In reality, I’ve long believed that there is a weird market failure in American culture. There are a lot of shows on politics, business and technology, but there are not enough on the fundamental questions of life that get addressed as part of a great liberal arts education: How do you become a better person? How do you find meaning in retirement? Does America still have a unifying national narrative? How do great nations recover from tyranny?

I don’t know what he’s up to, but David Brooks’s hints about what he’ll do after departure from the New York Times are tantalizing.

My main blog is the Tipsy Teetotaler, http://intellectualoid.com.