Something as important and central and encompassing as empathy can't be all bad. I think empathy plays a role in intimate relationships, where you might want your partner not just to care about you or understand you but to feel what you feel.

I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media.

What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel.

Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico.

Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

When you start writing things to try to persuade someone who's not already part of your guild or your profession that something is interesting, it forces you to ask yourself, "Well, why is this interesting?"