Shows
Art of SupplyEmpathy is Not a Soft Skill“The first casualty of war is truth—the second is empathy. Empathy has to call for backup. The backup is in the form of radical empathy.” -Lou Agosta, Assistant Professor of Medical Education at Ross Medical University at Saint Anthony Hospital We have a difficult six months ahead of us. A contentious presidential election looms in the U.S., the world continues to be war-torn, and companies find themselves mired in social topics that threaten to win over one half of consumers or stakeholders while alienating the other half. Could consciously practiced empath...
2024-05-1623 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaInterview with Rob Volpe about his empathy book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a TimeLou Agosta in conversation with Rob Volpe, CEO and Chief Catalyst, Ignite 360, about Rob's book on empathy: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time - in this conversation Rob shares what he had to survive and what he learned in the college of hard knocks when the intolerant kids in 5th grade decided to make Rob's sexual orientation a matter of bullying; how he survived these challenges; and brought what he learned to become an empathic story teller, calling forth insights about business, consumer products and services and, most importantly, human nature...
2022-06-2554 min
Baleine sous GravillonS03E106 Qui sont les baleineaux sous le gravillon en 2022 ? 3/4 : Marguerite, François, Tiffany et LouBaleine sous Gravillon réunit une équipe de bénévoles, sans qui ces podcasts n’existeraient plus depuis longtemps.
Cette dernière série de la saison 03 rend hommage au” rookies”, aux petits nouveaux arrivés en 2021-2022.
Chacun.e d’entre eux se présente, explique comment il est arrivé à BSG, ce qu’il y fait et quels sont ses épisodes préférés. Amour du Vivant oblige, au moins la moitié de leur témoignage est consacré à raconter leur totem animal.
Ce 3e épisode est dédié à Marguerite aka...
2022-06-2216 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaTransference and Empathy: Where Transference Was, Empathy Shall Be!It a useful and powerful oversimplification that in transference people relate inauthentically whereas in empathy people relate authentically. (Here “authentically” means “without distortion (in so far as that is humanly possible),” “in integrity,” not in a moralizing sense, but in the sense of “with workability in the matter of not fooling oneself.”)
The point is to radicalize the relationship between transference and empathy even to the point of emphasizing divergences and tensions in order subsequently to identify methods of reconciliation and harmonization. That is going to be tough to do because there is a transference dimension (and so also a potent...
2022-06-1643 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy: Top Ten Trends for 2022A new year and a new virus variant? Being cynical and resigned is easy, and the empathy training is to drive out cynicism and resignation – then empathy naturally comes forth. If given half a chance, people want to be empathic. The prediction is that with a rigorous and critical empathy (and getting a very high percent of the population vaccinated), we are equal to the challenge.
This podcast contains my choices and predictions for the top ten trends in empathy for the year 2022.
This episode is also available as a blog post: http://louagosta.com/2022/01/06/em...
2022-01-0646 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 3): Empathy by the NumbersI have been known to say: "We don't need more data; we need expanded empathy!" But, in truth, we need both. The numbers support the conclusion that there is an empathy deficit in the corporate world; but there is also hope that the factors and forces are trending that make possible overcoming this deficit and expanding empathy.
Business leaders lose contact with what clients and consumers are experiencing as the leaders get entangled in solving legal issues, reacting to the competition, or implementing the technologies required to sustain operations. Yet empathy is never needed more than when it...
2021-11-1353 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy Capitalist Tool (Part 2): "CEO" now means "Chief Empathy Officer"“CEO” no longer means “Chief Executive Officer,” but “Chief Empathy Officer.” One can hear the groans—this time, from the executive suite, not the cubicles.
Empathy is one of those things that are hard to delegate. This role shows up like another job responsibility with which the CEO of the organization is tasked—along with everything else that she already has to do. As if she did not already have enough alligators snapping at various parts of her anatomy, one has to be nice about it, too? But of course empathy is not niceness, though it is not about being...
2021-11-0332 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 1): The Empathy Deficit in Business is Getting AttentionWhen I ask business leaders what is their budget for empathy training, the response is often a blank stare. Zero. However, when I ask the person what is the budget for expanded teamwork, reduced conflict, enhanced productivity, commitment to organizational goals, taking ownership of outcomes, product and service innovations, then it turns out that budget exists after all. Empathy makes a difference in connecting the dots between business skills and performance. In this engaging and dynamic podcast, find out how empathy contributes to getting breakthrough results in business in a powerful way by engaging the energies and commitments of...
