← Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
The New Science of Awe & How It Improves Your Physical & Mental Wellbeing with Dr Dacher Keltner (re-release) #527
01:53:41
When was the last time you felt awe? Perhaps it’s an emotion you notice often, evoked by the trees, clouds, or people around you. Or maybe it’s something you associate with more dramatic, less frequent experiences.
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- [00:01]
A
A lot of the health challenges come out of this internal individual focus that has just blown up today, and awe moves us outside of ourselves. Finding some sense of what is beyond transactional values and money and the like matters for your life expectancy.
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B
Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live. More this podcast is getting so many new listeners at the moment because of the global release of my brand new book, the number one Sunday Times bestseller Make Change that 9 Simple Ways to break free from the habits that hold you back. And so to give new listeners a real flavor of what my podcast is all about, on Sundays I am re releasing some classic evergreen conversations from the back catalog and today's re release is a rather Beautiful conversation with Dr. Daca Keltner. Dacher is one of the world's foremost emotion scientists and a professor of psychology at the University of California. He's also the author of the quite wonderful book the New Science of Everyday Wonder and how it can transform your life. Now Dacher has spent decades researching the science of happiness and believes that across the world we are collectively having a moment of reflection and looking for more meaning. In our conversation, Dacher explains what exactly awe is and the eight different types which are easily available to us all. They include nature, music, moral, beauty, birth and death, and one of my very favorites, collective effervescence, that feeling of coming together with others and sharing the same consciousness as you may have experienced in a sports stadium, music, concert or dance floor. He also explains the incredible benefits of all, including reducing inflammation, activating the vagus nerve, lowering our stress levels, reducing our perception of pain, and how it reduces our ego and makes us more humble. We also spoke in depth about how birth and death are strong triggers for all, sharing our own painful yet precious experiences of watching close relatives die. I truly believe that Dacher's work can help us all find greater meaning and greater health. He's done a fantastic job of finding the science to support his words, but I think we all know intuitively that what he's saying makes perfect sense. You have been researching, lecturing, teaching happiness for many, many years now. As things stand in 2023, how do you think about happiness?
- [03:14]
A
That's a terrific question. You know, people have been thinking about happiness for millennia, and since we started thinking about the human condition, one of the first questions that always arises is, you know, what's the point of this? Why am I happy? What makes me happy? And I started teaching it 25 years ago at UC Berkeley and then online and tens of thousands of people. And I think that at the time, we were in the middle of this era that is really an era of economic expansion and weren't really aware of the climate crises. And happiness was really about individual purpose, individual pleasure. How do I experience pleasure? Dining out or gardening and so forth. And I think right now, Rangan, to answer your question, I think given the times, people. People are looking for new ideas about happiness. And as a result, people think about happiness in terms of emotions like gratitude, social connections, pleasures. And now there's this new concept of meaning, right? Like, do I understand the purpose of my life and how do I enact it? So I think about happiness right now as the quest for meaning.
- [04:32]
B
This idea, this quest for meaning. I went to India in December and hadn't been back for quite a long time. And as a kid, because my parents are Indian immigrants to the uk, we used to go every other summer for six weeks and play with our family and our cousins. And they were happy times. But I haven't been for a number of years now, and I went in December. And a couple of things you just said there really speaks to me. Dhaka, which is. You mentioned economics and how does that play a role in happiness. But you mentioned also meaning. And I'm drawn to this story of the doorman at my auntie's place. I remember when the taxi from the airport pulled up and I smiled and said hi, and he directed me. And I would chat to him for the next few days whenever I was going for a walk. And he's someone who doesn't have that much economically, certainly we compare it to the west, but he had a job. He seemed to enjoy his job. He knew what his role was, where he fits in. And I got to know him over those few days. And then occasionally he'd be at the tea stall opposite the gate, which is, you know, these are very. It's a rich part of the kind of experience in the city called Kolkata, used to be called Calcutta. And, you know, every now and again he'd be there with these little clay teapots. He would just be chewing the fat with his buddies and smiling. And there was a real simplicity. And I don't wanna speak for him in terms of how happy he really was, but he certainly struck me as someone who was happy. So we didn't have much materialistically. Right. But I think meaning. I think he knew what his meaning was. Does anything in that speak to you?
- [06:26]
A
Oh, that's. That's 20 years of, I believe, to be the most important discoveries in the science of happiness, which is, you know, early on, we started to ask questions like, how much does money really matter? And, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you ask somebody in the UK or the United States and like, the point of life is to make money and to expand my wealth. And it turns out, as your doorman reveals, money matters a little. It matters for really poor people, but not that much. It's not as big a contributor to, well, happiness as you might imagine. As we think, what matters is social connections being embedded in a culture or a community that you feel part of, like your doorman. And your example illustrates. And you know, one of my favorite findings in the happiness literature is that social connectedness gives you 10 years of life expectancy. It just is good for your body. Right. And as a result of these discoveries of, like, money doesn't matter as much, the more I commute, the less happy I get. Right. I buy the nicer home, and Now I'm commuting 40 minutes each way, like a lot of people do, undermines my happiness. The pressure on high school students or teenagers to fine materialism doesn't bring them happiness. It undermines their happiness. And so as a result, we're looking to other examples, like your doorman's example of, like, what is it about his sense of his place in the world, his interactions on a daily basis that gives him happiness? And I think that's a future of the field.
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B
Do you think the commonest misconception then about happiness is money economics, that we need more money to be happier. And I'm very conscious. Dhaka, as we discuss this across the world, many people are feeling the pinch.
- [08:26]
A
I know, I know, right.
- [08:27]
B
There's a cost of living crisis. You know, we're coming in the uk, we're still in winter, we're coming out of winter. There's certainly the early sense that springs on its way. Right. But people have struggled.
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A
Yeah, no, I know.
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B
So if anyone's pushing back and going, yeah, easy for you to say.
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A
No, I know, right, absolutely.
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B
But I'm struggling to pay my bills. How do you approach that with them?
- [08:50]
A
Well, I always say, and this is in the empirical literature, that money matters a lot if you don't have it, you know, and if you get an extra hundred pounds a month, it means paying food bills feels different. It means giving your kids some new, you know, football shoes is different. So money matters. If you're poor. And in the United States, 1 in 6 people are below poverty and money matters enormously. And when, you know, policies in Biden's administration led to more money for the poor, recently their, their life expectancy was boosted. Right. And immediately things were changed. So money matters for the poor, but for a lot of people, it doesn't matter as much as they think, right?
- [09:30]
B
Life expectancy has come up a couple of times. You mentioned the relationship between loneliness and life expectancy. You just mentioned now how economics can play a role in life expectancy. And I know from some recent data that it does appear that in the US and maybe in some other countries, life expectancy is starting to go down.
- [09:51]
A
It's mind blowing.
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B
So what's the relationship between happiness, the things that we could do to create more happiness, the things we're not doing right, which is why many of us, I feel, don't feel happy and content these days. What's the relationship between that and our lifespan, would you say?
- [10:08]
A
Yeah, you know, Rangan, I have been privileged to teach this science of happiness, of gratitude and compassion and forgiveness and laughter and pleasures and meditation to really skeptical audiences, including one you're familiar with, medical Doctors, you know, 25 years ago, and they'd look at me like, who's this long haired guy from Berkeley? I don't believe this. And I always led with life expectancy findings, you know, and there are two lessons there. One is practicing gratitude, getting outdoors for a walk, giving, serving, giving to charity matters for your life expectancy. The big reviews suggest the more happiness you cultivate. It's about 200 studies. You get about seven or eight years of additional life expectancy, social connection, 10 years. That is comparable to smoking, drinking vodka and eating red meat, right? And a lot of people ask me, well, if I get happy when I smoke and drink vodka and eat red meat, does it wash out? You know, but it's really important. And then the second thing that's really exciting for me as a scientist is we're starting to understand the neurophysiological pathways of that, right? So, you know, if I feel awe, for example, it activates the vagus nerve, it calms inflammation, it helps my heart, it deactivates stress regions of the brain, the amygdala. So we're starting to get a picture, really clear picture of how finding happiness is good for your body. And I'm really excited about it. That's why Vivek Murthy, our Surgeon General, he's the first Surgeon General, most important medical doctor in the United States to say this has to be our new set of initiatives.
- [11:57]
B
Yeah. I spoke to Vivek a couple of years ago when his book came out on this podcast and it was a really quite profound conversation with him. You, of course, were in the uk. You're in my studio at the moment to promote your brand new book or the Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder. Now, first of all, it's a sublime book.
- [12:16]
A
Thank you.
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B
It's really got me reflecting about life, the point of life, you know, where I fit into the web of life.
- [12:29]
A
Wow, well put.
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B
And, you know, I think connecting happiness and the things we've just been talking about to the topic of all. Yeah, I've got a line, I've got lots of scribbles in the book, which is a sign that I like a book. Right. And I wanna read this to you. You wrote, awe occurs in a realm separate from the mundane world of materialism, money acquisition and status signaling, a realm beyond the profane that many call the sacred. Yeah, it kind of relates to what we've just been talking about, that happiness or what does not make us happy.
- [13:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of attention in the field of happiness was interested in this transactional world. Right. How do I do better at work, or how does money influence my well being, how do I enjoy a good wine, et cetera. Although that can be sublime. But there is this space that scientists had been hesitant to study and even to use the words like sacred, sublime, spirit, even where this is a world where we feel connected to, as you nicely put it, Rangan, you know, the web of life, the larger systems we're part of. And that's what awe is about. It's about sort of pointing us to these big areas of meaning, like tending to people who are suffering or redressing injustice or finding beauty or finding my point in life and finding some sense of what is beyond transactional values and money and the like of the sacred. And so I used. I'm glad you brought out that language because I was trying to stir our culture to think like we're in this moment of reflection worldwide with climate crises and democracy and, you know, the pinch that a lot of people are feeling, falling life expectancies in the United States. So let's get back to what really matters and what you intuitively would say that's sacred. For me, it really calls to mind, like backpacking with my daughters, you know, getting out in the woods and having those conversations with friends that your doorman has that you can't put a price to.
