Gear up for episode #41 of the Downtown Podcast! In this episode, we welcome Scott Stratten, also known as @unmarketing online. Scott was recently named one of the top 5 social media influencers in the world on Forbes.com and we were thrilled to have …

We can be healthier, live longer, and make the world a better place by exploring our potential for compassionate behavior, according to neurosurgeon James Doty,founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, …

Compassion is a word that can feel a bit overused these days. Everyone seems to remind us to be compassionate with ourselves and others. But there is immense worth to the concept and the deeper meaning behind it. I’ve been reading a classic …

The lack of self-compassion could be a contributing factor in the development of homesickness, according to a recent study. Self-compassion is defined in the study as “the degree to which people treat themselves kindly during distressing situations.” T…

In order to better understand criminals’ thought processes, Dr. Jean Decety, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, conducted a two-year study that analyzed why psychopaths don’t feel empathetic about committin…

People shouldn’t assume that someone who can easily read their feelings always has their best interests at heart. Although good emotion-recognition skills might seem like concern and empathy, some people might use these skills to manipulate others…

Lately I have begun to fantasize about a different kind of discourse. What if, rather than learning to demonize people who hold different views, we learned how to picture them positively and empathize with them, even if we continued to believe they wer…

While chimps, bonobos, and baboons catch yawns from each other, especially when strong social bonds exist, contagious yawns seem to have no intrinsic survival value, making the evolutionary impetus to select for such behavior enigmatic. By viewing caug…