Pod Insights The Oprah Podcast Discover AWE Daily with Oprah and Dacher Keltner About this episode Did you know that experiencing awe can improve your health and your overall well-being? Oprah talks with University of California, Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner to delve into his latest book "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life." During this inspirational conversation Dacher explains how each of us has the potential to experience awe every single day and shares how encountering awe can lead us to greater fulfillment and happiness. Based on his extensive research Dacher outlines and describes what he calls the “Eight Wonders of Life” or the eight experiences that most commonly trigger awe. Throughout the discussion Oprah and Dacher each share their own deeply personal encounters with awe.
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00:00:00 - Welcome Dacher Keltner, author of “Awe”
00:04:30 - Awe decreases depression
00:07:40 - Awe and death
00:10:20 - Finding awe everyday
00:11:05 - 8 awe experiences
00:20:20 - how Awe affects our health
00:21:36 - Awe vs gratitude
00:24:45 - How awe can heal divisions
00:26:50 - Making space for awe and kids
00:28:20 - Develop an awe practice
00:29:50 - Psychedelics and awe
00:36:00 - Everyone can experience awe
The Science of Happiness Podcast
What does it take to live a happier life? Learn research-tested strategies that you can put into practice today. Hosted by award-winning psychologist Dacher Keltner. Co-produced by PRX and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/series/the_science_of_happiness
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Oprah Winfrey? I love how you begin the book, your introduction. This is funny to me. You said, "I have taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It's not obvious why I ended up doing this work. I've been a pretty wound up, anxious person for significant chunks of my life." And I love this, "and was thrown out of my first meditation class for laughing while we chanted, 'I am a being of purple fire.'" When I read that, I was like, what kind of meditation class was that? I'm a being of purple fire?
0:31 Speaker 01 Yep, my best friend Melo and I got tossed out of that class in college. Yeah, you know, and that's the point. You know, I struggle to meditate. I am wound up. I can't. That's just what I got, you know, in my nervous system. And awe, really, as I wrote this book in a very hard time in my life, I was like, yeah, that's what grounded me in life.
0:54 Oprah Winfrey? Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Oprah Podcast. I'm so pleased, honored, actually, that you chose to spend time with us here, where our, my intention is to offer some inspiration and maybe a bit of breathing space from the hustle of your day or from the endless barrage of news hitting your timeline. I hope you all are watching that, being careful about that, because it can just be too much. But I'm excited for you to hear from my guest today, because he spent decades studying, searching, researching for the secret to this question. How can we live a good life? Yeah, that's really what we all are in search of, right? How can we live a good life?
1:38 Oprah Winfrey? And he says the answer is really simple and something any one of us can access at any time and anywhere, no matter your background, no matter your circumstances. His name is Dacher Keltner, and he's a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the host of the award-winning podcast, The Science of Happiness. I didn't even know there was such a podcast until researching for this. And I just recently read his bestselling book, Aw. The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life. Now, I read it and thought, this man is speaking my language. And that's why he's now here in the tea house. Dacher Keltner, hello.
2:21 Speaker 01 Hello, Oprah. It's nice to be with you.
2:22 Oprah Winfrey? Nice to be here.
2:23 Speaker 01 And an honor.
2:24 Oprah Winfrey? Thank you. When you first started on this path, I think you found there wasn't even a real definition of awe. So what is awe? Let's start with letting everybody know what we're actually talking about.
2:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's actually a tough question, right? People have been trying to define the sense of the mystical and the sublime.
2:43 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. And the word awesome is thrown around as a slang.
2:46 Speaker 01 A little too much these days.
2:47 Oprah Winfrey? Yes, yes.
2:48 Speaker 01 So awe is an emotion you feel when you encounter vast things, most typically. Giant redwoods, right? A vast piece of music, somebody who really inspires you with their, the size of their character. And then it's mysterious to you. You don't quite understand it immediately and it provokes you to wonder. So very simply awe is when we encounter vast mysteries.
3:13 Oprah Winfrey? awe and wonder the same thing?
3:14 Speaker 01 No, philosophers pull awe and wonder apart. Awe is an emotion you feel. I see an incredible tree or a sunset. And then wonder is the cognitive state after.
3:25 Oprah Winfrey? Awe.
3:25 Speaker 01 By which I try to make sense of things, right?
3:28 Oprah Winfrey? Right.
