Skip to content

perspective-taking

concept · in 13 videos (2008–2013)

Mentions by year: 2008: 4 · 2009: 4 · 2010: 2 · 2012: 1 · 2013: 2

What the videos say

2008

  • 2008-08-26 · The Catcher in the Rye, Part 2 — John finds hope in the narrating Holden, who a year later writes about who he was in a way that makes readers care, listen and empathize. (00:02:45)
  • 2008-10-16 · What Did You Think of Paper Towns! — A contributor says the book starts as a light-hearted, funny teenage romp and subtly turns into a serious look at how we see other people. (00:02:32)
  • 2008-10-17 · Vital Status Report from NYC — John says Paper Towns is about people who constantly misimagine each other because they think of one another as something other than a person. (00:00:00)
  • 2008-10-17 · Vital Status Report from NYC — John says that, stuck inside our own skins, it is very difficult to imagine another person as they imagine themselves; nobody sees himself as a guy whose thoughts don't matter. (00:00:29)
  • 2008-11-06 · On Loving One Another or Dying — John says the problem with finding Margo, for Q and the other characters, is not the mystery: they don't see Margo, only a funhouse-mirror reflection of themselves. (00:00:58)
  • 2008-11-06 · On Loving One Another or Dying — John believes this results from not doing a good job of imagining what it's like to be other people. (00:02:24)

2009

  • 2009-02-11 · Paper Towns Tastic Question Tuesday — Song of Myself is central because it is a beautiful poem deeply involved with how we can imagine other people more effectively (and, he jokes, Whitman is hot). (00:00:00)
  • 2009-02-11 · Paper Towns Tastic Question Tuesday — Margo is the book's mirror maker: people looking at her see a funhouse-mirror reflection of themselves, not what is true of her, hence the two different, equally inaccurate covers. (00:00:46)
  • 2009-02-11 · Paper Towns Tastic Question Tuesday — Q's misimagining of Margo resembles Pudge's of Alaska; John argues that imagining someone as more than a person does them and ourselves a profound disservice. (00:01:22)
  • 2009-02-11 · Paper Towns Tastic Question Tuesday — The book is about how we misimagine other people and our stories; Radar's parents own the world's largest Black Santa collection because John finds it funny and it asks us to imagine the world more complexly. (00:02:36)
  • 2009-06-23 · Fighting the Flame War! — Hank defines Nerdfighters as people who fight for awesome, love learning and discovering, and try to understand others complexly; anyone who wants to be one probably is. (00:02:54)
  • 2009-09-15 · Internetless in Maine — Hank notes the brothers talk about understanding people complexly yet spend about 10 hours a day at a computer, and asks how you can understand people you know nothing about. (00:02:06)
  • 2009-09-15 · Internetless in Maine — Hank argues we should spend as much time as possible with people as different from us as possible, but do the opposite because similar people are easier to understand. (00:02:06)
  • 2009-10-28 · We Win When Everyone Wins — Hank says this can shrink the world's boundaries: watching YouTube videos makes him care about people, but few Congolese make them, so it's harder to understand them complexly. (00:01:50)

2010

  • 2010-09-20 · Life Is Like Pizza — John says the job of reading is to use stories to see other people as we see ourselves; then the world looks like endless beautiful variations of pizza. (00:03:23)
  • 2010-11-11 · REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution, Part III — John says that more than that, the study of history is essentially an exercise in empathy: imagining being a peasant, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette or Robespierre. (00:04:17)

2012

  • 2012-02-04 · An Awful Lot of Touring — Hank argues this is the only way to really understand different perspectives; without that understanding people start to hate each other and accuse each other of ruining the country. (00:02:33)

2013

  • 2013-01-16 · An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall — John says Paper Towns is about empathy and trying to imagine other people complexly, and hopes his books can jump into the abyss to be with readers. (00:53:07)
  • 2013-01-16 · An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall — John introduces a Paper Towns reader's theater, a book about imagining other people and our myths complexly: John as Q, Hannah Hart as Angela, Grace Helbig as Ben, Neil Gaiman as Radar. (02:30:51)
  • 2013-11-19 · On Middle School Misery — John now sees his bullies were not evil but kids with their own fear and pain, some facing trauma and abuse; that doesn't justify it but shows it wasn't about him. (00:01:31)