Episode 12 - Establishing Empathy with Mike Finucane

On this episode, Mike Finucane, a campus minister at a high-school in St. Louis, and I discuss how books can help develop empathy. He also gives a great tip from his dad about how to tackle a large non-fiction text. We also confirm that collecting books shouldn’t be considered a bad habit if you love it. We talk about a lot of really intense books but I hope that our discussion will inspire readers to do a deep dive into some of the topics.    Books mentioned in this episode:    What Betsy’s reading:  The Nix by Nathan Hill  The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon    Books Highlighted by Mike:  Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke  Stories of Your LIfe and Others by Ted Chiang  Exhalation by Ted Chiang  The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz  Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick Gilead by Marilynne Robinson  The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin  Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle City of Bohane by Kevin Barry  The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us by Ed Yong   Other Books Mentioned in the Episode: All books available on my Bookshop.org episode page.   Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky  The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro  The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain  How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens  God Knows by Joseph Heller  Catch-22 by Joseph Heller  Your Duck is My Duck: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg  Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe  Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe  Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe  The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin  There are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan