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Join or Die is a film about why you should join a club—and why the fate of America depends on it. Join or Die premiered at SXSW in 2023 and is currently streaming on Netflix.
My guests are Rebecca and Pete Davis, the sibling duo that directed and produced this important film. Rebecca was a senior producer with NBC news for nearly a decade, and has produced for HBO, VICE, Al Jazeera and A&E. This is her first feature length documentary. Pete’s Harvard Law School graduation speech, “A Counterculture of Commitment,” has been viewed more than 30 million times — and was expanded into a best-selling book in 2021 called Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in An Age of Infinite Browsing.
The film follows the story of America's civic unraveling through the journey of Robert Putnam, whose legendary "Bowling Alone" research into American community decline holds some answers to our democracy's present crisis.
One of the most delightful features of this film is the producers’ commitment to having people watch the film with other people instead of alone in our living rooms like we normally do. While you can just fire up Netflix and start watching, the Join or Die website lists dozens and dozens of opportunities to watch the film at local colleges, libraries and community centers.
Hosting your own community screening is still an option, and I strongly recommend doing so. My own experience hosting a community screening in late 2024 was delightful.
In this conversation we explore themes of community, what it's like to commit to a long-term creative project with your sibling, and the transformative power of Art. Pete and Rebecca have a lot of wisdom to share about the personal growth they experienced throughout the process.
One feature that I particularly love about this conversation is that Rebecca and Pete were willing to discuss some of the dynamics behind how they fight! I've been interviewing co-founders on this podcast for some time now (like here, here and here) and because many co-founders are in a situation where they are currently fundraising or in an active build mode they are less inclined to get under the hood and talk about the Dark Side of being a co-founder in all its gory details. It’s usually only when all the trauma is in the rear view mirror that folks are willing to get real (like Robbie Hammond, co-founder of the High Line did here or my friend Doug Erwin did in my interview with him)
I particularly enjoyed Rebecca's suggestion that we ask ourselves at least three “Whys” when we're in a conflict, like, "Why are we fighting this fight?" And, "Why are we really having this fight?"
Examining the dynamics that could be behind the scenes of a conflict is bringing humility to bear on the situation - being open to the idea that something else besides conviction could be driving the conflict - the desire to be right, patterns of fear or anger, or even just plain old habit. (Making sure to NOT gaslight yourself in the process of being humbly curious)
Pete talks about how he reminds himself to balance conviction and humility in conflicts, which immediately brought to mind one of my favorite self-coaching tools, Polarity Mapping, which I discussed in my conversation with Emily Levada, at that time the Chief Product Officer of Embark Veterinary.
Pete points out that conviction is powerful especially when it drives you to fight for quality. But there are downsides to leaning on conviction all the time- we cannot fight every fight at the cost of forward momentum, since Momentum is the lifeblood of any project. Balancing humility and conviction Is key: knowing when we're over-playing one move or the other is essential in navigating creative conflicts with our co-founders - and when I say creative I mean almost any kind of decision that involves interpretation of data - which is to say every decision.
Links
https://www.joinordiefilm.com/#see
NYTimes Review: http://nytimes.com/2024/07/18/movies/join-or-die-review-come-together.html
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKgQr6fhbxE
About Pete and Rebecca
PETE DAVIS is a writer and civic advocate from Falls Church, Virginia.
He works on civic projects aimed at deepening American democracy and solidarity. Pete is the co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network, a state policy organization focused on raising up ideas that deepen democracy, and is currently co-producing a documentary on the life and work of civic guru Robert Putnam. In 2015, he cofounded Getaway, a company that provides simple, unplugged escapes to tiny cabins outside of major cities. His Harvard Law School graduation speech, “A Counterculture of Commitment,” has been viewed more than 30 million times — and was recently expanded into a book: Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in An Age of Infinite Browsing.
Rebecca has produced for HBO, VICE, Al Jazeera and A&E — and was the supervising producer for Season 2 of Vox's Netflix show, Explained.
She was a senior producer with NBC News for nearly a decade, where she helped to launch NBC News' first digital video unit. Her work there in short-form documentaries focused on social movements, environmental and economic justice, and community innovators.
Her first feature-length documentary, Join or Die, on the life and work of civic guru Robert Putnam, premiered at SXSW in 2023 and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Transcript
Daniel Stillman (00:00.873)
All right, well, welcome to the conversation factory, Rebecca. Pete, thanks for making time out of your busy tour schedule.
Rebecca Davis (00:08.145)
Yes, glad to be here. Looking forward to chatting.
Pete Davis (00:09.986)
So glad to be here, thank you.
Daniel Stillman (00:12.787)
So I want to start way back. Rebecca, what was it like growing up with Pete?
Rebecca Davis (00:20.374)
Yes, so Pete did not come into our family's life until I was seven years old. So I was an only child until the age of seven. And then.
Pete Davis (00:28.814)
and then everything was ruined.
Daniel Stillman (00:30.793)
I've heard my brother's claimed he said it was great until I learned how to speak and that was like that was the breaking point.
Pete Davis (00:34.408)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (00:37.174)
No, and then this wonderful baby appeared in our house, who I had no idea at the time would come to someday be my co-conspirator on a Robert Putnam documentary. But yeah, we grew up in Falls Church, Virginia. Our father was an anthropologist, a cultural anthropologist.
And so he was doing a lot of thinking broadly about community and our mother was a big community practitioner on the ground who did a lot of community building work in our town. So I think Pete and I both grew up, I think with a lot of the themes of this film that we ultimately ended up working on together around us.
Daniel Stillman (01:24.423)
I I realized that you guys, y'all two, are both in the family business, as it were.
Rebecca Davis (01:28.662)
Yes, no, we joke a lot about that. Yeah, it's like running a deli
Daniel Stillman (01:34.429)
Did y'all, did you two do a lot of things together growing up? Rebecca, were you pals?
Rebecca Davis (01:42.366)
You know, we did not really because of this age gap. mean, Pete, what are some of your early memories?
Pete Davis (01:49.058)
Well, we ended up, you know, we were just in different life stages until later in life. And then we ended up being kind of the similar type of person in high school, though. I think we won, we both won the Spirit of George Mason Award, which was the name of our high school, because we were very, which was the award they gave to the person who was most like communal and contributed most to the common public civic life of the school.
Rebecca Davis (01:57.014)
you
Pete Davis (02:17.07)
And so we kind of had similar spirit of that. And we actually have a very similar thing on, you know, where we followed our parents into our majors in college, where my mom comes from like a long line of politicos and I was a political science major. And then my dad was an anthropologist and Becky was an anthropology major. And, and in a way, this film
Daniel Stillman (02:17.415)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (02:35.336)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (02:44.362)
is a mix of politics and anthropology because one way of saying, another way of putting what the film is, is it's a story about how culture affects politics.
Daniel Stillman (02:47.848)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (02:56.809)
Wow, we definitely need to circle back around to this. You know, the next question I wanted to ask is, I have this very broad way of thinking about what a conversation is. And when I say like, when did the conversation about this project start? What I'm hearing you say is it started with a couple of ancestors back.
Rebecca Davis (03:12.725)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (03:17.918)
Yes, I think so. And I think also hearing stories growing up about what our grandparents' day-to-day life was like and recognizing that those patterns had changed. Our mother's father, our grandfather, for example, was the Democratic committeeman for his town in Riverside, Illinois. And we heard growing up about how every four years,
Daniel Stillman (03:37.063)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (03:45.494)
My mom was one of seven and two of her siblings were born in, had birthdays in October and they had to move their birthdays to be celebrated later in the year because the elections happened in November and it was all hands on deck. My grandmother was hitting the phone tree every night and they were getting people out to the polls to vote block by block.
Daniel Stillman (03:52.585)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (04:08.807)
Yeah. Wow. So I mean, maybe let's zoom in then because, know, Pete, I know you've written about this and both of you studied this more broadly. But like, when did I think of this like this movie like a like writing a book together or starting a company together? It's like that scene in a movie like The Muppets Take Manhattan or it's like, let's put on a show. It's like. So I'm wondering, like, when when did.
Pete Davis (04:32.054)
Yes.
Daniel Stillman (04:37.607)
that conversation like let's do this start like
Pete Davis (04:40.3)
Yeah. You know, we had, we were both fans of documentaries. My sister was a video journalist for a decade doing short documentaries. We had like always talked about our favorite documentaries, whether it was like Adam Curtis or Earl Morris or Wernherzog or, know, Michael Moore or all these people. It was kind of, it was a nice age of golden age of documentaries as we were coming up.
