Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left Podcast.

This is a sample of our recent bonus episode, usually only available to members.

These episodes are comprised of our crew of researchers, Amanda and myself all getting

together for a roundtable discussion on topics that we find interesting.

So here's a few minutes for free so you can know what all the fuss is about.

Our actual first topic is to hear from Allison from Boulder who wanted to chime in on our

previous discussion about what Dion brought to light for all of us.

This was the connection between reading and empathy and why a lot of people see that as

explicitly bad.

Hi Jay, this is Allison in Boulder.

I wanted to let Dion know that I really appreciate him telling us about the phenomenon of people

like Sam Bankman, fried telling people not to read because they don't want to experience

empathy so they can be sharks, etc.

It really explains something about my ex, who was extremely manipulative and had very little

empathy.

He only read technical books, mainly about engineering, and books about business tycoons

and their strategies.

He thought that reading anything that puts one in the mind of another person, such as fiction,

was a waste of time and he thought I was really stupid for reading things like fiction

or autobiographies of anyone who wasn't talking about making money.

He also used to get angry at me that I wouldn't do things that harm others for his and my

own gain.

...