Speaker 1: Pushkin. It was a Thursday night ritual in the Santos House.
Speaker 1: Like families all over America, we'd settle in front of
Speaker 1: the TV to watch a sitcom that, from the opening
Speaker 1: bars of its theme song, really spoke to me. That
Speaker 1: show was Cheers.
Speaker 2: Cheers from before a live studio audience.
Speaker 1: Kind of like ten Pounds, a comedy about a bar
Speaker 1: in Boston owned by washed up baseball star Sam Malone.
Speaker 2: You've changed letters, no cants.
Speaker 1: The jokes spring from the ups and downs of the
Speaker 1: bars slightly oddball roster of staff and clientele, from prissy
Speaker 1: psychiatrist Frasier Crane to beer loving accountant Norm Peterson.
Speaker 2: I like drinking there north same. Oh that's too bad.
Speaker 1: I was just a kid when Cheers was on the air.
Speaker 1: I hadn't tasted my first beer, and most of the
Speaker 1: jokes went over my head.
Speaker 2: The Hindus believed that you led a good life. Do
Speaker 2: you come back and in elevated state like Colorado?
Speaker 1: Yet I loved Cheers. I fantasized that as an adult,
Speaker 1: I'd move to Boston and hang out in a place
Speaker 1: just like that, night after night after night.
Speaker 2: It could be.
Speaker 3: Very sad places some people spend their whole lives in
Speaker 3: the barn.
Speaker 4: Just yesterday, some guy sat right here next to me
Speaker 4: for eleven hours.
Speaker 1: But why did I love Cheers so much? I think
Speaker 1: it mostly came down to the show's theme song, taking
Speaker 1: a break from My life is tough. The song said,
Speaker 1: so wouldn't you like to get away and find a
Speaker 1: spot where community and camaraderie can fix all your troubles?
Speaker 4: Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your neck.
Speaker 1: Even as a kid, I understood the value of a
Speaker 1: place where you could be known and accepted, where you'd
Speaker 1: be welcomed among friends.
Speaker 2: You don't want to.
Speaker 1: Baby where you see it's almost all all as you
Speaker 1: don't want to be what everybody does. But of course
Speaker 1: Cheers was just a TV show. It was a fantasy.
Speaker 1: Deep down, we may all want to go somewhere where
Speaker 1: everybody knows our names. But those places are getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder to find. Many are closing their doors, and
Speaker 1: the ones that aren't shutting down are changing. Lots of
Speaker 1: local spots are becoming places where it's incredibly hard to
Speaker 1: see the same face twice, let alone form long term
Speaker 1: friendships with a bunch of regulars, which, as we'll see
Speaker 1: in this episode is bad for all our happiness in
Speaker 1: some pretty fundamental ways. But the most sad thing is
Speaker 1: that the same fate has even befallen my beloved Cheers Bar.
Speaker 1: What's the ratio of people who come here who are
Speaker 1: kind of from Boston versus tourists? Is it mostly tourists now?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's very heavily tourists.
Speaker 1: Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
Speaker 1: be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What
Speaker 1: if our minds are lying to us, leading us away
Speaker 1: from what really make us happy. The good news is
Speaker 1: that understanding the science of the mind can point us
Speaker 1: all back in the right direction. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 3: They liked the intimacy of it. It's small, about seven
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty square feet, so that they were relaxed
Speaker 3: and could meet other people.
Speaker 1: Tom Kershaw is something of a Boston legend, and so
Speaker 1: is his bar. Long before Cheers appeared on the Santo's
Speaker 1: Family television, his Bull and Finch tavern was pulling in
Speaker 1: Bostonian drinkers from all walks of life.
Speaker 3: We had college professors, we had college graduates, we had
Speaker 3: construction workers. I remember one fella, Butchi. I think he
Speaker 3: kind of was a man of all trades. What a
Speaker 3: whot he was, and he was there every night.
Speaker 1: The Bull and Finch was inspired by the cozy pubs
Speaker 1: Tom had visited on trip to England. He even had
Speaker 1: the interior built in Britain and shipped over piece by piece.
Speaker 1: The tavern opened in nineteen sixty nine and was soon
Speaker 1: buzzing with locals.
