Join or Die with Robert Putnam | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast

Trevor Noah 0:00 What is it about the bowling versus bowling alone that, that the data told you? And what were people reporting that you thought was important to, to get into?

Speaker 0:08 Well, first of all, bowling is big in America. You may not know this, but more Americans bowl than vote, for example, so-

Trevor Noah 0:15 Wow.

Speaker 0:15 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:15 So we gotta put, we gotta put bowls at the bowling booth. [laughs] Exactly. When you put your fingers in, you should, like, get the little die, and then you vote straight up. You vote. Yeah. That's what we should be doing. Agreed.

Speaker 0:25 [laughs] [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 0:31 This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. [upbeat music] I cannot tell you how excited I am to have you on the podcast. And I think, I think everyone will be because Robert Putnam is one of those names that is surprisingly unknown, but then surprisingly very well known depending on who you ask. So if you ask a lot of people in the streets- Mm-hmm ... if you said, "Do you know Robert Putnam?" They would probably maybe say no. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:01 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:01 But if the s- the person in the street that you asked was somebody like Barack Obama-

Speaker 1:05 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:05 ... then he'd be like- Yeah ... uh, "Yeah, I know Robert, and I know him well." [laughs] And you'd be like, "Wow."

Speaker 1:09 No, actually, he would say, "Bob." I've been over this. Um, there's a really funny, uh, New York Times interview in which The New York Times interview was trying to say, uh, "I know ... I'm, I'm New York Times reporter, pretty well-connected. I know Robert Putnam." And Barack just says, "No, it's Bob."

Trevor Noah 1:26 I like that. Hey. [laughs]

Speaker 1:27 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:28 That's when you, that's when you know somebody.

Speaker 1:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:30 So actually, let's talk about that because it-

Speaker 1:33 Sure

Trevor Noah 1:33 ... although it seems crazy, will tie into everything that we're gonna talk about today, loneliness, community, and fundamentally, funny enough, how all of it is integral in making sure that a democracy actually works.

Speaker 1:48 Right.

Trevor Noah 1:48 Which I think is very important in America right now because people are wondering if this democracy can and will work, you know, in the next few decades. Yeah. And we're, we're experiencing this around the world. But, but, but tell us a little bit about that. How does Barack Obama, President of the United States, come to know you as Bob? How does this journey begin?

Speaker 2:06 [laughs] Um, about 20 years ago, not ... well, maybe not quite that, 15 years ago maybe, um, I was trying to run a seminar. I was running a seminar of people i- and the, the idea was to bring people from very, very diverse backgrounds, um, together, uh, once every three months for a couple of years to try to figure out how to solve the problem of social isolation in America, and its political consequences. It's not just loneliness. It's also affects, as you said, and we're gonna come back to that, the chances of democracy surviving. We had a big multidimensional matrix. We wanna make sure we had enough men and women and Blacks and Asians and Latinos and whites and r- old and young and rich and poor and business and labor, et cetera. You can imagine this multidimensional scheme.

Trevor Noah 2:51 Right.

Speaker 2:51 And we got it all filled, but we had one box that we had not yet filled, um, for a young Black community organizer. And my son, who had been at Harvard Law School, said, "You know, you ought to check out this really bright guy I know who I play basketball with."

Trevor Noah 3:09 [laughs]

Speaker 3:10 Because it turns out my s- my son, this is gonna make you believe in the, a conspiracy theory of American life. My son happened to be on the Harvard Law Review with Barack, and they play, played basketball together.

Trevor Noah 3:22 Wow.

Speaker 3:23 He said, "Well, he's a, he's a community organizer out in Chicago." I said, "Bingo. That sort of fits our, you know, the right matrix."

Trevor Noah 3:28 Right.

Speaker 3:28 So we got this guy here. He's one of the l- youngest people in the group. And, and he's very ambitious. It's clear he's very ambitious, but he's also cute. He's a little bit like the mas-

Trevor Noah 3:38 [laughs]

Speaker 3:38 ... uh, like a, uh, like a mascot in this group. And so, you know, in, like in a summer camp, people develop nicknames, and our nickname for him was The Governor because we thought, "What a joke. This guy's ambitious, and he thinks he's gonna eventually become-

Trevor Noah 3:52 Hilarious

Speaker 3:53 ... I don't know, governor of Ill- Illinois." This is the guy who, five years later, is the President of United States.

Trevor Noah 3:57 [laughs] So you weren't, you weren't wrong. Governor was a, a joke.

Speaker 4:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 4:02 He was a joke.

Speaker 4:03 There was something else that's important about him.

Trevor Noah 4:05 Yes.

Speaker 4:06 You know he's very smart, but he's also, at least, he can be very quiet. So, and, and this is a group of, of big egos. And so the first, you know, we gather on a Friday night, Friday night and all day, much of Saturday up until lunch. Everybody else was doing what we called station identification. That is, they were telling us how important they were and why their views were the most important. And, and Obama kept silent during all of that. And then after lunch, he'd say, "You know, I've been listening to this. I, I've been listening especially to Susan and to Josh, and they think they disagree, but I think underneath, Susan and Josh agree." And they did. And everybody around the table was open-mouthed. How did he see that? We've been all sitting through the same conversation. And there was, the whole conversation was polarized in many different ways, but he saw a way in which he could frame an issue in ways that would be productive for the whole group going forward.

Trevor Noah 5:02 Oh, wow.

Speaker 5:03 He's able to see through all this, you know, all the fighting.

Trevor Noah 5:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He can read. He's able to, he's able to connect groups that don't necessarily- Yeah ... think they have anything that connects them. But I feel like that's the perfect jumping-off point-

Speaker 5:16 Good

Trevor Noah 5:16 ... to get into your work. And I won't say single-handedly, 'cause you always give credit to your team, and I think that's important. But you have been at the forefront of helping us understand social isolation and why this can very well be the reason society crumbles, society as we know it. Mm-hmm. You know? Everyone talks about we're more polarized than ever. People say like, "Oh, you know, and I don't get along with the other parents at school." And people say like, "I can't talk to my family because of politics." Yeah. "And I, I don't even know my neighbors' names." And at, and at the same time, everyone says, "I don't even know if this election will be the last one because democracy could be dead." Well, today we're gonna be speaking to the man who really has worked on helping us understand The data behind the feeling. And you've written a few books about this. You know, Bowling Alone was obviously, I mean, you know, your, your seminal work, which was then ... It went on, like, an interesting journey, and we'll talk about some of it. You know, the praise, the criticism.

Speaker 6:13 Right.

Trevor Noah 6:13 And then you, you, you, you talked about, like, making democracies work, et cetera, but let's start with the fundamental problem at the bottom of it.

Speaker 6:19 Sure.

Trevor Noah 6:20 Why do you think it's such a big deal that people are or say they're lonely? What is the value of minimizing social isolation?

Speaker 6:29 Well, of course, there are reasons to worry about people being lonely. That's, um, indeed the title of this, uh, film that's now, you know, out and about on Netflix and in theaters and so on.

Trevor Noah 6:41 That's Join, Join or Die, yeah.

Speaker 6:42 Join or Die. Your chances of dying ... Well, your chances of dying are high, actually. I've had befor- sorry to say that, but your chances of dying over the next year are cut in half by joining one group. Um, and that is there are real serious health effects, and, and this is controlling for everything you like. It's, it's, it is really social isolation that causes premature death, but it also undermines the foundation for democracy, and that's another part of the title, Join or Die, refers-

Trevor Noah 7:12 Yeah. Mm-hmm

Speaker 7:12 ... to the fact that, that, um, Benjamin Franklin, at the time of the founding of the American Republic, said, "Unless we join together, our democracy's gonna die."

Trevor Noah 7:20 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:20 That is, it refers both to the personal effects, which are big, and to the collective effects. And the collective effects, by the way, are not just democracy. Our, our economy grows more slowly. Our society becomes more unequal. Um, the political polarization is a big consequence of, of the lack of social capital. And Bowling Alone, the book Bowling Alone, first published in about 2000, but most of it was written in the late '90s, said we've been going downhill for a long time in terms of our connections, all sorts of connections.

Trevor Noah 7:54 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:54 We've been, we've been going to fewer club meetings, but we've been going on fewer picnics, and we trust other people less. And we're less connected to our friends and, and to community organizations, but also to our family. All, all those ways in which we connect, all of them turned out to be going down, um, when I wrote that book, and now 25 years later, it turns out they've gone down even further.

Trevor Noah 8:15 When you're talking about social connectedness, just, just to clarify this for people, what do you mean? Because there are people who will say, "Uh, uh, but, but, but Robert, I, I've got followers on Instagram, and I, I talk-

Speaker 8:25 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 8:25 ... to people on my Facebook, and I-"

Speaker 8:27 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 8:27 "You know, I see people at school, and ... What do you mean? I, I, I-"

Speaker 8:30 Yeah,

Speaker 8:30 also off that, I'm, I'm curious about the we, because my world is predominantly women and people of color, and our complaint is that we can't get rid of people. Like-

Trevor Noah 8:39 [laughs]

Speaker 8:39 You know? Like, you've started off with, like, kind of this collective we, which I'd like to disrupt a bit, right? Because-

Speaker 8:46 Sure

Speaker 8:47 ... there is no real collective we, hence this kind of political, the political differences that we have. And Black women in this country are probably one of the few groups where life expectancy is actually holding or going up, right? And one of the reason they say that, and one of the reasons Black women vote the way they do and behave the way they do, is because they have this deep sense of community among each other. So I'd say, speaking for Black women statistically, these aren't Black women's problems, and that's often because we are the carers. We are the people that are looking after children, elderly family members. They're looking to us. So I, I don't know many isolated Black women in the way that you speak of. Also, I say, just like ethnically, I'm Nigerian British. I'm Ibo. It wasn't just about my tribe, it was about my clan, which is the Aha people. And we had this group where people pay dues all the time, and when my great uncle died, part of the dues contributed to his funeral. So I think for ethnic minorities in this country, whether it's Latinos, it's African Americans, it's Asians, there are different cultural ties there, that the idea of when I re- pick up the newspaper and I hear a story of somebody dying alone, and they don't find the body for months, I'm like, how does that happen? Because there's 20 people knocking on your door.

