Playing and Reality

Is It a Relationship if No One’s on the Other Side?

The Ezra Klein Show, 14 October 2026. The book comes up at 16 min 17 sec in.

Sherry Turkle names this as her first of three book picks, calling it foundational though hard to read. She cites Winnicott's argument that children must learn to be alone or they will only know how to be lonely, connecting this to her concern that chatbots offer children nothing genuine to internalize and so leave an inner emptiness.

Listen to this episode ↗︎