Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / "The Fog of Trump" and strategic confusion

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"The Fog of Trump" and strategic confusion · The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: hillsdalet Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to take
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: advantage of the many free online courses there, and of
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: course I'll listener to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: at Hugh for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale KA. I'm Hugh Hewett. Join now by
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  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal calumnist Ai Senior Director of Domestic Policy Studies,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Matt Continetti. Follow Matt on exit Continetti. Matt, we got
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  Speaker 1: a lot to cover in fourteen minutes over two segments,
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  Speaker 1: So let me start with Eli Lakes article on the
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  Speaker 1: Free Press last night. Is Donald Trump doing psychological warfare
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  Speaker 1: on the Iranians? What do you think?
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  Speaker 2: I think Eli makes a compelling case, Hugh, that we're
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  Speaker 2: living in the fog of Trump, that Donald Trump's comments
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  Speaker 2: about the war and about diplomacy are, in a way
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  Speaker 2: another tool he's using in this conflict with Iran in
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  Speaker 2: order to one set the Iranian leadership against itself, to
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  Speaker 2: confuse the Iranian leadership, but also two to keep the
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  Speaker 2: markets in a place where they don't panic to such
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  Speaker 2: a degree that we face an economic calamity that.
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  Speaker 3: Would bring the war to a premature close.
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  Speaker 2: So I thought Eli's peace was very persuasive, and I
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  Speaker 2: recommend it to everyone listening.
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying to find what the price of the markets
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  Speaker 1: are up today. Crude oils at one hundred and one
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  Speaker 1: dollars in ninety seven. It's not going crazy. I think
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  Speaker 1: people think the Strait's going to get fixed eventually, do
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  Speaker 1: you yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I think the markets are taking in a lot of
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  Speaker 2: different information. I think they see some ships getting by.
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  Speaker 2: I think they have a new hope that the war
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  Speaker 2: may come to a end sooner rather than later.
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  Speaker 3: And then they also have Trump's rhetoric.
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  Speaker 2: And it's interesting that Trump always begins the week by
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  Speaker 2: talking about diplomacy, by talking about ending the war soon,
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  Speaker 2: and that tends to reassure the markets.
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  Speaker 3: And it's later in.
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  Speaker 2: The week when we have kind of the big booms
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  Speaker 2: over different cities and the missile sites in Tehran, and
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  Speaker 2: the war continues until it's complete, which I think is
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  Speaker 2: Trump's main objective.
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  Speaker 1: I listened to Dan Senor yesterday talking to Fred Kagan
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  Speaker 1: and Adavel. Do you listen to Dan Matt?
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  Speaker 2: I do not, perhaps as regularly as I should don't
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  Speaker 2: let Dan know, but.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, as he's too busy. But Fred Kagan makes the
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  Speaker 1: point the Iranians may not know how much trouble they're in.
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  Speaker 1: Their internet's been down, they may not actually have the
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  Speaker 1: ability to collect and process the amount of damage that's
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  Speaker 1: been done to their country. I thought that was interesting.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think that's possible or even likely?
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  Speaker 2: I think it's probable. I mean when you consider that,
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  Speaker 2: if you're in the leadership cadres of the Iranian regime,
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  Speaker 2: you are underground right now, Hugh. You know that the
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  Speaker 2: most important thing in this war is location, because if
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  Speaker 2: the Americans or the Israelis can locate you, if they
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  Speaker 2: can locate Missilan, if they can locate drone sites or
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  Speaker 2: drone launch locations, they will be targeted and you will
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  Speaker 2: be eliminated. And that has to mean that the people
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  Speaker 2: who are ordering the retaliatory strikes, the people who are
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  Speaker 2: trying to figure out a way to communicate with the
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  Speaker 2: Americans through Pakistan, the people who are trying to maintain
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  Speaker 2: that apparatus of repression that's keeping the people in a
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  Speaker 2: state of fear in Iran. They don't know the full
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  Speaker 2: picture of what's going on. They don't have access to
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  Speaker 2: the full range of information. And that does mean, as
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  Speaker 2: my colleague Fred Kagan suggests, that when the war ends,
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  Speaker 2: they're going to come up from their bunkers. They're going
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  Speaker 2: to look around, and they're going to find that the
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  Speaker 2: Iranian regime has been tellt a punishing and I hope
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  Speaker 2: lethal blow does.
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  Speaker 1: Does Fred ever laugh? He chuckles, Okay, to chuck it
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  Speaker 1: mirthful chuck, because he really is as serious as death
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  Speaker 1: when he's talking to people about this war, as he
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  Speaker 1: should be. The very serious stuff. When the President said
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  Speaker 1: today the Europeans can go open the straight and get
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  Speaker 1: their oil, is that just more fog of Trump.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's expressing his genuine feeling about the European
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  Speaker 2: allies and that I think he expected them to be
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  Speaker 2: more eager to participate, and not only in our goals
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  Speaker 2: in Iran visa via the nuclear program or the missiles,
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  Speaker 2: missiles that we now know could reach European capitals, but
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  Speaker 2: also reopening the Strait of Hermus. You know, about a
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  Speaker 2: fifth of the world's oil supply transits the Strait of
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  Speaker 2: Hermus Hue, but most of that doesn't go to the
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  Speaker 2: United States.
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  Speaker 3: It goes to China and it goes to Europe.
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  Speaker 2: So you would ask, well, what powers then have the
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  Speaker 2: most interest in keeping the straight open and not having
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  Speaker 2: to pay a toll to the Iranian regime to get
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  Speaker 2: by without harm and ensuring freedom and navigation.
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  Speaker 3: Well, that would mean that the European.
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  Speaker 2: Powers would have an interest, and there are some capacities
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  Speaker 2: like mindesweepers that the Europeans could provide. I would be
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  Speaker 2: just as shocked and angry at the Europeans for not
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  Speaker 2: recognizing their own interest in opening the Strait of Hormuz
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  Speaker 2: and coming to the support of the United States of
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  Speaker 2: America as Trump is. And so I think he's genuinely
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  Speaker 2: angry at the Allies, and maybe that anger will translate
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  Speaker 2: into action on their part in the coming weeks.
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  Speaker 1: They're going to where America. I'll be right back with
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  Speaker 1: Matt Contenetty. We got to talk more about NATO. When
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  Speaker 1: I was just a lad younger even than young mister Continetti,
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  Speaker 1: I'd wander around a white house full of cap Weinberger
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  Speaker 1: with visits from Margaret Thatcher and Helmet Cole and Francois
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  Speaker 1: Mehran and NATO met NATO and we deployed perishing two's
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  Speaker 1: and cruise missiles, and it was a bullmark. I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to ask Matt on the other side whether it is anymore.
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  Speaker 1: Can then begin to think it's not. Stay tuned, Welcome
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  Speaker 1: back to America. I'm Hugh Hewett. Matt Continetty is with me. Matt.
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  Speaker 1: When we went to the break, I was recalling the
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  Speaker 1: NATO of the eighties, and there were giants then and
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  Speaker 1: now I look at it's not that your it's starmer
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  Speaker 1: it's not Megan, it's Macron and it's I don't know
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  Speaker 1: who's run in Germany. He's pretty good for Merz, but
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  Speaker 1: he's not Al McColl is NATO done.
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  Speaker 3: It's damaged. It's looking for a purpose.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 2: You have to first start with the premise that this
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  Speaker 2: is the most successful alliance in history, Hugh. It meant
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  Speaker 2: was meant to prevent a great power war in Europe
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  Speaker 2: after the two most devastating wars in human history occurred
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  Speaker 2: on the European soil, and to that extent, it has
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  Speaker 2: been one of the most remarkable alliances in human history.
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  Speaker 2: There has been no great power war since the War
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  Speaker 2: of World War Two in nineteen forty five. However, NATO's
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  Speaker 2: taken on other forms as well. And of course we
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  Speaker 2: know that Article five, the mutual Defense clause, was invoked
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  Speaker 2: after nine to eleven. That was a case where all
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  Speaker 2: the NATO powers were coming to America's aid in Afghanistan.
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  Speaker 2: And then since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in twenty twenty two,
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  Speaker 2: NATO has worked to help defend Ukraine by providing Ukraine
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  Speaker 2: the defense and financial assistance it needs to resist the
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  Speaker 2: Russian invasion and even as we've seen in recent weeks,
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  Speaker 2: strike back and regain some lost ground from the Russians.
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  Speaker 2: The question is what is NATO's purpose now? What is
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  Speaker 2: NATO's purpose now? And is NATO a reciprocal alliance? That
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  Speaker 2: is to say, America has the predominance of power, It
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  Speaker 2: contributes most of the funds to NATO. Donald Trump has
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  Speaker 2: been very effective in persuading or forcing the NATO powers
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  Speaker 2: to recognize their own interest in increasing defense spending when
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  Speaker 2: it comes to ensuring freedom and navigation in the Persian Gulf,
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  Speaker 2: something that is of importance to European economies. Why aren't
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  Speaker 2: the NATO powers active there? Why won't they reciprocate all
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  Speaker 2: that America has done for them? This needs to be communicated,
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  Speaker 2: and he needs to be communicated strongly. You're right that
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  Speaker 2: there were giants in those days in the eighties. There
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  Speaker 2: were also a lot of conflicts, as you know between
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  Speaker 2: the allies. Ally management is never as smooth as we
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  Speaker 2: think of it in the past. But right now I
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  Speaker 2: think that we were facing an impast with NATO, and
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  Speaker 2: the NATO powers need to understand that for all America
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  Speaker 2: does for them, they also need to contribute to help
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  Speaker 2: in this case, not just America in pursuing its mission
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  Speaker 2: of disarming Iran, but also ensuring the freedom of navigation
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  Speaker 2: for all through the pain.
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  Speaker 3: And I will help Europeans well.
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  Speaker 1: I'm very aware that there are British families, and there
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  Speaker 1: are Polish families, and there are father families of other
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  Speaker 1: NATO members who gave their sons and daughters in the
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  Speaker 1: war in Afghanistan. Sam in Iraq. I remember Tony Blair
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  Speaker 1: being in the gallery after nine to eleven and George W.
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  Speaker 1: Bush looking up and saying thank you friend. But that's
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  Speaker 1: twenty five years ago and the continent has changed. I
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  Speaker 1: don't know that they have any will anymore. Matt Iran
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  Speaker 1: is a.
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  Speaker 2: Cly don't have the will right now yeah, and you
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  Speaker 2: know their economies have been destroyed by their own green
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  Speaker 2: energy policies. They have new populations of Muslim immigrants in
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  Speaker 2: European powers that are shaping the policies of the governments there.
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  Speaker 2: And in the case of UK, you know they're run
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  Speaker 2: by Starmer in the Labor government, which won this majority
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  Speaker 2: kind of on a fluke because of the British election
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  Speaker 2: system in the last election and is now remarkably unpopular.
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  Speaker 2: I think we might have a change coming with Nigel
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  Speaker 2: Faraj in the United Kingdom in the not so distant future, Hue,
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  Speaker 2: and then we might see a different type of enthusiasm
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  Speaker 2: toward participating and making the most out of the alliance
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  Speaker 2: with the United States.
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  Speaker 1: So mankind and I have no knowledge about anything, but
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  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is acting like a very confident man, which
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  Speaker 1: means you either confident about the war or he's confident
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  Speaker 1: about the fact that the story is going to change
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  Speaker 1: in June when he gets one or two Supreme Court
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  Speaker 1: nominee and by now if a justice is retiring, they
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  Speaker 1: will have communicated that to the White House. Do you
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  Speaker 1: think he's going to get one or two?
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  Speaker 3: I do think he might get one.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and the possibility he could get to but I
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  Speaker 2: do think the odds of him getting one retirement this
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  Speaker 2: year are increasing, and that's based on some of the
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  Speaker 2: conversations I've had in Washington in over the past month.
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  Speaker 1: You and I'm afraid we're going to lose the Senate,
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  Speaker 1: and the justices have to consider that if they care
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  Speaker 1: about their legacy because of the economy, because of the war.
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  Speaker 1: But I also think if he has one or two
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  Speaker 1: in his back pocket, he knows he can turn the page. Right,
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  Speaker 1: the war is going to get knocked up with our
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  Speaker 1: attention span. The war will be like five years ago
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  Speaker 1: and three weeks into a hearing, wouldn't it.
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  Speaker 2: Well, the media can only focus on one thing at
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  Speaker 2: a time, as you know, and right now they're focusing
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  Speaker 2: on Iran in completely the wrong way and misrepresenting what's
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  Speaker 2: happening there. But that means once the war is over,
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  Speaker 2: they'll move to something else. And if we do have
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  Speaker 2: a Supreme Court retirement, that will dominate the summer and
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: of course the hearings in the fall as well. So yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we'll turn the page on the war once it finishes
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  Speaker 2: pretty quickly.
