News commentary

Empathy machines: ‘This American Life’ and the public radio structure of feeling

Current · Jason Loviglio · last updated

A colleague shared with me a photo of a Post-it note with the words “Become Empathy Machines!” scrawled on it, taken at the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago on Nov. 4, 2016. It was two days after the stunning election of Donald Trump, and one of the podcasters or producers or radio journalists had written this message in response and pasted it to a wall as part of a makeshift Post-it note mural that sprang up to collect reactions and to identify ways forward in a country that suddenly seemed strange.

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