Ologies with Alie Ward - Party Psychology (WHY WE CELEBRATE) with Danielle Brick & Kelley Gullo-Wight

Episode Date: September 5, 2026

Rituals. Gatherings. Celebrations. Surprise parties. Weekend getaways. Campfires and birthday candles are in our DNA, and colleagues/social psychologists Dr. Danielle Brick & Dr. Kelley Gullo-Wight explain why. This conversation was like if you got seated at a dinner party next to two friends who study why we have dinner parties. We cover the neuroscience of anticipation, how much is too much for the ‘gram, a time machine to the middle ages, and how enjoying the good times together helps us weather our storms.Follow Dr. Brick on Google ScholarVisit Dr. Gullo-Wight’s website and follow her on Google ScholarDonations went to Middle Way House and Rosie’s PlaceMore episode sources and linksOther episodes you may enjoy: Matrimoniology (MARRIAGE), Fanthropology (FANDOM), Eudemonology (HAPPINESS), Awesomeology (GRATITUDE FOR LITTLE THINGS), Funology (YES, FUN), Food Anthropology (FEASTS), Zymology (BEER), Mixology (COCKTAILS), Enology (HOW TO DRINK WINE), Indigenous Fire Ecology (GOOD FIRE)400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topicSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, this is a special bonus episode of Ologies. It's brought to you by Verbo. I've loved making these bonus episodes. And today we're talking about celebrations and rituals and the traditions that lead to these shared experiences. And this is whether it's making a toast or taking annual vacations or doing holiday traditions, even these small, repeated moments to look forward to and how they have lasting psychological impacts way after the fact, how it affects you the rest of the year. It's scientifically different, and people study this and they let me talk to them. And I've experienced that a lot myself by booking a Verbo and having fun with the people I love.

And Verbo makes it easy to bring your people together in one place to create those traditions. They work hard to get everything right before you arrive. And if something goes wrong, Verbo care and their 24-7 support team are there to help. People on your trip are full of surprises. Not your Verbo. Book your next day on the Verbo app. I have. Oh, hey, it's your neighbor's cackling Halloween porch hag that scares you every time you walk the dog, Allie Ward. And this is a bonus. It's a quick, fun one. And I mean that scientifically, because it's about hanging out with your friends and your fam. So we have two guests for this one. They are in fact buddies, their colleagues who both got their

PhD is from Duke University, and they are consumer psychologists. So they look at close relationships between people and how we make decisions. So all the time, we're consuming everything from books to granola bars and subway tokens and TikToks and air. And the people around us influence how we spend our time and our money, and that impacts our well-being. So this conversation was like, if you got seated at a dinner party next to two friends who study why we have dinner parties. I loved every second. So let's meet him. One. Danielle Brick, she her. Is a professor in the marketing department at University of Connecticut. She has bright,

wide eyes, beachy, blonde waves and was wearing a white blouse. And the other guest, Kelly Gola White, she her. Is a behavioral professor at Indiana University's Kelly School of Business. And she hopped on the call with a curly corkscrew bob and a pinstripe suit jacket and a very sweet smile. So it was surreal meeting them because I had been lurking on their work from afar, particularly this 2023 paper, celebrate good times, how celebrations increase perceived social support. Which number one, we love a cool in the gang reference. But also it was about why humans gather to have fun. So the fact that they made time for me already following.

a party. Allie Ward. And we're going to get to it in just a minute first, but thank you to patrons of the show. Oh, hey, it's that little tiny pumpkin on the co-workers' desk. Allie. It's the listeners. Allie word. Which helps the show so much. Yeah, I do read them all. And yes, thank you. Selvin seven. Doesn't rock for strange, beautiful and endlessly fascinating. And I wish this one was endless. But yes, sadly, it's one of those little tiny pumpkins that you can buy to put on your desk. So let's get right to it into what defines a celebration. Okay, it's one of those impossibly tiny pumpkins that you can buy.

the produce section. So you can put it on your desk. Your DNA. Toasting to the bad times. Maybe that last one. The science of anticipation. How much is too much for the gram? A time machine back to the Middle Ages, please.