And we wanted to do one together and we were looking for a topic and the topic that, you know, my sister was always had the sober reality of everything during this project where she said, you know, we're going to be working on this for a very long time. This is not a quick project if we're going to do it. So it better be a topic that is really, really, really deep in our hearts that we think is so important 10 years from now, it'll still be important.
Daniel Stillman (05:24.073)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (05:29.001)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (05:33.056)
And so, you know, it's not just any passing idea. It has to be something that we want to wake up every day and think about. And, you know, and we're now, we chose right, at least on that, you know, I'm very confident we chose right, at least on that quality, because we are now coming up on two years since it premiered at a film festival, and we still want to talk every day about the importance of community in America, the decline of community, and most importantly, how do we turn around that decline to have enough swing of community engagement?
Daniel Stillman (05:39.806)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (05:52.883)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (06:02.602)
So that was kind of the topic that fit the bill.
Daniel Stillman (06:06.899)
So if I'm hearing you right, Pete, it's almost like you two wanted to work on a project together. then this was like, this is the heart of the matter, something you're both really, really passionate about. Did I get that right? It's like we were gonna do a big thing together.
Rebecca Davis (06:21.462)
But I think there was also that this topic in particular aligned and there was kind of a moment where it was a little bit like now or never on this story. Pete was a student of the main participant in the film Robert Putnam and in 2017 Robert Putnam was about to retire from teaching so it was about to be his last semester and so I think you know we batted around
Daniel Stillman (06:25.577)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (06:32.806)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (06:45.053)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (06:49.162)
this idea more casually about the possibility of doing a doc together. And I think I was increasingly frustrated by my job in the mainstream media and coming home a lot and complaining probably over holiday dinners about my frustrations and wanting to work on something longer and kind of out of the daily news cycle. But yeah, I think it was really this moment in 2017 when Robert Putnam was about to retire and it was like,
Daniel Stillman (06:59.88)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (07:05.863)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (07:18.196)
you know, we're gonna approach him about kind of revisiting bowling alone, this is really, you know, the moment so we can capture some of this last semester of him teaching where he was a professor at Harvard at the time.
Daniel Stillman (07:29.043)
Yeah. Okay. So there was like a forcing function and then also this wave of dissatisfaction on your side. Rebecca. Pete, is that how you remember the sort of inciting events in the story of this?
Rebecca Davis (07:33.206)
Thank
Pete Davis (07:42.304)
Yeah, totally. You know, we were always talking about things. One of the things that has driven, given momentum and energy to the film is that feeling darkness about what's going on in the country and then grasping for something that is one way we can contribute to the light. And the film was always our answer for our way to contribute to the light, which was, you know.
Daniel Stillman (07:56.36)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (08:06.332)
well, okay, let's take all this energy of how we're feeling disappointed in what's going on nationally and put it into the film because that's our contribution to turn this thing around. And I do remember, you know, a lot of this started with, you know, feeling that.
there was like a lot of darkness out there. The other was this lens that changes how you see everything. You know, that's a big part of the film, which is it's not just a story about something that happened. It's not just a story about something that's important. It's a way of seeing.
which is you can look at a housing complex and you can see it in terms of material. It's, it's made of brick and wood, or you can term it economically and say, look, here's how rent payments work. Here's how landlords have power, or all of that very important brick and wood and landlords and power and politics and economy and money. But there's another way you can look at it, which is this is a social network. And, you know, this is a community.
And there are things that come from it being a social network in a community. And we wanted to give people that lens to look at things because it's very clarifying and oftentimes inspiring.
Daniel Stillman (09:12.179)
Yeah. Yeah. It's really I mean, it's like the chef who looks at the world through the lens of food. You too. And I think through my own work in dialogue, you start to look at everything from a lens of, well, this is a network of conversations that we're either impeding the flow of conversations by how we build cities and buildings and organizations, or we we make it more possible for those conversations to flow.
Pete Davis (09:20.931)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (09:29.055)
Yes.
Rebecca Davis (09:40.798)
Yes. Yes.
Pete Davis (09:42.658)
And there's a great heritage of this lens, like Jane Jacobs, great hero. Her whole thing was, she opens Death and Life of Great American Cities with sidewalks. And she says, you look at a sidewalk and a sidewalk in a giant master plan from these big modernist urban designers is a small detail. It's like about, okay, pedestrian traffic or something. But a sidewalk is the site.
Daniel Stillman (09:47.72)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (10:12.256)
of public life and cultural creation and the ballet of the city in the morning where everyone's walking with each other. It's the sight of eyes on the street. And so we kind of see Bob's work and what we're trying to do with this film as part of that heritage.
Daniel Stillman (10:19.721)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (10:24.744)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (10:30.985)
Yeah, boy, and I'll tell you, mean, sidewalks, there's a whole story there. I mean, and certainly New York City, where I grew up, the sidewalks have been shipped away at. They used to be significantly larger in almost every single avenue. And slowly but surely, the car has taken over the side. If you look at these like old timey videos of New York, there's almost no distinction between sidewalk and where the horses and and early cars were going. was just a bunch of people just trying to get someplace. And now
Rebecca Davis (10:42.421)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (10:54.388)
Yes.
Rebecca Davis (11:00.062)
Yes, yes.
Daniel Stillman (11:01.179)
It's the segregation and the whittling away of, you know, human space for car space.
Rebecca Davis (11:05.076)
Yes, yes, I'm hopeful it's being clawed back slowly. I've been encouraged by some recent progress on that, but it's slower. Okay. Yeah, right, of course, of course.
Daniel Stillman (11:11.313)
Yeah, don't read the New York Post. Because they come like these bike lanes. That's what's causing all the traffic in New York City. So I'll just, you know, pause on my own rant there. I'm really curious. When we talk about building anything, when I talk about finding a partner or to build a company with people usually use the analogy of getting married. It's a long process 2017 to 2023.
Rebecca Davis (11:41.398)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (11:41.417)
And now here we are in 2025, like we're still, you're still talking about it. You're still working on the movie. Like it's a long haul and I'm curious, like what were some of the hard conversations that you had along the way and how did you, you know, manage that process? Because conflict is part of, of, you know, doing anything.
Rebecca Davis (11:48.202)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (12:01.845)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (12:05.652)
Right, right. I mean, I think some of it is you embark on the journey. And I think this is like all big commitments in life with some level of naivete that helps you embark on the journey because you don't realize at the outset maybe how hard it's going to be. know, think initially Pete and I thought we were maybe just making a film that would end up on YouTube. We, you know, it grew to something bigger. You know, it was just going to be a little side project initially.
Daniel Stillman (12:19.421)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (12:25.641)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (12:33.162)
But as we got deeper and deeper, it kind of took on a life of its own. But yeah, like all commitments too, you start them in one version of the world and you come out in another version of the world. A global pandemic hit in the middle of this one.
Daniel Stillman (12:51.945)
I'll write that.
Rebecca Davis (12:54.226)
Yes, Pete had two children in the middle of this one. I moved to another country in the process of doing it. So life is continuing on as you're doing the project. I think what I'll say is as far as the relationship building in a two-person team, which is always intense when it's just two people like that.
Daniel Stillman (13:02.096)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (13:20.925)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (13:24.202)
you know, I think we had to kind of acknowledge that there was life being lived outside. And I think it's, it's good and bad that you don't have the same boundaries as you have at work. you know, it was good and like, yeah, you know, like, you know, COVID was tough and there would be days where, you know,
Daniel Stillman (13:38.331)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (13:39.17)
when you're in a family together.
Daniel Stillman (13:41.597)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (13:46.75)
many days where I would come on and cry in the middle of our meetings on Zoom and not all workplaces I think are as understanding of bringing that much of your emotional self to your meeting. But when it's your brother, it's a little more understanding. you also need to... Thankfully more understanding. But then when you need to get to work on doing script edits, you have to learn how to...
Daniel Stillman (14:03.867)
or sometimes less understanding. don't know how your family is.
Pete Davis (14:06.433)
I'm
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (14:09.897)
That's great.
Rebecca Davis (14:16.606)
to shift gears.
Pete Davis (14:17.154)
Mode switching. Yeah, no, and there's a lot of it, which is like you dive off a cliff and you have to, like, you have, or, you know, actually the best metaphor, I'll not mix metaphors, I'll end that metaphor and say, the best metaphor we ever read, I think, was Jad out of a rod saying, you walk into a forest and then you have to walk out of the forest. And the thing is, you get to a certain point in the middle of a project where you're in the middle of the forest.
