February 13, 2026 • 13 mins
For Shop Talk, we unpack Robert Putnam's monumental book "Bowling Alone" and the collapse of the civic habits that once held our communities together — from church groups to bowling leagues. And what we as Army members are going to do about it!
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody, it's Bell courting with an army and normal folks.
Welcome to the shop.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey Alex, Hey Bill, how you doing. Molly's about to
get married.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
My oh, you're time stamping it. I leave tomorrow and yes,
we go off and my youngest daughter, my third child,
hold it. Yes, second child, she's second. Yes, youngest daughter.
Second child is getting married to a guy named Tracy
Z who is really awesome guy. I'm really excited for her,
(00:39):
and I feel sorry for him. She's crazy. My daughter
is a hand full, and then so I think she's
a lot of fun though, and she's got a good heart.
She has a great heart. She's faithful, she's she's spirited,
she's very very bright, she works hard, and she's just
(01:02):
nutty as hell. She's basically her mom.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I mean you're a little crazy too.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
No mom, y'all. Everybody thinks because in social settings, Lisa's
kind of this beautiful little thing that kind of keeps
her mouth shut and smiles big and just walks around
with me, and everybody thinks I'm the way I'm telling you,
least is the one.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
I haven't seen her crazy yet. I usually just see
you hitting on her in front of me.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's like the crazy hit on her.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
In front of everybody. She's gorgeous and I can't wait.
In fact, now I can't wait to get home and
see her. All right, everybody's shop Talk number ninety one.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
You know that's one of them. Job Bill. Oh that's
another one. Dennis Rodman.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Dennis Well, but see he wasn't always ninety but what
it said is on his bowls championship seasons he.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Was ninety one.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh okay, well there you.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Go, Serge Federoff and Hockey. I wouldn't have known that
demo the pitch.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah he was ninety one.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah really yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah? Who else?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That's it? That's good though. With Kevin Green, you know, but.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, well Kevin Green, I always thought he was a
hilacious defensive end. Okay, everybody's Shop Talk number ninety one,
in honor of my crazy wife and daughter, has nothing
to do with this. Alex Is teed this up. There's
a book called Bowling Alone. Correct can't wait to unpack
this right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
(02:47):
All right, everybody, welcome back to the shop Shop Talk
number ninety one. Bowling Alone, or why Everybody's lonely and
nobody knows what to do about it? Read by me
teed up by your very own, lovely and talented Alex Quartel,
who woke up at three point thirty in this morning.
I'm told to put this stuff together for our reading enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's correct, four hours of sleep.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
And then drove up here. I'm driving Oxford by the
way today.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Are you really?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Before I leave on my airplane at six in the morning,
I have to go down to do something with the
charity bowl.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Oh interesting, Yeah, do you hear the train? I do
hear the train?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay? Bowling Alone or why everybody's lonely and nobody knows
what to do about it? All right, I'm going to
tell you about this book. It sounds boring as hell,
but explains a lot of what's broken. It's called Bowling Alone,
and no, it really doesn't have anything to do about
with bowling. By the way, there's a book out called
(03:42):
Go to Hell, Ole Miss. Really that's on the National
bestsellers list. Oh wow, has very little to do with
Old Miss. It's about a pilot that got shot down
in World War Two and he was kept in this dingy,
dark cabin and he was held captive for like two years,
and somebody who had been captured before him, this back
(04:04):
in the forties had written with a knife on a
wood panel, go to hell will miss, And he said
just that connection to home is what saved his life.
And the book is about his two years.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Are you reading it?
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Starting it interesting? Yeah? Really?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Look at it?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah? All right? Anyway, bowling alone. The guy who wrote
this is Robert Putnam, and he noticed something weird. Americans
were bowling more than ever, but they stopped bowling together.
No leagues, no teams. Bowling league participation has declined by
about forty percent, which I think is sad. I think
American bowling leagues are stuff of Americana legend.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I also missed the dingy bowling alley with the pictures
of beer where he could smoke cigarettes. Now it's all
these like professional fancy ones that are super expensive and
you can't smoke inside.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You could smoke whe or not hype cigarette, and you
got pictures of cheap beer in.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
A cheap bowling alley and.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
The floor was sticky, and you could get a cheeseburger
at the grill. That's a bowling all.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
It looks like Das all, that's stupid.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, that's that's why bowling leagues are down. I guarantee it.
