Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for friendly square pegs in a world of round holes.

I'm your host Andrew Heaton.

Very excited about today's show gang.

I started reading David Brooks way back in Washington

when I first dipped my toes into political media and I've wanted to speak to him

for years and we're finally bringing on David Brooks today for a very

good chat about how to better connect with people. It is an episode that we're going to

tackle from two angles, big picture and interpersonal.

The big picture side is frankly kind of depressing.

Let me read you some statistics that I learned from

Mr. Brooks book, although they're in keeping with other dim statistics that I've

been reading this last five, ten years. Between 1990 and 2020, the percentage of Americans who said they have no close friends

quadrupled.

In 2013, Americans spent an average of six and a half hours per week with friends.

By 2019, they were spending four and a half hours per week with friends. By 2019 they were spending 4.5 hours per week with

friends a 38% drop. In the year 2000 roughly two-thirds of Americans gave charity.

As of 2021 fewer than half. In that same time frame

the number of American adults without a romantic partner increased by a third.

And depression rates have been surging since the beginning of the 21st century

as well as the prevalence of suicide. So in short, there is a crisis of alienation in our country. People are very lonely, which in and of itself is a breakdown in modern civilization which ought to be reckoned with on its own count something that I'm very

interested in. We've done episodes on this program on declining social trust and

civil intermediate institutions which is a fancy way of saying things that are neither your work nor the state.

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