Finding Your Third Place featured on Wisconsin Public Radio
- Rick Kyte
- Jun 20, 2024
- 2 min read
Rick Kyte, author of Finding Your Third Place, was featured on Wisconsin Public Radio's Morning Edition with Ezra Wall. Read a sample and listen to the full interview below.
Ezra Wall: What is a third place?
Richard Kyte: It’s the place where we go to socialize, where we go to make friends. It’s not home. It’s not work. It’s someplace that’s easy to access, that’s comfortable and that’s conducive to conversation.
EW: This isn’t a brand-new idea. Where did you first hear about this concept of third places?
RK: I heard about this idea about 20 years ago from a sociologist that I that I knew. We were sitting in a coffee shop and he dropped the term “third place,” thinking I knew what it was and I had never heard of it. It comes from another sociologist named Ray Oldenburg, who wrote a couple of books in the late 1980s and early 1990s explaining it.
EW: You point out that people often feel as though the world is becoming generally worse, but that statistically, many things are continuously getting better. What’s causing that disconnect in people’s perceptions?
RK: It’s really a remarkable thing that the world is getting much better in just about every measurable way in categories like health and longevity, equality, childhood mortality, the ability to cure diseases, and even air and water pollution.
We’ve done so much to clean things up from the time when I was a kid. And yet people aren’t feeling well. We know that there are much higher rates of anxiety, depression and loneliness. What seems to be happening is that we’ve developed a form of society in which technology fixes a lot of problems and we can use it to make our communities and our bodies better and our workplaces cleaner and better and more effective.
But we’re becoming less interdependent and that means we spend less time together. We are fundamentally social animals. We have to spend time with other people in community in order to feel good about our lives. We’re especially seeing this absence of connection in young people. That is where we’re seeing really high increases in anxiety, depression and loneliness.
The concept of a "third place" really resonates, especially given how disconnected many feel today. Rick Kyte's insights about the need for social spaces highlight how important it is to cultivate those connections. In my own experience, finding a local café or community hub has made a huge difference in my social life. For those looking to explore ways to enhance their community engagement, LuckyHYP offers some interesting perspectives on fostering connections through shared spaces.
Rick Kyte’s insights on the importance of third places really resonated with me. It's fascinating how, despite advancements in many areas, people feel more disconnected than ever. I've noticed this in my own life, especially among friends who struggle with feelings of isolation. Creating a space for casual socialization, like a local café or community center, could really help improve our mental well-being. It’s a simple yet powerful reminder of how vital these connections are to our happiness.
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