3:28 Speaker 01 One of my favorite examples is Newton and Descartes were these famous scientists and philosophers. And they were awestruck by rainbows. You know, how do rainbows exist? And then in a state of wonder, they figured it out. They did math and color theory and figured out how when light bends through water, it produces a rainbow.
3:48 Oprah Winfrey? Ah, so awe and wonder obviously are not the same. Wonder is what comes after the awe moment.
3:55 Speaker 01 Right.
3:56 Oprah Winfrey? Okay. And tell us why, as you do in the book, but most people who are listening to us now probably haven't read awe. So tell us why it matters.
4:07 Speaker 01 Well, when you look at our world, Oprah, and you see the crises of mind, you know, depression and anxiety at historic highs.
4:15 Oprah Winfrey? Mm-hmm.
4:16 Speaker 01 Body, a lot of people are suffering pain. And community, you know, our surgeon general, former surgeon general Vivek Murthy.
4:23 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
4:24 Speaker 01 Whom you know well, the crisis of loneliness.
4:27 Oprah Winfrey? Loneliness.
4:28 Speaker 01 A minute of awe a day helps us with those crises. It makes you feel less depressed and more happy. It helps your body physically.
4:36 Oprah Winfrey? Uh-huh.
4:37 Speaker 01 And even if you experience awe by yourself with music or nature, you feel connected to community. And so, you know, when I started to look at these scientific findings and thinking about our crises, our shared crises, I was like, you know, there's almost nothing better than a couple of minutes of awe a day.
4:55 Oprah Winfrey? Yes, and nothing is better also than shared awe, which you call...
5:01 Speaker 01 Collective effervescence.
5:02 Oprah Winfrey? Collective effervescence. And a lot of people who are listening and watching us right now, you all have experienced this.
5:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:09 Oprah Winfrey? You know, I remember having a gospel brunch here on the lawn many years ago, and I had Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick and Mariah Carey, and all of them were here. And someone was passing the mic, and literally everybody in the audience, all of us, were in collective effervescence. We had never seen anything like it or experienced anything like it. And it was like, the spirit came in to each of them and then entered us. It was spectacular. But lots of people experience this in sports, sporting events.
5:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:45 Oprah Winfrey? Concerts.
5:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:46 Oprah Winfrey? I remember just recently, this past year, I went to see Gypsy with Audra McDonald.
5:55 Speaker 01 Uh-huh.
5:56 Oprah Winfrey? And that performance of hers was, I just started weeping now, was out of body.
6:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:02 Oprah Winfrey? Was an out of body experience.
6:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:05 Oprah Winfrey? And so was Nicole in Sunset Boulevard.
6:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:08 Oprah Winfrey? Out of body. So you were just amazed that a human being can do that. I was like, I literally afterwards wrote both of them a letter saying, to see somebody vibrating at their highest level possible. You just know that it doesn't get any higher than that.
6:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:26 Oprah Winfrey? Brings awe to you.
6:27 Speaker 01 It does, and it's just remarkable, and I love your descriptions of it, Oprah. I mean, music's a classic example, gospel music.
6:34 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
6:34 Speaker 01 As good as any, right? And it astounds me, and it speaks to how ready we are to experience awe, which is you can go hear music that means a lot to you, and within a millisecond, you are having goosebumps, you're tearing up, you're synchronizing with other people, and it is an out-of-body experience. You leave the self.
6:54 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
6:55 Speaker 01 And become part of this collective, and you're hugging each other and crying and proposing camping trips.
7:00 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, that's the collective effort, as you talked about.
7:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:03 Oprah Winfrey? Well, in awe, one of the things, the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life, one of the things you did was you asked over 2,000 people
7:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:13 Oprah Winfrey? from all over the world, different faiths, different backgrounds, different life situations, different educations, and you asked them, what is an experience of awe that you've had when you encountered a vast mystery that transcends your world? I'm asking that of you all now. For you, it was, I mean, what most people wouldn't consider an awsome moment, but for you, it was the death of your younger brother.
7:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:43 Oprah Winfrey? Can you tell us that story?
7:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, I was lucky to be raised by parents who really cultivated a sense of wonder. You know, Rachel Carson, the great environmentalist, teach your child the wonder. And I had a younger brother, Rolf, who was a companion in awe, and we
8:02 Speaker 01 You know, we grew up listening to music in the late 60s in Laurel Canyon and wandering the foothills of the Sierras. And we did all of the awe-inspiring things in life together. And when he passed away first, it was pure grief and panic and anxiety. And the moment of his passing was awe-inspiring. It was, you know, seeing something transcendent about his body, something there in his spirit. Seeing the space around him as he was leaving reveal new dimensions out there. I'm a scientist, you know? I didn't know what to make of this. I had no religious background. And then the big question, which is, how is he going to stay with me? And through grief, I heard his voice.