And how weathering the good times is part of surviving the storms with researchers, professors, behavior scientists, and in effect party psychologists, Dr. Kelly Gullo White and Dr. Daniel Brick. You study celebrations. You co-authored a paper on it. First off, did you celebrate it when it came out? Yes. We did. Anytime we have anything go well, we make a point. And we highly recommend everybody should do that. Like, biggest takeaway is celebrate everything, anything you can. Yeah. And so we find a reason to have a toast to celebrate every time. Growing up, there was a running joke when I was earlier in my 20s about how I felt like celebrations, birthdays. needed to last a month. You needed to really embrace that. And then in grad school, I was very fortunate to take classes with some esteemed, incredible psychology professors. I was able to take

social psychology classes. And I saw that there was really fascinating work about how people were communicating about positive life events and how communicating and sharing verbally positive life events led to positive outcomes for the individual and the relationship and had sequentially positive downstream consequences. And being a consumer psychologist, I started thinking about, well, what about consumption to help Mark and highlight these positive life events? So the idea of celebrations being a very popular, important way in which we say, hey, look, this is something meaningful that happened and connecting with other people around it and building. upon that event and creating these relationship and social experiences amplify that positive event,

which then contribute to perceive social support for mental health, physical health, reduce morbidity, mortality rates, and just really understanding how these things all connect together. It's where it started. And when you talk about consumption, what does that mean? Does that mean like, okay, you're going to get candles or going to get party hats? Or is that partly psychological. So it can be actually sitting around eating, drinking, but it could be something like going to a concert. It could be one that involves a mosh pit or not. It depends upon your personal preference or not. But it's beyond just actual food. It's more of these consumer-type experiences, which I think is also what makes it really interesting. Yeah. I thought it was so interesting

that it's really hard to think of a ritual or a celebration that doesn't involve eating or food or something, some kind of shared consumption experience, right? Birthday parties, holidays. For sure. You know, you get the promotion. It feels weird. You don't have to toast alcohol, but you toast something. Something.

Or cake or you, there's something. Do you just live by the Julia Child, like, party without a cake is just a meeting? Have you heard that quote? No, that's amazing. I'm going to you from now on then. She had it right, man. She definitely did. So, yeah, there is always something that you want to consume together.

You know, I think there's these kind of rituals, these scripts we have around celebrating. In this research, we find that it matters that you're doing social consumption to mark some kind of positive separate event. But at its core, it kind of comes down to, you know, having something shared together, showing up for each other. Did you ever have to go down rabbit holes in terms of history,

everything from, you know, luau's to medieval cheersing and things like that. Like, how far back does that history go? So when I started the project, I did do some research back on the history. I just think of, like, jousting beers, toasting big, like drumstick legs. But what I did find was that a lot of the current practices,

traditions around celebrations, sort of evolved around the turn of the 20th century. And it happened where the changing in the society, culture, brought about these traditions, embedded them, and those continued on through the roaring 20s, which, of course, we also think about consumption, probably with drinks and Great Gatsby and the celebration of life maybe,

as opposed to an individual-specific event, but maybe at a more cultural or societal level. And then the depression happened. But what I found in my research was that small businesses helped keep the economy or restore the economy and small businesses relied on celebrations in their marketing and creating communications around holidays and rituals and this notion of still having things to look forward to as a way to bond. We have so many rituals around the holidays and so many feasts. And, you know, in the U.S., it might be a turtural. and it might be haggis in other places.

Yes, exactly. They seem to have roots also in religious traditions from like Marty Gras cakes and finding a baby in there, which is weird, but okay. You know, seasonal traditions. Did we kind of base it on religious rituals and then it became more just cultural, like, hey, it's been a month since we had a party. Labor Day it is, you know? So Arbor Day, let's throw a little Halloween in there.

I think it's hard to, I would imagine, differentiate if you imagine. It's a chicken and egg. Yeah, breaking bread and this idea of those going together, which then translate into stories and embedded within the religion. Exactly. I sort of see those as going together. There's this long tradition of thinking of, you know, breaking bread, as Danielle said, like eating and shared consumption together as companionship.