Trevor Noah 9:56 But, but you see, it's, it's-

Speaker 9:57 Within a we- And I'm, I'm not saying that from my personal experience.

Trevor Noah 9:59 No, no, no, no, I'm-

Speaker 9:59 But you know

Trevor Noah 10:00 ... so I will say, funny enough, I hear you both saying the same thing, genuinely. So i- you know, if, if I listen to what you're saying, Robert, you're saying that our life expectancy is directly tied to how many groups we are a part of, right? So those commu-

Speaker 10:18 And how close those are, yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:19 And how close those are.

Speaker 10:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:21 And everything I'm hearing you say, funny enough, is, and I understand the delineation of, like, the we, but I mean, we use the we in many different ways. But I hear you saying the same thing.

Speaker 10:28 Mm.

Trevor Noah 10:28 You're going, Black women's life expectancy is holding and going up in America because partly they are in these tight-knit groups. And so maybe that's sort of what I would like us to figure out, is what are some groups holding onto that other groups are letting go of?

Speaker 10:42 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:42 'Cause I, I agree with you. I think even if I look at my life, you know, R- Robert, I grew up in South Africa. It's called Chris-

Speaker 10:48 I know your life. I read your life story, so.

Trevor Noah 10:50 [laughs] Oh, damn. [laughs]

Speaker 10:52 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 10:53 He's, "I know your life." Um, and Christiana grew up in, in London, right? But-

Speaker 10:57 Right

Trevor Noah 10:57 ... we have similarities, and, and the main thing for me was, till this day even, Black women almost never found themselves without a community, and they worked towards it. So my grandmother was part of a thing called a society-

Speaker 11:12 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 11:12 ... where all the grandmothers would come together, and they would put their money into a collection, and one member would get money every single month.

Speaker 11:20 Mm.

Trevor Noah 11:20 And then there was, like, a funeral society as well, and that was just a group of people who'd come together to talk about funerals. And then there was another church society, and that-

Speaker 11:27 Yeah

Trevor Noah 11:28 ... d- it's self-explanatory. And so may- maybe that's what I wanna try and get to, 'cause I actually hear you both saying the same thing. And correct me if I'm wrong. I think the we you're talking about is, like, all of us, every single human being in a society. And Christiana, what you're saying is like, you know, Black women don't seem to have the same issue. So maybe let's dig into that. You did a lot of this work in Italy, right? A lot of your seminal work came from Italy.

Speaker 11:51 Originally, yes.

Trevor Noah 11:52 Yes. So, and, and a lot of the time, you know, when I'm having conversations about what happens in America, I'll say to people, "I know America is the be-all and end-all for many people, but I think a lot of America's issues and ideas Can be solved or have been solved-

Speaker 12:07 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 12:07 ... in other countries.

Speaker 12:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 12:09 You know? You go to Italy and really, you, you're on this journey of trying to understand why democracies work better or worse, or even to get more granular, you're trying to understand why some people-

Speaker 12:23 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 12:24 ... trust government more, why some people trust institutions more, and why some governments and institutions are working better for the people that they're looking after.

Speaker 12:33 Right.

Trevor Noah 12:33 And help me understand how Italy ties the story together for you. What do you learn in Italy?

Speaker 12:40 Well, um, I wanna step back just a little bit. If you were a botanist and wanted to study plant growth, how a plant was influenced by its environment, you'd take genetically identical seeds, you'd plant them in different pots of soil, you'd water them differently, and then you'd measure and see how, you know, which plants flourished and which faltered, and then you knew it'd be something that you did in the soil or something, or how much you watered them. That's what Italians did in Italy in 1970. They created a new set of regional governments all across Italy, from the up in the Alps to down in Sicily.

Trevor Noah 13:16 Hmm.

Speaker 13:16 Um, they all had the same powers and money. They looked the same on paper, but the environments into which they were in, planted, uh, in, were very, very different. Some were very advanced economically. Some were very backward economically. Some were Catholic, some were communist, et cetera. And so we, over, for 20, 25 years, followed those regional governments. We could see that some of them were very successful, not only in terms of were they able to build daycare centers when they planned to, but also in terms of what did the people think. And so we s- could see there were some successful governments and some failures, and then the question is, well, what was in the soil, and we had a lot of different ideas. Um, we thought maybe it was just economic wealth made the difference, or we thought maybe it was education that made a difference. But we didn't guess what it turned out to be, which was choral societies, singing groups, and football clubs and so on, by which I mean some, in some places of Italy, people in the region connected with one another across various lines, singing together. So that's what we came to call social capital. We were talking about these bonds that brought people in a given region or community together across lines. And in northern Italy, especially north central Italy, around Bologna, for example, there was a lot of, a lot of that kind of what I came to call social capital, that is, these connections among people, and they had very effective, still do, very, very effective regional governments. But some places, especially in the south, they didn't. They didn't have those kinds of groups, and they didn't ... And they had terrible, corrupt, inefficient, never answered the phone even, regional governments. Now, what I wanna ... And now I'm coming back to what Christiana asked about. Did they just have no groups down there? No, they had very tiny little groups. Families. They, they looked after their own immediate family but weren't involved in groups with people, you know, even on the other side of the street, much less on the other side of town.

Trevor Noah 15:19 Town.

Speaker 15:19 Now, what I'm trying to say is their we was strong but very narrow. And what was characteristic up north was that they had, um, much broader groups in which people from different families and different walks of life would come together to sing. Now, Christiana, I may not have persuaded you in what I've said now-

Trevor Noah 15:43 [laughs]

Speaker 15:43 ... but I've tried to convey the way I hear your objections. I think- No, I co- but I, I actually come from that world, a huge extended family, a huge church family. My husband's an only child but comes from a big extended family and loads of friends. So my conception of c- as much as I had the depth of my clan and my ethnic group, you know, when now it was time to dedicate my kids, I flew back to London so it happened in the home church where I was dedicated in.

Trevor Noah 16:09 Sure.

Speaker 16:09 The man that christened me christened my children.

Trevor Noah 16:12 Right.

Speaker 16:12 Do you know what I mean? So, like, this is ... I, I, I guess what I'm trying to articulate is that for a lot of people, maybe from similar backgrounds as mine, that's our conceit already, that, like, the, the fact that this ... It's not foreign. Do, do you get where I'm coming from?

Trevor Noah 16:25 Yeah, I, I, I hear what you're saying.

Speaker 16:26 Yeah, so, like, it's like I-

Trevor Noah 16:27 But it's-

Speaker 16:27 It's, it's, like, this extended group and clan and-

Trevor Noah 16:31 So-

Speaker 16:31 It's very different and it's very diverse.

Trevor Noah 16:33 So there's, there's one thing I want, I want us to get to in a way. M- maybe let's start with, with this part. The why. Why, why does it change anything? So what I love about this story is, you know, oftentimes when we, when we're talking about an issue in society, as you say, because we don't have all of the data and because we, we have confirmation bias, we'll pick the thing that we, we think is the cause.

Speaker 16:58 Right.

Trevor Noah 16:58 And we'll stick with it.

Speaker 16:59 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 17:00 So we go, "Oh, society's declining because of social media. Oh, society's declining because of politics. Oh, society's declining because ..." Okay. But you had a natural experiment that very few, you know, social scientists will ever have. Help, help us understand the why in that. I, I would love to know why your government will work better if your community has more clubs in it. I, I don't think that's, that correlation is, is easy for everyone to see.

Speaker 17:25 Let me see if I can explain it this way. Um, if you see people regularly and you're good friends, I don't mean intimate friends, but, you know-

Trevor Noah 17:35 Mm-hmm

Speaker 17:35 ... you, you have a good, good friendship-

Trevor Noah 17:37 Yeah

Speaker 17:37 ... uh, much less a, a deeper friendship, um, what tends to evolve is, um, a norm of reciprocity. That is, I'll do this for you now without expecting something back immediately from you, because down the road we'll see each other at choir practice and you'll do something for me.

Trevor Noah 17:57 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 17:57 I'll do this for you now without expecting something back.

Trevor Noah 18:00 Hmm.

Speaker 18:00 And indeed, if everybody in the community is connected, I'll do something for somebody who I don't actually know, because if other people watching see that I'm cheating him, they won't play games with me. So in other words, everybody learns that the people in this town ... are g- are nice to each other. Wouldn't, wouldn't you love to live in a place where people were nice to each other?

Trevor Noah 18:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18:19 And moreover, and this is the main point of Bowling Alone, we learned when we carried those ideas back to the United States, that that has changed over time. There have been periods in American history when we did have connections with other people. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, um, in the nine- late 1950s, and nobody locked their door. And when I tell my children and grandchildren that, they say they think Grandpa's lying.

