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Smerconish

The Mingle Project. Male Loneliness: Victory Only Happens Off A Screen; How Online Compartmentalization Eroded Genuine Human Intimacy; Healing The Psyche Of A Generation; What Is The Real Secret To Living A Longer Life?. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired June 13, 2026 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

STELLA JEAN, HATIAN-ITALIAN DESIGNER: -- a problem. They create an opportunity so many people decide to choose for us, to choose for the country. And right now, you will find the Asian uniform on the Olympic museum on Switzerland, from the margin, from the peripheries of the globe to the center. Italy won't be there and our heart is broken. And Haiti, with like 1.7 statistical possibility of qualifying to the World Cup, will be there.

It's something that goes far beyond football.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks for joining me today. Smerconish is next.

[09:00:42]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: America. We've never been more connected, and yet we've never been more alone.

I'm Michael Smerconish and the Philly burbs. We're divided, isolated, glued to screens designed to fuel our rage instead of our relationships. Twenty-five years ago, Harvard's Robert Putnam saw it all coming. He called it bowling alone. And since then, things have only gotten worse.

Today, I'm dedicating this entire program to one mission, restoring common experience. Joining me, Robert Putnam, Charles Murray, David Wasserman, Scott Galloway, Debra Soh, Dr. Tami Benton, and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. The Mingle Project starts now.

So, like Robert Putnam, my first guest was also ahead of the curve. More than a decade ago, he saw the growing societal disconnect between the upper and working class. Not good for either, but especially damaging for the white working class, cut off from the economic opportunity that comes from associating with those more financially secure. And to illustrate just how isolated the upper class had become, he developed a unique quiz.

Questions like these. Have you ever walked on a factory floor? Have you ever had a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day? You ever buy a pickup truck? Have you gone fishing in the last five years?

How often do you eat at a Denny's or IHOP? And since leaving school, have you ever worn a uniform? Well, the more yes answers that you had, congratulations, the less your bubble.

Dr. Charles Murray is the author of "Coming Apart." How and why did you come up with the quiz?

CHARLES MURRAY, AUTHOR OF "COMING APART" AND "THE BELL CURVE": I was trying to get across to my audience something that they didn't know. It's a problem. Like a fish doesn't know it's in water. Well, people on the upper west side don't realize that they are in a bubble that separates them from ordinary Americans, and they have no idea what life is like on the other side of that bubble.

SMERCONISH: And in coming apart, as you told the story of these polar opposites, you used real towns, but you used them in a more of a figurative sense. You used Belmont in Massachusetts, which I remember Mitt Romney, that was his homestead when he was governor. And then closer to me in Philadelphia, you used Fishtown or Kensington, some would say. Talk to me about why you chose those two locales.

MURRAY: I did choose them as allegories so that Belmont was the home not only Mitt Romney, but of my co-author in "The Bell Curve" professor at Harvard, Dick Herrnstein. And Fishtown was one of the few in 19 -- in 2000, when I was coming up with data on this stuff. Fishtown was one of the very few white working class urban neighborhoods left in the country. And I was writing a book and then coming apart that focused on whites. Very simple reason.

I learned with "The Bell Curve" that whenever race comes into the picture, it brings so many ancillary and distracting issues. I wanted to say to my audience, look, the problems I'm talking about should not be confused with racial problems. These are problems that are affecting America. And the way you know that they're affecting America across racial lines is they're happening with whites as well as with blacks.

SMERCONISH: The way that I interpreted that, I'm doing this from memory, is that you were talking about social cohesion or a lack thereof, and you didn't want individuals to ascribe to what you were coming up with a racial component that didn't exist.

MURRAY: Actually, that's true. And another thing is that I was talking about what I called the founding virtues, which included honesty and industriousness and marriage and religion, religiosity. And so if you're high on those, that's good, and if you're low on those, it's bad. And again, I didn't want the racial issue to come in here. Whites have problems in all these areas and I wanted the audience to understand that.

SMERCONISH: Dr. Murray, this is really not a left versus right issue as I see it. It's a cultural phenomenon or a cultural problem. But you're the author of "Coming Apart," so set me straight.