I think that's the root of the word companionship is Latin, right? Like bread. Oh. Panis. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No. Sit up. I never thought. I love etymology, but that is nuts. That's so fun. So, yes, I'm still freaking out about this. Companionship. Come panis.

Stop it. It just means with bread or breadfellow. So companions, we are all just sticking together like a couple of weasels sharing a slice of pizza. And eating stuff and laughing just goes way back further than the Industrial Revolution and to our hairier ancestors. So somewhere in the middle of that is in fact medieval ragers. And I had seen a meme a few years back about how medieval peasants worked only 150 days of the year and that modern humans, yes, work more than stall muckers of your in tattered burlap.

But hey, we do have electricity, and that's got to be good for our mental well-being. Right? Well, more on that in a minute. But I did go, and I fact-checked that 150 days a year. And truth be told, it is hard to estimate who worked how much because record-keeping was a little spotty without time clocks and Excel drives. But when it comes down to it, many historians agree that 150 days a year, that figure was probably right, give or take. And when wages were higher, many chose to work fewer hours and just spend more time chilling.

Some churches even mandated two weeks from labor around the Christmas holidays. But for every tale of snoozing in a haystack, there's also just egregious acts of labor exploitation and human cruelty. in the name of commerce and different religions. But speaking of which, while holiday does come from Holy Day, celebrating and merriment predates the church. So celebrations seem to fall in seasonal patterns across time and cultures. So harvest celebrations to mark the bounty, winter feasts to pull us through the cold or dark times, the renewal celebrations of spring, the start of summer pops off. And then these cycles and then many more that are written in the stars and the new moons have

always been outlets, anthropologists say, for people to blow off some steam and then just get cozy with their friends and their neighbors. Because we would all be dead if we didn't like each other and watch out for each other and share stuff. It's hard to know where it starts, right? You can imagine going all the way back to hunters, gatherers, food is, like. shared resource. It's where we all come together. It serves as social glue, I think, in a lot of ways. And I think it's natural that a lot of our very meaningful traditions and whether it's religious

or not is going to center around this kind of shared resource. And we see that in our daily life, right? People will wait to eat until we can all eat together. We'll center our celebrations around it, right? Like when we talk about Thanksgiving, yeah, we're giving thanks, but you brought up the turkey. When we think about the holidays, it's often around the food that we're going to share, birthdays, cake, or some kind of shared experience, you know, we're going to go to a concert or we'll do something to mark this occasion or to do something together. To your point, food does play a role, but it doesn't have to be only food if you have a trip or a vacation that's around some positive life event. Many people go on trips for birthdays or for holidays. And so there's also buying airplanes. tickets or renting a place to stay or finding the perfect location to have your celebration, all of that is also really important and I think embedded in our culture and keeps us happy and

excited and having things to look forward to and really builds our self-esteem and all these positive really great things. We have something, some kind of shared experience, things to talk about things to do together. It's not just, oh, we're going to, like, sit in the room. We're also going to play board games. Yeah, that's another great one. Absolutely ferocious, ferocious board games. Yes. And yes, science can be fun and fun can be science. And again, one of their academic papers, which was published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, is Celebrate Good Times, how celebrations increase perceived social support. So let's crack into the definitions and then the findings. You know, reading a book on something is is one thing, but reading

a pure-reviewed paper and a journal on this stuff is so exciting. How did you define a celebration versus a ritual when it came to the core terms? How do you figure that out? So celebrations can have rituals, but not all rituals or celebrations. I think is how we think about it and how we've talked about it. There are aspects that have ritual features, the script, the schema you walk in, you sort of know what to expect. So that helps to create some of the ease and the excitement around celebrations. But there doesn't have to be a specific ritual. It could be spur of the moment. It could be planned out. Special occasion. Or ritual is really just a shared script, right? It doesn't have to be celebratory script. We have scripts for all kinds of things. But we do have a lot of