Daniel Stillman (14:27.721)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (14:39.09)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (14:47.306)
And there always is a place where you could quit and like tell a hundred people that have already bought into this thing that it's over. Like we could have done that, but that seemed really, really out of reach. So you just wake up in the middle of a hard day and you say, we have to figure out how to get out of this forest. And then you get out of the forest. You know, that's the fun thing. Like when you have the energy at the beginning of a project where you're still excited by all the dreams of what it could be.
Daniel Stillman (14:54.398)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (15:06.472)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (15:15.35)
you use that energy to walk in and then you use the energy of like, we got to figure out how to land this plane, you know, to walk out, you know, or we got to get home, you know, to walk out. And so that's part of it too. you know, projects are the, all the cliches are just true. It's like a journey of a thousand miles is a collection of steps, you know, single steps. it's literally, we used to, we have a joke on the film, which is like, today is the day when we do X, you know, like,
Daniel Stillman (15:17.896)
Mmm.
Daniel Stillman (15:22.237)
Mmm.
Daniel Stillman (15:43.72)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (15:44.408)
Today is the day where we interview our 12th person. Today is the day where we find archival material of someone riding a bicycle because the interviewee is talking about bicycles and we need a bicycle to cover that interviewee. Today is the day where the fact checker told us everything in our script that was actually inaccurate and we need to correct it all. So that's just a collection of...
Daniel Stillman (15:57.075)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (16:06.311)
You
Rebecca Davis (16:10.76)
Yeah, but then there's happy days. You today's the day we apply for the Oscars. You know, today is the day we premiere our film and yeah.
Pete Davis (16:15.366)
Yeah. Yeah, today we literally said that like today is the day a hundred people are in a room watching our film.
Daniel Stillman (16:17.694)
Wow.
Daniel Stillman (16:23.955)
So it's very much like this day one mentality that I've heard bandied around, like kind of celebrating all the steps, celebrating all the moments and being like, okay, today, yes, these are, it's like the we get to instead of we have to, small mindset shift.
It's interesting because like, feel often, you we learn how to converse. We learn how to argue and how to repair arguments at the dinner table. And so it's kind of interesting to be talking to two, you know, project leads who share this, you know, family milieu, even though there's the saying that, you know, none of us have the same parents, because, you know, Rebecca, you had parents when they had, were you the first?
Yeah, so they were, you know, they knew less about being parents, but they kind of the time they got to Pete, they knew more. Right. This is as a second child. Pete and I can agree, like they got some things right. You know, they figured some things out that they, you they worked out some of the kinks on the firstborn, obviously. No, that's this. I'm getting no facial. Jacob, are you guys are you're like, no, that's not we've never had this conversation in our in our family. But it's like, how do you two fight?
Rebecca Davis (17:36.926)
No, no,
Daniel Stillman (17:44.937)
Do you fight well? I mean, there were, there must have been some fights.
Rebecca Davis (17:47.262)
Yeah, I think we had to learn how to fight, wouldn't you say, Pete, over the course of the project and how to fight productively and how to surface family dynamics that were at play and confront our own shadows for all the young followers out there.
Pete Davis (17:51.598)
Yeah, you have to know.
Daniel Stillman (17:58.066)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (18:07.357)
Yeah, well this is really important.
Pete Davis (18:07.63)
We're both in Diyani. Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (18:10.934)
Um, you know, cause a lot of times under the surface of our fights, you know, when we were able to get down to the, you know, asking three whys level of the fight. Um, a lot of times under there was, you know, I'm feeling condescended to by my older sister, which is, know, just a very common dynamic. And, um, you know, for, for me, I had the older sister, you're always so used to getting your way.
Daniel Stillman (18:16.178)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (18:21.469)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (18:28.841)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (18:35.234)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (18:36.054)
You know, and our fights were more successful when we could identify that that was at play and surface that and get back to writing a good script.
Pete Davis (18:42.798)
When is a font choice not a font choice? When is a color palette not a color palette? Which is great, that's the thing. In the end, there's also just a level of you have to make the movie, so you have to make a decision and there's no process that's a perfect way to make a decision.
Daniel Stillman (18:49.641)
Right.
Rebecca Davis (18:53.219)
Right.
Daniel Stillman (18:53.449)
Well
Daniel Stillman (19:07.347)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (19:11.687)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (19:12.342)
You have to constantly, I actually think, my sister's made like a lot more video projects than me, but like in my one experience of making this one feature doc, the one advice I give to other people, like I've heard like to be a director is to answer 10,000 questions. Like everyone, all you build together this amazing team, they bring all their skills to you, but then they come to you with like, do you want X or Y? Do you want Z or A? It's like an optometrist appointment. It's like A or B forever, know, for years.
Daniel Stillman (19:28.711)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (19:41.479)
Yes, yeah.
Pete Davis (19:42.126)
And, you know, there's some of those choices, you have to go to the mat for like the creative vision and other of those choices, you have to like, you can't go to the mat every day. And you might be wrong. You have to have humility to like a decision that you like is important, you might not know the best answer to and then you have to have conviction on another decision where it's like, I know for sure this is like the message we're trying to say with this thing and, and that
Daniel Stillman (19:49.714)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (19:53.341)
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Stillman (20:03.635)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (20:09.383)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (20:11.306)
It really helped. This is one of the nice things about working with someone coming up in your family is you kind of have similar vibes of what your like similar tastes and sensitivities to and like desires of what you're trying to go for, you know, and there was enough like shared creative vision on that. So, which is nice.
Daniel Stillman (20:22.281)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (20:31.549)
Yeah, there's so many layers here. And one that I think is so interesting is one, willingness to put the project kind of above. If there's a triangle here, hopefully there's a triangle in a way that's like we need to make a decision. We need to move the project forward. And then there's how I feel about it. And there's a willingness, I think you were saying, Rebecca, to sort of investigate. Why do I feel this way? Is it sort of?
owning. I'm I have I may have my own trigger here and I may also have legitimate needs wants. I may be seeing what I'm really seeing. And then there's like what hill am I and my friend Pete who may never listen to this, but he hates the phrase die on that hill. I try to demilitarize my metaphors in general, but but but we're kind of talking about the piece like pick your battles and say like, am I going to fight to the
Rebecca Davis (21:06.869)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (21:13.93)
Yep.
Rebecca Davis (21:20.606)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (21:23.918)
I'm
Rebecca Davis (21:27.798)
Thanks
Daniel Stillman (21:29.661)
to tooth and nail for this or am I going to step away? There is a dance between we've got to move this forward. I recognize my own triggers. I own what I really, really want. And sort of the flow between those things is non-trivial. So good job.
Rebecca Davis (21:46.26)
Yeah, yeah. And I think that was maybe one of the more surprising takeaway. This was the biggest and maybe the biggest project I work on in my life because it did take eight years. I don't know, Daniel, if you felt this in writing your book or other long, ambitious projects. It's something I felt like a special kinship to other people right now in my life who have gone through a hard thing. I think I underappreciated how you transform as a person.
Daniel Stillman (22:09.065)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (22:15.89)
in making art, I feel like I came out of this project a totally different person because of some of the personal growth I had to do to make it happen, to put it out in the world, which was something I think I didn't fully appreciate before taking on something quite so big. A lot of my work previously, it didn't feel as in the realm of art, and I do consider this film.
Daniel Stillman (22:30.184)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (22:31.8)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (22:44.7)
Art, prior I was in the news and I was kind of producing quicker stuff that had to just get out on deadline. But when you're really pouring something in that you can really shape to be exactly as you're kind of envisioning in your head, you're transformed by that process. Yeah, if you're lucky. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (22:48.519)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (23:00.542)
Yes.
Pete Davis (23:05.858)
Just to add a quick weird thing to that, know, like there is kind of like a Jungian archa alchemical heritage to that too, which is the idea of the magnum opus was ache this external work, but there's an equal mirrored internal transformation. Like you transform the materials out there into something and then you're transforming the materials in here. And we both feel totally that that's like what happened. Like this was a...
Daniel Stillman (23:17.799)
Mmm.
Pete Davis (23:36.076)
This was an ordeal in the best sense of the term, a gauntlet, that we went through the process.
Daniel Stillman (23:39.325)
Right? Yeah. Yes.
Daniel Stillman (23:45.747)
Wow, the transformative ordeal is definitely... There's a grail on the other side.
Rebecca Davis (23:49.322)
Yeah, everyone should write that book or make that film.
Pete Davis (23:51.554)
Bye!
Daniel Stillman (23:54.424)
What do you feel like is the the I mean because then we're if this is the hero's journey like we're getting the boon on the other side like what is the inner what is the inner growth that you feel like you two have have won in the process of Slaying this dragon completing this project
Rebecca Davis (23:59.134)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (24:13.61)
Do want to take that one first, I know, suddenly silent.
