Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When was the last time you went to a picnic or you went on a group bike ride or maybe joined a local chorus? Some political scientists say that when you join together with like-minded people, you're both entertaining yourself and you're doing good for the community. Professor Robert Putnam began studying how civic engagement care about our schools, parks, jobs, each other was directly related to the groups we join.

During the peak of that civic engagement, the 60s and the 70s people signed up. The links is where women did volunteering. Those working for voting rights band together. The Rotary Club was where business and professional leaders met. But in the past 30 years, interest in social club has declined. While some see the need for groups as old fashioned, one political scientist sounded the alarm.

Putnam wrote a book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and when it came out in 2000, it struck a nerve. Putnam wrote, "We have become increasingly disconnected from one another. Social structures, whether they be PTA, church, or political parties, have disintegrated." Well, it was a hit. Putnam was on TV, he was the White House. Pete Davis was one of his students. Some 20 years later, Davis wondered what had happened to Putnam and what happened to his call to arms.

Pete and his sister Rebecca sought out Robert Putnam, now in his eighties, and found him full of vim and vigor, but he has new worries about isolation, given social media and people divided into political tribes. The new documentary Join or Die examines Putnam's work and legacy and wonders if it can be deployed again.

Joining me now are Pete and Rebecca Davis, the producers and directors of Join or Die. By the way, DCT Firehouse Cinema at 87 Lafayette Street will have screenings this weekend of Join or Die. Pete and Rebecca, welcome.

Rebecca Davis: Thanks so much for having us.

Pete Davis: So glad to be here.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, what group have you joined? Why? What is it meant to your life? Book club, knitting Club, the Rotary? How does it make you feel to be part of something? Call and or text us at 2124-3396-9221-2433 WNYC. You can reach out to us at social media at All Of It WNYC. We want to know what book club you've joined, what knitting group you've joined, what Rotary Club you've joined. Tell us why. 2124-3396-9221-2433 WNYC.

Pete, you met Robert Putnam as a student. When you were a student, why did you take his class?

Pete Davis: I took his famous course at our school called Community in America, and I was a political science student. What I was really excited about in his class, and it really delivered, he's one of those teachers that changes your life, is that he was telling us young politicos that the most important thing for our democracy was not what was going on at the White House, was not what was going on at the UN, was not what was going on at the Supreme Court, in Congress, but what was going on in our ordinary neighborhoods and civic groups in our own local towns. That was such an interesting twist on what I thought, and all of us in this class thought what was important to our democracy.

Throughout his class and throughout kind of engaging with Bob's work and in making this film with my sister, it's been so amazing to discover how much of the foundation of our democracy is these ordinary civic groups, and how much joining is a key part of making democracy work.

Alison Stewart: When Pete told you about this class and what it stood for, what did you think, Rebecca?

Rebecca Davis: At that point, when Pete took Bob's class, I was already familiar with Bowling Alone and thought it was cool that my brother got this personal access to him. I had been working as a journalist. I used to work for the New York Daily News in New York City, and then later at NBC News. I found myself covering a lot of the symptoms on the ground of what I knew Pete had learned about in Bob's class and what I knew about from his famous book, Bowling Alone, going out around the country, talking to people that knew themselves without Bob's data, that things were off in their community life, in their civic life, and that they were increasingly feeling lonely, and isolated.

In 2017, I knew Bob was going to be retiring from teaching, and I said to Pete, "Maybe this would be a good time to approach him and see how he feels. We're coming up on the 20 year anniversary of Bowling Alone." At that time, we thought the film would be out by 2020. It ended up taking a few more years. It was released last year at South by Southwest in 2023. We were lucky that kind of the timing worked out that, that Bob was in a position where he was ready to look back on his work and reflect on where we were at.

Alison Stewart: Pete, Putnam began his research into what makes successful communities by studying Italy in the 1970s, when the regions were given new government to run things. What did his research show led to a community with a thriving civic engagement?