2021-10-2344 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy and LIterature: Grand Rounds Presentation at Rush Medical University October 13, 2016Most people think that empathy is compassion. And while the world needs more compassion, empathy is distinct from compassion. Empathy tells me what the other individual is experiencing; compassion tells me what to do about it. Engages with examples from world literature, including Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks and Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie. The scenes include empathic receptivity in Hanno's trip to the dentist and empathic understanding in Thomas' encounter with Hanno during the long silence as Gerda makes music with The Lieutenant. Empathic responsiveness is powerfully illustrated in William's work with Blue Roses. Not to be missed!
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2021-10-1551 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy versus Bullying: Part 3: Recommendations for students, parents, and educatorsIn the first two episodes, bullying was defined and the uses of a rigorous and critical empathy to set limits and boundaries and contain, reduce, and stop bullying were explored.
This podcast provides extensive actionable recommendations and guidance for students, parents, and educators on how to handle bullies and bullying. Not to be missed!
[Note: even though these recommendations directly address the "student," they are intended provide guidance to the parent or responsible adult on how he or she is to address the student regarding bullying. They are intended to inform the grown ups speaking...
2021-09-281h 06
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy versus bullying: Part 2: Online bullying and what to do about itThe paradox is the anti-social nature of social networking. The computer screen isolates the person even as the person is trying to connect. The contrary is also the case. The screen connects the person when the person wants to be alone, rudely announcing an incoming message by beeping, demanding one’s attention. Sometimes the screen brings out the anti-social tendencies instead of the pro-social ones, enabling one to be inauthentic, hiding behind a false self.
The cyber bully: The rule of thumb is that whatever a person does in life offline, the person does online, too. Whatever the...
2021-09-1840 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy versus bullying: The biggest bully in my lifeThis is the first podcast in a series on empathy and bullying. The author, Lou Agosta, talks about "the biggest bully in my life" and how empathy is the antithesis of bullying. Bullying is precisely defined and how empathy can be used to deal with bullying is engaged. Inducing empathy in the bully by asking: "How would YOU feel if this [the violence or bad language] were done to you?" does NOT work because the bully is usually not in touch with his feelings. Rather the recommendation and response of empathy is to set limits - reestablish the boundary o...
2021-09-0949 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaReclaiming Conversation in Online Therapy: An Imaginary Dialogue With Sherry Turkle Between Lou Agosta and Arnon RolnickArnon Rolnick and Lou Agosta discuss the work of Sherry Turkle. Professor Turkle gets off a good “Jeremiad” about the damaging effects of beeping, chirping, distracting, interrupting, messaging device. One of the main negative effects is a kind of acquired attention deficit on the part of large segments of the population/community. Key term: acquired attention deficit. The smart phone and text messaging is a significant disruptor to one's ability to be present with oneself and with others. One of the main effects of the digital revolution in everything is that we the community has an "acquired attention deficit" due t...
2021-06-2858 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaResistance to Empathy and How to Overcome it (Part 2): Individual Provider and Receiver (of Empathy)Empathy is supposed to be like motherhood, apple pie, and puppies. What’s not to like? A lot. People can be difficult—very difficult—why should empathizing with them be easy? Yet most of the things that are cited as reasons for criticizing and dismissing empathy—emotional contagion, projection, misinterpretation, gossip, messages lost in translation and devaluing language—are actually breakdowns of empathy. Find out how to practice and train one’s empathy to shift breakdowns in empathy to breakthroughs in empathic receptivity, understanding, responsiveness, possibilities of flourishing, enhanced humanity, relatedness, and building community.
This episode is also available...
2021-06-1932 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaResistance to Empathy and How to Overcome it (Part 1: Organizational Resistance to Empathy)The qualities that make organizations successful are not always the qualities that enhance their empathy. Beating the competition in the market, overcoming technical and legal problems, and "getting your numbers," do not reliably expand your empathy.
It often seems that compliance and rule-making, not empathy, are trending. The organization drives out empathy by enforcing conformity to an extensive and contradictory set of rules, whose complexity is such that at any give time, the individual is technically (though unwittingly) in violation of one of them. What to do about it?
Empathy has a key role to p...