Pete Davis (24:14.35)
Oh man, what a question. For listeners, Daniel asked us before this interview, like, do you have any questions you haven't asked before that are hard and we were like, we're down for anything. He's really dramatic. You know, I would say, one is I think there's like a certain creative confidence, like believing in your own vision. I think we have like much more secure confidence than creative vision. There's also just like project.
Rebecca Davis (24:24.15)
think that might fit.
Daniel Stillman (24:35.645)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (24:43.406)
confidence, which is like, you know, you go out and do a project, it's, it's completely ridiculous to do a project, like, at anyone, you know, it's like, the world works, it is a status quo, all the machines are going and you want something totally new in it. And you are the one who should make a film or write a book or change something or create an intervention in your neighborhood or form a new organization. It's always crazy. And, you know, there's a lot of messages out there as you're going that are like, this is crazy.
Daniel Stillman (24:49.809)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (24:58.386)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (25:12.942)
It's crazy. And you go through it and it works, or you go through it it doesn't work, but the sky didn't fall. You'd suddenly just like loosen the intensity a bit on that. And I think there's like a big thing. I would say a third thing is like, I really, think we both feel more of a connection that you like do this work.
Daniel Stillman (25:26.973)
Yes.
Pete Davis (25:42.326)
It's not your ego. It's not like this is representative of you. It's like the part that's you was the you that chose to get up every day and do it. Not like if the film is bad, that means you're bad. It's just, or if the film is good, but then here's the most important one. If the film is good, that doesn't mean you're good. It just means.
Daniel Stillman (25:51.689)
Mmm.
Daniel Stillman (26:01.577)
Mmm.
Pete Davis (26:02.55)
you communed with the universe in a way that led to a beautiful thing. And thus you learned a bit about how it's beautiful to communicate with the universe. But the most important thing was the fun process of communing, not like proving yourself as worthy in the world. You're already worthy in the world, even if you don't make a film. And so, I don't know.
Daniel Stillman (26:11.123)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (26:14.75)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (26:25.277)
That is quite a, that's quite a boon, Pete. That's extraordinary. Beautifully said.
Rebecca Davis (26:29.526)
Yeah, and I think for me, know, one practical thing I'll mention and then a little, you know, kind of more lofty or takeaway is I went into this film in a bad place mentally and emotionally about how I was looking out at America. I'd spent, you know, little over half a decade at NBC News covering national news and I was covering things like
school shootings and the opioid epidemic and suicide and just talking to a lot of people day in and day out around the country that felt unseen, not understood, forgotten about. And it takes a toll on you as we all know when you take in a lot of suffering every day and
And as a journalist, think some journalists fly off to far-fung places and then come home and have some distance. And for me, I felt my heart breaking for my own country, because it was covering stuff around me and that I felt ownership over being an American and covering America. And so I went into the film.
wanting to make a positive alternative vision, but not fully sure I believed in it myself, even while I wanted to put out that message. But I did truly leave and I feel even to this day at this moment, in early February, 2025, when we are recording this podcast, I feel hopeful now about the future of America. And I know we aren't hearing that from a lot of people in our mainstream media, but.
The cool thing that Pete and I got to see as we toured the, been touring the film around and in researching the film and looking at these kind of moments in American history when there've been huge bursts of civic activity, you know, we're in touch with people every day that are doing really cool stuff, you know, all over the place that's getting, you know, zero coverage in the media.
Daniel Stillman (28:42.226)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (28:44.086)
you know, you're, you're self included, Daniel, when I met with, you know, your, your coworking space in New York city. And I'm like, I'm getting so, so much hope from, you know, groups of 20 people at a time that are meeting up in, rooms all, all around the U S you know, working on making their communities better. so that that's kind of a practical thing. And then, you know, on, on, on the larger side, you know, I think.
Daniel Stillman (28:54.473)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (29:12.874)
looking at a big project from the outside, you know, in some ways I think can be like looking at, you know, a marriage or a long-term relationship when you're younger and don't quite know what that feels like till you're in it to understand the depth of commitment and the ups and downs that add to the whole of that depth. And I think, you know, working in this project for eight years and the good and the bad days, but.
how your aid feels different from year one. That depth has been a big takeaway and the deep meaning of that, of working on something for a long time and really loving it even when it's hard. Yep.
Daniel Stillman (29:43.465)
Mmm.
Daniel Stillman (29:51.453)
Yeah. Yeah.
And with a project like this, mean, writing a book, I mean, Pete, you've done, I think there's this idea that there's, I will be done, but there's the project of continuing to talk about the things that are in the thing because it's not just like, I built a building and then I walk away and now people live in it. It's like, well, I built, I mean, actually using that analogy, it's like a book is
Pete Davis (30:10.914)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (30:20.834)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (30:25.021)
You want people to come in and to continue to be part of the conversation. so congratulations on getting the film onto Netflix. think that's, I assume that that's a big deal in the filmmaking industry for like an indie doc to like be on Netflix. So congratulations on that. But I notice you're still doing dozens of community screenings. I.
of want to just like read. There's so many like lovely I just want to sort of like imagine what it's like to go to the Mendocino County Library on March 14th and the University of Nebraska Omaha and the Greenfield Community College and Greenfield Mass, which is a lovely town. And on March 24th and there's just the Chicago Public Library, like all of these places that are continuing to host the movie and to to
Rebecca Davis (31:00.177)
I'm sorry.
Pete Davis (31:02.254)
Thank
Rebecca Davis (31:08.704)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (31:20.275)
be part of the conversation. I think the community screening, I don't know if you want to call it a strategy, it seems like it's core to what the message of this film is, but I'm wondering like where it started and it seems like a hard way to get a movie out there, but also like a very natural way. I just want to unpack that because I think it's just such an amazing project within a project.
Pete Davis (31:45.346)
Yeah, you know, this is, don't want anyone watching this film alone. You know, the whole message of the film is one of our most effective questions we've been asking on the tour is what are things that you do alone that you should be doing together? And one of those is watching documentaries. And so, you know, we really want that. We want it, we see it as an organizing tool, not just an organizing tool for us. We see it as an organizing tool for you, you know, like the list, the viewer, you know, use this as an excuse.
Daniel Stillman (32:00.521)
Hahaha
Daniel Stillman (32:10.302)
Mmm.
Pete Davis (32:14.926)
to get a bunch of people together and then show them why getting a bunch of people together, it's kind of like a funny meta thing. It's like that get a bunch of people together, they watch it and then they understand a little bit more about why it was important that they all got together in retrospect. So that's one of the very basic stuff. The other thing is like using it as a way to reorient your institution to hone in on the importance of community connection. So we have people that are like,
Daniel Stillman (32:17.053)
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Stillman (32:22.536)
Very.
Daniel Stillman (32:28.307)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Pete Davis (32:41.238)
wildfire prevention or hospital or government or library or, you know, urban planners that teachers that are watching the film and then starting conversations, not necessarily on our main mass shtick of like, join a club, but actually like, how can our institution be more communal and promote the rejuvenation of community and civic life? So that's been exciting too. And that stuff happens in
Rebecca Davis (32:46.774)
urban planners.
Daniel Stillman (33:02.568)
Hmm
Pete Davis (33:09.9)
the interaction of real people in groups. I've been really taken by this idea, going to the movie as part of the movie. I think it's a Seinfeld joke, which is like the popcorn is part of the movie, driving there is part of the movie, walking out and hearing all the people have the conversation afterwards being like, did you like that scene? I didn't like that scene. I can't believe that character died. That's part of the movie. Now, what does he mean going to the movie?
Daniel Stillman (33:22.547)
Mm.
Daniel Stillman (33:32.349)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (33:38.057)
Spoiler alerts Pete. No one dies.
Rebecca Davis (33:39.574)
you
Pete Davis (33:40.118)
Yeah, preparing our grandmother. Like, like, what is about a movie, but the point of the idea is like, preparing the house for a party is part of a party. You know, cleaning up after the party is part of the party. And this is this is one of the deep communitarian ideas. Getting together is not an efficient necessity to get to some other goal in itself.
Rebecca Davis (33:43.51)
The only thing at threat of dying is our democracy in the film.
Daniel Stillman (33:47.119)
Yeah, okay.
Daniel Stillman (33:56.862)
Yes.
