Dacher Keltner — The Thrilling New Science of Awe

on being with Krista Tippett is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation funding research and catalyzing conversations that inspire people with awe and wonder discover the latest findings on Neuroscience cosmology and the origins of Life at templeton.org to me one of the most fascinating developments of our time is that human qualities we have understood in terms of virtue experiences we've called spiritual are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence as elements of human wholeness and Dagger Keltner and his greater good science center at Berkeley have been pivotal in this emergence from the earliest years of his career Dakar investigated how emotions are coded in the muscles of our faces and how they serve as moral sensory systems the way of feeling like sadness or fear or a sense of Injustice goes on to infuse how we see everything that's happening he was called on as emojis evolved he consulted on Pete doctors groundbreaking movie Inside Out and all of this as Decker sees it now led him deeper and deeper into investigating the primary experience of awe in human life moments when we have a sense of wonder an experience of mystery that transcends our understanding these it turns out are as common in human life globally as they are measurably health-giving and Immunity boosting they bring us together with others again and again they bring our nervous system and heartbeat and breath into sink and even into sync with other bodies around us this science is a wildly accessible minute-to-minute invitation to practice a common human experience that is literally life-giving and nourishing and actively good for this world of pain and promise that we inhabit I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being foreign I've been in a conversation of friendship and shared curiosity with Dr Keltner for years and I'm so happy to bring this conversation to you as he has now translated his studies into a book ah the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life [Music] so you know I want to start at the beginning which is where I like to start and okay you know it seems to me that so much I mean at the beginning of you right it seems to me that so much of your science uh one way to talk about it there are many ways to talk about it but but one way to talk about it is you are taking the stuff of what has always been moral virtue and you're taking it into the laboratory so I start to wonder just knowing a little bit about you um where if you would Trace I know that you had a rather kind of experimental unorthodox spiritual upbringing so I wonder if you look back at that and if you if you trace the roots of this this inquiry in you this curiosity and the way you've come at it oh yeah you know um there are times in a a scientific career where we we believe we're doing you know work that has some degree of objectivity where you realize it's all subjective and personal um you know I was raised by a literature Professor who love Romanticism and Virginia Woolf and quoted William Blake and others in the household and and then a visual artist my dad who loves you know Goya and Francis Bacon and all the horrors of their art and the awe-inspiring Horrors and and I grew up in a really kind of a radical time of the late 60s in Laurel Canyon and so awe was all around me and I think that being raised by people in the humanities um you know and being a little uh contrarian I guess like kids often are I always wanted proof right and I wanted to measure things and I wanted to test things and so it's very fitting that you know at this stage in my life I would turn to science to figure out a awe and so yeah it and and to find in that science and the limits of the science sort of the what lies Beyond it which is the metaphysical or the spiritual and so studying all really brought me into contact with spirituality too and then it's so interesting to me that you you really wandered into a new science as it's emerging right like I mean I've had this conversation with other neuroscientists as well and it's really easy I think for people now to forget that this particular form of science has just been around for a few decades and you were right there at the beginning and you walked into this new science of emotions yeah which which science had very very uh strictly avoided yeah and it was really new for you to be taking things like laughter and gratitude and Love and Desire and compassion into study you know it was astonishing to me I was in graduate school in the mid to late 80s at Stanford and and you know it was the Heyday of What's called the cognitive Revolution and the metaphor was that the human mind is like a computer with software and hardware and cranking out these algorithms and computations and that's Consciousness right and you know and some of the most famous people in the field I just felt like emotions couldn't be studied it was inappropriate to study them um they were intractable in terms of measurement and conceptualization or how we would even measure them and I just felt my past at that time you know of of being raised by these wonderfully emotional parents you know who are like but what about poetry and what about paintings and what about the feelings you have and what would human life be like without crying and laughter so it was it was astonishing to just hear the brightest Minds say there's there's no place for human emotion in Prejudice in racism in Morality uh literally you know carrying on Western European traditions in many ways and but what a great opportunity to fall into as a young scholar yeah so now you have written this wonderful book the first lines I have taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world it is not obvious why I ended up doing this work I have been