atheist and i took the common core, i wrote 16 papers, i probably wrote 20 and we had in those days professors that were refugees from germany and they when they taught you books they taught you as keys to the kingdom, how to live if you studied the books well and read them seriously, if you burn with enthusiasm people will come from miles to watch you burn and the professors had the enthusiasm and so they really introduced us to the great world ecologies and taught us to take reading really seriously and then they taught us and if you live in washington and seeing the world, most of what you see world in distorted way and theres a quote from john, says the older i get the more important the more i think the most essential thing in life is to see something and say what you saw clearly in a short passage, millions can talk and millions with think and millions can think for one who can see and author that told story, just see the world clearly and disciplined us to try to do. How did you in the university of chicago . I did better there. Theres a certain point where you learn to work. I learned to work. So how did you decide what it was going to be, did you know you were going to be a writer . I knew i was going to become a writer, i didnt want to be academic because im not good at abstract thinking . You didnt want to go to Investment Banking . Theres a higher calling but i would have had to been able to do addition and multiplication as i understand. When you were an undergraduate you met william, how did that change your life . I was school columnist for the newspaper and came to campus and i wrote a vicious parody of him, buckley, one called the buckley review which he merged to form buckley buckley, a jun bunch of jokes about that and he came to campus and gave speech to student body and at the end of it, david brooks if you are in the audience he said i want give you a job and that was the big break. He gave you a job . Sadly i was not in the audience. [laughter] i was literally out, i was hired by pbs to interview and if you go to youtube, you will see 21yearold with big glasses and show socialist, i argue the point, he destroys in about 6 words and the camera lingers on my face as i try to think of something to say. What did you do when you graduated . I worked for a year, best job i ever had and then i covered chicago politics for something called the City News Bureau in chicago journal, that was harold washington, first black mayor come in, the council wars. Did you get a job at buckley eventually . I covered poverty on the south and west side and i thought i was seeing a lot of bad social policies ahead of unintended consequences of making probably worse and that may be more conservative and i called buckley up and said is the job still there and he said yes, and moved to new york. Worked for National Review . Totally shock, you forget how buckley was, he lived a lifestyle that was unimaginable, youre a kid and suddenly on park avenue and they put a finger bowl in front of you, you have, why is soup so watery. Had you been conservative . I think by that time i was happy when thatcher won, but mostly in chicago they assigned me a book revolution of france and at the time i hated, i loathed the book, i wanted to create new ideas for myself and this is a guy that said distrust your reason. Conservatism is based on modesty. The world is a really complicated place, be careful how you think you can change it, do it gradually, incrementally and as if you were operating on your own father and what i saw in chicago social change gone badly and seem to confirm and i wasnt conservative as National Review was but suddenly sometimes when you get close to people you idealize and you see faults, did you see faults in buckley or did you idealize him . His son wrote a book and showed some of the dark father of father, add, his father couldnt sit still when christopher graduated from yale at the commencement and he left, christopher had to have lunch after own commencement alone and that side of buckley i saw, he couldnt slow down, he simply could not slow down. On the other hand, he asked me questions about everything, he took me to concert, he took me yachting, surrogate father for 18 months and what i saw in awesome capacity for friendship. Estimated that he wrote more letters than anybody else in 20th century, any other american because he was constantly staying in touch with his friends and great thing is that conversations at his home were almost never about politics, they were about ideas and literature, he was not primarily a how long did you stay at the National Review . I did that for 18 months. Thats it . That was short. Seemed long at the time. What did you do next . I came down here and i began two, mui movie critic. Did you have a background on movie critic . I went to the movies every night. [laughter] i had seen a lot of movies. Being movie critic was fun, i got to meet and best interview of my life with jackie, i was sitting in a hotel room and wife walks in and plays music, and then jackie walks in and goes like this and its just me and him in a room. [laughter] hilarious story after another. The one i remember is hes outdrinking with joe demaggio and bets a thousand bucks that he can race him around the block and beat him, for those who are younger than 40demaggio was a professional athlete, and jackie weighed approximately 2,000 pounds. As demaggio turn it turns the corner. They take off, they run around, they turn, and once again, he gives him 2,000 bucks and half an hour later back in the bar, demaggio