The Bulwark Podcast - Carol Leonnig and Robert Putnam: Lies and Moral Obligations

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

If Republican senators had any shred of dignity left, they'd demand that Kash Patel answer why he brazenly lied under oath to them about the purge of agents at the FBI. Credible sources have come forward to say he was directing the whole thing. Meanwhile, Trump has leveled the playing field so companies doing business overseas can do all the bribing they want. Plus, our modern "boy problem," our genetic wiring to not be loners, and finding a way out of our polarization by seeing we have an obligation to respect and care for other people.  Carol Leonnig and Bob Putnam join Tim Miller  show notes Bob's "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" The documentary about Bob, "Join or Die" Bob's co-written book, "The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again"

Hey guys, it's Tim. It's Wednesday. So we got this two part episode that focuses on specific issues. First we got Carol Lenig, maybe my favorite investigative reporter over at the Post. Don't tell everybody else. She specializes in Justice Department and FBI issues. So we are going to drill down on this whistleblower report regarding what Cash Patel knew about the firings of the FBI and whether he perjured himself during his confirmation hearing. So this is a massive story and she's working on a bunch of other issues as well. So we're talking to Carol first and then we're continuing kind of our series on the loneliness epidemic and we're going to the OG to Bob Putnam in segment two, talk about that and kind of what his bowling alone book, you know, how that reverberates in our politics today. It's a super interesting convo. On the other stuff, bunch of other stuff in the news, the Elon presser yesterday, the

news that's out this morning about how there was an uptick in inflation last month and a bunch of other issues, the elimination of the penny, all the fun stuff. I get into that on the next level with Sarah and JVL. For newbies, that's always out on Wednesday afternoons. It's a little more politics focused and so people can go either catch that on YouTube or download the next level feed on your podcast app of choice. So that will be up on Wednesday. So there's that. That's the agenda. Hope you enjoy as much as you can. Hold on to your hats. Up next, Carol Lenick.

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm delighted to be here today with one of my faves, an investigative reporter at the Washington Post. She writes about government misconduct, presidential power, the Justice Department and the FBI, a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her books include A Very Stable Genius, Donald Trump's Testing of America. It's Carol Lenig and her cat. How are you doing, Carol? Hey, Tim.

It's great to be with you as usual. Good to have you. That beat is kind of not really relevant right now. Government misconduct, Justice Department, and FBI, nothing happening for you, right? No. now, government misconduct, Justice Department, FBI, nothing happening for you, right? No, just working on my self-care, my nails, nothing going on. Tanning. Okay. Well, that sounds nice. I want to start with Cash Patel. We'd reached out because what I think is the biggest story of the day, really, even though there's obviously a lot happening, we had these firings with the FBI. We talked about this with Andrew

Wiseman last week, top FBI officials pushed out. And then there was a broader mandate that anybody that was involved in the Donald Trump investigations, there's going to be a review of their employment. You guys at the Post had reported that FBI officials sent out a questionnaire over the weekend to determine personnel involvement in cases related to the January 6th attack. So all of that was happening at the FBI. Meanwhile, Cash Patel was going through his confirmation hearings. And at those confirmation hearings, Cory Booker asked him this.

I want to play what Cory Booker asked Cash Patel. Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations. I'm not aware of that, Senator. Thank you. So now we have a whistleblower report out today that's indicating maybe Cash might've been aware of that. So a lot there, Carol. Why don't you get everybody up to speed on what we know?

It's really been a breathtaking set of days. And I don't just mean this to complain about our work-life balance. I just mean, if you are an employee of the FBI, you have experienced every day, maybe two or three events that have been stunners. A week before last, a series of the executive leadership for Chris Ray, the FBI director, all career employees, right? They're not beholden to Chris Ray, but they are promoted by him into high level jobs. All of them were brought into a meeting the day before Cash Patel's hearing and told, your names are on the list to go. And the next morning, while Cash Patel is testifying, they are brought again, a larger group of them brought into a meeting with their acting directors, Driscoll and Cassane and told, you got to

resign or you'll be fired by Friday. Resign, retire, your choice, but you got to be gone. And we're sorry, we're just the messengers here. Oh yeah. And over the weekend, all the FBI employees are learning that they are going to be questioned on a formal survey about their role in January 6th. Did you execute a search warrant? Did you subpoena anybody? Did you interview, testify, arrest? A kind of almost like a survey monkey survey to figure out what was your role in investigating a violent insurrection

and attack on police. All those things are happening in a string of days while Cash Patel is assuring the Democrats and Senate Judiciary Committee that he would never be involved in any political retribution and he's not aware of any plans to get rid of anybody. Okay, fast forward. Dick Durbin, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he has multiple, quote unquote, whistleblowers. We use the term carefully. Credible sources who come forward to him to say that those acting directors, Driscoll and Cassane, were being told at that very moment on Wednesday and Thursday, the Wednesday

before the hearing and the Thursday of the hearing, that Cash Patel was the person who wanted these people gone. In fact, in contemporaneous notes taken by an FBI official, it says KP wants fast movement on this and that Stephen Miller had been calling- Maybe that was Christoph Sporzingis. It could be anybody, KP. There are a lot of different people with names KP. Sorry, continue. Right. I think what's interesting to remember about Cash Patel is that he's an interesting witness on the stand. He told the entire public in the middle of the Mar-a-Lago records dispute, when it became news and reporters were learning that the FBI was investigating whether Donald

