In today’s book club episode, Parker Seaman and Ian R Buck discuss Bowling Alone by Robert D Putnam, in a conversation moderated by Stina Neel.
Links
- Current book: Bowling Alone
- The Evolution of Trust (Explorable Explanation)
- MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing
- Next Book: The Lost Cause
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was produced by Parker Seaman and Stina Neel, edited by Jeremy Winter, and engineered and transcribed by Ian R Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:02] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.mn Podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful, Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck. It’s time for another Book Club episode. This time we were reading Bowling Alone. Producer Parker Seaman and I read the book, and Stina Neel is joining us to ask questions as a non-reader. I mean, she can read, but like she just didn’t read this book. And OK, you know what I meant, let’s get into the episode.
[00:00:39] Stina: Hi, Ian.
[00:00:40] Ian: Hi, Stina.
[00:00:40] Stina: And hi, Parker.
[00:00:42] Parker: Hi, Stina.
[00:00:42] Stina: I heard we have another book club. Is that right?
[00:00:45] Parker: We sure do. And this one is Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam, which, despite the title of the book, doesn’t focus that much on bowling, but it does focus on the community and how it’s changed over the past couple of decades in America.
[00:01:00] Stina: And you two both read the book, right?
[00:01:02] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:02] Parker: I’ve read it twice.
[00:01:03] Ian: I did the audiobook. Did you do text?
[00:01:06] Parker: I did audiobook, but I did do a review of the included charts and graphs that are included as part of the PDF. Yeah, the PDF that’s referenced in the audiobook that during the audiobooks, say, “if you reference figure 39” and I am in the middle of a gym session and thinking, well, I don’t really have the ability for that. But went back and briefly reviewed the stuff. I would say it’s useful. But if you do your listener have listened to the audiobook or are going to listen to the audiobook, I don’t think it’s the most necessary.
[00:01:37] Ian: Yeah, like if you trust the author and the conclusions that he comes to, then like I think looking at the actual graphs is not strictly necessary.
[00:01:47] Parker: It’s just interesting. Yeah. Well, there it is kind of thing.
[00:01:50] Stina: So the bowling alone multimedia experience is what you both did.
[00:01:55] Parker: You’re right.
[00:01:56] Stina: And I did not read nor listen. And yet I am moderating this conversation.
[00:02:01] Parker: Yeah, should give you a quick overview of what the book is actually about. And I can start by giving a bit of a warning of the kind of book you would be diving into. In other urbanist books I’ve read there’s a bit more of a story that’s being told. And this one does have that, but it does frame itself very much like you are reading a research paper. So while the content is interesting, it’s presented in a bit of a dry way. I was showing this book to my partner as we’re on a road trip once. And we got about 15 minutes into it. And she went, “is this still the introduction?” And you bring up a good point. So if it is interesting to you, if the topic is interesting to you, have some patience. If it’s the audiobook, one and a half speed is just fine.
[00:02:52] Ian: I would argue that it is not structured as a research paper, but an entire collection of like every chapter is its own research paper that are all kind of building on each other. You know, because like for one research paper, you do one experimental design. You know. And so like most of the chapters for the first, I want to say three quarters of the book are like. So we’ve noticed that social capital has been reduced in the United States over this time period. Let’s compare that to and then, you know, this hypothetical like maybe this thing is the cause. And then we compare like the graphs of those things to decide whether or not that was actually the cause and then he moves on to the next cause in the next chapter.
[00:03:38] Stina: So I just heard you all say social capital and as someone who didn’t read the book, could you give me an elevator speech of what that is?
[00:03:45] Parker: I was just about to transition into that. So the actual content of the book is looking at we’ve seen the way people are engaging in community or social events or just social activities in general change throughout the past. I believe it takes a scope of 100 years and by nature of it, being done very academically provides definitions for a lot of these trends that are being noticed so that you can measure them. How much people are engaging in their community is how much they are spending social capital kind of taking an economics point of view of how you’re spending your time socially in comparison to how you would spend money.
[00:04:28] Ian: And the term bowling alone from the title comes from the fact that he’s like comparing the number of people who are members of a specific like community group. And so, you know, bowling as part of a bowling league is not bowling alone, right? That’s bowling as part of community. You bowling by literally by yourself, of course, is bowling alone, but also you bowling with your friends on a random weekday night. That’s also bowling alone.
[00:04:58] Stina: Because it’s not scheduled as part of a league?
[00:05:00] Ian: Exactly. Yeah. So because because this is like academic, you know, like it has to be a measurable like so the only thing that they were actually measuring is membership numbers in established like community organizations, which is inherently a little bit limiting in terms of the conversation that can be had. But also like because this is supposed to be a data driven like approach, that’s the only way that you can do it.
[00:05:28] Parker: He does make mention that there are limitations in how much perspective they can have because of how limited these types of surveys are served to people. There’s gaps in what that data looks like. But this is, you know, best sort of estimate that they can make with the data that’s given and also notes that since this trend has been noticed and increased or been increasing, more different surveys have been created and started to collect that data that has continued to show that the conclusions that they were able to get to are backed up by that data.
[00:06:05] Stina: Can I give some examples of things that may or may not be considered these memberships?
[00:06:11] Ian: Oh, sure.
[00:06:13] Stina: There are bowling leagues. We know that those still exist. But for example, going to Cribbage Night at a bar. That does not count unless you are in a league that you know that every Sunday it is there. For example, my pottery class, which I have paid to be a part of every Thursday night that does count, say someone had a membership to a co-working space where you go in on Tuesdays and Thursdays to the co-working space. That counts.
[00:06:45] Ian: I think so. I don’t know if co-working spaces existed, you know, during the time period when they were doing this data collection. But I think today, if you were doing those kinds of studies, yeah, I think that that would that would count.
[00:06:57] Stina: Well, this book was like starting in there, looking at the 1900s through 2000. Pretty much. Yeah, as a co-working space in the 1900s was a factory with all of your favorite childhood friends. Because you were also a child, sorry.