Daniel Stillman (34:00.329)
I
Pete Davis (34:10.282)
is part of the stuff of life. And like,
Rebecca Davis (34:12.298)
Yes, and our great religions know that. That's why so much of kind of cleaning and preparation is part of all of our great religious doctrines. And I think that's the level of spirituality we want to bring to our community life. Again, even if it's in a non explicitly kind of religious as we're used to thinking of it way.
Daniel Stillman (34:12.681)
Mmm.
Daniel Stillman (34:37.395)
Yeah, yeah. you I mean, more in the brass tacks arena, like, do you think this movie would have made it to where it's made it without the community strategy?
Rebecca Davis (34:49.652)
I don't know, actually. And it's hard to say if we would have gotten it on Netflix without that, because we actually premiered at South by Southwest and did not get our Netflix deal for a full year after that. And Pete and I made a decision after it had its premiere at Netflix and had been shown out in the world at that point that we weren't going to sit on it and wait. And so we did start that community tour right away.
Daniel Stillman (35:03.848)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (35:13.725)
Mmm.
Rebecca Davis (35:18.942)
and tried to start building kind of interest and buzz through this community screening model. And then I think, you know, on the flip side of that now, you know, it did go up on Netflix in October of last year, and we weren't sure if the interest in the community tour would fall off after it was more easily accessible, but we've been encouraged to see, you know, I think our requests have maybe doubled in pace since it ended up on Netflix. And I think that shows that...
Daniel Stillman (35:24.264)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (35:45.194)
people are hungry for an excuse to get together and hungry for this conversation and they're hungry for having it together. And so, you know, we're trying to continue this tour as long as we can and just go 25 people at a time in rooms around the country.
Daniel Stillman (35:49.171)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (35:53.117)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (35:59.977)
Are you showing up to, I mean, because when we got, I mean, I think maybe it was like 50 folks. You all were kind enough. I mean, we found the resources to bring you all on Zoom. How many of these are you showing up at?
Rebecca Davis (36:16.16)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (36:20.384)
Yeah, so in person, you know, we go to maybe 10%, I would say, you know, sort of Pete and I are both, you know, in the kind of Washington DC area. So, you know, if they're close by or an easy train up to New York or groups as they're willing to fly us out places. But I would say, you know, and then we join another handful kind of over Zoom as there's interest in bringing us on virtually. But I would say the majority, you know, we are not attending. And I always tell groups as they're booking screenings with us,
Daniel Stillman (36:25.161)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (36:36.201)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (36:49.406)
I love that too, even when good groups don't wanna bring us, you get your mayor up on stage after, get your president of the Rotary Club, they're gonna be able to tell you, you know, what's going on in Petaluma, you know, a lot better than Pete and I in the conversation, or, you know, break your head group, you know, into small groups to have conversations, you know, three or four at a time. you know, I think we also say about the film, we hope it...
Daniel Stillman (36:53.63)
Mm.
Yeah.
you
Daniel Stillman (37:08.253)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (37:13.278)
ask as many questions as it answers. Like we wanted to bring up lot of questions and thoughts for people to kind of explore and where they're gonna end up with those answers is gonna be different in Vermont than it is in Seattle, than it is in Florida. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (37:28.254)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (37:28.332)
Yeah, the topic is something that all of us have insight into, which is fun. You know, like probably the leading expert on Community in America is unknown, you know, right now, because they're probably someone who is like running a neighborhood association in the middle of some random neighborhood everywhere. And they, they took the most insular divided neighborhood and figured out a way to mix food and, you know, art and whatever and caught them together and no one knows about them.
Daniel Stillman (37:33.085)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (37:46.358)
Thank
Pete Davis (37:57.934)
You know, that's what's fun is like all of these people, you could do a Q &A with any three people that show up. That's like, what does community mean to you? How ways you brought people together? What, how do you, how do you, how do you gather across divides? And so that's why we like, you know, what comes out of these communal entity, you know, communal screenings, not necessarily everyone looking at us. Like you've heard enough of me with the, with my narration of the film.
Daniel Stillman (37:59.39)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (38:27.497)
Right. mean, and this is, you know, when I reflected on the gathering that I hosted at Fabric, I feel like because we had the two of you on Zoom and wanted to like squeeze all the extra wisdom we could, I feel like for me personally, I tried to before the film started to connect people, to have them get into pairs and to spark some conversation. But what I what I heard afterwards was
And I, I'm not surprised at this is that people were ravenous to continue the conversation. And I, and you've been to some of these, you've watched some of them. I'm wondering what you think best practices are. feel like gathering is, is non-trivial. is hard to do well. And, you know, I'm a semi pro at it. And I feel like I still did not give people the full satisfaction of connecting in the way that they wanted to connect. So I'm curious.
Pete Davis (39:03.906)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (39:26.749)
What have you seen that people are out there doing when they bring people together around the movie that is just chef's kiss? Like this is how to do it right.
Rebecca Davis (39:37.054)
Yeah, so, you know, one model we've been using is pairing the film with joining fairs. So, you know, we tell groups to host the film and then maybe invite 10 organizations from town to table outside, you know, the way you would have had in college or high school. And we've loved that model because, you know, people can come right out of the theater and, you know, the Rotary Club or the hospital who needs volunteers or, you know, the library's book club or a running club.
Daniel Stillman (39:52.558)
my God, that's awesome.
Daniel Stillman (39:59.943)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (40:06.782)
are right there ready after they are hopefully leaving the film feeling fired up to join and do something, ready there to kind of capture emails, which is a good organizing practice, get people's contact info and follow up with them. So that's one model that we've been seeing a lot of success with. Pete, other thoughts? Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (40:06.802)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (40:13.661)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (40:27.593)
Joining fairs. I love that idea.
Pete Davis (40:32.736)
Yeah, you know, it also it kind of depends on if the goal is just kind of generally promoting the spirit of joining, which joining fairs are great for that or just bringing up different people to talk about their joining experiences. The other is this kind of reorienting institutions to get excited about this. And one of that is like having good conversations afterwards, like, you know, how can our school what are points?
Daniel Stillman (40:56.925)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (41:00.372)
in our school where we could contribute to community revitalization. What are points in our hospital where we can do that? And you watch the film to get the juices flowing and then people start sharing ideas of what can be done.
Daniel Stillman (41:12.232)
Yes.
You know, this is a nice little like micro segue because I remember I was sitting at a coffee shop last summer. My wife and I were wound up chatting with this young lady who was a teacher. And I don't know how it came up, but, you know, I was fired up about Join or Die because I think we'd just watched it and she'd never heard of. She'd like, wait, I think I've heard of Bowling Alone. yeah. Bridging Capital. So interesting. And she and her brother worked on the marching band in school.
Rebecca Davis (41:44.886)
Lovely.
Pete Davis (41:45.063)
wow.
Daniel Stillman (41:45.423)
And she suddenly realized that marching band was a vector of bridging capital. And just by renaming what it is that she was doing, it's no longer just marching band. It's, juniors and seniors and sophomore and freshmen students have a ground, a shared interface for dialogue about something that they all love. This is bridging capital at work.
Rebecca Davis (41:48.96)
Yes.
Rebecca Davis (41:58.986)
Yes.
Rebecca Davis (42:12.298)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Pete Davis (42:13.922)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Go, go. Sorry.
Daniel Stillman (42:15.431)
It's an amazing reframe. I feel like in, yeah, sorry, go ahead and please riff.
Pete Davis (42:23.81)
Well, this is the thing. It's like why, you know, there are wonderful, there are these wonderful institutions everywhere that were never started to do X, Y, or Z, but embedded in them is this resource. And one of our hopes is that can help us make decisions about keeping things or building on things or things like that. So one of is, you know, we already have, you know, all the kids have individual music lessons. We don't need a marching band anymore.
Daniel Stillman (42:24.305)
No, I tend to ask questions that are way, way too long and multi-nested, so I'll just pause.
Rebecca Davis (42:26.486)
Thank
Daniel Stillman (42:35.529)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (42:53.708)
Well, if you know about Bridging Social Capital and you know that the marching band is there, well, that might be a reason to keep the marching band. You know, one of my favorite examples in this in school of how like the social capital lens helps you make decisions is, know, a lot of schools are moving to ban cell phones. And some of them do the half measure where they say, we're going to ban it in the classroom, but we'll allow it at lunch and in the hallways and at extracurricular activities.
Daniel Stillman (43:10.398)
Mmm.
Pete Davis (43:19.214)
And you ask them, well, why do you ban it in the classroom and not ban it at the, well, the classrooms where the real learning is happening. The other stuff doesn't matter. And you're like, wait, with the social capital lens, the hallways, the lunch and the extracurricular activities are the most important learning that's happening at school. School is just.
