Adam and Arlie Hochschild: Empathy in Nonfiction

After meeting in 1960, Arlie and Adam Hochschild bonded around common ideals and activism, beginning a partnership that led to marriage, family, and, so far, a combined total of nearly 20 books. Their most recent—Arlie's Strangers in Their Own Land and Adam's Spain in Our Hearts—are must-reads for today's political watchers, focusing, respectively, on Tea Party voters in Louisiana and American journalists and fighters who chose to cover or join the Spanish Civil War. During our conversation in Boston in 2017, about two months after the inauguration of Donald Trump, topics included supporting each other as writers (5:30); ways in which their 2016 books reflect on contemporary American political life (10:30); the importance of empathy in nonfiction writing (14:30); advice for aspiring writers (23:30); and thoughts on the kinds of journalists and writers needed today (25:00).