48. Mary-Louise Parker (Actress, Author): Virtual Empathy?/Lessons Relearned

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2016

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Death, Bob Marley, parenthood, gratitude, and what to do in the face of incalculable suffering. These are just a few of the topics raised in this episode's vulnerable, searching discussion with Tony, Emmy, Obie, and two-time Golden Globe award-winning actress and author Mary-Louise Parker. She’s won many awards -- Tony, Obie, Golden Globe, Emmy -- for her roles in the Showtime series Weeds, the TV miniseries of Angels in America, and the play Proof, among other things. Unbeknownst to many people until now, she’s also a seriously talented writer. Her first book, Dear Mr. You, is a series of letters to men, real and hypothetical, living and dead, who have had a meaningful impact on her life. Surprise interview clips from Henry Rollins and Ralph Rivera set Mary-Louise and host Jason Gots off on a conversation about the limits of empathy, the power of music, and the fact that likability is way overrated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's show is brought to you by the new podcast, Dog Smarts. Each episode features leading researchers and academics that tackle the questions of language, memory, intelligence, and even love as they pertain to our dogs.
0:14.0	Subscribe to Dog Smarts on iTunes Now. Our episode is also sponsored by a product I genuinely love, which is not something that I can say about a lot of products.
0:23.6	It's the Great Courses Plus video learning service.
0:26.6	These are hundreds of lectures by top professors on anything that your nerdy heart desires to learn from cooking to calculus.
0:33.6	No tests, no expectations. You watch whenever and wherever you like on any device. For example,
0:40.3	one of their courses is Your Deceptive Mind, which is a brilliant, comprehensive look at all the
0:45.4	ways we're bad at thinking in case you hadn't already figured that out from social media.
0:50.1	And now, the Great Courses Plus is offering our listeners a chance to stream hundreds of their courses,
0:55.4	including your deceptive mind, which is a $215 value for free when you go to the greatcoursesplus.com
1:03.4	slash think.
1:05.3	That's the greatcoursesplus.com slash think.
1:10.3	Hi there. I'm Jason Gatz and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.
1:20.1	Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from some of the most creative thinkers around.
1:26.0	On the Think Again podcast, we get out of our comfort zone,
1:29.4	surprising our guests and me, your host,
1:32.1	with unexpected conversation starters
1:34.1	from Big Think's vast interview archives,
1:37.3	ideas that neither my guest nor I came here prepared to discuss.
1:41.5	And today I'm very, very happy that my guest is actress
1:44.0	and author Mary Louise Parker.
1:45.8	She's won many awards, Tony, Obie, Golden Globe, Emmy for roles in the Showtime series
1:52.0	Weeds, the TV miniseries of Angels in America, and the play Proof, among other things.
	...

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