Monthly Archives: March 2022

More accurate, more robust, smaller, thinner...these are goals that have motivated watchmakers for centuries. Now, however, the watch world has just seen a milestone in the latter: the newly announced Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra, which is barely thicker than a U.S. quarter and the thinnest mechanical watch in the world.

Sorry about your still highly impressive 2mm-thick Altiplano, Piaget, but Bulgari has snatched the mantle with a mechanical watch measuring a fraction of a millimeter thinner; the new one is just 1.8mm thick. A difference of 0.2mm might not sound significant, but cramming all 170 of the movement's intricate little parts into that space is no mean feat; in fact, it involves eight patented solutions.

Like the Piaget Altiplano, part of how Bulgari achieved this extreme svelteness was by combining elements of the case and dial into the movement itself. For example, the movement's mainplate (its foundational structure) doubles as the caseback. Materials like titanium for the 40mm-wide case and and tungsten carbide for the caseback/mainplate were used to maintain overall rigidity because at this level of thinness you have to worry about things like the watch itself bending or breaking. The crown has been replaced with two horizontal knobs (one for winding and one for setting the time), and even the bracelet and its clasp required new engineering solutions to match the case.

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Bulgari's Octo collection turns 10 years old in 2022, and it's long been the brand's technical playground in its competition for thinness and world records. The Finissimo Ultra is its eighth record, following very specific achievements like the "thinnest automatic watch with monopusher chronograph and tourbillon." Of course, the "thinnest mechanical watch" overall (without all those qualifiers) is the grail of Bulgari and the other brands with a horse in this race.

The Finissimo Ultra is notable for its thinness, but also for highlighting ten years of the Octo collection which has become the brand's flagship. It derives from the pen of Gerald Genta, the designer of watches like the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak (which is turning 50 this year) and the Patek Philippe Nautilus, which are very much in the zeitgeist right now. Sharing some common design traits with those watches, Bulgari's announcement is timely in a few ways.

Aside from its nearly two-dimensional appearance, a striking visual element of the Octo Finissimo Ultra is the QR code laser-engraved on the movement's ratchet wheel. Each watch also comes with (sigh) an NFT that helps authenticate it, as well as offers "exclusive access to a dedicated digital universe."

It's hard to imagine watches getting any thinner than this, and if they do it'll be by minuscule increments. But technical challenges such as this are where innovation still feels most relevant in the watch industry. While it might be hard to get your hands on one of the only 10 examples of the Octo Finissimo Ultra being produced and costing ~$440,000 each, the solutions used here may ultimately trickle down to thin watches that might be more affordable.

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Bulgari Releases the Thinnest Mechanical Watch in the World - Gear Patrol

More than four years after his abrupt resignation amid a sexual harassment scandal, former Amazon Studios chief Roy Price publicly remarked on the damning expose that forced his ouster.

As Price sees it, his exile has more to do with timing than anything else.

Speaking to Bloomberg for a podcast detailing the rise of Amazon Studios and the broader Amazon Prime Video empire, Price seemed to indicate that the gravity of his career crisis was influenced by its proximity to the zeitgeist-shifting Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Writer Kim Masters' expose on Price's ill-fated 2015 interaction with producer Isa Hackett was published on October 12, 2017, the same week that the New York Times and New Yorker published separate stories that not only destroyed the career of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and led to his criminal prosecution and imprisonment, but also spawned the global #MeToo movement.

Amazon's investigation of the 2015 Price-Hackett event, which was reported immediately to Amazon higher-ups by Hackett and originally detailed in an August 2017 report in The Information, came to an indefinite conclusion. However, Price said the timing of Masters' THR report -- which came out two months later, right as the Weinstein reports hit -- was too much for the seminal Amazon video executive to overcome.

"That was not a good week to have a bad article," said Price, 55, who has not worked since leaving Amazon.

Certainly for Price, timing couldn't have been everything.

Hackett, the married executive producer of Amazon original series Man in a High Castle, claimed Price made unwanted and lewd overtures to her in an Uber ride to a 2015 pilot screening event at ComicCon in San Diego.

Commenting publicly for one of the few times since his departure, Price doesn't dispute the interaction occurred, but claims he wasn't coming onto the producer, merely engaging in a self-deprecating joke that was misunderstood.

"It was obviously unfortunate and unintended," Price told Bloomberg, conceding there was "banter in the Uber" amid the "very short" 1 a.m. ride that also included another Amazon employee.

"I deeply apologize if the banter was overboard," Price added. "Everyone has the right to define their own line of humor..."

The son of FrankPrice, who served as chairman of Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures, the Hackett event wasn't the only socially awkward, sexually charged moment tied to Price during his 13-year tenure as Amazon's first video exec.

Price hasn't given many interviews since his departure. But in November 2020, he told the Los Angeles Times that he wasn't looking to "elicit sympathy," but he doesn't think his #MeToo transgressions rise to the level of Weinstein, comedian Louis C.K. and former Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly.

I just didnt believe that, like, a false, vicious, totally contrary-to-fact narrative like that could be articulated, that it could actually be accepted and impact your reputation and all of your friends and family, Price told the L.A. Times. It just seemed like such a bizarre set of circumstances out of some Russian novel.

The L.A. Times also spoke to unnamed Amazon co-workers who said the "punishment didn't fit the crime," and who also implied that Price's firing was influenced by "internal and external pressures" occurring at Amazon in 2017.

Masters' report detailed broader cultural issues under Price. And there was plenty fo circumstantial smoke tied to his Amazon exit. Not only did Amazon Studios under the former top executive's watch sign a multiyear deal with another noted #MeToo transgressor, Woody Allen, two of the biggest stars for two of Amazon Studios' seminal hits, Casey Affleck (Oscar contender Manchester By the Sea) and Jeffrey Tambor (original series Transparent), ended up under on-set sexual harassment scrutiny, as well.

However, as Bloomberg noted, at the time of Price's ouster, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos -- enthralled and absorbed by the Hollywood industry he'd originally sought to disrupt and unseat -- was putting Price under pressure, seeking to broaden the reach of Amazon Studios beyond niche, artist-driven shows like Transparent into globally impactful hits.

"Over time, your audience gets bigger as your service grows around the world. And you really need some tentpole shows," Price told Bloomberg. "So you've got to have, whatever it is, your Game of Thrones."

Bezos even told Price at a meeting, "Bring me my Game of Thrones."

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Former Amazon Studios Chief Roy Price on His Downfall: 'That Was Not a Good Week to Have a Bad Article' - Next TV

Informing the viewer about a previously unreported incident or inspiring them to make a real-life change, the documentary medium is one of the most noble genres of filmmaking, often striving to better the world we see around us.

From classics of the genre such as The Thin Blue Line, Titicut Follies and Grey Gardens to modern greats like Flee, Summer of Soul and Free Solo, the hunger for quality documentary features have never ceased, with viewers constantly interested in films that may challenge their perception of the world around them. Whilst many documentaries come, inform and then leave, others will force genuine personal change.

Nearly every modern documentary will describe itself as life-changing or a genuine must-watch, so weve sifted through such popular claims to bring you ten films that hold the power to genuinely change your life. Including the films of Werner Herzog, Asif Kapadia and Michael Apted, as well as modern Netflix specials, lets delve into ten original stories and unique life lessons.

