The Daily - 'The Interview': Robert Putnam Knows Why You’re Lonely

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

The author of “Bowling Alone” warned us about social isolation and its effect on democracy a quarter century ago. Things have only gotten worse.

From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. This isn't going to come as a newsflash. Things feel fragile in America. And there is a broad consensus across parties and demographics that we are struggling to come together and face our many challenges. Which is why when I heard about a new documentary about the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, I knew I wanted to talk to him. Nearly three decades ago, Putnam became something pretty rare, a celebrity academic. In 1995, he published a groundbreaking paper called Bowling Alone, America's Declining Social Capital. In it, he used data from the previous few decades to prove that America was transforming from a nation

of joiners to a nation of loners. We were going to church less, joining clubs at declining rates. And he warned that as a result, we were losing trust in our fellow Americans and our institutions. result, we were losing trust in our fellow Americans and our institutions. That paper caught the attention of then-President Bill Clinton, and before long, regular people couldn't stop talking about it either. Putnam expanded it into a best-selling book a few years later. And for a moment, it seemed like his work might pull us back from this isolation highway we were all on. We all know how that story unfolded. Putnam's now 83, and he's watched as we've become more divided, more lonely, and less confident about the way forward than ever before, even as the stakes only get higher. Here's my conversation with Robert Putnam. Dr. Putnam, your work is all about connection. So I'm wondering

first, can you describe your own social life? I mean, what clubs are you in? That's a really embarrassing question. I write about and talk about the importance of connections, of social capital, which is my jargon for connections and trust and so on. teacher, and a terrific mother, and an even better grandmother. We've got two kids and seven grandchildren. And in the long run, her work is going to have a longer half-life than mine. I'm not just being modest, because those kids are going to be around long after people have forgotten anything about this Putnam, the writer and author. So that's a long way of saying not many clubs, am I right? Right. When I was a kid, I joined everything. There's a picture of my high school yearbook, and basically there's nothing in my high school that I did not join. Band and chorus and debate and even football and on and on. But as I've gotten older, I've gotten, it's hard to go to club meetings when

you're on the road all the time. And I am. That's the sad fact. That's interesting to me because you're grappling with, I think, something that we all grapple with, which is how harried our lives are, how hard it is to actually find a meaningful connection. And a big part of why I was interested in having this conversation with you is that when it comes to social connection, things feel bad right now. Do things feel bad to you, too? Oh, sure. I think we're at a really important turning point in American history. Of course, American history is full of turning points, but this is a pretty important one. What I wrote in Bowling Alone is even more relevant now. Why? Because what we've

seen over the last 25 years since the book was published is a deepening and intensifying of that trend. We've become more socially isolated, and we can see it in every facet of our lives. We can see it in the Surgeon General's talk about loneliness. And he's been talking about it relatively recently, and he's talking about the psychological state of being lonely. That's in bowling alone, the fact that people were becoming more and more socially isolated. And the social isolation leads to lots of bad things. We're seeing it right now. Let me give you a particular example. Socialization leads to lots of bad things. We're seeing it right now.

Let me give you a particular example. Social isolation is really bad. Well, it's bad for your health. That's part of the story of the book. But it's really bad for the country because people who are isolated, and especially young men who are isolated, are vulnerable to the appeals of some false community. That was true, and I can cite chapter and verse on this, eager recruits to the Nazi party in the 1930s were lonely, young, German men. And it's not an accident that the people who are most attractive today to white nationalist violence are lonely, young, white men. Loneliness is bad for your health, but it's also bad for the health of the people around you. Does that make

sense? It does. I want to understand a little bit about the terms that you use for how you describe this. You distinguish between two types of social capital, right? There's bonding social capital and there's bridging social capital. Exactly. Can you explain that distinction? Sure. Ties that link you to people like yourself are called bonding social capital. That's just the way the word is used. So my ties to other elderly male white Jewish professors, that's my bonding social capital. And bridging social capital are your ties to people unlike yourself. So my ties to people of a different generation or a different gender or a different religion or a different politics or whatever, that's my bridging social capital. I'm not saying bridging good, bonding bad, because if you get sick, the people who bring

you chicken soup are likely to reflect your bonding social capital. But I am saying that in a diverse society like ours, we need a lot of bridging social capital. And some forms of bonding social capital are really awful. So the KKK is pure social capital. Bonding social capital can be very useful, but it can also be extremely dangerous. So far, so good, except that bridging social capital is harder to build than bonding social capital. But basically, that's the challenge, as I see it, of America today. There's a lot more to say about it, but the basic challenge is we need a lot more bridging social capital, and that actually want to start by talking about individual connections. You know, in preparation for this interview, I talked to a lot of people about social isolation. Sure. My 33-year-old niece feels it. My nearly 60-year-old sister feels it. I feel it.