[00:07:13] Ian: I think one of my favorite sections of the book, honestly, was when they were like just talking about some of their favorite data sources and being like, yeah, this particular survey that, you know, is put out every single year and is only meant to be used by companies that are trying to measure their own like marketing plans. And, you know, like, oh, which demographics are we going to target? With like these, you know, kinds of advertisements and whatever. But it is such a thorough set of data and like listening to these data nerds like, you know, gush about their favorite places to find this information. I loved it. Yeah.
[00:07:53] Parker: So we’ve talked about what the book is talking about roughly. The book first starts with is social capital actually declining? Going over how we measured, how they measured that. Getting to the conclusion of yes, it is then getting to why is it and then going through the various reasons it is…
[00:08:12] Ian: And also why does it matter? Comparing like, oh, different states that have different levels of social capital and what other correlations are there with, you know, outcomes for the people who live in those places.
[00:08:27] Parker: The one that stuck with me a lot was that village in Italy that had very similar demographics to surrounding villages in the surrounding area, but they had an exceptionally low number of heart related deaths. And it was their best conclusion they could draw from why that was is that they had a very strong social network of all the different people in the village having social ties, very outgoing, all that sort of stuff. And they could really notice the difference when that generation started to die just from old age and natural causes. And the next generation was not as socially engaged and they started to see the heart attack rate rise much more along the same level as the surrounding areas.
[00:09:12] Ian: Yeah. And I mean, here’s my little bit of Minnesota exceptionalism, like hearing throughout the book over and over again that like Minnesota is one place in the United States that has unusually high social capital and also like that is reflected in a lot of other outcomes for the people who live in Minnesota. So like, hey, I feel good about that. And also like during the book, I was like, but what does that tell me about like, like, how did we get there? Because it’s easy to be like proud of where you’re born, but also like I have no responsibility in like the fact that we have high social capital here. But like, how can we continue to build on that? And like, how can other parts of the country try to replicate that?
[00:10:00] Parker: I think if I remember right, part of the thing that they talked about was the transition from very agrarian type communities to much more urban ones and how that changed a lot of those social dynamics and those sort of social trust dynamics and a sort of change in the sense of reciprocity, where when you have a much more spread out community that I know we kind of have a back and forth going between us because I don’t know, you live just down the road for me. I’ll see you at church on Sunday or stuff like that. When you get into a much more urban environment, it changes the dynamic because you might not be as closely tied with as many people that you’re seeing around you and so it gives less of a sense of close ties.
[00:10:44] Ian: Yeah, that reminds me of a like a computer simulation that was meant to be an educational experience about trust and how trust is built and the, you know, obviously this simulation is like I’m kind of robbing you of the experience of going through the simulation and trying out different things and everything. But the conclusion is like, oh, yeah, if you just make sure that all of the actors in a system are going to have to continue to deal with each other on an ongoing basis, then they will be nicer to each other and they will cooperate more because they know that they’re going to run into each other again later.
[00:11:22] Parker: Just that human nature thing of I should probably treat you well because I’ll probably see you again and I’d like to not be on a bad footing with you if I have to interact with you much.
[00:11:28] Ian: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:11:31] Stina: That’s where I think of the quote, “the price we pay for community is annoyance.” In order to be so closely connected with your neighbors and people around you, that means that they’re going to pee off a little bit from time to time.
[00:11:46] Parker: There’s going to be an imperfect relationship, but there’s going to be more benefits to it than there are going to be drawbacks or annoyances. Right. At least that’s the way it should work out.
[00:11:56] Stina: So in the book, does he offer like what is the root cause of this? What happened besides an industrial revolution and technological changes? But what happened?
[00:12:09] Parker: A lot of different causes. I appreciate that they go over. Here are some theories for why it has happened and why they’re wrong. And one that stuck out to me was I’m going, well, one theory is that women are in the workplace a whole lot more now. So let’s look at the data and see if that’s changed things. Save breath. No, that’s not why social capital has gone down. And I also like to know that he says, even if it did go down, giving people more rights and letting people have do what they want with their lives is, in the opinion of this author, absolutely worth it. But it’s weird to say, like, obviously because it’s been beaten to death so much. But one of the things he points to is television. And I think in a broader sense, that can be extrapolated to like personal at home entertainment things.
[00:12:56] Ian: Yeah. So the structure of the book, we had to get through so many different things that were like, could this be the cause? No, it’s not the cause. You know, like he did that to us so many times that by the time he got around to television, I was like, tell me why television isn’t the cause, man. Like, yeah, ruin ruin my expectations once again. And he was like, turns out television sucks, man. And I’m like, oh, oh, OK, we’re actually, hmm. Well, I can do something with that. Like now I got some information.
[00:13:28] Parker: Yeah, it’s a very sudden yet gradual shift too. And here’s the actual reasons he doesn’t really broadcast it like that in the book. The way it’s framed in the book is the issue with television is it takes up a lot of that time that you’d seek for entertainment that you previously would get from engaging with people. In a more social setting, the time that you’re spending watching television or actually it doesn’t even necessarily give much damnation to movies, mostly because that’s still something of you going out and potentially engaging with people in sort of a parallel place.
[00:14:00] Ian: Which isn’t necessarily the case anymore. In the 20th century, if you wanted to watch a movie, you probably were leaving the house. Right. Yeah.
[00:14:09] Stina: I would say the only thing I can think of is like when you have a Super Bowl party, right? And that’s like people are gathering at your house to watch a TV. But for the most part, the television is a solo experience, so…
[00:14:24] Ian: Right. And he made a big distinction between like, like there are two types of television watchers. There’s the kinds of people who just the television is always on in the background. And that’s the default unless they actively turn it off. And then there are the kinds of people who are like, there is a specific program that I want to catch that comes on at this time. And I’m going to turn on the television to watch that TV show. And then I will turn off the television again. And that type of watching seems to not be correlated with low levels of social capital.