says we raised around the block but we never crossed the bottom side. So all right so your movie criticisms were well received or not . I think well enough. I will say that being critic ruined credible of movies, you cant get lost in the movie anymore, when you meet the people making the movie you can see Financial Decisions on each scene. What did you do next . By then i was at the wall street journal and became correspondent, they sent me in early 90s, this is the part of the world you will cover from iceland, from scotland to cape town. In those days i covered nothing but good things, i covered the independence of ukraine, the berlin unification, mandela coming out of prison in south africa, peace in the middle east, it was all good news. Did you ever go to greenland or no . No. I put in a bid for it. [laughter] so, okay, you so you did that for a while, youre a Foreign Policy expert, what did you do next . I should say i had the best interview of my life in russia, there was a coup against regime and stood up in tank in Russian Parliament building and ran into 90year old woman, first husband had been killed in civil war, second husband and boys were killed in battle and her third husband was sent away and disappeared, she was sent away with her people and ended her life hanging out sandwiches in front of Russian Parliament building, she had personally experienced event of soviet history and it was one of those burning moments that you see history right in front of you. What happened next . I came home and i saw that American Culture had changed. I grew up i went to high school in place in pennsylvania and when i left people wore green pants and buck ties and when i came back it had the first anthropology, i never thought that a story would come to pennsylvania. New culture had come into being and was first chapter of my book. When did you write that . Are. That came out in 2000. The theme was . 60s value with 90s money, basically i came home and looked at New York Times writing page, mergers and acquisition page, it was like goldman marrying mckenzie, you couldnt have the tensions would be too great and they wanted to prove they were not money hungry so they had a code of consumption to prove that they were authentic progressives and so, for example, one of the code was you can spend money, as much money as you want used by the servants. You could spend a lot of money on kitchens, you had the nuclear reactors, stoves, nubby fabrics, you had a whole code that i basically made fun of. When did you began writing for the New York Times . So i went to work at weekly standard, make the republican moderate and reasonable and [laughter] how many years were you doing that . I was 9 years. Well, i really began to figure out what i actually thought and in 2003i got a call from gail call collins and i took the train up and on the way up i said, no, no, no. My best length is 3,500 words, 850 words are not my best length and she asked the question and before i was going to say, no, has anybody ever said no to the question do you want to become a New York Times columnist and they said no one ever said no and i had failure of courage and i said, yes. All right, what year was that that you began . 2003 and youve been writing how long . How many columnists did you write a week . Two a week, thats 100 a year and its a lot. I joke about being conservative communist, not a lot of company there. How long does it take you to write a column . It can be 2 and a half hours and it can be 20 hours. The length of time i spend working on it has inverse correlation on how good the column is. Do you say i dont have anything . Not, thats not allowed. Thats not the way it works. Suppose you write something thats 820 words, you need 30 more, where do you get the extra 30, you to fill out 850 . Character. [laughter] were you surprised of the leadership that you produced with those columns, how many people now read them and i assume youre pretty well known as a result of those columns . I dont know. Well, i will say that the joke columnists tell about their job, seems good for the first two weeks, you have to keep producing. [laughter] but i actually the first 6 months on the job were the hardest professional. You spent time with the other columnists or people on the New York Times or are you at home and send them in . Im on the dc bureau, 3 other others are on the road so much that we dont see do you ever have trouble coming up with an idea or do you have plenty of those . I have desperate trouble. So i used to think like its just sheer desperation, i used to think if i got hit by a bus and i lived i could get a column out. My only desire is column ideas. I remember fantasizing about winning the lottery, testify not the money but get column. When did the pbs series start, news hour. News hour started in 2001. How frequently you do that . Every friday and two most wonderful men i know. Every friday you have to show up in washington or wherever, you cant be anywhere else . Right. That does pin me down because im here every friday. The segment is called shields and brook, we wanted to call brook shields. [laughter] something intensely proud to be part of, we have a certain demographic who is our core demographic which we call season youth and so if 98yearold lady comes up to me in the airport, i know what shes going to say, i dont want your show but my mother loves it. So youre supposed to be the conservative on that and is that a fair column, lacterrization . Supposed to be but frankly over the years ive its been a struggle to call myself a