Trevor Noah 18:46 [laughs]

Speaker 18:46 But no, in that per- And it wasn't about race. There were, there were Black kids. I played football. I, there's a picture on the cover of Bowling Alone of me and my bowling league when I was in the, in junior high school, and there are three white guys, I'm the tall, skinny one in the middle, and there are two Black guys. And so this was not about race. I mean, it didn't, it wasn't bounded. This trust and reciprocity was not bounded then, there, by race. I'm not saying race was not a problem. Of course it was, but I mean in terms of this, in a small town in the 1950s-

Trevor Noah 19:18 Right, right, right

Speaker 19:19 ... people left their door unlocked, and that's because of what I, in my jargon, call social capital. So all I'm saying is not that every single person in America has lost trust or has become untrustworthy, but on average, and we've now shown this to be true all over America, people are less connected and therefore less trustworthy than they used to be. There are differences across America, and the places that are still relatively high, um, are s- in social connection d- are somewhat more trustworthy. Indeed, they've ... I'm sorry, I'm gonna tell you more social science than you want to know. They, people do an interesting study. They drop letters on the street with money in them, sealed but with money in them and addressed, and then they ask of, in any given town or a neighborhood, how many of those letters are actually put in the mailbox so the owner can get their money back, and enough-

Trevor Noah 20:18 What a fascinating experiment.

Speaker 20:20 There are cities in America where your odds of getting your money back if you drop it o- in an envelope, drop it on the street, are zero. And there are places, this is hard to believe, there are places in America where if you drop an envelope with money in it, the, uh, you're 80% likely to get the money back. So-

Trevor Noah 20:36 That's amazing

Speaker 20:36 ... big differences.

Speaker 20:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 20:38 So Bob, maybe, maybe help us understand, you know, the, the idea of bowling alone.

Speaker 20:42 Sure.

Trevor Noah 20:42 Because I, I think, you know, it is important to help people understand that first of all it is an example.

Speaker 20:48 Yes.

Trevor Noah 20:48 Right?

Speaker 20:48 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 20:49 A- and, and I think what you liked about it is sort of why it connects with me, is that it's a simple example to understand, right?

Speaker 20:54 Oh.

Trevor Noah 20:54 Because y- everyone can go bowling, but it's the alone that really became the signifier that showed what was going wrong in America and in many other parts of the world where people are experiencing this. So help, help us understand.

Speaker 21:07 There's been virtually no decline in bowling itself, but it used to be that people bowled in teams, in leagues. And the c- there has been a complete collapse of team bowling, of league bowling, and when I told a friend of mine that, he said, "Oh, you mean we're bowling alone?" And I thought, "That's a good title for a book if ever I write a book about this," and it sure does seem a good title. But what, what is the difference, what is the experiential difference?

Trevor Noah 21:36 Yes.

Speaker 21:36 Christiana, have you ever bowled?

Speaker 21:40 Yeah, a couple times, but I'm from England, so-

Speaker 21:42 Yeah, that's true

Speaker 21:43 ... it's more of a-

Speaker 21:43 Actually-

Speaker 21:43 ... it's more of a football, football team culture. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 21:46 [laughs]

Speaker 21:46 Than like bowling.

Speaker 21:46 No, no, no. Okay. I just wonder ... Um, so, uh, actually I know where every bowling alley in London is because whenever I've gone over there, I'm selling, selling books.

Trevor Noah 21:56 [laughs]

Speaker 21:57 Um, every, every journalist thought their clever idea would be to interview me in a bowling alley.

Speaker 22:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 22:01 Oh, fun.

Speaker 22:01 So like I've been taken to every bowling alley in central London.

Speaker 22:05 That's funny.

Speaker 22:05 In a, 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 semi-circle at the back of the alleys. And they're mostly talking, uh, 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-

Trevor Noah 22:36 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Speaker 22:37 ... or, you know, whether there should, a bond issue should be passed to cover the cost of the new sewer system or whatever. And now I'm gonna suddenly change that description. Occasionally they are conv- they're having a conversation about public civic life. That's highfalutin for saying they just had, got into a discussion with people they know well. Remember, they, these are people they see every week. And they know how to interpret what the people say. They're not total strangers, because they, because they bowl 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 it does say, "Here are people who know each other."

Trevor Noah 23:22 Right.

Speaker 23:22 If you're in a team, they know each other, and they're not doing politics, but occasionally it helps with the politics.

Trevor Noah 23:28 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 23:29 Does that make sense?

Trevor Noah 23:29 Yeah.

Speaker 23:29 Yeah.

Speaker 23:29 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 l- yelling at each other. It's two people who are gonna have to get along because the next week they're gonna be back in the same bowling alley.

Trevor Noah 23:44 Yeah.

Speaker 23:44 And that is, so it seemed to me a useful way of describing how bowling in a league, in a team, is not just fun. I mean, I, it's important to empha- emphasize this. I really wish I'd done, emphasize this more. Social capital can't just be, "Eat your spinach." It's gotta be fun, too.

Trevor Noah 24:03 [laughs]

Speaker 24:04 Yeah.

Speaker 24:04 I mean, it's, it's, it's g- So, and that's why I use the example of bowling leagues. It's not saying, "Oh, go to a, a good government meeting."

Trevor Noah 24:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No.

Speaker 24:11 Well, who wants to go to a good mother, good government meeting? It's gotta 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- A bowling together came, and then the opposite of that was we are just m- less opportunity for encountering people that we know well to talk occasionally about public affairs.

Trevor Noah 24:33 Right. If we only meet at a political rally, our conversations will only be political, and then we'll forget what connects us.

Speaker 24:39 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 24:40 One-

Speaker 24:40 Right

Trevor Noah 24:40 ... one other thing I wanted to throw in maybe here. I know your work is all about data, so I don't know if you have the data on this, but how much do you think companies and jobs and capitalism and the way it's been employed in America over the past 50, 60 years has affected people's ability to do that? 'Cause, you know, when you're talking about let's go bowling together, I, I, I just think of personally friends of mine and how we always want to do things. But more often than not, people will say, [smacks lips] "Ah, I would love to, but I work late that day. Yeah, I wish I could, but I've got to finish this thing for work."

Speaker 25:17 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:17 "Yeah, I want to, but I, you know, the, the work and the ... I, and then it's, like, my kid, and I gotta see the kid because I don't have childcare."

Speaker 25:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:24 "And I've got to ..." And I, and I wonder, because you are a man who y- as you say, you've lived through time, you know, I would, I would love to know if there's any data or any experience that you've had that has shown you that our ability to engage in a league with other people is directly affected by how much time our work gives us off-

Speaker 25:45 Yeah

Trevor Noah 25:45 ... to do that.

Speaker 25:46 Remarkably, I've got good data on how people spend every hour of their day going back to the 1960s. Would you believe that?

Trevor Noah 25:52 Wow.

Speaker 25:52 Mm.

Speaker 25:53 60-year time trend, and it's very interesting. It, it ... Invite me back for another two hours, and I'll talk about how our-

Trevor Noah 26:01 [laughs]

Speaker 26:01 [laughs]

Speaker 26:01 ... how our lives have changed. For example, s- um, back in the day, in the '60s, we slept, the average American slept, uh, 7.5 hours a day, and that average is exactly 7.5 hours today. There's been no change-

Trevor Noah 26:18 Wow

Speaker 26:18 ... on average. Some people sleep more, some people sleep less.

Trevor Noah 26:20 No, that's impressive, though, still. Yeah.

Speaker 26:22 But here's the complicated part, actually. We're spending less time at work than we used to. Less time at work.

Trevor Noah 26:29 No ways.

Speaker 26:30 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-

Trevor Noah 26:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Speaker 26:52 ... um, uh, s- you know, some social media thing.

Trevor Noah 26:53 Phones and iPads and whatever, yeah.

Speaker 26:55 Yeah, yeah. No, but it isn't. We're s- actually spending more time watching TV than we used to, and we're adding to that, I've ... Now, don't quote me exactly 'cause, I mean, I've got the data. I just don't have it in front of me at this moment. I didn't know you were gonna ask me this question. Um, we added, we've added, since the advent of, of, um, social media, another two hours a day, two hours a day, um, and yet we're spending less time w- in the presence of other people.

Trevor Noah 27:24 Hoo.

Speaker 27:24 Mm.

Speaker 27:24 I mean, it's ... The data are just the worst you could imagine. We've got more free time. We do have more free time.

Trevor Noah 27:32 Wow.

Speaker 27:33 And we've spent more than all of that free time in front of a screen.

Trevor Noah 27:38 Damn.

Speaker 27:38 [laughs]

Speaker 27:40 I feel called out.

Trevor Noah 27:41 Wow, wow, wow.

Speaker 27:42 Well, you asked me for data.

Trevor Noah 27:44 No, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 27:44 Okay.

Trevor Noah 27:44 I'm just ... I see, I see every binging and every TV show I've ... I see it very differently now. But that's a-

Speaker 27:50 But of course, I want people to watch this podcast. This is a different kind. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 27:53 Yeah, but I mean, wow.

Speaker 27:56 Listen to the podcast on the way to meet your friends.

Speaker 27:58 Yes, exactly.

Trevor Noah 27:59 Ah, yes. Yes.

Speaker 28:00 On the way to club.

Trevor Noah 28:00 That's why we love podcasts.

Speaker 28:01 Yeah.

Speaker 28:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 28:03 We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break. [upbeat music]

Speaker 28:14 Robert, I, I, I'm really curious about what you think. Like, I'm a millennial, and I have, like, younger cousins who are Gen Z.

Speaker 28:21 Yep.

Speaker 28:21 And we spend a lot of our time on the internet. Like s-

Speaker 28:24 Right.

Speaker 28:24 I, like, I met my spouse through Twitter, if, as crazy as that sounds, right? So this is a world where people meet their spouses, whether it's Tinder or Instagram. And then Gen Z, they spend probably a disproportionate amount of their time online. And for some people, and I think in my generation and younger, that's where they found their connections. Would you think that's a problem, or do you think that can be an alternative third space that maybe can foster that sense of trust?