[00:15:02] Stina: Did the author also mention suburbanization?
[00:15:06] Parker: Yes!
[00:15:06] Ian: Those two chapters were right next to each other. Suburbanization and car dependence. Right. And television were.
[00:15:12] Parker: Same sort of thing of the time that you used to spend in more social activities as part of suburbanization is now spent driving your kids to one school to drive to another neighborhood to go to work to then drive to another neighborhood to go grocery shopping or some other activity there that by the end of it all, you really don’t have much time left to be engaging with your community. Believe it or not, suburbanization did not positively affect community building.
[00:15:38] Ian: Though I was personally surprised. And this is probably because like I swim in the water of talking about urbanization and, you know, car dependence and everything all the time. But I was surprised that television was a stronger cause of low social capital than car dependence was.
[00:15:59] Stina: Really?
[00:16:01] Ian: Yeah. The car dependence angle and like moving to suburban communities that are much more homogenous did have a big effect on the dynamic between bridging social capital and bonding social capital, which are two terms that we can define right now.
[00:16:18] Parker: Go for it.
[00:16:21] Ian: So yeah, so bonding social capital is the type of social capital that you have like within an in group, right? And then bridging social capital is social capital that connects different groups together. So like if you have a bunch of people who are all very similar to you and you all move to this, you know, suburb together, then you will have strong bonding social capital. But that lessens the ability of that community to connect with other communities, which like has an overall detrimental effect for like an entire metro area kind of thing.
[00:16:59] Parker: Remind me again because you seem to remember these terms better than I do. Are those in relation to or just different words for the machers and schmoozers that he mentions?
[00:17:11] Ian: Oh, I think those are different. Yeah. I love it when I get like vocabulary words from another culture in a book like this. Yeah. So they were talking about like two different ways that people can go about building social capital between themselves and others. And so schmoozers, that’s a word that I’m familiar with, right? They’re the people who are like really social and they’re always kind of hanging out with people and everything. But the machers are people who like they’re like the get shit done kinds of people, right? They’re building social capital for different purposes. And and those have effects on like how that social capital is actually helpful within a community. And they’re both important, but…
[00:17:56] Parker: They serve a different purpose.
[00:17:58] Ian: Yeah. And it seems like the machers are the ones who like really have a larger benefit, you know, when we think about social capital and how it relates to all of these other like health benefits and economic benefits and everything for like the whole community.
[00:18:16] Parker: Speaking to the benefits of it, I also like the distinction between like close personal ties with friends versus acquaintances and how those are both beneficial and not necessarily one more than the other, but just in separate ways on how having a lot of a handful of close personal ties does a whole lot for like health being trustworthy of like you need somebody to watch your pet or your child or house sit or something that you need like a higher level of trust to do having those close personal ties allows you to enable. But when you have more those kinds of acquaintance connections, those serve the ability of being able to branch out from where your specific interests and habits lie to be more beneficial in a wider community sort of way. The one that I can relate to personally is our friend, Andrew, at a New Year’s party this past one, I ran into a acquaintance who had like seen it a couple of volunteering things who never interacted with that much, but came to learn that I had a interview coming up very shortly. That was at their place of work and because of that, they put in a good word for me and now we’re coworkers. Good example for how those sort of more acquaintance based connections can have a lot of benefits.
[00:19:39] Ian: Right. And that was something I was surprised at in the book, was that he said acquaintances are better at getting you another job than like close social ties are at getting you another job. Right. When you’re when you’re job hunting.
[00:19:54] Parker: Yeah. Can you imagine there’s kind of a level of diminishing marginal return when you have a connection like that? They can trust you and be an incredibly close friend, but that doesn’t change how far their good word goes for you when you’re applying for something versus an acquaintance. And you can have a lot more acquaintances in a much, much wider net who if they go to their manager and go, oh, yeah, I know that guy. We’ve hung out a couple of times. They’re good.
[00:20:19] Stina: Have I ever taught you the beer and a puppy method of determining friendship or acquaintance ship? Where once you have interacted with someone a number of times and you’re trying to decide like, well, where like, where are we? And it’s would I get a beer with this person? That’s a very acquaintancy type thing, right? And then would I trust this person to watch my puppy for a weekend? And that’s where it kind of gets into friendship. So knowing where people are on the beer and a puppy scale kind of helps you determine where they are and in a relationship.
[00:20:54] Parker: It’s a very succinct way to put that. I like that.
[00:20:58] Ian: I have a couple of notes. I took very, very few notes because I was listening to this as an audiobook. So by the time you finish with your commute and you’re like, oh, man, I need to write down stuff from the chapter that I listened to. So the the chapter about like car dependence and suburbanization there was one one point that really stuck out to me where he said, if your coworkers come from all over the metropolitan area, you must choose spend an evening with the neighbors or spend an evening with colleagues, right? And that’s like as opposed to earlier in the 20th century, when many, many of your coworkers would have been living close to you. And so like those like the social ties were much more well entwined with like your work life and everything. Yeah, this is like super true for me. It’s hard to get. Like I have a number of coworkers who I consider to be good friends now. And the number of times that I’ve like been able to hang out with them outside of work is I think one. And it’s like Ken lives way over in on the east side of St. Paul. And so like his commute is long enough by bicycle that he’s like, I can’t really stick around in Minneapolis for very long. Like, you know, so it’s like we can’t have a movie night. We can’t like, yeah. Yeah, everybody’s all spread out.
[00:22:23] Parker: I’m thinking back to my my previous jobs. And and yeah, when I first moved up to Minneapolis for the first job that brought me here, I felt like I had a lot of really good friends in my workplace and got along with them well. And I can think of a bunch of times where I spent time with them. Every one of those was a workplace sanctioned thing. And now after I left that place, I have one good friend that I see somewhat regularly as like a regular friend. And it’s just interesting how those dynamics changed because of that. What else you got for notes? I lost mine.