a pretty wound up anxious person for significant chunks of my life and was thrown out of my first meditation class which is true so thank you for that full disclosure yeah I have to say my friend and I in college went to this meditation class and they had us chanting I am a being of purple fire yeah which is a reason to laugh yeah and I'm like I'm not a being a purple fire I'm an adolescent who wants you know to meet interesting people and so yep we got tossed out of that class but I mean yeah and you um I've been following your work um off and on for for many years and this really has deepened and deepened and deepened to this the study of awe and you say you know now after 20 years you have the answer to the perennial question how to live a good life and the answer is to find ah and so tell me is this right you've done you've done these massive studies right yeah I don't know somewhere I've got 2600 narratives 20 languages yeah and were you surprised I kind of was to read that what most commonly LED people around the world to feel awe was an experience of other people's courage kindness strength or overcoming yeah you know the first surprise was it's other people around us everyday people who bring us awe moral and what we call moral Beauty yeah and I love that language moral Beauty yeah kindness courage overcoming obstacles you know saving people's lives just time and time again you know the the most common source of awe is other people and and you wouldn't think that given what we look at on Twitter and Instagram but but it's a deep a deep tendency to choke up and get tears thinking about what people can do and so you kind of uh named the book is structured around eight wonders of life um and I I mean I'm assuming I hear that as a like interior analogs to what we call wonders of the world is that right like I think we need new wonders of the world right you look at those and those are all power based yeah those are monuments right and yeah well yeah go on go on well you know this is saying you know that's like a hierarchical conceptualization of Wonder like what did the guy in charge and the Egyptian period do make thousands of people do or whatever you know but yeah you know and that was this big surprise in this research is how ordinary awe can be it's everywhere right so it's the flowers blooming and you know the moral beauty of people and some pattern of light on the sidewalk so yeah we called them eight wonders of everyday life yeah so what I what I would like to do is yeah obviously we can't walk through it all but I I just kind of went through myself and pulled out some threads that he's Intrigue and illuminate and you know turns a phrase that for me put something into a new line so I just like to walk through it that way and yeah and first of all there is this what you call the first Wonder of Life moral Beauty yeah and there's also there's this um in terms of this moral beauty of of awe at the kindness and strength and courage and overcoming of others you use this phrase allowing goodness its own speech so what is that what does that mean to you or how did that come out of the research well you know it comes allowing goodness its own speech comes out of a graduation speech by Tony Morrison the great writer who said you know this is what she sees to be the purpose of her creative life and literature and the like and Krista I mean obviously we live in these times where you know you you arrive at a really cynical view of human beings and that cynical view I might add has prevailed in a lot of the social sciences and it's been refuted that people actually share instinctively we cooperate we we have neurophysiological systems that help us care for a lot of people it's as Darwin said you know sympathy is our strongest Instinct and what struck me about the ease with which people around the world would like hey what's awe-inspiring they didn't mention a God or the Grand Canyon they mentioned ordinary people doing amazing things and so I felt like that scientific Act was allowing goodness its own speech like man this just surfaces in how people think about the transcendent and I hope you know I I just I think we need more of that you know we need more um stories around goodness and uh this human capacity so for me um you know like I said I I can get really uh tense and anxious I can be a little misanthropic I hate to say it you know I wasn't the the kindest little kid uh and this science was like Wow there is a lot of goodness out there that we need to allow it's it's articulation the so the second one is collective effervescence and what wonderful language for what you're describing is again so ordinary and built into all kind of life oh my God yeah Collective effervescence Emil durkheim the great French sociologist just moving together feeling exultant bubbling being ecstatic is just this deep tendency young people feel it all the time you know they dance and they they go to political rallies and sporting events you know but it's everywhere you know once I started to think about this I I love walking in Berkeley and Berkeley is this buzzing high energy place and you would see these patterns of collective effervescence that that the science is starting to capture you know people walking to work little kids going to a dance class you know people at a picnic people lining up to get onto a bus we just have this this tendency to start to move together right and it brings us a lot of sense of unity and a sense of awe and if you really push it in the right context Bliss and a sense of like wow look at what I'm part of you know I'm part of this this human this Collective um what a striking tendency we have and as I started to dig into this concept I love soaring character guards quote you know this grouchy philosopher writing about dread he'd go out and walk and he