Editor’s Choice: the Best Interviews of 2020

As has become something of a tradition each year at Merion West, here are our editor’s choices for his favorite interviews of this past year.

My comments at the top of the recent list of the five most memorable or noteworthy articles of 2020 could similarly be applied to this list of the interviews of 2020 that—in my view—most stood out. So I will refrain from repeating the same points again here, and we can simply proceed to the selections that I have pieced together, which I believe speak to some of the most compelling interviews released in this past year at Merion West.

5. “Johann Hari on Mental Health During a Pandemic”

Johann Hari, the author of the widely-read 2018 book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions, joins Kevin Turner to apply his findings about depression and anxiety to our current times during this pandemic. As has been documented extensively, this, after all, is a time when people—the world over—have been experiencing heightened levels of mental unease, given the stress and harm brought about by the Coronavirus (COVID-19). In Hari’s view, depression and anxiety are symptoms of a life not lived as well as it could be: “And what I learned is, in fact, while there are some biological contributions to depression, anxiety, they are signals. They’re telling us that something’s gone wrong.” Additionally, in Hari’s view, the issues in our society that have helped to give rise to high levels of depression and anxiety long predate COVID-19.

4. “Why Trust Prevents Nations from Tearing Themselves Apart”

At a time when a growing number of commentators are suggesting that one of the central social problems in the United States is the erosion of trust between citizens and their government (as well as between citizens), Mark Hecht sits down with Christian Bjørnskov, a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark and a leading researcher on the subject of social trust. Bjørnskov dives into the Danish model of stability, peace, and international relations and describes it in stark contrast to American culture. “In a large part of the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom,” he says, “you could [leave a baby in a stroller outside a café] without any problems, but people don’t. And I think we can teach people that little bit: There are things that are normal in other parts of the world that you should be able to do.”