[00:23:00] Ian: Oh, man. Another note from from that chapter about car dependence. He was talking about like statistics and numbers and everything. And he said, since vehicle occupancy cannot fall below one, you know, and like talking about how that the average vehicle occupancy is getting pretty darn close to one at this point, you know. And I’m like, well, you know, supposedly in the near future, we might have like cars driving around with zero occupants. So maybe maybe average car occupants will actually reach one or lower than that at some point in the future, which seems dire.
[00:23:35] Parker: Yeah, that’s fun. Overall, though, having read the book once, what are your thoughts on your book before we jump into not yet read the book perspective?
[00:23:49] Ian: I think I appreciated the the really thorough ways that they describe, for example, the fact that the like social changes like this, like like noticing that social capital is reducing over time, you know, that can happen either because like a generational cohort, right? Millennials have become less social over time, or it can be millennials. The overall ups and downs over the course of their lives is similar to what their parents were, but their parents were starting at a higher social capital, you know, it’s these generational differences versus like within a cohort differences over time. And that was a really helpful framework that they got to bring up over and over again and compare like these different types of potential causes and whether those were like generational differences or like a particular cohort changing its behaviors over time. And it almost always ended up being generational differences. Right. Yeah.
[00:25:00] Parker: Well, interesting.
[00:25:02] Stina: That’s where the book really hit for you.
[00:25:04] Ian: Yes, where it didn’t hit was the many, many chapters that we had to get through where we were like, is this the cause? No, it’s not. Is this the cause? No, it’s not. And then, you know, finally we get to a couple that were like, oh, they seem like they’re kind of, you know, but it still wasn’t like, oh, like if we solve this one problem, we’re definitely going to solve the social capital problem.
[00:25:26] Parker: That does make me trust it a bit more that they’re not going. And this is the thing that will fix it.
[00:25:31] Ian: But I want simple answers.
[00:25:33] Parker: I know we all do, but that’s just sometimes it don’t work that way.
[00:25:37] Ian: Yeah, yeah. One other note that I had was multi-level marketing schemes came up during the book. And I don’t remember super specifically what happened in the book related to those, but it reminded me of a an essay that I read by Cory Doctrow sometime within the last year where Cory was arguing that MLMs are like like the bizarro world equivalent of unions of labor unions because it’s the same type of social engagement that you need, you know, to get people involved in a union as you would need to get somebody involved in an MLM, right? You need the same kind of like charismatic but also like somebody who gets stuff done, right? A macher to like rope you in and be like, and we’re we’re going to work together on this thing. And we’re all going to, you know, benefit from from what we’re all doing. It’s just that one of them actually works and one of them is exploitative.
[00:26:44] Parker: It makes me just like MLMs even more than because that’s a really missed opportunity to take that kind of drive and personality to do something good for everybody.
[00:26:52] Ian: Right. Yeah.
[00:26:54] Parker: Dang.
[00:26:54] Ian: So we just need to make sure that we’re we’re capturing the people who are going to fill those roles for good social capital things instead of like losing them to.
[00:27:04] Stina: Cults. Who said that?
[00:27:07] Ian: But I mean, yeah, like, I mean, sometimes unions do feel kind of like a cult of personality and like you need to make sure that you’re steering it in the right direction. Right. Yeah.
[00:27:16] Stina: I mean, what is a cult but just folks who are very, very charismatic and focused on one thing. And ideally, it’s for good. But yeah.
[00:27:28] Parker: Stina, how’d you like the book?
[00:27:30] Stina: I didn’t read it. But I mean, learning about it from you two in the process of you reading it has been fascinating. And then being able to come up with some sort of type moderator discussion has been fun to kind of like read some critiques of the book and then come up with questions to ask you to is deeply fascinating. Would you like to jump into some of those?
[00:27:55] Parker: Yes, please.
[00:27:56] Stina: Questions.
[00:27:56] Parker & Ian: Questions!
[00:27:58] Stina: So this book was written in 2000.
[00:28:01] Ian: It did have a like an epilogue kind of thing for the 20th anniversary. OK, which they they wrote in like October of 2020. So they fascinating.
[00:28:11] Parker: Yeah, it doesn’t it doesn’t say it, but it starts with a emotional. Oh, boy.
[00:28:16] Stina: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. My question is, do you think social capital declined specifically during two major, I would say, major social changes for us? And that’s post 9/11 and COVID-19. So in spring of 2020. And do you think one of those has more of an impact on social capital than the other?
[00:28:38] Parker: I feel like, and this is probably coming from a perspective of being in kindergarten when 9/11 happened. COVID has had a lot more of a social connectedness type change. Versus 9/11, which seemed to be a bit more polarizing for like a better term.
[00:28:59] Ian: So I remember in the book, Robert talked about that like major events like wars are oftentimes catalysts for increasing social capital. Because a community will band together to overcome this foe, this thing that’s happening that we, you know, this problem that we need to fix. And I don’t like that wars are oftentimes that thing. But I guess you use what you’ve got sometimes, right? So like so like 9/11 was very much, especially by the Bush administration, right, was they were trying to use it as a moment of like national unity. I think enough people started seeing through that, you know, in like in the years following, but right then in that moment, it was like, you know, there’s a reason that we have a lot of like terrible consumer privacy issues that stemmed from that moment. But also like, I think if you were already in an American community, the social cohesion there strengthens in some ways. COVID-19 in Minnesota at least, right? Our governor was pitching that as a like, you know, hey, One Minnesota, we’re all in this together, like we got to work together to do this. And and as a result, like our outcomes in Minnesota were much better than in other states where it felt like everybody was, you know, every person for themselves. And I think I mean, that’s that’s not like that’s not to say that was all Tim Walz doing that, you know, on his own. Like I said, we started, Minnesota started from a point of having high social cohesion and high trust with each other to be like, yeah, I’m going to mask up because you’re going to mask up because we’re both protecting each other. And social distancing isn’t so hard when, you know, you prefer to stand six feet apart anyway, because we’re all Norwegian.