rituals around celebrations. So a ritual is something done following a tradition or a custom. And that's not always a celebration. A celebration is an event to mark an occasion usually enjoyable, at least in theory, depending on if you're two middle-aged cousins throw hands at the reunion because one of them got the cigarettes wet on the rafting trip. But even that was enjoyable from afar. And then they made up like 10 minutes later. The great reunion. The tension fades, but the memories don't. But what is the architecture of a celebration? Because it's actually not a cake. And also that quote, as it turns out, was not verifiably said by Julia Child, even though so many cross-stitch pillows would have you and me, sadly, believe otherwise. I love that there's like three core touchstones of what makes a celebration. Can you walk me through that and how you decided? Did you have to pare it down from like 17 to 3? Yes. There's a lot of research, especially with social support, on how perceived social support and response to a negative life event is extremely important. Not as much has looked at responses

to positive life events. So that's number one, positive life event. And then we really being relationship experts is the importance of the social dynamic was really important as well, because you could have a positive life event and you could market, but you could do. do that by yourself. You don't necessarily have to have other people, but to get the benefits on perceive social support, the social aspect was key. And then the third is consumption that can amplify, enhance, and build upon the experience to lead to those positive outcomes downstream. Those are the three. So that's an event to mark. There's a social aspect to it. And you're gathering and using something to celebrate it, whether that's just time spent or making a daisy chain

flower crown in the park or maybe pass around some rice, crispy treats, or go into a cabin for your anniversary. So how did they, as social scientists, quantify or qualify this fun? And we had a lot of conversations around, you know, each of these dimensions, positive, separate event and social consumption. We are also really systematic. and testing each of these things. We find that really we need all three in combination to kind of get this boost to perceive social support.

But there's lots of instances in life where you just have one or two or maybe even none of these elements, right? Imagine a negative life event, a funeral. Bummer. We're still gathering. We're still getting together. We're marking this person's life. Maybe we're even celebrating their life, right?

We could frame it that way. And often after service, is we gather as a group. And, you know, maybe you have sandwiches, maybe you have a toast, right? There's some kind of social consumption happening. That actually sounds kind of nice. And there's this really interesting finding across the social support literature and that, you know, this idea that social support resources are the belief that

others will be there for you when things go wrong. And that's really important having these resources, believing that people will be there. But when something actually does go wrong, there's really mixed effects about whether it has positive outcomes for you, right? When our social support network actually comes in enact support, for negative events, that can be really awkward. Because it's so difficult when something goes wrong, a funeral, to be able to connect and enact support successfully, whereas positive life events are much easier because some of the

scripts, some of the things in the positive emotions that are already going on. And so it's showing up for the positive life. life events in each other's lives that allow us to build these resources. So we have them when things do go bad. We ran studies on this, right? We had people compare thinking about a time when you marked a positive or a negative life event. Maybe you got the promotion or maybe you're fired, right? We don't have to go death. We can think of, we have to go death today. Not today. We can think of, you know, more common daily negative occurrences. But often we will go together and support our friends when something poorly goes on at work or when something positive goes on.

And so we ran studies trying to compare these two different situations. And we only saw a boost on perceived social support when it was positive. And certainly, I don't think the takeaway is don't support people when things go bad. But the takeaways also support them when things go well. Do people just showing up, do they kind of have this script running for you then that if shit hits a fan, like you can rely on these people because they were there to celebrate the good times, too? I think that's kind of the thesis of this paper. Yeah. Is this idea that by showing up for these positive life events and creating this shared experience together, making this one,

you know, one person's positive life event, a promotion, a birthday, whatever, turning it into a shared positive between, you know, the whole group, not just the person who's celebrating, but everybody at that celebration we find gets a boost to their perceived social support resources. So whether you're organizing it for your friend, whether you're just attending, it becomes this shared experience together. We're showing all of us how responsive we can be. Just a side note, I'd never watched the series Yellow Jackets before, but I just finished season one. And because I've been working on this episode, I'm watching things so differently. Like I noticed when the girls were bonding by dancing around or feasting on bear meat or putting on makeup and drinking berry wine to, let's say, lift some spirits.