Trump was hoarding classified records in 2022, Cash Patel, his loyal soldier, shows up on podcasts and interviews saying, I saw Donald Trump declassify all this stuff. He has ultimate power. I saw him declassify to the fullest extent of the law all of these records as if the Mar-a-Lago records had been declassified and that wasn't a problem. Later, he was brought before a grand jury and that's not what he said according to sources. And in fact, testifying on Thursday last, Patel was pressed on that too and said, hey, wait a minute, I didn't say he declassified all those records. I saw him declassify a lot of records. So he's a wily witness. Squirrely. I'm going to say squirrely. You say wily. I'll

say squirrely. And I thinkily, I'll say squirrely. And I think maybe both of those are possibly kind, depending on what the facts are that emerge. It depends on your view, but if you counted how many times he used that favorite phrase, I can't recall as I sit here today, it's not ringing a bell,

but if you gave me more information, one of the things that FBI employees and justice employees watched with shock as they are literally watching his testimony live in their offices or in their remote work locations, as they're watching this, they're like, wait a minute, you said you don't know some of the prosecutors that were fired in Jack Smith's office because there's one particular one that Booker asked him about. And these were people that interviewed Patel for hours in the grand jury. So how could you forget that person? Pete Slauson Well, there are a number of cases. And this

came up multiple times during the hearing, right, where it was also, he also claimed he didn't know about the pardons that were going to be happening of the instructionist. And that's kind of beggars belief. And then, you know, there was a moment where he was asked about, you know, his involvement with the January 6th choir and how he had told Steve Bannon that we were doing this. Adam Schiff was asking about this, that we were involved in this. And then he was claiming that he was using the royal we, like the editorial, right? Like it wasn't really me as part of the week. So like there were a number of times where it's just like, this person is lying. I just want to go back again to the,

I feel like we're in Breaking Bad. You remember the scene where it's like WW and Walter White is sitting there with his brother-in-law and they're like, who could WW be? Is it Woodrow Wilson? Is it Walt Whitman? It's KP wants movement at FBI. That's what the attendee purportedly wrote in the contemporary notes about the firings. I want to play the Cory Booker exchange one more time because we talked about perjury and lying, but like this is as direct as it gets. Let's just listen to him one more time. Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations.

I'm not aware of that, Senator. I'm not aware. At the same time, KP wants movement at FBI. And there's no real gray area here. It's there, it's one or the other. He either was lying or the whistleblower is lying, right? Like somebody's not telling the truth here, right? The problem is, you know,

I don't know that we're going to get the answer, Tim. You're absolutely right. There's no gray matter here. It's black, it's white, one or the other. And I'm not going to put a finger on the scale and say who is or isn't telling the truth because I'm all about facts. But Cash Patel has not been a very

careful, precise, or clear narrator in many other instances before. I mean, debating we, saying he doesn't recollect a prosecutor or interviewed him for hours in the grand jury, saying he's not aware of the appointees that are some of his best friends being installed inside the FBI. People were told he handpicked. But I don't think we're going to get an answer in any timely way. We've had 17 inspector generals fired by the president in the last several days, right? And now the Democrats of the Senate Judiciary Committee are asking the inspector general for the Department of Justice, one of the only ones that was not fired, to investigate this as quickly as possible.

I don't see how this is going to happen quickly. And I think it's going to be challenging for an inspector general to deliver on this question. Because remember, just yesterday, the inspector general for USAID, just to put this in context, was fired as soon as he delivered a report, a fairly blistering report, explaining what the impact of Donald Trump's and Doge's cuts in that agency were. Yeah, I mean, it's the head of the FBI. I just, I don't know how Republican senators, I know that they will, but I just don't know how you look the other way. Having somebody that is not trustworthy in this role, and it's not like running the Department of the Interior, you know, like you would think that you would want the truth and if somebody's lying

about treatment of federal law enforcement officials also. It's not even unsympathetic bureaucrats to Republicans. It's top level federal law enforcement. I guess maybe they are unsympathetic now. I don't know. You are one of the best read, most observant folks I know. You know what Speaker Johnson said the other day, which was basically like, I'm delighted about what Elon Musk is doing. Right? The FBI you think is maybe different than the SID, but I guess not anymore. I guess the federal law enforcement officials, people investigating drug crimes and domestic terrorism are just like kind

of lumped in with mid-level Department of Education staffers now. And I don't know. I'm curious though, from your reporting, like what it's like, like inside the building. And I don't know. I'm curious though, from your reporting, like what it's like, like inside the building. And obviously there's some limits on what you can say, but like, you know, your sources, the DOJ and FBI. I mean, what are people feeling about, you know, right now, kind of what's happening and what's coming? For all the reasons you mentioned and all the questions you've raised, you know, they're about as low as they can go. There was a goodbye party for a person I'm not going to mention. I was not an invitee, just to be clear, but I was

reporting a little bit around the edges of this party of a person who'd been forced out. And there was a funeral reel kind of quality as described by several of the guests. You know, like everyone was in the Biden political cadre that ran the Justice Department. Remember, there's only one political at the FBI, but there's quite a few at the Justice Department. That cadre was preparing for a pretty bracing landing of the 47th president and his administration and what that would mean for the justice department and the FBI that is a component. But even they are gobsmacked.

And one of the reasons is what you cited. You gotta believe that at the FBI, truth and truthfulness in congressional testimony would be important. Another thing that they felt was super important and they talked about at the party was, Cash Patel may be the only nominee for FBI director who felt compelled to take the Fifth Amendment in testimony in a criminal investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Adam Schiff mentioned this rather prominently in the confirmation hearing, Cash Patel was the, you know, sought to be

immunized because he believed he might incriminate himself if he answered questions truthfully in the Mar-a-Lago case and got a federal judge to hear his plea that he could not testify that he had to take the Fifth Amendment and she ultimately agreed and found that he had a reasonable basis to think that he had criminal exposure. Peter T. Leeson Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the FBI or the DRIZ, it does seem like something's going to come to the head with that, I mean, if cash gets confirmed. I'm just wondering if you have any reporting on this.

That's maybe the most crazy situation in the whole government. He's walked a really interesting line and he's viewed as extremely heroic by agents across the building. He has a good reputation, right? He's got 24 years of experience, had just been named, I think, the head of the Newark office, a pretty tough office, and an important one, office, a pretty tough office, and an important one, especially in terrorism and narcotics. Here he is threading this needle of not getting fired, but assuring his staff that he's not going to let them be illegally fired. He didn't say these words, but between the lines in all of the memos he's been sending, staying in enormous contact with the staff, large all agency emails, he has said in a way, I support you, I value your service, and I'm not going to let Emil Boeve, the acting Deputy Attorney General fire you unless he goes through his paces.

