There’s a fascinating new BBC Radio 4 series called The Human Zoo, looking at the ins and outs of who we really are – are we led by the head or the heart? what are the quirks and qualities that drive human behaviour? Episode 4 focuses on why human beings find it so difficult to admit when they are wrong, especially when they are part of groups. I’ve contributed some thoughts to the programme on The Tyranny of Group-Don’t-Think, which you’ll find in written form below… Continue reading
Category: podcasts
Sherlock Holmes and the lost history of empathy
Here’s a new podcast from the rather wonderful Aeon Magazine, in which philosopher Jules Evans explores the theme of empathy. I kick off by talking about the history of empathy, tracing the concept from Adam Smith’s ideas in the 18th century and through developments in child psychology over the past hundred years. Then comes Maria Konnikova, who makes the case that Sherlock Holmes was a master of the art of empathy, based on her new book Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. Finally there is novelist Tobias Jones, who discusses his attempts to create an empathic community at his home in Somerset.
The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People
This is the video of a talk I gave at the Royal Society of the Arts, which describes six ways to expand our empathic potential, drawing on everything from the empathy experiments of George Orwell to developments in industrial design, from the struggle against slavery in the eighteenth century to the Middle East crisis today. Discover why the 21st century needs to become the Age of Outrospection.
The full version of this talk is available as a podcast.
The ideas in this talk are discussed in my new book Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It.
I published an article summarising some of these ideas at the Greater Good Science Center.
Podcast: Empathy, mutual aid and the anarchist prince
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Peter Kropotkin was one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, who managed to multi-task as a Russian prince, renowned geographer and revolutionary anarchist. In this interview with Phonic FM, a wonderful community radio station based in Exeter, I discuss how Kropotkin’s ideas about ‘mutual aid’ relate to my own work on empathy, and why Kropotkin is a prophet for the art of living in the twenty-first century. The interview lasts around 50 minutes.
Podcast: Radical Art of Living interview
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This week I was the guest on Elese Coit’s ‘A New Way to Handle Absolutely Everything’ radio show in Seattle. We spoke together on the subject of ‘Empathy, the Radical Art of Living’.Podcast: Sally on Sunday interview
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On November 15 I spoke about empathy and the Outrospection blog on BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Sally on Sunday’ programme hosted by Sally Magnusson.