Can We Buy It Back?

Can We Buy It Back?

From More In Common by More In Common Podcast

June 12, 2026 · 33 min · Episode 238

About this episode

The episode explores the challenges of rebuilding social connections and identity in the context of independence and community.

Can we buy back what we gave up? This week Keith and Gerren close out a three-episode arc on the cost of independence with the hardest question of all. Not apps. Not initiatives. Not policy alone. Until the identity of the person shifts — until they see themselves as better with the group than alone — none of the programs work. Keith gets personal about his own lifelong pattern of stepping back from community at the last moment. They get into Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart, Adam Smith vs. Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan as an Ayn Rand acolyte, the temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and Harvard's 85-year study on happiness. The number one predictor? Social connection. Not wealth. Not career. Not health habits. Other people. And then Gerren connects both full arcs — trust collapse, identity, the stories we tell, and now this — into one throughput about how human connection breaks down in America. Institutionally. Personally. Cognitively. Narratively. Structurally. Hard questions. No easy answers. Arc closed. The Full Arc: Part 1 — The Deal We Didn't Know We Were Making Part 2 — What We Left Behind Part 3 — Can We Buy It Back? Find Us: 🌐 https://www.moreincommonent.com 📸…

People in this episode

Hosts: Keith, Gerren

Topics covered

  • social connection
  • identity
  • community
  • happiness
  • trust collapse
  • human connection

Keywords

  • social connection
  • identity
  • community
  • happiness
  • trust collapse
  • Robert Bellah
  • Alan Greenspan
  • Ayn Rand

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Harvard

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