Robert Putnam
speaker
197 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Robert Putnam’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
But what is the difference? What is the experiential difference? Yes. Christiana, have you ever bowled alone?
So actually, I know where every bowling alley in London is because whenever I've gone over there, I'm selling... selling books, every journalist thought their clever idea would be to interview me in a bowling alley. So I can take you to every bowling alley in central London. In bowling, in bowling in a league, there are five people on a team and two teams are playing against each other.
And how well you do depends on how well the team does, not how well you individually do. And at any given time, two people are up at the lane throwing the ball down. But the other eight people are sitting in a semicircle at the back of the alleys.
And they're mostly talking, you know, and they're talking about what was on TV last night or they're talking about occasionally they're talking about, you know, the local schools or, you know, whether there should a bond issue should be passed to cover the costs of the new sewer system or whatever. Right. And now I'm going to suddenly change that description.
Occasionally, they're having a conversation about public civic life. That's highfalutin for saying they just got into a discussion with people they know well. Remember, these are people they see every week. And they know how to interpret what the people say. They're not total strangers. because they ball in a league and with other members of the team, but they're also real human beings.
And so the reason I decided to use that as a metaphor is that does say, here are people who know each other. If you're in a team, they know each other. And they're not doing politics, but occasionally it helps with the politics. Does that make sense? I mean, occasionally they're able to have a conversation that's a kind of a responsible conversation.
It's not just two guys yelling at each other or two gals yelling at each other. It's two people who are going to have to get along because the next week they're going to be back in the same bowling alley. And so it seemed to me a useful way of describing how bowling in a league, in a team... it's not just fun. I mean, it's important to emphasize this. I really wish I'd done emphasize this more.
Social capital can't just be eat your spinach. It's got to be fun too. I mean, it's, it's, it's so, and that's why I use the example of bowling leagues. It's not saying, Oh, go to a good government meeting. Well, good mother, good government meeting. It's got to be fun. And bowling is fun, but it's also a little bit like a good government meeting.
Is that I may be exaggerating here, but that's, that's where the idea of bowling is. A Bowling Together came and then the opposite of that was we are just less opportunity for encountering people that we know well to talk occasionally about public affairs.
Remarkably, I've got good data on how people spend every hour of their day going back to the 1960s. Would you believe that's 60-year time trend? Wow. And it's very interesting. Invite me back for another two hours and I'll talk about how our lives have changed. For example, back in the day, in the 60s, we slept, the average American slept 7.5 hours a day.
And that average is exactly 7.5 hours today. There's been no change on average. Some people speak more. That's impressive, though, still. But here's the complicated part, actually. We're spending less time at work than we used to. Less time at work. No ways. So less time at work. So what do we do with our extra time? All of it is spent in front of screens.
There's been a steady, steady long-term rise in the amount of time we spend in front of screens. And the most recent data, you might think, well, okay, it used to be screens like television and now it's screens like, you know.
You know, some social media.
Yeah, yeah, no, but it isn't. We're actually spending more time watching TV than we used to. And we're adding to that. I now don't. Quote me exactly, because I've got the data. I just don't have it in front of me at this moment. I didn't know you were going to ask me this question. We've added, since the advent of social media, another two hours a day. Two hours a day.
And yet we're spending less time in the presence of other people. I mean, the data are just the worst you could imagine. We've got more free time. We do have more free time. Wow. And we've spent more than all of that free time. In front of a screen. Damn.
Well, you asked me for data.
But of course, I want people to watch this podcast. This is a different kind.
Christiana, you ask lots of really good questions and they're all complicated. And I'm going to try.
Did you say Robert? No, it's Bob, please.
I mean, if I get a call, a phone call, and the person says, Robert, I just hang up right away. If they know me, it's a nice screener I use as answering the phone. Okay, Bob, Bob. Okay, I want to say a couple of things about social media and virtual connections, and how they compare to real face-to-face connections, what some people call IRL, in real life.
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