That will be an interesting one to watch. It's been really, it's kind of bracing the whole scenario. I mean, he's just this accidental acting bureau head, rising to the moment. Okay. One other topic about DOJ stuff that I just feel like has a little bit got lost. Trump ordered a positive executive order on enforcing the Foreign Crouch Practices Act. It's about a week ago you reported on this. This comes with some other directives that have come from Bondi as she's come in about not really enforcing FARA and kind of really de-emphasizing white collar and corruption crime altogether. Just wondering what you're hearing about that and kind of the implications of this change of emphasis from the DOJ. So there's a lot that's gotten a buzzsaw taken to it in the Department of

Justice's arsenal to fight corruption at home and abroad. And abroad, the FCPA is really about like American businessmen and women and companies and lobbyists can't bribe governments abroad to get their fork in that country. We want to avoid corruption of other countries and we want to avoid aiding and abetting it and encouraging it because it's bad for us, it's bad for those countries. because it's bad for us, it's bad for those countries. But that tool is basically taken off the table for the government. And it's super worrisome. There are other executive orders by Pam Bondi, particularly about Farah. That's the one where you're supposed to register as an agent of a foreign government if you're a lobbyist for them. That enforcement tool is less worrisome, even though that's been neutered as well, is less

worrisome to many of the sources that I speak to. But foreign corrupt practices, this has been a mainstay for keeping our city on a hill modeling as a country and demanding it of other countries. And so what's funny to me, funny is not the right word. What's ironic to me is this is what Trump wanted in 2017. I reported on this in a book that I wrote with my colleague, Phil Rucker, a very stable genius. Trump had basically confronted Rex Tillerson, not really part of the Justice Department

firm of it. He was the Secretary of State. While they're sitting together talking, Trump says, look, I want to get rid of this Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, this bribery statute. It's just not a level playing field for American business people because they can't bribe. That is so classic Trump, right? Let's level the playing field so everybody can crime. Tillerson, as I reported at the time, was aghast. Like first, he was saying like, I'm your secretary of state. Second, that's a law, so I can't undo it. And third, it's really great that we have that protection,

that anti-bribery statute. So Trump eventually forgot, somewhere along the line, forgot that this was a huge priority of his because he kind of hit that roadblock with Rex Tillerson, though he may have tried to bring it up other places. It didn't go anywhere. But boom, here we are, Trump 2.0 and it's happening. And it really is of a piece of just kind of that he wants to sort of end the US's values based role in the world, right? Like that there is a Western, you know, kind of alliance that is based on rule of law and

democracy and, you know, common values and that we are going to have alliances based on that and interests that are informed by that. And like the shuttering of USAID and some of his other actions are just like tied to this right like he doesn't see the US is playing that role anymore like we're not gonna do it like that we're gonna do it like China where we can bribe people we have interests well we'll give you guys a favor here but then if you screw us we'll screw you back right like that's how he sees things zero-sum and I don't know, it's going to have a lot of reverberations, I think, around the world. Carol, any final thoughts for us?

Anything else? Any deep reporting? Any secrets? Any news you want to break? What you said just made me think about the lens through which we watched Donald Trump, which is a person who's unapologetically transactional and a real estate investor who thinks about acquiring things and now, you know, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, and a person who isn't thinking about sort of the model of America, but is thinking of the model of Donald Trump.

And that's where we are leaning right now as a country. All right, Carolina, do come back. That's going to be happening inside the DOJ. We look forward to having your reporting on that and Secret Service. I wanted to get to your reporting on the plane crash. There's so much. So come back soon and appreciate you very much. Thank you, Tim, for shining a light. Thanks so much, Carol. We really appreciate her. I'll bring you to the next guest. I just wanted to put a finer point on what we are talking about there with the Republicans in the Senate because Carol's doing the Lord's work out there. Got to do her reporting. And so haranguing her about the

cowardly Republicans doesn't do us a lot of good. But I have to say, it is absolute madness that the Republicans would confirm this person. This is not really even in the line of what we were talking about with, with Hegseth. Hegseth totally unqualified, an insane appointment, a preposterous appointment. But that is a value judgment, right? We're asking Republican senators to make a value judgment on that person's character and preparedness and bio. And obviously that was too much to ask for all but three of them. But in the situation of Patel, for him to be brazenly lying to their face multiple times, lying about his involvement in the January 6th choir, lying about the way that he associated with cop beaters who were jailed.

He's supposed to be the person that is in charge of the federal law enforcement, in charge of federal police. He lied to senators' faces about how he was working with cop beaters on a fucking song. Right? Like, he lied to them about that. He just, like, looked at their faces like, oh no, when I said we, it wasn't me, it was them. And like, we, just we, the insurrection is broadly. So he lies to them about that. I think that it's certainly possible we need more research into this, but it's certainly possible he lied to them about not knowing about the pardons. Again, I find it pretty hard to believe that it didn't get to him, that Trump decided to pardon

all of these insurrectionists that Cash Patel had been working with and producing songs for, and he was the nominee for FBI director, and he caught no wind of the fact that Trump planned to pardon all the cop eaters. I find that hard to believe. Maybe that happened. Maybe there was a wall. Maybe Donald Trump was uncharacteristically private in his communications. But I find it hard to believe. And then we have this, the firing of these FBI officials, the firing of agents just because they were doing their job investigating people who were involved in the attack on the Capitol. Cash says blankly, you just heard it twice, Cash says point blank, he was not aware of that.