This influential documentary from Jennie Livingston tells the story of the New York drag scene during the 1980s, focusing on the eccentric individuals who brought life and vitality to a movement that would impact the world. Shedding light on the complexities of the scene and those who make it such a wild success, Livingstons film is essential viewing for anyone interested in how the modern zeitgeist was moulded by the 80s scene.

Also touching on issues of racism, poverty and homophobia, Paris is Burning explores the necessity of inclusion whilst celebrating a scene that thrives on its sheer vigour and zest.

Asif Kapadias documentary about the great Amy Winehouse is a modern tragedy highlighting the shortcomings of modern media companies that force young talent to destruction. Lovingly told, the film explores the background of the singer, charting her childhood, her meteoric rise to stardom and her tragic fall from grace, passing away on July 23rd, 2011.

Encouraging the viewer to consider their own place in the media firestorm aimed at celebrities that is so often heightened by everyday people on social media, Amy is a crucial modern classic.

The role of advertising and fake news is so rife in modern society that its genuinely difficult to discern when we are being marketed to at all. Filip Remunda and Vt Klusk realised this way back at the start of the new century with their film Czech Dream which studied the role of advertising in persuading the masses to follow a fabricated truth, no matter what they read about the matter was real or not.

Watching this often hilarious Czech documentary will, no doubt, make you pause for thought before you fall victim to an advertising ploy, or indeed are lied to by key political figures.

Known as one of the greatest documentary filmmakers of all time, Werner Herzog has long deconstructed the role of man in the existential modern world. Following a man who spends his annual summer living with grizzly bears on an Alaskan reserve, Herzog examines the indelible connection humans have with animals, asking if it is indeed insane or indeed strangely noble to spend so much time with them.

Quiet and reflective, Grizzly Man invites internal discussion as to ones own peace with the wilderness, viewing nature in an entirely different way thanks to Herzogs unique touch.

Many food-related documentaries have tried to change attitudes to human consumption across the years, with Food, Inc. and Super Size Me both presenting compelling, now outdated, arguments for change. One message that has never faltered, however, is that of Shaun Monsons Earthlings, a film that is responsible for turning hundreds of people across the world into animal rights advocates.

Presenting the disturbing reality for so many mistreated animals across the world, Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix will genuinely change the way you look at animals.

War documentaries can too often get bogged down with explosive visuals and dramatic real-life moments, though its the small, intimate journey of Waad Al-Kateab in the disorientation of war that truly prompts serious thought. Directed by the subject of the film as well as Edward Watts, the story details the female experience of war, focusing on a couple raising a child in the chaos of the Syrian Civil War.

Swirling an emotional whirlwind, Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts create a truly compelling film that details the story of wars most forgotten victims, the women, children and everyday citizens of a town under siege.

A vast exploration of race relations in the USA, I Am Not Your Negro is based on an unfinished project by writer and activist James Baldwin named Remember This House. Detailing the lives of three revolutionary public figures, and close friends of Baldwin including Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, Pecks film is a galvanising, bold project.

Whilst offering a comprehensive insight into the efforts of multiple civil rights pioneers, Peck also explains just how far society is yet to go to reach true equality, shedding light on the racism of Hollywood among other institutions.

There is simply no better document that explores the horror of the holocaust than Claude Lanzmanns incredible, explorative documentary Shoah which is sure to alter your perspective on one of the greatest tragedies of human history. Clocking in at over nine hours, Lanzmanns film presents interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators during visits to multiple German extermination camps across Poland.

Brutal and hard-hitting, Shoah is one of the toughest documentaries to get through, though once you have, your perspective on the mid-20th century tragedy will be forever changed.

English filmmaker Adam Curtis has made a name for himself as a documentarian who is able to access the very heart of the contemporary zeitgeist, breaking down the internal structures that govern the modern world with staggering intricacy. HyperNormalisation, one of his many modern efforts, tells the story of how fake news and oversimplification has formed a strange world of artificial thought.

A near three-hour exercise for the brain, there is no doubt that Adam Curtis film will change your view on modern life, allowing you to see through the lies of modern consumerism and see the western world in an entirely new light.

Described by the American film critic Roger Ebert as an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium, the Up series, largely directed by Michael Apted, tracks the lives of 14 young boys and girls from various backgrounds, revisiting them every seven years to track their progress. Starting in 1964, the series has produced nine episodes, with each one providing a fascinating insight into how the 14 subjects have changed and adapted with every significant stage of their life.

Life-affirming, melancholy and utterly enveloped with the positive human spirit, the Up series will change the way you recall your own childhood and will adapt the way in which you perceive those around you. As Ebert states, it is indeed a noble, cinematic classic.

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The top 10 documentaries that can genuinely change your life - Far Out Magazine

Norco is a many-headed creaturea narrative hydra of place, personhood, nostalgia, and spirituality. But to start with the basics, it's a real Louisiana town named for the New Orleans Refining Company, a monumental piece of psychogeographical storytelling, and in March 2022, I'm ready to call it my game of the year.

Impossibly careful, subtle dithering imbues each scene with warmth and life

The tiny dev collective Geography of Robots has called Norco's style "petroleum blues," a nod to the area's relationship with the oil corporation that has defined both the town and the environmental decline that colors its existence. The game pointedly avoids the disaster porn and fetishization that tend to dominate media portrayals of the Deep South, and while a big part of Norco revolves around grief and trauma, it's also full of rousing punk momentum channeled from the DIY music scene. The result is nothing short of incredible.

Norco is a bristling pastiche of Louisianan references, pop culture, and satirical moments distilled into a point-and-click pixel art adventure. The townscape and Greater New Orleans area take the form of distant highways, refinery stacks, and familiar snapshots of suburbia; impossibly careful, subtle dithering imbues each scene with warmth and life. Norco isn't just for Louisianans, though residents will get a kick out of seeing real locations like Kenner's Esplanade Mallclosed due to Hurricane Ida and now being repurposed for political eventsrebirthed as the Promenade Mall.

Despite its hyperlocality, Norco has a universal reach that touches on widespread issues like the gig economy and automation. For starters, the non-descript bar Saint Somewhere is an instantly recognizable fixture of gentrifying neighborhoods across the US.

On the surface, its story is simpleKay is returning home after roaming around post-apocalyptic America doing piecemeal jobs, hitching rides, and fighting in fragmented militias. Her mother Catherine has died of cancer, which means reconnecting with her fragile younger brother. The player alternates between Kay and Catherine to uncover something strange and sinister in their hometown, culminating in a fascinating exploration of faith and identity. But while Norco is most obviously about external destruction and decaythe oil corporation's environmental harm is critical to the story but overwhelmingly dominated its media coverageit's also about so, so much more.

If Norco's aesthetic is "petroleum blues," then its existential milieu can only be described as "bummer vibes."

Creator Yuts, who was born and raised in Norco, began working on the beginnings of the project in 2015 as a series called Bummera handful of short films and an experimental sidescroller starring Norco's robot Million, with original music by Norco collaborators Gewgawly I and Andy Gibbs from sludge metal band Thou. "The game was going to be Bummer 4 where it was just going to be like a short little vignette," says Yuts. "So yeah, bummer vibes is the word."

Today Norco has become a small but mighty sensation in the indie game world, winning the first ever Games Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021. Geography of Robots isn't just Yuts anymore, eitherit includes musician Gewgawly I, artist Jesse Jacobi, sound designer fmAura, and coder/designer Aaron Gray; orbiting this core are other collaborators like Yuts' sister, who's helping to produce the artbook.

Jacobi, who comes from a traditional painting background, took to pixel art so fast that Yuts redrew and replaced all of Norco's older art last December to maintain a cohesive aesthetic.

Gray brought some of his gaming favorites to the table, namely Undertale's use of humor and pacing. "The way they use combat more as a narrative device than as a skill-test is a philosophy we've stuck to for various parts of the game," he says. Yuts wrote an exchange between two characters about their favorite game "Fantasy Horse 6" after being inspired by Gray's love of Kingdom Hearts (as well as weird 2.5D platformer Tomba! 2).

"I used to boot up Kingdom Hearts when I was a youngun and just pretend to coexist in those spaces with these fun characters," says Gray. "I feel like Norco has a similar vibe."

Norco's characters are lively and beautifully written, but infused with a pervasive sadness that brings us back to bummer, which sits in my head like a mantra throughout the game. It's not as bleak as "depression," but a very nuanced form of disappointment with a hint of playfulness. The word comes from the old German word "bummler," which means "loafer." In a modern American context it took on more antisocial connotations, and can be used interchangeably as a noun and a verb. It's also a great way to understand the Garrettsa cult of teen malcontents who form the backbone of the story.

I think people are exhausted by the alienation and the dematerialization of the internet

Norco comes from the same DNA that you'll find in DIY music scenes and punk collectivesa formative part of Yuts' youth and several others in the collective. "The informal nature of DIY punk as well as almost a proto-internet of zine exchanges and informal and esoteric knowledge in those spaces was something that carried over into the game," Yuts says, explaining where he first shared his art. Punk subcultures are directly referenced in the game world, like a book called Crisis LARPing that chronicles the early days of disaster tourism before "collapse became the zeitgeist."

There's nothing that delves more into this rich ecology of subcultures than the game's introduction of the Garrettsblue-shirted boys who answer to a sociopathic pseudo-religious leader named Kenner John. Their home base is the abandoned Promenade Mall, where they wander its hallways reading, playing video games, doomscrolling, and bickering among themselves. The Garretts are working on something importantsomething that John has promised themwhile the rest of the town (particularly the patrons at Saint Somewhere) derides them as "mall Nazis."

"There's the whole rift between the Garretts and what they call 'the scum,' which are basically crustpunks and DIY punks, who they don't like," Yuts explains. "The insular, often small-minded nature of those scenes is worth analyzing and critiquing [and] is incorporated into the game, but it also in certain oblique ways tries to touch on the value of those kinds of scenes as we become more atomized. That there are these new emergent forms of community to be built."

The Garretts mostly come into play in Act 2, which Yuts describes as the most collaboratively-constructed part of Norco. Gray designed a Voice Memo mechanic and the team iterated on that idea to create a clever exploration of quarreling social identities and performativity. It's also got some of the funniest moments in the game. While a few Garretts are goofy caricatures of some of the dev team, there's a little bit of Yuts in all of them. "It's all of these infantile 4chan-esque tendencies that we keep buried in our personalities," he says. "This was a way of exorcizing those things."

Some of these emergent Garrett-like communities coalesce around faitha huge social and cultural pillar for folks in the South. And while Kay goes through a very personal spiritual, quasi-religious journey, Yuts deliberately avoids offering the player any crumbs of objective truth. But he did still weave pieces of his Catholic upbringing into his work. "If you try to over-secularize your life and your community, and you lose the rootedness, and the kind of folkways that religion offers," he says, "then when you return to it, you lose a lot of its material application, and it becomes what you see with the Garretts just this bizarre perversion of what it should be."

For all their impotence, the Garretts are in many ways the true protagonists of the game. Yuts didn't want to make a didactic narrative around these desperate, problematic little bummers. "I wanted them to be more or less identifiable sympathetic characters," he says. "I tried to avoid any kind of binary thinking when it comes to that stuff. The Garretts' place in the larger world is most evident towards the end of the game when a bunch of hipster partygoersgathered to watch a Garrett-created spectacle of epic proportionsreflect on what the Garretts have managed to accomplish.

"These punks are like, 'we've just been drinking and hanging out doing the same shit,'" says Yuts. "And so in a way it's like, respect for these kids. Maybe we're more confused than they are."

Perhaps the most significant impact of Norco as a game (and a piece of interactive art) is its place in a small but vital group of hyperlocal narrative-driven point-and-click gamesyes, Kentucky Route Zero includedthat focus on the material world: class and social and economic issues that define distinct regions and industries across the US. This started to feel like a trend with Night in the Woods, which came out in 2017, and reached peak hype around 2020 with the final acts of Kentucky Route Zero.

Kentucky Route Zero is doubtless a landmark game, but it's also been an exhausting point of reference for Norco: the default framing being that Norco is the next KR0. It's easy marketing for a game with so much to say, and it feels like games critics and fans haven't yet cultivated better ways to talk about this sub-genre. Yuts played the first part of the first chapter of KR0 and stopped, partially because he didn't want to deal with the anxiety of influence. "I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison to make," he says. "But I do see Norco as very different mechanically, thematically, and everything else."

If there wasn't a distinct movement around hyperlocal material games, back when KR0 ended, there should be one now with Norco. "I think people are exhausted by the alienation and the dematerialization of the internet, and I think there is kind of a new emergent regionalism as well as a new kind of emergent sincerity that I can kind of see in my filter bubble," says Yuts. If collapse already became the zeitgeist years ago, perhaps this emergent sincerity is simply the result of younger generations' increasing desperation and frustration with climate change, widening class divides, and virulent technocapitalism. It's not romantic to be cynical and disaffected when we still have the power to do something about it, at the very least, in our own backyards.

However we come to talk about games like Norco, I don't think they need a quirky catch-all "-punk" label. "It's like advertising, to construct some kind of identity that stands against [something] kind of just makes you seem like you're even more psyop'd than everyone else," says Yuts wryly. "I'm not even interested in trying to construct some kind of outward facing identity that seems subversive or something."

For now, Norco has been a way to make sense of his relationship to his hometown, his home state, and even his old faith. It's been a way to make sense of Louisiana as a region and a cultural identity. And even if you've never been to Louisiana, one thing is certainNorco is a testament to the transformative power of politics in art, and proof that even in the midst of the world falling apart, games remain potent vectors for love and humor in the most unexpected places.

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This stunning Deep South fable isn't the next Kentucky Route Zeroit's the first Norco - PC Gamer

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See previous 74 Interviews: Andrew Rotherham on the Virginia governors race, researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings on culturally relevant teaching, and author Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder on free speech and Critical Race Theory. The full archive is here.

