Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dacher Keltner on How You Cultivate Awe and Moral Beauty in Life EP 288

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

The Passion Struck podcast welcomes Dacher Keltner, a professor at UC Berkeley, for a fascinating discussion on cultivating awe and moral beauty. Dacher is the author of the new book, "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. Dacher Keltner Joins Me to Discuss How to Cultivate Awe and Moral Beauty in Life In this inspirational episode of the Passion Struck podcast, host John R. Miles speaks with Dacher Keltner. The two discuss the importance of awe in transforming an individual's perspective and how it can lead to increased generosity, pro-social behavior, and concern for others. The conversation explores the cultural and historical significance of awe, as well as its physiological and psychological impact on mental and physical health. Listeners are encouraged to embrace a sense of wonder and curiosity and to visit the Greater Good Science Center for more information on happiness and well-being. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/dacher-keltner-cultivating-awe-moral-beauty/  Brought to you by Fabric. Go to Apply today in just 10 minutes at https://meetfabric.com/passion. Brought to you by Green Chef. Use code passionstruck60 to get $60 off, plus free shipping!” Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/-NkMSP-xIq0  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Lori Gottlieb on the importance of embracing self-compassion: https://passionstruck.com/lori-gottlieb-on-embracing-self-compassion/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2022? Check out episode 233 on intentional greatness and episode 234 on intentional behavior change. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network

Coming up next on Passion Struck. We gathered stories of awe from 26 countries, took two years with speakers of 20 languages to translate them, and then we classified them like what brings people awe. I was expecting nature, maybe spirituality, and it turns out it's other people, the moral beauty of other people. And it is things like their kindness,

sharing food with a stranger, their courage, its humility, its the ability to overcome things, to persevere. You see somebody who's born with a physical condition and lo and behold, they walk around the country. And you're just like, man, look at the strength and character and morality and goodness of humans. Welcome to PassionStrock. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets,

tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to Episode 288 of PassionStruck.

Graded by Apple is one of the top 20 health podcasts. And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly. But listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. I also want to let you know that PassionStruck is now unsindicated radio. You can tune in every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. on the AM FM 247 network. I'll put links to where you can listen to it and the radio stations in the show notes. If you're new to the show,

thank you so much for being here. Or you simply would like to introduce this for a friend or family member. We now have episode stutterpacks, which are collections of our fans, favorite episodes that we organize in the convenient topics. If any new listener, great way to get acclimated, everything we do here on the show, either go to Spotify for PassionStruct.com, it's nice starter packs to get started.

In case you missed it, earlier in the week, I interviewed Terry Cole, a licensed psychotherapist, global relationship, and empowerment expert, and the author of the best-selling book, Boundary Boss. The essential guide to talk true, be seen, and finally live free. Please check that episode out, and if you love today's episode, those are any of the other ones that we've done. Please consider giving us a five-star rating and review.

I know I say it every time on this podcast, but they really do go a long way in helping promote the popularity of the show, and more importantly, bringing people into the passion start community where we can teach people how to live a limitless life that is full of hope, connection, meaning, and inspiration. Now let's talk about today's episode.

The feeling of awe, let's face it, is difficult to define. It's the sensation that we feel when experiencing vast mysteries that go beyond our understanding of the world. For example, goosebumps when seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, or the wonder that we feel when looking at centuries old pieces of art. Until recently, there was no scientific investigation into awe, as scientists focused more on emotions such as fear, which is essential to human survival. However, research has now unveiled that awe actually plays a huge role in our evolution as our ability to cooperate, form communities, and create culture stems from

experiencing awe-inspired events. In today's episode, I'll be interviewing Dacker Keltner, who's one of the leading experts on the biology of human emotions, and will dive deeply into this elusive emotion of awe, exploring how it transforms our brains and our bodies. We discuss Dagger's latest book, Heideld-A, The New Science of Everyday Wonder, and how it can transform your life. He and I will discuss how cultivating awe in everyday life helps us appreciate the most humane aspects of human nature. At a time where our world is facing various crises and divisions, we need awe more than ever.

When we allow ourselves to experience awe, it enhances our reasoning, provides new insights, strengthens our sense of shared identity, and heals trauma, grief, and loneliness. Backer Caltoner is a professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley, and the Thalco-D director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, a renowned expert in the science of human emotion. Dacker-Coutner's studies,

compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities, as well as our search for meaning. His research interests also spanned issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is also the author of the Power Paradox, and the best-selling book born to be good, as well as being the co-editor of the compassionate instinct. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so ecstatic today to welcome Dacker Keltner to Passion Structs.

Welcome, Dacker. It's good to be with you, John. Well, Dacker, I first learned about you and your work from our mutual friends, Susan Kane, and I was wondering how did you and Susan first meet? I almost tear up when I think about my friendship with Susan and our conversations. She and I first met when we talked about her book Quiet and was background research, where she advances the thesis that the quieter, more introverted types of people

have a new place in leadership and advancing culture today. So I've done a lot of work on leadership or power. So she and I started to talk about that question of how is it that the quiet people in classrooms and hospitals and design firms and tech and the like are moving into positions of leadership. I was astonished, John, just like you at her insights. She just has a way of thinking about big phenomena, like how is the world changing? Who's doing that work? Quieter people today. What is the nature of emotion and bittersweet? And then starting with that conversation or a couple of conversations, I just was astonished at her depth. And she and I check in every six months, two a year and just talk. And in a way, we are joking

about this. It's like an old-style friendship where it's really grounded, but not in quick texts or Instagram posts, but just like long conversation, you know, about where we are and what we're doing. So when I go to any archives here and then follow her thinking and am influenced by her thinking deeply. So it's a cherished friendship. Well, Quiet had a huge impact on me personally because I was in these corporate roles and was wondering what was wrong with me because my peers would have all this energy, yeah, would always be so vocal and in their expressions and I was the exact opposite and I kept trying to make myself to be more like them and her book really showed me the power of being an introvert and why we are so different. Yeah, and it's interesting. It makes contact with some of the stuff.