would say it puts me into contact with the significance of insignificant things you know and that's how I felt like man watching kids line up to go play is awesome or marching to their preschool in their incredible ways you know how what becomes Collective effervescence has to do with moving the way our bodies Were Meant to move which is so interesting to think about but everything you're talking about though we do so unconscious of the fact that this is Primal and life-giving right which is what you're saying what the science is saying yeah you know I mean almost all cultures have deep histories and traditions of dance you know yeah I was just in the Himalayas in Bhutan for this project and the layup people dance all the time you know they they have a government ceremony and then they dance you know and that is very that's very human to move in unison like that and it's as you said Krista it's life-giving and you know I hate juxtaposing with our screen based chair-based life but we've lost that and but I see young people moving back to it of board games and dance clubs and uh so I I have hope we can return to it [Music] thank you foreign [Music] of the super organism and I've heard you talk about this in a few contexts and I want you to talk about the superorganism because I guess it's Collective effervescence also an expression of this when this happens when we're together in these gatherings having these experiences yeah and this is where the science is really cool which is that you know you can get people and they start moving in unison like you know in experiments you have them walk in unison or move their do some gestures in unison and they're like okay this is kind of artificial or it doesn't have the power of dance or a political rally but then their their brains start showing similar patterns of activation throughout the 80 billion neurons that are their brains and their physiologies their cortisol and their their hormones start linking up and the next thing you know it's like well we're kind of this a shared mental state and and you can measure that right with your science now yeah definitely you can measure that we literally physiologically sync up in all kinds of oh yeah ways yeah I mean you know one study had people listen to music together and their brain started to synchronize people in the the music venue in a similar pattern of Activation so they're literally their their neurophysiological mental state is similar we did a study of really poor kids and Veterans rafting and we measured the hormone cortisol which is a stress hormone at the start of the day their hormone levels were all different they're separate individuals yeah by the end of the day after having rafted with a little collection of people their hormone levels are the same lots of data on that and and that's striking that these processes of collective effervescence you're doing rituals in a church right you're chanting at a game you are greeting people in a ceremony they sync us up physiologically which enables lots of good things yeah oh gosh it's so fascinating yeah and then of course nature which is maybe what I would have expected to be the first from 2600 narratives I might have thought that the most stories would be about awe the natural world and of course it's in here and it's important and some of the things you're describing happen outside um but I want to hear more about the neurophysiology of what you call the neurophysiology of wild awe which I guess is always that often happens Outdoors in the wild yeah it is a universal um it it might be mushrooms in Russia or the desert landscape and part of the you know the Middle East or the ocean for Surfers but all nature is directly evocative of all but not as much as other people which surprised us and the neurophysiology is amazing it is truly amazing and it gets back to this old indigenous idea of we are part of an ecosystem our bodies are part of them so right you know there's a review of how nature benefits us and their 21 Pathways by which that's true including awe but what really struck me as the neurophysiology which is you know sound waves coming off of streams and moving bodies of water activate the vagus nerve they calm us down there are chemical compounds in nature you might smell a flower or tree bark or the resin on a tree that activate parts of the brain and the immune system right so our bodies are wired to respond in an open empowering strengthening way to Nature that works largely done in Japan and South Korea interesting and I think you know one of the broader lessons that awe provides for us is you know these ideas of separate self like oh I'm different from other people which is true but we're also synced up with other people I'm different from nature that's true but we're also part of an ecosystem and I'm always persuaded by certain kinds of physiological data which say like man you've got cells in your skin that are tracking uh chemicals in in nature that benefit you so it's striking to me the uses and meaning of that science and and you mentioned the vagus nerve which is our favorite nerve here at on being and that makes me tear up I have to say yeah I think it's one of maybe your favorite favorite nerves oh my God so I have a question for you yeah so you call it interestingly the caretaking nerve obviously I think that it translates the wandering nerve um I don't know if you know res momenticum who's worked with racialized trauma in the body he calls it the soul nerve and is this also so so I feel like the vagus nerve is this great Frontier that's helping explain a lot and yet is this also new science like was I feel like it's everywhere now but was the vagus nerve not seen before or was it just not taken seriously what a terrific question Krista and and I love the phrase Soul nerve I'll use that going forward okay