Speaker 3: It was just nice people being nice feople, and they
Speaker 3: became good friends.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just beer that was acting as a
Speaker 1: social lubricant. Tom had imported another pub fixture from England,
Speaker 1: a dart board.
Speaker 3: That dartboard was the melting pot, the entree into meeting
Speaker 3: people and becoming friends with people.
Speaker 1: The Bullet Finch quickly became what sociologists referred to as
Speaker 1: a third place. Third places are locations that aren't home
Speaker 1: or work, those first and second places where we spend
Speaker 1: most of our time. Third places are another space where
Speaker 1: people can get together for the sort of informal social
Speaker 1: interactions that make us all feel happier. And third places
Speaker 1: aren't just bars. They can be lions clubs, barbershops, community parks,
Speaker 1: coffee shops, rotary clubs, PTA meetings, or churches. To qualify
Speaker 1: as a third place, a spot doesn't just need a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but a lot of regulars. People need
Speaker 1: to have enough repeated connections and conversations that they start
Speaker 1: to feel like a community. Third places also have a
Speaker 1: knack for bringing together different kinds of folks. Their neutral
Speaker 1: grounds where nobody cares all that much about your income
Speaker 1: or background. There are spots where people are all the
Speaker 1: same as that great Cheers theme song put it, and
Speaker 1: their spots where the regulars wind up feeling happier and
Speaker 1: more connected. Tom in his dart playing regulars could tell
Speaker 1: that the Bull and Finch was a special kind of
Speaker 1: gathering spot. But what they didn't know was that a
Speaker 1: big change was looming. Because it turns out some television
Speaker 1: producers James Burrows and brothers Glenn and Less Charles, were
Speaker 1: on the hunt for their next sitcom. The trio had
Speaker 1: worked on a string of hit shows that were set
Speaker 1: in workplaces like hospitals and newsrooms, and they had just
Speaker 1: wrapped their Emmy Award winning comedy Taxi, which centered around
Speaker 1: a group of New York cabbies. The producers thought a
Speaker 1: third place, namely a neighborhood bar, would be the perfect
Speaker 1: venue for their new show, and Boston seemed like the
Speaker 1: ideal setting. The city's unusual mix so blue collar workers
Speaker 1: and nerdy academic types hadn't yet been featured on a sitcom.
Speaker 1: The new show would be filmed on a Hollywood soundstage,
Speaker 1: but the producers wanted to find a real life bar
Speaker 1: for the exterior shots, so they grabbed a Yellow Pages,
Speaker 1: went down the list of Boston bars and spotted a
Speaker 1: big ad for the Bull and Finch. One morning, two
Speaker 1: strangers from Hollywood were waiting outside when Tom's bar manager
Speaker 1: arrived at work. Can we come in?
Speaker 3: He said, sure, I'm hoping the business. They walked in,
Speaker 3: they looked around, looked at each other and said, this
Speaker 3: is it. They went to the pay phone and called
Speaker 3: their mates and jey, eureka, we have found it.
Speaker 1: The outside of the pub was perfect, but it was
Speaker 1: what was going on inside that really matched what the
Speaker 1: producers wanted for their new show. The clientele at the
Speaker 1: Bull and Finch was the exact oddball mix the writers
Speaker 1: were looking for.
Speaker 3: You know, he had Norm and Cliff and Carla and
Speaker 3: the other had you had Frazier Lilith.
Speaker 1: So did the character seem to map onto any of
Speaker 1: the actual regulars?
Speaker 3: And ye, absolutely we had Fred or that's Susie or
Speaker 3: that's you know whatever. Yeah, we played that game as
Speaker 3: to who was the characters they copied.
Speaker 1: Tom's a graduate of Harvard Business School, so he can
Speaker 1: spot a good deal for allowing his bar to feature
Speaker 1: in Cheers. He was paid just a dollar, but he
Speaker 1: soon made a fortune from the publicity surrounding the show
Speaker 1: and from selling Cheers merchandise to the fans who flocked
Speaker 1: to drink in his now world famous pub. So how
Speaker 1: many people come here a year?
Speaker 3: You knows, a just thousands of people, that's not millions.
Speaker 1: But the problem is you can't be one of Boston's
Speaker 1: top tourist attractions and a place where everybody knows your name.