- [14:53]
B
Yeah. How do you define awe?
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A
Yeah, that was hard. You know, and, you know, there are centuries of efforts to define awe, but I really was inspired by this great Irish philosopher, Edmund Burke.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Who wrote a revolutionary book when he was 27. And he said, awe is about powerful things that are obscure, that you can't make out. Right. And I then relied on contemporary psychological science to say, just intuitively, awe is vast. It's like you encounter something that's beyond your frame of reference and mysterious. I love the word mystery in the definition. Like, I can't figure out why a young student would give away all their money to help an unhoused person eat, which I just saw a few days ago in Berkeley, California. So it's vast encounters with vast mystery. And it's an emotion we feel in the moment. Awe. Descartes felt it was a basic state of mind that then unleashes wonder and generosity and curiosity.
- [16:03]
B
You say it's an emotion.
- [16:05]
A
Yeah.
- [16:07]
B
When your book first arrived, I sat with this idea. I thought, do I think awe is an emotion or would I have initially thought it was an experience?
- [16:17]
A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
And then I thought, is it even important? Does it even matter? We call it an experience or an emotion. So why do you say that awe is an emotion?
- [16:26]
A
Yeah, I say it's an emotion because there's this great tradition that continues to this day of the philosopher David Hume and Adam Smith and some of the East Asian traditions, the Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, who really feel. And contemporary studies of consciousness, like Mark Solmes, that the mind and how we experience the world. When you move through the day and you're like, what does the world mean? To me, the meaning is found in our emotions or subjective feelings. Like you said, Rangan, Like, I feel awe about this or I feel anger, fear. Those are basic states of the mind in our relation to the world. And we have a rich scientific tradition, beginning with Darwin, to understand the emotions. With lots of tools of science that are in the book, nervous system and expression and the like.
- [17:21]
B
I mean, we'll get to some of those scientific benefits or scientific discoveries that you found when trying to study this. But one idea that I've really enjoyed reading about, I've heard some of your other interviews, but also something I'm thinking deeply about and writing about at the moment is like, are we as a society getting bogged down too much with what does the science say here?
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A
Right. Yeah.
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B
And I love the fact that it's quite hard to define awe, that we can't give it a precise definition. I kind of love that because I think, would it not be boring if Everything full of wonder in life, we can clearly articulate this is what is going on. Do you know what I mean?
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A
Fundamental.
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B
Yeah. And I think, as I say, I love the fact that we can't define it.
- [18:14]
A
Yeah. You know, and I have to tell you, Rangan, I mean, when I started writing this book, you know, we had tons of data and great papers, you know, building on this definition of awe as a vast mystery. And I like you, I was like, it still, it doesn't capture the essence of this experience, which I believe, like Einstein, is the fundamental experience. And so frankly, what I had to do, which was unusual for me as a lab scientist, is go gather stories, you know, and go to prisons and talk to ministers. I'm not a religious person. I'm like, oh my God. You know, and talk to activists and environmentalists and veterans and also gather stories from 26 countries, write about it. And I think with the stories in the book, we get a little closer, but we're still not. It's always a mystery.
- [19:08]
B
And I think we should embrace that. Yes, I think we should embrace that. One thing. I'm a medical doctor, right. And for, well, since 2008, I was practicing general practice. And one of the big differences between general practice and specialism, for me at least, was that we as gps have to get really good at sitting with uncertainty. Right. You know, a lot of time we have small amount of time, we don't have access to all the tests that maybe the hospital colleagues have. And so we have to manage uncertainty. And I thought this is a fundamental difference because in the hospital you might be able to investigate, do this test have a lot more certainty. And I think of course humans like certainty, but I think there's something about being able to sit with uncertainty. I mean, one of the eye opening things to me when reading your book was you've really broadened out my definition or my perception of what awe is. Honestly, like if someone had said to me before reading your book, when do you experience awe? I probably would have said in nature.
- [20:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [20:23]
B
And I don't know what your experience has been going around the world talking about this, but you show that, yes, nature is one way to experience awe, but there's eight ways that you've defined. So I came to the conclusion that, oh wow, awe is around me every single day and possibly every single interaction if I can train myself to see it.
- [20:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, thank you for bringing into focus, I think the two biggest surprise surprises that blew my mind, you know, we. I too like awe. Is nature. You know, we're Western European. Then I thought, ah, I know the spiritual traditions, Oz, spirituality and mysticism. And so we gather these stories from 26 countries from Mexico to India to the UK to, you know, Poland, etc. All over the world. And awe comes to us through eight paths, which I call the eight wonders. And I'll just quickly the moral beauty of people, their kindness and courage. I teach medical doctors and once they think about this, they think, wow, I just gave a patient a terminal diagnosis and they held my hand and said, thank you for what you do. That's moral courage and beauty, nature, collective movement, you know, and what I love about this is like sports fans, like Arsenal fans or you know, they're like, I love sports are almost spiritual. And that's because of awe. And then you get to the culture ones which are music, visual design and spirituality. And then the two Rangan, that really caught me off guard. Epiphanies, big ideas like, you know, wow, the web of life, your phrase, that's the central idea in evolution, right? That Darwin was blown off the map by, we're all part of this, what he called a tangled bank of life. We're all interacting, different species. And then the final one, life and death, you know, that. You know, Rangan, when I started teaching awe8, 10 years ago to audiences with people over the age of 55, there would always be a hand that would raise and the person would say, you know, I felt awe holding my sister's hand when she died and just looking at that mystery, feeling it. And so lo and behold, around the world we really get into a state of awe, thinking about life and death.
- [22:51]
B
If someone's listening to this at the moment, Dhaka, or watching it, this conversation we're having, and thinks this is all really interesting. Sure. You know, it's interesting for me to learn about awe.
- [23:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
But I'm busy.
- [23:08]
A
Yeah.
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B
I got stuff going on in my life. Why does awe matter to me?
- [23:12]
A
Yeah.
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B
How do you respond?
- [23:16]
A
Yeah. You know, teaching happiness for 30 years to every imaginable audience, that's often the question, right? Rightfully so. And it gets more poignant. You know, every time I teach a large group of people about happiness, I'll have a mom come to me, especially post pandemic and they're like, you know, my 17 year old son is in real deep distress and what do I do? And I turn to the science of happiness and I say, man, find some social connections, get them outdoors, you know, give them a way to find meaning or reflect on life and now, awe, you know, the science that I, the health science and the, you know, awe helps your immune system, reducing inflammation, helps your cardiovascular system, activates vagal tone, reduces activation in the amygdala, a threat related region in the brain, helps you think more clearly and more creatively, makes you feel like you have less stress in life. For 75 years old and older, it makes you feel less physical pain. Right. I could go on. I mean these are all studies where five minutes of awe, and I love your phrase of like, hey, wait a minute, maybe it's around me a lot. Five minutes gives you that suite of benefits that I think are comparable to anything you can do. No kidding. And we didn't know that. And now it's starting to spread. Right. Just to be thinking about where are those five minutes of awe?
- [24:49]
B
Yeah, I love that answer.
- [24:52]
A
Well, you're a medical doctor. Yeah. And that's what matters.
- [24:55]
B
You know, I'm a medical doctor, but I'd also describe myself as a curious human which doesn't always fit with medicine sometimes, particularly with the way we're often encouraged to practice it these days.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah.
- [25:11]
B
And if I think about the common problems that exist medically. Yeah, right. A lot of them are related to inflammation, the immune system, stress, the amygdala, the threat response part of the brain being overactive. Right. And you have just beautifully explained that awe can buffer us against those, can be an antidote to many of the problems and things that we're suffering from in the modern world. So I agree with you. Awe is critical. And as I say, and this is something I hope we get to more and more throughout this conversation, it reminds me a little bit of gratitude, not in terms of awe being the same as gratitude, although I'm interested in your thoughts on that or what the crossover is more that if you don't practice it, you don't see it where it is. You can go through opportunities, you can go through situations in life and not see the gratitude. And one of the questions I had around Awe Dhaka is let's say the Grand Canyon.
- [26:18]
A
Right.
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B
You could put 10 people, 10 different people in the Grand Canyon. Right. And yes, you would hope that everyone would feel awe, but some people possibly wouldn't. Right. So it's not the environment that is creating the all, it's our approach to that environment. Right, yeah.
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A
That's so important, Rangan, to bring this into our focus here. And I think there are wonderful insights to be gleaned from those eight wonders of life we talked about. We started to find, if you ask People like, where do you tear up and get the goosebumps and cry and feel awe and wonder? And humans are remarkably varying. It's just a fundamental truth about who we are. And for some people it's busy cities and the stream of pedestrians and other people it is sitting by trees by themselves in the quiet. And for some people it's classical music. And for other people, Michael Pollan just, you know, when he interviewed me, he's like, I was just at a Pussy Riot show and I felt awe. You know, punk rock. For some people it's wild art, for other people it's still. Still life's right. We are all varying. And, and, and that's one of the mysteries to me of awe is we find it in such unique ways, but also universal ways. Right. That and music's a great case study of that. And I think our audience should be asking this question of themselves, which is, think of a time when you last got goosebumps and teared up at a piece of music. And most people have had that kind of experience, Right? Have you had one?
- [28:07]
B
I have on many occasions in my life. Music's a huge part of me. It always has been. And there's this. Well, I was listening to it this morning, actually. There's a song by the Augustana singer Dan Leis, called Call Me when youn Get There. I think it's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. It's absolutely gorgeous. And this idea, you know, call me when you get there. He goes through various verses once it's about him as a dad and his daughter leaving when she gets to 18. Then it's like him speaking to his partner, maybe when they're 70, 80. It's every time I hear it, I almost feel it. I have cried before listening to it. It makes me think I can't even imagine my daughter at 18 leaving home. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah, I was actually listening to that song this morning. So do I experience it yet? But what's really interesting again is that we may not perceive that as awe.
