Why More People Are Living Alone Than Ever Before

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Alive with Steve Burns

Episode: "Why More People Are Living Alone Than Ever Before"

Host: Steve Burns | Guest: Eric Klinenberg
Date: March 11, 2026
Podcast Network: Lemonada Media

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Main Theme / Episode Purpose

This episode explores the rapidly growing phenomenon of living alone. Host Steve Burns, himself a "hermit-adjacent" confirmed bachelor, sits down with sociologist and author Eric Klinenberg to unravel the modern shift towards solo living—what's driving it, how it shapes society and personal wellbeing, and what it means for the future of intimacy, independence, and community. With warmth, humor, and personal anecdotes, Steve and Eric probe myths, stigmas, and the social experiments inherent in the rise of the single-person household.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Contexts & Opening Reflections (00:00–07:34)

• Steve’s Life Alone: Steve describes his off-grid lifestyle in the Catskills, emphasizing that his solitude is a choice, not a symptom. He’s “almost never lonely,” but often alone, a pattern consistent since childhood.
• Misconceptions About Solitude: Despite his Blue’s Clues fame ("you invite people to go deep," 07:34, Klinenberg), Steve reveals he's an introvert who has consciously chosen solitude as rejuvenation rather than isolation.

Notable Quote:
Steve (00:00): "As a confirmed eccentric bachelor...I sometimes feel like I'm being told that I am out of sync with the music of the universe."

2. The Social Experiment of Living Alone (10:34–15:49)

• Modern Shift: Klinenberg frames solo living as a relatively new social experiment, enabled by affluence, social progress, and individualism, not a sign of societal decay.
• Cultural Change: Quoting sociologist Emile Durkheim, Klinenberg notes, "The cult of the individual" has redefined what it means to be a fully realized person in modernity (13:19).
• From Stigma to Possibility: The expectation now is to justify staying in a bad relationship, not leaving it—a seismic reversal (13:19).

Notable Quote:
Klinenberg (10:34): "We tend to have this conversation that presumes a deficit or a loss...my approach is...to try to understand them [these changes] as social experiments."

3. Stigma & Workplace Dynamics (24:36–32:35)

• Social and Familial Stigma: Steve and Eric discuss the stubborn stigma around solo living, particularly at family gatherings and in the workplace, where solo dwellers often shoulder more responsibilities.
• Gendered Expectations: Klinenberg notes, "As judgmental as people tend to be towards men who don't get married and have kids, for women...becoming a mother is fundamental to being...a full life" (30:15).
• Autonomy & Feminism: The rise of women's autonomy, access to paid labor, and reproductive rights are major drivers of solo living's normalization.

Notable Quotes:
Steve (25:40): "...I used to feel a little conspicuous about not being married. Now I sort of feel like a genius sometimes."
Klinenberg (28:40): "To carry a stigma is to be defined by that trait...it's like they can't see past it."

4. Debunking the Loneliness Myth (32:35–39:26)

• Living Alone ≠ Being Alone: Data shows solo dwellers tend to be more socially active, volunteering, socializing, and experiencing life outside the home more than many married counterparts (32:50).
• Functional Solitude: True solitude is restorative and chosen; loneliness is deprivation and unwanted. Steve sees his solitude as increasing his capacity to connect deeply when he does socialize: "I love persons, but people are exhausting" (36:49).

Notable Quotes:
Klinenberg (34:57): "It's actually our interdependence that makes our independence possible."
Steve (38:08): "Loneliness is indeed about feeling a lack of something...Solitude is restorative. Solitude is fortifying. Solitude is connecting deeply to something."

5. Technology, Screens, and Connection (39:26–44:35)

• Mediated Relationships: Both recognize that digital social life is not a simple loss; it's a new mode with its own possibilities and trade-offs, but has left many feeling out of balance.
• Online Dating and Social Media: Steve likens aimless scrolling to "playing a game," questioning the true motivation behind online connection-seeking (43:06), while Klinenberg suspects we'll view early smartphone culture as a "cigarette" era—a phase of misuse (43:35).

Notable Quote:
Klinenberg (43:35): "My hope is...we're going to look back on this moment and be like, oh my God, can you believe what we were doing the first 20 years of the phone? It was like when they first came out with cigarettes and everyone thought they were healthy and cool."

6. The Broader Social Landscape: Demographics & Aging (45:08–49:00)

• Statistical Trends: Nearly 30% of US households are single-person, up from about 6–7% in 1950. This is even higher in many European countries where state support makes independence easier.
• Aging Alone: Rising life expectancy means more people, even those married for decades, will spend years alone.

Notable Quote:
Klinenberg (45:08): "...even if you're married for 40, 50, 60 years, there's still a very real possibility...that one of you...is going to have years...where you're aging alone."

7. The Pandemic and "Long Social Covid" (49:00–56:12)

• 2020 as a Turning Point: COVID-19 thrust everyone into some form of solitude, showing both the pain of being "on your own" (52:43) and the need for mutual aid. The language of "social distancing" vs. "physical distancing" may have worsened social fracture.
• Aftermath: Klinenberg describes the US as still "rattled and addled," with unresolved trauma influencing current societal division.
• Glimmers of Hope: Despite this, both men see signs of compassion, collective empathy, and mutual aid resurfacing in neighborhoods and activism.

