Author Archives: Roman Krznaric

How Goethe can change your life – 3 lessons for 2013

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 1 January 2013

So you’ve drawn up your list of New Year’s resolutions. Some are probably achievable, like giving up eating chocolate for breakfast. Others may be more daunting because they represent a long-held desire to take your life in a new direction, anything from changing career to renewing family relationships. If you’ve resolved to make a big change, I suggest [...]

Posted in belief, history, love, travel, work | 6 Comments

The Power of Outrospection

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 3 December 2012

What do Mr Spock, Che Guevara and Gandhi have in common? They all appear in my new RSA Animate, The Power of Outrospection, about how empathy can create radical social change. If you want to know more about my ideas on empathy, a good place to start is my book The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of [...]

Posted in art, conversation, empathy, ethics, history, politics, psychology | 11 Comments

Is your job big enough for your spirit?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 29 November 2012

Here is the video of a talk I gave on my latest book, How to Find Fulfilling Work, at the Union Chapel in London in May. Filmed live in front of nearly 1000 people, it was part of the launch of The School of Life’s practical philosophy book series, edited by Alain de Botton and published [...]

Posted in empathy, ethics, love, money, politics, videos, work | Leave a comment

Can popular philosophy change the world?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 26 October 2012

I was recently interviewed by philosopher Jules Evans, author of the bestselling Philosophy for Life: And Other Dangerous Situations, as part of his project on the rise of the practical philosophy movement. The interview originally appeared on his website. Here it is in full.  Roman Krznaric is the author of two popular books that came out this [...]

Posted in conversation, empathy, ethics, interviews, philosophy, politics, psychology, work | Leave a comment

Ready for a vulnerability hangover? Five ideas from Brené Brown

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 16 October 2012

I recently had the great privilege and pleasure of interviewing Brené Brown, one of the world’s most original and exciting thinkers about emotional life, before a packed audience at London’s historic Conway Hall. It was no surprise that the event, organised by The School of Life, sold out its five hundred tickets within a record [...]

Posted in conversation, emotions, empathy, ethics, family, interviews, love, psychology | 10 Comments

Empathy Stories: How to watch TV in Samoa

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 17 August 2012

I have recently begun collecting stories of empathy experiences from around the world for a new book I am writing. Here is one of the latest, in which Antonina Elliott, a graphic designer who lives in New Zealand, describes a memory from a family visit to Samoa when she was five years old.  I have [...]

Posted in empathy, empathy stories, empathy through experience, money | Leave a comment

Ready for a radical sabbatical?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 7 August 2012

The following article originally appeared in The Guardian. Job hunting is like dating; just because a job ticks all the boxes, doesn’t mean it’s the only one for you. You need to experiment with a range of careers to find your prince charming. How’s work going? If people answered that question honestly, around three in five [...]

Posted in work | Leave a comment

Can reading a novel change the world?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 24 July 2012

‘It was through books that I first realised there were other worlds beyond my own; first imagined what it might be like to be another person,’ wrote novelist Julian Barnes in a recent Guardian essay. It’s an enticing thought that reading fiction might help us escape the straitjacket of our egos and expand our moral [...]

Posted in art, belief, empathy, empathy through education, empathy through experience, ethics, family, history, literature, love, philosophy, religion | 2 Comments

High Achiever or Wide Achiever?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 10 July 2012

We should all be worried about the £20 note, which features the eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith staring fixedly at workers toiling in a pin factory. Smith argued that this factory would produce far more pins if workers specialised in just one or two tasks – such as straightening the wire or sticking on the head [...]

Posted in art, history, money, work | 2 Comments

Jubilee’ve the hype? One hundred years of royal PR

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 4 June 2012

Over a million rain-soaked loyal subjects watched the Queen’s barge and a thousand support vessels bobble along the Thames this weekend to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. And around the country many more millions joined the festivities at street parties, country fairs, community dances and cake sales. But now the Union Jacks have been put away, [...]

Posted in belief, history, politics, public policy | 3 Comments

  • Welcome to OUTROSPECTION, my blog on empathy and the art of living. You'll find articles, interviews and news on the fundamental questions of how to live, with an emphasis on outrospection, which is about discovering who we are by stepping outside ourselves and exploring the lives of other people and cultures.

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