
Indie on Wheels – Pineville Library
Run Time: 120 min.
6 PM June 9, 2025
at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library – Pineville
Address: 505 Main St #100, Pineville, NC 28134
Time: 6:00pm – 7:30 pm
Register Online Here
Join IPH at Pineville Library on Monday, June 9, for a free community screening of Dysfunctional Societies: How Equality Makes Societies Stronger (2015).
What distinguishing feature do the world’s healthiest and happiest societies have in common? According to acclaimed author Richard Wilkinson, the answer is simple: they have far less income inequality than other societies. In this new film based on his international best-seller The Spirit Level, Wilkinson focuses on why the U.S., despite being one of the richest nations in the world, lags behind so many other rich Western societies in a number of crucial statistical measures – including life expectancy, violence, health, community, teen pregnancy, mental illness, and incarceration. The reason, he suggests, is that the immense wealth of the U.S. has been unevenly distributed among the American people.
Mobilizing years of research, Wilkinson looks at the devastating toll economic inequality is taking on people around the world, and shows that societies with the smallest gaps between rich and poor enjoy the highest levels of health and happiness across all social and economic classes. The result is a timely and accessible reassessment of some of our most cherished socio-economic principles and myths. As one reviewer observed, the research of Wilkinson and his colleagues “will change the way you think about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The screening will be followed with a discussion led by Dr. Megan Smith.
Dr. Megan Smith is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Sociology at UNC Charlotte, where she is deeply engaged in student mentorship, research, and curriculum development. She has earned multiple honors for her contributions to teaching, including the Phi Kappa Phi Distinguished Faculty award and the inaugural Trailblazer Award through the Center for Teaching and Learning at Charlotte. Her research and teaching focuses on mental health, loneliness, deviance, and criminology. She actively involves students in projects on mental health, aging, including AI in caregiving, and the aging inmates in the carceral system. Beyond the classroom, Dr. Smith is a dynamic public speaker, author, and community educator; she co-authored the book Ties that Enable (Rutgers, 2021), which primarily explores the relationship among severe and persistent mentally ill in an urban setting. She also co-authored a textbook Sociological Insights on Mental Health and Distress (Wiley, 2025). A proud aunt of seven and national needlepoint instructor, she is a nature lover who has visited all 50 states and 34 national parks—and enjoys nothing more than a quiet night in with her cats and a true crime doc.
This program is free and open to the public. Please register in advance.
This program is sponsored by Culture Blocks— a community partnership between ASC, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation to bring arts and cultural experiences closer to where residents live.