Speaker 28:51 Christiana, every, you ask lots of really good questions, and they're all complicated.

Speaker 28:55 [laughs]

Speaker 28:56 And I'm gonna, I'm gonna try-

Trevor Noah 28:57 [laughs]

Speaker 28:57 I'm a complicated person, Robert. I'm sorry.

Speaker 29:00 I'm ... Did you say Robert? No, it's Bob. Please. It's Bob.

Trevor Noah 29:03 Oh, we get Bob now.

Speaker 29:03 We get Bob.

Trevor Noah 29:04 Wow.

Speaker 29:04 Okay.

Trevor Noah 29:05 Wow, okay.

Speaker 29:05 Okay. I was gonna say Professor Putnam.

Speaker 29:07 No, please.

Speaker 29:08 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 29:08 [laughs]

Speaker 29:09 I mean, if I get a call, a phone call, um, and the person says Robert, I just hang up right away 'cause if they-

Trevor Noah 29:16 [laughs]

Speaker 29:16 [laughs]

Speaker 29:16 ... if they know me, it's a nice screener I use as a-

Trevor Noah 29:19 Okay

Speaker 29:19 ... answering the phone.

Speaker 29:19 Okay. Bob.

Speaker 29:20 I'm-

Speaker 29:20 Bob. [laughs]

Speaker 29:21 Okay. I wanna say a couple of things about, uh, social media and virtual connections-

Speaker 29:27 Mm-hmm

Speaker 29:28 ... and then, and how they compare to real face-to-face connections.

Speaker 29:34 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 29:34 Uh, what, in, one, once, some people call IRL, in real life.

Speaker 29:39 Mm-hmm. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 29:39 [laughs]

Speaker 29:40 When social media first came out, everybody thought it was, you know, unbelievably great. Uh, world peace was gonna break out. We would all have ... And, and we would all be friends with each other 'cause we'd be all connecting across. That always, at that time, seemed a little s- strange to me. But the academic work about that's true was always more skeptical than the people who were making money by getting us onto their websites.

Trevor Noah 30:05 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 30:06 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 30:07 But the real question at that point, if I can put it this way, was is Facebook better or worse than bowling leagues? I'm using that as a syn-

Speaker 30:14 Yeah

Speaker 30:14 ... I mean, just as labels for those two things. And for a long time, the academics said, "I don't know. There's some ways in which Facebook is not as good as bowling leagues, but a l- you know- You'll g- you can guess what Mike- Mark Zuckerberg thought.

Speaker 30:28 [laughs]

Speaker 30:29 And then he one point said, "Well, okay, maybe Putnam is right, but we're gonna create a new kind of Facebook that's gonna be even super dandier, and it's gonna be wonderful, even better than bowling leagues." But the academic research, I repeat, was always skeptical about that. But then came a terrible natural experiment, COVID. But now I, I promised you I was gonna get more complicated, but I can tell that Christiane is easy, likes to deal with complications, so I'm gonna re-

Speaker 30:55 [laughs] Let's do it.

Speaker 30:57 I've so far been phrasing this problem as if the choice we had was between either face-to-face or social media, right?

Trevor Noah 31:06 Yes.

Speaker 31:07 Yeah.

Speaker 31:07 But actually, that's not true. Almost all of our networks today are simultaneously face-to-face and internet based.

Trevor Noah 31:17 Yeah.

Speaker 31:18 My wife, Rosemary, and I do see each other a lot every day. That is, there is a face-to-face r- relationship there. But she has a different office than mine, and astonishingly, much of the time, I send her an email or send her a text, and she responds.

Speaker 31:35 Mm.

Speaker 31:35 It's not we have one set of relationships that are face-to-face and a different set of relationships that are internet based. They're the same. And I wanna use a metaphor here if I, if I can. In chemistry, we have the idea of a, um, an alloy is a mixture of two different base chemicals, like tin and copper, and you stir it and heat it and so on.

Trevor Noah 32:01 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 32:01 And you get something that is neither tin nor copper, but I never can remember, bronze or brass or something like that.

Trevor Noah 32:08 Right.

Speaker 32:08 And, and brass is different from either of the t- either of the tin or the copper. Okay, so f- so far so good?

Speaker 32:15 Yeah.

Speaker 32:15 Now what I'm saying is all of our networks today are alloys. So the question really is, how can we get an alloy that is, has the benefits of both?

Speaker 32:27 Yeah.

Speaker 32:28 That is to say, could we find a way to create a network that has the advantages that the internet has of not depending upon space, but that has the advantages of face-to-faceness, namely-

Trevor Noah 32:38 Mm.

Speaker 32:38 Mm-hmm

Speaker 32:38 ... you can actually-

Trevor Noah 32:39 Yeah

Speaker 32:39 ... get together and cooperate with somebody. Do we know how to do that? And the answer is we sure do.

Speaker 32:45 Okay.

Speaker 32:45 We know how to, for example, there are, there are networks that are, that are internet based for neighborhoods, and it's easy to contact the other people just whenever you get the idea. You wanna borrow a rake or something, you just send out an email. But then they're also in the neighborhood, so I can go and get the, the actual-

Trevor Noah 33:03 You go get the rake in person.

Speaker 33:05 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 33:05 Right. So it's not a technical problem. So why don't we have lots of these things? It sounds like it'd be wonderful to have this, right? And it turns out the real answer is these big companies. They know how to do it. They know, and I know this 'cause I've talked personally. They invited me, Bob Putnam, out to wherever it was in, in, in Silicon Valley, to talk about social capital. Amazing. And w- we had a wonderful conversation. They clearly knew what I meant, and they knew the difference between face-to-face and connected, and they knew how to use, they conveyed, conveyed the idea that they knew how to use-

Trevor Noah 33:38 Oh, they knew how to use their tools to get people to connect in person.

Speaker 33:41 Yes, but how do, why don't they do that? Answer, when it's much better for their business line if people fight than if they cooperate.

Speaker 33:49 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 33:49 And you can't sell ads in person. That's another problem. [laughs]

Speaker 33:52 No, you can't.

Speaker 33:52 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 33:52 No, it's true, though. You can't.

Speaker 33:54 You can't.

Trevor Noah 33:54 You can't, you can't monetize people's connections when they aren't digital.

Speaker 33:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 33:57 And so now you're limiting your revenue. You know, th- this seems like a, a similar problem that exists in many different industries and fields, right, in that, like, let's say food.

Speaker 34:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 34:10 There's nothing wrong with drinking a glass of Coke. There really isn't. There's nothing wrong with having a burger from McDonald's or whatever. There really isn't. However, those products are oftentimes made to make you crave them and want them-

Speaker 34:25 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:26 ... way more than you naturally would.

Speaker 34:28 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:28 Right? And you know this because you as a person, just think about you as a person. You do not say to yourself, "Mm, I should do that again." You don't. You're going to, "Ah, I can't believe I did that again. I had too much of it."

Speaker 34:38 [laughs]

Speaker 34:38 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:38 "I had..." But then you want more of it, and then you want more of it, and then you want more of it.

Speaker 34:41 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:41 Right? And we're supposed to be having, quote-unquote, a balanced diet. So it's like have your vegetables, have the salad, have the stew, have the this, have the that.

Speaker 34:49 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:49 And then have your snacks, and you'll be fine. But it feels like we're in, like, an arms race against companies who go, "We're not gonna give you a break."

Speaker 34:58 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:59 If you have a choice of 10 meals, we want you to pick the snacks 10 times, and we're gonna design it in such a way that you're gonna pick-

Speaker 35:04 Sure

Trevor Noah 35:04 ... the snacks 10 times. But then on the outside they'll say, "No, no, no, no, no. We want you to eat healthy." And you're like, "Yes, but you, you made your product so that I can't." Do, do you get what I'm saying?

Speaker 35:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 35:13 And I think the same thing goes for, like, what you're saying about social capital is they'll say it, "We wanna connect people," but they don't. You know how you know they don't want you to stop using the product? The simplest answer is infinite scroll.

Speaker 35:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 35:26 Right?

Speaker 35:26 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 35:27 If social media companies wanted us to not endlessly use their product, 'cause they'll even have a label that's like, "Hey, remember to take a break now and then." Yo, you can just make me take a break.

Speaker 35:36 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 35:37 You could literally, they could literally just go, like, TikTok, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Bam.

Speaker 35:41 Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 35:41 You're done.

Speaker 35:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 35:42 This is your limit for the day.

Speaker 35:43 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 35:44 And you know what? I almost think that people would actually like the product more because people would go, "Oh, yeah, I finished my TikTok for today. I'm done."

Speaker 35:51 Yeah. Do you, you know what?

Trevor Noah 35:52 Like, you're chronically online.

Speaker 35:53 Let's not talk about me.

Trevor Noah 35:54 No, we must talk about you.

Speaker 35:55 No, I am, I'm an addict.

Speaker 35:56 But Bob, it's so funny you mentioned the neighborhood group and the rake. So recently I joined my neighborhood WhatsApp group. And, um, it's very NIMBY. I thought it was very NIMBY-ish. But there was just, like, legit concerns about-

Trevor Noah 36:10 Yeah. Yeah

Speaker 36:11 ... crime in the neighborhood and the LAPD getting out, when they would come out. And, you know, sometimes people would be like, "There's someone walking in the neighborhood. This is their description. They're a bit suspicious." And-

Speaker 36:21 Right

Speaker 36:22 ... there was one day it got a bit loaded 'cause it was just like, "There's a Black guy. He's in a hoodie," or some- something like that.