And here we have contemporaneous notes saying KP wants movement. So not only was he aware, according to this report, he was directing their firings. So I just don't know how you can pretend to care about law enforcement or back the blue or integrity or rule of law or anything and confirm this person to be the director of the FBI Without finding additional information that the whistleblower is lying or something else is that there's some other story here besides the obvious because He just told a flat bald-faced lie about his role in firing the people that he is now nominated to lead. And he did it right to the Republican senators face. If they have a single shred of dignity left, they would demand that he testify in front of them and answer questions about this and

tell the truth. Obviously, there's no reason to think they have any dignity left, but I just don't understand how you can even lie to yourself or convince yourself that you are acting in a responsible manner if you confirm this clown who just lied to your face multiple times about very relevant subject matters about his involvement with people that beat police officers. If you have one shred of dignity left, you must hold Cash Patel accountable for his testimony and for his behavior. I don't expect that they will do it. This is not a Lucie of the football situation, but it is worth not just acting like

this is just some other thing. This is not just some exaggeration or some spin. It is a bald faced lie about his role in firing the people that have dedicated their life to protecting us. And it's fucking shameful. Anyway, all right up next a little bit of a change in tone. We got Bob Putnam author of Bowling Alone. I think it'll be good for everybody kind of let's take a deep breath and uh

you know think about the broader issues facing our society instead of this old twerp cash hotel. Stick around for Bob. ["Saga of Aretha"] For a long time, pod listeners have been following the saga of Aretha, the neighborhood cat that we were feeding. Well, it's our cat now. The cat's in the house. I had many of you, many listeners admonishing me that this was my cat for months. I refused to accept that. I was resistant to it But a couple weeks ago, I was stuck in New York while New Orleans had the hundred-year snowstorm

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code THEBULLWORK for 50% off your first order plus free shipping. I am here with Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at Harvard. His books include the groundbreaking Bowling Alone, the collapse and revival of American community, which 25 years later remains one of the most cited works of social science. He's also the subject of a recent documentary, Join or Die. Ominous. I love the ominousness of that title.

That's right in line for our podcast. It's Bob Putnam. How are you doing, sir? Thanks for doing this. I'm doing great. And as you did, please call me Bob. Nobody who knows me calls me Robert. So it's useful if I get a call on my cell phone and they say Robert, I just hang up because they can't possibly know me. So Bob, it is. I'm glad we're on the Bob level now. All right, I had Derek Thompson on over at the Atlantic, I don't know, about a month ago now to discuss our antisocial century.

And what we discovered in that convo is that he was basically cribbing from you. And so I figured we should go right to the source, you know, instead of the intermediary. Yes, I'm glad you said that. I didn't, but yes, I agree with you. All right, I can say it. We love Derek. Yeah, me too.

We have a mutual teasing relationship. All right. So, I want to start here. You wrote Boy Alone in 2000, before basically phones as we know them and social media as we know them now. And so, like, there's this chicken or the egg question kind of about this, right? Like, a lot of the conversation now around our isolation is centered around the phones and social media, but a lot of this stuff was happening before. So I'm just kind of wondering how you parse all that out. First of all, our connections with other people, all sorts of connections, connections with our friends and our family and with the community and with bowling leagues and so on have basically been all of them, trust in other people, all

of them have been going down roughly since the mid-1960s, way before, iPhones were invented way before. So the basic trend can't be caused by these things we carry around. A question is whether social media, I'm going to simplify it to social media, can make up for the fact that we're no longer bowling together. Are they better than bowling leagues or worse than bowling leagues? If I can put it that way. And at the beginning around in the first decade or so of this century,

many people claimed that social media were going to, you know, they were going to be great, better than sliced bread, they were going to bring world peace and so on. The data didn't show that and gradually the data began to question whether social media were as good as, or maybe even worse than, face-to-face connections. And that was the way the scientific evidence was tending. It may be nice to be on Facebook, but it's not making up for the declines in real face-to-face connections. Then in 2020 we had COVID and we had a big global experiment in which we couldn't be face-to-face but we still could zoom. And that gave us a nice test. Well, how about it? Is zooming with grandma better than hugging grandma or not? And I can tell you when that verdict became or not and I can tell you when that verdict became universal, namely November 25th, 2020, and people all over the country said, no, I'm sorry, hugging grandma was much better than this.

I think it was before that, but yeah, it was about three weeks in that I think that we decided that hugging was better. In any event, you'll allow me, I want to go just a little bit further because. Please. Describing this as an either or choice, either we can meet face to face or we can meet virtually is false. And I want to use here the metaphor of an alloy, A-L-L-O-Y.

An alloy is a mixture of two separate elements that is, you know, copper and tin. And if you is copper and tin. If you put copper and tin together and stir them up and heat it and so on, you get, I never can remember whether it's bronze or brass, but you get something different from either the tin or the copper. Now, most of our connections, most of our networks today in the real world are simultaneously virtual and real. My wife and I see each other all the time. We live in the same place, but I often sent her

a text message or even an email saying, come in here. Come in here means moving to the next room. I'm going to show you something. And that just captures the fact that my connections with my wife are mostly face to face, but also virtual. And that's true universally of everybody. I bet you don't know anybody face to face

that you don't communicate with via, you know, email or texts or, or social media and vice versa. So that means we need to think about what kind of alloys we have. Because an alloy in principle could be better than either of the two. We could use, let's say Facebook, to encourage people to connect really face to face with each other.

And about 10 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg came up with the idea of actually what he called communities and bizarrely, he quoted, but without quotation marks, bowling alone. He said, there's been a big decline, would you believe it, in going to PTA meetings and so on. And I've got the solution to that, he said. But it turned out it didn't have that effect. And Facebook's own internal research

shows that although they could do it, they know how to create this alloy that would be the best of both worlds, they don't do it. And you want to have two guesses as to why they don't do it. I was talking, actually, one of the chief engineers and researchers at Facebook, and they invited me out there to talk about social capital and Facebook, and they know how to do it. Two guesses why they don't do it. Because it would generate less conflict. Less engagement.