Now, as animals, if there were never any good times, why would we fight to live through the bad ones? I mean, it's dark, but it's in our evolution. Yeah. So to some extent, I would say bring on the fair weather friends. And then also the value, Kelly just alluded to this, of organizing for somebody else. We also found positives and that too. So it doesn't even have to be your positive event. You organizing a birthday or something for someone else can also have these positive impacts. Although we did find that there's less positive effects if you're organizing your own birthday.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yes. Oh, I was just talking about this. Yeah. I've said it before. I'm going to say it one more time. If you have someone with a big event coming up, just offer to help them plan it. Even just asking them questions to narrow down what they really want help so much and it makes it collaborative. Friends don't let friends plan their entire birthday without offering to help. And it's not harmful, but you don't get as good of a boost. Yeah. As when someone else organizes for you. How about surprise parties? How do you feel about surprise parties as scholars of celebrations? Love them. All for those as well. Love them. Surprise way. Janelle and I have some other research together on secrecy. And recently we've been working on,

it's not published yet. We've been working on a conceptual kind of theoretical piece about secrecy with our collaborator, Veronica Thomas. And we've been having so many conversations about the role of secrecy in celebrations, right? In gift giving. There's a huge chunk of giving a gift where it's a secret. Surprise parties. Like we're creating all these secrets and even just a party that's not a surprise. There's often some kind of surprise element, right? It's a secret that so-and-so is coming. It's a secret that we're going to have a slideshow or whatever. And secrecy adds enhanced meaning, right? Well, you know, I've read that gossip can be really destructive, but it can also bond people. But if you're gossiping about like, okay, I think that they would like

this and that seems like a cute form of gossip. Like if you're going to talk behind someone's the idea of being like, okay, you land at 430, we're going to get you to the, like, that's so cute. I don't know why. That just jazes me up. I think that's really adorable. And for more on this, you can read their 2022 paper, secret consumer behaviors in close relationships, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, which essentially found that what Danielle calls small-scale secrets or minor transgressions in close relationships, like sneaking a candy bar on the way home, even though you're having dinner together. Ultimately, those draw people closer because the guilt makes them behave more pro-socialally as a relationship investment to make sure that the bond is still strong.

Likewise, being in on a surprise for another person can bond a group together. And just on keeping with the pro-social behavior, this week, both doctors pointed us in the direction of good causes, and we're donating to two charities and their names. The first is Middle Way House, which supports individuals affected by domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. And it works to end those incidents and to meet the specific housing, employment, and service needs of survivors and their children. Great cause. You can find out more at middlewayhouse.org. And then another donation is going to rosy's place.org, which is a multi-service community center. It offers women emergency shelter and meals. They have a food pantry, language classes, legal assistance, wellness,

care one-on-one support. They also have housing and job search services and community outreach. That's rosy's place.org. So both of those causes, middlewayhouse.org as well, are linked in the show notes. Thank you so much to Verbo for sponsoring today's episode and making it possible for us to donate two causes of theologist choosing. And I've loved doing this one because I learned just how powerful rituals can be because they give us the sense of continuity and connection, but also So that planning and that time spent together really bonds us. And a lot of those rituals, too, are tied to a place of going somewhere together and experiencing things together and planning it ahead of time and having something to look forward to.

Or just creating new traditions in a new space. That is why group travel can become such an important part of people's lives. It's something that anthropologically scientists know that we need. And Verbo helps make those traditions possible by giving you a space to gather year after year, whether it's cooking together, celebrating something, or just spending time in the same place. They also help reduce the stress that can come with planning group trips. They focus on getting everything right ahead of time. And if something unexpected happens, Verbo care and 24-7 support are there to help.