MURRAY: It crosses party lines. Conservatives can be in every bit as isolated a bubble, as elite bubble, as liberals.

[09:05:04]

SMERCONISH: So I'm on a crusade of sorts. I've become an evangelist for restoring common experience. I call it The Mingle Project. And the more that I read the social science and have interviewed the political and social experts, I'm thinking about Bob Putnam and I'm thinking about Bill Bishop. I'm thinking more recently about Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt, Richard Louv, who wrote "Last Child in the Woods," and so, so many more.

But the more that I've been reading and studying and thinking, the more I think of you. Because you're the guy. I mean, when you wrote "Coming Apart," you were prescient and unfortunately the book has aged well. But you were talking about what Putnam would describe as a loss of social capital. If the people of Kensington aren't interacting with the people of Belmont, then there's a problem, especially for the people of Kensington, because they're not getting a leg up on the economic ladder.

Isn't that what it's all about?

MURRAY: There's another problem too, because people say to me, oh, come on, the working class people are in a bubble of their own. It's just different from the bubble in the upper class. Well, there's a difference. If you're a truck driver in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you may be in a certain kind of bubble, but what you do in your job does not affect the lives of everybody else.

If the Secretary of Transportation in Washington, D.C. is a member of the elite bubble and he or she has absolutely no idea what the working life of a truck driver is, they are going to come up with regulations and rules and policies that make life miserable for the truck driver. That is a problem. And I think a great many of the policy errors of the last 20 or 30 years can be blamed on an elite that doesn't know what the hell is going on in the lives of ordinary Americans.

SMERCONISH: So I'm sure this will not surprise Charles Murray at all. Cross class friendships had a stronger impact than school quality, family structure, job availability, or a community's racial composition. Confirmation of everything you were talking about in "Coming Apart." And in his case, it was based on 72 million Facebook users and their zip codes. Your thoughts?

MURRAY: Well, one thing -- by the way, Raj Chetty does wonderful work and --

SMERCONISH: Agrees. Yes.

MURRAY: -- criticism of his work at all. But when people hear that, oh, living next to wealthy people can improve the chances, then they say, great, let's move a bunch of people from the inner city out to places where wealthy people live and that'll solve our problems. I'm sorry.

People can learn to respect if they're in the bubble, the elite bubble, they can learn to respect the working class. That's not a problem. But what you do not want to do is force them to go into situations which make them uneasy about their safety of their children, the education, their schools, and so forth. So you better find ways to get this mingling to go on that do not artificially try to bring people together. It's got to be choices of people living near each other.

SMERCONISH: If Murray's blueprint for bridging the class divide is voluntary mixing, my next guest literally wrote the book on why we stopped. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. He's the intellectual anchor of this entire conversation.

Twenty-five years ago, his book "Bowling Alone" warned us that dismantling our civic clubs and community groups would pull the pin on our democracy. He was right. But today I want to focus on what has poured gasoline on those embers ever since, technology. And specifically, a remarkable story about a private conversation that he had with a senior Facebook executive who admitted that the platform could bring people closer together in real, meaningful ways and they chose not to because it would hurt the business model.

Robert Putnam.

ROBERT PUTNAM, AUTHOR OF "BOWLING ALONE": I want to begin with just a factual observation. People will know what I'm saying, but they will maybe not have thought of it in this way. All of our networks today, our connections with other people are an amalgam of face to face connections and electronic connections. That is, my wife and I, we see each other all the time. We live in the same place.

Her study is like 20 feet away from my study. But still, I will get a text across that 20 feet saying, it's your turn to do the dishes. Now what am I trying to say? That's an amalgam that pulls these things together. And in principle, that could be great.

We can have the best of both worlds. This, you know -- we should think of it maybe as what a chemist call it, when you put different chemicals together and you stir them up and you get a --

[09:10:02]

SMERCONISH: Explosion for me.

PUTNAM: Well, what I'm trying to say is --

SMERCONISH: Reaction.