And less conflict would mean less, you know, addiction to Facebook. And we could have an alloy that is the best of both worlds. If we have to choose, we should choose face to face, but we shouldn't have to choose except it's not a technological matter. It's an economic matter. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. And so there are two parts that I want to get to. One is like the social science and then the tech. But it is obviously true, I guess, for all of us that have lived through COVID, for at least any of us that aren't deep introverts, that like the face to face of it matters, right? That like that you gain something from a face-to-face that you don't from a Zoom. I mean, I have just a chill going up my spine thinking about the Zoom hangs that we had, that where your friends would get together

and have a glass of wine or whatever and hang out. And it was awful. I quit doing them halfway through. So I was like, this is worse than nothing actually. And I, but I can't really put my finger on why. What is it about humans that makes this face-to-face contract nutritious? And why is it that we don't just then do it? If we all know that it's better,

why are people not doing it as much? Why are we sitting around scrolling on our phones? Both of those, it turns out, are very complicated questions. They sound like they're clear questions, good questions, but it's not so easy to answer them. Probably, and this is what I really believe would be the answer. Actually, everything I'm telling you is going to

be what I really believe is the answer. Doesn't mean it's true, but. I would hope so. There's probably a survival advantage, at least for humans in being around other human beings. Loners back in the day, and by back in the day, I mean, really back in our evolution, loners were much more likely to be picked

off by predators. I think that's utterly clear that that's true. Probably doesn't even need much argumentation. There is now some really early, early prehistoric work that suggests that that's true, evidentially suggests that's true. But that probably means that those of our ancestors who had a taste for connecting with other people, and probably what that means is they had developed in such a way that they got high on endorphins, they ended up having more offspring.

And that's probably why we're biologically tuned to prefer being around other people. But now that's only half of your question. The other half is, well, so why are we now suddenly changing our minds? It's very unlikely that our basic genetic makeup has changed. In fact, it's essentially certain it hasn't changed over the period we're talking about. Our biology doesn't determine exactly how we behave. That's determined in part by our social environment,

our social and physical environment. So if physically we're in settings that make it easy to connect with other people, and there are examples of this in the article by Derek Thompson. He quotes Eric Kleinenberg about the importance of public libraries. Once upon a time, we did have public libraries, but in general, public libraries are no longer serving the purpose of connecting people as they once did, and that makes it harder even for people who would like to connect. So it requires social coordination. Does this make sense? I'm generalizing from the single example of physical space to all of the other things.

If the undeniable attractions of not having to worry about other people outweigh the kick of endorphins we demonstrably get when we're around other people, well, it's not that our biology has changed, but it's that the social or technological setting has changed. It's interesting. I was thinking about this interview because on Saturday, my friends were meeting for like a happy hour, but the Super Bowl is here in New Orleans. And so, I was sitting at home and I was like, it's just too big of a hassle. Like, I'm gonna go down there, get an Uber, etc., etc. I'm not gonna go. Canceled it. Like, three hours later, I was sitting alone on the couch looking at social media and I

was going, why did I do that? Like, why did I do, why did I cancel this? Like, yeah, it would have been annoying to go, but the payoff would have been better. But there is something, like all of us like at different levels, right? Like I'm pretty extroverted. So that is the appeal of both of those things is going to be different from, from another type of person, right? Right. But we all have the same thing where we, you know, sometimes are doing stuff that is against

what would bring us happiness and you would think that through 40 plus years of life like I have, like you would know yourself well enough. But it's like we're fighting against kind of powerful forces that are taking us the other way, I guess. I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that. Yeah. And I repeat, not powerful genetic forces. The genetic forces are generally pushing into the go to the darn game and hang out with people. Right.

But the technological and environmental factors, all the social institutions around us, make it less easy. More complicated. And there's another factor today, if we want to get into this, I don't know how far you want to get into politics, but. I want to go into politics next, so let's do it. That's a good transition.

Well, even at Thanksgiving, there are people that are in my Thanksgiving that I basically, I love them, but they have really crazy political ideas. And so we tend to shy away from those talks and therefore political polarization, which is to some extent, and we can get into this, the consequence of social disconnection is also then it reinforces social isolation. I want to talk about the consequence part and then what we'll get about how you deal with

your family members or friends that you have disagreements with. By the way, there's, I basically agree with Derek Thompson's account, but there are a few things in his account that I disagree with and maybe it would be useful to get to that at some point. All right, let's hear them. Yeah, let's, I love, I love a little disagreement. Let's hear them and then we'll get to politics. What were your disagreements?

Well, I think it's a great piece. Of course it's a great piece. Yeah. And I basically agree with almost everything. One part that doesn't seem to me to fit the evidence, he claims that our close ties are as strong as ever. And then there's this intermediate village, he calls it, where the slackening of ties is going on.

And then, then out in the more distant, well, you know, distant arena, it's low under any circumstances. Right. But you can make ties now, I guess this point was in that third category, you can make ties with somebody on the internet that has a shared interest with you that lives in China that you couldn't do that. I guess not China, but it lives in Hungary or whatever you couldn't have before. I think it's, he's wrong about the intimate ties and the best evidence that I know of, including some recent evidence that has just come out in the last couple of weeks, say that family ties, close intimate ties have been slackening.

First of all, over this period, many fewer people are getting married, which is one kind of intimate tie. Secondly, few people are having fewer children. And why is that? Because people are having sex less. That's the most intimate kind of, of contact. I mean, of social contact you can imagine.

And especially among younger people, that also is declining. So I just think it's wrong. It's a little bit romantic in my opinion. I mean, of social contact you can imagine, and especially among younger people, that also is declining. So I just think it's wrong, it's a little bit romantic in multiple senses of the word romantic to think that, well, we don't know our neighbors as well, but we really do love and cherish our most intimate ties. And actually many different kinds of evidence suggest that's not true. Now, of course, we're not going to be able to weigh my evidence against Derek's evidence here, but I

wanted to single that out. And if I'm right, I think that's even more devastating actually. Yeah. Well, this is actually kind of related a little bit to a topic I wanted to get to because then, and I think it does relate to the politics a little bit, because I'm not going to get into the social science data here, but like on its surface, a lot of times

when you talk about this social isolation, I think maybe because you use the example of the bowling alley, people like have an image of like that we're talking about middle class and upper middle class people, maybe white people in particular, but like that is like really the group that, you know, a lot of this kind of conversation is focused on. Can I interrupt for just one second? That's factually false. Bowling is the most interclass, interracial

sport in America. Blacks bowl more than whites. Not much, but they do. Is that true? Come on. I'm a fat guy here. You can look it up and bowl alone. That's true? Come on. I'm a fat guy here. That's a fun fact though. I wouldn't have thought that.