People think that they've lost the ability to connect. 24 years ago, you placed a lot of blame on television. Nowadays, many people place the blame on phones, although maybe that's too simplistic. Well, let me go back originally. At the time I wrote Bowling Alone, social media was still six or seven years in the future. I did speculate a little bit about social media because I didn't guess that, but about the internet, I did speculate a little bit. And as it happens, my speculations about the effects of the internet turned out to be

approximately right. And it's now a quite common idea that social media are to blame for all of our troubles. And I think that's a lot true. Although, even now, I don't think we should exculpate television. There was a recent Nielsen report which said that on average, the typical adult spends more than 10 hours each day with media. Okay, 10 hours every day, think of that. But about half of that is still devoted to television. So even now, even long after the invention of the internet and social media and the iPhone and so on, television still has that effect of privatizing our leisure time. That's the fundamental thing it does. Right. We're not interacting face-to-face with a real person.

Right. And one really important question that I don't think we really know is, what is it about face-to-faceness that matters so much? Face-to-faceness matters. There's no doubt about that. And why it matters, I don't know. Nobody knows. But I want to add one more thing, because to have that as a dichotomy, which most discussions of this have, is it better to do Facebook or better to go bowling on a team, that kind of issue, that is not the right way to think about the problem.

What is? I want to use an analogy here with the concept of alloy. here with the concept of alloy. An alloy is a mixture of two different metals, but mixing them together has unique characteristics. Today, almost all of our social connections are simultaneously face-to-face and virtual. Our social ties are all alloys. My wife and I, for example, social ties are all alloys. My wife and I, for example, we have offices, you know, just next door, but often we send emails to each other. How weird is that? I text my husband all the time, even if we're in the same house. Exactly. Well, it turns out that's not peculiar to your marriage or my marriage. That's extremely common that our most intensive personal face-to-face ties are also the people with whom we interact virtually most of the time. So there are ways in which we could combine face-to-face and Internet that would be really productive.

We could develop social media in a way that they would actually contribute to our lives, our personal lives and our collective lives, but it would have been a little less profitable. Let me take this idea a little further because as we've been talking, there's been two sort of ideas that are in tension here. One idea is that face-to-face is better. You've said it. We definitely experienced it during the pandemic. We know it. We are social animals. We need to see each other. And the other side is that you're texting your wife and I'm texting my husband, even though we're in the same house. We want community, and yet there's something that takes us away from community. Why? There are two ways of answering that question.

The first answer is we're busy. And you might think, therefore, busy people are going to be more online and less face-to-face. But here's what's complicated about that theory. Actually, when we look, and in Bowling Alone, I did this very, very carefully, we look to see who is a joiner and who is not a joiner, who connects in real life, bowling leagues or Kiwanis or women's reading groups or whatever. And I compared that to how busy they were. And the fact is, reading groups or whatever. And I compared that to how busy they were. And the fact is busy people are more connected with the rest of the world. So there are, I don't like to use pejorative language, but there are some sloths among us who don't connect face-to-face and also don't connect with, they just sit in front of the television. And there are other people who are very busy,

but nevertheless managed to connect with a lot of people both face-to-face and during the media. So it's basically, if you're asking why do we have people no longer connecting face-to-face, it absolutely is not because we're too busy. So then what is it? Well, so I know you ask an academic a simple question and they answer with an encyclopedia. And the next thing that academics always do is cite their most recent book. So, that's what I'm going to do. My most recent book is called The Upswing. I wrote it jointly with a brilliant young woman named Shailene Romney Garrett.

We looked at long-run trends. Trends, for example, in social capital, that is trends in connectedness, trends in loneliness, that sort of thing, over the last 125 years. And the short version is that curve, it's an upside-down U-curve. We were socially isolated and distrustful in the early 1900s, but then there was a turning point. And then we had a long upswing from roughly 1900 or 1910 till roughly 1965. And that was the peak of our social capital. That is, people were more trusting then, they were more connected then, they were more likely to be married then, they were more likely to join clubs then, et cetera. And then for the next 50 years,

that trend turned around. And the book bowling alone looked at that single trend. But this new book not only extends the length of time of looking at these things, but also looks at three other variables. First, political polarization. That trend in political polarization or depolarization follows the same pattern exactly that the trends in social connectedness follow. same pattern exactly that the trends in social connectedness follow. That is low in the beginning of the 20th century, high in the 60s, and then plunging to where we are now. So we now have a very politically polarized country, just as we did 125 years ago. The next dimension is inequality. America was very unequal in what was called the Gilded Age in the 1890s, 1900s. But then that turned around and the level of equality in America went up until the middle 60s.