conservative. I think now i call myself a moderate. Its more accurate to say im a moderate. Now that youre well known for tv show and also the columns, do High School Friends call you up and say i really knew that you were going to be successful, are people calling you that didnt call you before. I dated a lot of peoples sisters, in all cases these are women that would have had nothing to do with me. I would say, no, i went for same summer camp for 15 years and that was my childhood, and i have few friends from high school and they treat me as they always do. Jewish camp somewhere . It was unlikely to be jewish camp. [laughter] so, okay. Lets talk about your second book, what was your second book . That was called on Paradise Drive and that was a post 911 book and capturing spirit of america and how it showed out in everyday life and in the middle of the book i saw quote from said that every book is possible to write except the book about the spirit of america. I was like, oh, damn, hes right, basically i was people who live in dc area, i spent a lot of time in german town, springfield, and i thought these were the fastgrowing places at the time and i wanted to show the spirit of america with energy, movement and really paradise. Right. Was behind a lot of the moves and so i wrote about big box malls and, you know right. They would all have the suburban theme restaurants and the highway, which were chilis olive garden. I was obsessed with that part of america that nobody was writing about. They take time off to write a book, do you take time to write a book his or or how do you . I have done twice, id it did not accelerate the time of the book but spent more time with your garden. How long did it take you to write the book . 4 years cycle, im doing other stuff. It takes forever to structure book, my books are always somewhat personal, somewhat public and to get that structure it takes me forever to do it, to figure out what the book is about and the odd thing is you get these complexed book structures and then after 4 years you get down to simple structure and you think why didnt i get a simple structure first but it takes you 4 years to get to simplicity on the other side of complexity. Third book social animal. What was that about . Yeah. Neuroscience but about emotion and me trying to understand emotion because its not something i always say washington is the most emotionally avoiding city on the face of the earth and i might have been the most emotionally person in the city, writing book about [laughter] but neuroscience is showing, patients had legislations in the brain and could not experience emotions and you would think that they were super smart, in fact, they couldnt function in life because emotion is not the opposite of reason, emotion is the value device that tells us what we want, the foundation of reason and so people who are emotionally intelligent are also intellectually intelligent, the two go together. So i really we wanted to write about how we educate through art and literature and how we refine our emotional life through relationship with one another. In the course of writing the book and this is years ago now taylor swift was on 60 minutes and she was asked, you write a lot of sad songs, actually 23 different kinds of sadness, your boyfriend dumps you sadness and lose your dog different set of tune, your mom is mad at you is different set of tune. If youre aware of 25 different kinds of sadness and different kinds of joy is a better way to live and a better that gives you the capacity to see others deeply and know whats going on in their own emotional lives. Book was an attempt to write myself into some capacity for that. And you wrote a fourth book before you wrote this one, road to character, what was that about . What i learned from that book was that books a friend of mine had said this but i didnt appreciate it. Magazine article can be about many things, books have to be about one thing, people immediately can grasp. And so i had throw away passage in the book saying there are two sets of virtues, theres the things that make us look good in our job and eulogy after we are death, courageous, honorable, capable of great love and we spent a lot of time preparing people with virtues but we all know the eulogy virtues are more important, how do you develop those . So that one phrase eulogy virtues carries the book and sense that people share that culture is overpoliticized and overprofessionallized and underimmorallized, not really talking about how we become better people and thats sort of watching 10 people, 10 of my heros, how they went from being human disasters at age 20 to really magnificent people. Do you write book, do you do it longhand or computer . I have bad memory, i have notebooks in my pocket, got one right here. Write down ideas and xerox a lot of stuff and as i would research a book, collect thousands of pages of notes and what i do is i can only get them straight geographically so i put great piles on the floor with the notes in the right pile and when i where a column its only 150 words but theyll be 14 piles on the floor because a pile is a photograph and paragraph and i write the note. Its crawling around on the floor of my living room organizing my piles. [laughter] actually you do go on computer . I tell my students by the time i sit and put it in the computer your paper should be 80 done, writing is about management, structure and organization and if you dont get the structure right it wont flow, getting the structure right and then the process of organizing the piles is the p