Speaker 1: The regulars don't come so regularly anymore. And if someone
Speaker 1: does know your name at the Bull and Finch today,
Speaker 1: it's probably a gag that the staff are playing along with.
Speaker 3: We have people that come and say I have a
Speaker 3: friend coming. His name's Fred. When you walk in the door,
Speaker 3: can't wait, say hi, I've Fred.
Speaker 2: People love it.
Speaker 1: Thomas thrilled that his pub has become more profitable than ever,
Speaker 1: especially a time when so many similar businesses have closed
Speaker 1: their doors. But the Bull and Finch isn't the home
Speaker 1: away from home it used to be.
Speaker 3: Times change, people's attitudes, change people's needs, change the neighborhoods
Speaker 3: themselves change. The business is a very dynamic business, and
Speaker 3: what's popular today could be unbopyar tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I started with the story of Cheers, not because this
Speaker 1: is an episode about the mixed fortunes of the tavern business,
Speaker 1: but because research shows that what happened to the bar
Speaker 1: I fantasized about as a kid isn't unique. Lots of
Speaker 1: third places are in trouble.
Speaker 2: I'm born on nineteen forty one, so I'm pre boomer.
Speaker 2: It takes pretty old people to be able to recognize
Speaker 2: the cycle.
Speaker 1: Political scientist Robert Putnam has been keeping a close eye
Speaker 1: on the decline of third places. He started noticing their
Speaker 1: demise in his own community thanks to his wife and
Speaker 1: collaborator Rosemary.
Speaker 2: One breakfast, she put the gloves and globe on the
Speaker 2: table and say, look at this. Apparently they're having trouble
Speaker 2: getting enough people to go to the PGA. Now in someplace,
Speaker 2: I've forgotten bill record or god knows where, and she said, so,
Speaker 2: what's happened to that?
Speaker 1: But Robert wasn't worried about school governance. His real concern
Speaker 1: was that skipping the PTA meetings to work late or
Speaker 1: bing something on Netflix was affecting our happiness and connection.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's shocking is if you ask
Speaker 2: people what makes them happy, everybody says it's my family
Speaker 2: and my friends and neighbors. I mean it just hands down.
Speaker 2: Nobody says, what makes me happy is my buick.
Speaker 1: And Robert should know. He's now in his mid eighties
Speaker 1: and remembers how things were when he was growing up
Speaker 1: in Port Clinton, Ohio. Back then, Little Bobby Putnam was
Speaker 1: surrounded by third places where people mingled day in and
Speaker 1: day out.
Speaker 2: My dad every morning went to a diner in town
Speaker 2: to have breakfast. It was called the Breakfast Club, and
Speaker 2: it was, you know, sort of a cross section one
Speaker 2: of the richest people in town, although none of us
Speaker 2: knew that was in that group.
Speaker 1: Robert also found his own favorite third place, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a diyner or a bar. It was a bowling alley.
Speaker 2: In junior high school, I was part of a five
Speaker 2: men bowling team, and we did pretty well.
Speaker 1: We were not great, but bawling a three hundred game
Speaker 1: wasn't really the point of hitting the lanes. Being on
Speaker 1: the team allowed people from different identities to connect. At
Speaker 1: the time, Port Clinton, just like many neighborhoods across America,
Speaker 1: was divided along racial lines.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to say this was nirvana. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: But just like his dad ate breakfast with the town's
Speaker 1: richest man, Robert's time at the bowling alley was spent
Speaker 1: crossing the societal divides of the time.
Speaker 2: And there's a picture that shows the team which is
Speaker 2: three white guys, one tall, gangly guy in the middle
Speaker 2: which was me, and two black guys. And we did
Speaker 2: not think that was strange.
Speaker 1: That Robert says was the power of third places, But
Speaker 1: it was a power that people back then took for Granted,
Speaker 1: I didn't know a.
Speaker 2: Special and I don't think it was all that special
Speaker 2: in America in the middle of.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifties, But today's science shows that local hangouts like
Speaker 1: these were incredibly special. Research shows that the abundance of
Speaker 1: third places Robert enjoyed not only promoted personal happiness, but
Speaker 1: produced neighborhoods that were better run, more fun to live in,
Speaker 1: and even safer. We'll hear why when the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: returns from the break.