In the middle 60s, it's hard to believe this, in the middle 60s, America was more equal economically than socialist Sweden. And then, beginning in 1965, that turns around and plunged, and now we're back down to where we were. We're in a second Gilded Age. And the third variable that we look at is harder to discuss and measure, but it's sort of cultural. To what extent do we think we're all in this together? Or to what extent do we think it's every man for himself or every man and woman for

himself? And that has exactly the same trend, pause. What caused that? I am trying to get to the issues of causation because it turns out to be morality, according to my reading of this evidence. What stands upstream of all these other trends is morality, a sense that we're all in this together and that we have obligations to other people. Now, suddenly, I'm no longer the social scientist. I'm a preacher. Now, suddenly, I'm no longer the social scientist. I'm a preacher. I'm trying to say, we're not going to fix all these problems in America, polarization, inequality, social isolation, until, first of all, we start feeling we have an obligation to care for other people. And that's not easy. So don't ask me how to do that. That is a very hard thing to reverse, this idea that we're not all in this together, this idea that we're not rowing the same way. And I'm hearing you enumerate all these different things that are behind it, polarization, et cetera, et cetera. makes this a uniquely American problem? Because we look at other countries that have similar financial and economic and political systems, and they don't suffer as acutely at this moment

as we do from these things. Can I take issue with the framing of the question? You say, why are we among all nations prone to or... Uniquely afflicted. Uniquely afflicted. And we're not. That's my short answer. But we are. But we are. No, we're not. First of all, a little bit about the so is Hungary, so is Canada. It's hard to name an advanced industrial democracy in which there's not really deep, I mean seriously deep, political polarization. And if you'll allow me to get a little political, Trump-like figures in all of those countries.

Okay, how about economic inequality? The degree to which we're unequal, it's true, is probably higher in America than anywhere else. But the trend in inequality, that is the growth of inequality over the last 35, 40 years, is completely non-unique to America. Okay, how about social isolation? There was a lot of debate once upon a time when Bowling Alone first came out. People said, well, it's true in America, but it's not true here.

But then there was a second wave, and almost everybody agrees that there has been in their country in the last 30 or 40 years a growth in social isolation and loneliness. And indeed, some places have the government department of loneliness. I'm not even joking. Okay, now how about is America uniquely individualistic? There was a guy who wandered around, a Frenchman actually, who wandered around America in the 1830s, a guy named Alexis de Tocqueville. He wandered America in 1831 all over the country. And he came away thinking the most interesting thing about America that he discovered was that it was incredibly communal. And he didn't know the word social capital, too bad for him, but he was talking about joining. People were always joining.

However, he talked about, really incessantly, about how Americans were individualists. Now, how do you reconcile those two points? Is America individualistic or are we communitarian? He, in effect, said there are ways in which Americans are both and we even have a secret. He said this is the secret to America. It's called self-interest rightly understood. And he said it's because Americans, they do pursue their self-interest, but they think about it in the long term. They think about, well, in the short run, maybe I can gain by, you know, cheating somebody. But in the long run, that's bad for everybody. If everybody followed that practice, we'd be a poorer country.

We're all better off if we all can cooperate. It reminds me of something. I've covered a lot of natural disasters, among other things. And studies have shown that neighborhoods that have strong connections recover much more quickly from natural disasters than neighborhoods that don't. The ones that have strong ties, they do better. Absolutely. And I'm conscious of that. At this moment, I'm speaking to you from Cambridge, Mass., where we are lucky enough to have a

very nice home right in Harvard Square, but we also have a very nice home up in New Hampshire. And one of the reasons we like New Hampshire is because it happens purely by chance that the places we're living has the highest level of social capital in America. And I have got the data to show it. And what that means is that if a disaster happens, the power goes out, which happens all the time up in the woods, people will help one another. Now, maybe they would do that in Cambridge. I don't know. But in Cambridge, you probably wait for the utility to fix the utility.