There's other reasons in here, all right, So Americans are
bowling more than ever, but they stopped bowling together, no leagues,
no teams. Bowling League dissipation declined by about forty percent.
And then he realized, that's just not bowling. That's our country,
that's America. We quit showing up, quit joining, quit committing
(05:34):
church groups, civic clubs, ptas, volunteer organizations, neighborhood stuff. They
didn't disappear overnight. They've slowly faded. The Rotary The Rotary
Club has lost one hundred thousand members over the last
twenty years. In twenty twenty, church membership dropped below a
(05:55):
majority of Americans for the first time in Gallops eight
decade polling history, at forty seven percent. Think of that, y'all.
Over the last eighty years, for the first time in history,
fewer Americans attend church than don't. In nineteen thirty seven,
when Gallup measured it, seventy three percent of Americans belonged
(06:16):
to a church, a rate that remained nearly seventy percent
for six decades. That's into the late nineties until a
sharp decline began around the twenty first century, and the
percentage of Americans who report attending a public meeting on
town or school affairs fell from twenty two to thirteen percent,
a drop of more than a third. And what Putnam says,
(06:38):
this is the part that matters, is that what we
lost wasn't money or intelligence or talent. What we lost
and what we continue to lose, is social capital. That's
just a fancy way of saying we've lost trust, relationships,
shared responsibility, and the habit of showing up for each other.
Here's the line from Bowling Alone that hit me. Communities
(07:02):
don't fall apart because people stop caring. They fall apart
because people stop connecting. That is so true. Now look around.
People are lonely, about thirty to forty percent of adults
being lonely regularly. They're angry, they're cynical, they don't believe
anything they do matters anymore. And we keep trying to
(07:24):
fix that with better arguments, better politics, better posts. I
was about to say, better social media. None of that works,
and the numbers bear that out. Because loneliness isn't an
ideas problem. It's a presence problem. You don't fix it
with a tweet. You fix it by standing next to
(07:44):
an actual human being and doing something hard together. That's
where the army comes in. The Army of normal folks
exists because Bowling alone was right, but we think it's incomplete.
Putnam told us what we lost alone, doesn't tell us
how to rebuild it. That's our job, the Army of
(08:05):
normal folks, you and me. When Army members like you
start an A and F service club in their community,
they're not really starting programs. They're just rebuilding muscle memory,
the muscle of showing up once a month, looking somebody
else in the eye in a human way, not through
a computer screen, voting together, serving together, eating together with
(08:31):
human beings, and conversation. A giving circle isn't really about
the money. Certainly, it's about the money, but it's not
really what it's about. It's about doing way more meaningful
things together, way more meaningful than we could on our own.
Army activations. The monthly service days isn't only about the task.
(08:53):
It's about sweat, laughter and doing something together that matters.
Potlucks aren't only a cute little thing. They're radical because
neighbors don't eat together anymore. And here's the thing Putnam
understood deeply. This stuff doesn't scale fast, it doesn't go viral,
it doesn't look impressive on an Instagram. But it works slow, quiet, relational.
(09:20):
That's how America used to run. That's how it needs
to run again. We don't need more heroes, we need
more leagues. We don't need higher fences, we need longer tables,
more normal folks showing up and saying I don't have
all the answers, but I can do this, and I'll
do it with you. That's how belief comes back. That's
(09:41):
how hope sneaks in. That's how an army gets built,
and that's how we bowl together and rebuild America together.
It's good stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Alex Robert Putnam pulling alone. He's like the social capital guy.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
He is the social capital guy, right. And you know,
it's interesting that we have all this data and we
spend all this money to capture all this information about
what's wrong and how we but I mean, we spend
all this time, effort, money and hand ringing over figuring
out what's wrong and all these dwindling numbers. But the
(10:19):
irony is the answer to it. Is so inexpensive and simple.