I didn't think about how we need people who are more humble and other oriented, who serve others, who bring out the good and others as part of the corporate world. So her book was profound. It was a big book. And Kudos to her. Well, speaking of books, her latest one,

Better Sweet is all about painful emotions, something that you're an expert in. You wrote a best-selling book yourself called Born to Be Good. And I want to ask, how are emotions like compassion, gratitude, and love the glue of our social relationships? Yeah, that question. That's my entire career, John. So, it's taken me a while to get to that. When you look at our most meaningful social interactions, right,

with your children or with your best friends or a romantic partner, flirting with somebody or going to work and feeling really envious or exhilarated, you start to get the sense that feelings or emotions, these brief states that we call emotions, have really important things to say about our social lives, who we fall in love with, who we trust at work, how we parent a child, how we get along with our neighbors, and that sort of observation, led a variety of different scientists, including myself about 30 years ago to make the case, there really wasn't well established in a lot of the annals of scholarship that emotions are like a language of

our social life. We express them in facial expressions and voices. We use words, they motivate actions. And when you think carefully about your most meaningful moments in your social life, emotion is usually right there, right? You're falling in love with somebody and orging a bond. You want to ask for forgiveness from somebody whose feelings you've heard. You're at work and you feel ashamed about a mistake you've done.

And so starting with that insight that emotions are this language of our most important relationships, there are now thousands of studies around the world that speak to that general idea. Yeah, I find the work that you started pretty much the same time I was entering college. It was 1988. It was, it was, it was interesting because you were looking at the cognitive neuroscience revolution that was going on at the time. And through that lens, you discovered this missing link, which was the emotional revolution, which wow, it's come such a long way in the past 30 years. It has.

And just to give you a couple of examples, I'll give you two that are really game-changing. One from our lab, if you look at Danny Connamens thinking about Enemies Tversky about how we make choices and have preferences for this political candidate or that political candidate or buy this home or that home or this economic investment or that other, there was no role for emotion in those decisions. That's absurd, right? Now we know that economic decisions, political decisions, consumer decisions are emotional.

They involve our gut. And our lab came at people like Jen Learner and said, wow, fear is really important to the choices we make. Sadness too, anger is important to decision making. Another example, John Hites work on morality, prior to his thinking, the field just ignored how we make moral decisions about how long of a sentence should that criminal get? How should I punish this person who's taken my money? What are the moral things I care about in life? It had no statements about emotion. And John came in and said, there are these moral emotions like disgust and compassion

and anger that are fundamental to our moral lives. So yeah, it's, I'm glad you see it as having come a long way. I agree. I think we're now living in this age of emotion for better and worse. Hopefully we can learn from it. for better and worse. And hopefully we can learn from it. Well, you had such a unique upbringing. And at one time, your neighbors were the doors and Joni Mitchell, your mom top poetry, your father was a painter. But I didn't grew up that long after you. But I would certainly tell you that our dinner table wasn't filled with stories of the Vietnam War or talking about civil rights. But I wanted to ask you, how did your unique upbringing influence your path and eventually where you are now?

Yeah, thanks for asking that, John. Sometimes when you write books like all in particular, that just is out that I wrote. You engage in this deep reflection on like, why do I, why do I care so much about emotion and decision-making, emotions like awe and beauty and compassion? And it took me back to my childhood and I did have a pretty unconventional childhood. Even though my dad was a farmman as well as an artist, but I was born in Mexico. I grew up, as you say, in Laurel Canyon in the late 60s, where Joni Mitchell was around in the doors,

and the mamas and poppas and the birds. And it was the late 60s, and it was a wild time of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X and the war protest that my parents took part in. It taught me a few things. One is like we've been saying, my mom and dad both were influenced by poets, writers, painters,

the romantic movement in Francisco Goya, who cared a lot about passion, who said art is about passion and getting us to wake up. And then yeah, I was just part of a time. I remember vividly when Martin Luther King was assassinated. And just like my parents talking to me about it and I was seven and the funeral procession and just the sense of sadness about that.

And so it was just a time that shape people, young people like me to, in this case, think about what would I study, emotion? What emotion should I care about? Things I can passion. Martin Luther King was so strong. It was a profound influence on my life. Yeah, well, there are a number of books that have come out over the past year. In fact, when it's coming out this week from Susan McSaman, who's a professor at Johns Hopkins, but it's all on the power of the arts and creativity and how that can foster all like we're going to talk about, but also leads to helping people with things such as loneliness or overcoming trauma, depression, things like that.

So it is really a profound link. Yeah. It is. And you've really sketched out John, the lab science began in the late 80s, like you said, and we started to discover things about the face and the emotional brain, Joe Ladoo, and how it shapes decision making our lab, morality, John Hyde. And now we're having these different conversations 40, 35 years later, wow, maybe the emotions that art can create or music can create will help people with dementia. Maybe you will live longer if you surround yourself

with the emotion of awe and finding it in nature, which turns out to be true. And then Vivek Murthy, our surgeon general, thanks to this literature, saying loneliness is one of the central health challenges worldwide. We've broken down community, we've moved away from friends and family. Too many people like you cited are lonely,

and that's an emotional problem. And here's the chief doctor of the United States, saying this has to change healthcare. We have to think about emotions. Well, I've talked a lot about loneliness on this show because it's something that's so chronic. And when you think about it, one out of every three people globally,

they just completed a 20 year study that showed 33% of people in 120 countries experience it. One that was shocking to me was Brazil is the highest and there it's 57% of the population, which was just mind blowing. Yeah, and this goes back to emotion, which is you think about all the emotional joys of being in a strong community, of sharing laughter and touch and gratitude. And yeah, there's a lot of conflict,, of sharing laughter, and touch, and gratitude. And yeah, there's a lot of conflict, but then you forgive, and you share food together.

