And one of the suggestions that the person had, which really just made me do a double take,

but then I thought had some truth to it, was that what is replaced religion for many Americans

is some combination of political polarization and even media tribes, where if you consume a certain

media's offerings, then you're kind of joining a cult. And people refer to people who watch certain

channels, a cult, this cult, that, but that really stuck with them. David Foster Wallace,

the great American writer, one time said that everybody worships something because people are made

to worship. We're just, we're just worshipful creatures. He thought that was an innate feature of

humankind. And if you take away something that's worthy of worship, you will replace it with

something that's unworthy of worship. And it doesn't matter who you are, we all know intellectually

that politics is unworthy of being elevated to the level of religion. And yet this is, I mean,

look, your campaign was related to trying to de-religiousize and detribalize ideology,

a political ideology in this country. It's like, let's talk about how to bring people forward and

understand each other across ideological lines. Well, that's basically like going to people who are

extremely religiously fundamentalist and say, make common cause with this other group of

apostates and heretics. You know, what we've done in this country, and this is one of the big

problems that we have is that people are worshipping at the altar of American politics. And their

preachers, their TV preachers are on at 7 and 8, 9 on cable channels. This week, on

forward, the author of From Strength to Strength and columnist for the Atlantic on how to build a

happy life. Arthur Brooks, I'm so pumped for this conversation this week on Forward.

It is my thrill to welcome to the Forward podcast kicking off his book tour, his 12th book,

The Best Book from Strength to Strength, finding success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half

of life. Arthur Brooks, welcome Arthur. Thank you, Andrew. What a delight to be with you.

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