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  Speaker 1: I think now when I last talked to you, I
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: thought DHS was going to be reopened, and then the
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: House rejected the Senate bill, and we've gone back to
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  Speaker 1: our corners and the Democrats aren't budging. There was a
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  Speaker 1: terror attack. A Hesba La operative or inspired by Hesba
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Lah attacked the Senagogue in Michigan last week. We've had
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  Speaker 1: two other terror attacks and Old Dominion University of New
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  Speaker 1: York City. Are the Democrats playing with fire? Matt by
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  Speaker 1: leaving the just example, there's just the Cyber and Infrastructure
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  Speaker 1: Security Agency is part of DHS. The one thing the
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  Speaker 1: Iranians have got left beside this strait is a cyber capability.
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  Speaker 1: That's pretty good.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, the Democrats are playing with fire here. There's no question.
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  Speaker 2: Hugh and I always go back to the debate over
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  Speaker 2: the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in two
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  Speaker 2: thousand and two. That was the case where the Democrats
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  Speaker 2: held up the creation of DHS because they wanted guarantees
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  Speaker 2: of unions for the Transportation Security Agency.
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  Speaker 3: What happened then was that.
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  Speaker 2: Became an issue in the two thousand and two midterms,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: and the two thousand and two is one of the
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  Speaker 2: rare midterms where the president's party actually gained seats, and
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: in part because of this issue of playing politics with
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: national security. So I think the Democrats are in a
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  Speaker 2: very similarly dangerous place here. If something terrible were to happen,
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: then they would This policy of insanely just not funding
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security.
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  Speaker 3: Even though ICE has fully funded for.
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  Speaker 2: Several years, would be a huge political disaster for them.
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  Speaker 2: But I also say this here is I think Republicans
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  Speaker 2: need to really emphasize this.
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  Speaker 3: It's hard in this environment with the war going on.
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  Speaker 2: To talk of domestic politics, but I think Republicans really
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: need to rally around a message pointing out how destructive
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: these democratic policies are with shutting down the government and
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: impose pain on one TSA agents who had nothing to
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: do with immigration debates, and to the American people who
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: have been stuck in these lines. You know, President Trump
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: of course is paying the TSA agents now through executive
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: order that that will help some of the lines and
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: make our experiences at the airport better. But it shouldn't
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: lead the Democrats off the hook for responsive lines.
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  Speaker 1: Are those lines are the softest targets that America have
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: ever presented, the craziest I can't believe they're doing it.
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  Speaker 1: Matt Contenetty, have a great weekend or I actually talked
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: to you on Friday. I help Continetti follo him at Continetty.
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  Speaker 1: I maybe Thursday coming back X at Continetti. Stay tuned
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: on TV Wars Underway. No one better to talk with
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: about it than Brett Baer, host of Special Report, America's anchorman. Brett,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you covered the Pentagon before you over took over for
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Special Report is the anchor. I think you probably covered
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Hugh Shelton for a couple of weeks and then Richard
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Meyer and Peter Pace. Did you stick around from Michael Mullin?
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  Speaker 1: Was he there when you were still covering the Pentagon?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I just moved over to the White House, but
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: for most of my time it was Dick Myers and
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  Speaker 4: Pep Pays.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to play a couple of Dan Kane
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  Speaker 1: clips and then get your comparison with his style. And
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  Speaker 1: there here's cut number six of the chairmen today at
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  Speaker 1: the briefing.
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  Speaker 5: Together, we continue to deliver precision strikes against key manufacturing nodes,
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  Speaker 5: component storage sites, research facilities deep within Iranian territory and
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: over the past twenty nine I'm sorry, thirty days we've
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: struck more than eleven thousand targets. Given the increase in
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: air superiority, we've successfully started to conduct the first overland
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: B fifty two missions, which allow us, as we've said before,
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: to continue to get on top of the enemy, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: as the Secretary talked about, switched towards more and more
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: dynamic targets, servicing mobile targets around the battles.
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  Speaker 1: One more cut number seven of General Kane.
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  Speaker 5: Second, on the navy front, we continue to assert dominance
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  Speaker 5: over the Iranian Navy. We remain focused on targeting their
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: mind laying capability, their naval assets, and we've now, as
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: I mentioned briefly last time, started to work attack helicopters
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: and other close air support assets into the naval domain.
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: Santcom continues to identify and work against naval depots and
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: storage areas, and we've taken out again more than one
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  Speaker 5: hundred and fifty ships, including all Jammeran class frigates inside
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: their navy.
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  Speaker 1: So Brett Bair, generally, what do you make of his
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: briefing style and then specifically why the focus on the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: navy at the Strait Ohrmuz operation isn't it?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, first of all, I think his briefing style
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: is perfect. I mean it is so matter of fact
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: and so straightforward and so unambiguous. It's cut and dry.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: It is pure military, and essentially he's just taking down
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: what exactly you're doing. I think the other thing that's
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: really was really remarkable today is how much they are
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: hovering around over Iran to the point where they had
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: two hundred dynamic targeting attacks. In other words, as they're
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: floating essentially flying over Iran, new intelligence comes in and
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: they redirect and target that. I mean, that's remarkable. In
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: hundreds and hundreds of strikes, now you're over eleven thousand
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  Speaker 4: targets hit since the beginning. I do think that the
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: significance of the Navy is because of the straight upward moves.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: If you look at that flow today, it is significant
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: going through there. I mean a lot of tankers have
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: gone through there. Last night we did report that there
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: was one tanker hit, but today there are a lot
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: of tankers moving through and they're not just Pakistani flagged.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: There's a number of different flagged tankers moving through the straits.
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  Speaker 1: That explained I think that explains why the Dow is
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: up two and a half percent. The SMP up almost
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: three percent, the NW attack up almost four percent. That's
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: a data driven on the markets, right, Brett. They're they're
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: not listening to the President or the chief of chaff.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: They're just looking at the tanker flow.
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  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, I agree with you. I think they
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: are getting a sense of where things are. You know,
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: I don't know if everybody's buying into the negotiations or
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: progressing great, but they are clearly moving forward. I mean,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: they're they're talking to someone, and I've talked to Steve Whitcoff,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: I've talked to others, including President Trump.
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  Speaker 6: Last night.
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  Speaker 4: They say they're real. They don't know exactly, you know,
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: how each Iranian leader is perceived inside the new structure,
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: because they have they're scrambling around. The Pakistanian baster off
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: camera last night told me, you know, it takes them
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: twenty four thirty hours to hear back from the Iranians
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: because of the communication and command and control is up
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: in the air on the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Fred Kagan with the Institute for the Study of
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: War was on with Dan scene Or on the Calling
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Back podcast yesterday and Fred Kagan said they may not
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: know how badly they're damaged because they can't talk to
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: you know, it's an immense country, it's so large, when
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: they probably do not know how much havoc has been
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: wrecked upon their land.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: No, I mean when you can't get a hold of
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: someone and you realize maybe they're gone where their command
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: and control center is completely erased. That's a problem, you know.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: And I think that the Iranians had planned for this
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: for a long time. You we've talked about it before.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: They have systems in place where other people step up.
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: But there is a sense, and I've talked to some
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: people in intel world that there is real confusion and
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: some frustration and some throwing up their hands and saying
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: we need to stop this now.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: The president has said a lot of different things, and
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Eli lake Over at the Free Press calls it the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: fog of Trump, not the fog of war, but the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: fog of Trump and believes it's intentional. What do you
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: make of that theory that the President's thrown out something
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: different every day to confuse the Iranian leadership.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: You know, I think that's part of who he is.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: That's just his communications style. He owns every news cycle.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: He's the one that you know that that drives the headlines.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: But you know, I think there's confusion inherent on the
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: ground in Iran, with or without the president's truth social account.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, a couple other stories that came up today, Brett,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the shutdown continues. At Senator Cotton on yesterday, he said
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: they have two reconciliations left to go. They're going to
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: use one in a hurry to open up DHS and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: maybe do the supplemental Is that what you're hearing that
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the negotiations are effectively dead. The Republicans are going to
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: roll the Democrats.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: I think that's right. I think, you know, it's a
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: shame that had to come to that. Neither party really
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: looks good now when there's no one on Capitol Hill
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: and this is continuing. You know, everybody's saying, oh, we're
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: talking to our constituents back home, got it. But your
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: constituents back home really wants you to get stuff done
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: and at least fund the government, especially in the Department
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: of Homeland Security in the middle of what we're doing overseas.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: So I don't think there's a badge courage here for
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: either party. But I do think that the Republicans do
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: have a plan when they come back.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I think that Democrats may have a bit of a
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: strategic disadvantage of the Republicans press it. But as I
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: said on Special Report on Friday night, I don't think
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I've ever seen a breakdown in communications between the Senate
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and the House as thorough as Friday. When Mike Johnson
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: says no, we're not doing what have you? When they
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: just say no, we're not doing that.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Not only that is yeah, that's kind of bold, and
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: I agree, but rough the politics of Mike Johnson's majority
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: and the politics of Johnson's majority are two different things.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And speaking speaking of the latter, I have been wondering
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: if the President doesn't have in his back pocket noticed
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: from one, if not two members of the Court that
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: they'll be retiring at the end of June, and maybe
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: he's buoyed by that. What do you think about that, Brett.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't know. I mean, who's it going to be?
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: You think Clarence Thomas leader?
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: No, I think it just asn't lead out for sure,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: and Clarence maybe, But I think the fact that I've
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: got Molly Hemingway's book upstairs on Alito, that he would
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: allow that book to come out right now. I just
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: think that's about as clear as signal as you can get. Now,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you about abdul al say ed.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Have you listened to his phone call yet? Oh? Oh
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: we haven't.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: I have heard it. I have heard clips of it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I'll play a little bit for the audience.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Go ahead.
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: And I also want to remind you guys that there
• 22:10
  Speaker 7: are a lot of people in Dearborn who.
• 22:11
  Speaker 8: Are sad today.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: So like, I just don't want.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: To comment on the money him any at all.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of people in Dearborn who are
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: sad about I told Hamany getting killed. I don't believe that,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: do you?
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: I don't know. You know, Dearborn is an interesting place
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: politically and in the split. But the fact that he's
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: saying it is not a benefit to him politically, even
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: in Michigan.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Who would then the last question? Who would link that?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Who in there? Somebody is out to get him on
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: his team?
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, somebody's out to get him on his team. He
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: needs to do some some scrubbing internally, because you don't
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: get those that audio unless some on the inside has
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: put all that was stunning.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Brett Behar will be watching Tonight at six pm, Special
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Report America. Tune in for America's Anchorman.
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: Eating Glasses and theisodes Father's Title Man Elected.
• 23:13
  Speaker 9: James, I'm Jair Wires out field for some baddies.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Fail, Welcome back America. I'm you Hewett. Play that for
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Lilyx as in James Lylyx as in James Lilx dot
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: substack dot com. Because James had a caller yesterday, Bill
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: from Los Angeles said Don Henley had written a song
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: calling that old man Reagan a king. Because I was
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: laughing at the No King's rally, I had forgotten that song.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Do you remember that song that that existed?
• 23:44
  Speaker 6: No, no, not one of the Don Henley tunes that
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: I actually have at my playlist.
• 23:49
  Speaker 10: I'd like for some of them, but that one.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: No.
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: Yes, Ronald Reagan, that Autocrats, that that that iron booth
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: that descended out America's neck for eight years.
• 23:58
  Speaker 10: Anyway, what about it?
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Well, I want you're the epicenter of No Kingsland Minneapolis.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: You were ground zero for No Kings so you're like
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Lexington and Learn.
• 24:10
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, so many people showed up for that, and
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: good for them. You know, Springsteen shows up place for free.
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: You're going to get an awful lot of people, and
• 24:18
  Speaker 6: I'm not surprised that there were. That that's what you
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: have around here. You have a lot of people who
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: still think there's no Kings. Thing has some sort of
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: relevance and its other sort of funny. One of them,
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: one of the people speaking a comedian, I was telling
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: everybody that actually what they should do is they should
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: listen to the people who are the movement leaders here,
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: who they've done the groundwork, they've done, the thinking, they've done,
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: the organizational work. Listen to them, do what they say,
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: which sounds awfully astocratic to me, the idea that every
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: single one of these people, of course, would vote for
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: an administration that would have more control over their territory,
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: their property, their speech, their actions, what kind of car
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: they drive, what kind of license, what kind of light
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: bulb they use, how many gallons.
• 24:58
  Speaker 10: Their toilet can use and their shower and flush. Their
• 25:01
  Speaker 10: party is the party of macro and micromanaging your life
• 25:03
  Speaker 10: at all sorts of levels, using the.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: State and its power to do so. So maybe they're
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: not Kings, but I'm more likely to show up for
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: a no commissars at rally. Then again, when you've got
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: people at the No Kings rally flying the old red
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: flag with a hammer and sickle.
• 25:17
  Speaker 10: I would look around a little bit.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I was wondering if you somebody, did you see that
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: that was in Minneapolis, the hammer and the sickle within Minneapolis. Yeah,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with you people?
• 25:29
  Speaker 10: Well, what's this youth stuff here?
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: I'm not going and waving the old dreadful And I
• 25:35
  Speaker 6: hated the hammer and sickle when I was a kid
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: because they looked like they hurt. It's like we've got
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: two things to symbolize our government. One will stab you
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: and the other will knock you out. I mean, it's
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: just abhord that symbol. But it ought to be as
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: reprehensible to people as a swastika. The number of people
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: who died under the oppressed peoples who yearned under I
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: can't find the word who grown yoke.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: There we go.
