What if the deepest problems in American life were pre-political? It's often said that "culture is upstream from politics"—meaning that what we see in political news, speeches, ads, debates, and elections is symptomatic of a deeper cause. The conflicts, troubles, injustices, and sufferings that many people experience as political are more likely rooted in moral and spiritual crises. 

This week's episode marks ten years of Conversing, which launched on October 8, 2016. To celebrate, Mark Labberton is joined by David Brooks, a staff writer at The Atlantic and presidential fellow at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He is also the host of a brand-new podcast, The Permanent Questions.

In this episode, Mark and David wrestle with what asking questions actually does to a person and discuss the styles of great interviewers, why schools seem to train curiosity out of children, the human urge to control, how AI hollows us out and dehumanizes the people around us, and what moral formation looks like in a classroom—and a podcast.

Episode Highlights

  • "I felt over that time that the problems in our life were pre-political. They were in our culture. They're in our spiritual core."

  • "I've asked millions of people millions of questions. How many times has anybody ever said, 'None of your damn business'? And the answer is zero. No one has ever said that to me."

  • "My style has always been student. Teach me … I just treat people as teachers who can tell me something I don't know … People like to be treated as sages, it turns out, including me."

  • "One of the dumbest pieces of advice we give to people is to come up with your own values. Come up with your own philosophy of life. Unless your name is Aristotle, you probably can't do that."

  • "If there were settled answers to these biggest questions, we could just read one book and it would be over."

  • On AI: "For those who like to think, we will use it to think more. … The rest of us will use it to think less."

  • "The problem is that as we think more highly of AI, we think less highly of humans."

  • "Morality is about love."

 

About David Brooks

 

David Brooks is a writer at The Atlantic, a presidential fellow at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs, and the host of the weekly video podcast The Permanent Questions. He spent twenty-two years as a columnist at The New York Times and has long been a commentator on PBS NewsHour. His books include The Road to Character, The Second Mountain, and How to Know a Person. His first real job in journalism was as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago.

 

Helpful Links and Resources

 

  • The Permanent Questions podcast: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/the-permanent-questions

  • David Brooks at The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-brooks

  • How to Know a Person, David Brooks's 2023 book, Penguin Random House: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/652822/how-to-know-a-person-by-david-brooks

  • Comment magazine's fall 2026 issue on control, built around Hartmut Rosa's thought: https://comment.org/product/the-paradoxes-of-control-44-3-fall-2026

  • Hartmut Rosa's The Uncontrollability of the World, reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/control-everything-on-hartmut-rosas-the-uncontrollability-of-the-world

 

Show Notes

  • Ten years of Conversing and thanks to those behind it

  • A new podcast: The Permanent Questions

  • Hosting is harder than expected; twenty-five pages of notes

  • Meghan Sullivan's "God and the Good Life" course at Notre Dame

  • Confessional writing assignment that moved bereaved families

  • Leaving the Times; problems that are pre-political, rooted in culture and the spiritual core

  • The Great Conversation

  • Belonging versus autonomy, spirit versus mind, equality versus achievement

  • Police reporting in Chicago, asking questions on the worst day

  • Questions as generosity and an act of seeing

  • Genesis: the two opening questions, self-examination and communion

  • Interviewing styles: transaction, seduction, charm, and the student

  • Why permanent questions stay unsettled: souls, moderation versus speed

  • The garden of Eden: Eve, the tree, and the limits of curiosity

  • Who defines urgency, and which question is most urgent now

  • Resonance, control, and the fading of love in American life

  • Declining marriage, fertility, observance, and patriotism

  • Questions per hour: toddlers, first graders, fifth graders

  • The scale story: experimenting versus covering content

  • Frankenstein versus Faust: Will AI kill us or hollow us out?

  • Skills lost: writing, radiology, navigating Anaheim freeways

  • Anthropomorphizing bots and devaluing human workers

  • Moral reasoning among AI agents: pure consequentialism, no love

  • Moral gestures versus real change: reading scores in Mississippi and California

  • Two civil rights movements: one with no concept of sin, one prophetic

  • Nonviolence as a strategy for justice

  • Moral formation in the classroom: exemplars, traditions, and the teacher herself

  • Regret and risk, and what hospice workers hear when people are at the end of their lives

  • Why young people are the heroes of the story

#ConversingPodcast #DavidBrooks #ThePermanentQuestions #Curiosity #AI #Humanity #Resonance #MoralFormation #FaithAndCulture #GreatConversation #Humanities

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