Why Your Brain Needs Awe and Wonder with Dr. Dacher Keltner

When was the last time you felt absolutely mesmerized by something beautiful? Whether it’s seeing a breathtaking vista, losing yourself in a piece of music, or being in a crowd cheering for the same team, the feeling of awe can be all-encompassing and expansive. This week on Science of Perception Box, Dr. Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists and a scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out, shares how we can cultivate more awe in our life and why we need this sometimes overlooked emotion. Dr. Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. Dr. Keltner is involved with the education of health care providers and judges and has consulted extensively for Google, Apple, and Pinterest on issues related to emotion and well-being. Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School Of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for The Tiny Blue Dot Foundation as well as the current Meritorious investigator and Former President of the Allen Institute For Brain Science. Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever podcasts are found. Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app or tell a friend about the show. Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information. Episode Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction (01:35) - Exploring the Concept of Awe (02:33) - Personal Experiences of Awe (04:05) - Defining and Studying Awe (05:00) - Awe Across Cultures (07:02) - Physiological and Emotional Aspects of Awe (12:34) - Awe in Animals and Evolution (16:34) - Awe and Mental Health (20:31) - Babies in Tunnels: A Surprising Reaction (21:10) - The Role of Novelty in Experiencing Awe (22:29) - Cynicism vs. Awe: A Battle of Perspectives (23:29) - Digital Technology and Artificial Awe (24:27) - Awe and PTSD: Healing Through Nature (27:16) - The Complexity of Awe: Positive and Negative Emotions (31:30) - Finding Awe in Everyday Life (34:37) - The Power of Awe in Difficult Times (37:38) - Final Thoughts and Reflections

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  An all-prone person, they tend to be curious and love new things and always trying stuff.

• 0:05Heather Berlin?

  Openness to experience.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  And other people. So this is the perception box. You're open to the world. You're open to new experiences. You feel there's something above and vastly bigger than you are. This is closed. I've seen it all. I'm cynical. Yeah.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. We all live inside our own personal, private perception box, built by our genes and the physical, social, and cultural environment in which we were born and raised. In this podcast, we explore how although the walls of this mental box are always present, they can expand in states like awe, wonder, and curiosity, or contract in response to anxiety, fear, and anger. I'd like to introduce our esteemed hosts to incredible and distinguished minds.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Dr. Heather Berlin, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and Dr. Kristof Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current meritorious investigator and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box.

• 1:26Heather Berlin?

  Hi, everybody. Welcome to Science of Perception Box. I'm your co-host, Dr. Heather Berlin.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  And I'm your co-host, Dr. Kristof Koch.

• 1:35Heather Berlin?

  Every week, we feature an aspect of the Science of Perception Box, highlighting the latest research together with our expert guests. And this week, we explore the feeling of awe, a mysterious and striking feeling. What is it? And how is it different from other emotions? And I'm beyond thrilled to have one of the foremost scientists studying awe and its effects on the body, Dacher Keltner. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He's authored six books, including Born to be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power of Paradox. And his most recent book is awe. We have it right here.

• 2:17Heather Berlin?

  The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life. He has over 200 scientific publications. And if you're trying to make meaning out of this vast and mysterious world, this will be a very illuminating conversation. So first, we want to open it up with our connection to awe. So Krista, when was the first time or when was the last time that you experienced awe?

• 2:44Speaker 00

  I don't know the last time, but there was this year ago, this very discreet episode. I was attending the opera in Seattle, Tristan & Solde, Wagner's opera, probably the most virtuous music ever composed in the Western canon. And the second act, the so-called Liebesnacht, the love night or the night of love, where the two lovers, Tristan & Solde, they're sort of staged by themselves on a backdrop of stars. And there's this soaring music and it's just, you know, you totally become selfless. And you feel, you know, you have this bodily feeling. It's just an amazing feeling of awe.

• 3:21Heather Berlin?

  Wow, that's beautiful.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  What about you?

• 3:25Heather Berlin?

