In “The Narrative Brain,” Fritz Breithaupt attempts to deconstruct these processes and reveal how they work, going between high abstraction and specific cases.

Breithaupt is alarmed at the apparent new virus of selective empathy and how it's deepening divisions. ... What we can do when we do empathy, proposes Fritz, is help ourselves.

FRITZ BREITHAUPT: Absolutely. That's exactly how I grew up. ROSIN: This is Fritz Breithaupt, a professor at the University of Indiana who wrote a book on empathy.

Nonfiction. The Narrative Brain: The Stories Our Neurons Tell by Fritz Breithaupt. Yale University Press, 2025 ($35) Humans are storytelling ­animals. We narrate our lives as soon as we can speak ...

Fritz Breithaupt, Andrew B. B. Hamilton. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How? Amazon; Independent Bookstores; So science seems to suggest that empathy is sort of baked into our being.

Fritz Breithaupt is a humanities scholar and cognitive scientist at Indiana University. His newest book, “The Dark Sides of Empathy,” is forthcoming in spring 2018.

By Fritz Alwin Breithaupt. Yale University Press. 296 pages. We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site. Buy Book. Amazon Barnes & Noble Books a Million Bookshop.

FRITZ BREITHAUPT: Absolutely. That's exactly how I grew up. ROSIN: This is Fritz Breithaupt, a professor at the University of Indiana who wrote a book on empathy.

FRITZ BREITHAUPT: Absolutely. That's exactly how I grew up. ROSIN: This is Fritz Breithaupt, a professor at the University of Indiana who wrote a book on empathy.

The latest episode of NPR's Podcast Invisibilia examines the history of empathy in American culture. In this era of political polarization, empathy has fallen out of fashion.

The latest episode of NPR's Podcast Invisibilia examines the history of empathy in American culture. In this era of political polarization, empathy has fallen out of fashion.

The latest episode of NPR's Podcast Invisibilia examines the history of empathy in American culture. In this era of political polarization, empathy has fallen out of fashion.