Andrea Hiott in conversation with journalist and essayist Elissa Strauss, author of When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, framed by the host’s view of care as an embodied, orienting force and “minds as actions.” Strauss distinguishes “caring,” social-status “not caring,” collective/kumbaya care, and “dependency care,” which she calls a “Hotel California” relationship you can’t easily exit; she argues dependency care is fraught, messy, and misunderstood when treated as pure altruism. She describes moving from fast-paced feminist journalism and a policy lens on U.S. caregiving failures (including lack of federal paid leave) to a deeper account of motherhood’s embodied realities, attention, and moments of union and estrangement with children. The discussion links care ethics (Gilligan, Noddings, Kittay) with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on unselfing and attention, accepts and also wonders beyond binary labels, explores caring-for versus caring-about and the “glass door” separating home from public value, and connects care to economics, interdependence, faith as “wrestling,” and intergenerational “sandwich” caregiving.
Elissa’s Book When You Care
Elissa’s Substack
the Navigational Approach to Mind
Heat by H.D.
00:00 Trad Wife Label
00:48 Embodied Parenting
01:55 Estrangement Moments
02:57 Care Philosophy Intro
05:25 Care Ethics Primer
09:35 Care Economics Value
11:55 Poem Heat Reading
17:18 Defining Care Buckets
19:19 Dependency Care Explained
22:20 Writing Career Origins
25:53 Motherhood Identity Shift
30:32 Beyond Binary Labels
33:15 Embodied Early Motherhood
33:52 Embodied Early Motherhood
36:18 Attention and Listening
39:00 Touch Versus Screens
42:27 Dependency Care Awakening
46:25 Unselfing as Parenting North Star
49:54 Estrangement and Return
52:39 Faith as Wrestling
55:45 Finding Care Ethics
01:00:21 Gilligan Noddings Validation
01:05:46 Caring For Versus About
01:08:16 Shame and the Glass Door
01:09:44 Glass Door Feminism
01:10:48 Care Work Counts
01:13:00 Tradwife Backlash
01:15:12 Money Meets Meaning
01:16:19 Care Beyond Maintenance
01:20:47 Home Everywhere Politics
01:25:05 Figure Eight Care
01:27:42 Parenting as Process
01:31:51 Love Clarity and Illusion
01:35:54 Sandwich Caregiving Crunch
01:41:08 Wired to Care Together
01:43:55 Closing and Where to Find
"Still more important [than alterations in the physical environment] is the environment of inclusion: of welcoming many sorts of bodies and minds, seeing the world as enriched by this diversity, and embracing the possibilities as well as the challenges presented by those who diverge from the norm." - Eva Kittay
Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. ‘Caring for what?’ is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it’s quite the challenge and responsibility. Let’s help one another handle it.
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Some recent posts from Elissa
And here is a recent post we came across that has a good definition of care ethics from another angle:
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack
How Life Works Beyond Genes: a New Biology of Meaning with scientist and author Philip Ball
Philip Ball on How Life Works: Beyond Genes, Toward Context & Meaning
The Cyborg Myth
This argument was presented as an invited talk for the “Hybrid Minds” symposium — organized by the Telos Circle at the Medical University of Vienna on February 26, 2026. A re-recording with cleaned-up slides and sound is available here. I thank the organizer,
#86 What books, places and relations have been your WayMarkers? with A. A. Kostas
What are your Way-Markers?
#85 Punk, Tech & Care: B. Scot Rousse on Being Human in the AI Age
B. Scot Rousse (“B”)'s substack, "Without Why," focuses on what it means to be alive in an age of intelligent machines. He is philosopher in residence at Topos Institute and visiting scholar in Philosophy at Berkeley. He also drums in 3 punk bands.
#82 Philosophy of the Heart with Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Scilla Elworthy
Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee (Oxford Research Group) Scilla Elworthy reflects on 70 years of work with conflict and war, beginning at age 12 after seeing tanks in Budapest, then being sent to help concentration camp survivors. For her, the lesson of a lifetime, the one she feels is urgent right now, centers on “the vital importance of the heart for all we’re trying to address and change in today’s world.” It might seem too intimate or uncomfortable (at least for some of us) to talk about love and the heart so openly, but if we can sit with that difficulty, we may find power opening beyond the threshold.