you probably wait for the utility to fix the utility. But if there's a bad snowstorm, our neighbors come to shovel us out because they think I'm too old to shovel the snow, which is actually true. So I'm just reinforcing your idea that disasters require social capital. Wait, wait. You own a house in the place

with the most social capital in the United States? Did that happen because you're there or you moved there because it has social capital? Well, here's correlation and causation. I can show you the data that it had social capital decades before I got there. No, no, it's the other way around. I think I was attracted to Jaffrey is the name of this town. Well, partly because it's beautiful, actually, but I'm sure I was attracted to it without even at that point knowing it because you can feel community. I mean, you can be there not very long and you can feel that the neighbors are paying attention to you. One of the first times I went there, I mean, I'm sorry, this is just a silly story, but I've went to the grocery

store and they had different kinds of potato salad. And I asked the guy at the counter, could I have some German potato salad? And he gave it to me, and it was super. And the next week I came back, and I ordered a different kind of potato salad because I thought, well, you know, maybe try something different. He said, what, you didn't like the German potato salad I gave you last week? I'm a total stranger, and he's paying attention to my taste in potato salad. attention to my taste in potato salad. So I'd imagine that people do come to you a lot asking for solutions about how to feel less lonely on an individual level. And the thesis of this new documentary about your life is join a club. But how does having fun in a running club, for example, translate to democracy with a big D?

How does that small germ of social connection in a club then translate to, I believe in this whole experiment that we are living in? My work and this movie is designed to show you how it is that joining a club, even a trivial, you know, pinnacle club or whatever, tiddlywinks, does help democracy. That's what my work is designed to show. The reason that's true is because it's only by connecting with other people, we generalize from our experience. I mean, in the running club, you learn that you can trust other people and learn in a way how you need to do to maintain that trust. The idea is that you're running with someone, you learn that you can care for people and people can care for you, even people that are different. And therefore, you're more likely to then trust that government and institutions are actually working to help you too.

Yes, but I would say that the causal sequence is you begin with trusting other people. And the trusting in other people produces a government that's trustworthy. The virtue here is not trust. It's trustworthiness. I'm talking especially about government. That sounds like a silly difference, but trust without trustworthiness is just gullibility. I'm not an advocate of pure blind trust. I'm an advocate of trustworthiness. I want other people to be trustworthy of my trust, and I want the government to be trustworthy. Does it matter what kind of a club you join?

You know, is there a tension between what might be more enjoyable for you and what might be better in terms of saving American democracy? Of course, that's a tough question. I'm not sure I have any answer to it. It's got to be fun. I mean, building social capital is not like castor oil. You've got to take it because it's good for you, even though it feels awful. People don't join things unless they're fun.

So I am famous as the advocate of bowling clubs, but you don't bowl so you can, you know, build a better community. You bowl because it's fun. And in the doing of the bowling, in a team, I mean, you're hanging out with folks and you're talking about, you know, the latest TV show that you saw or, you know, that occasionally you might talk about garbage pickup in town. And that's democracy. I mean, doing democracy doesn't just mean, of course, it means voting or it means organizing. I'm a political scientist, so I'm not opposed to that. I'm just saying, don't think that the way to save democracy is just to set out to save democracy. So this is top of mind, of course, because we are in an election year. And this collective

experience that we're all having of feeling disconnected and alone and angry and upset has bigger ramifications than just my own feeling of that. Absolutely, it does. Actually, I should say, even though I am a liberal Democrat, much of my work has actually been supportive of and supported by people on the other side of the aisle. I mean, I have a track record of not being partisan, but I am on the issue of Trump because I think the MAGA movement is different. And why is it different? Well, partly because it doesn't do bridging social capital. I mean, that's part of my diagnosis. That's interesting. Let's talk about that. It doesn't do bridging social capital. It does bonding social capital. It basically tries to find people that are like themselves

and exclude the other. And not only exclude the other, but vilify the other and glorify the fact that it is bonding social capital. I mean, that captures the essence of the Trump movement, that they hate bridging social capital and they love their bonding social capital. That is, they glorify that they alone have the truth. So what is the causality here? Are we politically polarized because we are less connected, or are we less connected because we are politically polarized? Yes. By that, I mean life is not all one way, cause, and effect. And it is a vicious circle that we're caught in now. So what that means is any single strand, if we tried to fix one single strand,