Daniel Stillman (43:25.789)
Mmm.
Daniel Stillman (43:32.637)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (43:36.583)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (43:37.716)
you know, bunch of classes that are excuses to get you there so you can spend time at lunch in the hallway. That's the correct activities, where the most important thing is learning. Sorry, I know I'm going too far on that.
Daniel Stillman (43:49.799)
No, no, no. mean, but that's a lens on school. You're like, we're here to learn how to be with each other. Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (43:51.784)
at as important, at least as.
Pete Davis (43:55.116)
learn how to be with each other. So if you think cell phones are a poison to a place for kids, definitely ban it in the lunch. And those learnings happening there that curriculum is as important is just as important as math and science and English.
Daniel Stillman (44:05.811)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (44:14.131)
Yeah, it's the change, the lens of of social capital really does change how you see the world. I'm curious. I have like two more big questions and one's for you, Rebecca, and the other one's for you, Pete. But Rebecca, you and I met at this super like serendipitous and random gathering of gatherers. That was May. I was looking at my calendar, May of 2023. like you I remember watching the trailer and me like nuts.
Rebecca Davis (44:33.546)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (44:38.806)
Wow, yeah.
Daniel Stillman (44:43.047)
What I think was really interesting about that gathering is that we were putively supposed to talk about the future of gathering. But when you get a bunch of gatherers together, what we wound up talking about is how hard it is to be gatherers and to create sustainable models for gathering. Casper Tukul, who you know, Pete was there, like, you know, he was constantly innovating new models, sustainable financial models for gathering people in unique and interesting ways. I'm wondering if now
Rebecca Davis (44:53.685)
Yes.
Rebecca Davis (44:59.19)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (45:10.331)
you, Rebecca, and obviously Pete, can chime in on this. Like, if you have a point of view on, the future of gathering and what we can do. This was the question I asked you at our at our screening, which I'm still hungry for for myself as a gatherer. What can we do to make it easier for for gatherers to do the work of gathering? Because the movie is about joining. But there's this supposition that there's all these people who are dedicated to creating things for people to join.
Rebecca Davis (45:31.232)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (45:34.997)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you bring up, we spent a lot of time talking about the barriers. And I do think that is where a lot of conversations need to start, even as we try to go pie in the sky, build a community third space on every block. Or let's start sharing resources. But yeah.
we need to look at, yeah, what are those barriers? You the thing we hear a lot as we're touring this film, you know, and as Eddie Gloud and Jade McClavin, our film speak to is people are really tired. They're working really hard. They're, you know, caring for family members, you know, with health problems. They're caring for children. And, you know, the data backs it up. are, you know, and policy, you we are not a country that has a ton of support for families. So,
Daniel Stillman (46:32.605)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (46:33.578)
You know, I think we do need to look at those barriers very seriously, you know, as far as, you know, hours that we're working in the office and what support, you so how do we cut back on that so we have more free time to do this work if we're gonna decide as a culture it's important for, you know, our democracy and our economy and our physical and mental health. And yeah, and we need to create more policies to make it easier for families to gather. But then while we're waiting for that to happen,
Daniel Stillman (46:45.384)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (46:58.857)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (47:03.35)
you know, how do we start, you know, moving in the direction of building more even as we're pushing for those changes. And, you know, as we have higher social capital, we're gonna get to those changes faster, because we're gonna have, you know, more people to kind of push together with. But I think it's this thing that Pete mentioned earlier that we've been saying a lot on the tour is asking yourself,
A simple question, if it feels like a big barrier, which is this, what am I doing alone that I could be doing together? It's childcare that you're doing alone. Can you start a childcare cooperative so that, you know, can, you know, take off some of the load of caring for children, you know, every single day. If you're cooking dinner alone every night, can we start cooking more communally? If you're.
Daniel Stillman (47:33.693)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (47:39.368)
Mmm.
Rebecca Davis (47:52.788)
You know, walking or running alone, you know, we've seen a huge rise in, you know, athletic clubs and, know, that's a way we can get our exercise in, but also be building our social capital and making connections. you know, and for some people meeting, meeting life partners, so, you you can kill two birds with one stone at, at these, community events. So.
Yeah, I think everyone can kind of do a life assessment of what are all the activities I do right now? Okay, what of these could be converted into a group activity?
Daniel Stillman (48:27.037)
Yeah, it's a wonderful invitation. And I've been thinking about a cooking club because I remember reading about these, you know, just big kitchens where I'm big into bulk cooking and I think I can easily make three times the amount of soup that I need. In fact, my wife accuses me doing this regularly. That's of course what the freezer is for. So, Pete, I feel like I would be remiss if I did not talk about your book, Dedicated.
Rebecca Davis (48:40.456)
Yeah, yeah. Right.
Rebecca Davis (48:48.864)
Yes, yes, yes.
Daniel Stillman (48:56.685)
And, you know, this concept of liquid modernity, which you introduced me to through your work, there was an Atlantic article that you all probably read about the lonely century. And they cite some really interesting research in it, which I've been trying to remind myself of. There's this research that if you ask somebody if they're going to enjoy their commute more, you know, listening to a podcast or reading their paper,
or talking to a stranger, the answer is like really easy. People are like, oh, obviously I'm going to join my, we'd a hell of a lot more if I'm just minding my own damn business, because that's what we do here. But it, but the it's very reproducible result that we actually have a better time if we talk to a stranger. Now, like I have experienced immense resistance to going to a networking gathering or a thing people love to cancel.
Pete Davis (49:45.154)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (49:54.633)
We love to stay at home. love it when someone cancels on us. And it feels so good to like, can just do everything we want to do at home. It's easy. I can order and food. have total control. And I mean, why is it important for us to coach ourselves to resist this, this, this force in our brains that tells us, um, don't go. Why is it important for us?
Pete Davis (50:20.289)
You
Daniel Stillman (50:22.17)
to say, no, no, I committed to this and I'm going to commit to this.
Pete Davis (50:26.764)
Yeah, you know, a few things on this. One is that I really don't want civics to be like, your broccoli or finger-winding moralists. So I put it in discussion of like, here's why eating your broccoli is important for you. And that gets into a question of civic opportunity. The great political scientist, Hari Han has the civic opportunity index, which is like, how many people even have
Daniel Stillman (50:35.561)
Hey, I love broccoli. Let's just be clear.
Rebecca Davis (50:37.494)
Thank
Daniel Stillman (50:42.067)
Fair.
Pete Davis (50:52.758)
opportunities to join things. Like, why are we putting it on the individual to figure out how to be communal? Like, the way we were communal in a previous time was there were a lot of opportunities to be communal. So one aspect of this is I just think we need a flourishing of all different types of communal interactions. And the people that are heroes of this are the civic creators and the civic leaders who stick their neck out to create the pickleball league or the neighborhood association or the annual potluck or something like this, or
Daniel Stillman (51:21.767)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (51:22.424)
the, you know, whoever wants to invent a Metro car where it's normal or to talk to each other or something. And, or like,
Rebecca Davis (51:27.734)
yeah, the talking car. That's actually a great idea. Like there's a quiet car. We need a talking car. I love that. Love that.
Pete Davis (51:31.296)
Yes. We need a talking car. so that's one thing. But okay, so now for the individual with the we're born in the place we are with the level of social capital we have and like, why should you go out and do something? The thing is, you know, I love the old wisdom of you know, I think that our mom and grandma used to say this, it's like, you know exactly what your life is going to be if you stay home.
Daniel Stillman (51:31.493)
We have a quiet car. The Kibitz car.
Pete Davis (52:00.878)
And it'll be the same thing every day if you do that and stay home every day. The joy of life is in the serendipity and mystery of what happens if you go out. You don't know. You have to let go of a little bit of control. And out of that, some of it might be misses. You might go to the first club meeting and you're like, these are not my people at all. Or, you know, that's that neighbor, you know, I'm going to keep them at a little distance. the vast majority of times.
it's you're delighted by something or something connects or you add more material to your life. You know, I don't know the causal mechanism of this, but I see the reality, which is there's a weird thing that happens. The more communal people are, the more communal people are. You know, the people that are part of five clubs end up being part of 15 clubs. The people that have time for checking in on every single neighbor in one street in the neighborhood have time to check in on everyone on the next street in the neighborhood.
Daniel Stillman (52:45.416)
Mmm.
Pete Davis (52:57.942)
I don't know how that works. Like I have some guesses at it, but I know it's true, which is that somehow there's something about our time, our energy, our sense of meaning and purpose that just grows bigger and bigger and bigger as you get more material into your life. We had this amazing family friend who was my sister's godfather, Ken Brecker, and he did like a thousand different things in his life. He was starting plays and he was traveling around and he was on the library foundation and he was everything.
