Empathy Machines

Jason Loviglio is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), USA. He is the founding chair of the Media and Communication Studies Department at UMBC, and he is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion of Radio and Podcast Studies (2022) and Radio Journal: Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media (2017–present).

• Introduction: “Become Empathy Machines!”1. A Feeling Medium2. Voracious Voyagers: NPR Listens3. Feeling Playful: This American Life and Narrative Enchantment4. Feeling American: This American Life Goes to War5. Feeling Flush – Planet Money and The American Dream6. Fellow Feeling: This American Life and the Gendered Voice7. Feeling Uncomfortable: The Politics and Aesthetics of CringeConclusion: Maybe It’s a Feeling? How This American Life Long EnduredIndex

This book is an astonishing piece of scholarship – ambitious, erudite, insightful, and brilliantly readable. Jason Loviglio has surely produced the definitive study of This American Life; but more than that, his overarching analysis of how affect plays out across a century of public radio and transmedia shows should make Empathy Machines a standard reference work for anyone interested in the power of media in politics and everyday life.