Mind & Life Podcast

Tania Singer – The Power of Two

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May 15, 2025

View or download a transcript of this episode

In this episode, Wendy speaks with social neuroscientist and contemplative researcher Tania Singer. Tania is a world leader in studying empathy and compassion, and her pioneering work explores the interpersonal aspects of the brain and contemplative practice. This conversation covers many topics, including:

Tania Singer, PhD
  • her lifelong fascination with social interactions;
  • foundational studies on empathy in the brain;
  • distinguishing the physical vs. emotional aspects of pain;
  • a chance meeting with Mind & Life and critical insights from a Buddhism-science collaboration;
  • the difference between emotion contagion, empathy, and compassion;
  • exploring the trainability of empathy and compassion;
  • schadenfreude in the brain;
  • empathy burnout and compassion as an antidote;
  • the importance of correlating subjective reports with brain scans;
  • a landmark longitudinal study of training different aspects of meditation;
  • why what you practice really matters;
  • contemplative dyads and the power of practicing with another person;
  • the benefits of dyads for the negative effects of COVID lockdown;
  • moving dyad work into schools and hospitals;
  • shifting from studying individual change to systems change;
  • and the role of contemplative science amidst current societal challenges.

Tania Singer, PhD, is a social neuroscientist and psychologist and world expert on empathy and compassion. She has a passion for creating bridges between fields that typically never interact, such as linking neuroscience with economics, science with arts or science with spirituality. Learning from contemplative traditions, she has initiated and headed one of the largest meditation-based secular mental training studies on compassion, the ReSource project. Linking such findings to the field of economics, she developed a “caring economics” approach, developing new models of economy based on care and social cohesion. Throughout her life she has explored how inner change can bring about societal change, putting science in the service of societal transformation.

Resources

Personal website
Social Neuroscience Lab at Max Planck Society