Notable Quotes:
Steve (52:43): "There was an 'on your ownness' to the pandemic, where it's like, you don't tell me what to do...I no longer have to factor society into my survival."
Klinenberg (54:34): "[During the pandemic] at the national level, it really felt like things were cracking apart. But I went to so many different neighborhoods and saw this extraordinary outpouring of mutual aid and support..."

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Steve’s candid reflection on being single:
  “There was a decade of my life where I was like, dear God, I forgot to reproduce.” (28:50)
• Eric on American progress:
  “It's actually our interdependence that makes our independence possible.” (34:57)
• Steve on solitude vs. loneliness:
  "Solitude is about connecting to something powerful and deep, I guess." (39:26)
• Eric describing the impact of women’s liberation:
  “A huge driver of this social change...is women getting control of their lives and control of their bodies, getting access to the paid labor force...” (30:34)
• On technology’s double-edged sword:
  “We have to remember that there's a human being on the other side of the screen and that there’s a human being on the other side of the comment section. Literally always.” (44:06, Steve Burns)

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Timestamps: Key Segments

• 00:00–07:34: Steve’s personal context, introduction to solitude
• 10:34–15:49: Historical and sociological background to living alone
• 24:36–32:35: Stigma, workplace bias, gendered dynamics
• 32:35–39:26: Social patterns among solo dwellers; solitude vs. loneliness
• 39:26–44:35: The impact and challenge of technology in building/maintaining relationships
• 45:08–49:00: Demographics, aging, and the inevitability of periods spent alone
• 49:00–56:12: The pandemic’s impact on individualism, social ties, and mutual aid
• 56:12–end: Closing reflections, mutual gratitude, summary of core insights

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Living alone is less an expression of loneliness or failure, more an opportunity—when chosen—for independence, self-knowledge, and rich social life on one’s own terms.
• Societal stigma lingers but is diminishing, though gendered expectations remain strong, especially for women.
• Technological and social changes—from digital communication to women's rights—have set the stage for this form of modern life.
• The COVID-19 pandemic was a crucible for both positive and negative experiments in solitude, underlining our need for community even as we navigate autonomy.
• Ultimately, the episode advocates for empathy, flexibility, and social infrastructure that let people shape lives that fit their deepest needs, whether partnered or alone.

Final Quote:
Klinenberg (54:34): “There are incredible projects that people are doing at the local level...I don’t think we’re completely on our own. Yeah, we just have a lot of repair work to do.”

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Host Sign-off:
Steve closes by inviting listeners to reflect on their own relationship with solitude versus loneliness, expressing that solitude—when chosen—can fortify our capacity for connection, empathy, and meaningful relationships.

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Transcript

[Steve Burns]

As a confirmed eccentric bachelor, right. 52 years old, never married. I sometimes feel like. Like I'm being told that I am out of sync with the music of the universe.

[Ad Read Announcer]

He.

[Steve Burns]

There you are. I'm back here.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Forgive the weird hat, but it's cold and I'm bald.

[Steve Burns]

It also just snowed. This beautiful, quiet, fluffy snow. And whenever it does this, I just love to come up in the woods and just be alone.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

I love it, you know? How about you?

[Steve Burns]

Do you ever just like to be alone?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah, a lot of people don't like it. A lot of people are very uncomfortable being alone.

[Ad Read Announcer]

Not me.

[Steve Burns]

Solitude is something I actively choose and have chosen for a lot of my life. But I gotta tell you, the older I get, the more I wonder how healthy that impulse is. Is it a good thing, is it a bad thing? Or is it just a thing? So I had a really fascinating conversation

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

all about choosing to be alone.

[Steve Burns]

I think you're gonna like it. I can't wait to see and hear what you think. Okay. Eric Klinenberg is a sociolo and writer who studies how the structures around us shape the way we live both alone and together. He's a professor of sociology and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU New York University. He's written a bunch of books, most recently 2021, City 7 People and the Year Everything Changed. He, he wrote Heatwave, which is about Chicago, Heat Wave, 1995. He co wrote Modern Romance with Aziz Ansari, which is a book that I read. And he also wrote Going Solo, which is a book that was quite formative to me. And it's about the growing number of people who choose to live alone and what that shift reveals about modern life and intimacy and independence. And I'm thrilled, I'm thrilled that he's here. Eric, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Oh my God, it's such a thrill to be here.

[Steve Burns]

How are you today? Where do I find you?

[Eric Klinenberg]

You find me in a frozen city. I'm in Manhattan. It's buried in snow. I grew up in Chicago and we took pride in our ability to live with freezing cold weather and monstrous piles of snow. But that doesn't make me like it or accustomed to it. I mean, it's kind of fine here in Manhattan today, just walking through the sidewalks, but there's those enormous piles of snow that build up on the corners. And it's like you have to get your mountain gear to get across the street. So I'm struggling with, to be honest, Steve, I'm struggling with that. Just how do I get across the street today?

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, I lived in New York City for most of my adult life for like 30 years. And snow is beautiful for an hour and a half and then it is a true hardship in New York City when it melts. I mean, I don't think people, people who, who have never lived in New York City do not understand the, the profound filth of a New York driven snow. I mean it is so nasty and un, unfathomably deep. You have no way of knowing the depth of the slush pile you're about to enter. And it is so hard to get around the city. Like we're literally struggling to get anywhere in New York and yet we, and yet I did it for 30 years and I don't know why, but.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Well, you don't have to face that huge question when you get to the corner which is like, if I put my foot down in that slush pile, like is it just going to be like surface right below or is it going to sink to my knee?