2021-06-1549 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Secret Underground History of Empathy (complete talk)I know what you feel because I feel it, too, as a vicarious experience, not a merger. Without any prerequisites, this presentation engages the deep history of empathy, exploring the underground dynamics of sympathy, fellow feeling, vicarious feeling, in art, altruism, story telling, before the word “empathy” emerged. Without any prerequisites, empathy is engaged through the lens of selected methods of inquiry including phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and linguistic philosophy. The secret underground history of empathy includes works by Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Husserl, and, time permitting, Kohut. When all the philosophical arguments are complete, when all the Freudian transference and...
2021-06-131h 14
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy: The one-minute training [no kidding!]Expand your empathy here-and-now. Empathy training consists in overcoming the obstacles to empathy that people have unwittingly acquired in being taught to conform and survive the day. When the barriers are overcome, then empathy spontaneously develops, grows, comes forth, and expands. There is no catch, no “gotcha.” That is the one-minute empathy training, pure-and-simple. The devil is in the details and the deep work and tips and techniques around eliminating, overcoming, defeating the obstacles, resistance, and blocks to empathy. Find out what are the Big Four empathy breakdowns. It turns out that break downs in empathy, when handled carefully (and...
2021-06-0626 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Natural Empath Meets the Good SamaritanTo regulate your empathy, cross the street. This is an edgy and confrontational way of putting it, but it is literally accurate. Cross the street away from the neighbor to “down regulate” your empathy, and experience less empathic distress; and cross the street towards your neighbor to expand your empathy in the direction of creating an inclusive community of persons, who recognize the value of cooperation.
The empathy lesson is that the vicarious experience does not have to be overwhelming. Rather, with practice, and even if you are a natural empath, you are able to shift your focus...
2021-06-0623 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaHow to know if you are in an abusive relationship and what to do about it - spike in domestic violence accompanies pandemic shelter at homeThree women a day die because of domestic violence (nnedv.org). What is gender violence? How many women and children suffer abuse? How to tell if you are in an abusive relationship? Why was Apna Ghar [Our Home] created? Join Lou Agosta and Radhika Sharma to answer these questions. We will also discuss how we as a society can support survivors of violence and prevent gender violence. Awareness of domestic violence – also called “intimate partner abuse” – has reached a level of Awareness where USA Today has a regular section on the latest perpetrations. Many who have been doing the difficul...
2021-06-0645 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpaths don’t get enough empathyThis gift of empathy shows up as a mixed blessing, since the natural empath experiences the pains and sufferings of the world more intensely and deeply than do other individuals. Less charitable people redescribe the “natural empath” as someone who is “irritable” or “overly sensitive.”
Granted, the natural empath brings a deep sensitivity to the experience of human suffering and joy, the natural empath also lives through the nuances and delicate details of the experiences intensely. Too intensely?
The properly empathic empath uses his or her empathic receptivity as to who the other person is as a possibi...
2021-05-2818 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaGalileo’s Middle Finger: Speaking Truth to [Transgender] Power – and Power Talks BackA scientist has not been burned at the stake in over 350 years - and even then it was Giordano Bruno, not Galileo. Find out how Professor Alice Dreger (PhD) become an advocate for survivors of intersex sexual reassignment surgery and she becomes a strong candidate to be burned in effigy by those for whom she was advocating.
This is a reposting of a book conversation from 2015, now included as a podcast (originally recorded on April 29, 2015 as a live, on air conversation with Alice Dreger, PhD, Professor of Medical Humanities, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine).
With...
2021-05-2847 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Big Four Empathy Breakdowns - and What To Do About Them: How To Transform Them into Empathy BreakthroughsThe Big Four breakdowns of empathy are: emotional contagion, conformity, projection, and getting lost in translations. Every breakdown contains within itself the possibility of a breakthrough. Join Lou in finding out how to transform breakdowns in empathy into breakthroughs in empathy in this engaging and challenging podcast.
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD, and the Chicago Empathy Project
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Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lou-agosta-phd/support
2021-05-231h 21
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEverything You Wanted to Know About Emerging Adulthood but Were Afraid to Ask: Addiction, Learning Challenges, Failure to Launch, and Helicopter ParentsJoin Lou Agosta and his special guests Drs. Jesse Viner and Dale Monroe-Cook for an engaging conversation about the emotional, psychological, and human challenges of emerging adulthood. Drs. Viner and Monroe-Cook address these issues with their clients as Medical director and VP for Clinical Operations at YellowBrick, a national treatment center specializing in working with troubled emerging adults. What is emerging adulthood? What kind of breakdowns do the generations between 18 and 29 years old encounter in engaging in relationships, careers, finance, and life? How does the YellowBrick provide a foundation for turning break-downs in self-defeating behavior, emotional upset, addiction, learning...