Pete Davis: This is an amazing study. Bob was already famous in political science circles before Bowling Alone made him famous with millions of people across the country for this study, Italy had decentralized from a centralized government to having all these regional governments. It's like if the States were created in the seventies in the US. It was a perfect political science experiment because he could watch these different regional governments over 20 years and see what is the factor that makes one regional government succeed and another be a total mess. Get things done, get the mail on time, get daycare centers built, things like that. Have people be satisfied with the government.

He thought it was going to be education levels, or he thought it was going to be the stability of the staff in the government. He even thought it was going to be economics, but what he found out was the most significant factor in making democracy work, which was the name of his eventual study, was the amount of bocce clubs, or the amount of singing groups, or the amount of people that read the newspaper or just knew their neighbors, or the amount of plazas that were in the town where people could talk and were filled with people having conversations. It was the ordinary community connections that was the most correlated with making democracy work.

Then correlation doesn't equal causation, but the causation of this is what Bob deemed social capital, which is the networks and trust of people makes things work better, because you can watch dog the government when more people know each other. Good ideas spread faster when more people know each other, let alone you can have more people be healthy when more people know each other because they're checking up on each other when they're sick. They're encouraging each other to live their best lives. We all know all the good happiness and health benefits when people know each other, everything gets better when we're a more connected and less isolated society.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some calls. Ann from Long Branch, New Jersey, on line two. Hi, Ann.

Anne: Hi, Alison. Welcome back. I joined with my boyfriend, a movie club. Every Wednesday night, we met for two and a half years. We saw all the best picture winners in sequence from 1929 to Oppenheimer.

Pete Davis: Amazing.

Anne: Yes. It was a wonderful experience, and it was in a theater, in a local theater, not a chain theater. We were supporting the theater. I met some wonderful people that will be in my life forever.

Alison Stewart: Love it. Thank you, Anne, for calling. Let's talk to Monique from Tarrytown. Hi, Monique. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Monique: Hi. Well, thank you for taking me. When we moved to Tarrytown about 17 years ago, off the train station, there was a sign saying, that the gardens were being taken care of by a garden club, the little gardens of Tarrytown. That made me fall in love with the community to think that this was a civic little organization that took care of its common space. Then I joined it a year later, and I have to say that this garden club is celebrating a centennial of working in the community.

The members are of all different religious persuasions and non religious and immigrants and non immigrants, but the whole idea is that different political parties, but we all care for the common ground in a way that just, if there's ever a time that we all need to be cultivating common ground, I think it would be now. I think civic engagement is wonderful and would encourage everyone to join their garden club.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling. My guests are Pete and Rebecca Davis. They are the producers and the directors of the film Join or Die. Rebecca, when we look at the cycle of history, what causes people to join groups? What kind of things do groups need to do to be of value to democracy?

Rebecca Davis: I think that was the thing that so drew me to Bob's work is that what his research shows is that groups don't need to be explicitly political to be helpful for democracy. Honestly, in this moment of heightened polarization that we're living through, it can be hard to find groups that aren't necessarily explicitly political. But what Bob found, and that he used in this kind of great centering idea of our bowling leagues is, it's a secondary space outside of kind of direct politics, where you're interacting, as this caller just said, in their garden club with people of different religions, people of different political persuasions, different economic backgrounds, and the good stuff that comes out of Bob calls this bridging social capital. Social capital across different lines, as opposed to our bonding social capital, which is bonding together with people much more similar to us. That helps the wheels of democracy get the grease they need to function smoothly.

Alison Stewart: Pete, you do touch on it briefly. Putnam mentioned this in his recent New York Times piece on him over the weekend, sometimes when groups get together, they concentrate on one thing, and sometimes it's not the greatest one thing, like the KKK or heaven's gate for-- What's the fine line between a group, versus a cult or a gang?

Pete Davis: One of the things Bob likes to emphasize with this idea of social capital is that it's a tool. Just like a hammer is a tool, it's a form of physical capital. You can use a hammer to hit someone over the head, or you can use a hammer to build a building. We are not saying with this movie that all clubs are good. In fact, so much of the history of oppression in our country is bad clubs. But here's the thing we also want to emphasize. So much of the overcoming of that bad form of social organization was through people coming together in forms of good and bridging organizations. That's one aspect of this.

