Kitchen table conversations

Empathy is a powerful driver of civic engagement.

I’m writing this just before midnight, and not according to plan. I had intended to attend a pretty cool event: an all-night reading of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, at Brookline Booksmith. If you’re not familiar with the novel, it’s a 1930s exploration of how an authoritarian regime could take hold in the US. The bookstore connected with an arts organization to bring in guest authors all night. Pretty damn cool! Unfortunately a snowstorm scared me off, as it turns, needlessly.

But I did discover something else today. There’s a really interesting NPR podcast called Kitchen table conversations, that presents stories and perspectives from unexpected sources. Notably, it gives meaningful voice to voters who switched from Democrat to Republican in the past presidential election. Check out this one, for example:

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/509497278/509807356

I listed to five episodes today because i really do believe more empathy is needed. It’s worth a listen.

[Edit: I’m not sure why I can’t get the embed code for the podcast to work. But click through listen. It’s worth it.]