Upper upper class people ball less than working class people. I was getting to the fact that like that your research was really not about this too, but a lot of times when you're in the podcast world, like feels like the anecdotes that a lot of people use are kind of like upper middle class anecdotes. Cause it's mostly upper middle class people that are fucking doing podcasts and reading the Atlantic. So nothing against podcasts in the Atlantic, which I do. Yes. That's it. Actually, like the isolation,

the intimate tie isolation, like the marriage rate, you know, the sociability, it's going down across the board, but in like elite circles, it's doing less bad. And like in liberal elite circles, liberal elite circles in particular, like marriage rates are higher, divorce rates are lower, connectivity is higher. Like if you just look at the numbers. Yes.

And it's in the groups that are increasingly going mega, which is diverse really, like the working class groups that have, that where the Democrats have lost some ground. Like that is where these numbers are the worst actually. Forgive me for self citation here, but when you talk to an academic, that's what you're going to hear. I wrote a whole book about that fact, that there's a growing gap between rich kids and poor kids, rich adults and poor adults, that and all the ways you talked about, marriage rates are steady or actually rising among college-educated Americans plummeting among

non-college-educated Americans. Class is a big dividing line here on all these trends and moreover it's becoming a bigger dividing line than race. So the gap between college-educated blacks let say, and non-college educated blacks is growing and that showed up in the last election. This is fundamentally why the, I don't know if it's fair to say Trump, well I guess it is fair to say Trump made gains among some blacks, but which blacks? Non-college educated blacks. The same place he's been making gains among whites and Latinos. And so I think this has big implications for the strategy, the proper strategy for the

Democratic Party. That's a separate question. What should we do about it? And as I say, this has been clear for at least this growing class gap has been clear for at least 20 years because that's when I, I mean 10 years ago is when I wrote about it. So let's see what we summarize what we said. It is an asocial 21st century, that's right, but that's even true for family ties and it's especially true for the have nots and even more true for men, young men. So this, I'm not saying that there isn't a bigger problem, there is, but when you drill down and say where is this problem worst, it's among have nots, young have nots, young male have nuts. To me, like that is a much more challenging, like nut to crack.

Right? I don't know, like, you know, trying to figure out how to get whatever, you know, you're a college educated upper middle class, little Johnny, or I can say all different names now, you know, little, little Dylan, little Corbin, you know, to like hang out with more people or to be in your 20s and be in a city and try to figure out how to join the kickball league or whatever. That's a very addressable problem. I mean, we haven't done a great job of addressing it since you wrote the book, but we can wrap

our heads around it. Do you have thoughts from the book, from the research you did on non-college men and figuring out how to kind of reverse the isolation trend because they have less access to opportunities to socialize, busier, more access to phones, and obviously not to, like you almost roll your eyes to say video games, but whatever, TikTok. So I don't know. I'm just like,

do you have any thoughts on ways to mitigate it with that demo in particular? I'm glad you asked. I feel like I've been asking good questions. I've had, I've had a few compliments so far on my questions. So I'll take it. Okay. I want to begin with a little bit of history. I promise this will turn out to be relevant. I trust you. At the turn of the last, from the 19th to the 20th centuries, around 1900, there was what people then called the boy problem. What was the boy problem?

It was that young men were unusually isolated. Now the backstory is because they basically, or their parents had been living in little villages, whether the villages were in Iowa or in Southern Italy, but they were now living in the big city in Chicago or the East, Lower East Side of Manhattan. And it wasn't as easy to make friends there. Girls are just generally better at making friends than boys.

That's a sociological fact that they are. And so these young men were causing mayhem on the streets of Chicago or New York or really any of the big cities in America around 1900. And it was so bad that it was called, quote, the boy problem, unquote. And then they fixed it. So now the question is, how did they fix it? And this relates to a second principle that I have for building social capital. Building social capital can't be like saying, eat your spinach people. It's gotta be fun. I mean, okay, we may wanna have character formation

or something, but it's gotta be fun or else people are not gonna do it. That's why, by the way, I used bowling leagues as one of my start metaphors, because actually, I don't know if you've, bowling is actually fun. And competitive bowling, it's friendly competition, but it is, you get a high when you,

when you get a strike, when you knock down all the pins with one ball. Little trash talking, you know, you can do it no matter whether you're skinny or muscly or portly. But it most important for these purposes, it's fun. Yeah. So now back to the boy problem. We want to have something that's going to make

fun for the kids, but it's also going to bring them together in productive ways. And we did that and wait for it. The boy scouts were invented in America. I'm doing this for memory. So if you're fact checking, I'm off by a year or two, but between 1905 and 1910, virtually all of the major youth serving organizations in America

were invented. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls and Boys Clubs with a capital B, capital C and Big Brother, Big Sister and on and on. And they were all invented in five years. Quite remarkable. Why then? Because that's when the boy problem and more generally the isolated youth problem began to appear. I just Googled 4-H just to test you. 1912, right there. I don't make that up. I may be misinterpreted, but I'm really careful about my facts. By the way, and 4-H was actually created

by the government. Most people don't know that people sometimes say government is going to spoil everything. 4-H was invented by the department of agriculture. Keep a look at it in your, in your Wikipedia. I see it, it's right here. Okay. Back to the Boy Scouts.

I'm not talking about the Boy Scouts today. It's got a lot of problems, et cetera, but I'm talking about the Boy Scouts in 19, whatever got a lot of problems, et cetera, but I'm talking about the Boy Scouts in 19, whatever it was, 1910, roughly speaking. Sure. The Boy Scouts is fun. Fundamentally, it's fun. I don't know whether you're, have ever been in the

Boy Scouts. I was very active in the Boy Scouts when I was really little, so it's, I'm now describing things that happened about 75 years ago. Wasn't my cup of tea. I did the Cub Scouts, wasn't my cup of tea, but that's okay. I saw that other about 75 years ago. Wasn't my cup of tea. I did the cup scouts, wasn't my cup of tea, but that's okay. I saw that other people were having fun. Okay.