Speaker 2: Giuseppe had a fictitious younger brother who wanted to become
Speaker 2: an automachetic and he wanted to get the form so
Speaker 2: that they could apply for a subsidy for automachetic school.
Speaker 1: Back in the late eighties, political scientist Robert Putnam was
Speaker 1: engaging in some mild academic subterfuge. Robert was interested in
Speaker 1: why some governments worked well while others didn't, so he
Speaker 1: set up a new study in Italy. He wanted to
Speaker 1: know why it was easier to access healthcare or enroll
Speaker 1: a child in kindergarten in some towns but not others.
Speaker 1: So he created fake Italian characters like Dsceppe and had
Speaker 1: them navigate the bureaucracy of different regions. For example, how
Speaker 1: how long would it take Guceppe's equally made up brother
Speaker 1: to successfully apply for vocational training?
Speaker 2: And then we counted how long did it take until
Speaker 2: we got back the forms if we got back almost
Speaker 2: never did we get the forms back, So then Giuseppe
Speaker 2: picked up the phone, and then we counted to how
Speaker 2: many different people was a telephone call passed until at
Speaker 2: last someone would say they were the right person.
Speaker 1: Italy back then was a land of extremes. Some areas
Speaker 1: were ruled by conservatives, others by communists. Some areas were
Speaker 1: rich while others were decidedly not.
Speaker 2: The Solvidly at that point, economically looked like Nicaragua or
Speaker 2: Syria or something pretty undeveloped, pretty poor, and the northern
Speaker 2: regions looked like Holland or Sweden or someplace.
Speaker 1: But new reforms began better balancing how the different regions
Speaker 1: in Italy were governed, and Robert was super excited about
Speaker 1: these changes. These changes allowed Robert to directly test the
Speaker 1: role that culture, wealth, and history played in a government's effectiveness.
Speaker 2: The first thing we found was that richer regions were
Speaker 2: better governed than poor regions, and we thought that makes
Speaker 2: sense because the richer region is going to afford computers
Speaker 2: and more talented people, and saw it.
Speaker 1: But Robert also found that wealth wasn't the whole story.
Speaker 2: We had many different ideas, many hypolsitis about what the
Speaker 2: secret ingredient might be. It might be politics, it might
Speaker 2: be I don't know. Lots of different things, but we
Speaker 2: never guessed what turned out to be the best predictor.
Speaker 2: You can see I'm.
Speaker 1: Enjoying this, I know, edge of the sea.
Speaker 2: Come on. Choral societies.
Speaker 1: That's right, choral societies those groups of people who get
Speaker 1: together regularly to sing in choirs. Robert found that regions
Speaker 1: with more of these groups were the ones whose governments
Speaker 1: ran most efficiently. Now, I'm guessing choral societies probably wasn't
Speaker 1: the answer you were expecting. But Robert's strange result was
Speaker 1: about to get even stranger, because, like a good political scientist,
Speaker 1: Robert decided to look further back in history to figure
Speaker 1: out why choirs mattered so much. He thought maybe people
Speaker 1: in richer towns had more spare time and money to
Speaker 1: set up singing clubs. Turns out that wasn't right either.
Speaker 2: It was not that wealth produced choral societies, but the
Speaker 2: choral societies produced wealth.
Speaker 1: The Italian towns where it was easy for Robert's fictional
Speaker 1: citizen Giuseppe to access healthcare or the forms his brother
Speaker 1: needed to train as a mechanic weren't just the towns
Speaker 1: that had the most choral societies. Now, they were also
Speaker 1: the towns that had the most choirs hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago.
Speaker 2: The number of choral societies in a region of Italy
Speaker 2: in the thirteenth century predicts, it turns out, not only
Speaker 2: whether Giuseppe will get his medical buility burst, but predicts
Speaker 2: the happiness of people in regions Italy today. I mean,
Speaker 2: think of that.
Speaker 1: Robert was excited about these odd findings, but he didn't
Speaker 1: fully understand the link, that is, until he suffered a
Speaker 1: temporary of insomnia.
