Make America Happy Again
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 14.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're distrustful, unequal and isolated. That's according to the figures showing a decline in happy community feeling since the 1960s. But can we do anything to regain the healthier communal lives enjoyed by many of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents?
We talk to a hopeful trio - an economist, a political scientist and a US senator - about how we can reduce social isolation, temper political division and prioritize the kind of mixing and meeting that makes neighbors into friends.
Further reading:
Robert Putnam Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community and The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again.
Lord Richard Layard Can We Be Happier? Evidence and Ethics and Wellbeing: Science and Policy (co-authored by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey Dr. Lori Santos here. I'm guessing that many of my happiness lab listeners |
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| 0:45.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:58.0 | It's a heinous act and we're all victims. It's a terrible menace to society, one that's eroded our trust and made our futures less bright. |
| 1:06.0 | Given the shadow it casts on so many aspects of our daily lives, you'd think there'd be a federal task force assigned to investigate the threat, |
| 1:14.0 | kicking indoors to stop the ongoing assault. |
| 1:17.0 | Sadly, that's not happening, but one dogged detective has been on the case for decades. |
| 1:22.0 | Who done it? |
| 1:24.0 | Who killed social capital? |
| 1:26.0 | Political scientist Robert Putnam thinks social capital is the glue that holds a happy society together. |
| 1:31.0 | But the bonds of trust and friendship, he knew growing up in the clubs, leagues, and |
| 1:35.0 | unions of the 1950s have died. |
| 1:37.9 | Was it suburbanization? |
| 1:39.5 | Was it women going to work? |
| 1:41.0 | Was it, we're all too busy? I I mean there are a lot of different hypotheses. |
... |
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