You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcasts.

Hi, Simon.

Hi, Bob.

How you doing?

I'm doing good, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

So am I. Let me introduce this.

I am Robert Wright, publisher of the Non-Zero Newsletter.

This is a Non-Zero podcast.

You're Simon Baron Cohen, a clinical psychologist, a professor of Cambridge, in England, author of a number

of books, including recently the pattern seekers, how autism drives human invention. Before that,

the science of evil on empathy and the origins of cruelty. That's the American title. In Britain, it's

zero degrees of empathy. I wanted to start by talking about work you did well before either

of those books, back in the 80s, both because they build on it and because it speaks to what

regular readers of my newsletter knows is a special interest of mine, which is cognitive

empathy. By cognitive empathy, I should say, I mean, just trying to understand what's going on

in other people's minds, kind of perspective taking. It's not to be confused with emotional empathy,

which is about your emotional reaction to what you think is going on in their minds,

especially their emotions. So if you say, I feel his pain, that's emotional empathy. If you say,

I think he's in pain, that's cognitive empathy. If you say, I think he's pretending to be in

pain so that I'll give him money. That's cognitive empathy. And so...

Let me just interrupt you there.

Sure.

...