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: It ought not to be displayed without some people turning
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: around and.
• 26:05
  Speaker 10: Saying, no, that's a little bit too far. But the
• 26:08
  Speaker 10: communists it is.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: A swastia, the purest, the purest massion. It was swasti.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: But the more people died under Moulin Stalin than died
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: under Hitler's right and they don't know that. So my
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: question to college yesterday, are the No King people dumb
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: or are they indifferent to the fact that makes no
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: sense and they're just anti Trump?
• 26:32
  Speaker 10: Well, these are not mutually exclusive. There's a whole bunch
• 26:34
  Speaker 10: of people there.
• 26:35
  Speaker 6: There are people who probably were giving a little goose
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: to show up by some organizations answer you know, anyone
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: that's being run by Chinese billionaires. There people who show
• 26:44
  Speaker 6: up on the goodness of their heart because they really
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: do believe that fascism has descended on the country and
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: that Minnesota being the epicenter of the unfortunate ice accidents,
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: ice incidents here, they were radicalized, or it's something fun
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: to do to hear Springsteen, or they you know, just
• 27:01
  Speaker 6: that the general matrix of it's good to protest because
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: that's what we did in the sixties and we changed everything.
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: I mean, that's what old liberal people do is show
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: up at these things with signs and then the next
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: day absolutely nothing has changed.
• 27:14
  Speaker 10: So it's all of those things. I mean, it's useful idiots.
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: It's people who are just automatically kneedj youre gain saying
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: anything that comes out of the right wing.
• 27:20
  Speaker 10: Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Did you go here Springsteen?
• 27:25
  Speaker 10: No, I have no interest ne hearing Bruce anymore.
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: And I do think it's interesting also that this guy,
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: the working man's hero, is referred to as the Boss.
• 27:33
  Speaker 10: I just wondered about that.
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: You can tell he's a man of the people because
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: he's named himself after the overlord that makes the workers
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: do his bidding. I lost interest in Springsteen a long
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: time ago. The great music there is still, but I'm
• 27:45
  Speaker 6: not particularly interested.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I went under the web to find his last concert
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and I found that he played this twenty twenty fourth
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: summer at a rally or fall for Kamala Harris. So
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: it's not like Bruce's politics have changed. He's not really
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: anti monarchical. He's still a left ringer, that's all it is.
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: Well, right, But back in the day, you know, he
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: would sing my Hometalent, and he would talk about the
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: industrial capacity of the country being hollowed out by NAFTA and.
• 28:13
  Speaker 10: The rest of it.
• 28:13
  Speaker 6: And these are things that resonated with people and still
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: do now, except it's the other party that's talking about them.
• 28:19
  Speaker 6: So his alegatic pins to by gone America hit right
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: during the Reagan era. But again, everybody was blaming Reagan
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: for that when it turns out that globalism seems not
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: to be the preserve of the right wing anymore.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know who's running for Senate Minnesota, but there
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: are three senators on the Democratic side running, and or
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: would be senators running on the Democratic side in Michigan.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: One of them has got a tape recording in the
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Washington Free Beacon expressing the fact he's not going to
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: say anything bad about Iatoa Hamini because some people are
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: feeling bad that he's dead. Do you have anyone that
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: nut's running in Minnesota, Not.
• 28:59
  Speaker 10: That we can tell it.
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's a bad thing that that man said,
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: and it ought to disqualify him. It's bad things about
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: his constituency. But we don't have anybody that crazy. But
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: we won't have anybody actually who will probably win on
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: the R side because they nominate to unelectable people. I'm
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: still thinking that when somebody does win, as somebody that
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: comes out of nowhere, says all the right things, makes
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: people laugh, seems like a new fresh breath and has
• 29:20
  Speaker 6: a little sarcastic edge to them, and everybody's pleased.
• 29:22
  Speaker 10: And this person gets in.
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: Everyone's agreed, and then at the swearing end he takes
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: the zipper and he pulls it down all the way
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: and Al Franken steps out of the costume.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: You got to give Tom Wyler a look. I've known
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Tom a long time. There's some Marina retired now. Michelle
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Tafoye is running. Should be a good candidate. There's a
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: CeAl in there. The Republicans actually have three decent candidates
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: this time for the Senate seat. I'm not sure that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Minnesoko can be saved, but they have three decent candidates.
• 29:48
  Speaker 10: Well, we can be saved, you know.
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: Orwell said in nineteen eighty four, the prolls of the hope,
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: And that's the way that when Minnesota feel about the outstaters,
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: the city itself is just a hot red shanker or
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: a hot red shanker of liberalism. The recity outstage, which
• 30:03
  Speaker 6: has read politically, is completely different from the metro core.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Lost population for Polaria is the Twin cities going down
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: in population?
• 30:14
  Speaker 10: Yeah, I think it is a bit. Yeah, it's it's
• 30:17
  Speaker 10: I don't.
• 30:18
  Speaker 6: Know, We're we're not exactly robustly gaining like Texas and Florida.
• 30:21
  Speaker 10: Let's put it that way, is in our own choice.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I cannot wait to see how the census reflects up there. Lilex,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: thank you my friend. Follow him on substack James Lylas
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: dot substack dot com. Get a chuckle every day. Listen
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to him on this soon to be resurrected Dwayne's World. Heyka,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the After Show. I'll have to ask Dwayne when that's
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: coming back. It's soon, I think maybe next week, and
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Lilx will be a part of it. Stay tuned in
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: America on MUSU. They've heard me talk a lot about
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• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome back in America. You heal with Bethany Mandel Bethany,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Happy Passover in advance to are you busy cleaning?
• 33:14
  Speaker 9: Yes? And cooking? And I hate every second of it.
• 33:17
  Speaker 9: This is my least favorite holiday by mile.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: You know, my buddy Mark was over last night. Retired
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Navy Captain Jewish lives up in your neck of the woods,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and he tells me the Jews in then and spring cleaning,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and you really do have to clean, like every inch
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: of that does seth help? No? Oh to the kid's help.
• 33:36
  Speaker 9: Oh, I tried to. So I did have my older
• 33:41
  Speaker 9: kids run a passover babysitting camp with the younger kids today.
• 33:45
  Speaker 9: That cost me fifty dollars and it was worth it.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, I think I see some bread on the bookshelf
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: behind you now, Bethany, I am curious as to the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: mood you think will be around the Passover table in
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: israelrunning between the satyr and the bombshelter. Probably because the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Ranians that they got anything left, they're going to fire
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: it tomorrow.
• 34:07
  Speaker 9: Yeah, no, absolutely, I it's funny. There's a really funny
• 34:11
  Speaker 9: meme that's going around Jewish Instagram and social media where
• 34:15
  Speaker 9: people are talking about, you know, how hard it is
• 34:17
  Speaker 9: to prepare for Passover in Israel, and they say to themselves, well,
• 34:21
  Speaker 9: at least we only have two days of the holiday,
• 34:23
  Speaker 9: because in America and anywhere in the diaspora we have
• 34:26
  Speaker 9: three because of stupid reasons that are not worth talking about.
• 34:30
  Speaker 9: That Judaism is not logical. Sometimes this is one of
• 34:33
  Speaker 9: those times, and so people in Israel are saying, well,
• 34:36
  Speaker 9: you know, we have Iranian missiles, but you guys have
• 34:39
  Speaker 9: three days of holidays. So I don't know, I don't
• 34:42
  Speaker 9: know you.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Have does the family is it a one family deal
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: or is it everybody in the neighborhood comes or everybody
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: in the extended family comes, so.
• 34:53
  Speaker 9: A lot of people have extended family. We are actually
• 34:56
  Speaker 9: hosting my in laws this year for the first time.
• 34:59
  Speaker 9: They've never st at our house. No pressure, low key, terrified.
• 35:05
  Speaker 9: We'll see how it goes. I'm not really sure.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be a true Is your mother in law
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: good cook? She is?
• 35:15
  Speaker 9: She is, but hopefully she'll she'll be kind to me.
• 35:17
  Speaker 9: My father in law whenever I've cooked for him, has
• 35:19
  Speaker 9: always been very kind.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: So hopefully hopefully.
• 35:22
  Speaker 11: Let me go back past muster.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: To the war A meet Segal. Do you read him?
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Yes?
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: All the time? Okay, Meat just posted that Israel hit
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Iran steel production facilities yesterday, and I quote Iran is
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the largest steel producer in the Middle East and ranks
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: among the top ten globally. These two factories alone account
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: for billions of dollars of revenue, about three percent of
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: IRANI and GDP. The impact on the economy was a
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: side effect Israel accepted, and now seems that the side
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: effect may have been more powerful than the primary one.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: According to IDF intelligence, the regime's political and leadership now
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: believes there's no way to repair the war damage, and
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Ron simply lacks sufficient funds. It reportedly has broken the
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: spirit of many in the regime. That assessment is that
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: given the prolonged economic recovery after the war that will
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: inevitably consume the vast majority of state budgets, massive protests
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: will erupt. That's optimistic, but it sounds plausible. What do
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: you think.
• 36:24
  Speaker 9: It's definitely plausible. I would be surprised that there's any
• 36:27
  Speaker 9: optimism or any sort of any sense of good feeling
• 36:33
  Speaker 9: in our on long before this. I think it's probably
• 36:36
  Speaker 9: kicking a dead horse when it's down. But I've been
• 36:39
  Speaker 9: waiting for a long time, like when are we going
• 36:41
  Speaker 9: to start seeing these protests erupt on the Iranian streets.
• 36:45
  Speaker 9: I've heard from experts like the folks at FDD that
• 36:48
  Speaker 9: they're waiting for the bombs to stop dropping before they
• 36:52
  Speaker 9: get onto the streets. But I think all of this
• 36:55
  Speaker 9: stuff has a massive chumlaative effect that will hopefully end
• 36:59
  Speaker 9: the regime once the war is actually over.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Fred Kagan was on with Dan Senior. Did you
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: listen to call me back this week?
• 37:06
  Speaker 8: I did not.
• 37:07
  Speaker 9: This is like you're getting me in trouble sometimes.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 37:10
  Speaker 9: I realized that there was like a homework assignment there
• 37:13
  Speaker 9: is you.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Got to listen every Dan soor but Fred Kagan, I do,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Matt Conde, he assures me. He does occasionally smile and laugh,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: but he's like the most serious man in the world.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: And he said repeatedly that Iran really doesn't know how
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: badly Iran's been hurt because they can't talk to each other.
• 37:31
  Speaker 9: M Yeah, it makes sense. It's it's interesting because that's
• 37:36
  Speaker 9: the that's the side effect of them shutting down the
• 37:39
  Speaker 9: internet is that there's no communication theoretically within the regime itself,
• 37:44
  Speaker 9: but also the fact that there's who is there to
• 37:46
  Speaker 9: talk to. The Americans and the Israelis are killing the
• 37:50
  Speaker 9: Iranian you know, leaders of the regime every three seconds.
• 37:54
  Speaker 9: The problem is who is there left.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: To talk to? Well, President Trump is talking to the
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: speaker of the Parliament and Eli Lake calls it the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: fog of Trump and a play on the phrase fog
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: of war, and that he's purposefully playing mind games with
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the Iranians. What do you think of that theory?
• 38:13
  Speaker 9: I think it's an interesting theory. I mean, I always
• 38:15
  Speaker 9: think that Trump is playing mind games with everyone always,
• 38:17
  Speaker 9: and he's so good at it. I don't know why
• 38:20
  Speaker 9: he wouldn't do it in this instance when he does
• 38:23
  Speaker 9: it to Democrats during the State of the Union.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: All right, last question, Bethany. The Democrats have shuttered the
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Department of a Land Security, which includes the Office of Infrastructure,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Cyber and Infrastructure of Security CISA Cyber and Infrastructure of Security.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: The Iranians can't do much now. They can threaten the
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: straight and they can do their cyber games if they
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: can get a computer to work. How crazy is that
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: for the Democrats. We had a has blattack in the
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: country in Michigan this week. How crazy is it to
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: have DHS closed.
• 38:57
  Speaker 9: It's wild. But they are operating under the assumption. I
• 39:00
  Speaker 9: think it's the correct one that there are no consequences
• 39:02
  Speaker 9: because their Americans aren't paying attention that much. They see
• 39:05
  Speaker 9: what's happening at TSA, but they think that that's the
• 39:07
  Speaker 9: extent of it.
• 39:08
  Speaker 11: I live online.
• 39:10
  Speaker 9: I live in this world of you know, always thinking
• 39:12
  Speaker 9: about and talking about these issues, and I didn't know
• 39:14
  Speaker 9: that that was closed. So if that's the case, then
• 39:17
  Speaker 9: the average American certainly.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Has no idea if you live online. Okay, a bonus question.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Did you hear the phone call from the Senate candidate Michigan?
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: Yes?
• 39:27
  Speaker 8: I did.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: All right, let me play this. This is mister Vada
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: al Saied Abdua al Sayed talking about how many in
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Dearborn are bemoaning the loss of the killer comany here
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: I also want to remind you guys that there are
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today.