Trevor Noah 36:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 36:27 You know, very fit the description. And it was somebody else in the group who's white said, "Hey, let's be careful we're not profile..."

Speaker 36:33 [laughs]

Speaker 36:33 Like, it w- look, it was so refreshing for me.

Trevor Noah 36:35 [laughs]

Speaker 36:35 You know, 'cause I live in a majority white neighborhood.

Trevor Noah 36:38 [laughs]

Speaker 36:38 And I'm like, I don't wanna be the Black person in the group being like, "You shouldn't say that." And it was a white guy said, "Hey, guys, we should be careful." And- People figured it out amongst themselves.

Trevor Noah 36:47 Yeah.

Speaker 36:48 'Cause it's also the same neighborhood group that when there is something suspicious happening, when there is a break-in and LAPD don't get there-

Trevor Noah 36:54 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 36:55 ... it's the same people in the group that may say something offhand about a description that will show up to your house and make sure you're okay. And there's been, and there's something about that group that's completely transformed. Like, I would be sensitive typically if I read a bad description.

Trevor Noah 37:10 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 37:10 But the- everyone's have this trust among each other to say, "Even if we say the wrong thing, we don't mean it in the wrong way."

Trevor Noah 37:17 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 37:17 "We wanna keep our neighborhood safe, and fundamentally, we all trust each other and look out for each other." And sometimes it's like, "I, I need flour. Does anyone have flour?" [laughs] You know, and this is something I've never been exposed to, but it's happening through WhatsApp. But I'd say the critical thing is we have a great leader. I don't wanna say her name, 'cause she probably doesn't want people to-

Trevor Noah 37:32 Right. But, but then do you meet in person to what Bob was saying?

Speaker 37:34 She, she messaged me and she said, like, she was like, she told me her history, and she was like-

Trevor Noah 37:37 Yeah

Speaker 37:37 ... "I wanna meet your husband and your kids."

Trevor Noah 37:39 Right.

Speaker 37:39 So we're trying to figure it out, and she's the person-

Trevor Noah 37:41 Ah

Speaker 37:41 ... that goes around-

Trevor Noah 37:41 So do you see, that's probably what it is

Speaker 37:42 ... and she organizes neighborhood walks.

Trevor Noah 37:44 Oh, there you see. This is-

Speaker 37:45 But it's completely changed how I perceive not just people in my neighborhood, but how I even see-

Trevor Noah 37:51 Oh, how this sounds-

Speaker 37:51 ... how others do profiling

Trevor Noah 37:52 ... yeah, this sounds fair

Speaker 37:52 ... but it's the, it's the, it's the neighborhood, there's something to the neighborhood group is [laughs] what I'm trying to say, Bob.

Speaker 37:57 Yeah, and there's wonderful data on that. If you were worried about crime in your neighborhood and you had one of two strategies, you could bu- have a lot more cops on the beat, uh, pay cops more and, you know, arm them and so on, or you could know one another's first name. The second is the more important crime-fighting strategy. That is, it's more effective to have eyes on the street from your neighbors, just as you're saying. Um, and what I'm d- talking about is big, huge studies that have done this experimentally.

Trevor Noah 38:26 So this is, this is data.

Speaker 38:26 They've taken different neighborhoods and they've-

Speaker 38:27 Wow.

Trevor Noah 38:27 This is not like an opinion. This is data that's been gathered.

Speaker 38:30 [laughs] Yeah. Well, I'm sorry.

Trevor Noah 38:31 Yeah.

Speaker 38:31 That's what I do for a living.

Trevor Noah 38:31 No, I mean that, that's what I'm, I'm just-

Speaker 38:33 No, that's great. Yeah

Trevor Noah 38:33 ... clarifying for people. I love that. Yeah.

Speaker 38:35 Yeah. Well, anyway, the one, I don't wanna interrupt this conversation except that I hope we have a chance to go back to Bowling Alone and explain, and say why it explains Trump.

Trevor Noah 38:46 Let's fast-forward to that point. We are now living in a country, and the world is living in the shadow of this country-

Speaker 38:54 Mm

Trevor Noah 38:54 ... that is experiencing levels of polarization and levels of vitriol that most people say they've never experienced.

Speaker 39:01 Right.

Trevor Noah 39:02 Right? And one of the key tenets of this moment is that people do not trust the government.

Speaker 39:08 Mm.

Trevor Noah 39:08 They don't believe in the government. They don't believe that anything can get done. They don't believe anything will get done.

Speaker 39:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 39:13 And, and a lot of people who are being elected into government, ironically by the way, I always think that's ironic, is that those people are being elected into government because they say government shouldn't be a thing.

Speaker 39:23 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 39:24 And we should just dismantle it all.

Speaker 39:25 Yeah. Yes.

Trevor Noah 39:25 And fundamentally, they're saying like, "Hey, everyone, you just take care of yourself. Why does the government do your education? You do your education. Why does the government do your healthcare? You do your healthcare. You do your own research. You do your own thing." So actually, help us understand, how do we go from a world where people spend less time, and, and I, it is crucial to remind everyone, bowling is, is, is one of the things. It doesn't matter what it is.

Speaker 39:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 39:45 It could be a book club. It could be a-

Speaker 39:47 Running group. Me too. Yeah

Trevor Noah 39:47 ... a running group. It could be a bike club. It could, anything.

Speaker 39:50 Yeah.

Speaker 39:50 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 39:50 How, how does America go from having fewer clubs to creating the movement that leads to Donald Trump?

Speaker 39:59 Right. Remember, Bowling Alone said 25 years ago that we were, had been for 25 y- by, at that point, had been, it'd been 25 years we've been going downhill in terms of our social connections.

Trevor Noah 40:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 40:10 For various sorts.

Trevor Noah 40:11 Anything that brought people together from different walks of life-

Speaker 40:14 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 40:14 ... to connect across different boundaries.

Speaker 40:16 That's right, and they'd been, that'd been happening for 25 years. Now, 25 years later, we've gone back and done the same study, and it turns out nothing has changed. It's still going downhill despite-

Trevor Noah 40:26 Wow

Speaker 40:26 ... all of my-

Speaker 40:26 Yeah

Speaker 40:27 ... pleading and talking with people, it's going downhill, which now means for 50 years we've been going downhill. Donald Trump did not cause that, and this is the main thing I wanna say here. Donald Trump is not the cause of our problems. He's the symptom of our problems. American democracy had these problems long before Trump appeared on the scene.

Trevor Noah 40:49 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 40:49 And most importantly, we will have those same problems leading to faltering democracy when he's no longer on the scene.

Trevor Noah 40:56 Hmm.

Speaker 40:57 Hmm.

Speaker 40:57 Donald Trump exploited this, and I mean that ... So this is Bob Putnam saying, you know, Donald Trump exploited what I had discovered. That's not just me.

Speaker 41:06 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 41:06 Steve Bannon has said, I could show you the quote, "Well, we were trying to figure out how we could get Donald Trump elected, and then we read this book by this crazy guy Putnam about Bowling Alone."

Trevor Noah 41:14 Wait, no way.

Speaker 41:15 No.

Trevor Noah 41:15 Are you being serious?

Speaker 41:16 Yeah. There's, there's, he's quote, you can find, I mean, later on, on camera.

Trevor Noah 41:18 Wait, wait, wait. So how, wh- and what did they use ... I don't understand. What did they use from your book to help Trump get elected? What did they identify?

Speaker 41:26 They said, effectively, as I said in the book, but I wasn't doing it, [laughs] you have all these isolated people. They're, they're ripe for having a kind of populist come to power and say, "You're all unhappy and isolated. Trust me. I'm the one." Does that sound familiar? Does that sound like he's the guy?

Trevor Noah 41:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 41:47 Yeah.

Speaker 41:47 Well, that's what Bowling Alone said, and I didn't act on it. Maybe I should have. Maybe I could have been president.

Trevor Noah 41:52 Yeah, you could have been the president.

Speaker 41:53 He could have been president. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 41:53 You could have been president, Bob, President Bob Putnam.

Speaker 41:55 [laughs] And JD Vance has said something very similar to this. There's lots of empirical evidence. I won't bore you with all the data. There's lots of data that's saying, a, the strongest predictor actually of support for Donald Trump, of places that support Donald Trump and people that support Donald Trump, is social isolation. Now we're not just talking hypothetically, oh, it'd be nice to have more people joining clubs. We're saying the pickle that we're in as a country is precisely due to the fact that we're no longer bowling together.

Trevor Noah 42:26 Socially isolated. Yeah.

Speaker 42:27 Yeah.

Speaker 42:27 I'm not trying to say we ought to reconstruct bowling leagues, but it's gotta be something that brings us-

Trevor Noah 42:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Speaker 42:31 ... face to face. Is that making sense, Trevor? I mean, I think-

Trevor Noah 42:33 No, you, you know, you know why it makes complete sense is because I, I think of it through a few lenses. Like, you and I have talked about this a bunch. I go, one of the things I'm saddest about in America and I see around the world is the decline of churches.

Speaker 42:45 Yes.

Trevor Noah 42:46 Because I go, I understand that religion has many issues that it's come with

Speaker 42:51 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 42:51 ... whether it's pastors, whether it's, you know, the way they treat certain people, whatever it might be, right? But man, you take for granted what that building did.

Speaker 42:59 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 43:00 Yes.

Trevor Noah 43:00 There are very few places in our societies where you can come, and regardless of the language you speak, the color of your skin, your socioeconomic background, your location

Speaker 43:11 Mm

Trevor Noah 43:11 ... whatever it is, you are allowed to join and identify as being part of that group. And I've always thought that's maybe the most important thing, is the fact that you can become a part of it.