Well, stick with me for a moment. It was fun. You know, I learned bird identification. I became a lifelong birder because of that. We went camping and hiking. That was super fun. But also there was character formation. Your viewers have to look at me.

I now have my three fingers raised and I'm saying a scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. And I missed one, trustworthy, loyal. There's one right in there that I missed, but I got 11 out of 12. Trustworthy, loyal, there's one right in there that I missed, but I got 11 out of 12. That's pretty good. And that's remembering back 75 years. Now step back from that anecdote. What was that? That was about character formation. It was about our obligations to other people. I mean, most of those are quite, we would like to have kids have those values today, wouldn't we? I mean, trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous.

Sure. Kind, all those are sounding pretty good. Obedience sounds a little 19th centuryish. Yeah. Brave sounds a little. I like brave. Uh, clean. Yeah, that's not so bad.

Reverent. I mean, what the Scouts were as a response to the boy problem was to combine fun and character formation. Now stick with me for a moment. You asked me, we began this conversation saying, okay, we got the boy problem. What do we do about it? I am not saying that today the Scouts are the

solution to that problem. And I don't think people my age are actually going to be good at guessing what will work in the middle years of the 21st century. Old guys like me can sometimes be helpful in saying that there is a problem because I personally remember when we weren't so isolated as we are now. But it's my grandchildren who are now mostly in their 20s and maybe even my great grandchildren, let's hope they come along sometime. They're the ones who are going to have the mindset

tuned for the middle and late 21st century. So what I can say to them, and I do say to them, because I've got seven nice grandchildren, you didn't cause this problem, but history has bequeathed you the responsibility for fixing it. It's not impossible. Indeed, I can give you some guidelines about how we fixed it the last time. And the last time, among other things, we focused on young people, we focused on young men,

we focused on isolation, and we came up with, would you believe, the Scouts. Now, the Scouts may not seem right to my grandchildren or great grandchildren, but I'm trying to say to them, you've got to come up with something like that and maybe almost certainly it will involve the internet, but it won't be just internet based. It'll be something that brings young people together, having fun, but also learning to respect one another. I'm sorry, that's my sermon for the day. I don't know if that makes sense, but... No, it's good. It's a good sermon. It has me thinking about what could serve that purpose.

I want to tie the knot on two other things before I lose you because you mentioned the Thanksgiving dinner. And one of the things that you write about in the social capital is there's the binding social capital versus the bridging social capital. And the binding are people who are basically like you and your characteristics and the bridging are people who are different. And so within the political context, the bridging social capital, I mean, clearly, I don't know, while bowling of loan has aged well, quite well, as well as anything, you know, you're right up there with amusing ourselves to death as far as social science books aging well. The upswing, your 2020 book, How America

Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, eh, aging a little so-so so far. I don't think so at all, actually. I think that book is the book, forgive me. Okay, no, please. So how do we do it? How do we do, how do we do some bridging social capital and come together a little better? Of course, you'd expect an author to defend his work. Of course. But I think that the upswing, which let's just say, let's say quickly for readers who have not yet had the pleasure of reading the upswing, it's in a way like Bowling Alone except it steps back in two senses. It doesn't just look at social connections, it also looks at political polarization, it also looks at inequality

and it looks at cultural change, the degree to which we were either in any given year a we society or an I society. And it looks at it that not, Bowling Alone basically looked at the previous 25 years, this looks at the previous 125 years. So this goes way back and the advantage of doing that, those two changes, widening the scope of what you're looking at and lengthening the time over which you're looking at it, reveals that there was a time about 125 years ago at the beginning of the 20th century, when we faced essentially the same problem as we have today. What's today's problem? We're very unequal, we're very polarized, we're very self-centered, we're very socially isolated. What was the

problem in America around 1900? We were very polarized politically, we were very unequal, we were very self-centered, and we were very socially isolated. We were very unequal. We were very self-centered and we were very socially isolated. I'm not taking any time here to document those facts. That's why the book is 325 pages long. By the way, that book was written jointly with Shailene Ramney Garrett. Got to make sure that she gets full credit. And the advantage of looking at that period is that we can see that the people in America in 1900 faced exactly the same problems that we did today.

What are our problems today? We've got this crazy polarization, so did they. We've got this unbelievable level of inequality, so did they. We've got this great social isolation that is basically the theme of this podcast, so did they. And we got this great social isolation that is basically the theme of this podcast. So did they. And we're very self-centered.

We're very narcissistic and so were they, but they got out of it. As we look at the whole period of the 20th to 21st centuries, the last 125 years, what you see is the first half of that period, roughly speaking from 1910 to roughly speaking 1965, roughly speaking, things were going in a good direction and they were going the direction that we would like. America was becoming steadily more cooperative politically. There was a lot

of conversation across party and cooperation across party lines. Indeed, most major reforms of that period were passed by majorities of both parties. The New Deal was passed by majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. The Great Society, Lyndon Johnson's, was passed, the majority of it, by both parties together. was passed, the majority of it by both parties together. Ronald Reagan's deals, you know, the Reaganomics was passed by majorities of, well, not quite a majority of Democrats, but it was passed by definitely bipartisan majorities. It wasn't just Republicans, it wasn't just far right, it was the Democrats too. So what I'm trying to say was, in that, you know, roughly speaking from the 1900 till about 1965, and even a little later than that, America, wait for this, when I was in high school in the 1950s, everybody thought the most equal country, people now would think

maybe the most equal country in the world was socialist Sweden. Almost right. America, when I was in high school, was tied with Sweden as the most equal country in the world. Think about it. We're used to America being, you know, having a huge gap between rich and poor, but when I was in high school, the gap between rich and poor in America, in capitalist America, was about the school, the gap between rich and poor in America, in capitalist America, was about the same as the gap between rich and poor in socialist Sweden, and both of them were way ahead of anybody else. We're no longer there. What I'm trying to say was, the first half of the 20th century, roughly speaking, 1910