[00:31:04] Parker: But yeah, especially the aspect of masking up of being, well, this doesn’t really actually do a ton to protect you. The main aspect of it is being able to offer some protection to the people around you. And already, as you mentioned, already having a culture within the state that understands the benefits of reciprocity inherently makes taking an act like that more or less second nature because we would have done that anyways.
[00:31:31] Stina: So that gets into how much of social capital is, you know, these like cultural things and how much of it can be influenced by by physical changes, right? So we at Streets.mn, we talk about transportation and land use within the state of Minnesota. And famously, I’m a planner. So what are structural elements that cities or communities, even on a small scale, can do to try to encourage that cultural component?
[00:32:01] Ian: I think that as much as I love bikes and as much as I love buses, I think that the walking component is more important for this kind of social cohesion than anything else, putting into place the physical spaces that are required for people to be able to get most of their daily needs within walking distance is going to allow people to see their close neighbors much, much more often and build that kind of rapport, you know. Just this morning, I was biking to work and I passed somebody who is walking their dog and I was like, oh, hey, that’s one of the people who is on my neighborhood associations board. And, you know, like I ran into her at precinct caucuses and, you know, like now I’m occasionally volunteering for the organization and everything. And it’s like, oh, yeah, hey, like, I know who that is. And, you know, we like we work together on some things. And, you know, so it’s recognizing that that kind of social cohesion is like actually applicable in my life now is pretty, pretty awesome.
[00:33:12] Parker: Yeah, I think you’re short selling a little bit the benefits of social cohesion in bikes and buses as well. I’m sure you can relate to me the amount of times that you’ve been biking around and had a struck up a conversation with somebody on a bike or been biking with friends somewhere and able to communicate while you’re going along. Same sort of way as on a bus. There’s been many times I’ve seen somebody get on a bus, see somebody they recognize and have a conversation.
[00:33:38] Ian: Oh, man, I used to live in Seward and I would take the on the rare occasions that I took the bus to work, I would hop on the nine. And every single time that I did, the woman who got on the bus at the stop after me, everybody who she passed by on her way to her seat, everybody would wave to her. There was something about that one person that like she had made connections with everybody else who regularly rode the bus at that time of day.
[00:34:05] Stina: Let’s say she didn’t get on the bus one day. Someone or maybe all of them would maybe text or call her and check in. And it’s like building that community is so essential for just your well-being.
[00:34:20] Parker: And then on the other end of that, if you have a highway of cars go down the road throughout the suburbs and the metropolitan area getting to work or getting to home, that’s a lot harder to build any sort of social cohesion in a situation like that. It’s a lot more isolating. It’s a lot more separate from each other. All of these examples point to a built environment that really focuses on having the door open for having informal conversations and meetings. Ad hoc on the fly type stuff does a lot to help start to bridge those gaps in social capital. It doesn’t necessarily force people to have to talk to each other, but you do have to be around each other in a way that is more personal than a car with walls of steel.
[00:35:10] Ian: Physical infrastructure aside, there’s also the literal social infrastructure. Imagine that, you know, so they referenced any time that there was like a community immigrating to the U.S. And if they were coming from a place where they had a very particular way of organizing and working together on things that had high social cohesion, like that immigrant group typically would end up having like good outcomes within that community. And whether or not that actually, like, you know, maintained itself over time, I think, you know, sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes they would get kind of like, you know, molded into, well, this is like the way that we do things in New York City. And, you know, like you’re a small drop in the bucket versus like, you know, if you’ve got, I don’t know, a town in Northwestern Iowa that’s like, oh, everybody’s Dutch here. And, you know, so they do things the Dutch way. We have a delightful variety of different like municipal structures in the United States. And I think our immigrant roots is a large part to thank for that. And those kinds of social institutions have a large effect on what kinds of social cohesion you end up with.
[00:36:29] Parker: Pretty sure in the book, he mentions at least once that exact thing of immigrants moving to America and kind of coalescing in the same sort of area and developing those sort of neighborhoods that all had a, we’re all from roughly the same area. We all have similar backgrounds, reasons why we’re here and building a social cohesion around that of a similar shared experience.
[00:36:53] Stina: I feel like an example, at least locally, around in St. Paul, the Hmong community, like it’s such a close knit community that it is like a cultural identity in that part of St. Paul, where the style of businesses, I mean, everything there.
[00:37:11] Ian: And like, if there’s a community that has like a particular requirement for the way that finances are dealt with, right, you know, the Somali community, like they don’t take out loans nearly to the same extent that you and I would. And so they have different structures for supporting each other when they want to do something that like requires more capital than like one individual has.
[00:37:37] Stina: We were talking a little bit about how much we move and how quick things move. And I was thinking about the hustle culture, right? And so that’s probably something that’s really changed from the original publishing date of this book into now. And especially, I mean, you two have done quite a bit of work within the tech industry or tech industry adjacent. You know that hustle culture. Do you think when we are moving so fast and you have meeting after meeting after meeting, that’s losing tons of time that could be building the social connections in that sort of water cooler chatter or walking to go get lunch with your coworkers.
[00:38:23] Ian: But sometimes that work can be work that is building social capital, right? Like a lot of the organizations that they reference in the book would not have existed if you didn’t have people who are willing to volunteer their time, right? Which is a form of hustle.
[00:38:42] Parker: Yes, and I think specifically in hustle culture it’s just another way of framing, commoditizing every moment of your life to being able to be productive, which is another word for profitable in every sort of way. And only focusing on make more money in every step that you can.
[00:39:03] Ian: Specifically for yourself, right? Yeah, that’s a big part of hustle culture is the individualization.
[00:39:10] Stina: Encouraging folks to slow down. I feel like boredom drives the urge to develop community, right? If I’m bored and alone, what am I gonna do with that energy? And that’s where having the opportunity to become part of my community, become part of something that’s just, even if it’s just for fun.