- [29:15]
A
Right.
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B
But now you're saying it, it's like, yes, that is awe.
- [29:19]
A
Because what you just portrayed, and this is a story of awe, is the vastness of music, how it projects you across time. It leads you to think about what it's like to be 80. Think about your daughter being an 18 year old. So that's vast. It's mysterious how the mind derives meaning in this way from patterns of sound waves. But the striking thing is that's Awe for Rangen. Right. I haven't even heard that song. But I understand you. And in fact, when you told the story, I got kind of teary thinking about it because stories of awe reveal. To your point, we all have our pathways to awe. And I think the eight wonders are useful. And we can all understand other people's pathways when cast within this broader framework of what humans find in awe. Right. That I have songs like that that like, do the same thing for me.
- [30:12]
B
In the chapter on music, yeah. There was again a line that I really, really paused on and thought about. Music locates individuals within broader cultural identities.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
I'd never really thought of music in that way before. But what exactly do you mean by that?
- [30:36]
A
God, you know, you're doing a very deep and careful reading, Rangan. That's a hard question, Right. So let's take a couple of ideas out there in this new study of music. And the one really comes from this philosopher, Susan Langer, who said that art and music somehow express life patterns, right? So you hear music and you say, this is about beauty or love or courage or failure or justice. You hear Bob Dylan or hip hop and it's like, that's about justice, right? So the life patterns are contained within music in ways we're just beginning to understand how they sound and the lyrics and the acoustic structure of the song. And we hear that and we as individuals, and this is back to meaning, right? We as individuals care about certain things. We care about beauty or justice or transcendent knowledge, whatever it is, and it's contained within music. And then suddenly we hear a song and it moves us and we can't explain why, and we become part of a community, right, that's oriented around those meanings. When I first went to college, you know, and I grew up for part of my high school years, teenage years in the United States in a really poor rural town near the mountains. And all it was was like head banging rock and roll. And I first heard Brian Eno's ambient music and it was slow, quiet. I was like, I had profound awe because it taught me, like, there's this meditative, reflective world that this music contains that I could be part of. So it connects us to communities of meaning.
- [32:34]
B
I mean, in terms of take homes for the audience, these are not just theoretical ideas. These are ideas that we can practice and take part in immediately. Because I cannot believe that there's anyone listening right now who has not connected with music at some point in their life. But maybe they feel that their life is full of stress. Maybe they're low mood, maybe they're rushing around the entire time. They don't feel they have any time for themselves. But what if that part of our conversation encourages someone to go, you know what? I've not heard that album in a while. I've not heard that song that I heard when I was 16 and it really made me feel like this. If they then go and download that song or, you know, if you're a bit old school like me, take the CD out or whatever and re listen. Yeah, that's all that can have all kinds of benefits, can't it? Just that connection again to that visceral emotion.
- [33:31]
A
And thank you for reminding us of how accessible and powerful music is. And it's revelation of awe when during the pandemic, 30% rise in depression and anxiety worldwide. I got called by Spotify and they were like, oh, there's this awe scientist at Berkeley. And they said, you know, it's interesting, like we're studying people's listening patterns during this really hard, isolated time and people were listening to music like you're saying Rangan, like what's the music that makes me tear up and makes me feel like this is why I'm here. And they were listening for that, for awe in the music. You know, I recently went through a really hard time in life with my brother passing. And one of the things I did is exactly what you suggested. You know, I was stressed and not sleeping, in grief, thinking about my brother I was close to. And I was like, I got 10 minutes a day, I'm going to find the music that just sustains me. And it was certain songs by the Beatles and sufjohn Stevens, who's got this kind of spirituality to his music and Brian Eno's ambient and whatever offshoots. And I would encourage our listeners. Awe sounds sublime and ineffable or hard to find. It's very easy to find. Listen to music for awe what gives you rushes of goosebumps and that will bring you benefits.
- [35:01]
B
The goosebumps don't have to be just positive and happy, do they?
- [35:07]
A
No, no.
- [35:07]
B
You can even listen to someone in pain, in misery, you know, what do they say? Sadness can often breed the sweetest songs. Yeah, we can listen to that and connect to a pain, but it still has benefits, right?
- [35:22]
A
Totally. And this was, you know, thank you for bringing this up, Rangan. Awe is a complicated emotion. It's a mysterious emotion. It's hard to define. And one of the, you know, when I gathered these stories of awe in the book so Many of them were about struggle and suffering and pain, you know, so Lewis Scott, a prisoner who's a friend, I used to visit it, still visit him, trying to figure out, how do you bring beauty into a prison? You know, Stacy Bear, a veteran, finding awe out of the trauma of combat. And then a lot of people who watch other people pass away or get sick or medical care providers are like, there is wonder and awe in tending to suffering. Right. And that astounds me about awe is it emerges out of grappling with hardship very often and inspires the mind to be like, how can I make things a little better? Right. What can I do to build community here?
- [36:25]
B
The chapter you wrote on life and death really was very moving. I was reading it in bed last night and I thought we could probably do the whole two hour conversation just on death. It was that powerful. I definitely wanna come to that shortly just to sort of maybe tie up music.
- [36:44]
A
Yeah.
- [36:46]
B
Again, that's a powerful chapter just on music. But one of my favorite chapters was the one a little bit earlier on collective effervescence. Yes, one of my favorite terms. I discovered it a couple of years ago. There's a New York Times article on collective effervescence. Yeah, cool. And I shared it on my newsletter and I thought, wow, what a cool term. I'd never heard of that before. And then when I open up your book and it's like, oh, you've written a chapter on this, right? So perhaps you could explain what that is. It's one of those categories or. Right? What is it? How can people experience it? And why is it so beneficial? Just wanted to take a moment to tell you about my first ever UK theater tour taking place this March. So I've just finished two days rehearsing for the show with the entire tour team. The director, video tech, sound crew, tour manager. And I'm even more excited for these live shows than I was when I first announced the tour. Now, if you enjoy listening to my podcast, I think you are going to love coming to this tour. Don't think of it like a book tour. Think of it as an immersive, transformative, fun evening where you will walk away with a personalized blueprint of the things you need to work on in your own life. It's not just me on a stage talking to you. There will be lots of interactive moments and a few surprises. Now, I know that many of you listen to this podcast to learn things that will help you thrive, but I also know that at times it can feel hard. On this tour you are going to be in a room with other people who are interested in the same things as you are, which will feel incredibly special and give you a massive boost. These events are going to be fun, inspirational, educational, and hopefully will be the springboard you need to take action as we move out of winter and get into spring. There are 14 shows all around the UK. The two warm up dates in Wilmslow and the London Lyceum date has just sold out. So don't delay if you plan on picking up tickets. All details can be seen@doctor chatterjee.com forward/events. So get your friends together, make a night of it and I hope to see you in person in just a few weeks.
- [39:30]
A
Thank you for calling attention to that. It was something that emerged in our studies, very hard to study scientifically, collective effervescence. But it emerged as just a surprising way to find awe. That is a term that the French sociologist Emile Durkheim coined when he was trying to figure out, like William James did and others, like, what is the core subjective feeling of religion. And he called it collective effervescence. And it's when you start moving in unison or you're synchronizing your movements. Think of a ritual in a church, clapping, cheering at a football game, dancing together, you know, doing rituals before a basketball game. Collective movement. Then you start to realize collective movement makes you have a shared consciousness. So you're all thinking about the same thing. The religious figure leading the ritual, the soccer, the football players on the pitch, the movements at a concert, the band singing and you're all cheering a political speech. Right. And then emotion starts taking over where you know and the feeling. I'm going to ask you in a second, Rangan, tell us about a collective effervescence experience. Because it's profound, where people are like, I got this rush of chills. I was crying. I was almost ecstatic. I was feeling like I was one with everybody around me. And that's collective effervescence, which is movement attention, shared attention. And then this electric feeling that moves over you that makes you feel like you're united. So tell me, do you have a collective?
- [41:16]
B
I do. But I'm also realizing in my life currently that I don't really engage in collective effervescence in the way that I used to. So that was one of the powerful things to me about your book is it really made me reflect on, wow, I used to go to. I've probably been to thousands of gigs in my life.
- [41:44]
A
Seriously?
- [41:45]
B
Yeah. I'm a musician. I have Always sung, played multiple instruments. I was so into rock as a teenager. I've been to so many concerts and the first image that comes up is being at a big stadium rock concert and the drums start playing and everyone's clapping, but it doesn't matter who the people around you are. It doesn't matter their political persuasion. It doesn't matter what they're tweeting about. Frankly, social media didn't exist back then, thankfully. And you all come together. You're all there and having a shared experience.
- [42:21]
A
It's astonishing.
- [42:22]
B
Yeah. So concert. I used to, again, be very much into football or soccer. I'm not anymore, actually. I've fallen out of love with it for a variety of reasons. But I used to be obsessive. And I was at the Champions league final in 2005 where Liverpool came back from 30 down to win the Champions League on penalty shootout for the first time. And I remember the feeling in the stadium, the feeling in the plane on the way home. We all felt as though we were floating on air from being part of that communal experience. So, I mean, those are two things that come to mind.
- [42:57]
A
Yeah, they're wonderful.
- [42:58]
B
But I would definitely say that there's a deficiency of collective effervescence in my life at the moment.