• 39:47
  Speaker 10: So like, I just don't want to comment on money
• 39:49
  Speaker 10: to have any at all.
• 39:52
  Speaker 11: I don't think it's worth.
• 39:55
  Speaker 10: Even touching that.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: Like they're going to try and this is what we practiced,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: but like.
• 39:58
  Speaker 10: Is it a how many of god?
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Guy? I think great that he's dead on my first
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: amas eighty six years old.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: Who's going to be dead?
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Sometimes sit anyway, what do you think, bethink that help
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: him or hurt him?
• 40:10
  Speaker 9: So I loved your question to Brett Bayer because this
• 40:12
  Speaker 9: is my question as well.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Who leaked this?
• 40:14
  Speaker 9: I think that's the most interesting question, And it must
• 40:18
  Speaker 9: be that there's someone within the Democratic Party, someone within
• 40:21
  Speaker 9: you know, some his campaign that has a conscience and
• 40:24
  Speaker 9: has a sense of the fact that this is going
• 40:27
  Speaker 9: in a bad direction for Democrats. Simping for Hesbola is
• 40:30
  Speaker 9: not a good look. But it's scary that you know,
• 40:34
  Speaker 9: that's that's an unnamed person who's willing to put their
• 40:37
  Speaker 9: job on the line to leak this video. But there's
• 40:40
  Speaker 9: not enough of those, I don't know, conscientious objectures, I
• 40:44
  Speaker 9: guess in the Democratic Party to put up the flag
• 40:47
  Speaker 9: and say, guys, this is a real problem.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: The call goes on much longer. There are at least
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: five people on that call. Do you think they'll have
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: an inquisition or are they just is it going to
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: be like the leak of the roka of the DBT's decision.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: We'll never know.
• 41:01
  Speaker 9: Yeah, no, I I and I think that internally they'll
• 41:03
  Speaker 9: figure it out, and it's probably they'll they'll set their
• 41:06
  Speaker 9: sights on someone who's who's Jewish. Probably that will be
• 41:09
  Speaker 9: their first suspect. But I think that's maybe the only
• 41:14
  Speaker 9: person on the on a campaign that has a conscience
• 41:18
  Speaker 9: enough to say hi, uh. It's because he in that call. Also,
• 41:22
  Speaker 9: he talks about how he doesn't want to discuss what
• 41:25
  Speaker 9: happened in Michigan at the preschool where it was an
• 41:28
  Speaker 9: attempted massacre of Jewish children. If that's not your your
• 41:33
  Speaker 9: dividing line of morality you have, you have no Yeah.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I usually root for the weakest Democrat to get the nomination.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing so in this case because I'm too
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: afraid outside Ed would actually win by some although Mike
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Lodge is a very strong candidate. Methane Mandel, A happy
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: passover to you and to set them, to the children
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and to your in laws. Thank you all. You're right
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: back in America States, mornin glory and even grace America.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: I'm here, welcome to the two day edition of the
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Hugh Hewitt Show. Very excited about today. In the final hour,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be talking with Arthur Brooks of Harvard
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Business School about his brand new book, The Meaning of
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Your Life. But I'm opening the program with an individual
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I've known about forever. I've never met him. He doesn't
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: know me, maybe he's never heard the show. But Bishop
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Robert Barron may be the most prominent Catholic in America,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: and except for Popolio, probably the most prominent American Catholic period.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: But I think Popolo has got better name recognition. You
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: reread me, Bishop Baron.
• 42:31
  Speaker 11: That's probably true. I was on your program many years ago.
• 42:34
  Speaker 7: I was still oh my goodness, and yeah, it was
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: probably about twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, something like that and
• 42:43
  Speaker 7: I remember talking to you from my car on the radio.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Oh well, I appreciate that, and you'll forgive my memory.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I'm seventy now, so I'm beginning to forget twenty five
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: years ago shows. But recently you sat down. You sat
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: down with my buddy Larry arn and he talked to
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: me after that. He's on the program once a week.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: He said, you got to talk to Bishop Baron. He
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: knows the score with the young people. I said, well,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I will do that. I will do that during Easter
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Week if we can set that up. So welcome Bishop.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: First of all, will you tell people your story about
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: how Word on Fire came to be? Actually when you
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: became a preach. You know, you did a year at
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Notre Dame and then you went to seminary. Give him
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the whole Robert Barron story.
• 43:24
  Speaker 11: Well what in about thirty seconds? Well, yeah, I entered.
• 43:28
  Speaker 7: The seminary about halfway through college and went to Catholic
• 43:32
  Speaker 7: University on a philosophy scholarship. So I have a philosophy background,
• 43:36
  Speaker 7: studied theology at the seminary in Chicago.
• 43:39
  Speaker 11: Did parish work for a while.
• 43:41
  Speaker 7: Then I went to Paris to the Institute Catholique in
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: Paris and got my doctorate in theology. And then I
• 43:47
  Speaker 7: taught for many years at the seminary outside Chicago Mondoline,
• 43:51
  Speaker 7: and then I became rector under the great Cardinal.
• 43:54
  Speaker 11: George, who was sort of a hero to me.
• 43:56
  Speaker 7: Yes, and I was in that position for a three
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: year only, and then I was made auxiliary bishop out
• 44:02
  Speaker 7: in Los Angeles, which was a complete surprise to me.
• 44:05
  Speaker 7: But I spent six wonderful years in Santa Barbara and
• 44:09
  Speaker 7: I was out there under Archbishop Jose Gomez. And then
• 44:12
  Speaker 7: just a few years ago I was made bishop in
• 44:14
  Speaker 7: the basically it's the southern part of Minnesota Diocese at Winona, Rochester.
• 44:19
  Speaker 7: So I've had a background in both academics and pastoral work.
• 44:22
  Speaker 7: And then alongside of all that was Word on Fire.
• 44:24
  Speaker 7: So that began, oh late nineties, around the year two thousand,
• 44:29
  Speaker 7: when I felt we Catholics needed to do more to
• 44:32
  Speaker 7: use this is really pre social media. We didn't have
• 44:35
  Speaker 7: solcial media in two thousand, but just to use the
• 44:37
  Speaker 7: classical media of radio and TV. So I got on
• 44:40
  Speaker 7: the radio at WGN Radio in Chicago at five point
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: fifteen on Sunday mornings for a sermon show, and that's
• 44:48
  Speaker 7: how we started and developed a website from there, and
• 44:51
  Speaker 7: that's where Word on Fire where they grew. The breakthrough
• 44:55
  Speaker 7: probably was the Catholicism Series. I did that and came
• 44:59
  Speaker 7: out in the twenty eleve where I went all over
• 45:01
  Speaker 7: the world and my model was Kenneth Clark and that
• 45:04
  Speaker 7: wonderful show. I wanted to do something similar for Catholicism,
• 45:09
  Speaker 7: to go all over the world and show the beauties
• 45:12
  Speaker 7: of the faith and talk about the truth of it.
• 45:15
  Speaker 11: And that had a big impact.
• 45:16
  Speaker 7: That was played on PBS, picked up all over the place,
• 45:20
  Speaker 7: and that allowed us to get more established institutionally. Now
• 45:24
  Speaker 7: we have, you know, different platforms that go over the
• 45:26
  Speaker 7: all over the English speaking world. I've got three offices
• 45:30
  Speaker 7: here in Rochester, Minnesota with me than one in Chicago,
• 45:33
  Speaker 7: one in Dallas. So Word on Fire is you know,
• 45:37
  Speaker 7: going on all cylinders and is uh, you know, I
• 45:39
  Speaker 7: think making a good contribution.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about that to ask you though.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Hardship duty in Santa Barbara. I live in Orange County
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in the in the winter. That's where I go to
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: in the winter, so I know Santa Barbara pretty well.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: That's really hardship duty. Did you enjoy your time in California?
• 45:54
  Speaker 11: I did? I did. It was a complete surprise.
• 45:57
  Speaker 7: I'm a Chicago guy, and usually when you're made in
• 45:59
  Speaker 7: auxiliary bishop, they make you bishop in your own diocese.
• 46:02
  Speaker 7: So I was sent out there, but yeah, I loved it.
• 46:05
  Speaker 7: I'm a beautiful place to live. They were great people.
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: The priests were very good to me.
• 46:10
  Speaker 11: So I loved it. But then you know the church,
• 46:12
  Speaker 11: you just you go where you're sent.
• 46:13
  Speaker 7: And then you get a call out of the blue
• 46:16
  Speaker 7: in this case was the Hope's appointed you bishop of
• 46:19
  Speaker 7: now your own diocese, and I you know, I love
• 46:21
  Speaker 7: it here. This is like coming home to me because
• 46:23
  Speaker 7: I'm a I'm a Midwesterner.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Well i am too, I'm from Ohio and I got
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: to tell you. The Word on Fire and I'm a
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Catholic is one of the two great things that happened
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: to the church in America in my lifetime. I think
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Archbishopship you is probably living listening right now. He listened
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: to most days. Focus got started in Denver, and I
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: think Focus on doing great thing on campus, and then
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Word of Fire came along to serve the whole church,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: just not college kids. Would you agree those are maybe
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: the two most significant thing. Leo is a big deal,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: but we'll talk about Leon a moment.
• 46:54
  Speaker 11: Well, I'm a big fan of Focus.
• 46:56
  Speaker 7: I have no curse Martin for a long time, and
• 46:58
  Speaker 7: I go to Focus events and it has had a
• 47:01
  Speaker 7: beautiful contribution.
• 47:03
  Speaker 11: And actually I'm glad you mentioned Archbishop Shephew was kind
• 47:05
  Speaker 11: of a hero to me.
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: I met him, you know, many years ago, and he's
• 47:09
  Speaker 7: he's like the embodiment of the John Paul two.
• 47:10
  Speaker 11: Spirit in our country.
• 47:12
  Speaker 7: And so he, along with Cardinal George, was a great
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: influence on my own thinking and my desire to do
• 47:18
  Speaker 7: something in the pastoral order too.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Well a bishop you wouldn't know this, but he talked
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: me back into the church I left during the Reagan
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: years when I was in the White House and the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: bishops would send us off the wall letters about nuclear
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: weapons and the economy that were just dumb, and I
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: just said, that's it. I can't take this anymore. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: then he basically talked me back into the thing. You
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: can't do that, you got to come back. So I
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: really love the guy and he's a wonderful, wonderful pastor.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: I think he's a very pastoral Carl was a great
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: munch bishop.
• 47:49
  Speaker 11: Now tell me about churchman of our time?
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Eh? Yeah, what about the church in America? Because Arthur
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: is coming on new Arthur Brooks you should I mean Catholics.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I do. I know him very well. So his new
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: book begins by telling us that the Internet is killing
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the souls of people. There's a German word unhumenik, which
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: I can't say probably correctly. Do you speak German? You
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: speak like six languages. Do you speak German?
• 48:14
  Speaker 11: It's kind to ambition TOI spiking?
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: All right, I guess means something's not right at the home,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: and you gets the vague fear that something's wrong. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: he thinks something's wrong in America and he says it's
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: the web, and he says it's young people. But you're
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: using the web for redemptive purposes. What's your idea of
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the church in America?
• 48:35
  Speaker 7: Well, I mean, first of all, about the Internet. It's
• 48:37
  Speaker 7: like everything else is good and bad, and I am
• 48:40
  Speaker 7: well aware of the dark side of it and the
• 48:43
  Speaker 7: way both young men and young women are affected differently,
• 48:46
  Speaker 7: but there's a negative for both of them. But it
• 48:50
  Speaker 7: also it's an opportunity and I think it's it would
• 48:54
  Speaker 7: be silly for the church to overlook this tool we've
• 48:57
  Speaker 7: been given to reach into people hearts who would.
• 49:01
  Speaker 11: Never come to our institutions.
• 49:03
  Speaker 7: You know, the old model has always build institutions and
• 49:06
  Speaker 7: schools and parishes and so on, and people will come
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: to be evangelized. Well, they're not coming. They haven't been
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: coming for a long time. So we've got to go
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: get them. And the internet does provide a tool. It
• 49:18
  Speaker 7: seems to me for the church to do that, and
• 49:20
  Speaker 7: we're on fire. Whatever success we've had, I think is
• 49:22
  Speaker 7: a sign that it can be efficacious.
• 49:26
  Speaker 11: That we can move into the space where we're not
• 49:28
  Speaker 11: just young people.
• 49:29
  Speaker 7: I mean, heck, now everybody's where everybody lives, for everybody,
• 49:32
  Speaker 7: and we.
• 49:32
  Speaker 11: Can reach them.
• 49:33
  Speaker 7: We can reach them people that would not come to
• 49:36
  Speaker 7: our institutions. Now the purpose as a Catholic is to
• 49:39
  Speaker 7: get them to Mass, is get them to the Eucharist.
• 49:42
  Speaker 7: So I'm not content if someone is just listening to
• 49:45
  Speaker 7: me online. That should be a you know, introduction. But
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: I think it's a tool that w'd be silly to drop.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Now it is Eastern Week, and that's why I'm particularly
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: pleased to have you. This is the week when a
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: lot of once a year Catholics go. Would you speak
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: directly to them about why it ought not to be
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: once a year, but hey, we're glad they're coming, but
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: it ought not to be once a year.