you know, it wouldn't be enough because the other strands would work against that. I don't have any simple solutions to that. I mean, sorry, did you invite me here because you thought I was going to solve all of American problems? I don't solve American problems. I was solve problems I was told you were a sage okay last question and then I have one for you okay I'm just thinking about

in the documentary actually you sitting at the table with President Clinton in the White House, and you must have felt at that moment like your message was going to be received. You must have felt so hopeful at that point. Sure. And in fact, I felt even more that way about Barack Obama. I mean, I was incredibly hopeful about Barack Obama, not just because of who he was, but because I actually knew him well until he became president. He called me Bob and I called him Barack. He drew on my language in many of his speeches. And yet, Dr. Putnam, I hear you and your passion is so great. And I'm moved by it, frankly. But here we are. it, frankly. But here we are. Yeah. So, I don't know. You shouldn't think I've never asked myself that question. In fact, one way to put it is this. 25 years ago, I essentially predicted everything that was going to happen. That's a little exaggerated, but not much. And yet they happened.

Okay, I've been a little bit of an Isaiah, preaching how awful things are. One person once said I was like an Old Testament prophet with charts. I've been working for actually most of my adult life, and maybe even longer than that, to try to build a better, a more productive, more equal, more connected community in America. And now I'm 83 and looking back and it's been a total failure. Now, should I be optimistic or pessimistic about the future? I don't know that I'm optimistic or pessimistic. I could honestly, looking at the polls today, I could be pretty pessimistic. But I am hopeful because I can see how we could change it. And I'm doing my damnedest, including right this moment, to try to change the course of

history. I'm sorry, that's very self-important, and I apologize for that, but I'm telling you honestly how I feel. I don't mean to sound cynical. It's just that what can I do? I've tried my damnedest to sketch a way forward, but I've not been persuasive enough. Well, maybe it's just that one man can't do it alone. We need community.

You're right. Well, what is your question? If I'm right in examining your CV, you started your journalism career at the end of the 20th century, roughly speaking 2000, just about the time that Bowling Alone was released. Yes. Suppose you didn't know me at all and didn't know the book, but you were trying to describe how you think American society or any of these societies you've studied have changed. I'm trying to turn you into not a social scientist, but neither am I a pure social scientist.

What's changed? Better? Worse? Can I call you Bob? well there are two options Bob or your excellency so yes Bob I would say this

I came here in 2017 from having lived overseas and the things that I had seen in other places that I had not seen here before, I started to see here. Families turning against each other, friendships broken, politics invading every part of people's lives. And that has only accelerated. And I think, like you say, to turn that around is a hard and Herculean task. Actually, it's interesting that we have very different careers and origins and so on. But I have actually seen an America that was better.

So I know it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't mean I know how to get out of here, but America as a whole has been in good times. We have trusted one another. That's what my books show. We've trusted one another. We've loved one another. We've been equal to one another.

We've voted for higher taxes on ourselves in order to help poor Americans. We even began to reach across racial lines. I mean, it's not an accident that the civil rights movement comes at the peak of this upswing. So I know that we can do better. And I know that we've turned corners in the past. I mean, we've come back from worse. So there's no question that you can turn a corner. But you asked me in my lifetime what I'd seen. And I'm afraid the trajectory hasn't been on an upswing. And I think that's what your data shows, too. Sure does. It's not just the vibes. I don't do vibes. I do data. After the break, I called Bob back with a theory about why it's so hard to join a club these days. Politics. But he's not so sure.

Everybody who studies people's views agree most people are not interested in politics. Even now? Even now! Hello. Hi, Lulu. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm terrific. Are you at home? I'm at home in New Hampshire.

I'm looking down across our lawn to a pond and then on the far side are trees. And beyond that is the tallest mountain between here and New York City. So yeah, I'm in great shape. Thank you. It sounds beautiful. I'm jealous. So I was thinking about our conversation. And what struck me is, you know, to me, we feel less connected because it just feels like politics has changed since you started researching this. You know, our disagreements aren't just intellectual anymore about how we should pay taxes or how we should fund programs. They feel fundamental and existential to many people. And the remedies that are being proposed, like join a club, don't seem practical because people don't want to spend time with folks who seem to threaten their very way of life.

There's a debate among academics about which comes first, the elite polarizing us or the mass public polarizing. And there are two sides. I mean, there are debates about that, of course, but there's a strong argument in my view that this is top down. The reason people feel the way they do that they don't want to hang out with people who differ from them is because those are the messages they're getting from their political leaders. And there are people who want to join clubs, and they're really happy in those groups, and they're not talking about politics. science, but that was the first discovery of empirical political science. And so by now, everybody who studies people's views agree most people are not interested in politics. Even now? Even now. If you ask people, what are the things that you were worried about in your daily life?