8:47 Speaker 01 I felt his hand on my back. He was saying things to me. And he changed how I look at the universe, that there are other dimensions that we don't understand, that beings who leave us can be with us forever and that there's a cycle to life. And that's one of the wonders of life is the extraordinary miracle of life is its beginning, its growth and its ending, and that it repeats itself. That's just a law of the universe. It was the first time I understood that when I had to see my brother.
9:17 Oprah Winfrey? Watch your brother die?
9:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:19 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. And you said that after your brother's death, that you lost your ability for a while to experience awe.
9:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:28 Oprah Winfrey? Why, from the grief?
9:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean grief.
9:31 Oprah Winfrey? You just shut down?
9:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, grief is panic and breathlessness and waking up at all hours and grasping for who was gone. My brother and I shared a narrative about life. I couldn't hear his voice that I heard all the time. And it was strange, Oprah. Here I was studying this emotion, giving it to people, and I just couldn't feel it, you know?
9:51 Oprah Winfrey? So how did you get it back?
9:52 Speaker 01 I very intentionally said, you know,
9:56 Speaker 01 I'm gonna go in search of the wonders of life. I'm gonna find some moral beauty. I'm gonna be out in nature. I'm gonna listen to music that I don't understand, like classical music. Or I'm gonna think about the big ideas that matter to me. And so it took a while, but it changed my life.
10:13 Oprah Winfrey? And so I like the idea of people understanding that there is awe in the everyday.
10:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:23 Oprah Winfrey? So are you one of those people who, as a scientist, you've written the book, and then do you actually practice it?
10:28 Speaker 01 Yes.
10:30 Oprah Winfrey? Do you find awe in your everyday?
10:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, I think one of the most important findings from our research is people think awe is mysterious. It takes a lot of money. You gotta travel somewhere to find it. And that's just not true. Around the world, people feel awe a few times a week. And in those stories we gathered from 26 countries, it was right around them. You know, and Einstein said awe is a basic state of the mind that we can access anytime. And so I make it a practice to find awe on a daily basis.
11:06 Oprah Winfrey? After a quick break, we'll be back with psychology professor and researcher Dekker Keltner, who will share the eight everyday experiences that can inspire awe in all of us. Welcome back.
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11:50 Oprah Winfrey? Back to the Oprah podcast. Dekker Keltner shares the number one experience that is most likely to inspire awe. This one might surprise you. You say there are eight experiences that inspire people to feel awe. You call them, actually, the eight wonders in life. People may be surprised to learn what the most common reason for awe is. I know y'all are gonna be surprised by this.
12:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is, you know.
12:19 Oprah Winfrey? I'm not, because I experienced it every day, 25 years of doing a show and seeing it happen.
12:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, you have a career that cultivates moral beauty.
12:27 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
12:28 Speaker 01 And when we got these stories rolling in from Indonesia and China and Mexico and other countries, the most common source and most universal is what we call moral beauty, which is when you are moved by the courage and kindness, sense of justice and humility of other people. And it is, you know, people start writing about, oh, yeah, my grandmother or my teacher, you know, often teachers, this nurse who helped me with pain, my mother, my father, et cetera. And the stories are astonishing, you know, of encountering a fellow human, stands up to injustice, or gives away some resources, or is courageous facing.
13:11 Oprah Winfrey? I remember watching the news and seeing a young, burly, black guy standing out in the middle of water. And this was either a flood in Houston or flood in Dallas. I can't remember which flood it was, but he'd been out there all day, just, you know, handing down sandbags.
13:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:27 Oprah Winfrey? And I remember him, you know, looking exhausted but exuberant.
13:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:32 Oprah Winfrey? And him saying, this is what Texans do. This is what Texans do. And my eyes watered when I saw it, because I just thought, wow. You know, he's tired, he's got his own family, but he's out there, and this is what Texans do. So, seeing someone do something extraordinary for somebody else.
13:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:51 Oprah Winfrey? I remember years ago, there was a Maxwell House coffee commercial around Christmas time, and there was an elderly lady and the young woman next door goes and takes a Christmas tree, and they put the ornaments on the Christmas tree together, and then have a cup of Maxwell House coffee. And at the end of it, I'm like, oh. That's commercial moral beauty, right? Yeah, but the idea of sharing what you have with someone who doesn't.
