A few months ago, I attended a panel discussion on "Applied Empathy" hosted by consulting firm Sub Rosa, which featured three speakers from a variety of disciplines. The specific theme of that evening was "Consumption" - an idea relevant to most fields, but impossible to ignore in mine. We consume food literally and in media, we consume resources to produce it, and we often consume the ideologies of the places we eat. The panel itself felt like a sincere exploration, and the panelists brought unique perspectives that complemented one another, but the idea I kept returning to (the same one that brought me to the event in the first place) was Applied Empathy in general.