Speaker 43:21 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 43:21 Do, do you get what I'm saying? That's, like, really, really important to me, and I think about it through that and as I go like, "Wow, man." I understand that people go like, "Oh, yeah, religion, I don't care about it." And I'm like, yes, but you're also losing the church, and the church was the place where you saw people to tell them you were sick. The church was the-

Speaker 43:35 Yeah

Trevor Noah 43:35 ... place where you got a little help. The church was the place where you got a, you found out about a new job listing. You know? Someone-

Speaker 43:40 Oh, music lesson. People learn instruments.

Trevor Noah 43:41 People learned music.

Speaker 43:42 You know? Yeah.

Trevor Noah 43:42 People think about how all the greatest singers-

Speaker 43:45 Yeah

Trevor Noah 43:45 ... of, like, the, you know, the last whatever many decades-

Speaker 43:48 Came through the church

Trevor Noah 43:48 ... have all come from church.

Speaker 43:50 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 43:50 You know?

Speaker 43:50 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 43:51 So the training, the connections, the, the understanding that it came from. And it's funny that you say that. When we were still on The Daily Show, I remember the, the thing I used to talk to everyone about was how Jordan Klepper would say this. I'd say to him, 'cause he'd go to all these Trump rallies, and I said, "Jordan, what do you, like, what do you notice when you're at the Trump rallies? What do you notice that we don't from far?" And he said something really fascinating to me once. He said, "A lot of people are there for the vibes."

Speaker 44:15 Mm.

Speaker 44:15 Yes.

Trevor Noah 44:16 He said, "A lot of people are there for the vibes." And you think about it, Donald Trump created many clubs where clubs didn't exist.

Speaker 44:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 44:24 He said, "I'm coming to your town. I'm gonna sell you hats that you can all wear."

Speaker 44:28 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 44:28 "We're gonna sell you little scarves that you can all wear, and you're gonna come into a room, and then you know what? We all gonna hang out and chant the sa-" You know, when I knew that p- Trump, by the way, Bob, had reached the pinnacle of understanding this, is when he was at a political rally, right? People are there ostensibly to hear about your f- plan for the future of the country and how you plan to run the economy, and Trump was just like, "Let's just dance."

Speaker 44:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:54 Do you remember that moment?

Speaker 44:55 He's like-

Speaker 44:55 No.

Speaker 44:56 I don't remember that particular one.

Trevor Noah 44:57 You don't remember that moment?

Speaker 44:58 No.

Speaker 44:58 Yeah, yeah, sure. I do.

Speaker 44:59 I don't.

Trevor Noah 44:59 This was one of ... I, I remember watching that moment going, this man is either, he's completely lost it-

Speaker 45:05 Yes

Trevor Noah 45:05 ... or he is a savant who's completely understood it.

Speaker 45:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:08 And now I think he's the latter.

Speaker 45:09 Yeah.

Speaker 45:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:10 Donald Trump-

Speaker 45:10 I thought he was the former.

Speaker 45:11 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 45:11 Yeah. Donald Trump realized in that moment, he's like, "Man, you guys don't, you're not here because of, like, what I'm s- gonna do with the economy or not do with the... You just came here to hang out, and we're in a club"

Speaker 45:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:22 "And everyone in that club says the same thing. We've been forgotten."

Speaker 45:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:26 "So there's a man who grew up in a town where the factory was shut down, and-

Speaker 45:29 Yeah

Trevor Noah 45:29 ... that was a piece of his club, so he's forgotten."

Speaker 45:32 Yes. Yes.

Trevor Noah 45:32 "There's somebody else who grew up in another city, and because that city has lost its population, the church died, and now they don't have a church, so they've been forgotten."

Speaker 45:39 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 45:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:40 "And someone's kids left to go to a big city, so now they don't have the, they've been forgotten."

Speaker 45:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:44 And it's just a bunch of forgotten people who are now seen. They come together, and you go, you, when you go home, watch the video. I promise you it is one of the most amazing things. Trump literally just goes, like, "Yo, just play my playlist," he shouted to some person who rolls with him.

Speaker 45:57 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:58 And they just play all of his favorite, and I'm talking everything from YMCA-

Speaker 46:01 Yeah

Trevor Noah 46:01 ... to Ave Maria. Like, it's the most eclectic mix of music.

Speaker 46:04 Eclectic.

Trevor Noah 46:05 And he just dances.

Speaker 46:05 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 46:08 Don't go anywhere, 'cause we got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music]

Speaker 46:18 So Trevor, my question is this. You, like, you've hit on something with this Trump thing. How do we guarantee in this crazy world we live in that people don't start clubs of hate? Which I think what Trump id- as much-

Trevor Noah 46:29 Oh, that's a good question, actually

Speaker 46:30 ... You know what I mean? It's just like, 'cause that, that's then my concern, right?

Trevor Noah 46:33 Because the, the Ku Klux Klan is definitely a club.

Speaker 46:35 It's a club.

Trevor Noah 46:36 It's a local-

Speaker 46:36 They bonded. They were a community

Trevor Noah 46:36 ... it's a local club membership.

Speaker 46:38 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 46:38 Yeah.

Speaker 46:38 They took care of each other.

Trevor Noah 46:39 They all got uniforms.

Speaker 46:40 Yeah. It's just like, how do we, in this, like, very polarized moment where there i- where all sides seem to have deep resentment for each other, how do we make sure these clubs don't become spaces-

Trevor Noah 46:50 Or, or is that even necessary?

Speaker 46:52 Well, yes, I think it is necessary. There are different kinds of social capital, different kinds of networks, and one dist- important distinction is between what I call bridging social capital, that is ties that link you to people unlike yourself, and bonding social capital. Bonding social capital are the ties that link you to people just like yourself.

Trevor Noah 47:12 Oh.

Speaker 47:13 So my, so my bonding social capital are my friends with other elderly, white, male, Jewish professors.

Trevor Noah 47:25 [laughs]

Speaker 47:26 [laughs]

Speaker 47:26 That's my, that's, that's my bonding social capital. And my bridging social capital are my ties to people of a different generation. I have a little bit of bridging that I rely on heavily across generations, 'cause I've got my grandchildren. And I'm not saying, this is important, bridging good, bonding bad. Because if you get sick, the people who bring you chicken soup are likely to reflect your bonding social capital. That's a little bit what Christiana was earlier saying.

Speaker 47:52 [laughs]

Speaker 47:53 The people who would really take care of her if she got, who would bring her chicken soup or the equivalent-

Trevor Noah 47:56 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Speaker 47:56 ... would be bonding social capital. I'm, I'm saying bonding social capital is not necessarily bad, but bridging social capital is crucial for a modern, diverse society like ours.

Speaker 48:07 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 48:08 Uh, bridging across racial, across age, across gender, across party, and so on. So far so good.

Trevor Noah 48:15 Right, right, right.

Speaker 48:16 But bridging is harder to build than bonding social capital. My grandmother knew that. My grandmother said to me, "Bobbie, birds of a feather flock together."

Trevor Noah 48:26 Right.

Speaker 48:26 Mm.

Speaker 48:26 She didn't think I'd understand. She, what she meant was, "Bobbie, bridging social capital is harder to build than bonding social capital," but she didn't think I'd understand that, which is why she used the avian metaphor about bird-

Trevor Noah 48:38 [laughs]

Speaker 48:38 [laughs]

Speaker 48:38 ... about birds, but that's the basic point. So here's the challenge: Much of, of, um, Trump's support, it draws from different- ... kinds of demographic groups of course, but it's bonded heavily on politics and not bridging at all. And so now I'm back at the question, why doesn't Putnam saying he wants lots of, of, of Ku Klux Klan?

Trevor Noah 49:02 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 49:02 And the answer is, I don't want lots of Ku Klux Klan because it's bonding and I want a lot of more bridging. Does that make sense to what I'm saying?

Speaker 49:08 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:08 That make-

Speaker 49:08 For sure

Trevor Noah 49:09 ... that makes sense. And actually-

Speaker 49:09 And I wanna know how to do it.

Trevor Noah 49:11 Well, but I'm actually gonna throw this-

Speaker 49:12 How do we bridge? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:12 Before we move on.

Speaker 49:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:13 I'm gonna throw something out here, may be controversial. I would argue the reason the Democrats didn't do as well in this election is because they were bonding, they weren't bridging.

Speaker 49:22 Yes.

Speaker 49:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:23 So if I look at Barack, I look at Barack Obama's-

Speaker 49:25 They were bonding and they thought they were bridging.

Trevor Noah 49:26 Yeah.

Speaker 49:26 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:26 But if I look at Barack Obama's campaign, right? Barack Obama was going, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I don't care if you're in Kentucky. Let's connect, uh, let's connect."

Speaker 49:34 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:34 "Do you have this issue? I have this issue. This is something I grew up with. You grew up... My grandmother looks like you. My mother looks like you."

Speaker 49:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:40 "My father looked like that, my this. I grew up in this world." He was bridging.

Speaker 49:43 He was going to Iowa and yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:45 Yeah, yeah. And he was like, "Yes, we can."

Speaker 49:47 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:47 Like it was bridging, bridging, bridging, bridging, bridging.

Speaker 49:48 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We, we, we, we.

Trevor Noah 49:49 Right?

Speaker 49:49 It's gotta be, yes.

Trevor Noah 49:50 Right?