It's engage. It's simply get off your and engage. It's
have the courage to sit down across from somebody who's
not your trusted, most trusted confidant and making them so
by growing together in service. And I just feel like
(10:41):
the answer is so very simple, if somehow we can
inspire enough numbers of people to just re engage in
what made America the community it was up until about
twenty five years ago.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I think as a Catholic, I've always thought about this
example at the Friday fish ride. I mean, they were
so dominant for like the twentieth century, where even people
who aren't Catholic will go to them because they're so
good and so fun.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I'm not eveywhere near Catholic, but I have been to
it least and well in the South, summer fish fries,
summer spaghetti dinners, but it's always do you do about
a fish and spaghetti? Perfect? Do y'all still do? Bingo?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Actually we got one this Friday, Yeah, at our church.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Bingo was also part of that sitting at a long table,
you and a friend with eight other people you don't know,
all laughing, doing your bingo dots and stuff, and it's
just fun.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
But it's the kind of thing that would bring somebody rich,
somebody poor, somebody black, somebody white, like every type of
person in the community to this thing, and we just
have such a declient of that now. It's like rich
people go to rich people restaurants and they go to
their country clubs, and poor people go to poor restaurants.
But it's like, you have no place like really to
communally get together and meet strangers anymore until our local
(11:57):
service clubs.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I think, how neat it is to walk down the
street and bump into somebody you didn't know and say
hello because you met them at one of these things
and you know you have common ground. How simple? Is that?
So true? So Robert Putnam's the Bowling thing here is
just a beautiful, another beautiful example of we understand what's
(12:20):
happened to us, and the irony is the fix is
so simple, and we at an army and normal folks
are trying very hard to create that opportunity through our
service clubs, and we really hope you guys will take
it seriously and think about just showing up just slow,
quiet relational work.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
And even if you don't start a service club, I
would say, hope many of you do. But there's still
things you could do, like host the neighborhood block parties
like block Party USA also brings together. You could also
just host a dinner at your house with all kinds
of random, different people. Right, there's other ways you can
skin this cap.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So there it is shop Talk ninety one. We got
to quit bowling alone and restore American community and American
service to its roots. So if you liked this episode,
would you please share with friends on social, subscribe to
the podcast, rate and review it, join the army at
(13:17):
normal folks dot us. Just get off her and do something.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Man, be nice to them.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Okay, and do it nicely. How about that? That's shop
Talk number ninety one, Quit bowling alone. We'll see you
next week.
Hey, everybody, it's Bell courting with an army and normal folks.
Welcome to the shop.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey Alex, Hey Bill, how you doing. Molly's about to
get married.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
My oh, you're time stamping it. I leave tomorrow and yes,
we go off and my youngest daughter, my third child,
hold it. Yes, second child, she's second. Yes, youngest daughter.
Second child is getting married to a guy named Tracy
Z who is really awesome guy. I'm really excited for her,
(00:39):
and I feel sorry for him. She's crazy. My daughter
is a hand full, and then so I think she's
a lot of fun though, and she's got a good heart.
She has a great heart. She's faithful, she's she's spirited,
she's very very bright, she works hard, and she's just
(01:02):
nutty as hell. She's basically her mom.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I mean you're a little crazy too.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
No mom, y'all. Everybody thinks because in social settings, Lisa's
kind of this beautiful little thing that kind of keeps
her mouth shut and smiles big and just walks around
with me, and everybody thinks I'm the way I'm telling you,
least is the one.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
I haven't seen her crazy yet. I usually just see
you hitting on her in front of me.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's like the crazy hit on her.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
In front of everybody. She's gorgeous and I can't wait.
In fact, now I can't wait to get home and
see her. All right, everybody's shop Talk number ninety one.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
You know that's one of them. Job Bill. Oh that's
another one. Dennis Rodman.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Dennis Well, but see he wasn't always ninety but what
it said is on his bowls championship seasons he.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Was ninety one.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh okay, well there you.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Go, Serge Federoff and Hockey. I wouldn't have known that
demo the pitch.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah he was ninety one.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah really yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah? Who else?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That's it? That's good though. With Kevin Green, you know, but.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, well Kevin Green, I always thought he was a
hilacious defensive end. Okay, everybody's Shop Talk number ninety one,
in honor of my crazy wife and daughter, has nothing
to do with this. Alex Is teed this up. There's
a book called Bowling Alone. Correct can't wait to unpack
this right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
(02:47):
All right, everybody, welcome back to the shop Shop Talk
number ninety one. Bowling Alone, or why Everybody's lonely and
nobody knows what to do about it? Read by me
teed up by your very own, lovely and talented Alex Quartel,
who woke up at three point thirty in this morning.