Daniel Stillman (53:02.601)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (53:27.168)
Somehow he didn't ever feel this energy of I'm totally stuffed, there's too many things. And yet the people that are part of nothing sometimes feel, gosh, this is life is way too busy. And so none of this is judgment. It's just, there is some magic that happens with opening up your heart to the material of the world. And it somehow finds more and more space and more and more energy. And if I had to guess the mechanism.
Daniel Stillman (53:33.681)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (53:42.803)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (53:56.576)
It's like the energy that we have for the world is somehow connected to the feeling of like, whether like other people are part of our purpose. And like there's something that gets easier when you're open to other people. There's something that gives you more life that makes you feel like you have more time. There's something about being with other people that, that, that, that leads, that makes you feel like something.
you know, that there's more space. yeah.
Rebecca Davis (54:26.31)
Dependency. Yeah. Yeah. We've also been talking a little bit, you know, as we're meeting with different communities to ask ourselves, you know, where in our modern life are we, you know, taking convenience, but sacrificing community? You know, I think of growing up, we were always getting, you know, rides to the airport. It's a little strange now.
to be honest, to ask a friend for a ride, you know, when there is Uber and Lyft. I also heard recently there's Uber Teen, you know, which I see the need where parents can kind of call an Uber for a kid to pick them up for soccer practice. you know, I...
Daniel Stillman (54:52.905)
Hmm
Daniel Stillman (55:03.698)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (55:09.974)
want to acknowledge that, you know, parents are maybe stretched thin and, know, they need that, that extra help from a company. But, but I think we should be investigating all of these choices. That's a missed opportunity for, for that kid to connect with a neighbor doing a favor for you. Um, and going to pick up, um, you know, that kid or, know, for example, in New York city, you know, I used to live in New York. never had laundry in my apartment.
So I always, you know, had to either walk to the laundromat or go to a shared laundry room in a basement where I would maybe run into an older neighbor who I wouldn't have crossed paths with usually in my social circle, but could get to know them. It was a little more inconvenient that I had to drag my laundry somewhere, but there were all these opportunities for community building that I was taking for granted that, you know, when you get into a building that is maybe convenient because it has all the amenities, you you might be losing.
Daniel Stillman (55:43.08)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (55:51.977)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (56:07.402)
some of those opportunities. So that's another place to kind of look at convenience.
Daniel Stillman (56:10.985)
know, it's like, obviously, I love having a washer and dryer in my house because I can just take off what I'm wearing and put it directly in there. But I but in a way, there's this quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that I it's always stayed with me that analytical thought is like a knife. when we cut with that, that analytical thought, something is gained, but something is lost. And I'm seeing now that the way convenience gives us these boons of
Rebecca Davis (56:14.934)
Right. Yup.
Rebecca Davis (56:30.742)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Daniel Stillman (56:40.359)
You know, I don't have to do this anymore. I gain all this time back to do other things. But it's just like television. We're not actually there seems to be an incredibly elastic amount of time we can give to TikTok and Instagram and Netflix, where it's just all garbage, you know, 10 hours a day. And in a way, what Pete you're suggesting is that, like, once we commit to other people, there's an elasticism that can happen because we're once we make space for that, there's more space for that.
Rebecca Davis (56:43.71)
Yes. Yep.
Rebecca Davis (56:52.51)
Yes, yeah, 10 hours a day according to the last Nielsen data.
Pete Davis (56:53.646)
That's right.
Rebecca Davis (57:05.739)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (57:10.765)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (57:11.047)
And to really treat these moments in our lives that seem like they're nothing as they are opportunities.
Rebecca Davis (57:16.116)
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Ask for directions instead of opening up your Google Maps next time. And it's a chance to meet the local business on the corner, pop in and ask them how to get somewhere. A totally lost art.
Pete Davis (57:17.229)
Yes.
Pete Davis (57:21.016)
Thank
Daniel Stillman (57:28.21)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (57:30.286)
There's a great, know, L.M. Tsikasas, the great tech theorist and often critic, he, you know, he asks the great, the great thought experiment question, what if you fully optimized your life? So, so, and it's very haunting. He goes, imagine all of the inconveniences were gone. It's fully optimized. Nothing is inconvenient.
Daniel Stillman (57:32.185)
For sure.
Pete Davis (57:57.934)
is that a utopian novel or a dystopian novel? And everything was brought to you. There was never a moment you weren't entertained. There was never a moment of uncertainty, a lack of control. I'm like, that's a horror movie, you know? And he goes, so also a totally inconvenient, cough gasped life is also a horror movie. So we just know it's somewhere in between.
Daniel Stillman (58:00.873)
Right.
Rebecca Davis (58:01.366)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (58:11.357)
Yeah, that it sound like a Black Mirror episode.
Pete Davis (58:21.112)
total inconvenience, total convenience. I just know it's not all the way on either of those ends. So we got to find that balance.
Daniel Stillman (58:27.421)
Yeah. Yeah, that's where a good life is. I feel like our time together is running short, which is shocking. I appreciate all the stuff that we have covered. One question that my my my wife and I were talking about this morning and we mentioned bridging capital, but I think it's important to come back to this question of like where we can be finding more of it, because it seems like especially across political divide.
It is so hard to do. And I'm not sure if it, you know, it seems like there's at least two strategies. One is like, you know, I'm in a knitting club and just hope that someone in there happens to have some significant political difference in me. And then we we get to talk about that while having something that we do have in common. Right. Like that's I feel like the myth of the magical myth of Bridging Capital is that like, because I bowl with someone and I knit or I'm on the PTA.
I have enough glue that we can talk about other hard things. And then the other one is like, direct, maybe more direct bridging capital, like where we're just going to bring together people across these divides to talk about political issues specifically, which is very on the nose and a little bit hard. And I mean, so specifically in terms of, you know, bridging political divide. That.
Pete Davis (59:49.507)
Yeah.
Pete Davis (59:53.39)
Bridging, yeah, so, you know, one way to see this is a bridging relationship is just a bonding relationship about something else. Because no one really goes into, you only connect over things that you, something you find in common. And so a bridging across the economic divide by sharing a religious divide or bridging across the ethnic divide by sharing an economic connection or bridging across the political divide by sharing an interest in like swimming or something, you know, so.
What we need is a multiplicity of bonding. And then in many ways, I see this as like an anti-monopoly project, which is one type of divide has monopolized like so many other types of divides or so many other types of areas. Like we hear on our tour, I was in a Lions Club and now it's like ripped apart by national politics. But that's not what the Lions Club is about or I was in the VFW.
And what we need, so what is it?
Rebecca Davis (01:00:54.292)
Or more often, people are in nothing. And the one identity, air quotes, that they feel is their political team that they're on. But more often than not, these are people that feel that identity from what they're consuming on the internet or on TV, and not necessarily because they've been going to a local meeting or chapter for them.
Pete Davis (01:00:58.871)
Peace.
Daniel Stillman (01:01:15.027)
Right. Yeah.
Pete Davis (01:01:15.16)
Totally. And these things, you do to prevent them from being cannibalized or monopolized by the large divide, the great red team, blue team divide, is you have to have them have a center of gravity of their own mission and purpose and let that compel people. Our goal here is to play pickleball and connect with each other. Sometimes, I'm not on team, everything needs to be apolitical. Sometimes that might involve politics.
Daniel Stillman (01:01:43.71)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (01:01:44.236)
We can't let it always involve politics. We need to remember our mission here. This is what we do. This is what we do over here. This is what we do over here. Even parties. In a democratic chapter meeting, what we do is enforce the political divide, but we're going to connect over everything else and not get into our other divides here. So everything has its own thing and you want a multiplicity. I was seeing recently, like, Kendrick Lamar had his Super Bowl halftime show. It is for his own
Daniel Stillman (01:01:51.634)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (01:02:12.009)
Mmm.
Pete Davis (01:02:13.592)
purposes. You I'm not one to read what it's about. It's probably, you know, a lot about, you know, the black cultural experience. It's about Los Angeles. It's about all these things. And I was seeing all these people in LA about, know, about the meaning of hip hop. But I've been seeing all these people say like, was that was that a pro Trump or an anti Trump, you know, thing and it's like, well, we got to let things be their thing, you know, so that there's multiple different
We want a multipolar civic life so that, you know, and not let everything get sucked into this. And that's what we want with literal civic groups too. So yeah, don't know anything you want to add on.
Daniel Stillman (01:02:44.434)
Right.