Speaker 2: I thought, God, I've got to read something boring that
Speaker 2: i'll fall asleep over. And there was a big book
Speaker 2: line open, and I thought, this is clearly going to
Speaker 2: put me to sleep. It was social theory. Foundations of
Speaker 2: Social Theory.
Speaker 1: Robert just so happened to stumble on a chapter by
Speaker 1: the sociologist James Coleman which explained the concept known as
Speaker 1: social capital. Coleman argued that just as regions can have
Speaker 1: different amounts of physical capital resources like property, roads, and money,
Speaker 1: so too can they amass different amounts of social capital,
Speaker 1: social resources like relationships, networks, and communities.
Speaker 2: I had never heard the term social capital, but I
Speaker 2: began reading it. I said, my god, this is what
Speaker 2: I've been studying. I saw essentially instantly why that was
Speaker 2: the right concept to use for choral societies.
Speaker 1: Robert realized that third places like choirs and bowling leagues
Speaker 1: make governments work better because they allow people to build
Speaker 1: social capital. They helped create local networks in which everyone
Speaker 1: knows each other's names, and research shows that having people
Speaker 1: around who know our names changes our psychology. It helps
Speaker 1: us behave more virtuously. When people know who we are,
Speaker 1: we want to win their trust, and that means we
Speaker 1: put work into meeting our commitments, playing by the rules,
Speaker 1: and settling our bar bills. And if the people around
Speaker 1: us are doing the same thing, if they like us,
Speaker 1: want to be trustworthy and do nice things, then that's
Speaker 1: a win win that makes life easier for everyone in
Speaker 1: the community.
Speaker 2: Trustworthiness is demonstrably increased by social networks. If you and
Speaker 2: I are engaged in some kind of transaction and I
Speaker 2: cheat you, you'll be angry at me. But if we're
Speaker 2: doing that in a setting of networks and I cheat
Speaker 2: you and he's watching, he knows that I'm not trustworthy
Speaker 2: because he's seeing me mistreat you, and that means he'll
Speaker 2: never play a game with me. And we generalize that
Speaker 2: to everybody. If everybody in town is looking at this transaction.
Speaker 2: I am a huge incentive not to cheat you.
Speaker 1: And this is the reason that choral societies were such
Speaker 1: an important factor in Robert's study of those local Italian governments.
Speaker 1: If a city official sang in a choir with other townspeople,
Speaker 1: their reputation and good name became more important to them.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't want it getting around town that they couldn't
Speaker 1: do their job well or send out an application form promptly.
Speaker 2: But the more interesting thing is that social capitalis externalities.
Speaker 2: That is, it has benefits for people outside the networks.
Speaker 1: It's not just that an Italian official would work hard
Speaker 1: for a fellow choir member. The social capital that stems
Speaker 1: from third places like choral societies encourages people to make
Speaker 1: the whole system work better, which means that everyone in
Speaker 1: town gets to enjoy the fruits of more diligence and trustworthiness.
Speaker 1: And Robert observed other externalities too. Take crime, for example.
Speaker 2: The best predictor of a little crime rate in a
Speaker 2: neighborhood is how many neighbors know wander this first name.
Speaker 1: If you hang out with your neighbors in a bar,
Speaker 1: or a singing group or Residents Association. You'll start to
Speaker 1: look out for them, and they'll start to look out
Speaker 1: for you too. Robert himself benefits from living in just
Speaker 1: such a neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And this is the moment for confession. I actually never
Speaker 2: went to the picnics and barbecues and slaving parties, but
Speaker 2: I was able to benefit from the networks of reciprocity
Speaker 2: and people keeping an eye on one of his house
Speaker 2: and so on, even though I was not in it.
Speaker 1: Another example of these social capital building groups is parent
Speaker 1: teacher associations.
Speaker 2: The more the parents are involved in schools, the better
Speaker 2: the performance of the schools, the better performance of the kids.
Speaker 2: And that's true for even kids whose parents are not
Speaker 2: in the PTA. They benefit from the extra anomalies of
Speaker 2: those networks.
Speaker 1: But when Robert's wife, Rosemary showed him the newspaper story
Speaker 1: that PTA attendance was declining in that nearby Massachusetts community
Speaker 1: of bill Ricca, he began to worry.