So you can focus on the traditions that you're building. And you can find your next day on the Verbo app. Okay, so we're back, and this is a short bonus episodes. We didn't have space for listener questions, but a huge question I had, and you might as well, is in all of this talk of consumerism, what is too much? And in her book, Plentitude, the New Economics of True Wealth, economist and sociologist Dr. Juliet Shaw, pinpoints what matters most in the leisure that we're seeking, what is worth investing in. And that's a shift toward elements like nature and community and fostering learning and spending time. And the brain derives pleasure and renewal

from experiences and memories and bonding. But how far is too far? What about around weddings? Is there a point where things get so, like maybe a little off the rail? I feel like in the last year, this notion of a bachelorette party has to be really aesthetic and really impressive in two dimensions for the people who weren't there and like maybe losing sight of are we having a good time or is there like a spreadsheet that's like everyone has to be in a pink bikini and da da da da da da da da you know where's the line where you're like okay too much consumption i think it's also raising the interesting point about you know social media's effect on these aspects that initially are largely intended to be in person in the moment experienced in real time

versus creating this secondary aspect to it and how that's extremely interesting how that could change recalling the day the experiences during the day if you're like we all have to be in this pink bikini and we're not actually enjoying this time together because you're so focused on creating the same picture pose over and over over and over and over and over and you're you're removing all of the actual beneficial aspects. That's fascinating. Well, it kind of comes down to are we enacting support for each other? Are we being responsive to each other in the moment? And food and celebrations are way of doing that. But as soon as we are layering on these kind of traditions and rituals that are taking away from this focal shared interaction, and it's about people who

aren't there, I think it starts to break it a little bit. I think there's a lot of traditions and norms that we've start to build, like, rituals around some of these things that are maybe not strictly necessary. I have some research on gift giving. And what we find is gift givers are so focused on getting the perfect gift, right? There's lots of research on this. Like, it needs to be new. It needs to be perfectly priced. It needs to be all of these things. And really, people just want the gift. Like, they want to know they were thought of. The receivers don't care. We get so caught up and what we need to be doing. That sometimes these rituals can get in the way

are these traditions behind the core of what matters, right? When we're doing The Bachelorette, it's about all of us being together, celebrating our friendship and, you know, bringing our friend into this next chapter of life, all of these things. But if we're too focused on the other stuff, I agree. It takes it away a little bit.

And again, a celebration and a social gathering can happen around a few glasses of water, or as many anthropologists can tell you, some firelight. So there was this fascinating 2014 paper titled Embers of Society, Firelight Talk among the Zhu Wansi Bushmen, and it was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, and it analyzed dozens of conversations of South African Bushmen and found that around firelight, night activities steer away from tensions of the day into singing, dancing, religious ceremonies, and enthralling stories often about people that

everyone knows. And Night Talk, it says, plays an important role in evoking higher orders of theory of mind via the imagination and generating cooperation and trust. And of course, it notes that as a species, we share this widespread human use of firelight for this intimate conversation and to satiate this appetite for evening stories. And the author delivers such a stunning portrait of human interaction, just rendered in this flickering illumination and leaves us with, the question is raised as to what happens when economically unproductive firelit time is turned into productive time by artificial lighting.

And what happens is you're always working to make money or you're trying to relax by making other people money while you scroll and billionaires get richer. It's horse pucky, frankly. And that's not what we've evolved to do or care about. I mean, no wonder why everyone's tired and lonely. So, yeah, gather around campfires. Light a birthday candle. Even the smallest little flame can do something. And you said kinship earlier and all of these pieces that helped us form society.

and communities that could help each other. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's evident in how we see these very common, you know, shared consumption practices and celebrations and things across cultures. Right. It's not just in the U.S. that we're doing this. Or it's not just in, you know, kind of the Western world, quote unquote. It's everywhere. We gather around food. We gather around these kind of shared experiences. And if we're seeing something that spans cultures that pervasively, that suggests to me that we're rooted in something far deeper. Yeah, New Year's Eve as a celebration and the worldwide aspect of it and watching it turn across all parts is a great example of how it is culturally connecting. Yeah, any other traditions culturally that surprised you or that

were like, oh, that's a great idea. You know, my friend Simone, she's Swedish. And she, every year for her birthday, Swedish tradition, you make a cake in the shape of something or decorated with something really cool that happened that year, that to mark the year. And one year, she got a, she got sprayed by a skunk. We made her a skunk cake that had like a, that had like a easy cheese, cheese whiz. Yeah. Yeah. But you could press a cheese whiz. She got a, How cool. She got a car. She got an honorary doctorate. So we made a laurel wreath cake. She adopted a dog. We made her a cake that was shaped like her dog with coconut flakes on the top. So every year it's like, okay, what are we going to do for Simone? And I just think I was like, that's so cool that people do that in Sweden. And after about the third or fourth year, we were talking about it. And she's like, oh, they don't do this in Sweden. This is just a weird thing I like. And I was like, oh, my God. I love that. And looking on the effort and thought. and how you're highlighting all these events and being part of it. I love that.