PUTNAM: -- I was -- I'm going to tell a quick anecdote --

SMERCONISH: Please.

PUTNAM: -- and we can finish. Back in about 2020, Mark Zuckerberg and his folks invited me to come to Menlo Park. And their whole conference was about social capital. I was a key door. And I thought, whoa, this is wonderful, right? And I mean that's self-centered. It was interesting. They were smart people. And I told them, yes, you know, it would be great if we could figure out a way to use your technology to reinforce not just Facebook friends, but real friends. If we could somehow use your technology to build real face to face connections.

And he said, we can do that. And I said, this is wonderful. We've -- you know, this is better than sliced bread. We figured out a way to reconnect Americans using your technology, but getting real face to face connections, not just these electronic things. So when is it rolling out, I said.

And he said, well, wait a minute, Bob, took me over to the side of the room and talked behind his hand. He said, we're not rolling it out. And I said, why? We're not. Just -- I said it's wonderful. And he said, it turns out that if we use our technology to bring people closer together and know each other in personal terms, they like it, they really enjoy it, and they stop shouting.

And I said, well, isn't that great? He said, no, no, our business model depends upon them shouting. That is to say, we get --

SMERCONISH: Surprised he was so honest.

PUTNAM: Well, I don't think he's no longer with the firm. And that's why he was behind his -- you know, that's why he was conveying this to me as a secret. The basic point I'm trying to make is it's not technologically impossible to use the Internet to build real --

SMERCONISH: Force of good. Right.

PUTNAM: It's the business model.

SMERCONISH: Yes. The algorithms.

PUTNAM: And if we -- OK, well, I have, you know, if it's -- if it's a business model, we got to think about ways to change that. And we could do that. But of course why don't we do that, Michael? Because the tech bros, whatever it is, four or five of the tech bros now are running the world. They're running our government.

They're -- they have more power. You know who I mean by the tech?

SMERCONISH: Absolutely, yes.

PUTNAM: If they have more power as individuals economically, politically, culturally, socially than probably any four people in the history of the world. So am I optimistic or pessimistic? Well, if we could somehow get control just to do what our ancestors did, 125 years ago in the Progressive Era and have antitrust regulation and campaign finance reform and so on, we could do it. This is not rocket science.

But do we have the wit and the courage to do what people just like us and our kids did 125 years ago? You tell me, Michael.

SMERCONISH: From bowling alone to shopping alone, coming up, a number that should stop you cold. In 1980, fewer than 400 of America's roughly 3,100 counties were political landslides. Today, it's over 80 percent. That's not gerrymandering. The county boundary lines, they don't change.

The people inside them just stopped having anything in common. My next guest saw it all coming, and he tracked it not through polling or through politics, but through where we shop and eat Cracker Barrel versus Whole Foods. The data will surprise you. But first, go to smerconish.com and answer today's poll question, are you prepared to re-engage to save America?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:38]

SMERCONISH: To understand the geographic isolation that's tearing the country apart, you don't need an electoral map, you need a receipt. Because nothing illustrates the self-sorting of the American electorate quite like the distance between a Cracker Barrel and a Whole Foods.

My next guest discovered that gap and has been watching it widen for decades. Here's a number that should stop you cold. In 1980 only 391 of America's roughly 3100 counties were won by landslide margins, 20 or more points. By 2024 that number had exploded to over 80 percent of all counties. And that's not gerrymandering the county boundary lines, they don't change.

The people inside them just stopped having anything in common. David Wasserman, he's the senior election analyst who saw this coming long before election night made it impossible to ignore.

There are roughly 3,000 counties in the United States. I think the number is 3,114. I'm sure David Wasserman knows exactly what it is. I'd like to say roughly 3,000.

And this I know if you go back to 1980 which was Reagan v. Carter, Carter the incumbent, 391 of them, only 391 of them were landslide or blowout counties won by 20 or more percentage points. And now fast forward to the 2024 election. I'm going to put a David Wasserman slide on the screen which shows that 80.2 percent of all counties in the United States were won by 20 or more percentage points. And David, that's been a steady progression, right?