And now globalization has brought a lot of freedom to individuals, a lot of progress, which is great, but it also has broken down the emotional communities that used to sustain us. And that's a challenge for today. I'm glad you're profiling it on your show, John. Well, just think about when you and I were both kids. I remember getting home from school

and from the time I did my homework till we ate, it was just go out and enjoy nature with your friends and we had so much fun exploring. And I look around my neighborhood that has a lot of kids and not a single one is ever outside playing and it really scares me. Their recent studies are showing that adults use of phones is five to five and a half hours today and that for adolescents it's even higher and what scares me is we're creating the society where people are living in the metaverse

instead of the real universe. And I think with just panic, what this is gonna do to my kids are 19 and 24, them and these growing generations who are living in the cyber world more than they are in reality. And it's breaking all their relationship on. We've engaged in this massive experiment without

consent and without forethought. What will this do? And I think John, you've hit the central problem that I think our digital revolution is gonna bring and I don't think it's changing our consuming habits or political attitudes, I think it's going to disrupt our basic relational capacities. That it's going to hurt empathy, it's going to hurt our ability to laugh together, to coordinate at work. So I think we're in for some real striking developments. So glad you're profiling it. Yeah, my son and I often talk about his career future because

kids in their early 20s right now are really worried because they're hearing all these reports that hundreds of millions of jobs are going to disappear. So they're wondering what should I study when there's a high likelihood that I'm going to have to re-learn a different skill set. And the common theme that I keep hearing from more and more people that have been on the podcast, I've been telling my son now is, I think the most important thing that you could study is the science of human connection.

Because regardless of how much everything changes, fundamentally, AI can't replace human connection. No, and I agree. In the data, the emotional intelligence data of Mark Rackett, and the social intelligence data is really robust on that. In today's 21st century, given the nature of teams and work, and yeah, there always be the data analysts and the people who write code, but we need people who are smart at social connections. And there's now robust science that points the way. Well, speaking of relationships, you and I both, our lives had a very strong relationship with a younger sibling. I have two younger siblings, but unfortunately, I share something in common with you.

And that is my sister has been fighting pancreatic cancer for the past three plus years. And being close to someone like that, it's been really tough to see her fight so, valently, and yet, all the hurdles that just keep coming along her path. And so I was very sorry to hear about your brother, Ralph, and his fight with colon cancer. So I wanted to express that sympathy because I'm seeing it firsthand myself. But I did want to ask you how was watching him battle this terrible disease, actually an inspiration for you to write the book, ah.

Thank you, John. And I'm really sorry about your sister. And I wish her the best. It's interesting. My brother, Ralph, who passed away from colon cancer figures very prominently in the book, he's in some ways the hero. And a lot of people have been reaching out to me, like you who have had siblings go to early, Ralph was 55, I think. What happened, John, is my brother and I were extremely close. We were 14 months apart, used my younger brother, but bigger, and we're protecting Guy. And we had this unusual childhood, and it sounds a bit like yours in the sense

that he and I just did everything together. We roamed the countryside, we went fishing and ponds in the country, we grew up in LA, skateboarded around the wild streets, we played little league together, basketball tennis together, we just were true brothers. I came to see the world with him and through his eyes and here his voice all the time and have a sense of how he would look at reality. And that was my reality. And then he got colon cancer and colon cancer is brutal. It is, man, it's not brain cancer does some things and pancreatic others and colon cancer

is a mess because it just disrupts your digestion and eating and stomach and colon. And so it was two years of brutality. I teach happiness and I teach how to handle stress and it kept me sane. And then the night that he passed, I was there with my family. And I had no way to approach this because I wasn't brought up religious or with any sense of what happens in the afterlife, et cetera.

I was a materialist or a reductionist from biological perspective, but I started to read up on contemplative approaches to watching people die, like Rochie Joan Halifax out of the Buddhist tradition. So I was open to it. And then when I started to see my brother transition and a lot of ministers I talked to and doctors talk about this. And then so does the near death experience literature that I review in the books. Like, he got really calm and quiet and peaceful.

I would say he was interested in where he was going. He was unconscious, but he was breathing, was responding to us, his face was responding to us. And I had an experience of all where it just felt spiritual. It felt like he was going to a place. I felt him being pulled there. I saw space vibrating almost. When you lose a brother or sister who you're close to or a child, it knocks you out of your universe. And I was a mess. I wasn't sleeping well. I could work, but I was just really disoriented. And I literally heard a voice, John say, go find all. Your brother was where you found all, man, backpacking and fishing and going to sporting events

and music and he was gone. I literally grabbed a bunch of books that I cared about and I went off by myself and just started writing and that led to this book to find awe. Well, thank you for that story. I, my grandmother died of colon cancer. So I've been through part of that experience, and my other grandmother was actually the last person who talked to her and moments after

our conversation, she passed away. But similar to that, there was just something different about that conversation where I could just sense she was moving from one world to the other and had a piece about her that it's hard to describe. Yep, and it's been humbling, John, when the conversations around this book, I've been in touch with a lot of people who work with grief and bereavement and approaching and hospice care, and they feel like there's a lot of awe and transformation in the process, right? Our research finds that too, that the life and death cycle is just, it's incredible. It's transcendent, it's mysterious. And I hope that this book, and for our audience now, it engages them in thinking about how do we think about this great mystery of life that it ends and it helped me enormously to grow Out of the grief in searching for new forms of all Yeah, I don't know about you, but for me I just remember I've seen my son