• 50:08
  Speaker 7: I typically do so usually at Christmas and Easter. You know,
• 50:11
  Speaker 7: at the end of Mass, thank you as wonder, we'll
• 50:13
  Speaker 7: see this big church you'll fill with people glad you're here.
• 50:16
  Speaker 7: But remember we celebrate the Lawd's Resurrection every Sunday, and
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: so you know, come back. It's you know, you have
• 50:23
  Speaker 7: to stress the practice of the faith in the kind
• 50:28
  Speaker 7: of double sense of that term. You have to practice
• 50:31
  Speaker 7: your Catholicism or it fades away. It has to be
• 50:34
  Speaker 7: embodied in practice and ritual and repetition or it'll fade away.
• 50:40
  Speaker 7: And like anything else, you stop practicing the guitar, you'll
• 50:43
  Speaker 7: no longer know how to play it. You stop playing golf,
• 50:45
  Speaker 7: you'll get lousy at it. Well, the same is true
• 50:47
  Speaker 7: of religion. You stop going to Mass, you stop actively praying,
• 50:53
  Speaker 7: you stop doing the works of mercy, your Catholicism will atrophy.
• 50:58
  Speaker 7: So to me, that's just a common sense view. And
• 51:02
  Speaker 7: when your faith atrophy, something very deep in you dies.
• 51:07
  Speaker 7: And what that is is the hunger for God. You know, Augustinetolbus, Lord,
• 51:12
  Speaker 7: you made us for yourself, and therefore our heart is
• 51:14
  Speaker 7: restless till it rests in thee. That's the most powerful
• 51:18
  Speaker 7: statement of Christian anthropology ever.
• 51:20
  Speaker 11: It remains true.
• 51:24
  Speaker 7: And so you stay away from Mass on a regular basis,
• 51:27
  Speaker 7: which sadly about eighty percent of our fellow Catholics do,
• 51:32
  Speaker 7: that's death for the soul. So usually in a more
• 51:35
  Speaker 7: gentle way, I'll try to communicate that to people. Stop
• 51:38
  Speaker 7: practicing the faith and you'll lose something very deep in
• 51:43
  Speaker 7: your soul.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Well, we will be right back after a break with
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Bishop Robert Baron. Remember word on fire. What's the weapon is?
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Word on fire dot orger dot com.
• 51:52
  Speaker 11: Bishop yeah at dot org will get you into all the.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Word on fire dot org. Get started there. But remember
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: masses right around the corner. The light is on most
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: of the week. I guess you can't go to confessional
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: on Friday or Saturday. I'll ask the bishop that afterward,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: but receive the communion this weekend. And if you're not
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: a Catholic, go to your Protestant church. If you're Jewish,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: a happy pass Over to you. It is a special
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: week of the year for all of our place traditions
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: in the United States, the main ones and so state tuned.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: I'll be right back when they do do it. Shit,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Welcome back in America. Bishop Robert Barren is a force
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: masieur in American faith, especially in the Catholic tradition. He
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: is the founder of Word on Fire. He is the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Bishop of Wenona up in Minnesota. Cold what I call
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: ands so cold, and is the Mayo Clinic in your diocese,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Bishop Yeap.
• 52:42
  Speaker 7: In fact, as I'm recording these words, I'm about, oh,
• 52:44
  Speaker 7: you know, a few steps away from the Mayo Clinic.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: That's a great place to have a bishopric.
• 52:49
  Speaker 11: I know, the great place.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Certainly I want to go back to Arthur because it's
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: why we're doing the day beginning of the end. He
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: wrote about what's going on in America as a psychogenic pandemic.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: People are simply they don't understand. They're not too happy
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: about their lives, double the right they were than twenty
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: five years ago. And it's not we know about porn,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: and we know about depression and bullying, but just generally
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: people wasting their life away flipping, swiping the laughter, flipping
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: or reading actually doing stuff like that. What's your word
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: to those people, what do you want them to do?
• 53:29
  Speaker 10: Well?
• 53:29
  Speaker 7: I mean, first limited, So as I say you can't
• 53:32
  Speaker 7: eliminate the Internet, we can't eliminate these machines. But to
• 53:36
  Speaker 7: become aware of the fact they were designed to be
• 53:38
  Speaker 7: addictive and they work.
• 53:40
  Speaker 11: I mean, I get it. I do the same thing.
• 53:41
  Speaker 7: I'll find myself going through aimlessly some silly you know,
• 53:46
  Speaker 7: Facebook thing or something.
• 53:47
  Speaker 11: So be aware of that and actively limited.
• 53:51
  Speaker 7: Parents too, be very attentive to your kids and how
• 53:55
  Speaker 7: much time they're spending. The fact that the machine will
• 53:58
  Speaker 7: tell you it's so, but it'll tell you like you
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: spend so many hours today on this machine. Be aware
• 54:04
  Speaker 7: of that and then say, all right, I'm going to
• 54:06
  Speaker 7: set definite limits. Something I've done the last couple of
• 54:09
  Speaker 7: lens now is I've resolved that one day a week
• 54:12
  Speaker 7: I'll put the phone in a drawer.
• 54:14
  Speaker 11: Now, it's a little tricky because I'm bishop of a
• 54:15
  Speaker 11: diocese and I've got to be in touch with a
• 54:17
  Speaker 11: lot of people. But I made a deal with my assistant.
• 54:21
  Speaker 11: We worked out a way to get around.
• 54:22
  Speaker 7: It, and so one day a week I put the
• 54:25
  Speaker 7: phone in the drawer and I just ignore it.
• 54:28
  Speaker 11: So I think you've got to.
• 54:29
  Speaker 7: Be practically attentive to how addictive it is and take
• 54:33
  Speaker 7: some steps also. I mean, go back to things like
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: reading a real book that you hold in your hands,
• 54:40
  Speaker 7: go back to taking a walk, making sure you get
• 54:43
  Speaker 7: outside and adjust your eyes to something at a distance.
• 54:46
  Speaker 7: Because I buy the correlation has been amply demonstrated between
• 54:50
  Speaker 7: screen time and depression.
• 54:51
  Speaker 11: I completely get that.
• 54:53
  Speaker 7: I feel that if I'm spending too much time on
• 54:55
  Speaker 7: these little screens, it's depressing. So I think be aware
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: of all that and take some concrete action.
• 55:02
  Speaker 11: To avoid it.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: I am four years older than you, but we've grown
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: up and roughly the same period of time. Do you
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: think America is more divided now than it's ever been?
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Because if it is, I'm going to blame the device.
• 55:14
  Speaker 11: Well, yeah, and I think it is. I look back
• 55:18
  Speaker 11: in my lifetime.
• 55:18
  Speaker 7: There's always been divisions, of course, and political divisions and
• 55:21
  Speaker 7: so on and so forth. But you see, it's a
• 55:23
  Speaker 7: more fundamental problem, I think. So go back when you
• 55:27
  Speaker 7: know we were kids. Let's say politicians disagreed about political
• 55:31
  Speaker 7: strategy and about which legislation to pursue, and so LBJ
• 55:35
  Speaker 7: disagreed with Everet Dirkson or something, you know. But back then,
• 55:40
  Speaker 7: everybody believed in God, they believe in objective moral values,
• 55:44
  Speaker 7: they believed in a stable human nature that was in place,
• 55:48
  Speaker 7: and then within that framework they disagreed about particular strategies
• 55:52
  Speaker 7: and so on. But see, now the divide is so
• 55:54
  Speaker 7: much greater because people many don't believe in God, don't
• 55:58
  Speaker 7: believe in objective moral values, don't believe in the stable
• 56:01
  Speaker 7: human nature. So now the divide is far starker and
• 56:05
  Speaker 7: more fundamental. That's why I think there's a violence to
• 56:08
  Speaker 7: our division. It's a metaphysical problem, and that has come
• 56:12
  Speaker 7: ultimately from this disaffiliation from the churches. So you stay
• 56:16
  Speaker 7: with from church, in time you'll stop believing in God,
• 56:19
  Speaker 7: stop believing God, you stop believing objective values, stop believing
• 56:22
  Speaker 7: objective values. Eventually you'll say, well, even human nature itself
• 56:26
  Speaker 7: is fluid. And I think that's why the divisions are
• 56:29
  Speaker 7: somewhat starker and more dangerous.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I agree with you. And there are four people kinds
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: of people listening right now. There are true you Catholics
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: who go to Mass. They are Catholics that don't go
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: to Mass. There are Protestants, Jews, and other people of
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: other faiths, and then the people don't believe in God
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: at all, who think it's silly. I think that last
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: group is growing rather exponentially because of work done by
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins than others fifteen twenty years ago,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: and enhanced by social media and based a rough culture,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: a culture of division anger. How do you begin the
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: conversation with someone in the last group they don't believe
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: in God. I can show them chiefhus I can prove
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: to them there was Jesus this time in this place.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: But how do you begin it.
• 57:15
  Speaker 11: I have a lot of those conversations. In fact, we're
• 57:17
  Speaker 11: on fire.
• 57:17
  Speaker 7: Began the Internet side of it began right in the
• 57:21
  Speaker 7: wake of the new atheists, and so most people I
• 57:23
  Speaker 7: was engaging in dialogue with were those non believers and
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: the kind of aggressive people that didn't like God, didn't
• 57:29
  Speaker 7: like the Church, didn't like me, you know.
• 57:32
  Speaker 11: So I did a lot of that dialogue.
• 57:34
  Speaker 8: You know.
• 57:35
  Speaker 11: One thing is is my generation.
• 57:38
  Speaker 7: When I was coming of age, we threw away a
• 57:41
  Speaker 7: lot of our intellectual tools, so we bracketed much of
• 57:46
  Speaker 7: the intellectual tradition of Catholicism, the faith I got as
• 57:49
  Speaker 7: a young man was very kind of touchy feely. It
• 57:53
  Speaker 7: was very social justice oriented. If you had asked me
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: when I was a little kid, what's religion all about?
• 57:59
  Speaker 7: I would have said something like fighting for racial justice
• 58:03
  Speaker 7: and caring for the poor. Good things, obviously, but that's
• 58:07
  Speaker 7: what we tended to reduce religion too. Now, what happened
• 58:11
  Speaker 7: as a result of that, I call it banners and balloons.
• 58:13
  Speaker 7: Catholicism is a lot of people in my generation, when
• 58:16
  Speaker 7: we came of age, said well, this is silly, this
• 58:19
  Speaker 7: is superficial, and they absented themselves. Then along come the
• 58:23
  Speaker 7: aggressive atheists, using their intellectual tools. We had largely jettisoned
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: our own apologetic weapons. And so how pathetic, I must say,
• 58:33
  Speaker 7: was the response of Christians to the new atheists when
• 58:37
  Speaker 7: they first came on the scene rehearsing, by the way,
• 58:40
  Speaker 7: nothing new. The arguments were from Mars and from Freud
• 58:44
  Speaker 7: and from feuer Black. They were old, had atheist arguments.
• 58:48
  Speaker 7: All that was new about them was how nasty they were.
• 58:50
  Speaker 7: But we were particularly bad at responding to them.
• 58:53
  Speaker 11: So something I did when.
• 58:55
  Speaker 7: I started engaging these conversations, I would draw upon the
• 58:58
  Speaker 7: Catholic intellectual tradition and I would go back to some
• 59:01
  Speaker 7: of the arguments for God's existence. How do you explain
• 59:05
  Speaker 7: a radically contingent universe. You can't appeal endlessly to other
• 59:08
  Speaker 7: contingent things, right, I'd also make this sort of half
• 59:12
  Speaker 7: mocking appeals. Most people I was talking to would have
• 59:16
  Speaker 7: held very strongly to certain moral values, like slavery is wrong.
• 59:21
  Speaker 11: It's not just a consensus. It's not just a cultural thing.
• 59:25
  Speaker 7: It's like wrong in itself, or being abusive toward women,
• 59:29
  Speaker 7: that's a bad thing. I say, okay, So you don't
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: think these are just subjective opinions.
• 59:34
  Speaker 11: You don't think it's just a matter of cultural consensus.
• 59:37
  Speaker 7: You think there's something objectively wrong about these Where.
• 59:42
  Speaker 11: Do those values come from? How do you explain? But
• 59:47
  Speaker 11: the same thing with the sciences.
• 59:48
  Speaker 7: So most of the people that were great at poems
• 59:50
  Speaker 7: of religion, boy or boy, they believed in science.
• 59:52
  Speaker 11: And I say, okay, great, I believe in it too.
• 59:55
  Speaker 7: But science rests upon the assumption that the world is
• 59:59
  Speaker 7: radically intelligible, it has an intelligible pattern or form to it.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 7: Otherwise the scientists couldn't get his work off the ground.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 11: Where does that come from?