DAVID WASSERMAN, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT SENIOR EDITOR & ELECTIONS ANALYST: It has been a steady progression. And you know, in the 1990s Bill Clinton was still winning a broad swath of the mid-south and he was winning Tennessee and Arkansas and Louisiana. Democrats have little to no appeal in rural America and that has concentrated their coalition on the coasts, in college towns, in big cities to the point that they are winning just a tiny fraction of America's counties, less than 20 percent. So yes, that's primarily where the people are. But it's an inefficient coalition for purposes of winning the presidency, the Senate and the House, because the median Senate and House seats are a few points to the right of the nation because Democrats are so over concentrated in places where they're winning 80 or 90 percent of the vote.

[09:20:12]

SMERCONISH: OK, and now the $64,000 question for David Wasserman. We don't change county boundary lines. This has nothing to do with gerrymandering. County boundary lines are fixed. So why in the world has there been this growth from 391 counties being lopsided to 80.2 percent in 2024.

What is it that has caused that change?

WASSERMAN: I believe it's the educational polarization of the electorate. We are seeing a -- we've seen over the last couple decades a big sort attributable to where Americans are going to college and then where they're -- where they're migrating after they get their degrees. We've seen a clustering of the college educated professional class in certain urban and suburban settings. And it's not just the suburbs in general, they are clustering in certain types of Whole Foods suburbs.

And as a result, it's draining rural and working class America of Democratic votes as particularly as we've seen Democrats doing better and better with the professional class of voters and Republicans doing better with the working class. And in 2016, Donald Trump made a tremendous breakthrough with working class white voters. By 2024, he also made substantial breakthroughs with working class nonwhite voters. And so this educational polarization has reached a fever pitch. And it just so happens that we are more geographically segregated by educational attainment than we used to be.

SMERCONISH: You referenced Whole Foods and I love this. I always credit David Wasserman whenever I talk about the "Cracker Barrel" and Whole Foods analysis.

WASSERMAN: Back in 1992 when Bill Clinton first won the White house over George H.W. Bush, he carried 59 percent of counties that today have a Whole Foods market and 40 percent of the counties that today have a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. That was a 19 point culture gap. But in 2016, Donald Trump won the White House for the first time winning 74 percent of Cracker Barrel counties and 22 percent of Whole Foods counties. A 52 point gap nearly tripled the gap that we had in '92.

Michael, I'll never forget a couple of weeks before the 2016 election, I was going over this data set with a pretty liberal leaning group of young Capitol Hill staffers in D.C. And there was a young woman in the front row who raised her hand and she actually asked me, excuse me David, did you mean Crate & Barrel? I've never heard of Cracker Barrel. To me, that foreshadowed the election of Donald Trump.

And at the same time, 2024 was very interesting because it was the first year in the history of this data set, really in the -- since the establishment of Whole Foods Market that we saw a slight decline in this gap.

SMERCONISH: Still to come, our isolation isn't just reshaping our politics, it's hollowing out an entire generation of young men. NYU professor Scott Galloway has the numbers and they're alarming.

Men in their 20s now spending less time outside than prison inmates. Fifteen percent say they have no friends at all. And that's a figure that is quintupled since 1990.

And then there's what's happening behind closed doors. Neuroscientist Debra Soh explains how early exposure to pornography and artificial intelligence companions is rewiring young men's brains, leaving them ill equipped for the one thing that might actually save them, a real human relationship. Scott Galloway and Debra Soh still ahead. But first, make sure you're voting on today's poll question smerconish.com, are you ready to reengage to save America?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:27:55]

SMERCONISH: If The Mingle Project has a poster child, it's the young American male. He's falling behind in school, falling out of the workforce, and increasingly falling into isolation. Fifteen percent of young men today report having no close friends whatsoever. That's a number that's quintupled since 1990.

My next guest has written the book, literally, on how to fix it. He'll tell you the Boy Scouts saved his life. He'll tell you to get off your couch and out of your house. He'll tell you something that I think is the motto of the entire conversation we're having. Victory happens off a screen. Scott Galloway is the NYU professor, the entrepreneur, the author of "Notes on Being a Man."

