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Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Go To on Why Empathy Doesn't Scale

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.93.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2026

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There's a problem with leading with your heart: empathy doesn't scale. One sick child and we open our wallets. A thousand sick children and we change the channel. Behavioral psychologist Paul Slovic has spent years studying this—the more people suffering, the less we feel. Kelly reflects on her conversation with investor and philanthropist Olivia Walton, who figured out how to beat compassion fade by doing something smarter than making the moral case for maternal health. She built a business case: for every dollar you invest in maternal health, you get eleven back. It's about understanding that empathy burns hot and burns out, but when you make the business case, you've built a diesel engine—it just keeps running. This episode has been made possible by a grant from Ingeborg Initiatives, a social impact platform dedicated to improving maternal health and making it easier to raise a family. To learn more, please visit: ⁠https://www.ingeborginitiatives.com⁠. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Now, are all the traitors present?

0:28.6

Let's get started, shall we? From rags to riches. I'm so sick of this. Working like a dog and being treated worse. Yorkshire to New York. Poor climbers, you and me. A life dedicated to revenge. Let's make this an occasion to remember. A woman of substance on Channel 4, stream now. Hey, everybody.

0:29.6

This short segment is called a go-to.

0:33.6

It refers back to this crazy thing we used to do at the end of our sorority meetings in college,

0:37.7

if you can believe that.

0:38.6

It was called for the good of the order, and it was a way to share something that had emerged

0:43.2

over the course of the week, which really was a bit of learning or thinking or feeling

0:48.8

that was to everyone's benefit to share.

0:52.8

And so that's all we'll do here. Every Friday, we release a go-to,

0:57.0

and we encourage you to share it with friends around the country. We know that people use it

1:02.1

as a way to stay in touch with their best friends across the country, and of course, far-flung family

1:07.7

members, wherever they might be. And as for your local nearest and dearest,

1:12.6

consider it fodder for discussion over the course of the weekend. This is Kelly Corrigan

1:17.3

wonders in our weekly segment called GoTo. This week's GoTo is a reflection on my conversation

1:26.3

from Tuesday with philanthropist and investor Olivia Walton.

1:31.1

So there's a concept in behavioral psychology called Compassion Fade. A researcher named Paul

1:37.2

Slovak at the University of Oregon has spent years studying it. And here's what he found.

1:42.5

The more people who are suffering, the less we feel.

1:45.9

One sick child, we open our wallets. A hundred sick children, we start to go numb. A thousand, we change

1:51.8

the channel. Our empathy does not scale. It actually shrinks as the numbers get bigger. I've talked to

1:58.3

the great columnist Nick Christoff about this, and he has learned

2:02.4

over years and columns that when he talks about a single person suffering, and he gives that

...

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