[00:39:33] Parker: This can actually go back to the built environment type thing of if you’re home and you’re bored, you don’t have anything, nothing comes to mind. You could sit at home and watch television or look at your phone and stuff or doing something as simple as going for a walk helps you be more connected to your neighborhood, get to be more familiar with your surroundings and see them in different lights and see more of your neighbors and stuff like that rather than going, oh, I could get to work and make something or sell something in this downtime.
[00:40:06] Stina: I think when I was living in south of Miami, there was a lot of Cuban culture playing dominoes is a huge thing. And so there are, there’s permanent just seating areas in areas in parts of Miami where it’s a domino board, like you bring your own dominoes, but it’s two seats or four seats and that’s where you play dominoes and there’s a whole bunch of them in one square. So it could just be you and 11 other people all sitting at these little tables. And that’s the thing I think about of the built environment doesn’t have to be super expensive and it can be kind of we see some tactical urbanism. Even on Nicollet Mall, they’re trying so hard to revamp Nicollet and I think it’s just getting people to slow down because that’s where connections are built. Would you say that aligns with the book?
[00:41:04] Parker: Absolutely.
[00:41:06] Ian: Yeah, I think up here it would have to be cribbage boards, right?
[00:41:09] Stina: Yeah, it’d have to be cribbage and then I don’t know, we have to find something to do in the winter too.
[00:41:13] Parker: I see those tables that have the chess boards on them, chess checkers boards on them. And I’ve always wanted to stop and like set up a little chess thing and just like invite a stranger to play with me. I make someone’s day.
[00:41:46] Stina: On that, what if you created a social institution of some sort? What would that be? What could you imagine?
[00:41:56] Parker: Streets.mn Podcast.
[00:41:58] Ian: Yeah, I mean, so I think about my own life, right? And how up until now, anytime that I’m at like a public engagement event like, you know, Lyndale Avenue redesign or, you know, the Summit, bike trail, yada, yada. And I’m there because I want to advocate for this thing. And there’s a bunch of other fellow advocates who are there as well. And I have made the self-deprecating joke like, oh, here I am with 50 of my closest friends, you know. And the only time that I can hang out with other people is when it is within the context of advocacy. And I have felt like, I must be doing something wrong in my social life if that is like the basis of most of my friendships. But also in the book, they were talking about that like, for many protest movements in like the 70s and 80s, the determining factor on whether somebody like stuck with it wasn’t like how much they cared about that particular issue. It was, do they have friends who are also in that protest movement? And so like having those social connections within that context helps keep people on board and like helps keep the energy up and everything. And so like, maybe I shouldn’t feel weird about that. Maybe I should lean into that and, you know, like, that doesn’t have to be my only social connections, but also like it’s not a bad thing that I have a lot of social connections within this sphere.
[00:43:34] Parker: I can say personally, from having gone to a protest that was also a date, it is way better to have a social connection at something like that. We’re both very fired up about the thing we’re angry about, but then also getting to know each other. And it’s a great way to start. Why am I advocating for going on dates at protests?
[00:43:53] Stina: I’ve done it, it’s fun. It’s hot!
[00:43:54] Parker: Yeah, okay, cool. I’m not alone in this.
[00:44:07] Parker: I don’t know if this is a social institution, but I run a cybersecurity conference. So I guess I’d theme it around inclusive cybersecurity communities. Cause the whole point of the conference, it’s B-Sides Conference, which, for those not familiar, B-Sides got started after some larger security conferences in Vegas, Black Hat and Def Con, which are very popular and gets a bit more difficult to get your talk accepted there. So there’s a group of people that started the B-Sides for those conferences. So you didn’t get accepted to the main one, we’ll come to the B-Sides. And now there’s a lot of different ones all around the country and the world, various locations. There was one in the Twin Cities, I restarted one up here with some friends and this is gonna be our second year of it. But the whole point of it, at least how I’ve been wanting to promote it, has been come watch a couple of talks, but really come meet the other cybersecurity people in the area and find some community and get to know each other through something like this. Really leaning into the inclusive and welcoming aspect of it rather than the, this is gonna be prime tech talks. Like no, this is a talk from a friend that I met at a thing a couple of months ago who did a cool project. This isn’t gonna be like groundbreaking stuff or maybe it is, I don’t know. Just come meet people, talk.
[00:45:31] Ian: For listeners who grew up in the streaming era, a B-Side was-
[00:45:37] Parker: So these two have these things called CDs and then before those was like a CD but big.
[00:45:43] Ian: The big black CDs, yeah. And Vinyls would have the popular songs were gonna be on the front side.
[00:45:52] Stina: Called the A-Side.
[00:45:54] Ian: The A-Side and then the B-Side was where they put the stuff that they needed to include to make it to the full length of an album. But maybe those weren’t the songs that they thought were gonna be the big hits.
[00:46:04] Parker: And sometimes some of the B-Sides were the big hit. And I bet there’s examples I could say if I knew any.
[00:46:11] Ian: If we were like cultured and knew music, yeah.
[00:46:15] Parker: All I know is bus and bike and book, the three Bs. Anyways, hi, Stina.
[00:46:21] Stina: Hi. I think my social institution that I’m in progress of is Silent Book Club, where in Silent Book Club you meet at a location, it could be a house, it could be outdoors, it could be a coffee shop. Everyone brings their own book and you read on your own for one hour and then there’s one hour of social time. It’s a two hour commitment, once a week and it kind of shifts stays because that’s what I do because I can’t commit to anything. And it works, it’s fun, it’s drop-in. We also, a lot of people are afraid of commitment, I’ve noticed. So maybe that’s why we’re not seeing as many bowling leagues because I’m like what do you mean every single week on that same day? That’s a lot, I can’t even do D&D.