I'm on a mission. It's my Mingle Project. I believe we need to --

SCOTT GALLOWAY, PROFESSOR OF MARKETING, MY STEM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: Yes, I love that.

SMERCONISH: -- reestablish common experience. You can see my copy of "Notes on Being a Man" because you are a mingle guy, and I've isolated like, half a dozen examples of your trajectory. This book is very autobiographical, which is why it's so much fun. And I want to run through some mingle issues.

For example, the Boy Scouts. You say the Boy Scouts saved you. How so?

GALLOWAY: I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary. I went to public schools where there wasn't a lot of attention. I had assisted lunch. I actually think that big government kind of saved me, but there were just certain things I couldn't do with my mom or she didn't have time to.

And I joined the Boy Scouts. Troop leader Nobler (ph) was a chemistry teacher at. UCLA, and I think he figured out pretty quickly I didn't have money and figured out a way to get me pay for my Little League. You know, really generous, lovely man.

I was around a bunch of other guys. Some of them were nice, some weren't. But learning those skills around how to navigate other guys. And the Boy Scouts didn't attract what I'll call a very hip, popular crowd when I was a Boy Scout. But I found out that there are a lot of us out there, and once a month, they used to take us camping.

I developed a love, you know, the outdoors, and I developed values. I got a merit badge and fire safety. I still can't go into a hotel without planning out my escape route in a fire.

But things like knot tying, like discipline. We used to leave the campsite perfect. We used to join hands and walk through the entire campsite to make sure there was no sign of humans, teaching you respect for nature. It was hugely important.

And unfortunately, there's no more Boy Scouts. There's Scouts of America and there's Girl Scouts, but you're not allowed to have single sex boy scouts. And so, I don't -- and I understand -- I understand the reasoning behind it. But for the last 40 years, we have celebrated the ascent of women. And I think that's hugely important. But we don't want to recognize the real issues that young men are facing.

SMERCONISH: When I read about some of the things that you associated with the Boy Scouts, I thought of my own father's lessons to me about his Korean War experience. He never got anywhere near Korea, but he saw value in kids of dissimilar backgrounds coming together, joined in common purpose, and pursuing a sole goal. And that's what I thought of. And more joining along those lines needs to take place.

Also from Scott Galloway's book, leave your house. You should -- you should strive never to be at home, writes Prof. G. Home is for seven hours of sleep and recharging your tech. That's it. The amount of time you spend at home is inversely correlated to your success, professionally and romantically.

GALLOWAY: There's this data. You're 38 percent more likely if you are in the office versus remote work. There's a lot of layoffs going on right now at information age companies who are adopting A.I. It is really easy to put you on a list of who's being laid off when you don't know the person.

And also the person who promotes will have two or three people who are eligible for every promotion, but the decider will base his or her decision based on relationships. And relationships are a function of proximity.

We're mammals, and the worst thing you can do to an orca, put it in a tank alone and see how it does. The worst thing you can do to a human is solitary confinement. And now their estimate -- I just saw a study yesterday saying that men 20 to 30 are spending less out -- less time outside than prison inmates.

You have the most valuable companies in the world trying to convince young men who are more susceptible to this, because of immature brains, that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life online. And I think the result is they wake up lonely, without skills, anxious, depressed, obese.

And if a man hasn't been in a relationship by the time he's 30, he hasn't cohabitated or been married, there's a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser. Men need relationships more than women.

SMERCONISH: The whole book is a call to action for mingling. Do you use that word?

GALLOWAY: I don't use the word mingle. I like the word and I love what you're doing and I think you -- I love that you're pushing it. But the more time you spend on this, the less money you're going to make, the fewer friends you're going to have, the less sex you're going to have, the less opportunities you're going to have professionally. Victory happens off a screen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: Scott Galloway just told us that, victory happens off a screen. But for a generation of young men raised on smartphones, one screen in particular may be doing the most damage. And it's not social media.

