I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear and Vivit, conversations about connecting and communicating.

When you have a book titled Against Empathy, you get some cranky people and what I find ironic

is I get these emails saying, you know, you're a monster, you don't appreciate empathy

as a source of goodness, ah, to come to your house and beat you up.

When I read that Paul Bloom had written the book about empathy, I was delighted.

Then when I read that the book was against empathy, I thought it was a typo.

I knew Paul.

Years earlier, I had interviewed him in a garden at Yale where he's a professor of psychology.

He's a serious person who thinks a lot about what leads to moral behavior and here he was

trashing empathy.

I knew I had to have him on the show.

Paul, I'm so glad to be talking to you.

When I was writing this last book of mine, I was thinking about you and writing about you,

reading about you, because I had all this stuff about empathy in the book and you have this

wonderful book called Against Empathy.

So I can't wait to compare notes with you about empathy.

Well, thanks for having me here.

I loved your book, even though it's a very pro empathy.

I think I'll forgive you that.

I think when we start talking, we realize we agree on a lot of things.

We're talking to some extent.

We're just agreeing only in a sense that I'm talking about one thing here to have another

...