Robert Putnam: What Does It Mean To Be a Social Capitalist? (and how does it affect our health?)

How many of us have felt the deep need to belong, but weren’t sure where to start?

In this episode, recorded live at WBUR in Boston, Vivek sits down with the Harvard professor, author, and friend for a wide-ranging conversation on building community. Robert Putnam saw America's social fracturing coming decades before anyone else did. His book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, put a name to the collapse of community life in the U.S, tracking the disappearance of the bowling leagues, church groups, and civic clubs that used to hold neighborhoods together. More recently, his ideas have reached a new generation through Join or Die, a documentary that has screened hundreds of times in communities across the country.

Putnam traces his own lifelong preoccupation with connection back to a lonely childhood in Port Clinton, Ohio, and a mother who refused to let it stay that way. He unpacks “social capital” — what it is, and why it matters for both our health and our democracy. Bob also offers wisdom and hope from the last time America clawed its way back from a time of strikingly similar isolation, inequality, and division during the Progressive Era. From that history, he shares three lessons for us all today today, as we seek to build more connection in our lives.

Putnam also opens up about his wife Rosemary, one of the most talented “social capitalists” he knows, and reflects on what he holds onto — quite literally, in old photographs — when he needs to remember what matters most.

Join Or Die Documentary: https://joinordiefilm.com/

Bob Putnam: http://robertdputnam.com/

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