Speaker 2: At that point, I had not ever thought about measuring
Speaker 2: social capital of America. But the first thought is, well,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with bill Ricca? Is that also true? In intellection? Yes,
Speaker 2: it turned out to me, could that be true every place?
Speaker 1: And So Robert began a careful statistical study not just
Speaker 1: of PTA membership, but of attendance in third places and
Speaker 1: social groups of all kinds. He tracked what was happening
Speaker 1: to rotary clubs, labor unions, religious groups, Scout troops, fraternal organizations,
Speaker 1: women's groups, and even his favorite teenage third place bowling leagues.
Speaker 2: And by golly, it was true everywhere.
Speaker 1: Robert published his findings in a groundbreaking academic article which
Speaker 1: years later became a book. He argued not just that
Speaker 1: our third places and civic groups were in rapid decline,
Speaker 1: but also that society should be much much more worried
Speaker 1: about it. In honor of his own positive experiences in
Speaker 1: Port Clinton, he titled his article Bowling Alone, America's Declining
Speaker 1: social Capital. The article rang alarm bells across the entire country.
Speaker 1: Newspapers picked up Robert's arguments, and politicians vowed to act.
Speaker 2: Within one week, I was invited to Camp David David
Speaker 2: for goodness, Sex and Rosemary and I were on the
Speaker 2: cover of People magazine. So this is not the normal
Speaker 2: experience of any academic.
Speaker 1: So Robert's warning was heated. Right he discovered just how
Speaker 1: important third places were for our happiness and social connection
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, and people listened and things today
Speaker 1: should be great. Right. Unfortunately, that's not how the story went.
Speaker 1: Since Robert's article came out in nineteen ninety five, the
Speaker 1: story of third places has gotten much, much worse. Is
Speaker 1: there any way to stop this nasty cycle? Is there
Speaker 1: a way we can play a part in bringing back
Speaker 1: third places and all the social capital they create?
Speaker 4: Saying I'm not really a joiner isn't going to cut
Speaker 4: it in the coming decades, because we need people in
Speaker 4: this country to be joiners.
Speaker 1: To hear what we can do to rebuild third places.
Speaker 1: Join me when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: Harvard Professor Robert Putnam has taught political science to countless
Speaker 1: students over the decades. You remember, like when you first
Speaker 1: heard about bowling alone.
Speaker 4: Yep, you know, I was an incoming freshman and he
Speaker 4: was a professor at the college.
Speaker 1: I's gone too. Many were inspired by his lectures, but
Speaker 1: some have actually decided to act on his dire warnings
Speaker 1: about the decline of third places.
Speaker 4: Hello everyone, I am Pete Davis. I am the co
Speaker 4: director of Joiner Die, new film out about why you
Speaker 4: should join a club and why the fate of America
Speaker 4: may depend on it.
Speaker 1: After arriving in college, Pete Davis took a seminar class
Speaker 1: with Putnam called Community in America. Pete was electrified by
Speaker 1: his teacher.
Speaker 4: You know what's so amazing about Bob is he wasn't
Speaker 4: just about the academics. He was also about making an
Speaker 4: impact on the country. He thought the best way he
Speaker 4: could make an impact on the country was getting people
Speaker 4: riled up, his students and the people who were reading
Speaker 4: his books to be excited about rejuvenating community in America.
Speaker 4: He's had that spirit in the whole time that I've
Speaker 4: known him these thirteen years.
Speaker 1: Robert wanted to rekindle the businesses in clubs he'd known
Speaker 1: growing up in the fifties. Pete and the other millennials
Speaker 1: in class had never experienced these third places, but they
Speaker 1: did feel something about their lives wasn't quite right.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people my age feel a
Speaker 4: real sense of lack in the meaning department, and I
Speaker 4: think it's all connected.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are still some spaces that millennials like
Speaker 1: Pete can go to outside of work at home, But
Speaker 1: Pete worries these new places haven't provided his generation with
Speaker 1: the meeting or social capital they crave.
Speaker 4: So many of our third places had become unfortunately corporatized.