So vividly when he was born and just how Basically took my breath away just it's hard to even explain. Yeah, life is incredible. Well, speaking of great books, last year one was produced by Bob Waldinger, who you probably are familiar with. He's the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Agent, and it was actually on the topic of,

how do you create a good life, which is what your book is all about as well. Yeah. Their study has found that it's really relationships and human connections that create joint meaning. However, your work has led you to a slightly different conclusion. And what is that? Yeah, I appreciate how thoughtfully you're situating this work on

awe in this broader literature on well-being. There's this new interest in psychological science and the study of happiness called meaning, really nice work by Crystal Park. Meaning is core passion. It is your sense of purpose, your sense of, what is my life really about in the deepest sense, almost a spiritual sense?

It turns out that awe is that, right? How where you find awe, how you find it? What it feels like, the insights that it brings you, lead you on a path that's meaningful. There really is different from being happy in your relationships, although it's related. It's is different from being happy in your relationships, although it's related. It's different from feeling good about life.

It's different from the classic sort of dimensions or pieces of well-being. So this book, what it does is it says, there's this amazing emotion, aw, which is when we feel astonished by things that are vast and mysterious. We find aw in these different realms, what I call the eight wonders of life. We feel astonished by things that are vast and mysterious. We find awe in these different realms, what I call the eight wonders of life, moral beauty of people, collective movement, nature, spirituality, music, visual stuff, life and death and big ideas. And if you can find five or ten minutes of awe each day, just exploring these domains

of awe, you'll feel like life is meaningful. You feel like, even for me, when I lost my brother, I was in a lot of pain, but I found enormous meaning in it when I was searching for awe. It is different from every well-being researcher has their own pieces on the secret of life, and its relationships, or meditation joy or its gratitude or what have you, but awe is also an important part of that puzzle. It's a unique pathway to well-being. Yeah, well, you just hit the head on the nail of what this whole podcast is really about. I'm trying to educate people on meaning is the biggest one, but outside of that, the other two main areas are hope and connection.

What great emphasis. Well, I think it might be good for the audience. I'm sure that they have heard of awe before. Yeah. Maybe they don't really understand what it really means. You do a great job describing it in the book. I was hoping you could bring that life for the audience. Yeah. Well, if they don't understand, they're not alone because we didn't understand when we began this research 20 years ago. Yeah, so, as an emotion, it's a brief state that has

an expression and a physiology and a kind of what philosophers call the intentional object or what the emotion is about. And it tends to arise when we encounter things that are vast, like big things, vast in terms of the meaning for us, and that are mysterious, right? We don't immediately understand them. We're like, wow, what was that lightning storm? Or why is that big group of people moving through the streets really fast?

There is mystery and vastness to all. And then critically, to really understand your feelings of all, we've done a lot of different research on what does it feel like? What runs through your mind? And it's fascinating. I have people come to me, John, and they'll say, I was watching my kids graduate from eighth grade, and they were playing a musical score, and I was tearing up,

and I just felt amazed, is that all? And you can almost provide an awe checklist that science shows, which is, did you feel small and humble? Yeah, well, that's all. Did you tear up? Well, yeah, we often tear up when we feel awe. Did you get goosebumps, like those tingly sensations up your back?

That's part of all. Did you feel really open and curious about things? That's also part of all. Did you wanna do what William James called the saintly tendencies of mysticism or you wanna be good to people around you? That's also part of all. So all is this feeling that arises

when we encounter vast mysteries that makes us feel small, makes us feel connected to others, makes us in a sense want to serve, it has this kind of tearing and goose bumps, and then importantly, just to kind of round out our orientation, those eight wonders, we surveyed 26 countries around the world, and we coded all their stories of awe. And these are countries from Mexico to India, to China, to South Africa, to New Zealand, to Poland. And we find awe in encountering the moral beauty of people, their kindness, out in nature.

Collective movement, I love sporting events because you start cheering, you sing the fight song, you all do the touchdowns gesture. And next thing I was like, this is amazing. And then spiritual stuff, music, art. And then the final two sources of our big ideas, right? Man, three markets or the idea that I have choice or free will, big idea.

And then finally, the life and death cycle. So, Oz is feeling state that washes over us that comes out of these encounters with the eight wonders of life. Well, as I talk to you before we get up the show, this whole area is something that interests me and it's why I've wanted to have you on the podcast for so long. And I try to interview anyone who's around this space to get different viewpoints on it.