Speaker 49:50 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:51 And so a- as much as it's easy for everyone to be like Donald Trump and blah, blah, you know, and we're all guilty of that, but I think of like the Democrats in this election, a lot of it was bonding stuff as well. It was very much like, you know, like, "Oh, you know, white men are this and, uh, the, the, the rich have done that." And, and it became bonding that way as opposed to the coalition of saying... Like Bernie even did well, by the way, when he was running. He did a lot of bridging. Like, you know, "Hey, let's all join."

Speaker 50:15 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 50:15 "We're all struggling. Let's all come together as struggling people. We all deserve healthcare. You all, doesn't matter where you're from."

Speaker 50:21 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 50:21 Bridge, bridge, bridge. And I think in this election in particular, there was a lot of bonding from both parties. And as crazy as this may sound to a lot of people, I think Donald Trump engaged in a little more bridging than people will give him credit for, which I think is why he connected more than people thought he would in some spaces.

Speaker 50:43 I wanna know what Bob thinks of that. [laughs]

Speaker 50:46 So this is... Sorry, I, you, you didn't invite me on here to cite all my books, but I'm gonna cite yet another book.

Trevor Noah 50:51 No, that's exactly why we invited you on.

Speaker 50:53 It's relevant. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 50:53 You're an expert. [laughs]

Speaker 50:55 Okay. I wanna talk about the growing gap between rich folks and poor folks in America, and the book was called Our Kids. The book was focused on a whole series of charts and graphs that showed the gap between rich kids and poor kids growing.

Trevor Noah 51:11 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 51:11 And I'll say more about what I meant that, by that, but in particular, by rich, I didn't mean literally having lots of money. The ba- book is based on the upper third of American society, which is basically college educated folks.

Trevor Noah 51:24 Okay.

Speaker 51:24 And, and the lower two thirds of America, which is basically people who didn't graduate from four years of college. And what that book showed is a growing gap also among their parents. Those two groups are increasingly, they don't marry one another. It used to be that there were, people would marry across these class lines, but they don't now. They used to be that they, that they would live in the same neighborhood, but they're, were increasingly living in, not racially segregated, but class segregated homes. And I, and what I'm trying to say is that class lens was, when I wrote the book, at least as important as the racial lens.

Trevor Noah 52:01 Hm.

Speaker 52:01 And it's becoming, relatively speaking, the class lens is becoming more important relative to the racial lens. The plight facing working class whites is the same as the plight facing working class Blacks. That's what Bernie Sanders noticed. He was talking about everybody.

Speaker 52:25 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 52:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 52:25 It's down, not at the bottom, meaning the poorest of the poor, but the lower two thirds of the, of the country.

Trevor Noah 52:30 Right.

Speaker 52:31 And I think that the Democratic Party, this may be controversial, I think the Democratic Party has gotta start focusing more on those class differences and less exclusively on the racial or other identity issues. Um, now it sounds like I'm saying let's forget about, uh, uh, Black folks, and, and I'm-

Speaker 52:53 No

Speaker 52:53 ... not saying that. I'm saying let's really focus on working class Black folks, 'cause they're the ones who are falling further and further behind.

Speaker 52:59 Yeah. To follow up on that, they, um, 'cause a lot has been said about Black male increasing vote-

Trevor Noah 53:05 Yeah

Speaker 53:05 ... for Republican.

Speaker 53:06 Yes.

Speaker 53:06 They actually split the vote, and they look at the Black male vote specifically, and the Black men most likely to jo- vote for Trump were non-college educated-

Speaker 53:14 Yes

Speaker 53:15 ... and unchurched.

Speaker 53:15 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 53:16 Were unchurched as well.

Speaker 53:17 Unchurched. That was the key. They were-

Speaker 53:18 Absolutely

Speaker 53:19 ... secular, up to a high school diploma.

Trevor Noah 53:20 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 53:22 Black, young Black men. That's the group most likely to vote for Trump. The Black men that voted, um, Democrat, um, are college educated, tend to attend church, professionals.

Speaker 53:32 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:32 Oh.

Speaker 53:33 And that's where-

Speaker 53:33 That's good

Speaker 53:33 ... and they, they vote at similar levels for, um, Democrats-

Trevor Noah 53:36 Yeah

Speaker 53:37 ... as Black women do in general. So that, that group that's actually splitting off from the Democratic Party is like the most oppressed class among Black people.

Trevor Noah 53:45 I almost wanna know what you think the future will be because I, I, I remember speaking... I, I forget who this person was. It was such a wonderful conversation we had in one of my first times-

Speaker 53:55 Mm

Trevor Noah 53:55 ... going to London, and I was talking to them about living in America, and I was talking to them about coming from South Africa and everything. And, and this woman said to me, she said, um, she said, "Oh, darling," she said, "I can't wait for South Africa and, and, uh, America to get over race, because then they'll realize that everything's all about class, baby. It's all about class."

Speaker 54:15 [laughs]

Speaker 54:15 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:15 And it, it really was an interesting idea, which has stuck with me, because I go like, yeah.

Speaker 54:18 The most classist society ever. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:20 No, yeah, yeah. No, but you-

Speaker 54:21 [laughs]

Speaker 54:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:22 No, but what I, what I liked about it was this. Is she forced me to hone in on something that I think people do take for granted.

Speaker 54:29 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 54:30 Oftentimes when we talk about issues that are, like, pertaining to Black people, you'll be like, "Oh, Black people have a..." That has just become an easy identifier for a class issue, right?

Speaker 54:39 Yes, exactly.

Trevor Noah 54:40 And that's why, like, people like, that's why people like Dr. Martin Luther King, like MLK was like, "Yo, I'm fighting for class."

Speaker 54:46 Mm.

Trevor Noah 54:46 A lot of his stuff was class related.

Speaker 54:48 Very socialist. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:49 Yeah, he was fighting for class. And- Black people are disproportionately affected by it.

Speaker 54:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 54:53 But that's why, like, even the Black Panther Party, they found a coalition-

Speaker 54:57 Yeah

Trevor Noah 54:57 ... between white people who are proudly racist and Black people who are militantly fighting against racism, but they were like, "Yo."

Speaker 55:05 Union jobs. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 55:05 Yeah. The guy was like, "Hey, man, we should all come together because we're all being affected by this." And in all of these cases, by the way, they formed clubs. The Black Panthers formed a mini club that wasn't the Black Panthers that involved all of these poor people.

Speaker 55:18 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 55:19 Dr. Martin Luther King, he formed multiple clubs and chapters and all of these organizations, and it's interesting to see what you're saying is, like, these clubs came together around the issue of class. And so now let me, let me ask you this then. So do you think ... Say the people who are in the bottom two-thirds-

Speaker 55:37 Yes

Trevor Noah 55:37 ... are they more likely to be negative affect- negatively affected by not having a social club?

Speaker 55:44 Yes. And they're certainly much more likely to be socially isolated. I mean-

Trevor Noah 55:50 Uh, okay

Speaker 55:51 ... they've got, they've got at least two strikes against them. Well, maybe three. A, they're more socially isolated.

Trevor Noah 55:58 Okay.

Speaker 55:59 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 55:59 And B, they're poorer financially.

Trevor Noah 56:02 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 56:02 And C, they have got less education. So all that ... Those folks are in a pickle.

Trevor Noah 56:09 Hmm.

Speaker 56:10 And what that means is it's important to m- just understand the math. This is simple, simple arithmetic. We could have a clean system here in which we had all the college edu- educated people, you know, vote for the Democrats, and all the non-college educated people vote for the Republicans. What's wrong with that? Well, there are l- a lot more of them [laughs] than of us. We, the Democrats, if we're gonna retain power democratically, we've got to begin appealing, not ignoring race, I'm not saying that, but appealing more to the class-based interests.

Speaker 56:42 I wanna try to end with three to-dos.

Trevor Noah 56:46 Oh, yeah, that's great-

Speaker 56:47 Nice

Trevor Noah 56:47 ... because that's what Christiana was asking for.

Speaker 56:48 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 56:49 What, what were you gonna ask? 'Cause then, um, you can say it, and then he'll-

Speaker 56:51 Yeah, I was asking for my homework, the to-dos. [laughs]

Speaker 56:54 [laughs] Okay. Great.

Trevor Noah 56:55 So the what now.

Speaker 56:56 The what, what now?

Trevor Noah 56:57 The what now, Bob Putnam?

Speaker 56:58 I'm gonna try to keep it simple, not, not because you guys couldn't understand more, something more complicated, but because I think we've got to understand in very simple terms. One, go young. It's much more important that we focus on young people, regardless of where they are right now, because they are the future. And I'm now talking as an historian looking back o- not just over the last, you know, 5, 10, 20, 50 years, I'm looking over the last 125 years. In, in my last book, which was called The Upswing, I looked over the whole of American history over the last 125 years. And big changes are not the creation of old guys like me. Old guys like me, sometimes we've been around so long that we understand that it doesn't have to be the way it is today. But we're not the people who have the ideas that will work to build social capital and save America in the, I don't know, 2050s or something. I'm gonna be long gone. So first thing is go young and inspire the young people to come up with the new bowling leagues. It's not gonna be bowling leagues.

Trevor Noah 57:59 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 57:59 It's gonna be something else, but almost surely will involve something of, of high tech, but it, it will involve real personal relations with other people.

Trevor Noah 58:06 Before you move on, a perfect example of that for me was Pokemon Go. So I, I, I'm assuming neither of you played it, but-

Speaker 58:14 [laughs]

Speaker 58:15 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 58:15 I w- I was a huge Pokemon Go fan.

Speaker 58:17 Good.

Trevor Noah 58:18 Huge, huge, huge. I think this was the best execution of a video game in the modern age-

Speaker 58:24 Hmm

Trevor Noah 58:24 ... because it was a video game that everyone played on, on ... It was on your phones.

