David Brooks Has a New Podcast

Insufferable columnist David Brooks, who swapped his first wife for his much younger research assistant, has a new podcast “The Permanent Questions.” On morality. Because irony is dead.

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I know you’re all waiting for the next exciting David Brooks status alert. How has our favorite scourge of single mothers been enjoying life since leaving the New York Times? Has he tired of lecturing young Yale students on how to fall in love? Or shown up again in the Epstein files? Whatever shall he do next?

The answer: That most predictable of things — a podcast.

Yes, David Brooks has a new podcast — “The Permanent Questions.” The pitch:

What makes us human? How can I find purpose in life? How can my relationship survive a rough patch? What do I say to a friend who’s suffering? Does any of this mean anything at all? 

David Brooks found purpose with his much younger research assistant now wife. I’m sure he can tell us many things about what it is to be a wandering dick human on the path to Higher Purpose.

It’s easy to lose sight of fundamental human concerns amid the churn of the news cycle and the demands of every day. Each week on The Permanent Questions, host David Brooks seeks to return them to our attention through thoughtful conversation with the world’s deepest thinkers.

Yes, David is sitting at the table with the World’s Deepest Thinkers. They talk about virtue, happiness, meaning, education, and whether chucking the mother of your children for your much younger research assistant is the foundation of good character.

Ooh! I have a question, David!

When you consider the 23-year age gap between you and Anne Snyder do you pray she doesn’t trade you in for a younger moral philosopher? Someone whose, um, character still, um, lifts?

Stay young and relevant with a podcast. Lecture the world on riding out “rough patches.” I’m sure she’ll take the hint.

The Guardian newspaper asked this pompous windbag about his podcast, because I guess Nigel Farage wasn’t available to talk about his hair care regimen.

I’ve thought this for a long time that there’s a weird market failure in media – that we have a ton of podcasts about politics, tech, business, health, sports, but not enough about the big humanistic questions that get covered in a liberal arts education.

David Brooks would like you to know that he had a liberal arts education. People born in 1961 could get a job with those, back in the day.

And I think that’s part of a wider dehumanization of our culture that all the things that sort of ennoble the human spirit, we are doing less of it, like reading, religious services, conversation, friendship, that sort of stuff.

Or boinking your much younger research assistant while writing a book on Moral Character. #ennobling

I wanted to do it mostly because, personally, I had great teachers in college and they really changed my life, and I wanted to have that kind of conversation again. I thought it’d be fun. Other people would want to have these kinds of conversations. So that was a selfish reason. But then socially, I just think at a time of great technological advance, doing something very humanistic, having conversations like the one we just taped, which was: “Do humans have souls?” I think they do, and the guy I interviewed thinks they don’t, so we just had an argument. But I needed this, and I think the culture needs to ask the big questions again.

Only David Brooks can ask the Big Questions!

Out of 4.7 million podcasts worldwide, only David Brooks is having important, humanistic conversations! NPR, the BBC, legacy media they just want to discuss Kim Kardashian’s spray tan. Meanwhile the World’s Greatest Thinkers remain tragically sidelined. Wallflowers at the Great Banquet of Ideas. Won’t someone please, please invite them on a podcast? I think David Brooks should create a podcast just for them. For all the liberal arts majors born before 1961.

I’ve long believed that American culture as a whole is overpoliticized and undermoralized, which is to say that we follow every little political scandal, whether we’re going to remember it in two days or not. And so the big questions of life, like: how do you sit with someone who’s just lost a child or a spouse? … somehow those are weirdly underaddressed.

Yes, David how do you sit with someone who just lost a spouse? Oh, I know! You write a staggeringly self-congratulatory essay in the New York Times telling your first wife — who changed her name and religion for you — only to be dumped for a much younger researcher assistant, not to “cleave” to your awesomeness.

Remember when you wrote:

The paradox is that the person doing the leaving controls the situation, but greater heroism is demanded of the one being left behind. The person left in the vapor trail is hurt and probably craves contact. It’s amazing how much pain there is when what was once intimate conversation turns into unnaturally casual banter, emotional distance or just a void.

She just lost her spouse. And you told to be a hero. To suck up your vapor trail. And shamed her grief in the newspaper of record.

My permanent question: Who gave you a platform on morality?