So I've had several people you probably know, David Vago, David Gaden, Scott Berry, Hoffman on it. And I've really gone deep into the study of transcendence and what brings about self-realization. And it's interesting because as you're saying, it's everything from spiritual experiences to now, yadon, the studying, everything about how psychedelics are influencing the states of transcendence, mindfulness, which is what Vago studies. But I wanted to get into this whole aspect of moral beauty. I think it's a different lens

than anyone else is looking at this through. And it's something you deep dive in chapter four. Can you go a little bit deeper on this concept because I found it really just beautiful? Yeah, thank you, John. I really appreciate your careful reading seriously. Your surprise is my surprise. We gathered stories from 26 countries, took two years with speakers of 20 languages to translate them. And then we classified them like what brings people all. And I was expecting nature, maybe spirituality. And it turns out it's other people, the moral beauty of other people. And it is

things like their kindness, sharing food with a stranger, their courage. I love this story of a son from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who's dad through a racist out of the bar. It is wisdom, it's humility, it's the ability to overcome things to persevere, right? You see somebody who's born with a physical condition and lo and behold, they walk around the country and you're just like, man, look at the strength and character and morality and goodness of humans. And what's amazing is our encounters

with these characteristics of people nearest. It overwhelms us. We tear up, we cry, we get the chills, we are convinced we can be better people. It gives us a sense of purpose. And we call that phenomenon moral beauty. Emanuel Kant, great philosopher, talked about how very often we find our inspiration

from other people. What's interesting, John, when you think about it, is that we've often thought about how we become good people in terms of, oh, I got to study great texts and religions, or maybe I have to develop a certain cognitive complexity that was Lawrence Colberg's view, or maybe I have to have these kind of moral foundation perceptions that John Hight talked about. Here's a new view of our goodness, which is just be open to being moved by the goodness of people around you, right? And, you know, one of the my favorite things to do to find awe is to walk out in the streets

of Berkeley or wherever I am and just look for little moments of moral beauty. I remember one, a skateboarder helped this old woman, her cat got stuck up in the tree, and we were all paralyzed. What should we do? This skateboarder comes up and tattoos all around, runs up into the tree, gets the cat, brings it down, comes into the old woman,

he takes off, and we were all crying and hugging. That's moral beauty. And I think you're right, I think it has this potential to change how we view our fellow human beings is just to start to think about their moral beauty. Yeah, it is interesting in society. We tend to project things like strength and external elements and it's so shocking to me why we don't spend more time on things like honoring kindness, honoring gratitude, which are the things that really matter in life. I know.

And you think about what our culture does, right? In all the powerful media of video games and Instagram, there is a lot of moral beauty of honoring people's kindness and courage on digital platforms. Jonah Berger's done really cool research showing we love sharing that kind of content, right? But then you think about the forces of violent video games or pornography or certain kinds of cynical forms of art and Twitter outrage and so forth. And you're like, why aren't given all of our interest in these cons, these inspiring forms of moral beauty, why aren't they part of this story? And I think I hope this book, aw, really, gets people to think about that,

thinks about other ways of designing the things that lead us to convictions about human beings. Well, speaking of the convictions of human beings, one of the things that your book pointed convictions about human beings. Well, speaking of the convictions of human beings, one of the things that your book pointed out is that people think that the myth of awe is that it's only experienced by the wealthy or privileged. Yeah. But you actually went and visited Sam Quentin prison and it led you down the path of dismantling this myth.

What did you find from that experience? Man, you are asking such a question, so I really appreciate it. It's interesting that scientists in the happiness literature hadn't studied all that much until 15 years ago for various reasons, but I think one of the reasons was that there is this conception that awe is for the wealthy, for the privileged. And it really is most robustly filled in high price tag rarefied experiences. Well, I flew by helicopter into the Rockies and ski down

this one mountain, no one had ever skied before. Or I went to the very reef in Australia and stated this fancy resort. And I was a little worried about that. And I had this intuitive sense as our research started to come in of the truth of everyday awe, which is a central theme in this book, is we can find it anywhere. I've had a couple of moments of awe in our conversation so far, right? So it's all around us. It's, there's everyday awe to benefit from. It's a basic state of mind.

everyday ought to benefit from. It's a basic state of mind. And John, I don't know why, but when my brother was dying, any people's passing leads you to interesting areas of exploration. And I have always wanted to help our criminal justice system and used to volunteer at San Quentin Prison where a lot of people on death row are

and part of this restorative justice program. And I would go every four to six months and a whole day in prison inside, usually just with four or five volunteers, six volunteers, and then 180 prisoners. And if you're around prisoners, as I have been for dozens of hours, one of the things they all work out prolifically, and it was awe inspiring.

I'm like, man, I am the weakest guy out of these 180 types. And I'm a pretty good athlete. I'm like, all right, this is awe, I'm sorry. But I got in there and I was given a talk and I was standing in front of them and I'm a white guy with privilege and know that and the grew up poor. And I was standing in front of them, and I'm a white guy with privilege, and know that, and the grew up poor. And I was looking out, and I felt like, I gotta know, I was about to talk about all, the feeling of we have when we encounter Vest Mysteries.

Because one of those moments, I was like, the last thing I think these guys wanna hear is like, some professor from Berkeley lecturing them about all. So I was like, I want to hear their voices. And I said, what has brought you all recently? And these are guys living inside of prison, prison cells are tough, this food sucks. They don't get to see their families.

It's tough, life are significantly shorter. The healthcare is not good. And I said, what brings you all? They hesitated a little. There's a little bit of quiet. And then suddenly the answers came out and it was just like holding my granddaughter's hand, studying the Bible, getting my high school degree, learning how to read, playing basketball, looking at the clouds and the fog. I was blown away. I truly have not heard better answers to the more illuminating answers. And that led me to the, I think the central thesis of the book, outside of moral beauty, is

all is everywhere. We get such benefits from it. Just take a step back and open your mind to it and think about where it is around you and it'll bring you some good. And I learned that from these prisoners. And then the themes of moral beauty came in the striking relief for me, because there are prisoners inside, every prison, who are really bringing peace to prisons, right? Who are through meditation or Bible study or music, they really want to become good human beings.