I think we should use the word Soul more often I know you do but but uh we narrow-minded scientists should too you know um yeah you know it's so striking to reflect on how cultural biases shape science and then our claims about human nature you know for 60 70 years we've been studying fight or flight physiology oh we're wired to fight or flee in life you know and that was that was a sense of what physiology was was you know it's really about self-preservation and we made progress in understanding cortisol and the amygdala the threat related region of the brain and blood pressure it was this view of human nature that really penetrated the Western Society right totally yeah so what you're saying so we applied that lens to our bodies we did and and with profound myopius and one of them being well your body has the vagus nerve and you know we call it the autonomic nervous system there are all these bundles of nerves coming out of your spinal cord that affect blood flow and digestion and muscle contractions and glucose and so forth and the vagus nerve is part of that system it's it's a mammalian bundle of nerves it stretches from the top of your spinal cord it wanders through your heart and lungs and digestive organs and remarkably Krista gets into your gut yeah and receives all this information from the microbiome it is the Mind Body Nexus and we just hadn't studied it and it was really Steve porges who you know is this this scholar in the 80s was saying hey we've got this love organ in the body and people are like oh I know I probably misquoting here my apologies yeah but but or there's caretaking nerves he called it social engagement and and then you know our Labs started to get into the act that when you feel compassion the vagus nerve is activated because it slows your heart rate it it opens you up to other people it allows you to vocalize it allows you to look at people in the eyes when we meditate the vagus nerve is activated not the kind of meditation I got thrown out for but right yeah and then ah you know ah activates the vagus nerve because it orients you to be open to the world and to other people and I you know to me what that says is this this capacity for Wonder and beauty and sympathy and kindness when I used to teach it without the neurophysiology Skeptics would be like oh there's the Berkeley guy he's sitting in a hot tub having had a bong hit and you know and here he goes again no this is in our genes it's in our it's in our neurophysiology very robustly so is something that's fascinating me ever since I started visualizing this vagus nerve is I I also realize as much as as you say it's true that culturally we just didn't we didn't see this because we weren't looking for these capacities in ourselves yeah um and yet there are ways in which in words we use and phrase we use it's like we have this knowledge and it was and but we and we carried it around and now we're learning what it means so one thing that's occurred to me really is if you think about right the vagus nerve as you settle it goes to your amygdala your throat your heart your gut and what are we when we use this phrase I feel nervous right what what are we describing you feel a little bit afraid your throat closes up your heart is pounding your stomach is churning right so all of that somehow we've been this but I feel like what your science is doing is helping us activate it again towards what is life-giving towards nurturing these capacities in ourselves yeah there's no doubt you know cultures have really rich conceptual systems that that track the body you know and these bodily reverberations to use William James's language and you know chakra systems right there's this heart chakra and that's the vagus nerve and right when you go to you see images of of you know uh Buddhism and and Transcendent States and it has all this vibration around the head or heart so clearly we knew this but what the science gives us is it says Hey here is the system oh by the way it helps your immune system and your digestion and your heart rate and your cardiovascular profile and guess what medical doctors will listen right and and they will prescribe nature or a new yoga class or a meditation practice increasingly or gratitude exercise or or listening to your show you know as a way to activate these regions of the the body because they're good for you so yeah I always have had an eye on utility um you know my mom was a social activist or is and it's like well knowledge needs to especially now help people you know and and the vagus nerve has had that effect the science of it foreign [Music] support for on being with Krista Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute Fetzer supports a movement of organizations that are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems learn more at fetzer.org foreign [Music] [Music] spiritual and religious awe is of course in here it's part of it and I don't know it's number six and uh it's number six in the list but number six is religion but you know but click music as well as this one spiritual emotional they also show up in all these other places right yeah they show up in moral Beauty and in Collective effervescence and um so but I think another thing you've said about ah here is that also gives you gives us gives science and and gives us collectively a new way in to talk about meaning and yeah a compass for what matters yeah wow a compass for what matters I just had a little Goosebump reaction there so you know it's been so interesting Krista you know forgive me for saying this and you your show has gotten people to think about spirit and Seoul and uh sacred all these Concepts that are very intuitive that the world has used for so long uh that we're right at the front and center I love Walt Whitman you know saying uh if the soul is not in the body where