Sexual neuroscientist and author Debra Soh has a warning, pornography is activating the same brain regions as real sex. For millions of young men exposed to it at 12 years old or younger, it's become a real substitute for the real thing. And now A.I. companions are making it even easier to avoid human connection altogether.

She has enormous sympathy for the young men who are caught in this trap, but she also has thoughts and a warning, something to say to the young women who are sitting across from them. Debra Soh and her book "Sextinction."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBRA SOH, AUTHOR OF SEXTINCTION: THE DECLINE OF SEX AND THE FUTURE OF INTIMACY: I don't believe porn fully satisfies the person, but it can take say the edge off of the desire to find a sexual partner in real life. And I previously wrote for a very well-known men's magazine that featured nude women in it so my views on pornography have really changed a lot in the last few years.

And especially in writing this book, because I sat down and really asked myself, what are the effects of this? Especially when we look at Gen Z, who are exposed to pornography at such a young age. The average age that a child is exposed to porn nowadays is 12. One in seven kids sees it at the age of 10 or younger.

So many, many of Gen Z, I mean, the minute you get access to a smartphone, as many of them did at a young age, they basically have access to pornography, or people sending it to them. And in many cases, they see it and they don't mean to see it. They just come across it and they don't know what it is. So that's affected their sexuality.

And I think what happens when you watch porn is it activates the same brain regions that are activated during sexual activity. So when you're watching pornography, your mind feels or you feel as though you're actually experiencing sex when you're not.

So the associated orgasm that comes with that can be reinforcing. It can serve as a coping mechanism for people who say are less motivated or depressed or struggling in life. And so, I think it becomes a bit of a self-reinforcing loop.

[09:35:00]

So I think that is why many men are, to some degree, they're not fully satisfied, but it helps them to cope with the fact that they don't have someone. And then with the technology, I know I've heard you speak about A.I. girlfriends in the past, and I do think this is potentially very dangerous because it adds the emotional element. It makes it a lot more realistic.

And because these AIs really do -- I was so amazed at how real they are. It really feels like you're talking to another human being. I think that also is adding to this lethargy.

And more broadly, if you are masturbating and having an orgasm every day, looking at pornography, as some young men are, or multiple times a day, in some cases -- I've heard cases of young children watching porn at school in the morning before they go to school, when they come home from school. If this is a regular part of your life, it becomes normalized to the point where maybe you don't even want a real life partner because you've never experienced that, or you think it's too complicated. Especially post MeToo, I have to say.

SMERCONISH: Can I say? To that end, it also makes me pity a 16 through, I don't know, 28 year old young woman who now finds herself in the company, maybe instead of being attracted to the older guy, which seems to be the trend that you describe in the book, maybe she finds herself in the company of a contemporary who now has unrealistic expectations, because his only knowledge of intimacy is what he's watched on a video screen. And he has an expectation now that that's what he's going to get from her.

SOH: Yes, I've heard that a lot from young women. And I don't blame young men for this. I think, you know, I feel -- I really feel for both sexes because I think porn has done a disservice to both, and especially for young guys who grew up on this, who didn't know that this is not reflective of real life sex.

You don't learn about how to treat your partner before sex, after sex, even what real sexual activity looks like. So for many women, you know, after sexual activity, they'd like to be held by their partner. They want to feel wanted. They want to feel comforted.

For women, there's more oxytocin that is released during sex than for men. For men, their bonding hormones go down to zero after they finish, we'll say. So what happens is, you know, most women want to feel comforted after. And if your partner just gets up and leaves as you would if you're watching pornography, all you do after, I suppose is close the browser, right? So I mean, I don't watch porn myself, but that's my sense of it. So there's no real -- there's nothing really required of you after having an orgasm if you're watching porn. Whereas if you have a real life person sitting in front of you, they're going to want more from you.

And especially in the context of a relationship, porn doesn't teach you about how to interact with another person. Even I would say how to pursue women and to handle the rejection that comes with that.

So there's a whole piece of the puzzle that is missing. And yes, so I feel for both sexes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: We've heard what isolation is doing to our young men. But when loneliness becomes a mental health crisis, why are so many families still afraid to ask for help?