[Steve Burns]

You could disappear entirely.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Actually, the population of Manhattan was much larger before all those people got lost in the slush. So phenomenon that we don't study enough

[Steve Burns]

in modern life in sociology.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Where do you live now? Where are you now?

[Steve Burns]

I am also in a frozen land, but I am about 3 and a half hours northwest of you in the Catskill Mountains.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Ooh, nice.

[Steve Burns]

Technically off grid, halfway up a mountain. And the snow here is heart achingly beautiful. And I get into it. To be honest, winter's long as hell up here. It's like five months long easily. And I get into it for the first two months. You know, you get all weird and hairy and just kind of like hunkery and strange. You just kind of become a cryptid. And for two months it's fun. And then I'm angry.

[Eric Klinenberg]

So I'm catching you now in the early stages.

[Steve Burns]

I hope I'm romanced by it. I mean, we got like 19 inches of snow yesterday and Sunday and I was just, just up there walking around and just enjoying the solitude, which is a wonderful transition. So I am speaking to you, as I said, you know, kind of, kind of hermit adjacent up here. You know, I am technically off grid. I live entirely alone in this little kind of simple house, cabin situation. And I'm into it. I really enjoy it. I always say that I am most often alone. I am almost never lonely. And there's a lot about this that I enjoy and it is entirely, Eric, it's entirely chosen. I lived in New York City. I Lived in the most densely populated part of this country for most of my life. And didn't like it and chose to live much more alone than most people do. And I'm into it.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Did you know about yourself that you had that capacity to be alone without getting lonely?

[Ad Read Announcer]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

You know, people always call me an ohlone sandwich. And I have always been this way. You know, like my mom would say, like, I would come home from school and I'd drop my school bag on the couch. And I'd go directly into the woods by myself and build forts. And that's how I've chosen to live my life now. So I. Yeah, I've always been a solitary player and. And always kind of chronically uncoupled, you know, and that's a streak in my family as well.

[Eric Klinenberg]

You know, it was so interesting to me, though, is, like, when I think of you because of the TV show and my kids. And seeing the way that you somehow relate to people through the camera. I never would have guessed that, you know, you prefer to do anything other than just have deep, deep engagements with people and to, like, take them in. It was this kind of magical way in which, like, you know, you invite people to go deep and they can do that. And, I mean, I guess, I know, as a sociologist, and maybe we'll talk about this later. That it's not really about the quantity of relationships. You know, it's like life and meaning. And your feeling of connection is about the quality of. Of those relationships. And so you don't need to be with people all the time. But in my mind, you know, you're just someone who likes that interaction. And it's. And on the flip side, by the way, you know, I wrote this entire book going solo. About the fact that more people live alone in the world than ever before. And I'm like, one of those people who kind of can't get enough of this, of the social stuff. Like, I live in Manhattan, and I love it here. And always seeking out connections. And so, for me, like, almost anthropologically, I think the project came from this curiosity about other ways to live in the world that I just wanted to understand better.

[Steve Burns]

Well, it's interesting that you say this, because people often think that I must be this tremendous listener, this tremendous communicator. And I can certainly do that in this way. You know, it's the one thing I have 10,000 hours at. Right. Blue's Clues was my job. Blues Clues was about to viably create this little magic trick that I. That I could hear you and That I could see you. And that's the one thing I know how to do, you know, and because I am kind of a. Kind of a very guarded, closed off dude, like my dad, you know, like, because I'm that way, this is the way that I've learned to engage. This is the way I have learned to kind of have a form of intimacy, in a sense, through this mediated environment. It's a strange thing, but I also think, Eric, that it's sort of of the moment, I think that people are standing at an inflection point where they're trying to relate to this technology more personally, more humanely, more intimately, more in. In a way that is more real person to person. You know what I'm saying?

[Eric Klinenberg]

I totally do. And I think framing it that way is really productive because we tend to have this conversation that presumes a deficit or a loss. I was listening to a conversation you had recently with someone who's concerned about loneliness and isolation of boys and young men. And we talk a lot about how cut off, you know, people are from one another and maybe especially young men. And when I listen to those kinds of conversations, you know, I often hear people, you know, talk about the way we disappear into our screen and cut ourselves off from one another and the way in which life on screens is inevitably less satisfying than life with. With other people face to face. And I, to be honest, that is kind of how I think about it. I think, you know, being with other people face to face creates all kinds of possibilities for depth and meaning and intimacy. But, but I'm also aware that when I talk to a lot of people out there, and maybe especially younger people, their notion of what counts as alone time or together time or social time is different because they, they experience the social world through machines in a routine way, and they always have. And if, if we only talk about the way that young people are connecting in this language of deficit, I think we miss the opportunity to understand how we're all trying to remake the social world through this technology that's everywhere. So, you know, my approach for thinking about all these things is to try to understand them more as social experiments than as social problems. And then to really get inside of what. What's involved in that experiment. And so the machine stuff is an experiment, mediated relationships. But so too is this incredible change of just people being able to live by themselves, to be unmarried or to live alone for long periods of time. That's something that we never did in the 200,000 year history of our species until about 75 years ago, when people in affluent countries everywhere started trying it out, and so we could just say, oh, my God, isolation crisis. We're disconnected. What is wrong? Why can't we have intimacy? There are a lot of people who talk about this change in that way, and my approach is just different. It's like, well, whoa, how did this happen? And why? And what are we learning as we do it? Because, honestly, it's pretty fascinating.