- [43:05]
A
Yeah, well, parenting and, you know, as you head into the middle of life can do that to you. And collective effervescence is really for the young people finding their place in culture. But to your question, you know, one of the amazing things about thinking about these as contexts of awe, which they are, is this allows us to find the deeper meaning in these wonderful venues. Like people. There are studies that suggest that your football team is almost on par with a church. It gives you that much meaning and sense of community and sense of history. Right. Following music and going to musical venues. I love the work on sort of spontaneous forms of collective effervescence that people observe pedestrians moving through streets and being at festivals or farmers markets. Right. You start to sense like, wow, you know, I was just with my daughter Natalie at a farmer's market, what we call farmer's market in the United States, in. It was on. It was on this really wonderful area in this wonderful area in London. And it felt there was collective effervescence. We were all moving together, getting the street, Indian food, sharing it in a park. Right. That was awesome. And so this framework of awe starts to allow us to see the richness of these common venues of awe that we can enjoy.
- [44:30]
B
Have you heard of Parkrun?
- [44:32]
A
No.
- [44:32]
B
Parkrun. Whilst you're in the uk, I'd encourage you to look it up and check it out, maybe even participate in one. It's a phenomenal movement that is transforming lives.
- [44:43]
A
Nice.
- [44:43]
B
I don't know how many. There's probably hundreds and thousands now in the UK and around the world. It's basically every Saturday morning.
- [44:49]
A
Yeah.
- [44:51]
B
Local to you. In a park, there is a 5 kilometer. It's not a race, it's a 5k event. And people come together in communities and they complete 5K. Right. Some people are running it, they're trying to run really fast. Other people are walking it at the back. And they have a philosophy, no one comes last. There's always a tail walker. And people can come and volunteer. And I've had patients in the past who just. The volunteering helped them massively reduce their depression, sometimes completely get rid of it, actually, incredibly. So I think I never really thought about Parkrun through the lens of collective effervescence. But it is, right?
- [45:35]
A
Yeah. I mean, you know, the Greek Olympics began with, like, parkruns where people ran together. It's about moving in unison together.
- [45:43]
B
So why is it awe? So why does going to a Parkrun for many people give them a sense of awe?
- [45:52]
A
Terrific question. And that's, you know, we've mulled over that for 15 years. Right. And it won't give everybody awe. But for the person who realizes this is striking. Think about this movement of Parkrun and how many people are involved in it and how we move together. And suddenly you have the sense of how mysterious it is that this brings me this kind of joy, how vast it is and the people involved. Right. And that's very typical of collective effervescence. A couple of examples that have come to me in doing this work. One is singing together. There are all these singing groups out there.
- [46:30]
B
Yeah.
- [46:30]
A
And when I give talks on all, someone always comes up with tears in their eyes. Like, you've got to study choirs because it's all collective effervescence. Right. And a lot of the. It's interesting, a lot of the informal sort of help your body movements like yoga. 20 million people practice yoga in the United States, and a lot of it's collective effervescence. You're doing motions together, your attention is shared and you start to feel this joy.
- [46:59]
B
Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing that. One of the things that I've been, I guess, concerned with a little bit for a while, and I've just come back from the Middle east where I was giving a few talks and.
- [47:15]
A
You.
- [47:16]
B
Know, a lot of people are struggling to find that sense of community.
- [47:18]
A
I agree.
- [47:19]
B
And one of the things I said literally a few days ago at one of my talks was look, what do you like doing? Okay. Someone said yoga. I said, okay, you like yoga. One of the big problems over the last few years is that because of some of the restrictions.
- [47:32]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [47:33]
B
That have taken place over the past few years, a lot of this stuff has gone online. I know. So sure. Let's take yoga as an example.
- [47:41]
A
Yep.
- [47:42]
B
You know, for many people, a phenomenal practice that helps them physically, mentally, emotionally, for sure. And a lot of people now in, in our bid to save time and be more efficient. Right. We go on the, the zoom class. We do a 10, 50 minute YouTube video. And again, that can have a role. But I say listen, if that's you sign up for a class as well, do 10 minutes a day on YouTube, sure, that's great. But make sure once a week you sign up and you go to the class because you're gonna meet other like minded people. That's gonna help. That's one of the tips I give people who are struggling with loneliness is what are you, you know, what hobby do you have, what passion do you like? Is there a local class? Go there. You'll meet other people like you. So what is your view on that, you know, in respect to what we've been talking about so far? Loneliness? We're struggling to be happy, you know, or. It's a very clear message throughout your book that one of the powerful qualities of awe is that it takes us outside of ourselves to something much bigger, bigger and greater. Right. And if you're depressed, that's what you need. You're stuck inside yourself thinking again. I say that with compassion. Right. I'm definitely not being critical. I'm saying we need to help people get outside themselves.
- [49:05]
A
Yeah. Wow. What a profound observation. And you've just spoken to a very important empirical question. Does solitary activity on zoom compared to collective activity of the same thing? We know in the education world, it does not. And zoom classrooms for most people are a disaster. You need the collective mind and so forth. Yeah. I love your recommendation, Rangan. I mean, Jane Goodall awe. She saw it in chimpanzees. It is the beginning of our sense of spirit because it get. It allows us to be amazed at things outside of ourself. And the central challenge of the mental health crises of today is too much self focus.
- [49:51]
B
Yeah.
- [49:52]
A
And we're not going to find awe with zoom and smartphones where we're, you know, we Got to get with other people. You know, I was with a minister a couple of weeks ago who's in the book, Malcolm Clements, young, remarkable mind. And he said, you know, and I suspect this is true of a lot of the domains that you refer to. You can pray by yourself, but there's something about praying with people who are praying with you together. He said, and there's a lot of spiritual traditions around that. Meditating together, playing ping pong with other groups of people, doing dance together, doing yoga together. There's no substitute. And the answer for that is awe, that it makes you realize your collective. Like Jane Goodall said. And you said, I am amazed at things outside of myself.
- [50:44]
B
Another story comes to mind for me as you say that. On the plane home a few days ago, I watched a documentary, I don't know if you've heard of the British band Oasis, of course. Yeah. So there was a documentary on their kind of iconic concerts in 1996. They played somewhere called Nebworth and, you know, very few bands had ever played there. I think Led Zeppelin had, maybe this, Rolling Stones had, but very few bands could pull off playing at such a large venue.
- [51:19]
A
Yeah.
- [51:20]
B
And, you know, they played for two nights. There were 125,000 people each night, so quarter of a million people. But what was profound about the documentary was I think 2 1/2% of the UK population tried to get tickets. Something happened. There was something going on in the 90s, this sort of hope, you know, they sort of paint the picture in the documentary of what else was going on in culture. And Oasis really seemed to ride on that wave. Two and a half percent of the population tried to get tickets. But what was really interesting is it was that they were showing beautifully how this was pre Internet, right? This was pre mobile phone. So they had images of people on their landlines, you know, teenagers sitting on the stairs on their landlines, pressing the orange radar button, mates trying to get together, saying, look, you're gonna try and call there, you're gonna try and call there. People queuing overnight at the ticket sellers to get their tickets. And for me, because that was kind of the sweet spot of where I was into music. And I remember those days with all kinds of bands, like queuing for Bruce Springsteen tickets and all this kind of stuff. But what was really powerful was later on, I think Norm Gallagher, the guitar player and songwriter in Oasis, said, today you just wouldn't get that today. You'd look out and everyone would be on their phones trying to capture it, trying to text someone else Saying, hey, look at you here. Trying to show people that I'm here. And he said it was amazing. And they were interviewing people who were there saying everyone was focused on the same thing. They were all there to see this band at the peak of their powers. No one was distracted. It was just quite incredible. And it was funny. Cause I was reading your book on the plane, preparing for this conversation, and then I watched that documentary. I thought, wow, this is collective effervescence. Yes, right. This was collective effervescence at a time in the 1990s. And therefore, in relation to what we just said about yoga classes on Zoom, education being done on Zoom, and now the way we experience life with our phones, you know, how problematic is it potentially that we are no longer fully present for moments of awe because we're kind of distracted away from them?
- [53:39]
A
Yeah, I think that could be a show and a book. Right. And I think you've just identified one of the critical problems that the new technologies introduce to our lives as they interfere with collective effervescence. I'll give you just a couple of examples. Parents go to watch their children sing and perform and dance and they pop out their cell phones and are filming it. So now your awareness is not collectively on the children, it's distributed across these phones. I was recently at a dance party, you know, really interesting society, and they had a dance party where everybody danced to their own music and we were in different rhythms banging into each other, you know, it was ridiculous. And you could go on. And so this sense of shared collective mind, so vital to the human prospect, I think is imperiled by these kinds of technological, quote, innovations. But what I will take note of, Rangan, is a lot of our 20 year olds and 25 year olds and 30 year olds feel that viscerally. Right. And a lot of collective things are starting to emerge again. And game nights are really popular, where you play with actual games, with people physically present listening to vinyl albums, where you get back to that ritual of listening to music together. So it's too strong to take out of our experience. And I think it's coming back, but critical for us to think about, given.
- [55:14]
B
The awe that is subjective and we're all going to experience it in different ways and in different environments. Let's just stay on technology for a minute then. So we've explained that one potential downside of technology in group settings is that it can take us away from experiencing collective effervescence. Yeah, okay. I think we'd all kind of recognize that. Yes, I'm Sure. All of us have been to an event at some point where you go, wow, this is quite different from how it used to be. But can one experience awe through these smartphones?
- [55:53]
A
Yeah, well, yeah. By the way, I just have to cite one other experience. I went to go see the Mona Lisa recently, you know, and it used to be where you'd be with a big group of people looking at the painting, and now it's mobs of people taking selfies in front of the Mona Lisa. It's preposterous. Yeah, I really think, and I don't think, I think it's gonna be really hard when you think about those eight wonders to really find awe directly from your smartphone. It's too small, doesn't have the vastness just visually.
- [56:26]
B
Well, what if you were to see an image of the Grand Canyon? Okay, so let's just. We mentioned the Grand Canyon a couple of times. Right. So what if on your latest fancy smartphone, with whatever high definition technology, you're being sold on the latest advert, so in really sharp focus, you can see everything. Right. Why is that not the same kind of awe as if you were there?