Coming up, Dr. Tami Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, on the stigma that's keeping struggling kids from getting better. She makes a point that has stayed with me. We would never blame a child for having asthma. So why do we blame them for depression? That conversation next.

And make sure you're voting on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Are you prepared to reengage to save America?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:42:16]

SMERCONISH: If you're just joining us, welcome to "THE MINGLE PROJECT." We've already heard from Robert Putnam. He warned us 25 years ago that America was becoming a nation of loners. He wrote a book called "Bowling Alone." Charles Murray on how the upper and working class stopped mixing and what it cost us all. David Wasserman on how our shopping habits revealed our political fractures long before any election night. Scott Galloway, Debra Soh on what screen addiction and digital intimacy are doing to an entire generation of young men.

Now, if you want to see what a collapsing social infrastructure does to the psyche of a generation, then talk to somebody who treats it every day. Dr. Tami Benton is psychiatrist-in-chief at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. That's the nation's foremost child psychiatry organization.

She sees the anxiety, the depression, the isolation in her waiting room, not a statistics, but as children. Here's her prognosis.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: OK, so let's go there. Because if so many are affected, why does the stigma persist? We are all a degree of separation away from this. No more. DR. TAMI D. BENTON, PSYCHIATRIST-IN-CHIEF AT THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA: That's an excellent question and I think there are lots of explanations. But the one that's most common is the shame of not being strong enough to solve your own problems.

And you know, there's this idea, you know, we're a society of bootstrappers. You know, the ones who -- we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We go to school. We work hard. We do well in life. And if we don't, it means there's something wrong with us.

And if you're a parent, it means that maybe you didn't do something right. And the reality is that none of that's true. You know, we all know as parents and friends and community members, nobody does everything right all the time. And, you know, and we don't -- we don't have that same grace when it comes to mental health.

We don't think about mental health in the same way that we think about medical conditions. So we never blame someone -- if their child had asthma, we never blame a child if they had asthma. But certainly sometimes because we use terms like depression and anxiety to describe emotions and to describe illness, I think, it gets confusing for people.

And then there's also the history of these conditions in our society. You know, back in the day, we all knew plenty of people who probably were depressed. We just thought they were irritable, evil people that were difficult to get along with, or super anxious people. And, you know, we kind of put it aside because we didn't understand how much impairment it was causing.

[09:45:02]

But we tend to attribute these things and not being able to overcome them all by yourself as individual weaknesses or individual shortcomings, and not necessarily conditions that are medical conditions that can -- that benefit from treatment. And some of those treatments are behavioral.

Like every child who has a mental health condition doesn't require medication. Actually, most young people struggling with any mental health condition don't require medication, but they definitely require other things to support their forward moving mental health and healthy emotional development.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: So Dr. Benton has shown us what isolation does to our children. But our final guest argues the antidote is wired directly into our biology. When you talk to a stranger, your brain releases oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin, your stress hormone, cortisol drops, your heart rate slows.

In other words, human connection isn't just good for the soul, it's medicine. So what happens to a society that stops having casual conversations altogether? Renowned physician and bioethicist Dr. Zeke Emanuel has the answer, and he has a story about his father that I think will stay with you.

That's still ahead. And you still have time to vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Are you prepared to reengage to save America?

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[09:50:21]

SMERCONISH: So we've spent the program thus far documenting what happens to a society that stops connecting. Our final guest is here to tell us what happens when we start again.

Dr. Zeke Emanuel is the renowned physician, bioethicist, and author of "Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life." He argues that casual, real world human interaction, it's not just a nicety, it's a medical necessity. When we connect with others, our brains release oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. Our cortisol drops. We literally become healthier.

But he didn't learn that in a lab. He learned it watching his father, a man who could walk into any restaurant, strike up a conversation with the next table and leave having made a friend for life. That, he says, is the blueprint. Dr. Zeke Emanuel.

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SMERCONISH: Dr. Emanuel, thank you for coming back to the program. Here's what I want to say to you at the outset. I am on a crusade. My listeners know this because they hear me address these themes on a constant basis, both on radio and television.