  Me? Oh, that's a hard one, actually. I remember actually when I gave birth to my daughter and I looked into her eyes like for the very first time and it was just, I'm getting chills actually talking about it now. Like, I guess that's awe. I mean, amazement, like wonder, I couldn't, it was just beyond anything I had experienced before that. So I guess I can categorize, I mean, we'll find out if that is awe or what that feeling is. But let's, let's welcome Dacher to the podcast.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Thank you, Heather. Nice to meet you, Krista.

• 4:01Heather Berlin?

  So, I mean, was that awe? How do you define awe?

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think your examples illustrate a lot of what we've learned about awe. Awe is an emotion, so it's a distinct state that we feel when we encounter things for the most part that are vast and beyond our frame of reference. We can study awe as a feeling state in response to vast things that are mysterious, music, childbirth being two classics. And then it affects our body and it affects how we perceive the world.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  So where else do you find it outside the opera and during birth? Where else do you find awe?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, that was a central question that we took on. And it, and it was so great to start with your stories of awe because After studying awe for six or seven years, my lab and I started to feel like we needed to, like William James did when he was interested in religious feeling. And it's a question of our consciousness, like, how do we really get the essence of it? We decided to gather stories of awe from 26 different countries because we were worried about just gathering Western European stories. So we have stories of awe from India, Mexico, China, and South Korea, Japan, Poland, all over.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  And we find, it took us about two years to code these stories, awe, we find awe in the moral beauty of other people, their kindness and courage, nature, collective stuff, collective movement, being at a football match, or dancing with people, and then music, visual design, and spirituality.

• 5:39Heather Berlin?

  I'm still trying to sort of figure out the definition of this in the sense of, and is it, is it like a new emotion? You know, there's Ekman's emotions that, you know, cut across all these different cultures of like happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise? Am I missing one?

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Anger?

• 5:55Heather Berlin?

  Anger. I guess I suppressed that one, but we won't get into that.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  We'll get to that later.

• 5:59Heather Berlin?

  So, you know, is this like another universal emotion?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you know, and the last source of awe is life and death, which is really interesting, childbirth, and then watching people pass away. Yeah, you know, this is a hard problem, right? What, how do you know an emotion has occurred? You know, how do we, what are the criteria by which we make that claim? And so for 25 years, a lot of scientists around the world, including my lab, have built upon Ekman's original discoveries. And I think there's now enough evidence to say there are about 20 distinct emotion states, and awe is one of them. And so how do we know? We look at the structure of experience and we use sophisticated methods to figure out, you know, if I listen to music, or if I watch really moving videos, or listen

• 6:46Speaker 03

  to people's vocalizations, how many feeling states are there? And there are about 25. We could study the face and the voice, like Ekman did, right? And there are 20 distinct patterns of behavior.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  So is there gonna be an awe meter on my

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  watch in a couple of years from now? I mean, seriously, is there some physiological measure that relatively reliable identifies you're now in a state of awe?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, that and that's another way we understand these states is to look at their physiology. We know elevated vagus nerve activation is part of the awe response, but that's part of other pro-social emotions like compassion.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  And just tell us about the vagus nerve.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's amazing. It's the antithesis of the fight or flight system, or one, and it's the largest bundle of nerves, starts in your spinal cord and facial musculature, drops into your throat, goes into your heart, lungs, digestive organs, communicates with the microbiome in the gut. And it's only recently been studied in emotion science and it, Steve Ford just started to say, this, it slows us down, it calms us, it helps us vocalize, helps us make eye contact, social stuff. And so it's about social engagement. It correlates with awe. But I think the best bet is those, you know, goosebump responses track awe.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  And all I'll say, you know, and this is where science is incredible, which is, there's new work on the afferent cells that when you stimulate this area of your, your neck and your, the top of your head, it activates oxytocin release, which is part of this feeling of oceanic connection that's part of awe. So I think, I put my money on there, those muscle movements. So we'd have to figure out a sensor back there to track it. And, and that's how we get to the emotion. It's like, there are all these parts of the puzzle, words, physiology, how I move my body, what it means to me. And that's key, which is awe fundamentally, as philosophers say, the intentional object of the experience.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Is I'm really part of something larger than the self.

• 8:53Heather Berlin?

  But that's that the idea of the self transcendence, which you know, because I was gonna ask, you know, could this be used in terms of therapy to help people achieve these states? So they get into a better frame of mind. But there is this aspect of the dissolution of self in this experience of awe. It's something greater, right? You're talking about this, you know, whether it's through physics or music or something larger than yourself. And so is that key to this, the self transcendence?

• 9:18Speaker 03

  I think that's the DNA of the emotion or its fundamental purpose is in our evolutionary history, social mammals, humans, hyper social, we did everything socially. We needed mechanisms to quiet down self-interest and orient to other people. And that's what awe does just across our studies, 30 different countries. The kind of the core meaning of it is like, myself isn't that important. I am part of a piece of music and what it represents symbolically. I'm part of a group of people I'm moving with cheering on the football field, right? I'm part of a spiritual group. I'm part of a moral community when I move by people who speak truth to power or whatever it is.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  So I think fundamentally, it's you are part of something larger.

• 10:05Heather Berlin?

  So it's connection, really. It's not just the dissolution of self, but it is then therefore the connection with others or something.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Does every culture that you studied have a word for awe? And when the Koreans or the Japanese talk about awe, do you think it's really something very similar to what you and I mean?

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's one of the hardest questions to really get definitive answers to. Every culture we've studied, you know, it's 30 or so, has some combination of, combination of symbols that translates to awe. They mean different things. If you go to Japan or Mandarin, Japanese in Mandarin, it's really about fear and respect.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Right? There's that social dimension built into their conceptualization of awe. But that's just the words, right? And then, once you gather data on stories of awe, you know, physiology of awe, people's, how it affects people socially, there's a deeper similarity across cultures underlying these, these linguistic differences that we're documenting.

• 11:10Heather Berlin?

  Do you think it's similar to that, like, overview effect that astronauts have? Or, you know, when they see the Earth for the first time? Or, or I, when William Shatner went into space and he came down, if you've ever seen that interview, when he's just getting out of the, having, you know, gone into space and he's like ecstatic and, you know, transformed. Yeah, you should check out, we should check out this interview. But, you know, he just experienced something massive, you know? And he's like, everybody on Earth, if, you know, should experience this because it will transform you. So are these, is that similar, these transformative experiences? Is that related to awe?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think the overview effect is, you know, suddenly, you know, out in space, you see the Earth and you're a little tiny piece of dust, as Carl Sagan said, or whatever it is on that planet. But that's common in a lot of experiences of awe. I interviewed this musician, Yumi Kendall, who plays the cello for the Philadelphia Symphony, you know, one of our best cellists in the country. And she said, you know, every, I mean, she is filled with goosebumps when she plays the cello in music and crying, all the physiological symptoms of awe. And she said, "When I play music and I feel the sounds leave the cello affecting my body out into the audience, I realize I'm part of, you know, 100,000 years of humans making music.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  And it's just, it's part of this human tradition or this big thing."

• 12:33Heather Berlin?

  You're connected.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Do you think dogs are the social animals? Or monkeys or great apes? Do you think they have a, and how would you know?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, it's almost unanswerable if you rely on self-report, right? Because they, obviously, and I think, I think that misguides us. I mean, Frans de Waal, may he rest in peace, who really influenced my thinking.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Said, you know, you're studying awe, you have to look at Jane Goodall's observations of the waterfall display. The waterfall display, Jane Goodall coined the phrase is when her chimpanzees encounter vast, mysterious natural forces, you know, large storms, thunder and waterfalls, big rushing cascades of water. And if you watch the video, they fluff up their fur. They rock ritualistically as people will do together. For example, in spiritual observation. And they literally look absorbed in contemplating the river. And that to me tells us awe. And she said, of course they have awe, you know?

• 13:41Speaker 03

  It's just in the body, it's in their minds, but they can't tell you about it, but I see it.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  And so it predates the arrival of humans.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  I think so, and you'd be the better one to ask, you know, Kristoff. But I do feel this basic sense of, you know, expansion, contemplation, exploration, which you see in mammals. And then the bodily response, right? That's a big part of our experience of awe that I think we see in social mammals.

• 14:10Heather Berlin?

  And I think it's very much like with certain animals, they say they, you know, because they can't see that much into the future, it's hard for them to have things like anxiety. Right? So anxiety is like fear of some future threat, but they might have like fear in the moment. But the thing about what seems about awe is that it's a really in the moment type of experience, which makes sense that, you know, animals can have it.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, very much so.

• 14:30Heather Berlin?

  What's happening in the brain, like, you know, the default mode network is that involved and?

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:36Heather Berlin?

  How?

• 14:36Speaker 03

  I should be asking, you guys should be studying awe and telling me, you know? But yeah, you know, and this is where in the emotion space, I think neuroscience is really helpful. You have a subjective report that we've replicated in our studies. When people feel awe, nature, meditation, you know, psychedelics, music. They're like, God, I was dissolving. I lost all awareness of the self. And that's real subjectively. And it really maps onto the neuroscience, which is.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  The default mode network, which you know, you're interested in both of you with interest in consciousness is kind of this realm, big chunks of the cortex involve the self-representation and it's deactivated by awe, which I think is striking in Holland, Japan, United States, different ways of feeling awe, music, nature, et cetera. And that tells us indeed, our sense of not being focused on the self has corresponding neural correlates. And then, you know, there are, there are limited studies showing there's oxytocin release with awe, you know, so maybe perioqueductal gray, but we don't know scientifically. That's really interesting.

• 15:51Heather Berlin?

  So potentially you could feel less pain.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:53Heather Berlin?

  In the, yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  And there's one study, I think from Japan as well, certain kinds of awe deactivate the amygdala and have enhanced activation in ventral striatum reward circuitry. So it starts to give us a sense of like, yeah, I'm not as self-focused, I'm open to the world.

• 16:12Heather Berlin?

  So like, it could potentially be like in part of the toolkit when we're trying to get people to these states of, you know, letting go, letting go of the rumination and the, you know, the ego.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:22Heather Berlin?

  That, you know, you have different ways to get there psychedelics, maybe creativity and flow states and trying to induce sensations of awe. I mean, could we, could we, you know, bottle this and create feelings of awe somehow?

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Heather, I think you're asking a question that I think in 15 years, we're going to see a whole programmatic approach to the idea that awe is about healthcare. You know, it's so interesting to me, to your question, Heather, I work in the wellbeing realm as well, like little interventions to make people happy, you know, breathe and follow your breath and, you know, count the things you're grateful for, et cetera. And awe is offering up things we're really good at to help our wellbeing. Music, you know, music makes people happier. It helps with chronic pain, we now know. And, and through awe, nature, you know, forest bathing and the like. Other countries are way ahead of us. Even moral

• 17:19Speaker 03

  beauty, one of my favorite sources of awe. Just think about someone. Who moves you morally, you know, there are now studies coming out showing young people feel more inspired and stronger, just a little reflection. So I think it's a future of mental.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Do you think everyone is capable of awe? Do you think some people, whatever genetic or developmental reasons are more prone to awe?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no doubt, you know, we, evolution operates on individual differences and there are may, I was looking this up recently, there's amazing evidence showing, you know, heritability coefficients or that certain properties of awe are heritable and subject to individual differences. So the goosebumps is a good one where there are people who get the chills at music and it's a powerful individual difference. And our research shows.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Some of that is genetic, isn't it?

• 18:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Thirty, forty percent.

• 18:16Heather Berlin?

  Having known Kristoff for many years, he's very susceptible to awe. Like he's, he has lots of awe experiences. I'm kind of jealous. Maybe there's a different threshold of what it takes. I get excited. We were watching this video, Kristoff showed me this video of this double rainbow. I watched this video and then I didn't feel the same. I've seen double rainbows and I'm like, was like, why don't I feel that when I see a double rainbow?

• 18:37Speaker 03

  There were 50 million people who watched it. Well, I think what we enjoyed about it, why it was so viral is.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  The display, the raw display of awe.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  It's raw awe. And all you need, if you're wondering what awe is, you just look at it, you go, there it is.

• 18:51Heather Berlin?

  But it seemed very, I mean, you know, like orgasmic, you know, in a way, this like, it's almost a, you know, and we're, which also releases oxytocin and all of that.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:01Heather Berlin?

  I'm sure there's some, you know, connections there. But so is there a way that we can utilize this in, in terms of like fear of death? I have a great fear of death.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:10Heather Berlin?

  And I'm wondering if these kinds of, because I know a lot of people with psychedelics, when they get these experiences, they can lose their fear of death.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. No.

• 19:18Heather Berlin?

  So what about awe?

• 19:20Speaker 03

  The people who have had certain kinds of awe experiences will come out of it with a different view of life, right? I bet William Shatner, like, oh, you know, death's not as consequential as I thought it was. A lot of people who have near death experiences, people who watch other people die, as I did, and I write about it with my younger brother, Rolf, you come out of it like. Awe teaches you that there's a cycle of life. It's the fundamental principle of the natural world. Everything is born, grows and ends, right? And awe gets you there. It makes you realize this is a cycle. It isn't what I thought it was.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  And now, and I think it's a major opportunity, like in the psychedelic world, David Yaden, Peter Hendricks, work at NYU, are showing, I think it's really important psychedelics makes you less frightened by death, even if you are facing death through awe. Because it teaches you, you're part of something larger, right? You're part of a cycle. We all are, and that is reassuring.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  How young does this occur? Can a child feel awe?

• 20:29Speaker 03

  There's one study of children and awe, and maybe, or maybe two. I will tell you, and I would encourage our listeners to watch this YouTube series, Babies in Tunnels.

• 20:40Heather Berlin?

  Oh, I've seen that.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  When babies go into a tunnel in a car seat and their parents filming them, they think they're dead, you know, and they're like, life's over. And they come out into the light and they're like, oh my God. So I, so that tells us, if you just looked at it, like, that's awe, right? They're vibrating about the meaning of what they're seeing. And I think, I think you're right. I think we're always, there's a lot of awe early in life. And then culture intrudes.

• 21:10Heather Berlin?

  How much does novelty fit into that? Because my kids are now seven and 10, but like, especially my seven year old, it's because everything is so new to him that he gets super excited about stuff that we are, you know, just blasé about. You're like, mommy, did you know this or that? You know, like, and there is this sort of sense of awe. So, so is novelty an aspect of it?

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it is. And I think that the new, you know, if you go back to that core, what are the core meaning structures that are part of awe? It's like things that are vast and beyond my narrow understanding in the moment. And then also, you know, the new, the mysterious. I chose the word mysterious just for. You know, colloquial purposes, but yeah, novelty is built into awe. And, and, and I think that that sets up a bunch of hypotheses about awe in childhood. How we gravitate to novelty like Darwin did and just love all the new things.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  And it also sets up interesting ideas about, you know, in the, the middle of life, we know life is harder emotionally and wellbeing wise. And maybe we need to go in search of new ideas and new discoveries, right? To rekindle awe. So.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  So cynicism is sort of the, the opposite of that, right? When you, you think you've seen it all, you think you know it all, that sort of kills off any possibility of experiencing awe.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a terrific observation. You know, people are always like, what's the opposite of awe? And part of it's alienation, I think, like the awe prone person feels connected to purposes in life and communities. An awe prone person, and we know with respect to individual differences, they tend to be curious and love new things and always trying stuff.

• 23:03Heather Berlin?

  Openness to experience.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  So this is the perception box. You're open to the world, you're open to new experiences. You feel there's something above and vastly bigger than you are. This is closed. I've seen it all. I'm cynical.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I, you know, you look at our world right now and, and there's a lot of cynicism. I think that just the closed nature, the cynical nature of a lot of digital experience. So we gotta open it up, you know, and awe is a good pathway.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Can't you use digital technology to artificially generate or help people experience awe?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, you can. And, and you could ask the same question about pharmaceuticals and psychedelics, you know, like, and they do, they do induce big experiences of awe. But, you know, in doing this research for 15, 20 years, Kristoff, it was like, we have so many incredible ways that culture has been refining to produce awe. Music, visual stuff, sports, so much awe in sports, you know, spiritual practice, meditation, reading the great spiritual ethical traditions. We are good at this, right? And I tend to favor the more face to face, direct experience approaches pretty strongly. And I worry about VR, frankly. Awe is about.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Being with people and listening to a piece of music, and if you've got this big thing on your head, it's a different kind of experience.

• 24:27Heather Berlin?

  Did you do some work with PTSD and veterans with Oz? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, this was with Stacy Bear, who's a veteran who I write about in the book. And Oz saved his life. He came out of Iraq. You know, the stuff that he saw was, you know, brutal, traumatizing. And he found himself rock climbing. And he's like, he just had this massive transformation. So he got a lot of people outdoors and we happened to study some veterans who just do a half day rafting on a river that I used to raft as a child. And a week later, they have a 32% drop in PTSD. And, you know, if you talk to people who are working with PTSD, man, you know, it's such a humbling condition.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  And it was mediated, it was accounted for by their experiences of awe. They're just like, you know, I feel rattled by what I did in the war, but at this moment, I feel like I'm part of something bigger. We don't know how long these experiences last. I think that's one of the deepest questions. You know, 90% of people can tell you a story of awe from their childhood where it's like, I still feel that. It's still, for me, it was dinosaurs. It's just like, God, you know, when I was four or five. So we don't know how long it lasts. And then how much? I like to tell people in our busy lives, like, once a week for 10 minutes, go look for it.

• 25:58Heather Berlin?

  I mean, the solar eclipse that just happened.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 26:00Heather Berlin?

  I was, I was in, I was in the Great Lawn in Central Park. So it was like a group collective exercise. And my office is right there. So I walked with a patient. There were all these adults and they were like little kids again. And when we reached almost the full eclipse, everyone started clapping and cheering. And you could just see it was everyone, the doorman from the little kids, from everybody. It was like a collective experience of awe and there's something larger than us. I'm getting the chills again now.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  So am I.

• 26:25Heather Berlin?

  Talking about it, right?

• 26:27Speaker 03

  All right. And you know, we just think about the modern world we live in, and this is a little cliched, but it's still powerfully true, which is we used to have very serious relationships to night skies, you know, in terms of orientation and ideas and gods and goddesses, et cetera. We had serious relationships to bodies of water and forests and walking through, you know, I mean, this is just in our DNA. And we now need these reminders of culture of eclipses and the like. And yeah, it's, I hope, I, I think this science is opening us up again to that opportunity. South Korea, Japan, they use healthcare dollars to go out into the woods.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And, and there are 21 pathways by which being in nature makes our bodies stronger.

• 27:16Heather Berlin?

  But I had a question about, is it always a positive feeling? Because you got me thinking, you know, Kristoff, you asked, is it, you know, could it, one of these experiences impact you and last a lifetime? For me, it was this experience as a little kid that made me become a neuroscientist. When I had this extreme fear of death, I was around five years old. And then I, and I realized I was going to die and I thought, oh, can I just at least keep my own consciousness? And where do my thoughts come from? And how does my brain make thoughts? And this was like a burning question, but it was this feeling of like, there's this whole something greater than just me.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:45Heather Berlin?

  And it was a kind of feeling of awe, because I remember I was looking out at the night sky and thinking how small I was. And one day I'm going to die. And so, but there was like a fear to that. And even thinking about, I remember studying in college, you know, astrophysics and getting an understanding of the grandeur of the universe. And it scared me because it was so grand that I almost like couldn't comprehend it. And then fear came in.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:09Heather Berlin?

  So is it always positive?

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, Jonathan Haidt and I wrote about that. And, and it's a fundamental reminder that we have in any discussion of awe that, you know, emotions are complicated. They involve all these appraisals of the world. A fundamental appraisal of the world is, is it threatening? And, you know, amygdala and cortisol and HPA access and the like. And about a quarter of all experiences have serious threat. And, you know, like, you know, my daughter and I were backpacking and this beautiful cloud formation came across. We were up in the high Sierras and then it started shooting down lightning bolts and hitting the ground. And we were like, we packed, you know? And that awe experience had threat. And that changes everything, you know? You don't get the vagal tone shifts.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  You don't get, you get amygdala activation. You have a different emotional profile. It's more stress related in terms of bodily physiology. And it doesn't have the benefits of awe. So, you know, about a quarter of the time awe gets mixed in with threat and fear. Western science so often like, oh, threat and fear. Oh, that's a bad thing. You know, it's a, I don't like the frames of negative and positive emotions. It's just a, it's just a feeling, right? And then we make sense of it. And I think that's why the right kind of cultivation of awe makes, even if it's scary, right? I read a lot about the passing of my younger brother.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  It was filled with mystery and just watching his body deteriorate and leave and awe. But like, this is life. Life ends, you know, and the body goes. And that's an existential truth. And I felt better through awe coming out of that.

• 29:51Heather Berlin?

  Is that like, what? Cause you're an emotion researcher, but what made you decide to study awe in particular?

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Thank you for asking. I mean, part of it, you know, in the deep sense, I had a very awe filled childhood, you know, counterculture and, you know, parents who were like, go out and experience the world. My dad was a visual artist. My mom taught romantic poetry and Wordsworth and Shelley. And, and I just was like, Sublime? Yeah, sublime. I was like, my child, I was an anxious kid, but I was like, wow, awe's worth it. Part of it was watching my first daughter be born and second daughter, I was like you, I was just like, oh my God. And then, you know, I studied it. It's such, it's so important scientifically. You both have said.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Experiences of awe were part of your scientific careers. Darwin, the same, all of Darwin. And so I was like, this has to be studied. And even if my peers laugh at me.

• 30:54Heather Berlin?

  Do you think it makes people happier, though? The more awe you experience, the happier the person?

• 30:58Speaker 03

  I do, and we know that. And it also makes people feel like there's more meaning in their life.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  More meaning rather than more happy.

• 31:06Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  If happy can, yeah. More meaning, because you connect now with other, with the universe at large.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 31:13Heather Berlin?

  In terms of like perception box, you know, when you're alone, you feel I'm alone in the world and you're closed and you're, you know, scared. And then when you have this greater meaning and purpose, it kind of can open things up and expand your perspective and it doesn't feel, you don't feel so alone.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Well put.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  So how do you, if I step out of here in Oakland, tell me, you'll find awe.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think the science is starting to lend us confidence in this. So you can go for an awe walk. And we tested awe walks. Once a week, when you go for a walk, put away, take some deep breaths, pause, put away your devices and just start to look for small things, you know, little elements of the wood pattern here, and then span out and look at bigger things and just move your perception from the box to the expanse.

• 32:05Heather Berlin?

  Like this morning, I did a little morning walk and I saw these beautiful yellow roses. And I stopped and I looked and I was in awe of this perfect, like

• 32:15Speaker 03

  There we go.

• 32:16Heather Berlin?

  yellow rose.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:17Heather Berlin?

  So it was awe in a small thing. You know, it doesn't have to be the grandeur of the universe.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Right, but my sense is, is your sense that you're feeling the, the design of the flower and its, its evolutionary purpose. And yeah, so span from small to large and just look for a mystery in your walk. And we've tested that with people who are 75 years old or older. It benefits people. I love music is a source of awe. We, we, people ask me like, how do I, how in the world do I find awe? Do I have to be spiritual? You know, that's a separate question, but people are listening to music hours a day, right? And all you have to do is listen to music a little bit more intentionally, like, you know, Here Comes the Sun, Beatles. I remember when that song came out and I was listening to it with my parents, you know, when I listen to that.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  It's transcendent, right?

• 33:08Heather Berlin?

  How is this related to mindfulness? Because sometimes I go on these walks, I say, I'm going on a mindfulness walk. And I'll take patients with me and we'll look and observe and be present. How is that different than awe walk?

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Well, mindfulness is the nonjudgmental awareness of things in the world in your mind. Awe is when you are aware of your relationship and that you're part of vast things that have purpose in them. And we need more of that.

• 33:39Heather Berlin?

  It's more like scale and meaning.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:47Heather Berlin?

  So at the end of every episode,

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:50Heather Berlin?

  we ask a perception box question.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:54Heather Berlin?

  I have some questions here. Okay. This is the question I'm going to pose to everyone. I'll answer myself as well, but what do you have to ignore to keep believing in what you believe?

• 34:08Speaker 00

  So as you mentioned earlier on, I tend to have quite a bit of awe in a variety of situations. And I'm not sure how I square that with the pain that's in the world. I myself, unfortunately, I've got very privileged. I don't have that pain, but I see other people suffer from a lot of pain. And so is that really, is this feeling of awe that I feel? How does that square with the pain out in the world?

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Well, I would say, you know, it's interesting. Some of our most transcendent emotions, and there are three, the scientific literature is interested in compassion, gratitude and awe. Compassion is about embracing other people's suffering. Gratitude probably emerged out of food scarcity and sharing food during complicated times in our evolutionary history. And awe very often is being moved by other people's strength and character when they overcome obstacles. So I think it's these emotions equip us to deal with the complexities and the real hardship right now. The climate crises and the rise of authoritarianism. So awe is a good emotion to be looking for in these times.

• 35:22Heather Berlin?

  So are you saying that, but what do you have to ignore to say, keep believing that there's, you have to ignore all those negative things that are happening in the world in order to keep believing in these things like compassion and awe?

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  I feel like we need to ignore deep cynicism. I think that philosophy has really, you know, you find it in Wall Street and so forth.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  You know, Machiavelli, Ayn Rand, et cetera. And the idea that we're all individual selves striving for self-interest, I think it's much more. And, and right now in this cultural moment, we need a bigger idea about humanity. And I think, I think we need to ignore

• 36:08Speaker 03

  a, almost a truism in Western culture that I will be unhappy if I, if I embrace the world's challenges and hardships and the opposite, I believe is true. That when we throw ourselves into the hardships, be it social injustice or what have you, we find deeper meaning. So I think we, we need a reorientation.

• 36:32Heather Berlin?

  When I, this question reminds me of like hope, like why we still have hope in the face of adversity. And, you know, I was thinking about like, like love, romantic love. Right. And we've, I've been in serial monogamous relationships, but they end.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:49Heather Berlin?

  You know, I wasn't fortunate enough to be in one of these, like we're, we're together for 50 years and, you know, but even with that, I still have this belief in true love, in soulmates, in like really connecting with someone in a very significant way. Despite previous relationships that did not last lifetimes. And so I think you have to just ignore whatever happened in the past to keep believing that this exists.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think, ah, you know, Kristoff cited the romantic poet, that's right. They're all about the imagination. Romanticism is the imagination, what, what is inherent in reality. And, uh, you know, we can't ignore that. And I think it's a wonderful property of these emotions of love and compassion that like, oh, I can ima- and all, I can imagine other worlds. Um, that's why we need them now.

• 37:38Heather Berlin?

  Well, on that note, it was a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us today.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  It's an honor to be with you guys.

• 37:47Heather Berlin?

  Great. And if you'd like to learn more about your own Perception Box, spend some time this week answering the same Perception Box questions that we asked our guests, and check out our other questions on the website at unlikelycollaborators.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever you get your podcasts. This has been Science of Perception Box, created by Unlikely Collaborators in partnership with Podpeople. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  And I'm Dr. Christoph Kohl. Thank you very much.