Bowling Alone
Episodes about this book
3 episodesAmerica’s Crisis of Social Connection, With Adam Grant
Host Derek Thompson cites Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone as having documented the decline of social capital in the 20th century. Thompson notes that many critics dismissed Putnam as overly pessimistic, but that face-to-face socializing in America has since fallen by a further 20%, vindicating Putnam's warnings.
Finding Your Life Path, Solved
Robert Putnam's book is briefly cited as documenting—through data spanning the previous fifty years—that Americans were spending less and less time together and that civic institutions were decaying, even as they became wealthier and more mobile. The hosts connect it to the modern loneliness epidemic.
The Surprising Truth About America's Friendship Crisis
Laurie Santos invokes Bowling Alone as early evidence of declining community ties, describing Putnam's observation that people had stopped joining bowling leagues and were bowling alone. Derek Thompson adds that Putnam's critics at the time wrongly predicted the internet would reverse the trend, and that socialisation has since fallen even further—making Putnam, in Thompson's word, 'prescient.'
Also on Plain English with Derek Thompson
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