- [56:52]
A
Because you need, you know, awe. But there's an important optimistic note here. For the full experience of awe, you need the vastness. You know, it just, it just traces back to Edmund Burke. Power, bigness, vastness. Think about. You need vastness that, like your example of music moves you across time.
- [57:12]
B
Wow.
- [57:12]
A
I remember what it's like to be a child or an adult or holding my mom's hand, et cetera. And space. And the smartphone can't deliver that. Like, you know, just like the difference between being there, seeing Oasis versus watching the same show on a smartphone, but what it can do for you. And I think there's a lot of really interesting work in this is a lot of awe. And this is very encouraging, comes from remembering things from stories about that experience that we would share. And there's a lot of work on the power of those stories. Right. That's why your story got me tearing up a little. And that the smartphone can do, it can be like, hey, here's a piece of music that brought you awe two years ago. Listen to it in a quiet place. Here's a visual design of a building, Sagrada Familia, that makes you feel awe. And I think good work will happen in that realm.
- [58:05]
B
Yeah. Because it's not the device itself, it's what you're consuming on it and how you're consuming it. Because as you're saying that I would like to think, and I'd welcome your perspective on this, that this podcast that many people listen to each week when they're out for walks or in their car driving. And I hope that consistently we have thought provoking conversations that help people think about their life, their health, their happiness, their place in the world. If someone is consuming that through a smartphone whilst they're walking, I think we can make a case that that could be inspiring awe.
- [58:44]
A
Totally. And you know, I. And, and in point of fact, like, when you talk to people who love podcasts, like my younger daughter Seraphina, she's like, oh, I listen to it when I'm walking or when I'm out in the woods. Right. So you're giving the context of awe. But one of the really exciting things about awe is it's easy to practice. And it may not sound like it, but it is. So when I teach healthcare providers, which I do a lot of, one of the things they do is they say, I only have 20 minutes for lunch because as you know, they work very hard and they're busy. But I'll go sit in the garden or I'll go on a walk with my colleagues when I have this next conversation. Or we will share awe stories in a huddle. And you can do this anywhere, right? These are little three to five minute shifts in how we do things, be it eating or sharing a nice quote or an awe story from work that are easy to do. And bring us some of the benefits of awe.
- [59:44]
B
You've done some studies, I think, on something called an awe walk.
- [59:46]
A
Yeah.
- [59:47]
B
So tell us about that.
- [59:50]
A
And there are thousands of people leading awe walks around the world right now, which makes me really grateful. Yeah. You know, that study begins actually with the great British tradition of walking. And the Brits walk in spectacular ways, you know. And then Rebecca Solnit, a brilliant writer, did this book on wandering and just how much we derive meaning from walking. And she called it, she really talked about it in terms of awe. Like when you walk, your body is moving through space, but you feel like you're part of the environment, a path, et cetera, and a tradition. And so in our study, we had people who are 75 years old or older, which is an age in the United States where people start to feel more anxious and depressed because people are dying around them. And so we just once a week, they went out and did an awe walk. And I love this because it's really simple. Go to someplace that's a little mysterious and look at small things like this. Rock on your Table and vast things like your whole studio. Right. That's all they did. And they did it once a week for eight weeks. We had a nice control condition, a vigorous walk condition and our 75 years old participants in the awe walk felt less distress, they felt more awe over time. And we had them take selfies out on the walk and their selfies, the self gets smaller and starts to fade off to the side and they're taking in more of the environment. So they're just aware of what's, they're amazed at things outside of themselves. And so, you know, you put that together with a lot of the data on just walking outside to find awe is so good for you and it's easy to do anywhere.
- [61:35]
B
Yeah. There's other studies you write about on all kinds of things. I think there was one study in the book about how even a very brief experience of awe can make us less narcissistic.
- [61:47]
A
Yeah, you know, I encourage our audience to do this. You know, in this study, young people a little bit too self focused. This generation of 20 year olds, they're feeling the pain of that narcissism. We just had them go out in this experiment and stand up and look at these beautiful trees for one to two minutes.
- [62:09]
B
One to two minutes.
- [62:09]
A
One to 2 minutes.
- [62:10]
B
Got it.
- [62:11]
A
Look at the leaves, look at the bark, look at how it fades into the sky. And, and we compared it to a control condition and they were less narcissistic, less entitled, they needed less money and they were more altruistic. They helped a stranger nearby one to two minutes. You know, and, and what I do, just thinking practically is like take one minute to look at a sunset. You know, there's a whole cloud society in the uk. I don't know if you think I.
- [62:40]
B
Didn'T know about this.
- [62:41]
A
Oh yeah, it's a big phenomenon and it's a wonderful book on cloud spotting. Go look at a cloud for 45 seconds and study its movements and suddenly you're like, wow, I didn't know they were so dynamic. A little bit of awe and it's easy to get.
- [62:56]
B
Well, a couple of things there. In my second book, which is called the Stress Solution, I wrote about nature and fractals and I remember there's a subheading in that chapter where I think I called it staring at a tree and I basically encouraged.
- [63:12]
A
They didn't laugh at you.
- [63:13]
B
I don't think they did. I think I justified it in the book. But I wrote that a few years ago. But as you're saying that it reminds me that one of my recommendations was, you know, don't worry if you can't get out in the wild. You can't get out into sort of, you know, what you consider nature. Just get outside and stare at a tree for a few minutes and it sounds as though what you're speaking to is saying, yes, you do that and you're going to get all kinds of benefits.
- [63:36]
A
Totally. And you know, and then awe starts to surface when you're like, like the trees I look at in California, redwoods, five times as old as I'll ever live. They have these amazing root systems. They're a family, they're plant in circles.
- [63:49]
B
So this is interesting for me. Right, so you can look at the tree. Yeah, you're just looking at it. Maybe you're not thinking about how old it is. That has some benefits. But what about what you just said, which is if you look at that tree and go, wow, this oak tree has been here for 300 years. Wow. My parents probably saw this. My grandparents, my great grandparents lived through this. It again speaks to this kind of through line, which is it takes us outside of ourselves. It connects us to something much greater than our individualistic, potentially ego driven existence.
- [64:26]
A
Yeah.
- [64:27]
B
So, you know, is it, is it just looking at the tree that's enough or thinking about that tree or do we not know yet? Vivobarefoot are one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, I am a huge fan of Vivobarefoot shoes and have been wearing them for over a decade, decade now, well before they started supporting this podcast. I've also been recommending them to patients for years because I've seen so many benefits. I've seen improvements in back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain, and even things like plantar fasciitis. And contrary to what you might initially think, most people find Vivos really, really comfortable. But I have to say, especially at this time of year, as the temperature is starting to drop, their winter boots are absolutely fantastic. And I myself am really enjoying wearing their brand new goby warmlined winter boots now as well as adults. I think they are a fantastic option for children and I really hope that in the future more and more children start wearing barefoot shoes like Vivos as I think this can prevent many downstream problems in the body later on in life. And remember, whether for your children or yourself, if you've never tried Vivos before, it's completely risk free to do so as they offer a 100 day trial for new customers. So if you're not happy, you just send them back for a full refund if you go to vivobarefoot.com livemore they are giving 20% off as a one time code to all of my podcast listeners. Terms and conditions do apply. To get your 20% off code all you have to do is go to vivobarefoot.com live more just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It is a science driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. And all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life no matter how busy you feel. It's also really tasty as well. Now the scientific team behind AG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry and I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. For listeners of my podcast, AG1 are giving a special exclusive offer. You can get a free one year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with your first order. These packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to give them a try, just go to drinkag1.com livemore we.
- [68:06]
A
Know a little and what a spectacular analysis Rangan. Like if you just think about time and then have some guidance like you nicely guided us. And by the way, in a lot of contemplative traditions. I was just up in the Himalayas, they do engage in these multi generational reflections of what would your grandparent have thought about this tree or the great grandparent that becomes a source of awe. Like, oh, I am part of a family tradition, a cultural tradition. What war did this tree was it born in? Right? And what will the world be like when it dies? So yeah, we're starting to sense that, you know, and that was part of our AWAQ condition or instructions is to get from the small, what does this tree look like to the vast, Right? Whoa. How did this grow to be like this? And that kind of reflective exercise of going from the small to vast, physically or temporally is starting to show some of the benefits that we're interested in. Loved your analysis too. Like in our western world, we think too much about the individual, we forget the Systems of people. We're part of the families and the culture. And it's awe inspiring. Sort of reflect on that.
- [69:26]
B
It really is. And of course nature is a, is a really good way to access that. There was another study I think you wrote about, I can't quite place it now. I think it was about how experiencing awe makes you more humble.
- [69:41]
A
Yeah.
- [69:42]
B
Was this the one at Berkeley where the group, one group was looking at the tall trees, one group was looking at the science building and then I think you had. I think it was this one where the stranger then dropped some pens and if you had looked at the tree as opposed to the science building, you were statistically more likely to go and help that stranger pick up pens. Have I got that right?
- [70:06]
A
Yeah. Nailed it. You know, and it's the wonderful work of Paul Piff, you know, and it speaks to the science of awe and the challenges of this mysterious emotion. Right. How do you get awe in a, A lab? So we started do a lot of stuff out in the world. We, yeah, we've studied all at Yosemite and the Great Wall of China and other people studied it in, in mosh pits and you know, musical venues and the like. And we have a couple of studies on humility. Humility is when you have a realistic assessment of who you are and you are open to the strengths of other people. Right. So if I'm humble about my scientific or write author accomplishments and I appreciate what a brilliant writer Steve Pinker is or an Andrea Wolf. Right. That's humility. Some people feel we need more of it today. When you think, anyway, I won't comment on the ex president of the United States, but you know, but so first study the trees. Look up into these vast trees and suddenly your self gets smaller. You feel humble. We got people at Yosemite, travelers from 42 countries looking at Yosemite. They drew really small selves as a characterization of who they are. We took other people up into this clock tower on the Berkeley campus. They looked out at the view and this is a classic source of awe. It's like, wow, I see the view of the world. And they not only were more small in themselves, but they felt really good about the strengths of people around them, you know, as opposed to envious or the like.