I am out to restore common experience. I think that what most ails the country is that we have self-sorted largely along political lines, technology has fueled that. And what we most need is common experience.

So the reason that I love the book in particular is chapter two, which could be a bible for my crusade in restoring common experience. Let's talk about your dad. Tell me about him. And what does it mean to be a people person?

DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE HEALTH POLICY ADVISER: My father was the paradigmatic extrovert. Wherever we would go, he would begin talking to other people. He would begin asking them questions about their life, about what interested them. And he wasn't shy.

And, you know, not everyone responded positively. And he would -- you know, if they said something bad, he would just sort of brush it off. It's like, they're probably having a bad day. Somethings gone wrong in their life. But he always loved to find out about people.

And I think the real testament to him, and this is a testament we should all try to aspire to, is that he died about six years ago, at his memorial service, there were just huge numbers of people who saw him from every walk of life. Patients, friends, colleagues, everyone loved him. And he was very, very charming. And again, just talked to everyone and found out what made them tick. That was what really fascinated him.

SMERCONISH: We may have had the same --

EMANUEL: Human diversity.

SMERCONISH: We may have had the same father because my dad was the same way. And I have to tell you, to the point of embarrassment. I mean, you point out in the book that you'd go into a restaurant with your dad, and it was a matter of minutes before he'd be speaking to the next table. And my dad was exactly the same. And like your dad had a nice, long, healthy run.

But I can remember being a kid and we'd go out, our family of four, and was like, oh my gosh, there he goes again. And now he's talking to them and then he's talking to them. What does that have to do with health?

EMANUEL: Well, the social interaction is super important. Look, human beings are not the strongest animal in the world. They're not the fastest animal in the world, but they are fantastic at collaboration and social interaction. That's why we have this big forebrain in our head, because it helps us navigate social interactions.

And collaboratively, we can do almost anything. And our brains are set up so that, you know, when we do human interaction, we get squirts of oxytocin, that sort of quote, unquote, "love hormone" in the brain.

We also get increases in dopamine and serotonin. And our access for stress decreases cortisol, which is the stress hormone that raises our heart rate, raises our blood pressure. And so our physiology changes in a positive way when we interact with people.

And I think one of the problems probably closely related to the increase in anxiety and depression in society, is loneliness is going up, eating alone is going up, people just, as you point out, not interacting, not forming communities.

You know, when I was a young kid, we would hang out on the block and be playing with every kid. Or my parents -- my mom would take us to the, you know, playground and talk to the other mothers. And while we're playing around, you know, doing whatever were doing. And that kind of casual interactions with people, super important to human beings. Of course, our deep interactions with our, you know, siblings, our close friends, those also are important at a totally different level.

[09:55:04]

And we need to begin to reestablish those. And I think, you know, that's why it's chapter two in the book, because it is the most important thing for living well, living healthy, living happy.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SMERCONISH: We began today with a simple but devastating observation that America has never been more connected and yet never more alone. And over the course of this hour, some remarkable people have helped us understand why that's the case.

Robert Putnam showed us the data. Charles Murray gave us the quiz. David Wasserman mapped the divide county by county, Cracker Barrel by Whole Foods. Scott Galloway told us to leave the house. Debra Soh warned us what happens when we don't.

Dr. Tami Benton reminded us that struggling isn't a weakness. It's a medical condition that deserves treatment. And Dr. Zeke Emanuel pointed us back to something as simple and profound as his father striking up a conversation with a stranger at the next table.

Here's what I take away from all of it. The algorithms, they didn't create this problem alone. The politicians didn't either. We did. One skipped school bus ride, one curated college roommate, one self- checkout kiosk at a time.

But that also means that we can fix it. Not with legislation, not with a screen, but with a choice every single day to show up, to join, to reach out, to mingle. Robert Putnam reminded us, we've done it before and we can fix it again.

So thanks for watching. Vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Are you prepared to reengage to save America? And when you vote, you'll see the results so far.

If you missed any of today's program, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week.

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