[Steve Burns]

This is such a recent idea. What gave people this idea? What drove them to try So a

[Eric Klinenberg]

few different ways to answer that question. And I guess, like, I. I started with affluence just because, you know, living alone is materially difficult thing to do and has been for most of our history. Like our ancestors, you know, they needed to live in groups so that they could hunt and gather, someone could prepare the food while someone else went out and got it, or they needed to live together so that they could protect themselves from invaders. They had no other idea about how to live. And so one way to think about this, in addition to just the money part, because it's expensive, is to recognize that it's a fairly modern idea, that we see ourselves as individuals and that we think our individual preferences and needs should take precedence over other considerations. There's a great sociologist from the early 20th century named Emile Durkheim who talked about the cult of the individual as this transformative force in the modern world where, you know, we came up with new ideas about what it means to be a self and an autonomous self. And we increasingly made decisions about, you know, what would be best for us, for ourselves. And I guess, like one. One great example of this is, you know, when it comes to, you know, marriage and finding another person to live with, you know, we. We might once have thought, like, if we're in a relationship and it's not going well, if we're married and it's not bringing us happiness, we would have to really work hard to justify separating because it seemed like separation was stigmatized and looked down upon. I think in the world we live in today, if you are in a relationship or a marriage and it's clear to you and clear to everyone around you, that is not good for you as an individual. Like, you should get out of it. You need to justify why you're staying in it. And even that little change in our cultural orientation has massive implications for the way we think about organizing our lives and organizing society.

[Steve Burns]

Right? Like the concept that there are viable human beings who have chosen to live alone and may be alone for their entire lives. It is even brand new to me. You know what I mean? Like that, that, that sounds like a new concept to me. And yet I know more and more people who are doing it.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp March includes international Women's Day. It's a time to celebrate women and everything they carry at work in families and relationships, the roles they hold every single day. And lately I've been thinking a lot about my mother and how everything she was shaped everything that I am. And how strange it is that most of that work was unseen to me as a child, like invisible to me as a kid. But it was definitely there. She created who I am in a whole lot of ways. I mean, she invented me really, if

[Steve Burns]

you think about it.

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[Steve Burns]

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[Steve Burns]

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[Steve Burns]

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[Steve Burns]

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[Steve Burns]

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Hello, and welcome to another installment of Just a Thought, brought to you by BetterHelp, where I sit in this old chair and just share something that I've been thinking about. And lately I've been thinking a lot about scrolling and how that Makes me feel. Which is bad, real bad, because I don't know, it's always an unfair fight. Basically. On one side, you have the entire global interweb, which is beautiful and glowing and shiny, and everyone is perfect and beautiful all of the time. And on the other hand, there's me on a Tuesday morning with a cold in dirty sweatpants. And I always get tricked into letting those two ideas compete, right? And I compare, I allow myself to compare everyone's curated, performative, shiny life with my completely ordinary, I have a cold and dirty sweat pants life. And then I subconsciously assign personal value to myself based on that comparison. And of course, that makes me miserable. It makes all of us miserable when we do it. And it's completely corrosive for our mental health. And I was thinking that this dynamic does seem to be hitting women, especially young women, particularly hard. We know about rising anxiety and depression and body image, struggling, self harm. And with International Women's Day this month, I was thinking, like, how do we as a society celebrate. Yes, but also safeguard, protect, take as seriously as possible the really fraught mental health landscape that women are navigating. Because it can get heavy, right? It can get too heavy. It can get so heavy that you might feel that you need to talk to someone. And I don't mean like this. What we do here is valuable, I think, because we're just sort of sitting down and wondering out loud what it means to be a person. But it's not therapy, and I'm talking about therapy. Therapy is structured therapy is with a licensed clinician who is trained to objectively help you identify patterns and in your life. And that can be so useful. It really can. And the good news is there's lots

[Steve Burns]

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[Steve Burns]

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[Steve Burns]

I don't know.

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It certainly was for me.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Anyway, it's just a thought.

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Let's get back to that interview.

[Ad Read Announcer]

The.

[Steve Burns]

The issue is an issue is the stigma attached to it. As, as a confirmed eccentric bachelor, right? 52 years old, never married, only close once. And thank God that didn't happen. You know, I sometimes feel like, like I'm being told that I am out of sync with the, the music of the universe, right? That the whole. That there's a biological imperative shared by every cell on earth. And I missed the point, right? I'M not self replicating. You have failed as an organism. And that there's some acute medical problem that needs to be solved because, you know, I'm single. And I got to tell you, Eric, I never really felt that from a marriage standpoint. Yeah, you know, I used to feel a little conspicuous about not being married. Now I sort of feel like a genius sometimes.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Okay, so this is so interesting. I guess, like, first of all, it's probably time for me to just say, you know, I'm married. I have two children. You know, I. And the point of me writing this book was not, like, I want to persuade you that you need to abandon your family. It's not a how to book, you

