Empathy Machines: This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling

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Professor Jason Loviglio (University of Maryland, USA)

Empathy Machines

Name: Empathy Machines
Price: 44.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9798765111680

This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling

Professor Jason Loviglio (University of Maryland, USA)

$44.99

Paperback

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
14 May 2026

Radio; Communication studies; Media studies

Series: Bloomsbury Podcast Studies

The first book-length treatment of This American Life, Empathy Machines contextualizes the influential show within the history of radio, looking back to radio’s golden era and the para-social connections that it encouraged, as well as the formation of NPR in the 1960s and the “Great Society Liberalism” that guided its programming and approach to the audience.

Empathy Machines identifies This American Life as a central cultural institution in the evolution of empathy as a “liberal feeling” central to podcast storytelling and the neoliberal era in which it developed. This American Life revitalized the public radio traditions of investigative journalism and sonically inventive audio production. An early adopter of podcasting as a time-shifted delivery mechanism for its broadcast content, the program also ushered in appointment listening, a key innovation and disruption in the emerging chaotic attention economy of the 21st century. Empathy Machines centers This American Life as a model for prioritizing empathy as an affective and ideological

strategy for feeling liberal as liberal democracy’s precarious balance of opposites began to fracture into hypercapitalism, atavistic ethnonationalism, and new identity politics.

By: Professor Jason Loviglio (University of Maryland USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 426g
ISBN: 9798765111680
Series: Bloomsbury Podcast Studies
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 14 May 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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).

Reviews for Empathy Machines: This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling

In the first book-length analysis of This American Life, Loviglio explores how this innovative and influential public radio program has carved out a space of affect and empathy in an increasingly fractured, individualistic world. * John L. Sullivan, Professor of Media and Communication, Muhlenberg College, USA *