The second aspect of this is that often bad organizations are more likely to rise up and prey on people when we have a more isolated and lonely populace. When you have a thriving civic life, you have so many more opportunities to have pro social interactions with other people. When you're lonely and isolated, and as the studies show, you're becoming more unhealthy and more angry and more dissatisfied with your life. When you're lonely and isolated, when someone knocks at your door and says, "I want you to join this group that's going to prey on all the worst angels of your nature," you're more susceptible to that, than if the Kiwanis club or the Rotary Club or the local bowling league got to you first to fill that community-shaped hole in your heart.

Not all clubs are good, but a great increase in community is the way that we're going to fight back against the worst social formations.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, what group have you joined? Why? What has it meant to your life? How does it make you feel to be part of something? Give us a call 212-43396-92, 212-433 WNYC. Or reach out All Of It WNYC as we talk to Pete and Rebecca Davis, the producers and directors of Join or Die. Let's talk to Tanya from Saddle River, New Jersey. Hi, Tanya.

Tanya: Hi. Good afternoon. This is Tanya, very nice of you to take my call.

Alison Stewart: We're on the air.

Tana: Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: Yes. Go for it.

Tanya: I have the same concerns about what's going on in community and how we are ostracizing the others, not understanding where they're coming from. I decided to start my own store where you can do crafting and doing that, you can connect with others, and you can also organize your own birthday party, invite others, and cross also with other parties if you want. I've had a lot of success with this, especially our crochet class is very busy, and there's a lot of laughter and connecting. There are all kinds of crafts you can join.

Alison Stewart: That sounds great. I understand, I think it's called [00:13:24] Bayou. Anybody who's interested in some crocheting, go to Bayou. This text, "I am part of a social dance group in New York City, the New York branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. We're all ages and backgrounds united by our enjoyment of dancing to wonderful music. It's exercise, fun, and above all, it's about the social connection that we provide for each other. We dance every Thursday at Metro Baptist Church on the West side of Manhattan." Thank you for calling in.

This brings me, actually, to the title of the film, Join or Die. First thing, what is the title of the film? Rebecca, let's start with you.

Rebecca Davis: We realize this is a provocative title, and it does rub some people the wrong way because it does have a very serious undertone to it, but it also has an action to it. We wanted to get action right into the title, Join or Die. I think so much of the media landscape right now, people leave, watching the news or reading the news, feeling kind of hopeless and anxious, and not knowing what to do. We wanted to give people a really simple action item right in the title of the film, so that as soon as people watch it and come out, they think about joining something.

We wanted to call attention to both impacts of joining, both the impact on the individual. Your chances of dying over the next year are cut in half by joining one group, and we were fortunate enough to get to speak with the surgeon general in the film, who's been doing a lot of work around loneliness and isolation. There are real implications to our personal physical health. Then to the more grandiose project of our democracy. As Bob's data shows, our democracy needs us to be joiners to function and thrive. We're in a moment where our reserves of social capital are not in a good place, and we really do need to turn those around if we want to continue with this project.

Alison Stewart: Pete, the film is also about Bob Putnam. How would you describe Bob Putman Putnam?

Pete Davis: One of the spirits we wanted to capture in the film was to match the spirit of Bob in how he talks about this issue, because you could imagine that the leading expert on social isolation in America and the film about social isolation in America would be very dour. It would be about all the darkness of what comes with isolation, and it's important to talk about that. But what Bob has always done and what we tried to mirror in the film, is we tried to flip it on its head and talk about the hopeful angle on this, which is, what is the opposite of social isolation in America? It's the joy of civic life in America, the lovely things that happen when we come together.