[Steve Burns]

know, it's how to go solo.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Hey, honey, I just listened to this amazing podcast with Steve and Eric, and I'm gonna be leaving at the end of the night. That's not what this is about for me. So I just want to be out there with that because I think it's important for people to know. I'm really trying to understand this on the stigma thing, again, this is a very new way of living, and it's clear that our cultural codes and values have not changed as fast as our practices, and they've spread unevenly, even within our family. So the stigma you feel is probably more profound on Thanksgiving, when you go home to be with your family. Or there's that one aunt who's always like, steve, I met this girl. I've got someone for you, or whatever it is, there's always someone in your family who can't stop talking about it. Or maybe more. Stigma in my world, in sociology has kind of a technical meaning. We think of it in terms of spoiled identity. And by that, what we mean by that is, like, to carry a stigma is to be defined by that trait. For other people who look at you, it's like they can't see past it. So I think when I did the interviews with people, because I talked to more than 300 people who lived alone for the book, and what they often said is, like, I walk into some places and it's like people can kind of only see my singlehood. Like, that's the only thing that matters to them. It makes them uncomfortable. They're projecting this thing. And I will say, like, we still definitely have that. We have come a long way. I cite this study in the book from a University of Michigan survey that was done, like, in the 1950s. And I can't remember exactly what the. What the terms they use, but something like 85% of the people who responded to this survey in the 1950s thought that adults who were unmarried were. Were immoral, you know, or they. They. We've come a long way. Exactly. We've come a long way from that. But people. People definitely experience it. And, you know, you can. You can experience this in your family. A lot of people say they experience it, like, in the workplace. I talked to a lot of people who said that they got a heavier share of the big work assignments because their bosses kind of acknowledged that people who were married and had families, like, they had other responsibilities that were thought to be legitimate. But if you're doing. You got nothing to do is available. Steve could do it.

[Steve Burns]

He's not doing anything. He's watching Mythbusters like, you can do it. Yeah, that's also true. You know, but it's.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

It's.

[Steve Burns]

It's. It's the biological part that I've found harder. I've. I've kind of accommodated all of that now. But I. There was a decade of my life where I was like, dear God, I forgot to reproduce. You know, and that coincided with the death of my father. You know, I was very much caretaking for him, and I was looking at this cycle of life going, okay, I'm his son, but I'm no one's father. Right. Like, how does this work? Because I have chosen to live a certain way that has precluded this idea of marriage, this idea of having children, and that's the one I felt more than marriage. You know what I mean? As a consequence of being alone. Yeah.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Okay. I totally get that. And I think also it's a good point for bringing up the gendered nature of this experience, because as powerfully as you felt that, and clearly, it was very powerful. And I get that whole notion of being part of a family and a lineage, and you're the one who's not continuing the family line. That idea can be powerful. What I learned in the conversations I had with people is that the anxiety about reproduction, it's even more powerful. Typically for women, we have this language of the biological clinic clock.

[Steve Burns]

Sure.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Which I think a lot of the women I interviewed internalized. And more importantly, like, as judgmental as people tend to be towards men who don't get married and have kids, I think for a lot of people in our society, still, becoming a mother is fundamental to being. To having a full life as a woman.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Eric Klinenberg]

And so women I interviewed who don't feel that we felt like I could have a full life without being a mother. Or having. Or a wife. It was almost as if their presence offended and upset other people around them. So they're getting a barrage of questions like, oh, my God, you're 32, you're 34, you're 37. Are you going to freeze your eggs? What are you going to do? And there was an urgency about the setups that made them feel even more stigmatized. And, you know, so I think that's very powerful. It also, you know, reminds me when you ask about the deep roots of this. I mean, a huge driver of this social change, the fact that people are living alone is women getting control of their lives and control of their bodies, getting access to the paid labor force, having the capacity to get a divorce or to make ends meet without being married. Because, you know, if you think about it, but, you know, before, women have all those, you know, rights and capabilities and opportunities. If you're a woman and you're not married, you know, you're either going to live with your family and be, you know, infantilized in some way, not launched as a full adult, you know, or you have to. You have to get married. You know, you have to find someone who could be a breadwinner. And so this kind of incredible transformation, the rising status of women in the world, is just fundamental to this, the bigger social change. People are using this unprecedented wealth and freedom and security to live, you know, to make the choice to live alone. That's. I think that's very interesting. And clearly there's something that people are getting out of the experience, and it's worth trying to understand what that's about.

[Steve Burns]

So when we do have money, when we are suddenly allowed to join the workforce and have autonomy and things, why choose a loneliness?

[Eric Klinenberg]

Okay, so what's attractive about it, I wonder. Yeah, so you're going to help me answer that question for sure, because I'm writing about it, you're living it. So we're going to go back and forth on. But. But let me just say that, you know, one. One thing I learned which surprised me is that living alone does not mean being isolated. In fact, when I looked at the data on the social patterns of people who were going solo, you're not living by themselves, not married. What I learned is that people who live alone, on average, are more likely to spend time with friends and neighbors than people who are married. They're more likely to go to bars and restaurants, to go out to hear music, to exercise and gyms with other people. They're more likely to volunteer in civic organizations. And so While it may be true that there's some set of people who move to the woods in the Catskills and are more hermetic, for the most part, living alone does not mean being antisocial. One of the kind of startling conclusions from this lesson I learned that actually, people in the US are much less likely to live alone than people in Europe. And the place where people are most likely to live alone, like the Scandinavian countries that have a good amount of wealth, but also this kind of booming set of social services, like a pretty big welfare state for transit and housing and home care, all kinds of support. It. Basically, the lesson I learned is it's actually our interdependence that makes our independence possible. Oh, hey, that makes sense.