I'm told to put this stuff together for our reading enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's correct, four hours of sleep.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
And then drove up here. I'm driving Oxford by the
way today.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Are you really?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Before I leave on my airplane at six in the morning,
I have to go down to do something with the
charity bowl.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Oh interesting, Yeah, do you hear the train? I do
hear the train?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay? Bowling Alone or why everybody's lonely and nobody knows
what to do about it? All right, I'm going to
tell you about this book. It sounds boring as hell,
but explains a lot of what's broken. It's called Bowling Alone,
and no, it really doesn't have anything to do about
with bowling. By the way, there's a book out called
(03:42):
Go to Hell, Ole Miss. Really that's on the National
bestsellers list. Oh wow, has very little to do with
Old Miss. It's about a pilot that got shot down
in World War Two and he was kept in this dingy,
dark cabin and he was held captive for like two years,
and somebody who had been captured before him, this back
(04:04):
in the forties had written with a knife on a
wood panel, go to hell will miss, And he said
just that connection to home is what saved his life.
And the book is about his two years.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Are you reading it?
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Starting it interesting? Yeah? Really?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Look at it?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah? All right? Anyway, bowling alone. The guy who wrote
this is Robert Putnam, and he noticed something weird. Americans
were bowling more than ever, but they stopped bowling together.
No leagues, no teams. Bowling league participation has declined by
about forty percent, which I think is sad. I think
American bowling leagues are stuff of Americana legend.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I also missed the dingy bowling alley with the pictures
of beer where he could smoke cigarettes. Now it's all
these like professional fancy ones that are super expensive and
you can't smoke inside.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You could smoke whe or not hype cigarette, and you
got pictures of cheap beer in.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
A cheap bowling alley and.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
The floor was sticky, and you could get a cheeseburger
at the grill. That's a bowling all.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
It looks like Das all, that's stupid.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, that's that's why bowling leagues are down. I guarantee it.
There's other reasons in here, all right, So Americans are
bowling more than ever, but they stopped bowling together, no leagues,
no teams. Bowling League dissipation declined by about forty percent.
And then he realized, that's just not bowling. That's our country,
that's America. We quit showing up, quit joining, quit committing
(05:34):
church groups, civic clubs, ptas, volunteer organizations, neighborhood stuff. They
didn't disappear overnight. They've slowly faded. The Rotary The Rotary
Club has lost one hundred thousand members over the last
twenty years. In twenty twenty, church membership dropped below a
(05:55):
majority of Americans for the first time in Gallops eight
decade polling history, at forty seven percent. Think of that, y'all.
Over the last eighty years, for the first time in history,
fewer Americans attend church than don't. In nineteen thirty seven,
when Gallup measured it, seventy three percent of Americans belonged
(06:16):
to a church, a rate that remained nearly seventy percent
for six decades. That's into the late nineties until a
sharp decline began around the twenty first century, and the
percentage of Americans who report attending a public meeting on
town or school affairs fell from twenty two to thirteen percent,
a drop of more than a third. And what Putnam says,
(06:38):
this is the part that matters, is that what we
lost wasn't money or intelligence or talent. What we lost
and what we continue to lose, is social capital. That's
just a fancy way of saying we've lost trust, relationships,
shared responsibility, and the habit of showing up for each other.
Here's the line from Bowling Alone that hit me. Communities
(07:02):
don't fall apart because people stop caring. They fall apart
because people stop connecting. That is so true. Now look around.
People are lonely, about thirty to forty percent of adults
being lonely regularly. They're angry, they're cynical, they don't believe
anything they do matters anymore. And we keep trying to
(07:24):
fix that with better arguments, better politics, better posts. I
was about to say, better social media. None of that works,
and the numbers bear that out. Because loneliness isn't an
ideas problem. It's a presence problem. You don't fix it
with a tweet. You fix it by standing next to
(07:44):
an actual human being and doing something hard together. That's
where the army comes in. The Army of normal folks
exists because Bowling alone was right, but we think it's incomplete.
