• last year
Why Taylor Swift Is So Successful
Transcript
00:00 Taylor Swift has turned her Eras tour, it's this big tour where she went all around the
00:06 country and it was sold out everywhere and I had the misfortune of being in downtown
00:10 Nashville on a night when the concert let out and I felt like I was in a third world
00:15 country.
00:16 You couldn't get a car, there were a gazillion people flooding into the street, it was mayhem.
00:20 People go crazy.
00:21 When Taylor Swift announced her concert tour, every woman in this office, I walk in, I show
00:26 up here early, I'm here earlier than almost anybody and the moment I come in, this is
00:31 the very, very beginning of the work day, just as I come in from my show, all the girls
00:36 are refreshing the page to try to get the early tickets from American.
00:40 People love Taylor Swift.
00:41 I have never in my life consciously, intentionally listened to a Taylor Swift song.
00:47 I couldn't name a Taylor Swift song.
00:49 The one exception to that is the one about I'm a problem, it's you or I'm a problem,
00:55 it's me.
00:56 I guess that would make more sense because my producers made me listen to it to react
01:01 to it on the show, but I couldn't tell you what a Taylor Swift song is other than that.
01:05 Well, she turned this bestselling tour into a movie and the movie has held the number
01:11 one spot at the box office for the second weekend.
01:15 It surged well over $100 million.
01:18 It's made history as the first concert film ever to cross the $100 million mark.
01:24 Why?
01:25 Why?
01:26 Am I going to have to go see this movie?
01:29 I avoided the Taylor Swift era's tour.
01:31 I might have to go see it to make sense of this cultural phenomenon because I have an
01:36 inkling of why Taylor Swift does so well.
01:40 I don't mean to diminish Taylor Swift.
01:43 She has a lot of things to recommend her.
01:46 Is she Bach?
01:47 Is she Mozart?
01:48 No, I don't think so.
01:49 Is she the greatest lyricist or musician or singer or dancer ever?
01:55 No.
01:56 Is she the most glamorous Hollywood star ever?
01:58 No.
01:59 Is she?
02:00 No.
02:01 Actually, I think that's why she's so popular.
02:07 She's just kind of normal.
02:12 In another age, that would be fine and she might be popular, but in our age, which is
02:18 so abnormal, which exalts abnormality and bizarre things, people crave something that's
02:28 normal.
02:29 She's just kind of nice looking, blonde, doesn't have any tattoos, doesn't have any piercings,
02:36 doesn't...
02:37 When she makes statements about politics, they're relatively mild, center left, perfectly
02:44 socially acceptable statement, acceptable to the ruling class, still basically acceptable
02:49 to the populace.
02:52 She sings songs about her ex-boyfriends.
02:54 That's pretty much it.
02:57 Everyone kind of...
02:58 That's a relatable experience.
02:59 There's nothing particularly profound in any of the songs.
03:02 I'm not sure there's very much meaningful at all in the songs, but she's just kind of
03:06 normal and being kind of normal is enough in an age that has gone completely insane.
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04:11 And speaking of what people want, a very sad study came out showing that nearly one in
04:19 four adults across the world report feeling very or fairly lonely.
04:24 This is according to a Meta Gallup survey.
04:27 This is not just a survey of Americans or a certain age bracket.
04:30 A new survey was taken across 142 countries, found that 24% of people age 15 and older
04:38 self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely in response to the question, "How lonely
04:41 do you feel?"
04:43 The survey also found that the rates of loneliness were highest in young people.
04:47 So you might expect older people, maybe whose friends have died, who have suffered all sorts
04:51 of losses, lived a little bit, that they might be lonelier.
04:54 No, it's younger people, the young people who are supposed to be out and constantly
04:58 around other young people and going on dates and just surrounded by social life.
05:03 They report being the loneliest.
05:05 27% of young adults age 19 to 29 report feeling very or fairly lonely.
05:10 And the lowest rates were actually found in older adults.
05:13 Only 17% of people age 65 and older reported feeling lonely.
05:18 Why is this?
05:19 Why is everybody so lonely?
05:20 Part of it is that we are living in that, "How does it affect you?"
05:26 culture.
05:27 What we were talking about at the very top of the show, the culture which says, "Ignore
05:31 social questions, ignore any need for consensus, any agreement on anything in society.
05:39 How does it affect you?
05:40 Let people do whatever decadent, divergent, depraved thing as they want to do.
05:45 Just you do you and I'll do me and we'll just do different things."
05:47 Well, a consequence of that is we're going to be more isolated.
05:50 We're not going to have as much in common and we're not going to have as much to say
05:53 to one another and we're not going to, we're going to feel alienated.
05:56 That's part of it.
05:57 But at a deeper level, why are people lonely?
06:01 At a deeper level, the loneliness pandemic is directly attributable to the decline and
06:07 sidelining of virtue.
06:09 It comes down to that because true friendship is only possible among virtuous people.
06:16 Good old Uncle Aristotle told us this millennia ago.
06:21 There are three kinds of friendship we could say.
06:24 Friendship of pleasure, you know, we both like meatballs and martinis.
06:29 Friendships of utility, which is we can help each other professionally say, and friendships
06:37 of virtue where people who are basically good, who practice virtue and tamp down vice, spend
06:43 time with one another because they're both oriented toward the good and working toward
06:48 the good.
06:49 And when you are oriented toward and working toward the good, you get happier.
06:53 And when you're oriented toward and doing things that are bad, you get less happy.
06:58 There's a good book by Alistair MacIntyre, a still living philosopher, called After Virtue.
07:05 A highly recommended book because it talks about this very problem.
07:11 We have sidelined virtue.
07:12 We have forgotten about virtue.
07:14 Many people in our culture mock the notion of virtue and they say it's illusory.
07:19 And that's bad and if you don't care about virtue at all, you might end up in hell someday.
07:25 You're going to have probably a miserable life.
07:26 You're going to fall into bad habits.
07:27 You're going to do all sorts of things.
07:29 But one of the least discussed aspects of that is you're going to have a harder time
07:32 making friends.
07:33 I'm not saying that if you are lonely right now, it's because you are not virtuous.
07:38 It's a social problem.
07:39 If you live in a, just living in a culture that denies and sidelines virtue is going
07:45 to greatly increase the chances that you're going to be lonely and have trouble making
07:48 friends.
07:49 It's a social problem.
07:50 It's not just about what you do.
07:51 It's about what everybody does.
07:52 But then there it is.
07:53 There is the answer to that question.
07:54 How does it affect you?
07:55 How does it affect you if we pass some law?
07:57 Well because the law is a teacher and it molds the populace just as education molds children.
08:03 Well, how does it affect you?
08:05 It affects me because I live in a society and when you pass laws and when you have rituals
08:10 and culture, that is going to warp the fabric in which I move.
08:16 The fabric of the space in which I move and that is going to create a certain kind of
08:20 society and that affects me a lot.
08:22 Boy, what a great clip that was now.
08:24 Hey, hey, hey, hey man, you got to ring that bell.
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