Bob has always been able to-- he was called the Old Testament prophet with charts by one of one person who has followed him. He kind of has that prophetic spirit of talking seriously about the crisis that we're in, but then offering a path to hope. If we can increase civic creativity, if we can create more things, if we can become a nation of joiners again, we can flip this around. Bob's always kept his eye on the ball of keeping that hope alive, and we tried to mirror that in the film.

Alison Stewart: Rebecca, there's a really poignant moment when you're celebrating Bob's 80th birthday via a Zoom party, because it was four years ago. What was it like to be with a man who believes in groups, to be sort of alone?

Rebecca Davis: At that moment, we were not with Bob. That was his wife, Rosemary, coming in as a camera person for us during COVID and filming that moment from their home on their cell phone. We couldn't see Bob for about a year and a half as we were all socially isolating. I think that's the interesting thing about any long project you work on, you started in one world, the world of 2017, when we approached Bob, and you end the project in another world in 2023, when we were releasing it, we had no idea that COVID would hit in the middle of that, that our political polarization and events like January 6 would happen over the course of filming. I think every year that we've continued to work on this project, and the urgency of Bob's message and the urgency of this idea that we need to double down on our efforts in community life have only become that much stronger.

I think coming through those years of isolation during COVID, I think a lot of people now are really ready for this conversation, and it's front of mine. We're excited to be releasing this film into theaters this summer and having these conversations because I think everyone in America is hungry to figure out what to do.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Sig from Manhattan. Hi, Sig.

Sig: Hi. I'm calling in favor of group singing of all kinds, small acapella to large glee club. I'm lucky to belong to two fine private clubs that had, I finally realized, nothing in common except the best things, a love of music and interest in having fun. One's a male glee club, university glee club. One is the musical group, the Blue Hill Troupe, which has been performing musical comedy in Manhattan now for, since the '20s for the benefit of local charities.

Your screener did say, what does this really have to do with good government? That kind of threw me back a little bit, but I came back with, it's good for the personal health and personal survival. I recommend it highly, and of course, once you get to be of a certain age, just singing as loud as you can is exercise.

[laughs]

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in.

Pete Davis: Loved that.

Alison Stewart: What makes Robert Putnam optimistic in today's society, and then what makes him pessimistic, Pete?

Pete Davis: I think, well, pessimistic is what he's been writing about for-- I wouldn't say pessimistic, I would say sober about the state of where we're at on almost every level, from picnicking data, to taking leadership, to trusting people who are different than us, to living in integrated communities with people who are different than us, to economic inequality. We're at some of the lowest places we've been in the century, but what has made him optimistic is Bob takes the historic view. This is a place that we end the film at, which is around some of Bob's recent research about at the other-- Bob spent most of his life writing about Bowling Alone, and how we've declined from the mid century in community connections. If you go to the first half of the 20th century, we actually had a huge increase in community connections from the turn of the century to the mid century, which means that at some point at the turn of the century, a generation of Americans decided to turn things around through the collected works of tens of thousands of different instances of civic creativity and joining.

That, if you go back to the turn of the last century, that's when the boys and girls scouts are founded, that's when kindergartens are founded, that's when public parks are founded. All these different examples of ways of people coming together. Bob believes if we've done it before, we can do it again, and we're already seeing the first little sparks of how we could have another generation of joiners again, of all these interesting new ways people are coming together. They come up to us after the screenings across the country and tell us, "I started a queer skateboard club. I started a feminist bird watching club."

Alison Stewart: Oh, nice.

Pete Davis: "We're trying to revive our VFW hall because we're a bunch of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, who the Vietnam and especially the Korean veterans, we might be losing. They need some new blood in the VFWs.

Alison Stewart: Hey, Pete, I'm gonna dive in because we've only about 32nd. I want to make sure people know where your screening is gonna be. Okay?

Pete Davis: Okay.

Alison Stewart: Join or die, a DC TV Firehouse Cinema at 87 Lafayette Street screening. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you can meet the directors at the 230 screening. Pete and Rebecca Davis, Join or Die is the name of their film. Thanks again for all your help.

Rebecca Davis: Thanks so much for having us on. Love hearing those club stories.

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