SHERRY TURKLE mourned the loss of conversation in ALONE TOGETHER: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other and called for its restoration in RECLAIMING CONVERSATION: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. In THE EMPATHY DIARIES: A Memoir, she turns the conversation on herself, and weaves together her very personal story and her evolving insights on technology, empathy, and ethics. Among her questions: How did her role in keeping family secrets influence her as a researcher, a teacher, a writer, and a woman? To learn more about the book and read an excerpt: bit.ly/3lyo4HS; more about Sherry’s work: sherryturkle.mit.edu

STEVEN GREENHOUSE covered labor for the New ¥ork Times for 19 years. Unions played a key role when the American economy created the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. Given how clearly unions improved the lives of hundreds of millions of laborers, why did workers allow corporations and government to weaken and shrink those unions? What can we do about it? Can our shared vulnerability to the pandemic and its destruction of the economy help us recreate the post-war experience of shared prosperity? We talk about greenhouse’s latest book, Beaten Down Worked Up: The Past Present and Future of American Labor.

Impeachment #2 is over, Trump is still off Twitter, vaccines are on the rise, and Biden is committed to relief for American families. Let’s take a breath – and listen to my remarkable 2002 conversation with National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence WADE DAVIS, about his wild path to the corners of the earth from the Amazon to the Arctic, his experiences with psychotropic plants, the pluses and minuses of Western progress, and the threats to indigenous peoples as told in his book The Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures.

In 1999, MICHAEL MANN co-authored a scientific paper that included a graph that tracked temperatures over the last 1000 years. Known as “the hockey stick,” it showed that climate change was real. His integrity attacked, he learned the strategies and methods of those who would postpone and disable our efforts to deal with climate change. In his latest book, The New Climate War, Mann debunks false narratives and argues that all is not lost. He believes Biden is on the right track, but warns we won’t succeed unless we learn to recognize and defeat the latest tactics of the forces of inaction.

Biden’s pitching unity, but he seems determined to go big and the Dems sound serious about accountability. Pandemic numbers are easing and vaccines increasing, but we fear the unknown of virus variants. Normal is not around the corner. How will we come out of this – as a society and as individuals? Here’s my 2014 conversation with DANIEL GOLEMAN. In his book, FOCUS: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, he cites the latest neuroscience to make the case for the power and impact of where we choose to put our attention. Like a muscle, use attention poorly and it withers; work it in the right way and it strengthens.