Speaker 4: So you know, you meet in a Starbucks, or you'd
Speaker 4: meet at a McDonald's, or meet at a Panera, and
Speaker 4: you know, it wouldn't be the story of meeting that
Speaker 4: our grandparents or even parents would remember of meeting at
Speaker 4: an Elks lodge, or meeting at a Masonic temple, or
Speaker 4: meeting at an NAACP headquarters in a state.
Speaker 1: So why aren't people nowadays pushing to develop more of
Speaker 1: these satisfying third places. There are lots of reasons, but
Speaker 1: Pete says at least one of them is the fact
Speaker 1: that people today kind of just want to stay home.
Speaker 4: One of the culprits Bob pointed to and Bowling alone
Speaker 4: was television. And I want to be clear, it's not
Speaker 4: the only culprit, but it is a very significant one.
Speaker 4: And part of the reason is that TV provided parasocial interaction.
Speaker 4: You felt like you were friends with the Today Show
Speaker 4: hosts or the sitcom characters TV.
Speaker 1: The irony that television is causing America's decline in third
Speaker 1: places hits pretty hard. I mean My family was definitely
Speaker 1: among the people who stayed home to watch Tears on
Speaker 1: TV while dreaming of someday finding a place where everybody
Speaker 1: knew our names. In retrospect, maybe we should have been
Speaker 1: forming real life social bonds at third places instead of
Speaker 1: hanging out with fantasy friends on TV. But Pete says
Speaker 1: the temptation of TV was just the first in a
Speaker 1: series of problematic technological developments.
Speaker 4: What's happened in the twenty years since Bowling Alone is
Speaker 4: we've had an even more supercharged version of parasocial interaction,
Speaker 4: which is everything that's been happening on the Internet because
Speaker 4: you have your friends that you're following on Instagram, but
Speaker 4: you're only experiencing their Internet presence, and so what that's
Speaker 4: doing is giving us this I would call it, kind
Speaker 4: of junk social interaction that's not the nourishing, real world
Speaker 4: social interaction that gives you kind of the full experience
Speaker 4: of community.
Speaker 1: Pete made me realize that we really did squander our
Speaker 1: chance to heed Robert's warning. The momentum his initial Bowling
Speaker 1: Alone article had back in the late nineties was huge.
Speaker 4: The White House calls him up, and you know, the
Speaker 4: President and first lady in cabinet have all read Bowling
Speaker 4: alone and are interested.
Speaker 1: In talking with them about it.
Speaker 4: But then you know, after kind of nine to eleven,
Speaker 4: America starts talking about other things.
Speaker 1: Nine to eleven brought huge political upheavals that overshadowed concerns
Speaker 1: about social capital, but it was also an era that
Speaker 1: saw epic technological change. Many people back then assumed that
Speaker 1: online communities would eventually replace physical spaces. Why gather in
Speaker 1: person for your morning coffee at your charity club when
Speaker 1: you could set up a GoFundMe page that reached hundreds
Speaker 1: of people. Why attend a political debate when you could
Speaker 1: join a Facebook group. Online communities can connect us to
Speaker 1: people more easily, but the science shows that these groups
Speaker 1: aren't a great psychological replacement for the face to face
Speaker 1: encounters we get at real life third places. Virtual meetings
Speaker 1: just don't seem to encourage the same trustworthiness that Robert
Speaker 1: saw in his quarrels societies and Bowling leagues, and research
Speaker 1: has shown that we tend not to be our kindest
Speaker 1: selves online. In real life third places promote trustworthiness across
Speaker 1: differing identities, but online communities do just the opposite. They
Speaker 1: so division and misinformation, which if you've been paying attention,
Speaker 1: you know has already led to some really nasty civic results.
Speaker 3: All of us here today do not want to see
Speaker 3: our election victory stolen Boma for that find.
Speaker 4: We're going to clear this, we're going to get this
Speaker 4: straightened out, and we're going to go.
Speaker 2: Back to war.
Speaker 1: The events of January sixth are just one reason Pete
Speaker 1: thinks we need to return to Robert's ideas and act
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 4: Love of America. There's just been a very growing drum
Speaker 4: beat of interest stemming from personal experience of everyone across America,
Speaker 4: especially young people, that we are living in a social
Speaker 4: isolation crisis, that we are lonely, that we are hungry
Speaker 4: deeply for kind of a rejuvenation of community.