[Steve Burns]

Makes all the sense, especially as you frame that Nordically. Yeah. Because I. I think. I think, yeah, I got healthcare, I got transportation, I got everything. I got kind of everything I need, and I can do this, you know. Yeah. And it's because we're sharing. It's because they're sharing resources that they can enjoy them alone.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Yeah. It liberates people to live the life that feels best for them. Now, again, I think most people who live alone have cycled through a few different kinds of experiences. Like, a lot of people have lived with roommates.

[Steve Burns]

For instance.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Maybe you live with roommates at some point. A lot of people had lived with a romantic partner, married or unmarried, and it didn't work out the way they wanted. And then they decided to live alone. Sometimes people had moved with family. There's a lot of fluidity in the way that we organize our lives these days. There are a set of people who are capable of turning being alone into a kind of productive solitude. Yeah, right. Like the. Like the kind of solitude we associate with Emerson and Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, where living alone is not necessarily a full retreat from the world. It's a. It's like a temporary retreat that we make to recharge our batteries and to think about how we want to conduct ourselves and what we value so that we can then have these more productive returns. Yeah. Again, like, I'm struck by how capable I find you. You know, this is just as a fan. It's like a Blue's Clues fan who grew up with you on my children's TV set. Like, you strike me as someone who's, like, tremendously capable of establishing connections with people, mediated or not. There's something about you that makes me feel like, oh, you. You listen, you know, you understand. Like, and I listen to. I Listen to your podcast. Like, that's, that is an art of yours. And I wonder if you could do that as powerfully as you do if it weren't for the time that you have on your own.

[Steve Burns]

I think, you know, I think when you say, you know, you seem like a person who needs to be around people or who connects to people. I can just hear all of my friends laughing, you know?

[Eric Klinenberg]

Yeah, I'm sure that's fair.

[Steve Burns]

I, I, what I've learned is that I love persons, but people are exhausting, you know, and that is, that is the personality type that I have. New York City, as exciting as that place is, I will defend that place to my death. It's an important, it's such an important place on this planet. I think everyone should live there for a minute or two. It felt like an assault to me every day. The noise, the crush, the people, the. Too much. I just don't do that. And I was in a pretty bad mental state when I lived in New York City, and I lived in that city really well. I had a big, beautiful house and friends, and I lived in the beating heart of Williamsburg, where all the cool people were. I never left my house, you know, because the city was kind of oppressive to me. And my life changed when I moved up here, and it was like solving an ancient riddle. And suddenly there was more of me to share, you know, And I am much more social up here than I ever was in New York City. And I think I'm a better friend now that I'm here. There is just, there's an ease to

[Eric Klinenberg]

it for me, that totally makes sense to me.

[Steve Burns]

And there's a huge difference between, as you were saying, and it's an important difference between loneliness and solitude. They are not the same thing meaningfully. Right. Being alone is, you know, I think I read this in your book. Being alone is about a lack of something, right? It's about lacking feeling, a lack of social interaction and, and regretting that and pining for its opposite. Solitude is restorative. Solitude is fortifying. Solitude is connecting deeply to something. Solitude's about connection. At least it is in my mind. And it's one of the stoics. I forget who they're all. They all kind of read similarly to me. But one of them said something like, look, if you leave the city with your middle fingers in the air, you know, saying, I hate society, society sucks, and I'm better than society, and I reject it, and that's why I'm here. Like, that's not solitude. You're actually living in relation to something you hate and you're doing it wrong and you're going to be lonely and miserable. Solitude is about connecting to something powerful and deep, I guess.

[Eric Klinenberg]

So I think that's beautifully put. And I think also there's an art to solitude. I mean, it's a skill one needs to develop. And one of my fears today is that because we've become so tethered to these devices that are constantly in our pockets buzzing at us, and because so many people, I think, especially younger people, are just kind of constantly waiting for that next thing to happen, that's going to be exciting. They can't, they can't, you know, for fear of missing out on the next thing, they can't turn it off there. And, and because the algorithms are so powerful at capturing our attention. Like I, I always think about the fact that today, you know, we live in this world where the biggest corporations on earth are hiring the most educated people so that they can spend, you know, untold billions of dollars to accomplish the job of keeping us as tethered to our screens as we possibly could be. Like, that's a huge force to be up against as an individual, let alone as a society. Right.

[Steve Burns]

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[Leah Greenberg]

everyone, it's Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin. You might know us as two of the lead organizers of the no Kings protests. We're also the co founders of Indivisible, the grassroots movement organizing against Trump's regime.

[Ezra Levin]

And this is what's the Plan? Your weekly guide to the state of our democracy and how we fight back. This is not canned talking points. It's a real live discussion space for the pro democracy movement. We wrestle with strategy together. We take your top voted questions in real time, and we talk about the most impactful actions we can take. Right now.

[Leah Greenberg]

Democracy is a participatory sport. The fascists win when we sit on the sidelines. What's the Plan is about how we get into the game.

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What's the plan? Available Friday, January 23rd wherever you get

[Leah Greenberg]

your podcasts, subscribe, recruit, discuss, organize and win. That's the plan.

[Steve Burns]

People use this technology to reach out all the time.

[Ad Read Announcer]

Right.

[Steve Burns]

To try to connect. Online dating, for example. I feel like everyone is scrolling constantly to try to connect and find someone to be not alone with.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Right, right.

[Steve Burns]

But more often than not, people just scroll because they're playing a game and they have no intention necessarily. I know I've done that. Of actually connecting. What does that say?

[Eric Klinenberg]

My sense is that people are pretty frustrated with the life we have developed with screens. My hope is 10 or 20 years from now, we're gonna look back on this moment and be like, oh my God, can you believe what we were doing the first 20 years of the phone? It was like when they first came out with cigarettes and everyone thought they were healthy and cool. Like, I think we're going to look back on this and be like, oh, my God, can you believe that? Because we just have the balance wrong. But it doesn't mean that the technology can't. Can't help us connect. It's. But it's out of whack.

[Steve Burns]

I agree 100%. I keep saying it's user error and that we have to show up to this moment differently. We have to, because this is not going away and this technology is about to swallow us whole. And we have to show up as people and we have to show up with human stakes. And we have to remember that there's a human being on the other side of the screen and that there's a human being on the other side of the comment section. Literally always.

[Eric Klinenberg]

So when there is, when, when there is, right when there.

[Steve Burns]

Unless it's a bot. Except when there's not, at least for now, there often is. So, so what do the stats say of those of us who live alone? How are we doing? Happiness wise, fulfillment wise, monetarily, financially? What's the report card on the ohlone sandwiches of the world?

[Eric Klinenberg]

One reason so many people are living alone right now is because so many people are aging alone. Like we were living longer than we ever did before. You know, another, like, amazing sign of progress, but in any couple, our lifespans are somewhat uneven, right? And probably everybody listening to our conversation knows of couples where like, one person predeceases the other by 5, 10, 20 years, right? That is very common. Like someone dies at 75 and the other person lives to 90. And why is it important to say that? Because it's not, Steve. Like I could say, oh, if you just go find someone to get married right now at 52, you know, you can solve the dying alone problem, right? Because you'll know that by getting married. You know, you have it taken care of. The reality is that even if you're married for 40, 50, 60 years, there's still a very real possibility probability that one of you in the marriage is going to have years like the last years of your life where you're aging alone. So even marriage, we know, is not a solution to this thing. More Americans are living alone than ever before. It's like a little Less than 30% of all households in the US today are one person households. That's up from 6 or 7% around 1950. There's a massive change, right? We're talking about tens of millions of people who are living alone. More people are aging alone than ever before. We are going to confront these issues and we have the choice of either fending for ourselves and dealing with the terror as an individual psychological problem that keeps us up at night, or we could actually have a conversation about how we can plan together with building projects, with policies. And I guess where I ended this book project was kind of urging us to be a little less judgmental about the way people choose to live their lives and seek happiness and meaning and a little bit more generous about the way that we treat each Other and even ourselves. Because let me put it this way. There's nobody listening to this podcast right now. There's nobody listening to this conversation who knows for sure that at some point in their lives, they will not be living alone and facing the hard part of it. Right. No one can feel that with security. And so we all have some vested interest in attending to it.

[Steve Burns]

Strong agree. That does sound very civilized to me. I would prefer the version of that where I have about 20 acres of solitude around me.

[Eric Klinenberg]

You're not moving to. You're not moving to fardknopping in Stockholm.

[Steve Burns]

I mean, I'm sure it's very hig, and I'm sure it's very nice, and I'm sure everyone's very pleasant.

[Eric Klinenberg]

They have great brown bread. They have those, like, breads that are really, you know, rich and nutritious.

[Steve Burns]

But eventually, eventually, I'm just gonna want everybody. All right, last question, Eric, and I'll let you go. But we talked a bit about the shift, about the seismic shift. 200,000 years of people basically living in tribes, and then in the last 75, we've had various socioeconomic reasons that. Or conditions where we can live alone. And people have been trying, and people have been doing it. The stat that you gave is wild. I think in the 50s, it was, like, what, 6% of people. Households were alone. Now it's like 30%. That's crazy, right?

[Eric Klinenberg]

And higher in European countries and even

[Steve Burns]

higher in European countries. People living alone for various reasons with varying degrees of happiness and success. But it does seem that that experiment was on course and taking shape. And then 2020 happened, and then the pandemic happened, and everyone was an ohlone sandwich to a degree that they had not been ever before. And literally everyone had a taste of this. And how did that change all of this?

[Eric Klinenberg]

Yeah, I mean, as you know, I wrote a whole book about the year 2020 and about that experience, and we. We did get physically isolated.

[Ad Read Announcer]

Yeah.

[Eric Klinenberg]

In a way that I think was really profound and that it has enduring effects. Like, I think of Long Covid as not just a medical condition, but also like a. It's a social condition. It's a social situation. Like, we're still rattled and addled by what we went through in 2020. I think that was just such a profound shock to our. To our system. And look, I think one thing people learned is that they really do value companionship. Even the hermits out there. Like, remember when the pandemic first started and the who And a lot of, like, American officials were recommending that we do this new thing called social distancing.

[Ad Read Announcer]

Yes.