[00:47:09] Ian: Yeah, D&D is one that I’ve like long been fascinated by and like, oh man, I wanna be a part of an ongoing campaign and have like this core group of people who I get to spend time with on a regular basis and also, I don’t wanna give up time on a regular basis because maybe I need to edit a podcast episode last minute on this evening, whatever, yeah.
[00:47:34] Stina: Another kind of personal question for both of you. We talked about reciprocity, right? Which is, I’ll do this thing without expecting something in return, right? That’s kind of what we’re trying to get into and I would say our friend group is particularly good at this but for a lot of folks, especially the big shock of when I moved from Florida to here, which people are just nice to be nice, they don’t actually want anything from me. So what’s your advice for how do people start getting into this vibe of just I let you borrow this thing without getting something in return?
[00:48:10] Parker: I think not expecting it to be a one-to-one thing is a good place to start. At least that’s how I approach a lot of it is you more or less just do this thing because you want to be kind to your friends, to the people you have around you with maybe somewhat of an internal expectation that eventually this will come back to me and benefit me in some sort of way but if I paid for your meal, if I paid $10 or $15 for your meal, I don’t expect you to give me back that exact amount of money anytime soon or ever really but when there is a need coming back the other way that you are able to fill, then there is that opportunity and you’ll take that opportunity. I think the way that you make sure that’s maintained is being able to have open and clear communications with those in your life. So if a friend of yours isn’t meeting that level of reciprocity, you have the door open to go, hey, I want to have a conversation about kind of the back and forth we got going. I’m feeling it might be a little one-sided. How do you feel, Ian?
[00:49:17] Ian: I would say a good way to get started on reciprocal relationships like this would be think about what kinds of skills you have that you can offer to people and ideally think of something that like is only gonna put you out time and isn’t necessarily gonna be a big monetary or material thing that you have to give away, right? So I like technology and I know a thing or two about computers and I enjoy just helping with consumer grade, computer issues and so whenever I need a haircut, I can go over to my mom’s place because my mom is gonna cut my hair and that’s what she’s offering and then like I can update her computer because that’s what I’m offering and then it’s a good excuse for us to spend time together and so like even though I’m spending time updating a computer that I could have been doing something else, I also am just like hanging out with the person who I’m helping out with that thing. Yeah, I think that that’s a good place to start and then kind of develop from there.
[00:50:27] Parker: I like that a lot. There’s been a lot of times that I’ve helped similarly people with computer issues and they feel the need to pay me money for it and I’ve tried really hard to insist. No, you paid me by letting me tinker around with the computer for a bit, that’s fun and I’ve gotta hang out with you for a half hour. That’s all I needed.
[00:50:46] Stina: I have two more questions. So we make friends and we make connections and acquaintances because they’re all different in various ways and so my question for you two is what is the silliest social tie you’ve gathered ideally recently but it can be at any time in the world?
[00:51:05] Ian: Mine’s not recent at all. When I went to kindergarten, I came home after the first day of kindergarten and I told my dad, yeah, I met Taylor today. Taylor’s my best friend now. Taylor has a really cool Anakin Skywalker backpack. That’s all it took. He was my best friend apparently.
[00:51:29] Stina: That’s cute.
[00:51:30] Parker: I’ll go to climbing gyms somewhat often and I will wear either my shirt that has a bunch of trains on it with lightning all around it and stuff that says “train daddy” or I wear another one that has a, is a lime, bright lime green shirt with a frog with a cowboy hat on it that says “giddy up” and those are my two shirts that I wear as kind of a filter of do you think this shirt rocks or do you think it’s weird because if you think it rocks we’re probably gonna be friends and so I will just kind of strike up conversations with people and if they seem to vibe well with that then I will just go with like all right cool you’re that kind of friend now. It’s similarly if somebody has a tattoo that I think is rad I will compliment it and make friends with them via that. I made a new friend while on the Twin Cities Bike Tour yesterday because they had a tattoo on their leg of the fishing game from Club Penguin and I went that’s awesome I’ll be right back I’m grabbing my phone you’re my friend now.
[00:52:37] Stina: It’s like in college the way that I met one of my best friends in the entire world is I was taking out the garbage and she was playing the piano in the lobby of my dorm (it was not that fancy it was donated to us by a former student) and she was playing a k-pop song that I considered pretty obscure at the time but I was like I know this song so I’m standing there with my stinky garbage waiting for her to finish the song and then I was like is that Haru Haru by Big Bang? Thank you listeners for those who got that and she turned around she’s like yes you know them and I was like yes and now we’re best friends and she lives in LA now but we still hang out like once a year and we talk once a week for like four hours on the phone but it all started because we had the opportunity to have that connection in this open space.
[00:53:30] Parker: I had a very similar situation like earlier this week I was biking somewhere I don’t remember where and playing music for my speaker and playing the musician Alex G and somebody across the street went, “I love Alex G” and I went “what I’ve not met another Alex G fan yet” and I biked over to them and talked to him for a minute about music and stuff and now we’re friends.
[00:53:53] Stina: And my last question and this relates to the book do you think we are actually as lonely as we feel or is it all perceived loneliness?
[00:54:06] Parker: I think given how many products and stuff are sold along the lines of creating some sort of perceived relation I mean especially recently of like AI chat stuff and how much people attach personalities to them I think there is a strong desire for a lot of social connection and making ties like that so I think as a culture at least in America there’s probably a strong sense for wanting more deeper connections and in typical fashion a lot of tech companies will try to innovate their way out of the problem which isn’t I don’t want to say is always a terrible idea but oftentimes misses a lot simpler solution of well if I make a multi-billion dollar server farm network and tie these together to create a system of computers that simulate human interaction that can solve your loneliness when a probably a little bit simpler of a solution is to go outside and talk to your neighbor and if you don’t like that neighbor there’s probably going to be another one nearby.