- [71:38]
B
Awe seems to be the perfect antidote to everything we're struggling with today.
- [71:43]
A
Yeah.
- [71:43]
B
Which a lot of it is simply inward focus. Me, me, me. This social media post, how many likes has it got even take this even further. Right. This is something I've, I think One of the downsides of technology for me is that we can customize everything for ourselves. So think about it. Twenty years ago, let's say you're in a family or you have a partner, for example, you don't really have the option in the evening to individualize and customize your life. Yeah, sure, you could have both read different books, but let's say you'd put the television on. There's probably one telly, and you have to agree, which channel are we going to watch? You don't have to do that anymore. You can both be sitting there on the same sofa with your device in your own customized world. Right. Consuming your curated content. Great. But again, it's more me, me, me. And it's taken us away from us, us, us. So I think that's interesting to reflect on.
- [72:48]
A
Huge.
- [72:49]
B
But this thing about humility, I'd wonder about your perspective on this, Dak. Yeah, I'm very fortunate to speak to some incredible people like yourself each week on this show. And two people I've had on in the past who you know, were widely regarded as the best in their field. Right. Were the athletes. Eliud Kipchoge, the Kenyan marathon runner, and the mountain runner Kylian Journey. Okay, Now, I've spoken to both of them, and they're still considered, you know, one's the greatest road marathon runner, possibly of all time. One's the greatest mountain runner of all time. Now, speaking to awe and the content in your book. Cause I've been pondering this for a good few weeks to months, I pondered, why are those two guests, I would consider two of the humblest guests, the two of the most modest people I've ever spoken to on the show. It doesn't mean why the guests weren't. But for me, I've been really trying to crack this. What is it about those two when they. You wouldn't be surprised if they had ego, given how good they are and how celebrated they are around the world. Whereas if you think of a top footballer or a top basketball player, again, it's not everyone. But you would probably think about a bit of ego that comes along with that. And so I'm thinking, well, is it because, you know, these are long distances, so they bash the ego out of them? You know, at some point they have to confront themselves and go beyond. Or is it the fact that these guys are out there in nature, they see that they're distance runners. Cillian in the mountains. Elliot runs in the Rift Valley in Kenya with his running crew. Like, I've Been I literally. This. This keeps me up Sunset. I think, why are those two so lacking in ego?
- [74:49]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [74:50]
B
And I think some of the concepts in your book kind of might help me explain that.
- [74:54]
A
Yeah, that's a spectacular observation, Rangan. You know, we, you know, when you find people who have been extraordinarily successful, you know, and, you know, one of the things. And your question really raises this, I think timely and. And really sort of underappreciated possibility that humility is really the pathway to enduring success. And people write about it in the ethics literature, but your examples really bring it to life. I think the runners and I think how they find humility, setting world records when the self is on the victory stand is almost what I encountered when I interviewed Steve Kerr. And Steve Kerr is a basketball coach in the United States. He probably. He set a couple of records. He probably will go down as having won more championships, both as a player and a coach, than any player in history, any person in history. He's at, I think, 10 now or 11. He's regarded as one of the greatest coaches. He'll be hall of Fame. And when I talk to him about being this athlete, you know, Olympics, NBA champion, et cetera, he's one of the most humble people you'll know. And what he talked about is what we've been talking about throughout this conversation, which is he is amazed that he plays a sport that puts him into contact with thousands of people and they're inspired when he, when he. His team start to really play well. I asked him, like, how do you know you're really successful? And he said, and I was expecting some, you know, coaching wisdom. And he said, I look around me and the people are dancing, you know, and it's just joy. And so when you are a runner, like these great runners, and you're part of a history of the sport, that's awe. You do it outdoors, that's all, and then you see the people who are moved by you. That's awe. Right. And suddenly it's like, ah, this is a privilege to be a runner like this. I wish I could. Yeah, it's a great idea. And I hope your next book is about that. It's a really interesting idea.
- [77:03]
B
Yeah. Thank you for sharing your perspective on that. It's just. Yeah. As I say, it's just something I've been thinking about and that's. It kind of lit up in my brain when I was reading your book a little. I thought, ooh, maybe a part of this is that they're spending a Lot of time in nature. If you think about Killian journey, he's gonna be in mountains all the time. I mean, what teaches you how small you really are than being around these big, vast mountains? That definition, you know, what is it the definition you put in the book was or is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.
- [77:40]
A
Yeah, yeah. And that's the challenge of our individualistic times that the athletes find in nature. And we can find it in many different ways. When I interviewed Yumi Kendall, who's one of the great cellists in the United States, and I asked her, like, how do you find awe? You know, and she plays the cello. It's an awe inspiring music. And she's full of awe. And she said, you know, when I play awe, I am not. I am part of this orchestra. I'm part of the audience. I'm part of humans making music for tens of thousands of years. And the notes are just part of life and our history together. Right. And suddenly she gets really humble and awe inspired. And I think that's what awe points us to is like, this is what I'm part of. That is way bigger than the self.
- [78:27]
B
Talking about things greater than the self. Very few things teach us that than life and death.
- [78:34]
A
Yeah.
- [78:35]
B
And this chapter really did have a big impact on me. I thought it was beautifully written.
- [78:40]
A
Thank you.
- [78:41]
B
With some phenomenal ideas in there. Let's start with life.
- [78:44]
A
Yeah.
- [78:46]
B
I think it's easy for us to understand when we think about it that the birth of a child is an awe inspiring event.
- [78:56]
A
It is. Yeah. And, you know, when we did that study, stories of awe from 26 countries everywhere in the world, people, parents, relatives, grandparents. I remember this story from a grandmother in France who's like, when my granddaughter came in, I just felt like hugging everybody. And my life was anew, you know? Yeah. You know, and very simply, this is, you know, it's awe inspiring visually. And, you know, it's got a lot of, as, you know, fluids and so forth, but out comes the face. And you look at the face as I did with my daughter Natalie, and I was like, I saw all the generations that she was part of genetically and historically. I was blown away by the beauty of her face. I still get goosebumps thinking about it now and time. Like, you're listening to the music and thinking about your daughter. Like, wow, this is the beginning of a cycle. Right. And then a lot of people, I remember a mom from Japan writing about, like, oh, my God, I Am different. I now am responsible. I have to take care of somebody for 60 years. So transformative.
- [80:07]
B
Yeah. There's nothing like becoming a parent to take you outside of yourself, you know, and your own inner world. What am I gonna do? And your worries is suddenly, it's. Suddenly everything changes. Everything, you know?
- [80:19]
A
Yeah.
- [80:20]
B
I still remember at Edinburgh Medical School when I was on my obstetrics and gynecology placements and I can't remember what year, maybe third year, fourth year as a med student.
- [80:31]
A
Yeah.
- [80:32]
B
I went in to observe a caesarean section.
- [80:35]
A
Wow.
- [80:35]
B
And I remember putting, you know, scrubbing up and going in. And I just remember being literally amazed that within minutes I basically cut open someone pulled out a baby. And I just remember at that time going, I have never seen anything like that before. That is just ridiculous. Do you know what I mean?
- [80:59]
A
I mean, when you go from no baby to baby out of the body, like it's.
- [81:03]
B
Yeah, it was one of those. It was one of those things. But interestingly enough, one of the things I found fascinating as you were writing about life was you talking about this lady who started off the natural childbirth movement because there was a concern that births are becoming over medicalized. I thought that was fascinating.
- [81:21]
A
Yeah. Nancy Bardocke. It's a, you know, it's a radical cultural shift. Right. We started to. Women would be in general anesthesia and they wouldn't recognize their child and just presumably for safety reasons. And we've moved away from that. And Nancy Bardocke leads this whole awe based approach to giving birth to children. Be aware of it, understand the vastness, and it's to good effect.
- [81:45]
B
Yeah. Let's talk about death. Death is a topic that I think we don't talk about enough. Certainly in the west. It's something that is hidden away.
- [81:59]
A
Yeah. Oh, my God.
- [82:00]
B
Even the way we use language, we, you know, we often don't say that that person died. We say, oh, I lost that person. That, you know, we try and soften it in so many ways. Whereas there's many cultures where death is right there in your face.
- [82:17]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [82:19]
B
And if I reflect on my own life, one of the transformative experiences was when my dad died. And yeah, it's almost 10 years now, which is mad for me to even think that it's, you know, this March will be 10 years. And this whole idea that it takes you outside of yourself, that's what awe is. You know, you think about the vastness. Until I read that chapter, I don't think I look back on dad's death and I never would have thought about the emotion awe.
- [82:53]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [82:54]
B
But actually, I think you're bang on. It was awe inspiring.
- [82:58]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [82:58]
B
You know, I would have thought that awe is a good. It's a positive emotion. It's love. Right. But of course, that is love.
- [83:04]
A
Part of it.
- [83:04]
B
It's losing love or, you know, that's one way you could describe it. But I thought, yeah, that was the first time in my life after dad died that I started to ask big existential questions. Who am I? Whose life am I leading? What am I going to do? So talk to me about death and why that made the book under this sort of umbrella of awe.