to 1960, 65, we were moving in the right direction. Less polarization, less inequality, less social isolation, less me, me, me. And that's why I think we need to look at that, the period in American history, which is most like the one we're in now. Deep polarization, deep inequality, deep self-centeredness, deep social isolation. I don't know if I've mentioned all four of them, but they got out of it. And that means we could too, if we learned lessons from that period. I would like you to also tie the room together on the phones, because you mentioned that on the phones because you mentioned that they don't have to be used to degrade our social cohesion. Right? Like you could imagine a way where the technology supplements that, obviously, that's

not really happening. I mean, I guess it's happening in certain niche ways, but it's not happening at scale. So I'm just wondering what your thoughts were on that. If we have any final substantive, productive lessons for how we could use the phones for good or if that's not possible. I don't know that I have any useful things to say about that, but I do want to say one thing, driving from the book that you were dismissing. The upswing. So I was just teasing you. We all have subheads. Pete Slauson Come on, army.

Pete Slauson I'm just saying the how we could come together again in 2020, I just, it's 2025, maybe in 2035, it'll look good. I'm just saying right now today, we're not exactly, it's not exactly kumbaya in this great country. Pete Slauson Was the title of the book, How We Can Come Together in 2020? No, it was How We Can Come Together in 2020? No, it was How We Can Come Together Again. I didn't, careful, you can predict things as long as you don't predict the exact data, which is going to happen.

That's, I think, Yogi said that too. This is what I want to say. One of the things we learned in that book, and I'm going to shock your listeners if they think I'm a, you know, a pretty secular straight guy. I mean, I am straight, but pretty secular factual guy. When you look at all those variables that I looked at, hundreds of variables we looked

at, you know, how unequal and how self-centered or not we were, the leading indicator, the thing that had to change first was actually moral. If we had more time here, I'd go through the details. There was a very specific period in American history in the late 19th century in which people reevaluated their moral obligations. I am not talking sex at all. I'm talking the very simple thing, do we have obligations to, are we a we? Do we have obligations to other people? And that involved initially evangelical Protestants

saying, look at the damn Sermon on the Mount. They probably didn't say damn, but Christianity, they said, is not about helping the rich and dismissing the poor. Every sentence in the Sermon on the Mount, which I could not reproduce here, but could come close, is about the place of Christians. This is evangelicals. The place of Christians is beside the poor. And that same thing, that was evangelicals, but pretty soon it became all Protestants and pretty soon it spread to Catholics and Jews and pretty soon to the whole darn country. And that's the thing that was the first thing that was required before you started making creating unions or you know having new ways of connecting the Boy Scouts and and all that.

Before all of that, people in that era became convinced, not everybody of course, but there was a switch. You can see it in the data, a switch in which people began to think there are other people in the world more important than me, I have obligations to other people. Now, you did not think you were going to get an evangelical preacher on this podcast. But that's where I would like to end up because we can talk, I'd love to talk about the details of how we, you know,

how we could tweak phones or how we could, you know, re-institute unions or how we could narrow the gap between rich people and poor people or even how we could, you know, change the administration because we're in a pickle now if you hadn't noticed. But upstream from all of that is we and especially our young people, because it was young people then and it's young people now, need to begin thinking that we have obligations to other people. That sounds so simple, but it's really hard. But that's my admonition for America and especially for my grandchildren. This is not me just preaching to other people. And I'm proud of my grandchildren. They listen to their grandmother, who other people. And I'm proud of my grandchildren.

They listen to their grandmother, who's even better social capitalist than I am. They listen to me sometimes. They listen to their parents who are also really nice. But it's going against the core values that they are currently imbibing. I repeat, this is not about sex. It's about just simple,

do we have obligations to other people? So I'm sorry, Tim, you didn't ask me to come on as a lecture preacher. No, I wanted to gather as much wisdom from you as I could. There's something to it. Look, I also am secular, unlapped Catholic, but there's no doubt something to it. There's no doubt something to it. You know, there's no doubt something to the decline. By the way, this Pope is exactly the Pope we need because that's exactly what he's doing. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get into Catholic. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's okay. He's a good

Pope, though, you know, I don't know. We could do a whole other episode about that. The Catholic Church is polarizing like the country. Yeah, they are. So, Pope hasn't exactly had the impact on cohesion that you would have hoped. But anyway, to be continued. It was an honor. I really appreciate you coming on and I hope folks can check out, join or die. Or if your sociology teacher didn't make you read Bowling Alone, go read it. It's a joy. It's a delight. And hopefully we can stay in touch. I appreciate it very much. Thanks an awful lot, Tim. It's been a lot it's a delight, and hopefully we can stay in touch. I appreciate it very much. Thanks an awful lot, Tim.

It's been a lot of fun for me too. Thanks so much, Carol Lanag, Bob Putnam. Really appreciate both of you. Wonderful podcast. We'll be back tomorrow. As you know, we'll see you all then. Peace. We're lonely dancers, join me for the night.

We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry. We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide. We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry. We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide. We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry. We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide. We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry. We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide. We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry. We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide. We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry

We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide I know the answer, baby, dance with me so we don't cry La la la la la, cry La la la la la Your lover left you, broke up tonight My lover's busy, kissing other guys Oh, we're both alone now, tears in our eyes I know the perfect way to waste our time

We're lonely dancers, join me for the night We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide I know the answer, baby, dance with me so we don't cry La la la la la, cry La la la la la Wait, stop, forget that guy He don't know love, I hope he does

Get back up, we'll be alright Tonight you're mine We're lonely dancers, join me for the night We're lonely dancers, baby, dance with me so we don't cry We're lonely dancers, there's no need to hide I know the answer baby, dance with me so we don't cry La la la la la, cry Dance with me so we don't cry The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason

Brown.