INSIDE AND OUTSIDE: Nature + Pop Culture News with Jessica Murnane · Jessica Murnane

Coffins Made Of Mushrooms and Empathy For As*holes with Karen Faith

·51 min·5 clips

Karen Faith declares, 'I must believe that every human life is worthy of love. No matter what,' arguing exceptions to this principle become dangerously expansive.

Host Jessica Murnan interviews empathy trainer and ethnographer Karen Faith about the limits of empathy in the face of incomprehensible evil and political division. They discuss mushroom coffins as eco-friendly burial options, then dive into Karen's struggle to extend empathy to figures like Jeffrey Epstein and her framework for when perspective-taking becomes too costly. The conversation explores practical empathy tools, the difference between empathy and justice, and how to maintain relationships across political divides.

As heard by us

A calm, unsentimental look at empathy, compassion, and disagreement.

Jessica Murnane spends the hour tracing the gap between understanding people and signing off on what they believe or do. Karen Faith brings a calm, ethnography-shaped lens to that tension, and the conversation lands on a useful distinction: empathy is perspective taking, a way…

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Why you'd press play

A political, not-fun-pop-culture conversation about empathy, compassion, and why some differences feel harder to carry.

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