From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro.

This isn't going to come as a news flash. Things feel fragile in America and there is a broad

consensus across parties and demographics that we are struggling to come together and

face our many challenges, which is why when I heard

about a new documentary about the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, I

knew I wanted to talk to him. Nearly three decades ago, Putnam became something pretty rare,

a celebrity academic.

In 1995, he published a groundbreaking paper

called Bowling Alone America's declining social capital.

In it he used data from the previous few decades to prove that America was transforming

from a nation of joiners to a nation of loners.

We were going to churchless, joining clubs at declining rates,

and he warned that as a result, we were losing trust in our fellow Americans and our institutions.

That paper caught the attention of then President Bill Clinton and before long regular people

couldn't stop talking about it either.

Putnam expanded it into a best-selling book a few years later.

And for a moment, it seemed like his work might pull us back from this isolation highway we were all on.

We all know how that story unfolded.

Putnam's now 83, and he's watched

as we've become more divided, more lonely, and less confident about the way forward than ever before,

even as the stakes only get higher.

Here's my conversation with Robert Putnam. Dr. Putnam, your work is all about connection. So I'm wondering first, can you describe

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