August 5, 2010

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Whole Show Blow-by-Blow

Today's guest host was Jim Brown.

It's Thursday August 5th.

Stockwell Day says un-reported crimes are on the rise in Canada, but couldn't provide a source to backup his assertion.

Currently, Turns out it was the long-form census. Awkward!

This is The Current.

B.C. Forest Fires

Three clusters of fires now cover about 500 square kilometres across the north-central part of BC's interior. More than 750 square kilometres of land have already been damaged or destroyed. Officials expect an average of 50 new fires to break out every day unless heavy rain develops - something that is not in the forecast. Of course, British Columbia battles forest fires every summer. According to Robert Gray, this summer didn't have to be so bad. He's a fire ecologist. Six years ago, he co-authored a government-commissioned study about how the BC government could reduce the risk and the intensity of forest fires. And he says the government still hasn't taken enough action. Robert Gray was in Vancouver.

Pat Bell was also brought into the conversation. He's British Columbia's Minister of Forests and Range. And he was in Kamloops.

HOUR TWO

Empathy

In recent years, the idea that empathy as an inherently valuable trait has been driving research in fields as diverse as neuroscience, psychology, early childhood development and political science. But earlier this summer, at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists presented new research suggesting that university students today are 40 per cent less empathetic than their counterparts from 30-years-ago. The results of the study have been disputed. But it has raised the possibility that we are becoming less capable of empathy even as we come to value it more.

For his thoughts on the value of empathy, we're joined by Robert Brain. He's a historian at the University of British Columbia. Two years ago, he convened a conference called Varieties of Empathy in Science, Art and Culture. And he was in Vancouver.

One of the guests at Brain's empathy conference was Jean Decety, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. He did a study on something called Empathy for Pain. Basically, when you see someone in pain, mirror neurons in your brain fire, giving you that wincing feeling. But some people, like doctors, have to cause people pain. Dr. Decety did scans of doctors brains and it turned out that their brains shut down the effect of those mirror neurons. They don't experience empathy for pain.

But medical schools are looking for ways to teach doctors to maintain their empathy. One of the more successful methods is called narrative medicine. It was developed by Doctor Rita Charon of Colombia University. We reached Doctor Rita Charon in New York.

Jeremy Rifkin also spoke with us. He is a senior lecturer at The Wharton School, one of the most influential business school in the world. He also serves as an advisor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. And he thinks that empathy might just save the world. He makes the case in his most recent book, The Empathic Civilization. Jeremy Rifkin was in Washington.