Speaker 1: So what does Pete propose we do well. First, he
Speaker 1: thinks we need to understand that we do have a
Speaker 1: big problem when it comes to social capital, one that's
Speaker 1: getting worse and worse and worse. And that's where his
Speaker 1: new movie, Join Our Die comes in.
Speaker 4: So we hope that the movie can be a catalyzer,
Speaker 4: a week up call of wow, you know, if we're
Speaker 4: going to turn things around as a country, or if
Speaker 4: I want to get all the joys of community.
Speaker 1: I have to become a joiner, Tommy or.
Speaker 2: You good brother.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I can see the transition in my life from my
Speaker 4: joining lodge.
Speaker 2: Do like who I own out warden We.
Speaker 1: The film chronicles people Pete's age who are doing just this,
Speaker 1: gig workers who are forming new labor unions, bike associations
Speaker 1: who are bringing low income communities together, and even new
Speaker 1: school bowling leagues that are forming where you least expect them.
Speaker 1: I was a very unhappy attorney and became an extremely happy,
Speaker 1: bullying out of the owner. It's a grassroots joiner effort
Speaker 1: that makes Pete feel really hopeful. All right, good evening,
Speaker 1: Bob Borland.
Speaker 4: There's not a switch, you know in Fort Knox that
Speaker 4: says isolation versus community. The way it's going to change
Speaker 4: is going to be much more like the growing of
Speaker 4: a forest. We need a thousand different seeds planted of
Speaker 4: new ways of being in a community spirit, you know,
Speaker 4: new ways of getting together with your neighbors, new clubs
Speaker 4: out there, new cultural ideas about the importance of community
Speaker 4: and how we can be better neighbors. All of that
Speaker 4: together in every region across the country is what we need.
Speaker 4: That's the message Bob's been preaching, and I'm ready to
Speaker 4: be a follower. I've been taken in being a follower
Speaker 4: of that, and what we're hoping for with this film
Speaker 4: is we can recruit some more people to this spirit
Speaker 4: of community in the coming years.
Speaker 3: Beer under directly.
Speaker 1: Pete's film title, Join Our Die sounds a little dramatic,
Speaker 1: but he thinks there's something important in us that does
Speaker 1: die when we don't have opportunities to build ties with
Speaker 1: our neighbors. If you want your neighborhood to be the
Speaker 1: kind of place where everybody knows you're Pete says, you
Speaker 1: might have to shut off the TV and head out
Speaker 1: of the house so that you can form some community
Speaker 1: with your local barkeeper and bowlers. And if there isn't
Speaker 1: an obvious group to sign up for, then Pete says
Speaker 1: you should put in the work to start one yourself.
Speaker 1: That might feel like a big undertaking, but that's what
Speaker 1: previous generations did, and through their efforts they found camaraderie
Speaker 1: and comfort. But the importance of joining and creating new
Speaker 1: third places isn't quite the end of our story today.
Speaker 1: Our individual actions count a lot, but Pete says that
Speaker 1: rebuilding social capital is also a huge societal challenge.
Speaker 4: Cities should take seriously the social infrastructure they have. Our
Speaker 4: libraries are parks, our plazas, where just like how physical
Speaker 4: infrastructure facilitates things like getting the water moving through it
Speaker 4: or the cars moving through it, social infrastructure facilitates the
Speaker 4: building of social capital and the marshaling of social capital
Speaker 4: for community purposes.
Speaker 1: And so in our next episode, we're going to explore
Speaker 1: how those at the top of government are again waking
Speaker 1: up to the need to save the little social infrastructure
Speaker 1: we have left and what plans they have to build
Speaker 1: back the social capital needed to protect our future.
Speaker 4: We have met these truly existential threats in the past
Speaker 4: when we have adjusted as a nation.
Speaker 1: I absolutely believe that we can find a way out.
Speaker 1: So if you dearly want there to be more places
Speaker 1: where everybody knows your name, I hope you'll return for
Speaker 1: the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me doctor
Speaker 1: Lauriy Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and produced
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver,
Speaker 1: with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Jess
Speaker 1: Shane and Alice Fines offered additional production support. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to my agent, Ben Davis and all of the Pushkin crew.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Any doctor, Lauriy Santos on