is the soul and I think he was talking about the vagus nerved no seriously yeah you know but um I live in a world of science where we really really did not study Spirit or Soul or religion we've really get awkward talking about it we we avoid it and yet it is a deep human Universal and what I love about awe and when I teach odd to different groups like I teach a lot of medical doctors who are watching people die and they want to talk about spirit and they are very interested in and the whole context of that moment is awe and wonder and mystery and what's been striking to me in studying on and teaching are having conversations around awe with judges and doctors and you know academicians and school teachers is it gets them to Spirit and the sacred and they say wow you know you know I felt awe backpacking with my daughter and that's really what is spirituality for me and that's actually true of 41 of Americans you know that they find God or Divine in nature like Ralph Aldo Emerson did and awe allows us to have that conversation and then somebody who says well that's interesting I find it in you know going to church and it has this feeling State this quality that you can start having a more pluralistic conversation around like William James was interested in and I you know Krista I'm not a religious person one of the other great family stories is we went to a largely Jewish school when I was growing up in Laurel Canyon or a lot of Jews were in the school and they uh when Hanukkah arrived they all got to go home and my brother was like asked his first grade teacher like why are all these kids gone and the teacher said well you you know they have a certain religious faith and you believe in Jesus and my brother went home like hey mom who's this Jesus Valley okay that's the kind of story we expect to hear from Berkeley right yeah I know where I grew up in the middle of the country but but anyway I'm rambling but you know it it allows us to have a conversation about Spirit yes it's all you know I think also a place it this takes my mind is to just like we were saying that there's intelligence embedded in our language and cultures um that science catches up with you know if you think about the intelligence of religious traditions and practices at their best right so many of the things that you've named these wonders of Life they are all embedded right dance and chant and visual design sacred geometry liturgy service to others right all of these things that it's now possible to study uh make us more complete more whole to lead towards flourishing have been kind of innovated in these spaces well taking seriously in these spaces maybe oh yeah and and you know that's one view as a social scientific view of religious practice is it brings together all of these deeply human Tendencies of all right of rituals and reverence and forms of deference and visual typography yeah yeah gratitude yeah and music and singing and by the way you know as a non-religious person one of the things that science taught me is go find that you know and you'll piece it together in interesting ways and I think that's in it's what we're doing anyway it's so intelligent in our culture and and for those people like me who are a little bit more data driven this science points Us in that direction yeah and I also want to talk about a very tender part of this story you tell and part of your life experience that does come into your writing about this um which is the the illness and death of your brother Ralph m and you know I wonder so experiences of life and death are also part of this array of where human beings experience all and it seems like you you had that experience very directly I wonder if you would talk to me about you know what that experience in the middle of being somebody studying this thing yeah I I have the feeling when I read what you write about it that it actually that you learn things that you hadn't known before that it took you that much deeper in some way yeah you know um I uh you know I was doing this all science for 10 years um you know I'm very proud of it I think uh it it's been generating a lot of interesting conversations and then you know my younger brother Ralph got sick with colon cancer and passed away and Ralph and I as we've spoken all those wild times I had in Laurel Canyon and Beyond and the kind of the experiment that was my family a wonderful experiment we're knit side by side with my brother Ralph he was only 14 months younger than me we did everything together from playing little league to wandering Foothills to Wild trips dancing Etc best men at each other's weddings and he you know there's I mean there's nothing like a great sibling relationship he and I made sense of our lives together and and looked at the world together and and found awe together and then you know when I was watching him you know colon cancer is horrible and it's horror and watching him die knocked me into an all this state where like some Americans feel where I was like trying to make sense of death and watching a a really strong human being's body just get wiped out and deteriorate uh and that was my brother's body that looked like my body and you know and it it I've never felt like I did and it was like Joan Didion you know like this madness of grief uh of you know just hallucinating and I was barely sleeping and and then I also had the mystery that a lot of people have in our research as we found of like the night he passed I was full of wonder I was like what is life you know why do people we love vanish do they vanish because he sure felt like he was around me and he still does and to your point or question Krista I I was uh Alice and probably clearly anxious and depressed after the grief like a lot of people or in the grief as after the loss as a lot of people are and and I I use the science I