14:19 Speaker 01 It is, but it's just remarkable to me that you can see a stranger helping another person in the streets. You don't know any of these people, and you're tearing up.
14:27 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
14:28 Speaker 01 You can hear a story from other country about the courage of a woman facing a disease.
14:33 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
14:33 Speaker 01 And it can change your life, right? And that is a mystery for me scientifically. How, why is it that that's so powerful? But it definitely is the universal source of all.
14:42 Oprah Winfrey? So that is the number one.
14:44 Speaker 01 It is.
14:45 Oprah Winfrey? Wonder of life is people experiencing other people doing extraordinary awesome things.
14:51 Speaker 01 Right.
14:52 Oprah Winfrey? Yes, and you call that moral beauty.
14:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:55 Oprah Winfrey? I love that.
14:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, and because it evokes this feeling, like you said, of tearing up. And it's almost like you're hearing a phenomenal piece of music. Humans seem beautiful. They seem transcendent, right? They're not part of the mundane world anymore. So it has this beauty quality to it that we've been interested in for a long time.
15:15 Oprah Winfrey? So what are the other seven? We talked about number two, which is collective effervescence, right? That's being in the, that's everybody in the football game and your team and feeling that.
15:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, or the gospel concert at Oprah's.
15:28 Oprah Winfrey? Or the gospel concert or wherever, the collective effervescence.
15:31 Speaker 01 Yes.
15:31 Oprah Winfrey? And the third is nature.
15:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:33 Oprah Winfrey? Let's talk about that.
15:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, you know, the science is a great place to begin. People know nature is awesome, you know, from oceans to clouds to redwood trees to flowers to spring to the sounds of birds. And the science is astonishing, which is that we're now learning that we are wired to be inspired and moved by nature. You know, if I hear running water, it activates parts of my heart, right? That calm me down. If I hear bird song, parts of the brain light up that feel rewarding. If I smell certain scents, like the trees around here, that activates specific chemical processes in your brain that make you feel.
16:17 Speaker 01 Part of something larger, the ecosystem.
16:19 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, and isn't that the whole idea of every awesome experience? Is that it takes you out of your ego self?
16:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:28 Oprah Winfrey? And allows you to feel that you are a part of something bigger than your small self.
16:32 Speaker 01 And that took us 10 years to figure out, and you just put it in one sentence, so thanks a lot. But, you know, it, yeah, time and time again, we started to realize that moments of awe in nature, moral beauty, music, et cetera, that nagging voice of the ego quiets down. Your to-do list and your sense of status and what, it just quiets down. In fact, the brain regions of the ego quiet down.
17:00 Oprah Winfrey? Right.
17:01 Speaker 01 And importantly, what you said, which is you become more aware of how you're connected to larger things than you, be it a musical tradition, gospel music, a social cause, the environment around you, the gardens.
17:15 Oprah Winfrey? That's really what's going on.
17:16 Speaker 01 That is what's going on.
17:17 Oprah Winfrey? And that, even in that collective effervescence, what you're really feeling is that you're a part of something that's bigger than you.
17:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:24 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
17:25 Speaker 01 And it's profound.
17:26 Oprah Winfrey? And it's profound.
17:27 Speaker 01 And needed.
17:27 Oprah Winfrey? The fourth is music.
17:28 Speaker 01 Yep.
17:29 Oprah Winfrey? We talked about that. Fifth is visual design. I thought that was interesting, like great architecture or paintings.
17:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, you think about the, you know, the Islamic tile patterns or the Mesoamerican basket weaving and sculptures and temples and, and our minds are wired to detect these sacred geometries of the visual world.
17:54 Oprah Winfrey? Even though we don't even know that's what we're detecting?
17:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, but you feel struck by the facade of a cathedral or some painting. I was lucky to be raised by a painter, my dad, who got me looking at paintings early in life, and they changed my life. They, and so, yeah, we, the visual world is a very rich realm of awe to explore.
18:15 Oprah Winfrey? And then spiritual or religious experiences?
18:17 Speaker 01 Yep. And it's important because, you know, in this complicated time in American history, spirit and religion can divide. And in some sense, as William James argued, underlying that is this feeling of the divine or mystical experience. Eighty-one percent of Americans feel a sense of the divine. Half of those people find it in nature. And awe is the emotion that tracks that relationship to spirit and the divine. One of the many sort of transcendent emotions like ecstasy.
18:50 Oprah Winfrey? Stories also of life and death, number seven.
18:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:54 Oprah Winfrey? Tell us about that.
18:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, we started getting stories around the world, watching children be born, infants be born, grandmothers, parents, friends, relatives. You just see life come in. The life cycle begins. Likewise, you could now think about, you know, why are people awestruck by spring? Right? Because it's this maximum moment of life in nature. It's like everything is blooming.
19:19 Oprah Winfrey? Bursting and blooming, yes, coming forth.
19:21 Speaker 01 Right, life.
19:22 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
19:22 Speaker 01 But life, it's a law-like pattern. It ends. And I remember Oprah, when I started to talk publicly about the science before the book, I remember very clearly this, I was just asking this group, like, when have you felt awe? And this woman raises her hand and she said, I was holding my sister's hand as she had her last breath in life. And I was awestruck by her place in my life, that things like this end. She continues, like, I felt with my brother, Rolf. And so the life cycle is a very underappreciated, but reliable source of awe.
20:00 Oprah Winfrey? Well, also, that brings us to number eight, which is epiphanies or suddenly understanding the essential truths about life.
20:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:09 Oprah Winfrey? Which is what happened to you also with your brother in that space, right, when he was dying.
20:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, it, you know, and people feel awe about these big ideas, you know, AI, quantum physics, you know, evolution, et cetera. And for me, the challenge of my brother's passing.
20:30 Speaker 01 Not only concretely to live a life without my companion in awe, my brother, was to understand what life means, you know, which is it is a cycle for us physically. And we all have to lose people. You know, Buddhism, the first noble truth is we grasp that suffering and things continue and they go onward and we grow and we learn. And for me, I had to grasp that we're not just cells and neurons and bodies, that we're more out of the experience and that, and I feel that to this day, that, you know, I
21:10 Speaker 01 feel my brothers with me and that there's something beyond what I thought was all that there is to nature.
21:17 Oprah Winfrey? This has to be physically, actually physically good for us too. I mean, I would think your blood pressure goes down, your, all the other things in your body that need to mellow out and chill.
21:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:29 Oprah Winfrey? When you're experiencing, if you've had an awesome moment.
21:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:34 Oprah Winfrey? Or an awe-filled moment, that it would change your neurosystem.
21:38 Speaker 01 I even felt it when you were describing this gospel concert. I started to feel my body change and, and we've made a lot of progress in understanding that. And what we know, you know, is a couple minutes of awe reduces physical pain, it reduces long COVID symptoms, it benefits your heart by activating what's called the vagus nerve, this big bundle of nerves in your chest that calms your body down, like you said. It reduces inflammation in the body. The immune system heats up your body to kill pathogens. If you feel chronically threatened by poverty or racism or misogyny, your body will be
22:18 Speaker 01 heated up, inflamed. It's a very troubling condition for your health. Awe cools down that system. I mean, it's amazing. And, and so it makes me bullish in promoting this to medical doctors.
22:31 Oprah Winfrey? And how is it different than gratitude? Because I've had a gratitude practice for decades now.
22:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:39 Oprah Winfrey? Where I do five things, I have volumes of gratitude journals, I'm constantly always, even when I'm just walking around, you know, my property here, in a state of gratitude, appreciation, reverence.
22:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:56 Oprah Winfrey? Awe is something different.
22:57 Speaker 01 It is, and we call these the self-transcendent emotions, where you get out of the self and really appreciate what's around you. Reverence, like you said.
23:06 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
23:06 Speaker 01 Very much love that word. Gratitude is really not as mysterious as awe.
23:12 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
23:12 Speaker 01 And it's really about more concrete things in your world.
23:17 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, that you appreciate.
23:18 Speaker 01 Right, that you appreciate. Awe is fundamentally about something vast that you don't understand. It's mysterious.
23:25 Oprah Winfrey? So, I mean, after reading your book, Awe, I was thinking differently about, you know, my everyday experiences. And one of the experiences that I've shared with you all here before that I still love and I still think it's an awe, and I was saying that, is this an awe moment or is this a gratitude moment? What is it? That moment where you're on the plane, you probably experienced it because you couldn't get in at first because of fog.
23:45 Speaker 01 Right.
23:45 Oprah Winfrey? But there's that moment that no matter how rainy, dreary, miserable it is, you shoot through the clouds.
23:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:52 Oprah Winfrey? And you're up above the clouds.
23:53 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
23:54 Oprah Winfrey? And you're looking down through the clouds.
23:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:58 Oprah Winfrey? I am in awe every time that happens.
24:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:01 Oprah Winfrey? I'm just like, how am I up here?
24:04 Speaker 01 And that's awe, right?
24:05 Oprah Winfrey? That's awe.
24:05 Speaker 01 Suddenly you're like, this is vast.
24:07 Oprah Winfrey? This is vast.
24:08 Speaker 01 I used to be on the earth and now I'm in space.
24:10 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, and now I'm here.
24:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's, how did this happen? How do planes work?
24:13 Oprah Winfrey? And it's so beautiful.
24:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:15 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
24:16 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, and that's a, and, you know, that's just a classic experience of awe, which is you suddenly encounter something vast. And you can't, your ordinary mind, if you will, you know, just making sense of our daily lives, can't make sense of it. And I feel that about flying too, just, you know, appreciating the earth from 30,000 feet.
24:37 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, and I have, yeah, one of my, I've had 21 dogs and now Sadie is about, she's gonna turn 17. And the other day, we were walking her and she has trouble getting down the stairs sometimes, right? So now I carry her down the stairs. And then we were out in the yard and she just started. Cantering, like running.
24:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:58 Oprah Winfrey? And I stood there, I think I was in awe. Like, how is she doing that when you can't walk down the stairs?
25:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:05 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
25:06 Speaker 01 I, I think that, you know, it's almost like moral beauty, right? Which is we marvel at the, the exceptional qualities of other life forms around us.
25:17 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
25:18 Speaker 01 And so you're sensing something, a spirit in her, a transcendent spirit.
25:21 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, that something came over her and she just decided, I'm gonna run across this yard.
25:25 Speaker 01 Oh.
25:26 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. When we come back from this short break, Decker Keltner says awe has the potential to heal social, cultural, and political divisions.
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26:07 Oprah Winfrey? We're back with Professor Decker Keltner, talking about his bestselling book, Aw, The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. You talked about, in awe, you talked about these fractious times.
26:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:22 Oprah Winfrey? I mean. Whoo.
26:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:25 Oprah Winfrey? Politically, socially, culturally. How do you think awe, or if it can, be a bridge
26:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:35 Oprah Winfrey? to help heal divisions? Is that possible?
26:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, I, I do. I mean, you know, I'm always worried about structural things, racism, misogyny, inequality. But, um, but I do feel that the, and we have empirical data for this, that feelings of awe socially make you appreciate your shared humanity.
26:59 Speaker 01 And they make you aware of the bigger thing that you're part of, right? And our study found that people on opposite sides of the issues of police brutality and abortion, once they felt awe, they didn't demonize or dehumanize their opponents, right? They saw the humanity in them. And you know, Oprah, when you think about, there are sources of awe that unite people in this country. Three hundred and thirty million people go to the national parks. It is unlike anything. And they are
27:35 Oprah Winfrey? Really?
27:36 Speaker 01 They're environmentalists, they're radicals, they're hunters, they're, you know, sports people, and it unites them in a sense of common spirit. So it's worth remembering the big sources of awe that bring us together. The Constitution is awe inspiring as a document.
27:53 Oprah Winfrey? I didn't know that three hundred million people went to the national parks.
27:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. And you can go for twenty dollars. It's, anybody goes. There's a program for fourth grade kids to go, put together by John Jarvis, the former director of the parks. So it's a unifying American experience, and it transcends our concerns in the moment about, you know, taxation or immigrants or the like. So there are things that we can cultivate.
28:18 Oprah Winfrey? So our culture, as you know, is obsessed with this whole idea of ranking who's best and win-win and how, and, you know, who's number one and who's not. So the question is, how can schools, how can families, how can communities make space for awe for children
28:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:39 Oprah Winfrey? growing up in an achievement-driven, achievement-oriented environment?
28:45 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, I worry about this a lot, and having raised two daughters and teach young people up at Berkeley and see the effects of our times, ninety percent rise in anxiety in young people.
28:58 Oprah Winfrey? Ninety percent rise?
29:00 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's epidemic. And so What the science of awe tells us is get them off the junk of their devices. And there's a lot of moral ugliness.
29:12 Oprah Winfrey? We know that, we know that, yeah.
29:13 Speaker 01 Let them wander, give them more spare time. And then, you know, let them do the things that we deprioritize of music and visual arts. And the ones that I really like, Oprah, that I think we've de-emphasized are moral beauty. You know, get them to reflect on the people who move them. And then, you know, I think every child should be thinking about the big ideas they care about. And our educational system has kind of, I see this in our colleges. We don't think about like, what's the singular thing you want to be part of? You know, that you learn from in history. Is it justice? Is it ameliorating suffering or what have you?
29:56 Speaker 01 And so I think we've got to return to these old ways that we used to find meaning.
30:02 Oprah Winfrey? How would you advise those of us who are looking for more awe in our life? What is an awe practice?
30:12 Speaker 01 Well, one of my favorites we tested, which is the awe walk.
30:16 Oprah Winfrey? The awe walk?
30:17 Speaker 01 And this is with Virginia Sterm at UC San Francisco. We tested it with people over the age of 75 where they're feeling a little more anxious and painful. And once a week, you go out, a lot of people are walking in the United States, and you look for awe. You look for natural awe, right? You go do your walk at sunset, or you go to a stand of trees. You look for moral beauty. You may go visit, walk past a park, right? Where the kids are playing and all the wonders of play. So all you have to do, if you're looking for awe, is build it into your daily routines.
30:58 Oprah Winfrey? Looking for awe, awe walks?
31:00 Speaker 01 Yeah. And there, thousands of them are being led by practitioners of AWOL walks now around the world. And it's an easy thing to do. A lot of people find their best exercise in walking. And now just make it include a little mystery and wonder.
31:15 Oprah Winfrey? Well, I had, speaking of mystery and wonder, I had Michael Pollan on, and we were talking about the effects of, and also the late Dr. Roland Griffiths.
31:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:26 Oprah Winfrey? And we're talking about the effects of psychedelics.
31:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:29 Oprah Winfrey? What is the connection between psychedelics and awe?
31:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, you know, and it's, it's a little comical that it took a while to realize this in the scientific community, but psychedelics or spirit medicines in indigenous traditions produce these self-transcendent states where the self quiets down and vanishes and dissolves, to use Michael's language, and opens us up to awe, right? And, and now several labs really feel that's the active ingredient of a psychedelic experience is to feel a deep sense of reverence and connection to an ecosystem, to feel really moved by the compassion of fellow human beings, to feel music in a different way. And, and that's
32:19 Speaker 01 true. I mean, in those experiences, awe is driving a lot of the benefits you get from psychedelics.
32:26 Oprah Winfrey? Next, psychology professor Decker Keltner explains how awe can be experienced even in the most unlikely of places.
32:35 Speaker 04 This episode is brought to you by Netflix. The Four Seasons is back for season two, starring Tina Fey, Will Forte, Coleman Domingo, Marco Calvani, Carrie Kenny Silver, and Erica Henningson. After a difficult year, your favorite group of friends continues their tradition of vacationing together, now with a baby in tow. From the Jersey Shore to upstate New York and Italy, their getaways are sure to take unexpected turns where comedy ensues. Watch The Four Seasons, now streaming only on Netflix.
33:04 Oprah Winfrey? Welcome back. If you know somebody who might need an awe-inspiring conversation right about now, send them the link to this episode. Let's get back to my conversation with bestselling author and the Science of Happiness podcast host, Decker Keltner. I hope those of you who are listening incorporate this idea into your own life, the idea of an awe walk. And one of the things I appreciate about the new science
33:31 Oprah Winfrey? Everyday wonder and how it can transform your life awe. What I appreciate about it is, is it doesn't matter where you live.
33:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:38 Oprah Winfrey? Or if you have a PhD or no D. It makes no difference your life circumstances.
33:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:44 Oprah Winfrey? Your ability to experience awe is within reach of every human being, even at San Quentin prison.
33:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:53 Oprah Winfrey? So tell us about your experiences there.
33:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:57 Speaker 01 You know, I had the great privilege of being part of the restorative justice program at San Quentin prison. And I went in, and that's a remarkable program that's built on the idea of moral beauty, that, you know, all humans have goodness within them that they can find with the right guidance and practice, even if they've perpetrated harms and the like. And so I go in and give a talk, you know, and I think every American should go into an American prison and just to see that part of our state. And it's astonishing, it's, you know, it's, you don't have the wonders of life readily available. Solitary confinement, which I've worked on, is horrific.
34:42 Speaker 01 It's a form of cruel and unusual punishment. So I go in, I'm giving a talk. In this program, there are 180 prisoners. All of them work out a lot. I was the smallest person in that building, you know, and they would have twisted me up like a pretzel. And they are working hard and I, and I, in the middle of my talk, I was like, I have to do this. And I said, what, what brings you awe in San Quentin? And there's this, there's this quiet, and then the answers came, you know, pouring forth and it was, you know, my grandchild, learning how to read, getting my college diploma. Uh, you know, the Quran, meditating.
35:27 Oprah Winfrey? My celli.
35:28 Speaker 01 My celli.
35:29 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
35:29 Speaker 01 You know, being outside and seeing the bay light, you know, San Quentin's on the San Francisco Bay. And I, you know, Oprah, I was like, these are the best answers I've ever heard. You know, they are a lesson that we can find awe anywhere. Right? And, um, and we can cultivate awe in the hardest places. And then, you know, my experience in San Quentin, and I will call out Darnell Washington, who's now, he led the restorative justice programs. He's a dear friend outside. He's teaching yoga and meditation that he learned inside to kids in LA. And we know that those programs work.
36:10 Speaker 01 There's an 80% drop in incarceration rates for young people because of people like Darnell. And when I look at his career, I'm like, it keeps me, it inspires me. So it was a life-changing experience.
36:22 Oprah Winfrey? Cause we know that it seems to quiet the ego and help reduce stress. And it can be a part of also healing trauma.
36:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:32 Oprah Winfrey? As you're talking about, that's why you don't have 80%, that's why you have 80%, right?
36:36 Speaker 01 Exactly right.
36:37 Oprah Winfrey? Healing trauma and grief or loss. And so many people who are traumatized are actually really grieving.
36:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, well put, really well put, you know, I.
36:49 Oprah Winfrey? They're grieving the life that they wished they'd had.
36:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:51 Oprah Winfrey? They're grieving mistakes they've made, they're grieving.
36:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, the family could, what they could have been. And I was privileged to work with Stacy Bear, who's a veteran with the Sierra Club. And Stacy is a pioneer in grappling with the trauma of veterans. You know, they have twice the rates of PTSD as of civilians. And his wisdom coming out of his life was get veterans outdoors. You know, get them on rock climbing and rafting and backpacking and skiing. Uh, you know, they don't necessarily want pharmaceutical cocktails. They want to challenge themselves and to find their courage. And so we took veterans on a, a half-day rafting trip on the American River, where my brother and I used to raft, which was amazing. And it led to a 32% drop in PTSD.
37:41 Speaker 01 And, you know, for a week, right? And so for those of us who are experiencing trauma or grief, be thinking about those immersive experiences of awe, right? Like that half-day rafting, 32% drop in all the symptoms of PTSD. And so, yeah, I am really excited about how awe can be a tool for transforming grief and trauma.
38:08 Oprah Winfrey? Yes. And so you wrote the book because you wanted
38:15 Oprah Winfrey? the experience for the reader to result in what?
38:21 Speaker 01 You know, Oprah, I've been teaching happiness for 25 years at Berkeley.
38:25 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, you begin the book talking about teaching happiness, yeah.
38:28 Speaker 01 And, you know, the world has changed. And, you know, the loneliness and anxiety and self-harm and depression and opioid use. And what I wanted to give people was the idea that they can experience awe whenever they're wanting to.
38:47 Oprah Winfrey? I love how you begin the book, your introduction. This is funny to me. You said, "I have taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It's not obvious why I ended up doing this work. I've been a pretty wound-up, anxious person for significant chunks of my life." And, I love this, "and was thrown out of my first meditation class for laughing while we chanted, 'I am a being of purple fire.'"
39:12 Oprah Winfrey? And when I read that, I was like, what kind of meditation class was that? "I'm a being of purple fire."
39:21 Speaker 01 Yep, my best friend Melo and I got tossed out of that class in college. Yeah, you know, and that's the point, which is, you know, I struggle to meditate. I am wound up. I can't, that's just what I got, you know, in my nervous system. And awe, really, as I wrote this book in a very hard time in my life, I was like, yeah, that's what grounded me in life, is nature and the moral beauty of seeing Nelson Mandela come out of prison in Oakland, Calhoun.
39:50 Oprah Winfrey? Wasn't that a day?
39:51 Speaker 01 I was just like, I think about that and I just got goosebumps, you know? That's with me today. So it was awe that lifted me up.
40:00 Oprah Winfrey? Wow. I appreciate you coming on, flying all the way through the fog, making it here. Thank you, Dacher Keltner, for this awe-inspiring conversation. I hope that you all begin to take awe walks for yourselves and find more awe in your everyday. The book, "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life," is available wherever you buy your books. Come hang out with us again next week. Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.
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