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: Why should the world be in every detail massively intelligible
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 7: in such a way that only the highest mathematics can
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 7: describe it. So I would kind of tease them at
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 7: the moral level and the epistemic level. There's something objective
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 7: that's hard to explain apart from.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 11: A law giver, as CS Lewis would say.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 7: Or apart from some intelligence that's endowed the world with intelligibility.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: So I would use those approaches a lot with folks online.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: It's the best approach. It's the argument from design, and
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: the designer wants to be known. All you have to
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: do is knock on the door and answer. But boy
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Dawkins was nasty and Hitch was funny. Those were their
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: two weapons. Pitcher was on the shows. Have any times,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. Don't go anywhere, beshop. Robert
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Barron from Word on Fire dot org, Stay tuned, broking
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: back America A Bishop Robert Barron is my guest. I'm
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: kicking off a bunch of different stuff on Holy Week
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: with the Bishop Bishop Easter Sunday. People will say to
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: me he has risen. I will say he has written indeed,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: And people who don't believe or don't care to believe,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: will laugh at that or not understand it. What's the
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: good news that you're going to be preaching on Sunday
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: that modern people twenty twenty six people need to know
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: in here, especially in America.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 7: The good news is that God's love is more powerful
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 7: than anything that's in the world, even death itself.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 11: That God has won a.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 7: Definitive victory over all the powers of the world. Jesus
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 7: saying shalom the risen Jesus saying shalom to those who
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 7: had abandoned him and denied him and run from him.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 7: That's where we find our salvation. See, because they, as
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 7: it were, committed the worst possible sin, which is they
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 7: killed God.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 11: They have betrayed God. They ran from God. But God
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 11: returned and forgiving love. So it's not just the fact
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 11: of the.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 7: Resurrection, it's the effect of the resurrection. Spiritually, God's love
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 7: is greater than anything that's in the world.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 11: And that's why you know, Paul can say.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 7: I'm certain neither death or life, neither angels or principalities,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 7: neither heighten nor depth, or any other creature could separate
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 7: us from the love of God. That's what the resurrection means. Nothing,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 7: even our greatest sin can block the grace of God?
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Do you ever get tired of doing Easter Week? And
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of work for priests, and I'm sure
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: it's even more for bishops. But physically and emotionally, that
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: is it worrying?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 10: Sure?
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 7: Sure, Like yesterday I hed the Chrism Mass, which is
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 7: a lovely mass.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 11: We blessed the oils to be used throughout the diocese.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 7: But that mass is about an hour and forty five
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 7: minutes long, and then we start, you know, the Tritaum,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 7: and they're all lengthy liturgies. And one of the things, Hugh,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 7: I find it's challenging as a preacher is when you
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 7: come back to the same feast you know, again and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 7: again and again. So like what new can I say
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 7: about Christmas or about Easter?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 11: And in a way I've learned not to.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 7: Worry about that because you speak the Great Easter Faith,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 7: the Great Easter Belief.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 11: A text I love.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 7: It's in the second Reading for Easter Day is that
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 7: Acts chapter ten and at Saint Peter giving one of
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 7: his early sermons, and he said he rehearsed the life
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 7: of Jesus very briefly, and then his death and his
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 7: resurrection and.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 11: Then he says, so blithely, we who ate.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 7: And drank with him after he rose from the dead,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 7: And that line always takes my breath away.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 11: We're not talking about a myth.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 7: You know, myths begin once upon a time, and myths
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 7: are archetypal stories. And as c As lewis new, there's
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 7: certain clues that interior to a text that tell you
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: you're dealing with a myth.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 11: Then you read the Gospels. The Gospels are not myths.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 8: You know.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 7: This Jesus that began up in Galilee with the baptism
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 7: of John Preach. Then he came to Judea and then Jerusalem,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 7: and that's not once upon a time. He's referring to
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 7: real places. And you know how our elders put him
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 7: to death, And yeah, well God raised him and we
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 7: ate and drank with him after he rote from the dead.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 7: And I think of that too, whenever I go past
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 7: Saint Peter's basilic in Rome. Saint Peter the Big Fisherman
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 7: is buried underneath that great basilica, That same Peter who
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 7: said we ate and drank with him, and who went
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: to his death crucified upside down affirming it. You know,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 7: the facticity of Christianity, the facticity of the historical claim matters.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: And last question, Bishop in America, is the church okay?
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Is Leo good for the churches are growing? Because I
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: think it is from what I observe it my churches
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: on both coasts, I think it is. But I'm not
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: sure what you think.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 11: No, there's a lot of evidence I'll give you. In
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 11: my own diocese.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 7: Last year we set a record for the number of
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 7: adult convers coming in. This year we broke that record.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: And that's been that's not just here, but all over
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 7: the church. We've noticed this increase in adult converse to
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 7: the faith.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 11: We seem to have at least reversed the decline.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 7: In most of the years I've been watching this, there's
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 7: been this steady downward, you know, trajectory, more and more disaffiliation.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 7: We seem to have stopped that anyway, and there are
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 7: indications of an uptick.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 11: I think it has to do with the gen Z people.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 7: The generation for them, the new atheists are kind of
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 7: a distant memory, and they inherited this spiritual space of
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 7: you know, the no God. We came from nothing, We're
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 7: going nowhere, no objective value, no purpose to life, and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 7: they said, well, come on, and they knew it ran
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 7: counter to the deepest longings of their heart. So I
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 7: think they're responding more readily to the invitation of religion.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 7: So I think that's all. That's all positive. Nothing struggles over,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 7: you know, but I think.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: That help people listening right now take from your words
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: and from Arthur later, that the meaning of life can
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: be discerned and it's God, and that they will go
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: on Sunday to the church of their choice. And if
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: they're not a Catholic, you're welcome in the Catholic Church.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: Can't receive communion, but you're welcome there. And if you
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: are a Catholic, you can get the confession today or
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: tomorrow or Thursday. We don't do confessions on Friday, doeight, Bishop, so.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 11: You don't schedule them. But of course you can always
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 11: go if you're going to bok.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the call of priest, and go and enjoy
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Easter and we'll talk on the other side. Bishop. Let's
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: not make it another thirteen years until you're back. I
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: appreciate you so much for what you're doing and for
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: joining me today. We're on fire dot Org. Thank you. Bishop, Baron,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: meaning Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, as promised from the
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: beginning of the show forward, Arthur Brooks of Harvard Business
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: School joins me to talk about this brand new book,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: The Meaning of your Life. The Meaning of your Life
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: just came out today. You can order an Amazon, you
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: can get into the bookstore. It's probably in like all
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: of Arthur's books, every airport chaos that you walk by.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: But I got to start, Arthur. I was talking with
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Bishop Baron at the top of the show. Who's your friend?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: He told me he was your friend, and I asked him,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: since I know he speaks German, did he know the
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: word unhemlik And he did, and it meant dread something's
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: not right at home. I'm never gonna forget that word.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: What a horrible way to describe the culture.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 8: But you're right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, Hugh. Great
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 8: to see you. I miss seeing you in person, and
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 8: sometimes I see you at your alma mater, Harvard, where
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 8: I teach. As a matter of fact. But the trouble
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 8: that I had when I came back to academia seven
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 8: years ago in twenty nineteen, was I had this unheimlich feeling,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 8: which in German means a sense of well, something's not
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 8: right now. I am a lifelong academic. By that, I
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 8: mean I grew up on a college campus. My dad
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 8: was a college professor. His dad was a college professor.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 8: It's what we do in my family. And it was
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 8: always happier than ordinary life. It just was people fall
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: in love, people at friends. It's like when you were
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: at Harvard. It's what you were doing, man and crazy ideas,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: scary ideas. That's the thrill of it. But when I
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 8: came back after being away, I was the president of
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 8: the American Enterprise Institute for eleven years until twenty nineteen,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 8: so I had been gone since two thousand and eight,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 8: and it was like a plague had gone through my village.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 8: I found that depression had tripled, anxiety had doubled. I
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 8: found cancel culture, sadness, anxiety, all kinds of crazy activism.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 8: And people will say, it's like something's wrong with these universities. No,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: something's wrong with our culture that made it impossible for
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 8: people actually to feel normal. And so I started a
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 8: big study. I mean, because this is this is what
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 8: I'm put on earth to do. Here, I'm a behavioral scientist.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 8: I started looking of the misery.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: I just spent the weekend with my four grandkids who
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: lived four hours south of here, and I have four
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: other ones all right, so I got eight total. And
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the book scares me to death because I think because
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I'm Roman Catholic from birth and a pretty good practicing Catholic,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: not great, but good enough that I got. I understand
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: the Baltimore Catechism lesson first Fire, we on Earth, the
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: no love and serve God. I got the meaning part
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: down early, but I'm afraid that the culture will deny that.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: And my kids go to church, but I'm afraid that
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: the culture will be at war with them, believing in
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: service and in purpose and in meaning. And I think
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: the culture is winning. And your book is kind of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good fight back book, but you
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: do admit we're in a bad shape right now.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 8: We are in bad shape right now, And of course
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 8: I'm an American, so I'm optimistic that we will figure
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 8: this out. We always have figured out these existential problems,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 8: and I think we will again. But I don't want
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 8: to lose another generation of people to this crisis. Now
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: that you put your finger on it, By the way, Hugh,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 8: when I started doing interviews with young people who were
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 8: depressed and anxious on campuses and off campuses, they said
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 8: the same thing. By life feels meaningless, It's like, what
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 8: do we have some sort of philosophical problem? Yeah, and
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 8: so this study, this book is Okay, what are people,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 8: what do they need, what are they looking for? Why
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 8: is it hard? And now what do they have to do?
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 8: And this is a six part plan for finding the
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 8: meaning of life in six months. It's the graduation gift
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 8: for the aimless young person, the struggling young person in
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 8: your life.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to jump around at the fabulous read. By
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: the way, all of Arthur's books are, so I'm not
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: going to go in the sixth part order that people
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: really ought to experience, because it makes so much sense
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: and unfold. I want to jump around to some things
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: people might know to get it hooked in. First, I
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: did not know that Arthur Schoppenheimer invented the meaning of life,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: and that he was a cranky, weird guy who didn't
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: believe in the meaning of life, but he kind of
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: loved beauty, so he did that a good summary.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, that's right, Arthur Schopenhower, the nineteenth century existentialist,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 8: nihilist philosopher, and the guy was just a complete grouch.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 8: He literally created a theory called the theory of rational pessimism.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 8: Always expect the worst is the whole thing. He was
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 8: on non speaking terms with his family. It's just awful
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 8: his life. And he said, you know, he created the
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 8: phrase meaning of life. He was the first one who
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 8: actually said it and said it doesn't exist. It's a
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 8: He said it as a farce. Is the whole thing.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 8: But as you correctly point out, this guy, he had
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 8: one thing in his life. He played music. He played
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 8: the flute. He used to play the flute every afternoon
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 8: and look up to heaven and say ah meaning. In
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 8: other words, he found that beauty was a true source
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 8: of meaning to him. Even the guys who say there
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 8: is no meaning of life believe there is meaning in life.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: I love. We're going to come back with Rossini, by
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: the way, because you mentioned that he loved Rossini. We'll
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: come back with that. But I want to start with
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the question I asked to Bishop Baron, how do you
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: get people? The key to this is you got to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: believe in God and you got to serve God in people.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: That's it the short version on Amazon's sat What a
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: wonderful book explaining you got to believe in God and
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: you have to serve God to be at one with
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: Him and to be happy. But how do you get
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: people to believe in God? Arthur? And they can't walk
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: the campus tell it whenever you walk through that along
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: the way. They can't go to North Dakota to do
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: what Teddy Roosevelt did. They can't go see the Dalai Lama.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: How do you get them to, you know, the kid
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: that comes to your office at HBS to believe in God?
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of old school.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it's pretty old school. But really what it is
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 8: about loving and so loving another person is a way
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 8: to open the open the aperture to the divine, seeking beauty,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 8: understanding that suffering is not your enemy. All of these
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 8: things what they do is they oh, they crack the door,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 8: Hugh a little bit. And this is one of the
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 8: reasons I talk about the things that I do, asking
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 8: big philosophical question cracks the door. What keeps it shut
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: is this assumption that I know everything already and then
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 8: frittering away all of your time literally in the wrong
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 8: side of your brain, which is what people are doing
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 8: when they check their telephones two hundred and five times
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 8: a day. And so that's really where I start the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 8: whole book is not go to church and believe. It's
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 8: actually fight back against what's actually chaining you to the
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 8: pole down there. That's that's not what you want because
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 8: you know you're miserable.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: In the next segment, we're going to talk about hemispheric lateralization.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: My new favorite words of the week. I'm going to
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: use that in the conversations. You know, let's talk a
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: little bit about hemispheric lateralization. People are going to be impressed.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: But when you take two walks a day, that's accessible.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: So tell people about that. That's something people can start
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: doing today.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly right. And so people often ask what's the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 8: first thing I should do in the morning. Number one
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 8: is what you shouldn't do. We should picking up your phone.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 8: Why because you neurocognitively program yourself to be sitting. What
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: we're going to talk about in the next segment in
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 8: the wrong part of your brain. What you should do
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 8: is leave your phone plugged, it in a closet some
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 8: other place in the house and go for a walk
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 8: ideally as the sun comes up, and I promise you
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 8: that is a transcendent experience that has been that is
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 8: as old as the hills in Sanskrit. That's called the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 8: Brahma Mukuorta, the Creator's time, that's been going on for
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 8: six thousand years in India. People find it has mystical properties,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 8: and I promise you the neuroscience research bears that out.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 8: That's the first thing to do for a walk.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Do you listen to podcast when you walk? Arthur Brooks?