2021-05-2357 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaA Rigorous and Critical Empathy: Perform a Readiness AssessmentEmpathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time for it. Empathy is never needed more than when it seems the budget does not allow for it. Empathy is never needed more than when the cynicism and resignation about life, whether in the family or the corporate jungle, are so thick you can’t catch your breath.
Being ready for empathy is like being ready to be born. No one is ready to be born. You just get born. Ready or not, the individual is thrown into the world. No one asked you if...
2021-05-1617 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaA Rumor of Empathy in Modern Music: A Conversation with Mischa Zupko, composer, teacher, artist, musicianIn this podcast, join me and my special guest musician, teacher, and composer Mischa Zupko for a conversation about music, the emotions, empathy, and community, originally broadcast live and in person on Wednesday June 3rd (2015) on VoiceAmerica Empowerment Radio. Mischa is an accomplished music teacher and composer. Music stimulates us to intense emotions, both high and low. Music sets the mood in movies. It stimulates buying behavior in ads. It relieves depression. It gets people dancing. Music can stimulate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move. Stroke patients can sing words that they cannot otherwise say. Music is...
2021-05-1651 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy is a dial, not an on-off switchPeople think of empathy as an "on off" switch. Turn empathy "on" for friends, family, the home team - turn empathy "off" for the bad guys, the competition, or unwelcome visitors. Empathy then tends to get stuck in the "off" position. Rather approach empathy as a dial or tuner - turn it up or turn it down - tune it up or tune it down - in one's relationships in the family, community, business, and interactions of all kinds.
This is a new idea to most people - and it does not come naturally. Practice is needed. T...
2021-05-0813 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaHow Things Were Done [Empathically] in Odessa: A Conversation with Jonathan Brent, Executive Director, YIVOJoin Lou for a conversation with Jonathan Brent, Executive Director of Yivo about how things were done in Odessa. This refers to a celebrated story by Isaac Babel. In 1925, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was founded in Vilna (Wilno, Poland; now Vilnius, Lithuania), by key European intellectuals, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, to record the history and pioneer in the critical study of the language, literature and culture of the Jews of Eastern Europe. From its inception, YIVO was deeply concerned that the language and culture of East European Jewry were undergoing radical change in a rapidly...
2021-05-0841 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy, Stress, Brain Science – the Course!A famous person (Heinz Kohut) once said: "Empathy is oxygen for the soul." So if one is feeling shortness of breath, maybe one needs expanded empathy! This course will connect the dots between empathy and neuroscience ("brain science"). For example, empathic responsiveness releases the compassion hormone oxytocin, which blocks the stress hormone cortisol. [This is an over-simplification, but a compelling one.] Reduced stress correlates to reduced risk of such life style disorders as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, weak immune system, depression, and the common cold.
The session engages each of the following modules in the discussion segment, including...
2021-04-302h 52
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy and compassion fatigue: A radical proposal for overcoming itWhat is the difference between empathy and compassion? One of the criticisms of empathy is that is leaves you vulnerable to compassion fatigue. The helping professions are notoriously exposed to burn out and empathic distress. Well-intentioned helpers end up as emotional basket cases. There is truth to it, but there is also an effective antidote: expanded empathy. Discover a radical proposal: how providers of empathy can overcome compassion fatigue and regulate their own empathy to manage and overcome the risk of burnout and compassion fatigue. Not to be missed!
This episode is also available as a blog...
2021-04-3009 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Evidence: Empathy is Teachable, Trainable, LearnableTired of people talkin' out of their hats about "lack of evidence" for empathy? Such assertions are incorrect. Here are many peer-reviewed, evidence-based publications. I discuss the details - and the evidence.
This essay is an excerpt from Chapter Four of the book Empathy Lessons. This essay is motivated by the need to debunk the position that the practice of empathy is vague and fuzzy and cannot be taught, that you either have it or you don't. Bunk. I am addressing scientists, researchers, health care professionals, who are properly skeptical or improperly dismiss empathy as not scientific...