- [83:27]
A
Yeah. Thank you. And I could not agree more about our Western European view of death. You know, in working with medical doctors during the pandemic, and they watched a million people in the United States die by themselves. Right. In a hospital bed. Often tough stuff. We don't confront it like a lot of other cultures. Yeah. It made the book for a couple of reasons. And, you know, one was our data from 26 countries. And people talked a lot about dying. You know, watching. I remember this young guy from Indonesia just watching his mom die and he was just like, wow, what was my mother? And. And what was her life? And you know, what is my life without her? And as you nicely illustrated and argued, you know, Rangan, it is a huge mystery like, what is it? Where do they go? And then the other thing and I really, this led me to write the book was my brother's death, my brother Rolf. And as I was thinking about awe, you know, I was lucky. He's my younger brother, red hair, you know, we had a awe filled childhood of, you know, we were one year apart. We, my parents were kind of counterculture, grew up in the Laurel canyon in the 60s and then in the country and we backpacked and ran. It jumped in rivers and, you know, it was just full of awe. And then he got colon cancer. And, you know, it's important to say at the outset, like, dying is horrifying. You know, it was brutal. That's a brutal cancer. It was just like chaos. And then the cancer returned after chemotherapy hit his gut and you know, this carcinoma. Peritone. Yeah. And it just lights out, you know. And so the day that he died, we all rushed up to his home and I was sitting there and I knew this was coming, you know, for years and holding, you know, touching his body and seeing that he was in this state and, you know, it was like it was a transcendent visual Experience where it was like I saw patterns of light vibrating his. I felt like there was a soul there, you know, like his soul uniting us. And then, like, you, you know, when he passed, my mind was flooded with the big questions, like, what is life? You know, what. What was his life? Why. Why did he die? You know, what is death? And I went. I went in search. That is part of the book.
- [86:21]
B
I mean, sorry to hear about you, brother. Thank you for sharing that story. Your brother plays quite a key role in this book. He teaches heavily at various times. There was something in the chapter on death about these three practices towards the end of life. I think it was Roshi Joan Halifax that really made me stop and reflect. I wonder if you could talk us through them.
- [86:57]
A
Yeah. Thank you, Rangan. You know, when my brother struggled with colon cancer, I'd visit him almost every week. And, you know, you would be able to make sense of it. I couldn't. I'm not, you know, it was just like, what's going on with the body? And like a lot of people who are really with illness and confronting the death of a deeply loved person. I tried to control things. I tried to fix things. I thought I had solutions. I was reading journals and bringing foods and so forth, and I was not doing well, and I wasn't helping. And then I read Roshi Joan Halifax, who started a lot of the hospice work in the United States with AIDS patients, seeing thousands of people die. She's a friend. I love her. And she comes at a dying out of a Buddhist contemplative tradition. And it has these three principles, which is accept uncertainty, mystery, and not knowing. You don't know. You don't know how long. You don't know where the body goes. And when I was near my brother, I was like, okay, I'm going to shift to, like, I don't know. You know, I will never know. The second is witness. You know, just like. Just observe instead of direct or control or label. Like, be there and witness the process. And it was interesting. You know, Rangan, a lot of people talk about this who are around death a lot, that people who are dying kind of know the vast thing they're heading into. They're like, wow, this is a mystery. And my brother started to lead me there. He. I remember one moment where he's like, you know, I was like, how are you doing? He's like, well, I'm thinking about the big D. And I was like, what is that? Death? I was like, what? You know, he's like, yeah, I'm So curious about what is it? You know, And I was like, oh, I got to witness that. And then compassionate action is don't control or mislead, but just, you know, be kind. And man, thank you for reminding me of those, Rangan. Like once I read that and I got those and embodied those, the whole thing changed. You know, my whole experience of his dying opened me up to awe, frankly.
- [89:18]
B
Yeah. We're talking about the benefits of awe. The benefits of us experiencing more awe in our lives. How does that relate to death? Because death is seen as something negative often.
- [89:36]
A
Yeah.
- [89:37]
B
And there'll be many people listening who are either going through it or recently been through it. Someone close to them has died. How do you put that together with this idea that awe has incredible benefits for us? Do you know what I mean? Help us sort of understand that.
- [89:55]
A
Right. It I. It's a next movement in. That's already starting to happen in facing the end of life and then grieving. Right. So facing the end of life. So for as an empirical illustration, we know psychedelics actually benefit people with terminal diseases. And the thinking now that we've written about in others and I write about in this book is psychedelics help us feel awe. And so if you're given a terminal disease and you feel awe about it and now there's work that's not psychedelic related with children facing terminal diseases, you're doing exactly what you did in your examples, Rangan. Which you're like, well, I'm really part of a family and I'm part of a broader human experience. And maybe I believe in a soul and my consciousness stays in some fashion. We don't know. And that helps people facing dying, that helps ordinary people not facing dying just to reflect on that. And there's studies showing it's good for you. And then with grief. Grief has a lot of awe in it. It's horrible, it's panicky, it's anxious. But there are all these mysteries that we have to head into. Awe guides us to.
- [91:14]
B
There are two more things in that chapter that really moved me. One was how you ended it. And I'm just gonna read some of your words if that's okay.
- [91:22]
A
I'm glad you're reminding me.
- [91:24]
B
And that the people we love remain with us in even more mysterious ways after they leave.
- [91:32]
A
Yeah.
- [91:34]
B
That is just so profound.
- [91:37]
A
Yeah.
- [91:38]
B
Like there's so many ways to interpret that. I certainly have been thinking a lot about my dad and how I now feel I still have a relationship with him. It's just changed. Like I can't talk to him. I can't ask him things and get a response. But I still have a relationship with him. It's just a different one. And so that line really spoke to me.
- [92:01]
A
Thank you. You know, when my brother died, I went on a kind of a 18 month odyssey to just figure out the mysteries of life. And it's interesting, Rangan and I haven't really thought about this, but. And I write about it. He kept coming to me when I was out in nature because he and I did a lot of outdoors time, you know, growing up in the country and then backpacking. And I'd feel his voice in the sky. I'd hear his voice in the wind, or I'd feel his eyesight in the sky. I'd see him in trees, literally. And he is with me in consciousness in ways that science will never understand and I feel to be true. And that I learned by following the awe of dying and grief.
- [92:52]
B
Yeah, death can really teach us so much about what it means to be alive. The other section in that chapter I wanted to talk to you about was this Japanese principle of. Is it Wabi sabi?
- [93:08]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [93:08]
B
I hadn't come across that, but this idea that the evolution of all forms, from the natural to the man made, follow a cycle of creation, birth, growth, decay and death. Again, you know, we read things and they land with us at different parts of our life. So I've had an incredibly challenging six weeks, two months, you know, just after Christmas, I, me and my brother thought mum was dying. And I went through a sort of grief type process, thinking, that's it, I'm never gonna be able to talk to mum again. And she has survived and she's come home, but she's not the person she was before. And there's a lot of care in place. She hasn't got the vibrancy that she had before. But that section on wabi Sabi has been incredibly comforting because. And I think it speaks to awe. It speaks to this idea that there is a natural cycle. And instead of trying to fight this and control it, creation, birth, growth, decay, death. I thought, mum's probably in that fourth stage. She's probably in decay now.
- [94:35]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [94:37]
B
And instead of resisting it, maybe it's a case of embracing it and going, yeah, Mum's had a good life. This is now her journey on the evolution of life.
- [94:51]
A
Yeah. Sorry about your mom. Yeah. You know, that was a central insight in grappling with my brother's death. I'm a scientist. I believe in evolution. I love molecules and Nervous systems. And I watched him go and I watched that process of. I thought about his creation and then his growth, which I shared almost everything with growth. Then I watched his body decay brutally and go. And my mind at that moment was, that's it. And then the experience of awe opened me up to like, rebirth of Rolf is here in other ways. He's creating new things in this show. He's spreading these ideas. Right. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it today. And that notion really confounded me of the cycle. And I was like, I don't quite understand this. So I started reading Wabi Sabi, the idea in Japanese design of everything goes through this cycle. Charles Darwin in evolution, everything goes through that cycle. I talked to Reverend Jen Bailey and I was like, what's the secret to spirituality and awe? And she said, it's always composting. It goes through a cycle of birth, growth, decay and starting over. And I was like, oh my God. This is one of the things that awe teaches us is that cycle.
- [96:22]
B
It's incredible. One might think that talking about these topics is dark and somber, but I don't think it is. I think it actually really helps us connect with life, connect with something bigger, remind us of our insignificance, really in this kind of ego focused world where there appears to be more and more people exhibiting narcissistic traits. This is the power of awe. Wherever you experience it, isn't it? That actually it takes you out of yourself. You realize that, you know what, it's all happened before, it's all done. Let's just play our part in the kind of, I guess, the normal evolution of life.
- [97:15]
A
Yeah, you know, thank you for that summary. You know, Rangan, you know, one of the things you can take from this book is there are these eight wonders that hint to us that there are big things to be part of. Music and life and death and moral beauty, collective effervescence we've talked about. And just, you know, when you feel awe, just ask yourself that question, like, what am I part of here? You know, and it usually points you towards it makes you realize like, I'm just a small thing that actually is okay, that's actually true. But I'm part of something really large, like fellow humans, you know, an ecosystem or something about culture. And we need that today. You know, like you said earlier, a lot of the health challenges come out of this, this internal, individual focus that has just blown up today. And awe moves us towards the things that are amazing outside of ourselves.
- [98:08]
B
It's interesting that you Pose the idea in the book that the English language doesn't really have good words like other languages might do about experiencing things outside of ourselves.
- [98:23]
A
Yeah.
- [98:23]
B
Can you speak to that a little bit?
- [98:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's. It's striking. You know, we. You know, there. There is a term in Japanese, I think it's called jibun, which is shared life space, which is kind of like their sense of self.
- [98:39]
B
Yeah.
- [98:40]
A
It's not like Dacre, with all my traits and characteristics. It's like shared life space. I just encountered this other concept in Javanese. I think it's called purna, which is home, you know, which is like, what is meaning? It's my sense of home, which you can find anywhere. But it really is about a collective experience of this is we. Right. And the English language, you try to find words to describe that, and it just doesn't hit right. We think of the self and the ego, and it has these connotations of, like, bound itself. So hopefully this book opens people's minds to a little bit of the collective imagination.