Daniel Stillman (01:02:50.632)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (01:02:55.35)
Yeah, and think we've also been saying, I think there has been, as the political divides have deepened, a lot of talk about we need more of these bridging groups, as you mentioned. But I think in strengthening our bonding, which also is in desperate need of attention, our bonding social capital, so our meeting up with people like us, we're going to just automatically get better.
Daniel Stillman (01:03:15.465)
Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (01:03:22.784)
bridging, you know, while acknowledging there are certain areas that will require, you know, really focused work. But, you know, the things we learn in our bonding groups is how to approach a stranger at a meeting and introduce ourselves, you know, and, wear a name tag, how to publicly speak, how to have a disagreement, you know, even if that disagreements with people that are like you, you know, about who you want to cater the event or whatever trivial thing is, but you're still learning how to kind of work out those differences.
Daniel Stillman (01:03:35.113)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (01:03:40.233)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (01:03:51.273)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (01:03:51.348)
And I think those skills are not being practiced anywhere right now, as our joining numbers are so low. And so if we can be doing skill building, even among bonding groups, when we go out and do need to disagree over bigger things or do need to public speak over larger things, those skills will be much more advanced if we've had time to kind of practice them, because no one's bored knowing how to do this stuff.
Daniel Stillman (01:04:18.001)
Yes, that is true. That actually feels like maybe there's a moment to talk a little bit about the upswing, which I must confess I have not read, but I was sort of encouraged that, you know, mean, Robert Putnam obviously had this opportunity many decades ago to to bring this to the attention of the government. We were not able to, I don't know, listen to him well enough. And
Rebecca Davis (01:04:41.622)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (01:04:47.177)
It seems like maybe there's an opportunity through the work of this movie and, you know, I don't know if there's other trends that you're noticing, but like what what is the message that we should be taking from from Robert's newest work and and from you guys in terms of like a hopeful future for a for a multi gathering, you know, joining of all types type of of society, which is where we were, you know, 50 years ago.
Pete Davis (01:05:15.886)
Yeah, yeah, the biggest message of the upswing, I don't want to put words in Bob's mouth, but our read of it is we've done it before and we can do it again. There have been times where we've had very low challenge, know, low social capital and challenging times in civic life. He points to the point at the turn of the 20th century.
Daniel Stillman (01:05:16.713)
60 years ago.
Pete Davis (01:05:38.316)
And then you have an awakening. It starts with moral and cultural awakening, then it becomes an economic, civic, and social and political awakening. And it comes with a lot of civic creativity. It comes with lot of what's called democratic experimentalism, a lot of experiments. It comes with a transformation, like we were saying about our own project, people creating things and then transforming how they are as people.
Daniel Stillman (01:05:40.359)
Hmm.
Pete Davis (01:06:05.038)
and having a different sense of what it means to be an American or what the purpose of our lives are. It allows, it comes with a lot of institutional boundary crossing where, you know, interesting new institutions are created and surprising places where, and we did it before that led to a golden age of civics at the mid-century and I think we can do it again. You know, so that's the hope, you know, this is an,
a special time. It's a time that is part of some of these cycles and we can decide to change it.
Rebecca Davis (01:06:39.254)
Yeah, and I think from someone coming from a media background, I think I especially appreciated that about Bob's work, because I think we love running the article about what's happening in Sweden and the Scandinavian countries where they have high happiness. Or this thing worked over here in Japan, and look at this kind of cool social experiment.
But it's easy when it's somewhere else to say, that can happen there because of the dynamics of that culture that's different than kind of the particular challenges we might face in America. And the thing I loved about this work that Bob looks at in the upswing is he's looking back on ourselves here in America, but from another moment in our past, which I think makes a strong argument that we have done here before. And so this isn't something.
something new and we've been up against similar kind of forces economically and what people did to fight those forces economically then was not get on Facebook. I didn't have it then, but it was not to sit at home, I will say. It was to get out of the house. It was to get together. It was to get organized. It was to talk to your coworkers about what you don't like in the workplace. It was to talk to your neighbors about what you didn't like.
Daniel Stillman (01:07:34.845)
Hmm.
Daniel Stillman (01:07:46.643)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (01:07:53.479)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Davis (01:08:00.244)
you know, going on in your neighborhood if the kids weren't being educated and, you know, got, they got together and started public libraries and started the high school system and, you know, transformed our workplaces, which transformed our economy. So there, there are lot of lessons to be taken there. And then obviously, you know, we're always careful to note and we need to do it better than they did to make sure that it's being done in a more just way.
Daniel Stillman (01:08:24.242)
Hmm.
Rebecca Davis (01:08:28.826)
know, acknowledging the kind of our racist and sexist past in this country where we want to be pushing further.
Daniel Stillman (01:08:40.135)
Yeah, the odd fellows can't just be fellows anymore. The inclusive fellow. Well, good God, we this is such an important topic. I feel when you talk about the upswing and the hope that it feels there's a feeling in my chest. don't know exactly what to say. Maybe it's hope, but it's a really beautiful message that you two are bringing. I really appreciate you.
Rebecca Davis (01:08:43.038)
Right.
Pete Davis (01:08:43.607)
Hahaha.
Daniel Stillman (01:09:08.541)
being these harbingers of hope. Is there anything that I have not asked you that you feel like I ought to have asked you or any parting message that we should we should unpack before we before we close up shop?
Rebecca Davis (01:09:25.014)
parting message is always just join a club. Anything else? Or if you're in one, make sure you get to that meeting.
Daniel Stillman (01:09:33.875)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Stillman (01:09:38.326)
Pete's frozen so he can't add anything. You know it happens to the best of us.
Rebecca Davis (01:09:38.998)
Yeah, he's been having some internet issues on this one. there you are, Pete. Party messages beyond join a club. Get to your meetings.
Daniel Stillman (01:09:47.241)
Ha ha ha ha.
Pete Davis (01:09:48.29)
Thank
Yeah, I would just say, you know, the same question we raised earlier, which is what are things, you know, really think about that. What are things you're doing alone that you could be doing together? And, you know, I'll add this, something that gives me hope anytime I'm down on what's going on nationally in this country and feeling that like the world we want is very far away. I really believe, and one of the things we tried to highlight in the film was that
Daniel Stillman (01:09:59.657)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (01:10:08.062)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Davis (01:10:17.11)
The world we want already exists in piecemeal scattered across thousands of experiments all across the country. Like there are people already doing the part.
of the dream that we're all seeking somewhere. And so our goal is to just multiply those experiments, grow them, foster them, cultivate them into a larger whole. And so you go to any of these corners where that little piece of hope is and you're totally filled up and you can see it. You can see the vision of a better future. We just got to bring those all together and keep blowing on those sparks.
Daniel Stillman (01:10:33.576)
Yes.
Daniel Stillman (01:10:48.777)
Yeah.
Yeah. Which is some of the work of this movie. And so obviously, everyone listening should go to join or die film dot com. And I feel like hosting a screening is another call to action. Bring your people together to watch this movie and to have the conversation about what can we join and how can we create things for people to join. And also just to see that hopeful work of all these people who are trying to experiment and innovate with bringing people together.
Rebecca Davis (01:11:02.9)
Yeah, absolutely.
Pete Davis (01:11:10.915)
Amen.
Daniel Stillman (01:11:20.581)
in new and powerful ways, whether it's, you know, black cyclists or something else, whatever it is.
Rebecca Davis (01:11:26.548)
Yup. Yup. Yup.
Daniel Stillman (01:11:30.985)
Well, then I will thank you. Is there any place else you'd like people to visit? I think join or die film dot com is probably the best. That's it. That's where the journey should start and it should not be where the journey ends. Well, then I will say thank you so much for your generosity and and for the work for your magnum opus and all the dragons you slayed along the way, both in yourself and in the world to make this happen. It's a beautiful thing.
Pete Davis (01:11:35.895)
That was great.
Rebecca Davis (01:11:35.898)
That's it. That's it. Yeah.
Rebecca Davis (01:11:55.638)
Thank you. Thank you. Today was the day we're on Daniel Stillman's podcast.
Pete Davis (01:12:00.051)
Hahaha!
Daniel Stillman (01:12:00.681)
Check. Well then I can call scene, I guess.
Rebecca Davis (01:12:03.688)
You
Pete Davis (01:12:04.29)
you
Rebecca Davis (01:12:09.782)
Great. Daniel, thank you for your time. That was a lovely chat. We really enjoyed it. It was great.
Pete Davis (01:12:09.87)
Okay, let's this one.
Daniel Stillman (01:12:11.836)
beautiful. Thank you so much.
