Conflict, clashes, political strife, social discord: It’s the sort of stuff we report on every day on KCBS Radio, and in recent years it seems like all this tension just keeps ratcheting up and up. But what if the reason the world is becoming a meaner place is actually because we’re becoming meaner people?

On this edition of KCBS In Depth, our guest argues that over the last forty years our world has experienced an erosion of empathy -- that is an erosion in our very ability to understand one another -- and that as the daily news suggests we are living the consequences of that loss every day. We discuss what's behind this loss and how we might turn it around. 

Guest: Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of "The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World"

Host: KCBS Radio reporter Keith Menconi