And it just astounded me to be close to that. When some ways, Dagger, it didn't surprise me that you found this because I think in this super fast-paced world that we live in our today, the one thing that most people don't do is spend time with themselves. And when you're in a prison, you've got no choice, but to process all your regrets, what got you there in the first place. And so I would imagine the littlest things start becoming so meaningful when you put them in comparison to where they're at right now and how they're trying to get out of that place. John, it's hard to do research in prisons for various reasons, but you've just pointed

to this hypothesis that just struck me. I have never been around people and I've been in Buddhist monasteries and around professional sports teams and work with federal judges and doctors, but I've never been around people who are working harder on contemplating about their character and trying to get better, working really hard, and it was humbling to be close to that. They struggle, they get back into trouble for various reasons, but they really want to find their humanity, which was inspiring.

Well, I used to volunteer at cold weather shelters for the homeless and I would talk to many of the men and women who were there and what became shocking to me is how close each of us are to being a step away from being homeless. I remember talking to this gentleman and he was one of the leading cardiovascular surgeons in the state of Florida. And somehow or another drugs entered his life and he lost everything. He lost his medical license. He lost his wife. His kids won't talk to him. And it was so interesting for me to talk to him because he is completely humbled now.

But he said he is smart as he is as much as he's trying. He can't find a way out of where he's at because society doesn't really provide a glide path to getting your life back. We're not good at that in the United States. And compared to other cultures like Norway where their prisons are really different. Yeah, and part of it for me, why I went in, John, is, and I read about this in the power paradox my last book, part of my unusual background, my parents moved to this really poor rural town. Very poor.

There weren't pathways to success like a lot of communities or quote success. I was lucky because my parents really stressed education and went to university and obviously, some of my best friends were the stories you just described of getting into drugs and ending up in prison. It was one of my best friends in fifth grade and said, man, he had so much talent.

A misstep here or there, the adults that you would hope would be watching you weren't around and next year in trouble. And I think that's what drew me into San Quentin in some ways. Well, I'm gonna go from prisoners to astronauts. So in chapter two, it's all about how do we transform our relationship to the world? And I don't think there's a better way to think about this, that being a Naval Academy

graduate, one of the things that it makes us fortunate of having is friends who are astronauts. So I have several former astronaut friends and one who was just on a space station about six months ago. And one thing when I talked to them that they all have in common is they say their time up there completely changes their relationship to the world. And it's something that you cover in the book called the overview of a fact. And I remember my buddy Chris Cassidy told me that he was up there and he was flying over New York City. And he said, I could just picture these people who were stuck in traffic. They're giving another person the bird.

They're upset. They're panicked. They're this. And he said, from looking at it from where I was, they don't see how minuscule they are. And how were they're putting their present mind is absolutely different from what he was experiencing. And it's too bad we all can't have this overview effect. Well, yeah, that's one of the interesting things.

I followed your spirit here, John, which is, as I wrote this book, and this is a lesson for all of us, which is to put yourself in context, where you really look at your life radically differently, right? And that will bring you on for astronauts, the overview effect as it implies, is like, you get out into space,

and you look down at the world, and you're like, oh my god, check it out. And like, when I'm down on that street in New York, I'm all uptight and worried about being late for a meeting or whatever, but up here, there are a billion people doing that. It suddenly changes your view. But you can get something equivalent

to the overview of fact from many sources of awe, right? Stacey Baer, who's a veteran, who's a hero in my story, from rock climbing and mountaineering. You can get it from certain forms of literature or music, some of the musicians that I spoke to really talked about how music lifts you up and allows you to look at the human condition and our small part in it. So astronauts are lucky to get a big time experience of all by just being out in space and looking at our world, but I think that's what all does,

is it engages the imagination to look at our lives and place them in these larger systems, if you will, that bring peace to us. And so thanks for bringing up the overview effect. It's a fascinating thing. Well, the other thing I wanted to tie it to is we talked about this state of chronic loneliness, such as impacting so many people, including I'm sure

many of the people who are listening to this podcast. Yeah. And you have a connection between the overview effect and possibly something that could address some of this loneliness, and I was hoping you could just talk about that. Yeah, if I understand your question correctly, it has to do with shifting out of this self-focus. And I'm not sure if that's what you after John, but yeah, it is. Yeah, just sociologists start writing about this. Wow, or like in the late 70s, early 80s, or in this self-focused era, this generation of individualism and self-expression and self-interest, make wealth and self-focus. There's a lot of good to it, of freedom and rights and self-expression. That's good. But we have become a self-obsessed culture, and we take selfies, and we think

about ourselves, and we reflect on what other people think about us. And to an excessive degree, and there are now a lot of data that show that mental orientation makes us anxious, self-critical, ashamed, sometimes depressive, and lonely. And they interact. When we feel lonely, we become too self-focused. And one of the astonishing things about experiences of all, any kind of all, you can listen to a piece of music that brings you the tears. You can be out looking at a beautiful sky wherever you are and find all is it reduces self-focus. It just suddenly makes you realize that I'm small, like the over-u-effect. In fact, I'm really small and my concerns,