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 8: You know, I sometimes do, but I ordinarily like not
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 8: to because I want to be fully present, simply because
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 8: when you're distracting yourself, when you're distracting yourself from the
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 8: from the business at hand of being alive, you're missing
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 8: the meaning experience and you're sending your brain into activity
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 8: about analysis, about engineering, about solving problems, as opposed to
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 8: the experience of being here.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Now, Okay, I'm pretty addictive to podcast because it's the
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: news business and I got to keep up. Let me
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: ask you, when you go for the walk and you're
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: not plugged in, are you looking in the far distance?
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Are you studying people? How are you engaging your your
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: right brain? You're engaging, right.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 8: Right, that's it, right. The right hemisphere of your brain
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 8: is what you're engaging, because that's the side of your
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 8: brain that you need for mystery and meaning and for
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 8: mind wandering. That's why when you're bored, that's what's actually
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 8: most active. Being bored is unbelievably important for you to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 8: find the meaning of life. And so you you don't
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: have to worry about what you're focusing on. You're just
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 8: focusing on what crosses your field of view, and no
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 8: matter where your brain takes you, that's fine, because your
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 8: brain is going to take you where you need to go,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 8: is what it comes down to. So you don't have
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 8: to worry about it at all. You just have to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 8: stay undistracted electronically and then ambulate and then walk. And
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 8: that's the first way to actually start finding having No,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 8: it's actually you're not finding the meaning of life. You're
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 8: letting meaning find you.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Now, the other thing you mentioned that's very practical. You
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: often leave your phone in the foyer and only go
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: and consult it in the hallway of the house or
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: someplace like that. And then you said, the average the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: average person looks at their phone one hundred times the
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: average person one hundred times a.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 8: Day, two hundred, two hundred and five times a day,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 8: two hundred and five times a day. That's every thirteen minutes.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: So that's an extraordinary That's like an asteroid hitting our
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: evolutionary design.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 8: Isn't it exactly right?
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 8: Exactly right. I mean, the truth is that our brains
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 8: are the same as they were two hundred and fifty
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 8: thousand years ago, the late Place to Scene period. This
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 8: is one of the things I talk about in the book.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 8: We have caveman brains. They were pretty smart back then.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 8: And the way our brains are supposed to work, because
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 8: you have two hemispheres, the right side for mystery and
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 8: meaning and the left side for how to and what.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 8: You got to have the why questions. You got to
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 8: have the how to questions and they work together. You
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 8: have to decide what you want to do because of
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 8: what you're really all about, and then go do it.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 8: Is what it comes down to. But if you never
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 8: ask the why questions, because that's off because of electronics
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 8: and media and constant stimulation and engineering and hustle and grind,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 8: you're going to go in circles and say I'm always
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 8: busy but I'm always bored even though I'm busy.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, have you ever read The Three Body Problem? The
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: only science fiction book that John Podhortz has ever recommended.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: So I read it and was fascinated.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I know that and that's based on the Three
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 8: Body Problem is actually a philosophical problem.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it's in your book. And I started
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about the science fiction book based on that, and
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: about Paul and Marsha and Mark, and I got wow,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: this is the same problem that Arthur's dealing with. We're
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: coming right back with Arthur Brook. Go get the book
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: The Meaning of Your Life. It's available to Amazon right now.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: It's especially for graduates, it's especially for younger people. But
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: like I just mentioned, Paul, is what fifty maybe, so
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: if you're on the lower side of fifty, you can
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: definitely use it. Maybe even sixties. When you're seventy, you've
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: either got it or your jump.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 12: I'm kind of happy I got most of it. Kay Jo,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 12: Welcome back America.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: If you recognize that you're pretty far advanced in your
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: classical music. That's by Olivier Mession, who I think survived
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: the Holocaust and Nazi prisoner of war. Camps to write this. Arthur,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: am I getting that correct or my notes correct?
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 8: Yeah? Olivia Besi Eden is one of the great twentieth
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 8: century French composers. He was actually a prisoner of war.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 8: He had been conscripted into the French army and he
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 8: was a classical musician and he was like thirty six,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: and so he was not he was not fit for
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 8: I mean, look, you know, I got two marines among
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 8: my kids. This guy's idea one of them.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't know about this one until I read the book.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: She's a second.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: First, second lieutenant. She's no, she's a second lieutenant, and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 8: she's a man. She's a she's a killer at four
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: foot eleven, I'm telling you. And by the way, my
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 8: first marine who's enlisted scout sniper, has to salute her.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: Is he younger or older?
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 8: Older? And he's six months hard?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very harsh.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I know this story.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: You're adopting her, by the way, and now she adopted you.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: Go ahead and tell tell people that story. Yeah.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so you know years ago, you know, you and
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 8: I first met. I don't know if you remember, I
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 8: wrote a book when I was still teaching at Syracuse
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 8: University about charitable giving in two thousand and six, loads
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 8: many years ago, twenty years ago. Yeah, yeah, And I
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 8: found well that you can do a little bit of
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 8: good in other people's lives by kind of throwing money
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 8: out of a helicopter, a couple of bucks here and there.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 8: But you can do a lot of good if you
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 8: turn the whole dial for one person. And by the way,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 8: you'll get happier and healthier. So I told my wife,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 8: and she's like, so let's do it. I said, do
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 8: what she said, let's adopt a baby. Let's turn the
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 8: whole dial. And I'm like, it's only a book, honey,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 8: And she had me dead to rights. And so we
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 8: did it. We adopted my little girl, Marina, and she,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 8: you know, she was born in two thousand and three.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 8: We brought her home in two thousand and four. And
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 8: it's been the most life changing experience any of us
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 8: has ever had. It completely, it totally completed our family.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: She's you know that has stopped that now, Arthur. It's
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: a tragedy.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 8: Stop, I know. And during the Alabama administration, as a
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 8: matter of fact, the foreign adoptions were cut by three quarters.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: It was very very loose during the during the Bush administration,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 8: which was fantastic. There were about twenty six thousand foreign
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 8: ad options of the year that we did and it
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 8: was down to six or seven thousand during the Obama administration.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 8: And because of rules from the State Department. You know,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 8: it's just bureaucratic morass ruining lives just as always.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Let me from left field, got nothing new with anything.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: Just occurred to me because I mentioned China. How do
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: you think Jimmy Lai gets through the day.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 8: Jimmy Li gets through the day because he's a Christian believer.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 8: That's how he gets through the day. He's a Catholic
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 8: like you and me, and he prays for the holy
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 8: souls in purgatory, he prays for his captors. He does
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 8: what we are meant to do as Christian people. Look,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 8: here's the deal. You look at the Early Church. The
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 8: Early Church is all about bring it on, man, because
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 8: this is not the Kingdom, this is not the last stop.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 8: If this is supposed to be hard, then make it hard.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 8: Jimmy Lai is the Early Church and I admire him
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 8: for it.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: I do too. All right, now, I want to go
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: back to hemispheric lateralization, and how do I say I
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: AI and miguil christ I in.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 8: That's that's Ian, That's just like the Scottish spelling of
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 8: I and that's Ian. Migilchrist.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Well, he sounded like a brilliant guy even to come
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: up with the term hemispheric lateralization. Explain it to people, please, yeah.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 8: Yeah, So back, Hugh, when you and I were lads
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 8: in the nineteen seventies, we all thought that, you know,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 8: you were right brained if you were artsy, and you
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: were left brained if you were analytical and mathematical. And
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 8: you know, that's what everybody thought. Now that's been completely
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 8: overtaken by this neuroscientists don't believe that anymore. What we
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 8: do know, and this comes from the work of the
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 8: great neuroscientists at Oxford Ian Migilchrist, is that the right
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 8: side of the brain asks the big philosophical why questions
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 8: of life, and the right and the left side of
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 8: the brain asks the how to and what questions to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 8: execute on those why questions. In other words, I say,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 8: why why am I getting out of bed today? Well,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 8: because I love my family I want to support them,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 8: and then the left side says, here's how we go
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 8: do that? The trouble is that if you're doing something
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 8: systematically that shuts down the right hemisphere and only illuminates
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 8: the left hemisphere, you're going to be all about technology
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 8: and all how to and what, and you're not going
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 8: to spend any time on the why. The why is
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 8: the meaning of your life. And that's exactly the pickle
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 8: we're in right now because of those two hundred and
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 8: five phone checks today.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: You know, Henry Allen said, ones answers before questions do
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: one soul great harm. And a lot of people pick
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: up a book like this and they want answers, but
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: they're going to get questions, right answer. And I think
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: you did this very right. By the way, since you're
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: in Cambridge, now, do you attend Saint Paul's?
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: I do what I'm there actually, so my family lives
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 8: in northern Virginia. That's where we spend most of our time,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 8: and I commute during the semester up to Harvard up
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 8: to Cambridge.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: In Boston, a friend of mine, Regina Pieza, who you
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: may or may not know, is raising money to reduce
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: Saint Paul's, which apparently has not been improved since the
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: mid seventies. So we may have to help with that.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to the three students you begin with.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: You conclude by saying, we're in a psychogenic epidemic. That
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: sounds bad, that's what is it.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 8: Yeah, a psychogetic epidemic is an epidemic of misery without
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 8: a your biological origin. So you can't find a bacterium,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 8: you can't find a virus, but there's a lot of suffering.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 8: And this is when something spreads around like a fad
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 8: or a panic spreads around the culture, so you know,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 8: cutting or you know, anything as kids get involved in.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 8: It's anything that's really harmful. Self harmful is a psychogenic epidemic.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 8: And the misery, the depression and anxiety that young people
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 8: are suffering today is a psychogenic epidemic. And now we
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 8: know the reason, which is that we're in the wrong
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 8: side of our brains and is being provoked by the
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 8: way that we misuse technology.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: So we're on the left side of the brain all
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the time. All that on the right side of.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 8: The brain enough, and so that's exactly right.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: Do the right side of the brain kick in other
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: than when walking way?
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 8: Oh for sure. And this is the key thing that
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 8: we need to do is put down our devices and
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 8: actually engage in behavior that my great grandfather, Leroy Brooks
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 8: did every single day without thinking about it. Here's the irony.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 8: Here's the irony. Hue to wipe out boredom. Because people
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 8: hate being bored. They the device use, which is unbelievably distracting,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 8: eradicates boredom moment to moment. But life is unbelievably boring.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 8: People will say at the end of the day, I
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 8: don't even know what I did all day because I
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 8: was on Instagram the whole day. My great grandfather, Leroy,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 8: he was bored behind that mule, but he never came
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 8: home and said, honey, I had a panic attack today
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 8: behind the mule because his brain was working the way
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 8: it was supposed to and he was bored plenty. But
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 8: the end of his life, I guarantee you he didn't
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 8: say his life was boring. And that's the great irony
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 8: of using your brain wrong. And that's exactly what's happening.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 8: That's the reason that people don't know the meaning of
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 8: their lives, don't even know how to start asking. And
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 8: there are lots of ways to do it, but they
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 8: have to do with living in an old fashioned way.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 8: And doing it on purpose.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I do. We'll come back to the old fashioned
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: way and segment four. Couple of definitions. Happiness equals enjoyment
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: plus satisfaction plus meaning. We can get the enjoyment in
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: the satisfaction. We do a lot of that. Meaning means,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: coherence and purpose and significance all at it. Again, we
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: suck at meaning. That's terrible, so I'm varrible.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 8: That's exactly right. So that the three parts of meaning
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 8: are why things happen the way they do, why I'm
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 8: doing what I'm doing, and why my life matters. And
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 8: we can't answer those questions today when we're on our phones.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Arthur gives you a quiz. By the way, it's a
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: very interesting quiz that didn't make any sense to me
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: when I took it. Arthur, you might be surprised. I'm
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: a happy homebuddy. But I did it and I was
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: getting sevens and ones and that's it. Sevens are ones,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: and I'm a happy homebody. Did you invent that?
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 10: No?
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 8: No, that was actually from Mike Steeger, who's a psychologist
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 8: leaders of Colorado, and it's a really good test. It
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 8: turns out that you know many, many tens of thousands
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 8: of people have taken it, and what it shows you
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 8: is do you have a sense of your life's meaning?
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 8: And are you looking? Those are the two questions and
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 8: that starts the books, so people know where they.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: Are right, don't go anywhere. I'll be right back with
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: Arthur's brook The brand new book is The Meaning of
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: Your Life. That's in bookstores everywhere, as available Amazon today
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: and have it tomorrow in time for Easter. Perfect Easter
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: President of course for grad Stay tuned, Welcome back to America.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewett. Arthur Brooks is here. His new book
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: is the Meaning of Your Life. I end up recommending
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: all of Arthur's Brooks for my small men's group. I'm
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: going to do it with this one as well. I
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: learned more about Dshevsky in three pages than I have
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: in seventy years. He's a gambling addict. He had the
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: challenge to write a book of one hundred and forty
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: pages where he'd lose all the rights to his books.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: He met his wonderful wife Anna the first I just
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: thought it was fabulous you include that in there. But
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: what's that got to do with interrupting the doom loop?
