Empathy Machines

Name: Empathy Machines
Brand: Bloomsbury Publishing (AUS)
Price: 90.75 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling

By: Professor Jason Loviglio

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Paperback | 22 January 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
256 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.6 x 14.0 x 2.54

Paperback

$90.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $22.69 with

Available: 22nd January 2026

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The first book-length treatment of This American Life, Empathy Machines contextualizes the influential show within the history of radio, looking back to radioâs golden era and the para-social connections that it encouraged, as well as the formation of NPR in the 1960s and the âGreat Society Liberalismâ that guided its programming and approach to the audience.
Empathy Machines identifies This American Life as a central cultural institution in the evolution of empathy as a âliberal feelingâ central to podcast storytelling and the neoliberal era in which it developed. This American Life revitalized the public radio traditions of investigative journalism and sonically inventive audio production. An early adopter of podcasting as a time-shifted delivery mechanism for its broadcast content, the program also ushered in appointment listening, a key innovation and disruption in the emerging chaotic attention economy of the 21st century. Empathy Machines centers This American Life as a model for prioritizing empathy as an affective and ideological
strategy for feeling liberal as liberal democracyâs precarious balance of opposites began to fracture into hypercapitalism, atavistic ethnonationalism, and new identity politics.

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