[Eric Klinenberg]

And I heard that social distancing, and, like, I kind of knew what they meant, but it occurred to me right away, like, this is a terrible idea, because, like, what you needed to survive the pandemic was physical distancing, but social solidarity, social closeness. Right. Social distancing tells you, oh, you can be happy and survive by just closing your door and shutting the world out. And unfortunately, I think what that messaging did is it encouraged a kind of hyper individualism in the United States that has really transformed us. This, like, sure, you can wear a mask if you want to, but I'm not wearing a mask. Or, sure, like, you can get a vaccine if you want to, but I'm not getting a vaccine. Like, I don't know why. Like, if you don't want to go to the restaurant, you don't have to go to the restaurant, but I want to go to the restaurant. So it should be open. Like, we kind of lost our ability in that moment to think about what it means to live in a society and to have a common purpose and to, you know, recognize the vulnerability of some and the strengths of others and the ways in which getting through the hard things, you know, involves finding ways to work together. And. I don't know. When I look at our political culture today, I fear that in our worst moments, the experience of being so isolated, the experience of feeling like we were on our own, it's all on us. That was really bad for us. And I think there's a lot of anger that's not been processed, a lot of trauma that's not been processed that we carry with us today. And so when I look at just the total explosiveness of American life today on so many. So many dimensions, I mean, a lot of the craziness predates Covid, of course, But I think 2020 was, like, a breaking point. And. And I don't. I don't think we've got it back together.

[Steve Burns]

I agree. I heard you speak really, really eloquently on this. I think it was with Chris Hayes or something. You're talking about this subtle and important distinction between being alone and being on your own, you know, and there was an on your ownness to the pandemic, where it's like, you don't tell me what to do, right? My back is up against the wall, there's a wolf at the door, and I'm gonna do this. You can't tell me how to do this. And I no longer have to factor society into my survival. You know, that's, that's the kind of fight or flight, lizard brain instinct that a lot of people grasped and I agree, are still clinging to to this day. But I just spoke to psychiatrist about, about a whole bunch of things and, and she said something that I just loved. She said, the one bright spot of the pandemic is that everyone got sad. And why that is brilliant. The thing that's doing the most work there is everyone. Right?

[Eric Klinenberg]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

We all shared the same struggle. We all shared the same pain. And, and to. For anyone who recognized that that is the foundation of compassion. Right. That's the definition. Right. To struggle with. That's. That's the thing. And I think, because I'm going to be an optimist, I think we are seeing some of that right now. Like, literally right now, we are seeing people begin to reject kind of a cruel individualism a little bit. And I hope that maybe there's some collective empathy and compassion that we also learned.

[Eric Klinenberg]

It is a beautiful sentiment, and I only add to it. You know, the other beautiful thing that I witnessed and wrote about is the, you know, the emergence of these mutual aid networks all over the country of people who banded together to provide food to people who needed it or companionship and care or, you know, help with getting vaccines or medication. Like, at the national level, it really felt like things were cracking apart. But I went to so many different neighborhoods and saw this, like, extraordinary outpouring of mutual aid and support from people who said, like, oh, well, the government is not giving this to us right now, and if we don't find a way to do this together, it's all going to fall apart. I think that's what we're going to need to get through this moment in American life that we're in right now. I mean, and I think we're seeing it. I grew up in Chicago. I saw it in Chicago a few weeks ago. I have good friends in Minneapolis St. Paul right now. I'm hearing about it there. I live in New York City and I still see food pantries organized at the block level and people running migrant rights clinics out of their basements. There are incredible projects that people are doing at the local level. And by the way, it's true in red states and blue states. So I don't. I don't think we're completely on our own. Yeah, we just have a lot of repair work to do.

[Steve Burns]

Eric Klinenberg, what a joy to talk to you. Thank you for your kind words about Blue's clues and saying you're a fan. But I've read several of your books, and I'm a fan of yours. Going solo was a. Was very formative for me at a time in my life where I was kind of questioning a lot of who I had become as an adult, you know, and provided some really valuable context for me. So I thank you for that and I thank you for this interview. And go enjoy the beautiful New York snow before it turns to slush.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Thank you. Hope our paths cross up in the mountains someday.

[Steve Burns]

All right, take care. Bye Bye.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Bye.

[Leah Greenberg]

Bye.

[Eric Klinenberg]

Well,

[Steve Burns]

what'd you think?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

You know?

[Eric Klinenberg]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah. Interesting, right?

[Eric Klinenberg]

Mm.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, I think there definitely is a difference between loneliness and solitude. And loneliness is indeed about feeling a lack of something, a lack of connection. And solitude is, in fact, about connecting to something meaningful. And I have found that solitude, which I have in abundance up here, has somehow made it easier for me to connect to other people meaningfully. So why do you think that is? How can solitude make it easier to connect to other people meaningfully? What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you might be onto something there. I do. Well, thank you for being here. I hope you connected to something in this. I know I did. And I'm just gonna sit here and enjoy all of this solitude with you. You look great. By the way, Alive with Steve Burns is a Lemonada Media original. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now's the perfect time. You can listen to the show completely ad free, plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus content from me as I reflect on this episode. Just press subscribe on Apple podcasts. Head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. That's lemonadapremium.com you know when you're just

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[Steve Burns]

Or do dogs know their dogs?

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