Arthur C. Brooks

I've been out in public with you.

And everybody wants to talk to Oprah Winfrey, and you look at them in the eyes.

They get a little bit of oxytocin, that neuropeptide.

They feel significant because you actually see them.

You give them a little bit of meaning.

That's a gift.

That's an incredible gift.

But in this society, we don't really look at people.

We don't really pay attention to people.

So what do people need in life?

They need an explanation for what's going on, they need a direction and set of goals, and they need to be seen.

That's meaning.

Questions are everything.

And here's the weird thing.

Remember when we were kids, there was this really famous gorilla named Coco.

Remember Coco the gorilla?

And Coco the gorilla was really famous because this primatologist named Penny Patterson in California trained this gorilla to have a vocabulary of a thousand words in sign language.

And so Coco the Gorilla, I mean, had an obituary in the New York Times.

I'm not gonna have an obituary in the New York Times.

Had covers on the National Geographic, kids' books, because it kind of blurred the lines between people and animals a little bit.