was like man I gotta go find awe you know you wrote that I went in search of awe which is kind of a stunning statement because you were already in search of awe but it feels like I don't know it did you kind of make it a practice I did in a way that you hadn't before I I really did you know I mean one of the things and I've done a little bit of work on Grief and anyone will Intuit this that when you lose people they have you have this certain relationality with them and you lose that you know and my brother and I were awe Seekers together and we went backpacking and you know to Mexico into concerts and and there it went and I was like man I don't know how to find the all I need and I made it a practice I went to and it's interesting for people to think about this like you know I did more awe walks ordinarily I went to mountains yes they went to all walks or that's something you've yeah it's a thing so I you know for me the awe practice in in the grief was I all walks are simply we've tested this scientifically like go out and do a walk and look for things that Amaze you and big and small and and you can do that I you know I gathered up a lot of sacred texts to stay close to I went to all spots I just I I don't know much about music but I really intentionally went into music to like find what is awe-inspiring about it so I made it a practice in life like a lot of people do you know like you've said like religion or spirituality and it changed my life you know I know which is number eight number eight Wonder of Life yeah here's the Epiphany that I had kind of in the middle of getting ready to talk to you and immersing in what you've written and what you know I I don't know I think this is a very hard time in the life of the world right like I agree I I am aware in myself I'm also wearing a lot of other people you know I I gotta go in and out of feeling okay and not and and it we're really not okay right like we're not okay and the world is not okay and I don't think we've even begun to process all the things we've been through and everything that we are called to so anyway so but I started to realize that the way I have trained myself and I feel like there's a lot of available training and teaching right now culturally and you're you're in this too about like how to calm yourself right yeah so like I know about breathing and I have my little my little embarrassingly little meditation practice you know I pray I but I listen to music like and I actually know some of the science right I mean I think about what it's doing in my body but I realized when I was reading you that all of that is kind of it's remedial right it's like just getting and I think you know we also know I've been reading hearing about there's there's um research about when when people do meditation in a remedial way which is how a lot of us do it like just hanging on for dear life how can I calm down that you don't keep it up as a practice but I realized so I realized like so much of how I'm how I think I've learned to get grounded when things are hard is all about like settling inside getting calm and looking in but what you're talking about with going in search of awe and making awe a practice is another move it's a complementary move right like it's not just looking in it's like looking up and out and getting activated in a grounding worry like grounding towards flourishing and not just holding it together yeah yeah I think you're on to a very important critique of the well-being literature you know the science and the practice and and I felt this recently teaching it with the mistakes I've been making and you've put your finger on it Krista which is it is like oh reduce your individual stress this is how we do it right stress reduction stress reduction yeah right and that's remedial and we need more right and and the science of well-being has suddenly surfaced this idea of meaning that what we're really and you've been talking about this for a long time we have a crisis of meaning you know and what are the big things that I need to care about and relate to and Orient my life toward and awe does that work for you right awe is about fundamentally what is the individual's relation to the the big systems of life um that we care about that move us culturally and individually um you know for some people it's music for other people it's a conception of the Divine for other people it's ecosystems and that's what awe gives you and what I'm hopeful about you know introducing it at this time is is you know we have been in this big narrowing of Consciousness yeah like smartphones and little apps and you know it's narrow by it's physicality and isn't it weird because like in the one hand it's a revolution of Consciousness but it's also been incredibly narrowing diminishing at the same time yeah and I don't even know if it's been a revolution I think we think we've thought of it that way yeah I just think it's this oh I'm gonna narrow into very constrained searches on a little device um you know it's worth noting that no one mentions their smartphone around the world when they think of all I hate to say it right or a Google search so yeah and so you know ah tells us like go out and expand your view of things and I do think it gives us meaning you know um the young people I teach are very good at algorithms and computations and they they need the broader view so and that and and that's what it gave me during this hard time in my life was like wow you know what I really care I have this new sense of the human form and spirit that maybe my brother is always with me in ways I can't imagine and it going in search of all gave me that [Music] you you've also said and I don't want to talk about psychedelics because psychedelics get talked about so much now but like oh my God you've said like uh maybe not as this big