Why is young white men being on their own side a "problem"? You'd never hear him say that about Asians or blacks or Latinos.

What a smart man, it's tragic that he has no great plan to move us forward. Maybe the plan is millions of tiny actions taken by all of us. Ill see if i can think of any, good luck to us all.

There are big elephants in the room being ignored in this conversation.

My dog is my constant companion. I'm 67. I never feel lonely. One morning I woke my back was out & I had no one to call to help me. Have I done anything to change my circumstances since? No. Why Not? Past Rejections has left a lasting negative impact on me.

Maybe the issue is - surprise - really not a lack of community, but of that genuine, immutable and pathologically American self-interest. Refuse to listen to others, adapt, or step outside yourself and you’ll be a real American, and you’ll find politicians and media who flatter the impulses you already have.

Love this convo❤

What a wise man! Excellent show.

Remarkable interview.

i am surprised he did not call his book driving alone. the loneliness epidemic he refers to co-incides with the rise of two car families.

No mention of the inherent individualism fetish in America?

Question for the professor: how do you build an organization like the Boyscouts when that and similar organizations have had so many problems with abuses and social exclusion and/ or exclusivity?

Diversity hasn't helped

The reason a couple avoids each other in the home and texts each other instead of face to face talking within the home is not that they don't want connection. It is instead because one or both of them wants different connection, likely with someone else.

I haven’t heard the name Putnam so many times since middle school.

He's lost the plot. If social capital is in secular decline, as he says, yet it is a force of nature that cannot be eliminated without eliminating humanity itself, and he has no idea of how to build it, except to say 'join the local dart club, then this pressure can only be released through the emergence of extreme ideological movements, left and right. His focus on Trump and Trumpism is misplaced. The comparison to Weimar is fitting but naïve. We only remember the right-wing violence because of the Nazi victory, but there was a much larger social disintegration across Europe that was playing out on the left and right. Like Macron today, they had little hope but to try to play the two off one another or go into exile. Imagine Putnam's solution in 1929: "be trustworthy and go to the lederhosen league."

NYT: Thank you for this, and for the rest of the videos you publish. Ayn Rand said many decades ago that we are living in an age of "social metaphysics", where our fundamental apprehension of reality is based on other people's opinions. Say what you will about Ayn Rand. She and her philosophy had quite a few flaws and shortcomings, but in this case, she was right. As of today this channel has 71 thousand subscribers. MrBeast's channel has 302 million. I stopped there but there are countless other examples. That says it all.

Answer: Capitalism

A commentator on Plato said when a country lays downs Plato, that's when trouble starts. We had a Canon we followed and like it or not, it was the underpinning of much of our ideologies. Bring back the Classical Canon.

Mr Putman, where is the input specific to females and to the desire of females to connect socially with others in a platonic way? Child care and elder care issues keep the mother at home, isolated. Angry, controlling husbands keep some wives at home. Female gender specific violence and sexual harassment keep the single woman at home instead of outdoors or at clubs and events. Plus, clubs, events and activities nearly all cost money to participate in and plenty women do not have access to that entertainment money. You are omitting the female experience.

This guy needs to lower the pitch of his voice. It’s annoying.