For years though, I was like, oh, that's incredible. That's so funny. That's amazing. I sort of wish to bring you back to the secrecy. She hadn't even told you that and she just kept letting you think it was part of the culture. I just assumed. I was like, yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, what do you have, but those memories and that bonding. Yeah. Even if something goes wrong, you can still like laugh about it or you know I remember one of my fondest memories is horrible from my 40th birthday as my friend day Lynn showed up with like balloons it was so sweet she was the first person there and immediately something happened the knot slipped and the balloons just floated into the

ether it was like five minutes into it but we laughed about it a lot and like that's like a memory from my birthday that's indelible just because it was like oh with the time it was really funny. So I don't know. I think sometimes these rituals, it's more what you experience together than does it go perfectly. Do you know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. And it kind of goes back to this idea of we don't have to make it perfect, right? These rituals give us a basic script, but we don't have to follow it precisely, right? It doesn't have to be a perfect Instagramable birthday party? Yes. It's almost better if it isn't. Exactly. The whole goal is to have something that we can share and all of a sudden it becomes not just your birthday, but a shared thing we all have.

And then that's something we can look forward to going into it. It's something we can enjoy in the moment. And it's something we can talk about and kind of build into our relationship and the story of, you know, our friendship and our relationships and our life afterwards. It's okay if we break the script a little bit. The goal is to get together in a meaningful way. And I've been so excited to get to this aside, all episode, because there was a 2018 study published in Frontiers of Psychology titled, Well-Being and Anticipation for Future Positive Events, Evidences from an FMRI study. So anticipating anticipation, it noted previous research dating back a few decades that suggested that anticipation has really important implications in human well-being and in our mental health,

and that thinking in the future has important evolutionary benefits. We have to be able to imagine what's going to happen, right? And it also cites earlier studies that people who are more anxious tend to anticipate more negative future experiences, whereas people with depression tend to anticipate fewer positive experiences. So people with depression don't necessarily anticipate negative events. That's for the anxious people. Just a lack of positive ones. generally speaking.

If any of this sounds too familiar, listen up. So anticipating positive events increases something called reward sensitivity in the brain. And that helps boost a positive mood and it leads to higher levels of mental well-being, which also helps with stress coping and also helps with physical well-being. So to prove it, these researchers put 40 people in functional MRI machines to see their brains anticipating good stuff. And they watched the brains light up in the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex. That's an area that is associated with higher well-being, the study says. So since I did this interview and this episode, I keep thinking all the time, like, am I anticipating a bad result? Am I anxious?

Can I tweak that thought and imagine a better outcome? Or am I bummed? Am I depressed? Am I even looking forward to anything. And then I try to think of three things that I'm looking forward to from like tomorrow mornings cup of tea to going to a perfume counter to sniff some stuff for free or a pie baking contest that's happening in two months. Anything. Think of anything you can look forward to. Scientists have worked so hard to tell you that it helps. Also, doctors, heal thyself. Is there anything, any ritual that y'all are looking forward to this year or any holidays or favorite days or anniversaries or birthdays or dissertation anniversaries that you guys are looking forward to? I just had one. I'm not looking forward to it anymore. It just happened. But one of my best friends,

my roommate from undergrad just got married. And that was so much fun, right? A bunch of our college friends got together. A bunch of us were in the wedding. We got to celebrate. not just our friend and her new husband and their relationship, but it was so fun to just be together. We did this whole trip together. We were all staying together. I think that was my big one for the years, is celebrating my friend and all the rituals that go along with it. Not everything went perfect, but I think it was a perfect wedding. I was just going to say, at the end of the day, it's really less about, like, are the napkins the exact color of sage or did the groom's brother do the worm on the dance floor. And what do you, what do you remember? It's like, yeah. And there was,