concentrated experience High experience but that you said essentially awe does experiences about do the same thing in your brain that psychedelics do and I mean you know here's this very conclusive statement from you as a scientist There is almost nothing better to do for the state of your mind and body than go get some awe would you talk a little bit about the default mode Network because I guess what what I'm also what I also what you've helped me understand is all these kinds of experiences we've talked about like they are amazing in and of themselves in terms of what they do to us and for us but then they also become they open us right to that to a conversation with ourselves or a reflection in the world about meaning about something larger than ourselves and you talked about this default mode Network that a quiet certain impulses in us and that they free our minds up to connect in a bigger way yeah you know the default mode network is this a lot of large structures in your cortex um the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex on the side I mean this is hundreds of millions or billions of neurons so either we're going to be more precise as the science evolves but it it tends to correlate with in its activation self-focused activities right like oh I'm thinking about me and my traits and my past and my memories and my goals and quite strikingly one of the big findings in the psychedelics literature is psychedelics you know lead to the deactivation of the the default mode Network so does meditation and so does awe in studies in Japan and Holland and the U.S and you know I as I get older Krista you'll probably like this like I get less biologically reductionistic like so what you know so this brain region deactivates what's that tell you about meaning not much you know but what it does tell us is wow you're people use language like ego death psychedelics small self oh I lost a sense of self-awareness in Collective effervescence and and that's true neurophysiologically too uh to me what what these neurophysiological findings highlight is yes psychedelics are one of many Pathways and are fervor about them needs we can't lose sight of the fact that you can have that experience uh gardening you can have that experience listening to your favorite piece of music that a lot of the world is quote psychedelic just imbued with meaning yeah and and one of the what I'm excited about is kind of the next Frontier of that Neuroscience which is okay the self regions of the brain calm down what how do we make sense of this feeling you have with awe that your your boundaries are dissolving and you're part of everything and and to use your language which I really almost used in this fight you know and thinking about the purpose of Oz to recognize what's life-giving you know because that is a Common Thread across the wonders of Life of all and and that will be really interesting new Neuroscience that's on the horizon yeah and as we've spoken all the way through it's so clear that this also has so much relevance not just to our individual state of being and does have huge relevance to that but also too you know our life together our Collective state of being and possibility um you wrote some really interesting things in 2020 about you know being in pandemic and you named and I think this is important to name it's like what's the difference between what we call a mystery and what we call a nightmare right I mean what you know that awe and fear and awe and horror these things are they live somewhere close to each other in us but you quoted um the wonderful environmentalist Terry Tempest well I'm saying the difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting but I guess just yeah talk a little bit about how you see the what this science and this practice of awe might have to offer this very complicated world where we're living in right now yeah I would hope that we think about a couple of extensions of this science of awe one are the social crises of our time that our Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy has named as the crisis of emotional well-being or meaning shared meaning we are you know individualism the idea I'm separate and different from others and have no connections has really risen dramatically uh and then you add to that the structural factors that gave have given rise to loneliness and wanting more social contact and not being able to find it and and that is as uh Vivek has said a crisis of our times a Health crisis and ah and where we find it and how it changes our minds where when we feel awe in the moment we suddenly feel like we're part of a an integrated Community we do things that are good for the community we build things like public art spaces or Gardens or game nights that bring us together it is a compass uh as to use your language of meaning like oh I got to get back together with other people so I think Oz really a direct Pathway to addressing these social crises of our time and then you know the environmental crises it's it's really clear from a lot of different kinds of data from large-scale naturalistic data going to Big public art events finding all individually that makes you better behaved in terms of the environment you eat less red meat you walk more or you you drive less yeah so amazing yeah you know and and I think you know you could come up with an interesting explanation like it activates this old evolved sense that I'm part of an ecosystem I should care for the error and the other beings around me and maybe all as long as it stays you know fresh will move us in a different direction to deal with these crises of loneliness which is huge and it's killing people not and I'm not exaggerating and then the sense of how I relate to Nature and the resources that are part of Nature and there are 360 million Americans who go to