Politics is bottom of the list. Most people don't. They don't wake up in the morning thinking, oh, I wish I could stick it to those abortionists or whatever. They don't. Most people, they wake up thinking about their marriage or their kids or the local sports team or whatever. And then they turn on the news and the news is telling that they should, A, that they should be concerned about public affairs, politics, and B, people telling them what to think. The polarization that we're talking about is mainly provoked from above, to some extent by media, but mostly by political leaders. Okay, so let's say you got to sit with the next president, like you did with former President Clinton and Obama. Yeah. What are the top policy solutions you'd recommend to help remedy social isolation?

I think there are a lot of specific things. For example, about 125 years ago, in other words, roughly around 1900 or 1890, what was called the, quote, boy problem was a big problem. I don't know what that is. Well, it was a problem of boys who were getting in trouble and raising trouble for the country as a whole. And to address that problem, a burst of new associations directed at boys were invented. Big Brothers and the organization called Boys Clubs, now called Boys and Girls Club, but it was then called Boys Clubs. It was invented in 1906, and Boy Scouts. Now, what do I infer from that? This goes back to my understanding of why we would look at that period, the progressive era. Folks in that era were concerned about the same problem we are now. That is, loner males, boys especially,

were getting in trouble and causing the country trouble. And nowadays, it's exactly those loner males, younger loner males, who are drawn to white nationalism and violence. And so if I were talking to the president and said, how do we solve this problem of white nationalism and violence and terrorism in America, we have to begin early in life. And that means thinking of new ways, not the Boy Scouts or whatever, because that's, but what was it? What did the Boy Scouts and those other groups do that was so neat? They combined something that was fun with moral indoctrination. A scout is trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful. I could do this once. I love that you still remember most of it. All the boys in my generation remembered it because you had to.

It was a pledge. A scout is trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. I got it. Now, some of that sounds a little, you know, thrifty sounds a little dated, but trustworthy isn't. That's not wrong. So we need somebody as bright as the people who invented those institutions.

Now, for the 21st century, to think about something that's fun, that will actually be enjoyable for the kids, but also throw in a dose of character education. I want to end by asking you this. You've sounded frustrated with the lack of progress your work has led to. Why do you think it's been so hard to get people from reading your book and understanding your argument to actually doing something about it? I wish I knew the answer to that question. Obviously, I wish I knew the answer to that question. First of all, it's a tough problem.

I mean, if this were an easy problem, somebody else would have fixed it. And the fact that we're divided as a country, or at least think we're divided, makes it even harder to fix. But for the last 25 years, more than two-thirds of my time has not been spent doing research or writing books.

I first of all ran something called the Saguaro Seminar, which tried really hard to get smart people, both practitioners and intellectuals, together to figure out these problems. And we still couldn't crack the problem. But that was my try, and it didn't work. And then the other thing I've spent a ton of time on, I've traveled certainly every state and to hundreds of towns, big towns and little towns all across America. I'm probably over those 25 years, hundreds of thousands of people I've personally spoken to. There are some groups largely around community foundations across America that actually are now, they would tell you, they're following my agenda for trying to fix their communities, who have spent a lot of their time over the last 20 years trying to do what I said they should do.

Has that made a difference? I don't know. I'd be hard-pressed to make the case. But that's, you know, believe me, I'm more aware than you are of my failures. Believe me, I'm more aware than you are of my failures. That's Bob Putnam, Join or Die. The documentary about his life and work is being shown at real-life in-person screenings across the country starting July 19th. See if one is happening near you at joinordiefilm.com.

This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly. Thank you. Priya Matthew, and our producer is Wyatt Orme. Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Special thanks to Bo Breslin, Sarah Lamati, Melanie Mason, Lori Rodriguez, Rory Walsh, Renan Barelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Macielo, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schumann, and Sam Dolnik. If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts.

And to read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview. You can also email us at theinterview at nytimes.com. Next week, my co-host David Marchese speaks with the basketball superstar Joel Embiid, the head of the Paris Olympics. Growing up, I watched the Olympics. It was always about, you know, I want to play. I want to be part of it. So that's been my dream. So to me, that was what matters the most, you know, achieving my dreams.

I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is the interview from The New York Times.