The Way We Live Now

Karen Christensen
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Thinking globally, acting locally: stories, tools, & ideas. Karen Christensen talks with authors, experts, and others to explore ways we can make the world a better place. karenchristensen.substack.com

  1. Apr 29

    From Serbia to Iowa City, third-place talk is bubbling up

    A conversation about cafes, bistros, pub sheds, apartment cafes, and more—as well as Antoine Burret’s current initiative, Europa Cafes—and how they work as third places or tiers lieux. These diverse places, and ideas about their importance, can be a puzzle, and Antoine (in Geneva) and Karen Christensen (in Massachusetts) tease out common factors. Political conversation is on the agenda, so they also discuss the role of such places in France, Serbia, Cuba, and the United States. They consider the challenges that face both businesses and nonprofits that aim to be third places and promote social life. Antoine also provides history of the way “third place” became equated with coworking in Europe and then part of French government policy and funding. We discuss how the definition has been evolving, and breaking down. Europa Cafes www.europacafes.org Antoine’s book, Nos Tiers Lieux: https://fypeditions.com/nos-tiers-lieux-defendre-les-lieux-de-sociabilite-du-quotidien/ Karen’s forthcoming The Great Good Place II: https://greatgoodplace.org Foucault concept: “heterotopia,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_(space) Mentioned when talking about Serbia: Milena Dragićević Šešić’s biography is available here: https://www.unesco.org/creativity/en/biography/milena-dragicevic-sesic Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

    From Serbia to Iowa City, third-place talk is bubbling up

  2. 12/30/2025

    Let's make leaving home a New Year's resolution

    Urban policy and housing expert Diana Lind joins Karen Christensen to discuss her Washington Post opinion piece “America is becoming a nation of homebodies.” They discuss the connection between the housing crisis and the loneliness epidemic, both topics we’ve been hearing about a lot. They also talked about the reasons people stick with big properties even when life might be better, simpler, and more social in a smaller home. And Diana explains how there are business opportunities and policy levers such as permitting reform and improved transit that can be used to make it more likely that more of us will leave home. Show Notes Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing The New Urban Order at Substack “America is becoming a nation of homebodies,” Washington Post, August 2025. “Sober Up, Harvard,” Harvard Crimson. (Mentioned in the show.) Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

  3. 12/16/2025

    Career women, wives and mothers, and presidents chosen by God

    We read biography and memoir to be titillated, but we’re also looking for ways to understand ourselves and our world, and ways to tell our own stories. Carl Rollyson joins Karen Christensen to talk about the idea that every biography is an autobiography. Given how much we hear today about the need for politicians to be “authentic,” it is instructive to hear how Carl’s subjects took on different roles at different stages of their lives, and how we write, and read, biography in order to live vicariously, to experience other possible lives. Carl also discusses his forthcoming book about presidential biography, from the University of Virginia Press, in which he writes about everyone from George Washington to Donald Trump--and finds a startling parallel in the lives of two men whom one might think came from different planets. He calls them “providential presidents,” in the sense that many of their followers believe them to have been sent by providence—or God. Carl’s comparison is fascinating and persuasive, and useful in the context of the slogan “No Kings.” What if 30% of Americans still want to have a king? We wrap with a few words about Carl’s next project, a biography of Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick. Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

  4. 12/11/2025

    What should we call the places we love?

    Host Karen Christensen is joined by sociologist Katherine Giuffre, now retired to Italy, who used Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place with her students for many years. They share a concern that term “third place” is being used indiscriminately, diluting the original meaning and making it harder to find the social connections we need. They talk about distinctive features of a third place, and how having a third place of your own manifests itself. Kathy’s amusing story about a crisis at the pub-restaurant in a tiny Italian village illustrates some of the things she considers most important. Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

  5. 12/06/2025

    How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do about It

    Daniel Knowles, a journalist at the Economist, joins Karen Christensen to talk about his book, Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It. The publisher calls it “A high-octane polemic against cars,” but that’s not all. While Knowles has plenty to say about what’s wrong with cars, he is also eloquent about the benefits, and beauty, of life with fewer cars around. Note that “fewer.” Not no cars, but fewer of them, and more trains and bikes and walkable streets. Knowles is not advocating change by directive, but argues that the market could and should do the job for us. That is, if we can recognize that we have been subsidizing automobiles and strangling other forms of mobility. The conversation also gets into the pros and cons of EVs and the political importance of the auto industry, and highlights positive developments as well as some of the problems with transit planning. Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

  6. 11/13/2025

    The Missing Chapter

    Karen Christensen talks about her discovery that third places have been left out of academic writing on social capital and social life. Meanwhile, the terms “third place” and “third space” are surging in general conversation and in planning and architectural circles, especially since the pandemic. She proposes that these humble but vital pieces of the mosaic of public life have to observed and studied in real life, and aren’t amenable to being turned into data sets for AI processing. These books are discussed in the show: 1995 Rheingold, Howard, The virtual community: finding connection in a computerized world 2001 Putnam, Robert, Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community 2015 Turkle, Sherry, Reclaiming conversation: the power of talk in a digital age 2018 Klinenberg, Eric, Palaces for the people: how social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life 2021 Murthy, Vivek, Together: loneliness, health and what happens when we find connection 2024 Moreno, Carlos, The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

  7. 10/30/2025

    Last summer's talk by Lake Mansfield

    This interview about third places was recorded last September for the WRLDCTY conference in Bilboa, Spain. While I found it a bit disconcerting to do an interview with a busy beach behind us, and even more disconcerting to have Canadian geese wandering around, the conversation hit on quite a number of important points. I was happy to find that I’d explained how reading Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place in 1990 changed my life. It was a book that changed a lot of people’s lives, I suspect, and perhaps mine as much as anyone’s since I’ve ended up inheriting the work from Ray. I often find myself wishing I could talk to him about the new material, but so far I’ve never found myself agonizing over whether he would agree with me—in fact, I have a sense that he is urging me on. The Substack platform now uses AI to generate video clips—after all where would a writer be without video clips to post to Facebook and YouTube? Here’s the bit about how third places changed my life (just a minute and a half). The interviewer, Steven Pedigo, is director of the LBJ Urban Lab at the University of Texas Austin, and happens to have a home in Great Barrington. How fortunate I was to have such a knowledgeable interlocutor. He asked great questions, and encouraged me to include practical advice to people wanting to create or restore a third place. That section of the book is now substantial. I’m gathering a lot of material that won’t fit into the book but will become lectures or perhaps even a course. I’m keen to field test ideas, and will be looking for case studies as I travel in 2026. Europe first, and then Mexico. Thanks for reading The Way We Live Now! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

  8. 08/11/2025

    The secret to great cities and towns

    A walk and talk with architect John Massengale in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, one of the towns and cities discussed in Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns, which he wrote with Victor Dover. The revised and expanded edition is published by Wiley. Buy it here. Get full access to The Way We Live Now at karenchristensen.substack.com/subscribe

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Thinking globally, acting locally: stories, tools, & ideas. Karen Christensen talks with authors, experts, and others to explore ways we can make the world a better place. karenchristensen.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Karen Christensen
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    47
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Berkshire Publishing Group
  • Show Website
    The Way We Live Now