Speaker 58:27 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 58:27 Right? And the goal was to catch Pokemon. You don't need to know what any of this is. Just think of a game where you're trying to catch little creatures.

Speaker 58:33 Okay.

Trevor Noah 58:34 But what they did that was amazing was you had to catch the creatures in the real world.

Speaker 58:38 Ah.

Trevor Noah 58:38 So they used your camera on your phone, and you would literally have to run out into the streets to catch these digital creatures. And so at first, it was just like, "Oh, this is silly and this is fun." But I will n- I will never forget the joy I experienced when one night I was in New York and I was running with a group of people in Central Park.

Speaker 58:59 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:00 Strangers at 11:30 PM because someone had tweeted and told us that there was a Snorlax-

Speaker 59:06 [laughs]

Speaker 59:06 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:06 ... which is one of the creatures. There was a Snorlax in Central Park. And Bob and Christiana, when I tell you, there were ... If I was just to estimate, there were, like, maybe 500 people-

Speaker 59:17 [laughs]

Speaker 59:17 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:18 ... from, like, from, like, little kids who had dragged their parents out of the house, all the way through to, like, adults who were playing the game running.

Speaker 59:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:25 And I remember at one point, one of the kids turned, looked at me, wa- ... 'Cause we're all running-

Speaker 59:29 Yeah

Trevor Noah 59:29 ... 'cause there's a time limit. You don't know how long the, the creature will be there for. So we're all running through Central Park together, and one of the kid turns, t- turns, looks at me. This kid's, like, maybe, like, 14, 15.

Speaker 59:38 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:38 And he looks at me, and he's like, he's like, "Trevor Noah." He's like, "You, you play Pokemon Go?"

Speaker 59:43 [laughs]

Speaker 59:43 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:43 And he's like, "Now I know I'm in the right place." [laughs]

Speaker 59:46 [laughs]

Speaker 59:46 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:46 And we just run together. But I, what I, what I loved about it was it, to what you're saying, it was the perfect culmination. It wasn't the either/or.

Speaker 59:53 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:53 We were all playing a digital game.

Speaker 59:55 It was the alloy.

Trevor Noah 59:55 It was the alloy.

Speaker 59:55 Yeah.

Speaker 59:55 Yes.

Trevor Noah 59:55 You could play the game at home, and we were playing it at home, but you could not help but bump into other people who were playing the game as well-

Speaker 1:00:03 Yeah.

Speaker 1:00:03 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:00:03 ... in the real world. And it, it was such a beautiful ... 'Cause once the Snorlax was gone, all everyone could do now is talk. "Where are you from?"

Speaker 1:00:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:00:09 "Hey, where do you live?"

Speaker 1:00:10 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:00:11 "Where did you c- what's the best one you've caught? What have you ..." And this was like ... The, the game won awards, by the way, even for getting people fit and running and moving.

Speaker 1:00:18 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:00:18 It's ... But I, I, I love that. So the ... When you say the going young and figuring out the, the hybrid, I think there are ways to do it. 'Cause some people will be like, "Ah, I don't know if you can." I think we actually have seen one of the ways.

Speaker 1:00:28 Absolutely.

Trevor Noah 1:00:28 And I know because I played it. But yes. Okay. So what's rule number two?

Speaker 1:00:32 Rule number two is go local. Go local. All the times that there have been major social revolutions, they bubbled up from the bottom, and at local levels, people can more easily collaborate across party and other lines because- Somebody's gotta fix the sewers.

Trevor Noah 1:00:53 Yeah.

Speaker 1:00:53 And so you don't have to have an ideological discussion about how important is, is the environment. You- everybody knows that the sewers gotta be fixed if we're gonna be able to survive in this town. Or the schools. Um, uh, you know, you can have a national debate about, I don't know, some issue in education, but, but somebody's gotta fix our schools right here.

Trevor Noah 1:01:16 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:01:16 And so sometimes left-wingers are in favor of national solutions and, and the... for race, we did have to go national because there were whole regions of the country which were, if we went local, it would s- we would've stayed segregated forever. So I'm not saying always go local. But if you wanna have a major revolution, and that's, this is exactly what MLK did, right? He didn't start with his March on Washington. He started in, in Montgomery. What do you think is the most important social reform in the history of America? I'm gonna tell you in just a second. The high school.

Trevor Noah 1:01:49 Oh.

Speaker 1:01:49 When was the high school invented? The high school was invented in 1910. God did not invent the high school.

Trevor Noah 1:01:54 [laughs]

Speaker 1:01:55 It was invented instantly. And where was the high school in- by high school I mean a secondary school that, a public high school that everybody-

Trevor Noah 1:02:01 Yeah

Speaker 1:02:01 ... could go to.

Trevor Noah 1:02:02 Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:02 We'd had private schools, of course, as, like Eaton or whatever, but I'm talking about public high schools. First place in the world was in 1910 in flyover country, in America. It was not invented in Massachusetts or in Chicago or in LA or whatever. It was invented in small towns in the middle of America, and it went viral, and within 20 years, every city in America, every city and town in America had a high, public high school. That's viral. 20 years it went from-

Trevor Noah 1:02:32 That's amazing

Speaker 1:02:33 ... so what I'm trying to say is the really good ideas, policy ideas the next time-

Trevor Noah 1:02:39 They spread.

Speaker 1:02:39 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:02:40 And thirdly, and I'm gonna come back now to this issue of religion, go morality. Stick with me. I'm an academic, but I'm about to start preaching at you.

Trevor Noah 1:02:49 [laughs]

Speaker 1:02:49 Both of you. I, I apologize for that. When we look at long-run changes, long-run changes in political polarization, in economic inequality, in s- connections and so on, the leading indicator, it turns out that people in any given period and place actually think they have obligations to other people.

Trevor Noah 1:03:17 Hmm.

Speaker 1:03:17 We need to have a moral reawakening in America. I'm talking about simple golden rule. R- read the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, any, any religion says worry at least as much about other people as you do about yourself.

Trevor Noah 1:03:30 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:03:31 Love thy neighbor.

Speaker 1:03:31 Religion should, religion should be a we phenomenon, not an I phenomenon.

Speaker 1:03:36 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:36 So if I had a magic wand, I don't, but maybe somebody listening-

Trevor Noah 1:03:42 [laughs]

Speaker 1:03:43 ... will have a magic wand, I'd try to make the magic wand make young people, remember young, in localities across America think that they have obligations to other people. Does that make any sense? I mean, that-

Trevor Noah 1:03:57 Yeah, that makes, that makes complete sense

Speaker 1:03:58 ... yeah, of course

Speaker 1:03:59 ... and, and my basic message is if we wanna fix America, and I desperately wanna fix America, it's probably not gonna come in my lifetime, but I wanna have it come at least in my grandchildren's lifetime, and we gotta get about it now, and that requires mobilizing large numbers of people at the local- large numbers of young people at the local level thinking about their obligations to other people and not just about themselves. Sorry. That's the message.

Trevor Noah 1:04:27 No, no, I don't think you have to be sorry.

Speaker 1:04:29 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:29 I think it's, it's given us homework. So play Pokemon Go-

Speaker 1:04:33 Oh, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:04:34 ... with people in your local neighborhood-

Speaker 1:04:35 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:04:36 ... and help them catch the Pokemon that they can't.

Speaker 1:04:38 Yes.

Speaker 1:04:38 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:39 That's essentially-

Speaker 1:04:40 You got it

Trevor Noah 1:04:40 ... because-

Speaker 1:04:40 And then-

Trevor Noah 1:04:40 ... 'cause you're helping each other.

Speaker 1:04:42 And then when you speak to them-

Speaker 1:04:43 You got it

Speaker 1:04:43 ... talk to them about a spiritual awakening.

Speaker 1:04:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:46 [laughs]

Speaker 1:04:48 So you guys are gonna, you're gonna lead this revolution. I'm-

Speaker 1:04:50 Yeah

Speaker 1:04:50 ... sign me up. Let me know how I can join.

Speaker 1:04:52 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:04:53 Oh, we'd love it. Bob, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Speaker 1:04:56 Thank you, Bob.

Trevor Noah 1:04:57 You know, it's such a simple idea, and unfortunately, sometimes the best ideas are so simple that people don't want them.

Speaker 1:05:03 It's simple, but it's hard.

Trevor Noah 1:05:05 Yeah. No, but that's what I mean.

Speaker 1:05:05 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:05:05 It's like, it's the same way, like, eating healthy. It's a simple idea.

Speaker 1:05:08 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:05:08 Eat the vegetables, and-

Speaker 1:05:10 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:05:10 ... don't eat things that come in packets, and-

Speaker 1:05:12 And move your body. Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:05:12 ... your body changes. And people are like, "Yeah, yeah, but I need something more complicated than that."

Speaker 1:05:17 Right, no.

Trevor Noah 1:05:17 But yeah, um, I, I wanna say thank you very much. Thank you for doing the work. Thank you for taking the time with us, and, uh, you know, we started at Robert. We end at Bob. Thank you very much. It was wonderful getting to know you, and, um, I hope, I hope you do get to see some of this in your lifetime. So don't, don't write it off yet. You keep talking about you're gonna be gone.

Speaker 1:05:34 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:05:35 L- may- maybe some of it will change. We'll see. We'll do our best.

Speaker 1:05:38 Thank you, Christiana.

Speaker 1:05:40 Thank you.

Speaker 1:05:40 And thank you, Trevor.

Trevor Noah 1:05:41 Thank you so much, Bob.

Speaker 1:05:43 Bye. [outro music]