- [99:22]
B
It's that classic tussle between east and west in terms of philosophies and that you feel it. Yeah. It's incredible to. It's incredible to think how much the language we have access to influences our experience of the world. Because that's how many of us, we see it, don't we? You know, if we don't have the words to. You know, if your culture has these collective words within it and you're using them, of course you're gonna see these things more easily. You know, it's not gonna be quite as a struggle. Like, even this concept of awe, this is what we were getting to at the start. That, you know, you may go to some cultures and go, yeah, we kind of know this. We're connected to our ancestors. We're connected to the land. We're connected to our communities. I really feel that there's this thing now in the west where we have to prove everything. Prove to me what you already know is intuitively true. And look, you've done a great job at supporting these ideas with science, to be clear. You've done a brilliant job at putting it all together. But I do question some of the stuff. Experiencing awe is an innate human quality that humans 200,000 years ago were doing.
- [100:40]
A
Yeah.
- [100:40]
B
Before a scientific study said to them, you know, you must or is good for you.
- [100:45]
A
Yeah.
- [100:46]
B
Do you know what I mean?
- [100:46]
A
Yeah. No, but. But, you know, that's. That's what science, you know, as. As my advisor, Lee Ross said, you know, is in some sense it's about knowledge for kindness, you know, it's for learning things that make us a little bit better as a community. And I think if you look at the broad trends that we've been noting in our, our largely globalized Western European cultures and now increasingly throughout the world, it's self focused, it's individualistic, it's more materialistic, and we've forgotten, you know, and you're absolutely right. For the interested reader, like the indigenous traditions that Dr. Yuria Salidwin, whom I interviewed for the book represents, they have so much awe in their cultural, in their general cultural tendencies. And we just need to remind ourselves of that, you know, that we need this.
- [101:33]
B
People who are religious have a lot of awe, don't they?
- [101:36]
A
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, one of the interesting things about awe is it helps us understand why certain things are beneficial. People who are religious tend to feel less depression, benefits or life expectancy. And one of the hypotheses is, and I write about this, is that religions are just containers for awe. You know, you go and you do your rituals and you sing together. You look up at the beautiful stained glass and you're in a cathedral that looks like a forest and you're hugging people. That's all awe, you know, and so we. When my brother died, I'm not a religious person, but like a lot of secular people facing such stress, I was like, how do I kind of build a sense of that, of like moving with people and my rituals and my sacred texts? So religion is a master at. It's a technology of awe.
- [102:29]
B
Yeah, it really is. As we speak, my wife's parents are in Kenya at the moment and they have a lot of family there. They used to live there. And I've only visited once and my father in law is part of the Jain community and there's something in Nairobi called the Oshawa Center. And I have this vivid memory. I spoke about this once on the podcast when chatting to Shane O'Mara, the neuroscientist from Ireland who wrote a brilliant book on walking and about what happens when you walk together with other people. You of course touch on that in your book. And I don't know if he's done this yet or not, but at the Oshawa center, the Jain community or certain elements of the Jane community would come together every evening at dusk and it's the most beautiful sight. They walk together around this track. They just go around talking.
- [103:26]
A
Yeah.
- [103:27]
B
So they're getting physical activity, they're getting Community, they're getting connection, they're getting the mood lifting benefits of all of those things. But it's built in to the fabric of the community, of the structure. And I think that's what, as we become more secular, this is a massive thing we've lost. Of course there are some negatives of religions. I'm not trying to paint a picture that everything's fantastic, but we really have lost some of this cohesion and this ritual that used to exist.
- [104:00]
A
I, you know, and I love one of our, the people I interviewed is Diana Gameros, who's this great musician and she did the awok that we talked about, but in a Mexico Zocalo and Mexico Zoclos are. They're like churches, they're like genius locations for a lot of awe of, you know, sharing music and culture. And they're like, yeah, you know, we have. One of the things that's been really surprising and exhilarating about writing this book and then in the conversations is I think it gives us a new way to talk about religion and spirit and sacred. You know, we started with a quote about the sacred and even the divine that, you know, let's, let's put aside dogma and definitions and so forth and just ask humans, as William James did, like, what brings you a sense of, of the sacred? What do you really, what do you, what would you give your life for? Right. Where do you find a sense of your soul, that which is primary and good and it's mysterious, right. And lo and behold, a lot of it's about awe. And so 81% of Americans believe in spirit and half of those people find it in nature. And they go out there and they're like, this is beyond my words and understanding. It's awe and it gives me a sense of soul.
- [105:27]
B
Yeah. I chatted to my wife this morning and I said, I'm talking to you about awe. And I asked her about how often she experiences awe. She said, all the time.
- [105:40]
A
Yeah.
- [105:40]
B
And the thing she said to me was when I'm meditating regularly, I experience awe everywhere. All the time. Yeah, I found that interesting. So that practice of solitude and the way she meditates and what she taps into allows her then to go out into the non meditative world, I. E. When, you know, when the parts of her life where she's not meditating and she's starting to see the wonder of life everywhere. So I wonder your perspective on that. But I also wonder, like my last book daca was on happiness, right? And I said, happiness is a trainable skill, and I believe it to be. And you have a lot more experience talking about happiness than I do. But I can't shake that thought, like with happiness, like with gratitude and now with awe that the ability to experience or see or find awe is something you can get better at once you start looking for it.
- [106:39]
A
Yeah, yeah. Your wife is onto something really profound that I think we'll learn more about, which is when you find your. What you might call your contemplative practice. And it might be listening to music, it might be walking in the woods, reading the Upanishads. For me, believe it or not, it was playing pickup basketball for decades just like this. I'm in a reflective moment about my life. You often feel extensive awe about almost everything in life. And in some sense that's what you find in the spiritual journalings of and you know, the great revelations of, in the Bhagavad Gita or other texts is like, wow, there's so much. That's incredible here. So much wonder. And the science and scholarship around awe says, as I show, like, this is a basic state of mind. And it's not. You don't need to be on a plane and going to the Barrier Reef. It's just a basic thing about reality to wonder about it, that it's mysterious and it is to your, to your question. You can cultivate it, you know, and when you read the book and you think about, like you said earlier, listening to music for awe or going for an aw walk or reading a poem that really moved you, watching children grow, if you just do that. I do that every day when I walk to work. I walk by a little preschool and I just stop for about 30 seconds and look. Oh, they're playing. You know, they have this weird, you know, Game of Thrones game going on. Kids are amazing. You know, it's a mind blowing. So you listen to them speak language, whatever it is. So there's so much awe. And your wife is in some sense the kind of the spirit of the book that I was trying to say encourage, which is like there's everyday awe and wonder. Just go get it, you know.
- [108:34]
B
Yeah. Well, let's close this conversation down. Dhaka. It's, you know, been so expanding this.
- [108:42]
A
Conversation for me too.
- [108:44]
B
I think I've experienced awe on several occasions throughout. I think the book is wonderful. I think it's such a deep dive. We haven't even covered a fraction of what's in it in terms of the things I think people can learn about themselves, about the world, about their history. About their ancestors. I think it really is quite profound. This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. And I always like to finish off with a question to my guest around this idea. If you look around in the world today, people are sick. Yeah, Right. There's a lot of sickness, a lot of struggle. There's a lot of discontentment. So for that person who's listening right now, who feels like that, through the lens of this new book, through the lens of awe, have you got any final words of advice or some practical wisdom for them?
- [109:47]
A
Yeah. Thank you. That's one of the reasons I wrote this book. I felt it in grief, like I'm sick. I saw it in the broad patterns of data. And then I hear from those parents that are like, man, my son is really struggling, like a lot of teens are. And I say, find awe, you know, and those eight wonders are really useful. So just a few of them. One of them is moral beauty.
- [110:13]
B
Can you just sort of top line, what is moral beauty?
- [110:15]
A
Moral beauty is when we're astonished by the kindness and courage of other people. And, you know, one exercise I have people do is just think about a mentor whose courage or kindness changed your life and how it's with you today.
- [110:28]
B
Wow.
- [110:29]
A
And when they do that, they're like, oh, my God, my math teacher, Mr. McAuliffe, like, he told me I was good in math, you know, and I didn't know, and now I'm X or Y. And we forget that in our individualistic mindset. You know, get outside and do an awe walk. Find some form of collective movement, you know, or singing. Listen to music for awe. Right? Find, you know, it's. I mean, this is where the. You know, our Internet and the smartphones are great. Like, man, look at awe videos. There are tons of awe videos. One of my favorite babies in tunnels is a whole series of babies coming out of tunnels. Like, you know, so much awe out there. And then, you know, you know, I'll avoid spirituality. That's up to people to form their own spirituality. But, you know, think about the ideas that matter to you. And when my brother died, I was like, God, I know I have this cocktail of ideas that I'm part of, and I started reading Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf and so forth. And then, you know, I am grateful, Rangan, that you've brought into focus death. Like, there are now exercises of imagine the full life of somebody you really care about, from their birth to their death. The Bhutanese do this as a regular practice school kids do this. We never do it. Oh, don't think about dying. But you know, you think about like, wow, this is, I think about my mom, you know, 85 inspiration for me. Like that's what she was like as a little girl. And I follow the trajectory of her life and then appreciate it will end. And suddenly you come out of that. As studies show. Like, we all have this part of our life, right? And it has awe in it.
- [112:10]
B
Daki, I appreciate the work you've done, I appreciate the book you've written and I really appreciate the conversation. Thanks for coming up to the studio.
- [112:17]
A
Yeah, thank you, Raghen. This has been an incredible conversation. So thank you.
- [112:22]
B
Thank you. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatterjee.com Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics. Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode Notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.
- [114:43]
A
Sa.