Over the last two years, a dispute over history has been waged in classrooms, school board meetings, and statehouses. It has drifted in and out of the spotlight as the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic have dragged on, but the question at the heart of the controversy persistently hangs over the discourse around K-12 education: Who gets to decide what students learn about the nations past, especially when it addresses the topic of race?

Daryl Scott doesnt hesitate to call the conflict a war a culture war begun long before the emergence of the 1619 Project or the sudden ubiquity of the term Critical Race Theory. A professor of history at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Scott describes himself as a private intellectual who frequently shares his views on race, politics, and historiography with other academics on his public Facebook page. But as his discipline has grown more contentious, he has increasingly ventured into public view.

First came a long essay in the journal Liberties challenging the view that the Thirteenth Amendment led to the development of convict slavery, a system of forced penal labor that arose in the United States after the abolition of slavery. Then, in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, he warned that historians have endangered their credibility through a reductionist focus on slavery and racism over the achievements of African Americans over four centuries. He has been outspoken in his criticism of the New York Timess 1619 Project, including its inclusion in classroom curricular materials.

Scotts concerns are grounded in a career spent advocating for the study of Black history. He formerly served as the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, formed over a century ago by former Howard faculty member Carter G. Woodson. In 2008, he edited and released a previously lost manuscript by Woodson, who is often referred to as the father of Black history.

In an interview with The 74s Kevin Mahnken, Scott argued that the fabric of American civic life has been dangerously frayed by politics, and that educators needed to help students recover a shared culture.

The stakes of the past are nothing like the stakes now, Scott said, referring to past battles around American history in schools. You may have had one or two people at a school board meeting trying to outlaw one or two books, but now were looking at every red state changing laws about what teachers can teach.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 1619 blowup isnt the first big debate over the teaching of U.S. history, but it seems like the most intense weve seen in a long time. What factors do you think led us here? The release of the 1619 Project, and reaction to it on the political right, may have been the proximate cause, but it also seems like cultural politics have been headed this way for a while.

Its the collapse of multiculturalism. What brought it to a head was the arrival of Barack Obama, and what that meant to people on both sides of the political divide. One side thought it would mean racial progress, in the sense that the needs of the Black community would be better met. Thered be affordable education, affordable housing, and wed have more progressive politics. The other side said, in effect, Theyre now playing quarterback, and were represented by a guy whos not like us. And what better way to express that than by saying he was a Muslim born in Kenya?

I trace a straight line going all the way back to the 1960s and the end of the white supremacist Democratic Party. Some of those people found a home in the Republican Party for a price. The price of the ticket was this: Well talk about and the excesses of liberalism on race, but were not a white supremacist party, and were going to keep you in the background. And by the time you got to Obama, the people who had been in the Klan had retreated from politics. They couldnt articulate their racism fully until Trump came along. There was an acceptance of a multicultural society where Republicans would elect people like Bobby Jindal and Tim Scott and tell you that diversity was our strength. But after Trump, multiculturalism dies out on that side.

On the left, it dies out as well. It dies out because people thought they were getting a return to Great Society liberalism with race-conscious programs for Black people, and a lot of those folks were disillusioned. With the economic decline of the 2010s, Black wealth dropped precipitously, and its as if the Civil Rights Movement had done nothing for Black people economically. Theres a denial about the society-wide growth of inequality, and instead of this being talked about in class terms, it gets talked about in racial terms.

These developments are related to the ideas that had become important in the academy, like white supremacy and white privilege. Those are being taught in the academy, people are going to school to become teachers, and theyre taking a body of courses that includes this. This stuff isnt necessarily taught in education courses, but maybe it finds its way into them. The association I was with [the Association for the Study of African American Life and History] published the Black History Bulletin; its not a famous journal, but it has teachers who write lesson plans in it, and you could see the influence there. You started seeing it in the social studies groups that the teachers run. And so it starts trickling down as part of the education teachers would get, either directly in school or in some of the workshops they attend to keep their accreditation Its in the cultural and intellectual milieu.

You get terms like white fragility. Theres less promotion of anything multicultural, and it creates an environment where everybody increasingly becomes combative. The whole concept of white fragility is pejorative; you could frame it in a non-pejorative way, but it matters that it was framed in a pejorative way. You get people saying that there is no such thing as white, European culture.

This didnt have to be a polemic, but when the tone changes, all of this is weaponized. You could say that some of this starts with the 1619 Project, but its important to know where the first shots were fired. Im no student of the Hundred Years War, but I would guarantee that they were not fighting every day.

Could you trace the development of how schools have approached the teaching of racism and slavery and how, in your view, the 1619 Project is tackling things differently?

People will say that conservative textbooks since the 1960s have tried to erase slaveryby calling Black people anything but slaves and, if they have to talk about slavery, to suggest that its just one of several different labor systems in the New World. So you hear slavery discussed, fleetingly, as a labor system in certain states. It gets glossed, and when its dealt with, its as a fairly benign institution. Some people see it as hearkening back to the Lost Cause narrative of the happy slave.

But we should also remember that something like Roots has already been part of popular culture and had been in the classroom since the 70s. And the emphasis on slavery and Black history this is where the 1619 Project really deviates has been on cultural continuity with West Africa and a sense of pride in that cultural continuity.

Thats the predominant K-12 message I saw when I started at the Association, and by the way, its still the predominant message. People lost jobs in the 60s and 70s if they ran around saying that Black people had been crushed by slavery and lost their culture. That was the Nation of Islam position, and the Nation of Islam was understood by the mainstream of the Black community to be extreme and wrong.

The 400th year marking the origins of slavery in the New World would have been expected, in the tradition of Roots, to be a celebration of cultural achievement and African retentions. Thats how it was done virtually everywhere else! There was a state commission on the anniversary of 1619 in Virginia, and everyone signed off on it, conservatives and liberals alike. The traditional 1619 story was accepted because it had pretty much become the multicultural story.

The New York Times Magazine version of history doesnt talk about Black people so much as it talks about what white people did to Black people. It becomes a story of unrelenting oppression at the hands of white people with everything being measured in racism, including how you take the highway to work. It wasnt completely self-created Nikole Hannah-Jones is a product of the same cultural experience over the last 12 years, part of that same zeitgeist. At the same time, shes saying it from a very exalted platform, so that the mainstream 1619 celebration gets bumped in favor of a narrative that comes from a different intellectual movement.

So much of what were seeing in this alternative interpretation of 1619 has now become the dominant interpretation. And behold! How did that happen? Because it comes from the New York Times, the institution that many people on the center-left genuflect to. And now in many red states, where Black history had to be fought for from 1926 forward success in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, Black History Month celebrated everywhere its now being called into question. Thats progress?

It feels like the Trump administrations reaction to the 1619 Project, and especially the curriculums rapid adoption in schools, was at least as important in raising the stakes of history education as the Timess own product. What was your response to the short-lived 1776 Commission?

One of the things about the new, allegedly conservative stuff like the 1776 Commission is that its borrowed liberal ideology. American exceptionalism is a liberal project, and its always been a liberal project. It gets borrowed by conservatives in the absence of anything else. When you imagine a real conservative historiography, it really would be about innate inequalities along class and racial lines. It would be a true, thoroughgoing defense of aristocracy, and the slaveholding class.