Putnam told us what we lost alone, doesn't tell us
how to rebuild it. That's our job, the Army of
(08:05):
normal folks, you and me. When Army members like you
start an A and F service club in their community,
they're not really starting programs. They're just rebuilding muscle memory,
the muscle of showing up once a month, looking somebody
else in the eye in a human way, not through
a computer screen, voting together, serving together, eating together with
(08:31):
human beings, and conversation. A giving circle isn't really about
the money. Certainly, it's about the money, but it's not
really what it's about. It's about doing way more meaningful
things together, way more meaningful than we could on our own.
Army activations. The monthly service days isn't only about the task.
(08:53):
It's about sweat, laughter and doing something together that matters.
Potlucks aren't only a cute little thing. They're radical because
neighbors don't eat together anymore. And here's the thing Putnam
understood deeply. This stuff doesn't scale fast, it doesn't go viral,
it doesn't look impressive on an Instagram. But it works slow, quiet, relational.
(09:20):
That's how America used to run. That's how it needs
to run again. We don't need more heroes, we need
more leagues. We don't need higher fences, we need longer tables,
more normal folks showing up and saying I don't have
all the answers, but I can do this, and I'll
do it with you. That's how belief comes back. That's
(09:41):
how hope sneaks in. That's how an army gets built,
and that's how we bowl together and rebuild America together.
It's good stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Alex Robert Putnam pulling alone. He's like the social capital guy.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
He is the social capital guy, right. And you know,
it's interesting that we have all this data and we
spend all this money to capture all this information about
what's wrong and how we but I mean, we spend
all this time, effort, money and hand ringing over figuring
out what's wrong and all these dwindling numbers. But the
(10:19):
irony is the answer to it. Is so inexpensive and simple.
It's engage. It's simply get off your and engage. It's
have the courage to sit down across from somebody who's
not your trusted, most trusted confidant and making them so
by growing together in service. And I just feel like
(10:41):
the answer is so very simple, if somehow we can
inspire enough numbers of people to just re engage in
what made America the community it was up until about
twenty five years ago.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I think as a Catholic, I've always thought about this
example at the Friday fish ride. I mean, they were
so dominant for like the twentieth century, where even people
who aren't Catholic will go to them because they're so
good and so fun.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I'm not eveywhere near Catholic, but I have been to
it least and well in the South, summer fish fries,
summer spaghetti dinners, but it's always do you do about
a fish and spaghetti? Perfect? Do y'all still do? Bingo?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Actually we got one this Friday, Yeah, at our church.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Bingo was also part of that sitting at a long table,
you and a friend with eight other people you don't know,
all laughing, doing your bingo dots and stuff, and it's
just fun.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
But it's the kind of thing that would bring somebody rich,
somebody poor, somebody black, somebody white, like every type of
person in the community to this thing, and we just
have such a declient of that now. It's like rich
people go to rich people restaurants and they go to
their country clubs, and poor people go to poor restaurants.
But it's like, you have no place like really to
communally get together and meet strangers anymore until our local
(11:57):
service clubs.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I think, how neat it is to walk down the
street and bump into somebody you didn't know and say
hello because you met them at one of these things
and you know you have common ground. How simple? Is that?
So true? So Robert Putnam's the Bowling thing here is
just a beautiful, another beautiful example of we understand what's
(12:20):
happened to us, and the irony is the fix is
so simple, and we at an army and normal folks
are trying very hard to create that opportunity through our
service clubs, and we really hope you guys will take
it seriously and think about just showing up just slow,
quiet relational work.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
And even if you don't start a service club, I
would say, hope many of you do. But there's still
things you could do, like host the neighborhood block parties
like block Party USA also brings together. You could also
just host a dinner at your house with all kinds
of random, different people. Right, there's other ways you can
skin this cap.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So there it is shop Talk ninety one. We got
to quit bowling alone and restore American community and American
service to its roots. So if you liked this episode,
would you please share with friends on social, subscribe to
the podcast, rate and review it, join the army at
(13:17):
normal folks dot us. Just get off her and do something.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Man, be nice to them.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Okay, and do it nicely. How about that? That's shop
Talk number ninety one, Quit bowling alone. We'll see you
next week.
Host
Bill Courtney
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