[00:55:15] Ian: From like a from a data perspective you know it’s so hard to know when you’re in your own life like oh how how is my level of like social interaction and loneliness and everything like how does that compare to a historic you know like what was it like in my parents generation what was it like in my grandparents generation when they were 33 years old right? No matter what you know your feelings about how lonely you are are totally valid and also it’s it’s so hard to know like how that compares to like what is normal for humans and like what to do about that.
[00:55:54] Parker: It’s also hard to tell nowadays with how much has changed with internet communities which the book touches on in the afterward because in the main book it talks about how well the internet’s just starting to be a thing so it’ll be interesting to see how that changes stuff and the afterward goes well boy did it change stuff but it’s still not entirely sure whether internet communities have made things better worse or just different because there’s definitely a lot of strong ties and benefits to connections made over the internet I’ve gone around America in a couple different states to see friends that I’ve met only ever online and I get along with them great and everything like that and I would have never met them otherwise but I can also say personally some of the loneliest time that I’ve spent was when I was spending most of that time talking to people on Discord.
[00:56:49] Ian: Yeah the detail that stood out to me in that afterward was and I don’t remember how much like data they had to support this necessarily but it seemed it rang true to me was that like having a lot of online social connections isn’t necessarily bad if those if the overlap between those online social connections and your in-person social connections is high if those two are helping to strengthen each other and reinforce each other and like in my own life being at a point in my late 20s when the pandemic hit like having those strong online relationships was essential and simultaneously like those communities were realizing how important in-person interaction is because we were all going through this experience together of like all of a sudden we didn’t have as many in-person opportunities for social interaction so that like resulted in an online community that was really intentionally trying to spend time in person together once it was safe to do so and that’s felt super positive. They don’t use this phrase in the book but like if you’re somebody who doesn’t have a whole lot of like overlap between your online and in-person social groups I think that would be what I would describe as being “chronically online” and so that they don’t really get into like what the negative aspects of that are but I would love to see an exploration of that a little bit more.
[00:58:28] Parker: He does have a follow-up book that I listened to the first 10 minutes of so far but a whole lot more to go through. Stina, does this answer your questions and additionally would you read the book after hearing this conversation?
[00:58:42] Stina: I think I prefer the Cliff’s Notes version that I received via you two but also some of the articles that I read they did a really good job of having some direct quotes that I felt like were impactful I’d be curious to read the next prologue prologue in 10 years of how have things changed.
[00:59:03] Parker: We’ll have to hit up Mr. Putnam about that.
[00:59:07] Stina: Can I get some final thoughts from both of you on the book itself?
[00:59:11] Parker: It’s a really good dry book on what social capital is and how engagement has changed I think the biggest takeaway because it doesn’t give a conclusive yes or no to anything other than yeah we’re seeing engagement go down the whys are here’s a pretty good theory why but it doesn’t ever uh it hedges all of its bets the most conclusive thing I can draw from it though is that social engagement is a muscle that needs to be worked in order to be strengthened and that we don’t get out of this problem of not having these connections by developing a new technology to solve it we don’t get out of it by pulling ourselves away and investing time elsewhere as hard as it is it’s a very straightforward “we need to find time and make time to have these sort of social connections.” I know that’s a lot easier said than done for a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons but finding ways to make that work will begin the process for it to be better and easier in the future and while it takes some time for those results to be really fully actualized it is something that can start having immediate improvements the moment you start working on it and it starts with just going to try to be a bit more social.
[01:00:42] Ian: Yeah it’s a it’s a book that’s trying to address like a very systemic problem and straddling the line between like okay are we going to think about this as like individual solutions versus systemic solutions which is a really tough place to be. I’m glad that this book exists because it’s a great tool for like people in decision-making scenarios right to be able to shape our communities in really profound ways and I think it’s okay that it doesn’t like give us exact solutions as as individuals right you know it doesn’t tell you like how to go about encouraging yourself to watch less TV and get out there and like hang out with people more often. That’s where we have to like build the systems that are going to encourage people to spend less time watching TV.
[01:01:38] Stina: Well thank you two. For my last question so what’s next for the book club do you have a next book picked out?
[01:01:49] Parker: Yes we do and Ian is going to tell us about it.
[01:01:52] Ian: Yeah so I pitched this one to Parker and uh and I’m absolutely chuffed that he uh chose it as our next book. It’s going to be The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow (oh my gosh I referenced him earlier this episode).
[01:02:06] Parker: A trend.
[01:02:06] Ian: But it’s a it’s a novel so we’re doing fiction for the first time and it is set in a near future I think it’s about 30 years in the future where we have you know a US government and and a lot of other governments are actually trying to do what needs to be done to tackle climate change for you know and um and so what what do our communities look like in that scenario what are the social uh support systems look like you know how how are they going about building enough housing for everybody and yeah.
[01:02:40] Parker: Nice. I’m looking forward to reading it I’m glad you suggested a fantasy book because I don’t like my books to be simple they’re either going to be dry or really complex because this is this Bowling Alone is one of my favorite non-fiction books and my favorite fiction books are Dune and House of Leaves.
[01:03:00] Ian: High complexity.
[01:03:03] Stina: If folks want to do a read-along with you too do we have an estimated timeline for when they should read that?
[01:03:18] Parker: January…
[01:03:18] Stina: All right so by the end of the year pick that up wherever you find books perhaps the library or your favorite local bookstore and we will come back maybe I’ll even read it this time we’ll come back in December, January.
[01:03:34] Parker: Thanks for joining us.
[01:03:37] Stina: Thank you!
[01:03:38] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast. The show is released under a creative commons attribution non-commercial non-derivative license so feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it. The music in this episode is by Erik Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was produced by Parker Seaman and Stina Neel, edited by Jeremy Winter, and was engineered and transcribed by me Ian R. Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes drop us a line at [[email protected]]. Streets.mn is a community blog and podcast and relies on contributions from audience members like you; if you can make a one-time or recurring donation you can find more information about doing so at [https://streets.mn/donate]. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #streetsmnpodcast. Until next time, take care.