there was maybe like a kerfuffle around the, the flowers. Like, are the flowers going to show up? We're like, okay, we'll just run to Trader Joe's. Like, we'll, we'll get a bunch of flowers. We'll get a bunch of flowers. We're going to have this great wedding. And the flowers showed up. They were beautiful. The wedding was beautiful. But ultimately, you know, the memories aren't about the flowers. The memories about all celebrating together, right? Yeah. And Danielle, you were going to say your son's birthday? is Friday and he loves mini golfing and this will be our third year going mini golfing on his birthday and I am actually excited about it and it's just like a very low key but it'll be a fun

little thing that will be our ritual I'm realizing so I'm excited about that. Is he good at it? Yes, he is, yes. He is turning eight and he is better at already a lot of of sports than I am. Like, we went when he was maybe six. Yeah. He was better at mini golf than I was.

So I imagine he's still very good. Yeah. That's so great. Oh, my gosh. This has just been really affirming in terms of get goofy, get together, celebrate, bigger, small. Yes. I think it really does matter. And it's really heartening to know that when you're there for the good times, it helps

during the bad times, too. Yes. Exactly. It gives me like butterflies to celebrate things. That's so sweet and great. So keep up the amazing work. It's so cool that someone gets to study this and it's y'all. It is. Yes. It's so fun. It's the best job. Yes, it is the best job. I'm very grateful to be able to ask these questions and do this research and look at these exciting and important things. And also benefit I've tried so hard to integrate celebrations more into my daily life. I think I'm better off for it. It's a great way to live.

So ask festive people, your festering questions, because what's the point of anything if you can't enjoy something? So thank you, Danielle and Kelly, so much for agreeing to let me ask you so many questions. And please do find out more about them and their causes of choice this week, right in the show notes. We are at Ologies on Blue Sky and on Instagram, and I'm at Allie Ward, 1L, L on both. We have shorter kid-friendly episodes are in their own feed, wherever you get podcasts. Thank you, as always, to supporters at patreon.com slash ologies

for supporting the show from the very beginning. We'll be back, of course, on Tuesday with regular episodes. And thanks to Aaron Talbert, who admin the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwired does the website. Spending quality time is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. Social and occupational support comes via managing director

Susan Hale bonding together all the clips and the cuts are editors Jake Chafee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn gifted us with this theme music. And if you stick around to the very very end, I tell you a secret. And this is one of my favorite birthday candle traditions. I feel like it started around quarantine. And then as people were coming out of quarantine, it felt super weird to watch someone like blow on their candles on a cake. Everyone's like, ugh. It's like too soon for that. What I started doing, instead of one person having to blow out a ton of candles and either have an asthma attack or spread germs everywhere, everyone gets a candle. It gets lit.

And then everyone makes a wish for the person who's having a birthday and blows it out at the same time. So that person gets like 20 wishes from various friends who are wishing good things. Nobody spits on any cakes. I know I'm talking about this too much, but I'm just saying it's, I think it's a beautiful thing. to say, hey, everyone, make a wish for me, will you? Make it something good. I think that's a great idea. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it.

Happy birthday. Okay, bye-bye. It's been scientifically proven. Thank you again so much to Verbo for sponsoring today's special episode. I was so stoked to find the two best people to talk to about this, about creating meaning over time, and also the social support that brings warmth to not only your good times, but bonding and, and support that sustains us all year, even the rough times.

And the investment of traveling and enjoying these shared traditions is literally good for your health and the health of the people you love. You deserve it. Your ancestors agree. 300,000 years of gathering over rituals and traditions, whether it's under a new moon or it's your yearly holiday 2,000 piece puzzle, it's a form of medicine. It's also fun. And Verbo helps support these moments with a reliable place to stay.

and support when you need it. The people on your trip are full of surprises. Not your Verbo. Book your next trip on the Verbo app. Yay!