How to Improve Your Empathy Skills, Next Door Villain

Description of Next Door Villain

This is how host Joe and Tiana describe the show: We attempt to empathize with the most notorious fictional villains. Like Cruella Deville, Draco Malfoy, Norman Bates, Harley Quinn, and more with discussion, some literary art and a bit of humor, we attempt to find the humanity behind these characters because if we can learn to connect with, relate to, and understand characters that we’re designed to be hated, then we might just have a chance at understanding our villainous selves as well as the villains we face in our everyday.

The length of each episode is 30 minutes to an hour. The series is ongoing with new episodes available a couple times a month.

Olive & June Nail Polish

Before we learn more about the vibe of the show, we’re going to take a quick break to talk about Olive and June nail polish. I love having nail polish on, but I don’t handle it well when my nail polish starts to chip a day or two after I paint my nails, that is where Olive and June comes in.

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Introduction to Tiana & Next Door Villain

Hi, yeah, my name is Tiana. I’m the co-host of Nextdoor Villain. little bit about me. I currently live in Shanghai, China, and I love it here, . And I also enjoy, you know, writing poetry, doing the podcast, and doing other artistic projects.

Empathy Was a Big Part of the Start of Next Door Villain

So my co-host, Joe and I we decided that it would be so helpful if we could practice our empathy skills and practice understanding different perspectives of people. And it would be great to practice that on fictional villains. So we thought…we like villains, we like pop culture, we like nerding out about villains. So hey, let’s get together and talk about what we like about them, how we relate to them and how we can understand their perspective even if we don’t entirely agree with it.

Because sometimes in our own personal lives sometimes it might be hard to understand the perspective of someone who we think is a “villain” in our personal lives. But if we can maybe practice that, or if the listener can listen to how we might, you know, relate to them or understand their perspective, then maybe. , they, they could also improve their empathy skills in some ways. Plus I just love being poetic. We also feature literary art in the podcast. Sometimes it’s listener written, sometimes it’s host written like by me. It’s poetry and other literary art that is usually from the perspective of the villain that we’re covering or about the villain in some way. And when you can use poetry, it just gets down deeper into the character than we otherwise would if we just kept it as only discussion. There is also some random silliness thrown in for good measure.

Doing the Podcast Has Improved Tiana’s Empathy Skills

I think Joe and I have improved our empathy skills, , we’ve been doing it for a while now. And we also found out that maybe we’re more villain-ish than we thought ourselves. We relate to the villains. I’ll be like, I’m kind of like this sometimes…I’ve done this too. In, similar ways, you know? 

What to Expect from Next Door Villain

I want people to get a better idea as to how one might empathize with someone or a villain. When you hear us do it I want people to experience the literary art and I also want people to enjoy the podcast community. You know we have a pretty active Instagram where you know, our listeners or baddies as we like to call them, get to interact with us and nerd out about the villains that they love too, and relate to.

A lot of our listeners end up relating to a lot of the villains or are they like hearing episodes about the villains that they feel they’re similar to. So yeah, I guess those are the general things I’d like to think about.

The Vibe of Next Door Villain

I would say it’s sometimes a bit silly while at the same time we’re sometimes deep, cool and literary . So it’s like a mix of silliness, but also trying to be chill. I know it’s kind of a mix of a lot, so, and it’s also kind of, edgy for me at least, sometimes.

It’s a desperate attempt to be edgy, but then I fail. . . I’m like, yeah, villain. And then I just stay cheesy.

Where to Find Next Door Villain

So of course you can look up Next Door Villain in your podcast app. Also you can find us on Instagram @nextdoorvillain and on our website, nextdoorvillain.com Fabulous.

Tiana’s Favorite Episode, Finding Empathy for a Silly Villain

This is a hard question, but , I would say one that’s really in the top is our Tom and Jerry episode where we related to Tom, the cat. We really got deep into talking about the benefits of chasing what you want.

And the philosophy of Tom from Tom and Jerry. It was also just overall very fun to do. So I did a pretty silly segment in it that relates to my love of cats in the beginning it’s a spoof on kind of a famous YouTube video from a few years ago. And I get to express my love of cats.

We were also able to feature a poem written by a listener about Tom. And it’s such a wholesome poem. It kind of got me right in the feels. And so just overall I thought our Tom, the cat from Tom and Jerry episode was really cool.

Next Door Villain & Little Ears

It is not okay for little ears which is surprising. You think it would, right? But sometimes, you know, we talk about horror villains too.

So the moment we start talking about that, it gets kind of gory. We do put an explicit tag on most of our episodes just because we get more adults than we plan on being. So no, it’s not. But I hope maybe, you know, when the kids are in bed, you’ll give it a listen.