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: Because if you tell me able to read Doschatsky, they won't.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah. Well, so reading Dostovsky is not a prerequisite for
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 8: finding the meaning of your life, but understanding something about
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 8: his life is really important because the doom loop is
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 8: what happens when there's any addictive behavior in your life.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 8: You know, it's like the the main predictor of drinking
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 8: too much or boredom and anxiety. And if your life
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 8: is boring and really stressful, you're at risk for drinking
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 8: too much and that will be relieved temporarily, but those
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 8: phenomena will come back and forth. You'll become more bored
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 8: and more anxious because of your brain chemistry, which you'll
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 8: make you escalate, and that's what actually leads to rampant alcoholism.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 8: The same thing is true with your phone, as it
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 8: turns out the same way as how you try to
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 8: eradicate your boredom by looking at your devices all day long,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 8: and the result of it is you become less tolerant
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 8: of boredom and life gets more boring, ironically, which makes
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 8: you look at your phone even more, and that's the
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 8: doom bloop. So we learned about this from Dosteansky because
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 8: he was this huge gambling addict, and the more that
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 8: he gambled the worst. Yeah, the more stressed out he got,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 8: and so the more he gambled, and it got worse
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 8: and worse than he had to break the doom bloop.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 8: And the way he did it was with love, by
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 8: falling in love. He fell in love with a woman
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 8: who is to whom he was dictating his novel about gambling,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 8: which he had to write in one month or he'd
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 8: lose all his rights so he could pay off his
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 8: gambling desks. It's all, it's all really convoluted, but at
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 8: the end of the day, she's the one who actually
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 8: helped him understand the meaning of his life, because that's
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 8: what love does.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: Are all addictions like art there, whether it's drinking, drugs, porn, gambling,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: gambling ubiquitous. Now. I don't gamble online. I don't like
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: to see anyone doing it because it's just endorphins flooding
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: your brain during a game that should be fun on
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: its own. Marriage. I worry about people being bankrupt in
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: five years. Do you think that's kind?
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 8: Well, for sure, Oh yeah, for sure. It's a huge
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 8: problem and it's going to wind up getting regulated, and
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 8: it's going to be a big crisis. And by the way,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 8: there's huge cod morbidities between different kinds of addictions. So
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 8: I had this new paper that I just read. Actually
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 8: I'm going to be writing about it my callum in
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 8: the Free Press soon that shows that online gambling is
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 8: very positively correlated with binge drinking. Why because the answer
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 8: to your earlier question is that there are similarities between
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 8: all addictions, and they use the neurotransmittered neuromodulator dopamine, which
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 8: gives you the anticipation of reward, and that's that's what
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 8: you want. It's what your brain uses to make you
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 8: learn and like and want things, and that's what leads
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 8: to craving. In every case. It's so that you would
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 8: learn how to do new stuff and be rewarded for it.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 8: The trouble is that we misuse it by souping it
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 8: up with pornography and heroin and now of course the Internet.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: Now the solution is borrowed from Emerson. I haven't read
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: anything from Emerson for a long long time. Let us
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: hear a whistle from the Spartan life. Gosh, that's a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: wonderful phrase. What's it mean? Oh?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 8: I know, Oh, so it basically means be your own man,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 8: be your own woman, think for yourself, fight back. You know.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 8: One of the things is because I have a whole
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 8: chapter on how to get free of technological addiction. This
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 8: is a very specific detox chapter based on the most
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 8: cutting edge neuroscience on how to do it. You don't
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 8: have to throw your phone away. You just have to
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 8: basically relegate your phone to the right periods of the
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 8: day and not use it for three periods when you
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 8: wake up, during during meals, and an hour before you
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 8: go to sleep, and your phone life will change and
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 8: your life will change, is what it comes down to.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 8: But first to do that, like with any of the addiction,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 8: you got to get mad. The one thing is that
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 8: when people stop drinking alcohol abusively, the first thing is
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 8: that they get furious. They say, this is ruining my
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 8: life and I'm not going to put up with it.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 8: As they say, and what was it broadcast news, I'm
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 8: mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 8: is what people actually say. That's basically all of Ralph
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 8: Waldo Emerson, the great American philosopher's view on how to
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 8: deal with all the stuff that's screwing you up in life,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 8: all the fads and panics that we see around us.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: Now, the first step you say is rebelling, that taking
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: the action rebelling. It's the culture that's harming you, and
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: on social media, which leads to anxiety, attention seeking, an
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: addiction to it. How do you rebel against social media
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: not participate in it?
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 8: Yeah, well, part of it is that you have to say,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 8: I will not be managed by this. My emotions will
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 8: not be managed by this. So therefore I'm only going
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 8: to use it as a tool. This is going to
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 8: serve me. I am not going to serve is here
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 8: the thing supposed to be a tool your smartphone. It's
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 8: supposed to be a tool for you. You're not supposed to
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 8: be a tool of your smartphone and the company that
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 8: makes your smartphone and the applications on your smartphone. So
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 8: the way to fight back is to basically say you
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 8: can't use me anymore. I'm using you. It's what it
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 8: comes down to, and basically laughing at it.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: I hope we can get the people who are under
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: fifteen to listen to you, because I do worry chronically
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: that they're all on chromebooks at school. And the schools
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: are pushing it. I mean, right back with Arthur Brooks.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: The brand new book is the Meaning of your Life.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: Go get it for your graduate, Go get it for
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: your kids. Read it with them, Actually have a book
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: study at home. Just read it with them. It will
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: make a great discussion and they'll begin to understand why
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: you're so down on their technologies. Stay tuned, Welcome back
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: to America. I'm Hugh Hewett. I promise you some Rassini
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: and there it is the Meaning of your Life by
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Arthur C. Brooks is out there right now, Arthur. As
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: with most of your books, from Strength to Strength, the
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: one you wret with Oprah, you end up with God.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: But this way you go around a different way to
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: get there. And I'm fascinated by your father, the mathematician
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: saying God built randomness into the universe. When did you
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: ever talk to your father about that?
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 8: Well, my dad and I Well, I love my dad
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 8: and my dad was a real intellectual hero to me
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 8: as well as being a wonderful dad. He died early.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 8: I mean he died at sixty six too early. As
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 8: a matter of fact, he was a biostatistician. His PhD
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 8: was in statistics, and so he believed in randomness. He
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 8: believed in, you know, the idea that there were events
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 8: that happened that God made randomness. And I asked at
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 8: one time, so what are miracles? And he said, what
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 8: statisticians called long tail events. There's just really really improbable things.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 8: I mean, actually, that's how he thought, and he marveled
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 8: at it and he loved it. But this is the
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 8: thing that I learned from my dad, is that there's
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 8: no conflict between faith and reason. People ask me this
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 8: a lot because I'm a science now, I'm a I'm
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 8: a behavioral scientist.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 8: I do a lot of work in neuroscience too, as
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 8: a matter of fact these days, and people say, well,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 8: how do you square that with your Christian faith, which,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 8: by the way, is the most important thing in my
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 8: life with no exceptions. And I say, it's basically like this,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 8: because this is what my father told me. Here's what
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 8: my dad told me. And this is the thing for
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 8: all of our listeners when somebody asked them, this is
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 8: the argument. If you were an expert in Picasso, you
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 8: need to know two things. You need to know a
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 8: lot about his paintings, and you need to know a
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 8: lot about the man, but you can't find evidence of
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 8: the man in the paintings. You have to learn about
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 8: those two things in different ways, and they compliment each other.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 8: And if you only know one, you're not a good
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 8: Picasso expert. That's how I feel about about science and
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 8: the world. The more I study science, the more I
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 8: want to learn about God. The more I learn about God,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 8: the more I want to understand science.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: I always read the acknowledgments. And you have a director
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: of research, Bryce Flimilar, so I know that the mind. Yeah,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: they're they're bringing you this stuff to read to work
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: on some question. I'm going to throw out three things
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: I wrote down. We only have five minutes or eight
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: minutes to left. We're going a love depression, not a
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: sex recession. Porn is the acts to the ladder of love.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: Learn from your suffering. Avoid the dark triad. We should
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: probably talk about the dark triad and then explore a
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: faith tradition. And I want you to tell people how
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: to do that. First, tell people about dark triad. Fourteen
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: percent a lot.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, so dark triads. I talk about this in
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 8: the book. This is one of the biggest threats to
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 8: romantic love. Romantic love is one of the single best
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 8: ways to find the meaning of your life because you
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 8: have to give your heart away and you can never
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 8: answer the questions. They are incredibly complex, and this will
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 8: open up the right side of your brain. You're romantically
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 8: in love in the right side of your brain. The
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 8: biggest threat to that is that there are predators about.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 8: The predators in romantic markets and on dating apps are
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 8: called dark triads. These are people who are high and
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 8: three characteristics Narcissism which means it's all about me, machiavellianism,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 8: which is I'm willing to hurt you to feed my goals,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 8: and psychopathy psychopathic traits which means I have no regret
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 8: and no remorse. Ve percent of the population bears those characteristics.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 8: This is like everybody's first husband, every woman's first husband, right.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 8: I mean, as these are guys who are their users,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 8: they act like they would love, they actually aren't. Their
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 8: commitment deceivers is what we find. And I could spend
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 8: the whole semester in my class at Harvard just talking
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 8: about this, and my students are rapped with attention.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: You sound like you're the counselor at HBS. Arthur you're off,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: they're crazy because they're not crazy, they're wonderful. Because you
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: know they they'll say, you know, I get the same
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: questions over and over again.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 8: You they want to know the meaning of their lives.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 8: And so I say, okay, here's how we do it.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 8: So I'll actually give our audience the exercise to think
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 8: about finding the meeting for life right now. Number one
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 8: is the number one thing to do.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: Is this.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 8: Imagine yourself in five years and your happiness is twenty
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 8: five percent higher than it is now because of three
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 8: changes in your life. Tell me what those three changes
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 8: are in order. In every single case, they give me
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 8: the same answer for number one, which is marriage and kids, marriage, kids,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 8: marriage and kids. That's what it is. Why, because those
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 8: institutions are the meaning of life. Number two almost always
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 8: is either other relationships or finding their faith. That's what
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 8: it comes down to. Why because those are things that
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 8: you use to find your meaning in life as well.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 8: That's what they want, and they already know the solution.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 8: But all they're paying attention to is their careers because
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 8: that's what the university tells them that they can actually ninage.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: Its Friendship shows up on page one of four Aristotle's
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: three forms of friendship, the virtuous friendship being the most
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: important one. You suggest making a list of the ten
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: people in your life who are most important to you.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: What do you do with the list?
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 8: Yeah? Put rs and d's after their name, which does
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 8: not mean Republican and democrat, it means real and deal.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 8: Is this a real friend or a deal friend? And
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 8: on and on it goes. And if you find this
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 8: all deal friends useful people in your life, you got
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 8: to start doing more work because you need more real friends.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 8: Real friends are the true source of meaning.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: All right, last question. You are not trying to convert anyone,
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: but do you want readers like it's eas sir? Do
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: you want to have a mass one? Do you want
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: to seek some sort of church and commit intellectually to
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: figuring it out because it matters?
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it does matter. And this transcendent journey of cosmic truth,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 8: this is ultimately what we're trying to find the most.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 8: You know, I, as a committed Catholic, as a Christian man,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 8: believe that the crossing Gospel of Jesus Christ or the
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 8: path that God had for me. And I'm humble enough
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 8: to say that I realized that other people have other paths.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 8: I recommend my path that everybody I possibly can, just
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 8: like Bishop Baron does to be sure. It's a wonderful path.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 8: And I have a whole protocol in this book about
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 8: how to find your faith if you've fallen away, how
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 8: to explore it if you never had one. And it
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 8: doesn't start with exploring your feelings, because feelings are liars.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 8: It's about it's about understanding something through study and observation
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 8: and then ultimately practice all before believing anything. As a
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 8: matter of fact that I talk about the science of
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 8: how to find your own faith and it actually works.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: There can bad people change.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 8: Bad people can change. Now, there's generally speaking two circumstances
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 8: in which bad people change. Number one is when they're
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 8: in recovery from an addiction. Number two is when they
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 8: have a religious conversion. Those are the wholesale kinds of
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 8: behavior and even character change that people actually have. But
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 8: the truth of the matter is that anybody who wants
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 8: to change with metaphysical power, with the power of the divine,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 8: can be the person that they want to be. Absolutely can.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: The dark triad people change.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 8: That's harder because they don't want to see. This is
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 8: the thing. If you want to change, you can. The
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 8: trouble with dark triads is they tend to be psychopathic,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 8: which means they feel no remorse or empathy, which means
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 8: that they don't want to change their ways. That's the barrier.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: We don't have enough time, but I want people to
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: know that in this book you will find the advice
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: make leisure. You're calling that ought to be enough to
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: go and get the meaning of your life, because leisure
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: is a wonderful thing. Arthur, great to see you, Happy
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: to you and your family, to your marine and everyone
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: in it. The Meaning of Your Life is available at
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: Amazon dot com. I look forward to seeing you soon.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: Arthur Brooks. Be well.