TED

Why You Should Share a Recipe with a Stranger | Anuj Gupta | TED

Those cuisines are more than just their ingredients. They're collections of stories, histories, values, memories. When we start to learn something about one another's cuisine, we often discover something deeper. We are not as different from each other as we think.

Hidden Brain

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

We tend to think of justice as something that exists in the world — that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. When we see someone suffering, it's natural to assume they must have done something to deserve it. But this belief, psychologists have found, can cause us to blame the victims of misfortune rather than help them.

Book of the Day

Lois Lowry on 'Building 903,' 'The Giver' and relationships between the old and young

When we lose that power to imagine ourselves into the being of another creature another human or in fact a caterpillar uh we we lose the capacity for empathy and that's the thing that's going to destroy us in the future if we let it.

Hidden Brain

How to Make a Difference: Part 1

Most of us know that we should give to causes we care about, but we rarely stop to ask whether the charities we support are actually effective. When psychologist Paul Bloom looked at how people make charitable decisions, he found something troubling: we are far more moved by a single identifiable victim than by statistical evidence of mass suffering.

Hidden Brain

The Things We Don't Say

We expect that people will judge us harshly for saying something awkward, but actually, people often appreciate the effort. The discomfort we feel about saying the wrong thing is much greater than the discomfort the other person feels when we say nothing at all.

Book of the Day

Author Liane Moriarty on her long-awaited sequel to 'Big Little Lies'

I guess I can remember reading books when I was younger about older women and thinking, uh, isn't that interesting? They're still they still have a a rich inner life. They're still people,

TED Intersections

How to Live a Good Life — on Earth and in Space | TED Intersections

What we owe another person is to be willing to look at them again. Which means like often times we meet people and we sort of form our assumptions and stereotypes about them. We kind of We put them in a little category in our brain and then we interact with them according to that category.

Hidden Brain

How to Be A Better Partner

Most of us think we know what our partners want and need, but research suggests we're not nearly as good at this as we think. We assume that because we love someone, we understand them. But love and understanding are not the same thing.

Hidden Brain

How to Be A Better Partner

Most of us think we know what our partners want and need, but research suggests we're often surprisingly wrong. We see our partners through the lens of our own desires and fears, and we mistake what we want for what they want.

Hidden Brain

How to Be A Better Partner

Most of us think we know what our partners want and need. But Epley's research suggests we're not nearly as good at this as we think we are. We often fail to ask, and instead rely on assumptions that can be badly wrong.

Hidden Brain

How Feelings Make Us Smarter

Some people are remarkably good at reading the emotional temperature of a situation. They can pick up on what others are feeling, manage their own emotions, and respond skillfully.

Daily Stoic

The Man Traveling America to Prove You Wrong About It

It's my responsibility to be the conduit to bring that message out whether I agree with it or not and let the audience see it. When you can understand where someone's coming from, it definitely develops empathy. You don't have to agree.

It's Been a Minute

What's a pathway to freedom? Reading.

We often get confused. We imagine that the thing that connects us is like our skin color, our complexion, our culture, our profession. But but it's not. It's the ability to be touched by a story.

Hidden Brain

You Are Not Ordinary

Most of us know, of course, that we are not actually the center of the universe. But we often act as if we are. We notice when we are the victim of rudeness, but we rarely think about all the times when other people were rude and we weren't around to experience it.

Hidden Brain

You Are Not Ordinary

Most of us recognize that we were shaped by the circumstances of our births. But we rarely consider that all the people who matter to us were also shaped by their circumstances. We assume the people in our lives have freely chosen their values, beliefs, and behaviors, when in fact all of these were shaped by their experiences and the brains they happened to be born with.

Fresh Air

Actor Jon Bernthal on grit, dedication & the teacher who saved him

I love opportunities to turn my back on the audience. I love to sort of take it too far to try to push myself to a place or push the audience to a place where they can no longer be with this character, but then try to win them back through showing the fragility of their heart, showing how brokenhearted they are, showing how much pain they have, because I do think pain is a real adhesive. And I think it's the thing that really connects all of us.

Fresh Air

French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani on feminism & freedom

when I was a teenager, I hated my parents for that. I judged them very harshly because I thought that they were hypocrites. And I thought that they were cowards. And you know, when I was writing the book, my own son is now 15 years old and I put myself in the shoes of my parents. And I thought, yeah, of course, if I was in the same situation, I think I would act the same. My mother was not a coward. She was a mother.

TED

Why AI Will Never Replace a Great Teacher | Matt Wu | TED

That is what makes education human. Not just the transfer of knowledge, but the ability to understand others and use that to shape your own perspective.

It's Been a Minute

So you've changed. Will it stick?

We're judges of other people's change, and we don't always do it in the most thoughtful, considered way.

Hidden Brain

A Secret Source of Connection

Most of us think about what we say to others. We think about whether our words might hurt or please them, whether we're saying the right things at the right time. But we rarely think about how we listen. We assume we're doing it fine, or well enough. Yet listening is one of the most powerful things we can do for another person.

Book of the Day

'The Yahoo Boys' investigates Nigeria’s network of cyber crime 'sweetheart scams'

I know that all these scams sound preposterous to most people. But I think when talking about these victims, one has to make the effort to put themselves in their shoes. And we are talking about people who have gone through hell.

Hidden Brain

A Secret Source of Connection

We all have moments in our lives when we see someone who could use a helping hand. We tell ourselves we should help, but then something stops us.

The Daily

Steven Spielberg on the Real Life Evidence That Inspired 'Disclosure Day'

The thing that we need to preserve in our society more than anything else, which is something which I believe is as fragile as democracy, is empathy.

Book of the Day

ABC News' Martha Raddatz on 'The Hero Next Door,' her collection of veterans’ stories

I have always considered myself kind of a bridge. I can help those people who do not understand the military, who don't understand that these are the guys next door who four days before they were in a war zone were in a minivan taking their kids to school.

Hidden Brain

The Empathy Gym

Some people are good at putting themselves in another person's shoes. Others may struggle to relate. But psychologist Jamil Zaki argues that empathy isn't a fixed trait.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

Brandi Carlile helps us say goodbye to Bill Kurtis!

I was on Interstate 5 in over in the Pacific Northwest where I live and one of those big trucks that's got all the chickens in it like bombing down the highway and I looked at it and a chicken looked into my soul.

Book of the Day

Two new murder mysteries cleverly explore the meta — in two very different ways

If I spoke to every person on this bus and asked them about their life story, I bet it would be so much better than any fiction that I could write because you wouldn't believe what people have survived and triumphed and seen and done and the grief and the loss and the joy.

Fresh Air

Palestinian & Israeli activists share a vision of peace

People, I think, don't realize one small action, one kind word. You never leave the person you meet the same after you've interacted with them, and I wanted to do that for Ma'oz and for others.

Fresh Air

John Lithgow

You look for ways you can empathize with every character. And if you're playing a scoundrel of any stripe, you just try to make it interesting. You try to figure out what made him that way.

TED Radio Hour

How does your brain perceive the world?

Our minds are black boxes to each other. I think if we actually switched consciousnesses, if we had like a Freaky Friday situation, initially we'd be totally lost in the wilderness.

TED

A Different Way to Measure Success in Health Care | Andrew Bastawrous | TED

The greatest gift I could give her was not her sight but to have her be truly seen.

TED Radio Hour

How does your brain perceive the world?

Our minds are black boxes to each other. I think if we actually switched consciousnesses, if we had, like, a Freaky Friday situation, initially we'd be totally lost in the wilderness.