2021-04-2946 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaListening to Killers: James Garbarino interviewed by Lou Agosta on Jim's 20 years as an exert witness in murder casesJames Garbarino presents lessons learned from his twenty plus years as a psychological expert witness in murder cases. Understanding the victims of violent crimes and the survivors is relatively easy for any decent human being. It is easy to include the survivors in the circle of caring of the community. However, what about understanding the killer?
Garbarino succeeds almost beyond measure in being a voice for killers. They get a hearing. It is not always easy to listen to – but the humanity is there in a way that needs to be heard. No one is saying that so...
2021-04-2350 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Evidence: Empathy is good for your health and well-being (Updated!)Empathy has been criticized as not "evidence-based" or lacking in scientific rigor. This is incorrect. Extensive scientific and peer-reviewed research supports the position that empathy is good for you health and well-being. This podcast covers the research in a brainy but breezy way. The podcast discusses the relevance and the cytokine theory of depression, how this relates to inflammation and inflammation-reducing practices. It also takes a light-hearted and personal look at how the practice of empathy as well as a set of related practices such as mindfulness (meditation), yoga, and Tai Chi contribution to stress reduction (and what the h...
2021-04-191h 24
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Secret Underground History of Empathy (excerpt)This podcast is an excerpt from a live, in person presentation entitled The Secret Underground History of Empathy delivered on July 14, 2016 (Bastille Day) at the University of Chicago Graham School of Continuing Education by Lou Agosta. It contains the four-fold analysis and definition of empathy as receptivity, understanding, interpretation, and responsiveness. It contains remarks on Paul Ekman's application of micro-expressions in relation to empathy and a Q&A segment. For those interested in expanding their empathy, not to be missed!
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project
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Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm...
2021-04-1115 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaEmpathy is the New LoveThe idea is that what people really want more than anything else is to be gotten for who they are – i.e., people want empathy. You know how in the world of high fashion grey is the new black? Well, empathy is the new love.
My proposal is that love contains an empathic core in its stimulating and exciting aspects and that which is the “love sickness” part is due, well, to the struggle to unite affection and desire. In particular, that which is the “love sickness” is due to a breakdown in empathy.
The goal in love...
2021-04-1130 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaA Rumor of Empathy in HeideggerThis is a live talk / presentation at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University on May 6, 2013 by Lou Agosta discussing his book Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, including an approach to empathy based on Martin Heidegger's challenge of producing "a special hermeneutic of empathy."
The talk takes the listener through Heidegger's design distinctions for human existence [Dasein] and these distinction apply to empathy and generate a Heideggerian definition of empathy including: affectivity, understanding, interpretation, and talk (speech) - as authentic forms of human relatedness. Lou tells a story about empathy based on a famous...
2021-04-1118 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThe Case of Dr Know-it-all: Empathy Gives Us Our HumanityYou do not need a philosopher to tell you what empathy is. What then do you need? How about a folktale, a narrative, a fairy tale?
Rather than start with a definition of empathy, my proposal is to start by telling a couple of stories, in which empathy (and its breakdown) plays a crucial role.
Both stories are anonymous folktales from the collection edited by the Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The first story (Dr Know-it-all) features top down, cognitive empathy; the second story (The Youth Who Went For to Learn Fear) features bottom up, af...
2021-04-1037 min
A Rumor of Empathy with Lou AgostaThree books on empathy reviewed: The good, the bad, and the uglyThree books on empathy that you will want to check out - after getting the short version here. I had some fun with this one - and, you, the listener, will too, in addition to expanding your empathy. This podcast contains additional bonus material not in the original blog post about how I came to write a book length review of The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Empathy, one of three books reviewed here along with William Miller's Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding and Cris Beam's I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy. The...
2021-04-0526 min
Living Well with Ann BealEmpathy and the Christmas SeasonDr. Lou Agosta, empathy specialist and author of Empathy Lessons, joins host Ann Beal in this timely episode of Living Well with Ann Beal titled Empathy and the Christmas Season.Dr. Agosta discusses how to feel for others, reach out with genuine care, and positively impact the world through expanded empathy. Christmas is the perfect time to turn attention outward, experiencing others' stories vicariously—as we do when watching a movie or reading a book. He encourages listeners to live through another's perspective for a moment, tapping into the innate empathy he believes exists in everyone.Th...
2014-12-2457 min