I hate to say it, are insignificant. In the big sweep of history, whether or not I said the best thing at the dinner party or you've got a good grade, that doesn't matter. And awe brings at you. And what I love is we did research, for example, in Yosemite, the national part. And once you're in the national part, you suddenly don't think about yourself. Once you go walking in search of all, you don't think about yourself as much. And it gives you those joys of the overview effect of, I feel free. I don't feel so stressed right now. And

what a good thing for our times. Yeah, my folks have lived in Chatnew, Gatenacea for over 30 years and they live on one of the mountains around it called Walden's Ridge and there's this point that you can look at called signal point and it's during the Confederate war the soldiers were up there signaling the troop movements of the Union forces to the other confederates who are on look out mountain across the Tennessee river. But what's interesting is there's a pathway that you can go on and I'd always wanted to do it and I one day go on this long hike and about two miles into it. I turned this corner and all of a sudden a 200 foot waterfall emerges and it's one of these moments like you were just talking about, which is why I brought it up, where suddenly, you feel like you're in this other planet because it's so majestic. Yeah. You see that. And I lived in Wisconsin for four years in the wonderful city

of Madison. Didn't have the mountains of California where it's easy to get the overview effect. But man, I'll tell you, some of my best moments of natural awe, which I write about in the book, we're watching these thunderstorms roll in over the plains in the Madison. And you have these vast skies and the vast turbulent clouds and some lightning coming out and they're thrilling. And we found this in our research.

If you live in the desert of the Middle East or the frozen tundra of Sweden or the wild tropical areas of Mexico, you can find awe and sense that overview factor, the sense that I'm part of some vast natural process that is life. Yeah, well, absolutely. And another one that brings me there is music

and irregular listener, people know how much I love concerts. I love all different forms. I've been to Foo Fighter concerts where you're just blown away. I've seen Metallica and felt the same way. I've seen Country Artist. But one of the most memorable for me is I had always wanted to see fish playing concert because people tell me it's transformative So a few years ago I got to get a Denver and see them over a few days Yeah, and it was such a unique experience. I have you ever been to a fish concert? I haven't but I saw the grateful dead probably ten times Well, probably something very similar, but what's interesting is when you typically go to a concert and you look down, people are moving, but they're moving in different directions.

What was so interesting about fish is everyone was just in this unison. And yes, something you bring up is emotional contagion. And I was using this as a way to try to get into it, but can you dive into that concept a little bit more? This is one of my favorites is what the sociologist studying religion called collective effort lessons. And it's so interesting, John. The stories we got started to speak to this, which is once you start moving in unison with people, like you describe nicely at the fish concert. What happens is your physiology start to sink up, right? The science shows. The boundaries between you and other people start to dissolve conceptually. You're like, hey, we're all part of this tribe. Your mind's not only as the physiology and emotion starting to sink up, but your mind starts to, we're all kind of thinking

about the same thing, like, you lead guitars to fish or the person given the speech at the political rally or the great basketball player on the basketball court. And then this emotion overtakes you of what Durkheim called collective effervescence. It's like crackling electric energy that unites everybody. And it's powerful. And when I ask people what is an awe-inspiring piece

of music or a concert they've been to, which we've done in our research, they like you, they talk about Lanna, is that the show? We started dancing together, next thing I'm hugging all these people, I'm asking them to go camping, we are feeling like family, that's amazing, but also it happens obviously in religious ceremonies, you think about the rituals of religion. And then one of my favorites is sports, where there are sporting experiences that bring you awe that are as meaningful as any source of awe you might ever feel. The Red Sox finally went in that world series.

And when Calbeat Stanford on the play, it is famous, crazy, return of a kickoff. There are people you can look at that today. Cal does not have a good football team, UC Berkeley. Very often. That play makes people really inspired. So it tells us that we are such a collective species, we are so communal and we can find this sense of all just being with other people as a counter to the loneliness of our times. I hope that chapter opens people up to think about new ways to find all they might not have thought about. Well, I could tell you this year's March madness has given us several examples of that, including

who would ever thought Florida Atlantic University, that should about 90% of the audience have never even heard of it, would be in the final four, or my alma mater, San Diego State, who would have guessed it. Congratulations, and what's funny about that is suddenly you're feeling it. You're like, I'm filling up with it. I feel excited and awesome about a sporting event. And sports have a very deep and important place in our social lives.

So go out and see more sports. One other area I wanted to talk to you about was Niths. And one of my favorite books, all time favorites, is by Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth. And it's something that I try to read every year or two because I think it's just such a powerful lesson. But I wanted to ask, how do these mystical experiences bring about joy and bliss? I've got to read Joseph Campbell, Carl Gustaf Jung, and the great writers about myths and legends,

and the like, in the book, I write about what's the meaning of all across historical periods or time? And for a long time, all was really a religious emotion. And it was about conversions and experiences with the divine. However, it would be defined in a particular religion of the Bhagavad Gita is about visions of God. And Paul on the road to Damascus has a famous conversion experience in the Buddha.

And indigenous traditions have mystical experiences. Mysticism, which is very hot right now, in particular with the new interest in psychedelics, for example, is a lot like awe. It's when you feel a sense of amazement, you feel the self-desolving, you feel connected to something large, you feel a sense of deep purpose to the world, and you also feel in connection to the divine. What you think of as supernatural and primary and good in life giving about the universe, the spiritual force. William James said, feeling, religion is feeling. It has belief, it has practices, it has ceremonies and rituals, but at its core, it's about feeling. And once you take that as a starting point, then you ask, well, what are the really important spiritual emotions? And awe is one. A lot of people

feel spiritual awe that they are in prayer or meditating or reading the Upanishads or out in nature. 40% of Americans think that their relationship to nature is divine. They think spirit is part of nature. And that's awe. And then it's just this wonder at being part of something large that feels that it transcends physics and psychology, spirituality. And then there are other emotions that just haven't been studied. John, like, bliss, when we totally dissolve, a sense of horror or terror sometimes, reverence. I try to offer one answer from a more

social scientific, biological perspective on what is the nature of mystical feeling? Here's one view. And then that invites the reader to think about how that works for their own experiences and how else they would think about their own spirituality. But I could one thing that was interesting to me is I went into this thinking that there was going to be universal expression of awe. But it seems to differ based on your culture and where you're from. Why is that? Well, we express our emotions in the voice, in the face, in words, and in stories and myths, and in music and painting, right?

