We're becoming a nation of empathy eaters.

I'm Scott Ott with Stephen Green and Bill Whittle.

This episode of Right Angle is brought to you by the members at Bill Whittle.com.

And gentlemen, I'll tell you what set me off about this.

First, I saw this TED talk by a woman named Tina Yang, who was talking about how more and more disadvantaged youth so called are being encouraged to write

trauma essays in their applications for colleges and for scholarships.

And these are essays that are designed to show they've made a transition from pain to progress,

that they are resilient, and so they're supposed to reveal

like their darkest traumas so that they can have a better

application for a scholarship.

And then my lovely bride and I binge watch these talent shows, only two of them.

We watch The Voice, an American Idol.

And this has always been a factor on these two shows, at least during the time when we've watched them.

But I'm constantly talking to the TV and therefore to my poor, you know, long-suffering wife, complaining about the fact that you can't

just have somebody who can sing real good, who comes out there and sings real good, and then

they vote for them. No, you've got to lead off with a story about some sort of pain in their

life. Now, sometimes it's kind of what

we might classify as kind of a statement kind of pain where they're talking about their

sexual identity or something like that. But sometimes it's just somebody in their family died

or they have a brother who is mentally challenged or whatever. But they can't let a contestant run the

gauntlet of these shows without unearthing some some agonizing aspect of their

humanity so that we can be prepped to hear their ability to, as I say, sing real good.

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