our national parks it is the big experiment in awe and all practice in the United States um and and we get a lot of benefits from that and it gives us a sense of common purpose so I hope our conversation stirs other kinds of movements like that you know I don't want to finish before noting that you've mentioned Goosebumps a few times I know I can't remember if you mentioned tears but chills but for you these are metrics right so another fabulous phrase that I want to end without putting out here is the emotional body so we started out with you yeah coding facial expressions and now I think you're interested in the emotional body and the scholarship of Tears so would you talk about what all of those things mean and how important they are in ways oh my God you know I love the the I love the body no but you know you know I would start with uh both William James and of course this is much older you know and Walt Whitman if the soul is not in the body where is the soul that's a radical statement right that that James also pursued that the Transcendent and the sacred and the spiritual are in our bodies uh not a very popular idea in a lot of Western European Traditions um and as an emotion scientist you see a statement like that if the soul is not in the body where is the soul okay the Soul's in the body my sense of deep meaning is is in the body then you you start asking people as we've done and they say oh yeah I get the Goosebumps what are the Goosebumps well there are two different kinds one is the shutter you know of horror the other is the tingly sensation uh I've had it a couple times today Krista of you know rushing up your back like wow I get these little movements these flashes of of bodily sensation up up into my scalp which young people call ASMR today well those are little muscles Contracting around hair follicles that mammals social mammals pilo erected or they fluffed up their fur to get close to each other to get warm during the cold and so that analysis is the Goosebumps and that specific kind tends to correlate with awe tells us awe in mammalian evolution is about getting close to others to face shared threats and frost of all the great primatologists said oh you've got to read Jane Goodall because she noted that you know the great apes show this early awe of absorption and goosebumps and like looking at waterfalls and she said that's early awe and spirituality so the body tells us not only you know wow our metaphors and and the like are grounded in physiology which is interesting but we share this with mammals you know which to me is always it's back to my love of dinosaurs who aren't mammals but you know and then the tears you know Alan Fisk has done wonderful work showing we tear up which again is uh part of this certain pro-social physiology of vagus nerve activation the like we get these tears particular kinds of Tears when we see people forming community right and that's amazing to me you know you you see two Olympic athletes from different countries Embrace and you cheer up right right or you see people you're not even sure why yeah you know yeah in the restorative justice work I did in prisons man you know I would see white supremacists prisoners Embrace a person of color and I would just be crying you know and and that's the bodily response that says I am observing people becoming part of a community which is our our one of our defining evolutionary accomplishments so the body to me is just another language to say hey this isn't just Pie in the Sky you know rhetoric that you'd hear on with Trista Tippett yeah or if I you know it's it's part of our body oh yeah I'm gonna admit it I got a little freaky little tear pricky during that last answer so success you succeeded um I I know we have to finish let me just say um yeah and I feel like also I've watched some of your talks with your students at Berkeley and it's just clear to me that even bringing like the We crave this right as you go along We crave this as creatures and we know we want mystery and we know it's real and we know our imaginations are longing to engage I feel like you really embody this effervescence as much as you teach about it I'm so glad you're you're here and doing this and thank you so much thank you thanks for saying that [Music] Dr keltner's new book is awe the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life he's a professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley and founding director of the greater good science center and he hosts the science of Happiness podcast [Music] the on being project is Chris Hegel Loren drummerhausen Eddie Gonzalez Lillian vo Lucas Johnson Suzette Burley Zach Rose Colleen check Julie seipel Gretchen honald Padre gotuma Gautam srikishan April Adamson Ashley Herr Amy channeling Romy name Cameron musar Kayla Edwards Juliana Lewis and Tiffany champion on being is an independent non-profit production of the on-being project we are located on Dakota land our lovely theme music is provided and composed By Zoe Keating our closing music was composed by galtham srikishan and the last voice you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn our funding Partners include the hearthland foundation helping to build a more just Equitable and connected America one creative act at a time the Fetzer Institute supporting a movement of organizations applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems find them at fetzer.org Kalia Paya Foundation dedicated to reconnecting ecology culture and spirituality supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth learn more at caliopeia.org the Osprey Foundation a catalyst for empowered healthy and fulfilled lives and the Lily endowment an Indianapolis based private family Foundation dedicated to its Founders interests in religion 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