To help other people understand our feelings, because they're so important to our social life, and then we build a culture out of that process. And obviously, each culture has its own unique language of all, that it shares with others through expressions, right? And how they vocalize the emotion, the words they use. One of my favorite examples are the myth and godlike concepts that cultures create to express mystical experience.

And in Japan, they have this whole tradition of the Yokai, or to these little gods and goblins that are out there that produce a lot of the on-starring things, right? So when the sun sets are there's dusk or a big storm or weird darkness or eerie sounds, they think that's really produced as a lot of cultures have by these little godlike figures. So cultures are always just like with the sounds we use to produce language. They're expressing emotions in strikingly different ways, but there's a lot of universality to it too. All cultures have myths, all cultures like to paint all or all cultures chant in a way that brings about all as an expression of mystical feeling. So it's this great combination of what's universal and specific to who we are.

And I have two questions left for you. And this one's going to be a fun philosophical question. So we talked about astronauts earlier. So I wanted to ask you, if you got selected to be an astronaut on the mission of ours, and you were given the ability to put one edict or philosophy into place for this new planet that would help guide it. What would it be? I thought a lot about that question like Einstein and Descartes and Rachel Carson and many others. I really feel that all is almost a basic state of consciousness for the human mind. It is a fundamental property of how we relate to the world, right, is to be filled with wonder and awe. And I encountered so many great quotes about that property of our minds and existence. And then returned to somebody who my dad introduced me to when I was a late teenager, Lao Tzu, the Dow Day Qing. It's one of my Bibles, if you will. And this quote is what I would put on

Mars, which is, from wonder into wonder, existence opens. From wonder into wonder, existence opens. And to me, our lives are like this, which is they move from one mystery to another that we should be curious about. And that's existence. It almost speaks to Darwin's thinking about evolution, which is we move from one state to another as we evolve. And that's the nature of existence. It's always opening and changing and evolving. And so I think that gets as close to what I think this book is about, but also what I think human identity in our lives are about, which is moving from one mystery to another and decurious about it. And that's what existence is.

Well, that was incredible. And you just answered the second question I was going to ask you, but incredible. And you just answered the second question I was going to ask you, but I'm wrong. But really what you just said is that awe reveals the deep systems that connect us all. And that's really what your whole book is about. It is. We were deluded into thinking that it's just me and I and that's what the world is. Instead, the world has all these incredible systems that a system of a storm system, and an ecosystem of a tide pool and food systems, and the family is a system, and a political groups system. And we're part of them. And I think to combat loneliness, we have to open our minds and remember and realize that we are part of all these broad systems

out there that constitute society and the world and the earth. And we're part of them. The magic of all is no matter where we find it, it opens us up to that idea that I am part of something larger. And I love Jane Goodall's quote on this, which is she felt chimps had very beginning forms of on she said, isn't it amazing? And that's really the key to on and our early forms of spirituality even is to be amazed at things outside of yourself. And I think our times need that sentiment. Well, we are definitely a draft not only here in the United States, but as we see on the news on a daily basis throughout so much of culture today.

The last thing I wanted to ask is if a listener has tuned into this extremely fascinating talk we've had today, what's one thing that they could take away from it that they could apply right now in helping them get closer to the good life? Yeah, John, I have a lot of ideas about that in the book, but also importantly is the Greater Good Science Center, GreaterGood.Burkeley.edu is a center that disseminates the knowledge of happiness and the practices of happiness to over a million people a month and it's all free. And we've taken 21 years at UC Berkeley to build it with generous gifts from people like Tom Horniday and Ruth Ann Horniday who helped us found it. It's just there to just like this conversation and what you're doing with this podcast is we need conversations and ideas and practices around the good life. So we can find it again because we are a

drift and we need to do good work on that. So I'd look at that as well as the book. Well, Dacker, thank you so much. It was such an honor to have you on today and to the audience, please read this amazing book and all of Dackers' books are truly amazing. Thank you so much again. Don, thank you for all your really thoughtful questions and the directions you've taken this new study of all that's been part of it, our work. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dacker Keltner

and I wanted to thank Dacker, Penguin Random House, for the privilege and honor of having him here on today's show. Links to all things Dacker will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at John Armiles and PassionStruck Clips. As I said at the beginning, you can also find us now Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m.

Eastern Time on the AM FM 247 National broadcast. Avertiser deals and discount codes are in one community place at passionstruck.com slash deals. I'm on LinkedIn where you can go and subscribe to my weekly newsletter or you can also find me at John Armeyles on Instagram and Twitter where I post daily doses of inspiration. You're about to hear a preview of the Passionstruck podcast I did with C. McDermott, a precision wellness practitioner who holds a doctorate of philosophy in integrative nutrition. C focuses on preventing disease and optimizing lifestyle through nutrition, behavioral change, mindset, as well as stress management. C is the author of the International Asselling Book, your DNA, your life.

Let's start a health revolution. Let's start a wellness revolution because in my mind, average is a standard that includes chronic disease, which I don't think anybody wants that to be average. I don't think anybody's happy with that average. And I think anybody with a chronic disease, which is up to 65% of the population and a quarter of children, if you're in that situation,

you certainly can't say that that's a perfect place to be currently. The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something interesting or useful. If you know someone who's interesting in learning everything about awe, then definitely share today's episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and hear about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen? Till next time, live life, ash and strut.