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