Instead, you have a group of people today who, for lack of a better term, really are close to being fascist we just have to admit that this is where some of these people are headed but they dont really have their own thing. The 1776 Commissions report is basically a recooked Reaganite adoption of American exceptionalism that was tacked onto a Trump agenda by people who werent necessarily Trumpists themselves. It was a bizarre thing.

So Trump creates the commission, and the commission comes back with 50s liberalism and 50s liberalism on race was American exceptionalism. In the mid-50s, no ones called America systemically racist yet. Thats a 60s concept, and it gets talked about a lot in the 60s. What you see in the 50s is basically the belief that if you dismantle segregation and give Black people the right to vote that is to say, if you dismantle real white supremacy then we would be the liberal society weve always said wed be. Theres the notion that we can live up to this vision, and theres always been progress made toward this end. What theyre arguing against, just like any good 50s liberal would have argued, is that theres nothing permanent about American racism. Thats an awfully damned liberal position.

Youve mentioned the way certain progressive intellectual tendencies trickled down from the academy into K-12 teaching, but that notion feels sort of incomplete to me. I wouldnt have pictured schools of education as the same kind of hothouse intellectual environment as a graduate-level humanities department, for example.

Well, theres a zeitgeist, right? You dont have to take a course on Critical Race Theory to hear one of its cardinal concepts, which is that theres a kind of permanence of racism in society. And of course, critical race theorists didnt discover this; it was a Civil Rights Movement problem for intellectuals and policymakers. There was a need to categorize certain behaviors as racist, because were trying to condemn them. So discrimination on the basis of race becomes the standard definition of racism in the 1960s.

Its not necessarily taught in all the schools of education, but every teacher would know this. Implicitly, they would know this. The critical race theorists didnt discover this measure of discrimination, but it becomes one of their metrics for determining that racism still exists and is permanent.

Its not even the only subfield thinking that way. The whole multicultural project is about how to root out discrimination from the schools! This is not to say that every teacher went to school and learned it that way, but it was part of the professional culture they entered.

When parents start saying whether theyre being egged on by right-wing activists or not that their children are being taught to hate themselves or feel guilty for what other people have done, its going to have consequences. Parents dont want their children taught that theyre the source of the problem and that this problem is permanent. I mean, wasnt multicultural education, going back to Carter G. Woodson, essentially an attempt to make everybody, including Black kids, feel that they werent inferior, werent less than, werent to blame?

So much of this is about pre-existing combat, and the combatants want to say that theyre just into truth-telling. But theres so many truths you can tell, so why do you tell this truth, and why do you tell it in this way? Why is there this effort to poke the opposition in the eye? Part of the answer is that theres a lot of frustration on both sides, and the cultural war is playing out that dimension among what would otherwise be perfectly reasonable people.

It seems like the political reaction of the last few years caught a lot of people by surprise. Whats your reaction to the movement in statehouses to limit the scope of what teachers can discuss in the classroom?

A lot of this stuff is just so East Coast-centric and blue state-centric. They dont understand the nooks and crannies of this country, and they dont understand how a school board functions. Youve got people saying, Let the teachers sort out what needs to be taught, as if that was all that was at stake. They seemed not to understand that school boards ultimately have a say, that state departments of education have a say, and that legislatures have a say.

My whole thing from the very beginning was that this was not just a book, it was an attempt to transform K-12 education. Youre attempting to shape whats going on in schools, and youre doing so from the highest intellectual platform. Its the most important newspaper in the country, and when that newspaper says its going to make an intervention in education, are you really surprised that the opposition was listening? And that Trump, who lives in New York, reads the New York Times?

Before all this, the history culture war mostly centered on monuments. Now it centers on the teaching of history itself. And what I want people to understand is that this is just not one event. Its the escalation of a war at a critical juncture in American history, when anti-democratic forces are now in control of the Republican Party. Those anti-democratic forces are disenfranchising people, and this is the realm in which you are making these assaults, as if youre not part of the broader fight?

Obviously, youre not a fan of 1619. But what view of Black history would you like to see in K-12 classrooms? Is it that Roots version, the multiculturalist perspective that emphasizes themes of cultural continuity and pride in the achievements of Black people?

We live in a diverse, multicultural society. Public schools belong to all of us, and it behooves us to teach about our past in a way that respects everyone. Maybe the multicultural nirvana was never possible, but what counts is the good faith effort to be inclusive, to be respectful, and to realize that were on a boat at sea together. You cant drill a hole in one side of the boat without sinking the other side.

Here comes the most uncomfortable truth of all: We dont know whether white Americans will become a self-conscious ethnic group in their own right, but there are reasons to believe that theyre becoming precisely that. To the extent that theyre becoming that, they are part of this diverse America that has to be taken into account as well, and you cant treat them as a default category with no culture and no history.

The fact of the matter is, white people are becoming one among many ethnic groups, and their anger is a reflection of what they feel to be the growing power of other groups. To the extent that their perception is creating a reality, were all going to have to deal with that reality. And the way to deal with that reality, in a pluralistic society, is to honor the identity group that presents itself to us. Because theyre far from powerless. We cant pretend that theyre powerless, just like we cant pretend that we have no power.

What Im calling for is a return to multiculturalism as a procedural frame for how we go about educating our kids about history. As a good pluralist, I believe theres a shared culture, and I dont believe that everybody is an equal contributor to history at any given moment. World War II shouldnt be reduced to the multicultural history of World War II; theres an ethnic dimension to how people recruit for World War II, and there are stories we can tell about various groups during World War II, but those key battles are the key battles. History is not always reducible to a story of multiculturalism.

However we teach it, though, we need to be mindful that there is a diverse group of people participating. As a kind of modus operandi, how we teach history is what Im most concerned about. The purpose should never be to make anybody in the audience uncomfortable to the point that this is grievance history. Because what happens then? Everybody gets to voice their grievances? I think thats where were headed if were not careful.

One criticism Ive heard about multicultural K-12 history was raised by the education historian Jonathan Zimmerman, who told me that schools have spent decades making room for heroes of new ethnicity: We went from cheerleading for George Washington to cheerleading for George Washington Carver.

Some of this is just the nature of K-8 history, which gets taught around biographies too much. K-8 will invariably be that way because biographies matter to kids. Woodson defended this by saying, We wont teach less about George Washington, well teach more about Peter Salem. Thats how he pitched this at the elementary level.

But even Woodson took the celebration of Douglasss birthday and Lincolns birthday and transformed them into the commemoration not of two people there were often celebrations of those two events but of a whole group of people. There was still a biographical aspect in how he was doing it, but what made him a social historian was talking about the role that common people played in the making of history. Woodson at his best is beyond biography, but he got into a collective biography of how peoples contribute to the making of history.

What you could say the 1619 Project is doing at its best is to talk about the African American contribution to making America live up to its ideals. Thats actually a very traditional point of view within the African American community that its our struggle that transformed America and makes it live up to its ideals. So everybody has done this, and we should continue to talk about different ways in which collectivities have shaped the country.

All of this is legitimate turf for future discussions of how history is written. It is a debate about how we want to tell our past, and it has got to get beyond simply grievance history. History that is propaganda for the sake of getting certain policy outcomes is not going to get us through this. And I really mean get us through this, because theres a possibility that we rend ourselves on the question of race. The longest-standing question of democracy is, How much homogeneity is necessary? The assumption once was that if its too heterogeneous, a democracy cant work. So we really need to ask ourselves, how do we go about teaching our past in a common way, so that we have a common project? We have to deal with history for the common weal.

I think this addresses the supply-side question of history education youve got practitioners of Black history and womens history and labor history who all want to have their say. But the public demand for historical knowledge seems to be so weak, to the point where most Americans demonstrate very little grasp of it at all.

America is a history wasteland, and February is about the only month where youre going to get any American history. There are interviews and surveys showing that the average American doesnt know who was on what side of the Civil War. How ironic is it, then, that were over here splitting each others skulls about this?

Having said that, one could argue thats how we got here in the first place that we have a lack of knowledge about our history, and if were going to make it through this, we have to do better at teaching history with civics embedded in it. We need to teach about shared government and shared culture, and if these things tend to go in one ear and out the other, we have to figure out how to keep it in peoples heads.

I dont know if youve ever heard of this, but February used to be American History Month, not Black History Month. After World War II, the Daughters of the American Revolution started promoting February as American History Month because it had the birthdays of two major presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They went out and got the proclamations of presidents and governors, and it went through Lyndon Johnson. And the way they dealt with American History Month was the story of the WASP; they didnt even talk about the white immigrants. And so American History Month was not a big-city affair, where all the immigrants were. (Laughter) It was really a small-town movement in the hinterlands. Phyllis Schlafly was a big deal in this whole thing.

But it just faded. I only caught onto this because I saw someone post online, Do you remember when February was American History Month? They were complaining about Black History Month, and another person said, Oh yeah! But by 1976, there were presidential proclamations for Black History Month, and nobody remembered that February was American History Month. This is what happens if you do this history that excludes people. So White History Month, if you will, failed; the people doing it wanted Anglo-Saxon Month, but they called it American History Month. They werent boasting about how Eisenhower saved Western Civilization, you know?

Do you think the general lack of knowledge among Americans about their past is why theres this appetite for historical myth and misinformation? Or could it be the other way around, that the political pathologies of today are eroding our historical awareness?

Theres always been a market for popular history and what you were never taught in school. This is not something exclusive to African Americans. Theres a notion that schools are not serving us well. Yet theres also a perception that the schools are serving someone else well just not the cause I believe in. Its hard to get across this point to people: If I created a multicultural curriculum, Id have to throw out a whole lot of stuff that you want to stay in, because youre going to share time with other groups. What that means is that the ultimate multicultural history would be disappointing to virtually all groups even the best-faith efforts to be inclusive would still be met with, Theyre excluding us!

This is a very particular moment. Social media has, on the one hand, made people more conscious of what is consumed as history, and its also led to the sense that the white story is not being told. You see this everywhere. There are certain white nationalists who will now falsely say that the Irish were slaves, and their story is not being told. There are people who say that, in the name of 1619, the true American history is not being told. So in this moment, the history has been politicized, and the history that serves ones own cause is the history people are looking for. This sense of being excluded is because we dont have a sense that were in this together anymore.

The obvious question is, were we ever all in this together? As youve acknowledged, battles over what history to include or exclude go back a long way, and inter-group relations have long been fractious in the United States.

The multicultural battle we waged between the 70s and the 2000s was just not the same battle as the one were looking at now. Progress was made that is now denied. People act as though there was never a Black History Month in Montana, when there was; people act like everything was excluded from K-12 in Idaho, when it wasnt. Theres a pretense that everything in textbooks has been the Lost Cause until this very day, and that everything Woodson attempted to do in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s went to naught.

And of course, the Civil War was there also. The people who want to pretend that we started teaching about Critical Race Theory and stopped teaching about the American Revolution, thats false. If they think schools have been teaching that the Revolution was caused by slavery, its not really taught that way. But lets also not deny that the 1619 Project was poised to go into public schools teaching precisely that. They were moving at 100 miles per hour, and if people didnt scream and yell, thats what would have been printed and disseminated to teachers.

So there was an effort to change the narrative in such a way that people couldnt recognize themselves in their own history. The argument was, Its one telling of the story, one narrative among manybut its what we want you to teach in schools. Anybody who understands K-8 education should understand that you dont give multiple narrations of history to children. You dont tell them that it could have been this way and could have been the other way. Its just not how elementary school is taught.

Im here to say that the history that gets taught is not as important as the effort to build a shared culture in society moving forward. You will not exterminate your enemies, and youre going to cohabitate the same territory. The question is how much damage youll do to each other and to everyone else. Were at that point.

Lincoln would say that you can destroy your enemies by making them your friends.

Thats precisely my point.

What makes this different for me is that Im a South Side ghetto boy, but I served in the U.S. Army with people from all walks of life during the Cold War. So I cant be that partisan in the culture war I know its going nowhere good. Youre not going to get the reparations that some people think youll get from amassing this evidence of repression. And youre certainly not going to get it by poking the other fella in the eye with this history that you say indicts them. Its just not how this is going to be done, unless theres some third party that takes over the entire government and gives what you think you deserve as the spoils for destroying the country. It would be the Chinese Reparations Committee hearing the grievances of African Americans and Native Americans.

Changing the subject a bit, youve described yourself as the product of Catholic education, all the way up to attending Marquette University as an undergraduate. What effect did that have on your scholarship and your development as a human being?

My context of Catholicism is really from the vantage of a set of schools that were servicing Black communities. They were really white Catholic institutions serving a Black Protestant population. I happen to be Catholic, but I was probably one of a minority of Catholics going to those grammar schools and high schools.

This was a moment in history after the World Wars. My father boxed in the Catholic Youth Organization in the 30s, but he didnt go to a Catholic school. In a lot of the urban North, as the Catholics left the inner city, they were replaced by Black folks during the Great Migration. The schools were only dealing with Catholics before Vatican II, and much of the Black people were committing apostasy to get an education, going from Protestant to Catholic in the 50s.

The motto at my high school was Unto Perfect Manhood; there was an effort to make us good Christian, Catholic men, and to some extent, Im a product of all of that. The Catholic schools became an opportunity structure for social mobility for me and my brother and a whole lot of other people. Being a Black Catholic on the South Side of Chicago during the Great Society, thats what shaped me.

It was only much later that I realized that Catholics were some of the earliest advocates for school choice, and that goes back to trying to use public funds to support religious education. And Im a decidedly liberal person who says, Nah, not with my tax dollars. Ive understood choice to mean opting out of public schools at your own expense, and politically, thats where I still come down. It is conceivable that we could all take our fair share of the tax dollars and let people take them to whatever kind of school they want to, but if this moment tells me anything, it tells me that we collectively would be better off with shared experiences. If you want to opt out of that shared experience, maybe you should underwrite it yourself.

