Episode · EconTalk · 2021-03-15
Books mentioned on Sherry Turkle on Family, Artificial Intelligence, and the Empathy Diaries
Psychologist and author Sherry Turkle of MIT talks about her book, The Empathy Diaries, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. The Empathy Diaries is a memoir about Turkle's secretive family and how that secrecy turned Turkle into an acute observer, skilled at revealing the story behind the story.
Russ Roberts discussed The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Empathy Diaries
The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle is a deeply moving and revealing memoir that traces the author's personal journey, family dynamics, and intellectual evolution as a pioneering scholar of technology and human psychology.
Discussed“it's a heartbreaking book in many passages it is an illuminating book in others it's a it's um it's an incredible read uh you you mention how um your mother divorced your birth father when you were young and kept the two of you apart for reasons you eventually come to appreciate and talk about the book”
Where to get it
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Great Expectations
Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's classic coming-of-age novel that follows the orphan Pip as he navigates class, ambition, and heartbreak in nineteenth-century England.
Discussed“i couldn't help thinking of great expectations yes by dickens one of my all-time favorite novels where pip the main character is going to have a chance to live in a different world in the world that his his sister who's raising him and his uncle who are raising him”
Where to get it
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Reclaiming Conversation
Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle is a nonfiction book exploring how digital devices, social media, and texting diminish human empathy and undermine the capacity for deep personal connection.
Discussed“you've written quite a few but your other recent book reclaiming conversation um”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (8) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“her latest book is the empathy diaries a memoir”
“she's also the author of reclaiming conversation the power of talk in a digital age”
“and it turns out that readers of the book will find out that i didn't have the best birth father”
“the empathy diaries isn't supposed to be me showing that i'm i'm so great i'm empathic with other people look at me i'm empathic with my student”
“if you don't talk about and this is again where i think my emphasis on conversation comes in my in my work i wrote a book called reclaiming conversation and i'm passionate about it”
“and we're having a conversation which would not be enhanced if you were also reading like war and peace on a screen on your spectacles off to the side off to the side”
“this is something i try to talk about a little bit in in the empathy diaries in other words um empathy is an active it's an active thing”
“her book is the empathy diary”