Oh, hello friends. Welcome back to Modern Wisdom.

Before I go on to today's guest, I need to give you a warning that you will only be receiving

one episode per week for the next couple of weeks. I'm jetting off a game to Bali, which

means that you will unfortunately be left with just one Modern Wisdom episode every seven

days until I get back. But today's episode will make up for it. Professor Paul Bloom is

a psychologist from the University of Yale. He's just a crazy, interesting guy. Someone

that swims in the circles of philosophy and psychology and looks at the first principles

of why we are the way we are in the way that Professor Bloom does is it's just an absolute

dream for me. So I mean, we get to talk today about why empathy is bad, the case for rational

compassion, how pleasure works and why we like what we like. We talk about racism, how

to have a productive conversation, why we love people who have died. I mean, these

questions are just so cool. Very, very interesting for me to sink my teeth into. Hopefully

we'll be the same for you as well. Before we get into it, I recently, I recently, recently

released a video talking about me starting therapy might not be quite what you expected,

but that's on the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel. So you should go and check that out as

well. But for now, please welcome Professor Paul Bloom.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Professor Paul Bloom. Paul, look at the

thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to have you on. It's been listening

to a lot of your work recently. Some fantastic interviews with Sam Harris and podcast that

you did a little while ago, but some super interesting stuff we've been talking about

empathy and about resilience a lot on the show. Recently, discussed Elliott Kipchow

gave sub to our marathon performance, which is a very resilient physical feat that people

...