Im for public schools as a venue for those shared experiences, and Im actually for all kinds of incentives to join the military in pursuit of common experiences. I believe the draft ended in 74, and here we are roughly 50 years later without that common experience of military service. If youve never met that poor white kid from West Virginia, if youve never met that brown-skinned kid from Samoa, if youve never met the guys from Puerto Rico, if youve never met that Black Mississippian, then you really dont understand whats out here in this country, and you dont know how people share a culture and share experiences.

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The 74 Interview: Howard Historian Daryl Scott on 'Grievance History,' the 1619 Project and the 'Possibility that We Rend Ourselves on the Question of...

Editors note: The following is taken from the webinar Family Matters. It is a conversation between Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and professor Arthur Brooks from Harvard University. The conversation draws from Brooks new book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Brad Wilcox: Welcome, Arthur.

Arthur Brooks:Thank you, Brad. And thank you for your work on this important subject.

BW: So lets just begin with the basics here. How do you define happiness, and why is it important for us to think about?

AB: Happiness, in the general zeitgeist, when I ask my students at Harvard, whats happiness, they generally start talking about feelings. And feelings are related to happiness. But happiness as we understand it in the modern world of neuroscience and social science is basically a combination of three phenomena. The first is enjoyment. The second is satisfaction. And the third is purpose. People who are truly happy and what Im saying is the people who have these things in balance and abundance are the people who will report high levels of self-reported happiness. And so enjoyment means pleasure plus elevation. So its not just pure pleasure, its actually being able to enjoy things in a way that you understand what youre enjoying, which is important. Satisfaction is the reward for a job well done, or a goal met. And purpose, which is maybe the most paradoxical of all, comes from actually understanding the coherence and meaning of your life. I suspect that most of the people watching this will know that it actually requires sacrifice, even pain and trouble in our lives. And so the great irony is that to have happiness, you need purpose, and to have purpose, you need sacrifice and pain. And that actually entails some unhappiness. So when people are going through their lives trying to avoid unhappiness, what they inadvertently do is they wind up avoiding a lot of their own happiness.

BW: Im going to come back to that, because it actually relates to new book by Paul Bloom, as you may know. You and I both have a number of kids, and theyre all very different, including different levels of happiness. And this makes me wonder, as we begin our conversation here, how much of happiness is genetic? How much is it related just to good fortune and bad fortune, or things that are beyond our control?

AB: Yeah, its a good question. You have a lot of kids. I only have three, but three is enough to get a sample. When it comes to your children, you notice that they all have different levels of basic life satisfaction. And the truth is that theres been very good research on identical twins separated at birth adopted into different families it wasnt an experiment run kids, of course, that would be unethical and then who are reunited as adults and get personality tests. And what this research finds is that more of our personality than we ever thought possible is actually genetically based. So somewhere between 40% to 80% of most personality characteristics has a relationship to whats passed on from our parents, and that includes happiness. So most studies find somewhere between 44% and 52% of our happiness is genetic. Lets just say half. Half of our happiness is related to what we get from our parents. And that leaves the other half thats in the other two big categories of what brings happiness. One is circumstances and the others habits. Now, I dont want that to be true. As an American, I want all of my happiness to be under my control, basically and completely having to do with my habits. But I have to recognize the truth. So 50% is genetic. About another quarter is circumstantial, so the good and bad things that are happening in my life. The thing to keep in mind about that is that its a quarter, its a lot, but it doesnt last, and so good things dont last for your happiness, and bad things dont last for your unhappiness. The part that endures, that we can truly manipulate, that we can truly affect is our habits, which is about a quarter of our happiness. And thats based entirely on how we live our lives. And that can be extremely enduring. And thats what we should therefore be focusing our energies on.

BW: So on the things that we can control, then, what do you think are the keys to happiness for the average person?

AB: In all the research on this, you can kind of boil it down to four big categories of habits, and we call these the Four Habits of Highly Happy People. You could say, it doesnt mean that if you have these habits, youre gonna be happy all the time, because once again, genetics and circumstances, but youre going to be as happy as you can be on the basis of what you have control over. And they fall into four categories: faith, family, friendship and meaningful work. And meaningful work has nothing to do with money or prestige or job title or even education. It has everything to do with earning your success and serving other people. So faith, family, friendship, earning your success and serving other people those are the portfolio of habits. And so one of the things that I recommend, when I look diagnostically at people who say, I cant find a particular direction in my life, I dont feel like Im as happy as I could be, I look diagnostically at their happiness portfolio. And I almost always find that theyre over indexing on one thing, and under indexing on the other things. And for a lot of people who are really successful, people who work all the time, for example, it means theyre under indexing on their faith and their family life. And especially for a lot of people, especially men on their friendships. And you can get a lot of happiness by working on the hygiene of those habits.

BW: Now, you mentioned work here. But as we look at this kind of issue of happiness, in our recent survey with YouGov, we found a pretty big difference in terms of how women and men to relate to a paid work and happiness. So for men, theres a clear connection between gainful, full-time employment and happiness in a recent survey. But there is no such clear pattern for women. There are plenty of women who are not working at least in the paid labor force, who are very happy. So how do you think about this gender difference when it comes to paid work and happiness? Whats the story there, from your perspective?

AB: It has everything to do with the tradition of how we value ourselves. So this is something that gets back to the psychological literature on what they call extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is where youre motivated by outside things. And what happens is, if youve only ever done work thats paid by the market, you start to value yourself in terms of the market returns to your labor. So for a lot of families that are set up in a more traditional way, a more conventional way, where dad earns salary outside, and mom does a lot of the work in the home, perhaps volunteer work, for example. Mom becomes really, really good at intrinsically valuing her time and the value that shes creating. Shes able to get an accounting system thats more helpful. And it reflects more of the value that shes actually creating with her time. I mean, nobody would say that women who stay home with their children and raise their children are wasting their time. Youd say, well, thats a really valuable thing to do. And yet, if it doesnt bring in dollar wages, most women who do that would say, Well, yeah, thats not how I denominate my time. Well, men get really, really bad at doing that. Which is why theyll say, if Im not getting paid more one job to the next job, somethings wrong with my career. So whats going on is kind of a blinkered accounting system thats based entirely on money for men. I think this is more of a problem for men than it is for women, generally speaking.

BW: Right. But as you know, theres another wrinkle here. And that is today, as you know, your former colleague, Nicholas Eberstadt, has written theres a way in which a lot of men are no longer engaging with the workforce. And this is probably also a big part of the deaths of despair trend that weve been seeing in the U.S. in recent years. What do you think is driving this movement of at least a decent minority of men away from a regular engagement with the labor force, with work?

AB: Whats happening in the modern economy is that more and more people, not just men, more and more people are in a situation where they dont feel that they have an opportunity to create value in the lives of other people. Thats how we earn our success. We earn our success by serving others and creating value with our lives and value in the lives of other people. And what happens is, when people are discouraged from forming families, discouraged from serving other people in their communities, discouraged from participating in the formal workforce, they dont feel like theyre creating value. And thats what actually leads to despair. Despair is really the opposite of dignity. And dignity requires one big thing, which is being needed. This is really, really important. I mean, there was a Roman Catholic Cardinal in Chicago for the longest time named Francis George. And one time, he was giving a famous speech to his wealthiest donors on the north shore of Chicago, talking about a South Side poverty initiative, saying, dont forget the poor need you to pull them out of poverty. And then he said, and you need the poor to keep you out of hell, which is a pretty gutsy fundraising line, I have to say. Ive never used that in my own fundraising. But the bottom line is, people need to be needed. Thats the basis of dignity. And when theyre not needed whether its by a full-time job, whether its by children, whether its by community, whether its by other people then they will lose their dignity, which is the basis of despair. And what we find is that people who are not involved in the workforce, that have no education, for example, so they have a hard time creating value in the workforce and are not involved in the workforce, dont have children and they dont have any of these other institutions. Theyre way more likely to get involved in drugs and alcohol. Theres almost a 400% increase in drug overdose deaths. We find a significant increase in suicides. Thats why these things are called deaths of despair. What they should be called is deaths of the lack of dignity.

BW: I mentioned this book by Paul Bloom that just came out, The Sweet Spot. It talks about the role of suffering. And he actually talks about parenting, and the way in which theres a certain measure of suffering that follows from being a parent. And yet, it seems like that makes ones sense of meaning and happiness more salient. Its kind of a U curve, in terms of sort of suffering. With tons of suffering, theres more despair, often even meaninglessness. But no suffering also is linked to less meaning and less happiness. The sweet spot is having some degree, some portion, of suffering, connected to needful activity as a parent, or even as a worker too. So how do you think about the relationship between yourself between suffering and happiness, or suffering and meaning in life?

AB: Some people will split meaning off from happiness, and I dont do that. I think meaning is one of the components of happiness. And its the most paradoxical component because, as you suggest, suffering, challenge, resiliency, overcoming barriers thats really, really important. I mean, nobody ever says, You know when I found my purpose in life, Brad? Ill tell you, it was that week with my friends. Nobody says that. They always talk about, you know, when my father died, or when I was thrown out of college and I had to find my way. You know, people always talk about these challenges are when they find the purpose in their life. And one of the most common kinds of challenges is when youre raising children, and you have your first child, and theres no manual. And you know, when we had our first child, and my parents were incapacitated and across the country, and my in-laws were in Spain, and we had nothing, man. And it was lonely, and it was hard. But we figured out who we were in our marriage. We figured out who we were as parents, who we wanted to be, and the child that we wanted to raise. And child by child, the challenge is augmented, to be sure, and the pain and suffering is really there. But your purpose and meaning strongly grow into those circumstances. So today, when people say, well, youll be happier if you dont have kids, what theyre saying is, youll have more enjoyment if you dont have kids. The problem is the trade-off. Youll have more enjoyment; youll probably have less meaning and purpose. And so net-net, thats actually not good for you on the happiness scale. Because both of those things, plus the satisfaction that comes from different rewards of life, are what you need to be a fully happy individual.

BW: Right. Now, your new book, From Strength to Strength, explores what its like to live a purposeful and happy life, when youre kind of moving into the next stage of life, past the peak of your career. Whats the key message in the book thats coming out, and whats the link back to happiness?

AB: Well, a pretty strong majority of people find particularly those who work hard and are successful in their careers at some point, they start losing their edge. Ad it happens to most people before they think theyre going to. Most think that its only them, and somethings wrong with them. So what I show in this book is that particularly in thinking industries you know, doctors, lawyers, accountants, professors, like you and me that when it comes to the innovative capacity, to think of brand new ideas, that tends to go into decline between the age of 35 and 50. And thats very, very normal. It has to do with something called fluid intelligence, from a psychologist named Raymond Cattell, a British psychologist from the 1960s and 70s. What most of us dont know is theres another intelligence that lurks behind it that happens later in life, called crystallized intelligence: our ability to teach, to share, to pass on knowledge, to synthesize ideas into a big framework, to write better books, for example. To be better teachers, under the circumstances. Maybe not to be able to think of the new mathematical theorem, but to write the book that actually tells a story about whats actually going on. So what I talked about in this book is how to design your life, no matter what business youre in, to jump from your fluid intelligence curve to your crystallized intelligence curve so you can be maximally useful, happy and serve other people in a fulfilling way, all the way to the end of your life, which is, I think, what we all deserve, and we can do it. And what I show is that everybody actually can do this. And so its a step-by-step guide book on how to be happier at 80 than you even were at 30.

BW: And so again, it seems like part of the message here, based upon your notion of crystallized intelligence, if Im getting this correct, is that theres a way in which people who are kind of moving through their 50s and beyond can share a kind of accumulated life wisdom or professional wisdom that is valuable, and maybe in some ways, more developed. Or they may have a better capacity to be an elder in a profession or a community at that stage in their life, than they were when they were 35, for instance.

AB: For sure. I mean, one of the reasons as you and I both know that the best teaching evaluations at universities tend to go to people who are over 70 is because they have a high level of crystallized intelligence. Its just easier to learn from an older professor than it is from a younger professor. You know, when I was brand new in academia, I remember it was just harder. And now, you know, young professors ask me, Whats the secret to good teaching evaluations? Its like, wait 25 years, to no small extent. And so the trick, for all of us, if we want to grow old well without frustration, without the discouragement and without regret the key thing is going from innovator to instructor, whatever that means in our lives. And thats a blessed thing. You know, the idea of going from being the inventor, being the star, or even the sole proprietor, to being somebody who passes on wisdom, somebody whos beloved, for actually making it possible for other people to learn the circumstances. Not everybody can be teachers like you and me, Brad. But everybody can be more of an instructor than they currently are. And that should be the goal. And so I talk about how to get on that curve the skills to actually develop, the things to be thinking about along the way. Thats the point of the book.

BW: Is there any connection between your book and that famous Harvard study of adult development, which tracks men and women over the course of their lives, and figures out what is linked to rich and meaningful and happy lives, as people are in the last chapter of their lives? Any connections there?

AB: There are, and youre referring to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, also known as the Grant Study, thats been running for 80 years. It looked at some famous guys who graduated from Harvard JFK was in the study, Ben Bradlee was in the study who graduated from 1930 into 1941. And then it mixed it with another study of people who didnt go to college, so its more socioeconomically and racially diverse. And then it looks at the spouses and the children of the first cohort going forward. So its incredible crystal ball. It looks at, what did people do in their 20s and 30s, and how does that predict if theyre going to be happy in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s? And its astonishing. Theres a lot of different practices. It talks about alcohol use and exercise and rumination, and the tendency to be able to deal with problems and reading and all this stuff. But the bottom line is what the founder or the guy who ran the study for 30 years, of professor named George Vaillant, when he was asked to summarize it in just a few words, he said, OK, happiness is love, full stop. And this is a really important thing, and I talk an awful lot about it in my book. If youre going to go from innovator to instructor, you need to develop your life around the principles of love. If youre going to have the four happiness habits that I talked about a little bit earlier faith; love of the divine; family, a love the people that are the ties that bind but dont break and should never break; friendship, which is voluntary love-based relationships; and service to other people it is. Happiness is love, Brad.

BW: Well, thats a great note to end our conversation on, Arthur. I appreciate your time today and Im looking forward to getting the book. And when is the book coming out?

AB: Thank you.

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What is the secret to happiness? Arthur Brooks talks sources of happiness | Opinion - Deseret News