The Science of Everyday Awe: How to Find Wonder in Ordinary Moments

But that's what happens with Oz. You start looking at the light on a tree and the leaves and the clouds drifting by and you pause and you see all these patterns and your sense of self starts to be connected to that those patterns in nature and you feel awe and that is right here in front of us as you said and it's one of the most important discoveries in our research is what I call everyday awe. It's people are finding it pretty regularly and it's just right around them. Docker Kelner, welcome to the show, my friend. Yeah, it's good to be with you, Sean. Let's just get right into it. Um, I love this book. I love this topic. And I wasn't even aware that there was a science of awe But now I am and I'm glad

I am. Um, awe is such a squishy word. I think we all use it. I think we all vaguely know what it's supposed to mean, but we use it interchangeably with other words like wonder or reverence. Is that a mistake? Yeah, you know, and thanks for starting there actually, Sean. Um, you know, one of the hardest things about emotion science and the study of off falls within that is we use words to try to describe these complicated subjective experiences, right, that are in our bodies and in the unconscious and part of our history. And that's true of awe, right? So, um, that's why we do the science of awe. So uh conceptually um we differentiate awe which is an emotion

that you feel when you encounter vast mysterious things for the most part. Um and we differentiate that from wonder which philosophers have been interested in for some time Decart Plato and others which is really what we might call an epistemological state that follows an experience of awe and then we would differentiate awe from two other feeling states uh beauty and that was a old question of Edmund Burke and Emanuel Kant how is the sublime or awe different from the Beautiful. And then you got to differentiate awe from horror, right? You, you know, I did research with the veteran with veterans and they will feel horror on the battlefield very obviously, but also some awe. So, we got to pull all these states apart

scientifically to get precise. How would you distinguish awe from another ordinary emotion like fear or amazement? Are they just like intense? is all like an intense version of that or is it a difference of kind not just degree? Thank you Sean. You just asked a question that took us about 15 years to answer with science. So yeah, this is what I do sir. Yeah. When we study emotions and this really you know traces back in the western tradition to Darwin who wrote about the emotions in 1872 and then a more contemporary science beginning about 30 years ago. When we study an emotion, we look at the feeling

state or experience. We look at physiology. We look at the brain. We look at your face, your voice, your body. We have all these different ways to measure what an emotion is when it happens. And so that science tells us very importantly, awe is really different from fear, right? It's different in its physiology. Fear elevates heart rate. Awe elevates veagal tone, the activation of the vagus nerve, which slows your body down and makes you open and connected. Uh fear activates the amydala. Awe activates different regions of the brain related to reward. Um fear sound sounds like, you know, awe has an entirely different vocalization. Sean, what's a sound you might emit if you were feeling awe?

That's so interesting that you would say that and ask that because to me the sound of awe is silence. When I'm in awe, when I'm in awe, I'm sort of rendered speechless. I don't I'm sort of overcome with a feeling and I'm just sort of captured by it and silent, I guess. I don't associate sound with it. But what you tell me what a sounds like. I don't know. Yeah. My hunch is if you're around a bunch of giant trees, the low oldest living organisms on Earth, you might be silent by yourself, but if you're with friends, you might Whoa. Right. Uh we've studied that sound very universal around

the world. Really different acoustically than fear. So we take all these ways to measure an emotion and we do the very important work of differentiating it from closely related states. And what it tells us I think is something really important which is you know Einstein felt awe was a basic state of mind a basic state of consciousness of being in the world and seeing the world and this science says that's true that it's just part of our the organization of our minds. An important difference between a feeling and a state. This is getting hard. Yeah. I think we would use the term state as a broader term to say this is a mental state, right? And the mental state can be a feeling. Oh, I feel awe.

It can be a sensation. My body itches, right? It can be uh more of an epistemological state. I can't remember how to do that mathematical function. So states are episodes of mental activity or consciousness if you will and then feeling is one kind. And I was reading your book and thinking about how I've used the term awe and I basically realized that I usually use that word when I don't really know what I'm trying to describe. Almost like it's poetic umbrella for a feeling for which there isn't an adequate word. So I just say I'm in awe. Um would you quibble with that or is that sort of kind of what awe is? That it sort of speech almost feels superolous before it because you're you're overwhelmed in that way and it seems I don't know

beyond language. I just got goosebumps at your observation. That's a wonderful thought. You know in moments of awe great thinkers come up blank when it comes to words. You know, William James, one of my heroes, had this almost psychedelic experience on nitrous oxide of all things. And he called words tattered fragments, you know, of, you know, and Michael Pollen addresses this in his new book on consciousness that words can't capture the full experience. And subjectively, what we know with awe, as you say, is it's a state of deep humility where you don't know. uh your knowledge can't make sense of how big the trees are or how beautifully

children play or what how music can make us cry in an instant. We just don't know uh the rational mind in that moment. Uh and I love the idea that one of the purposes of awe is it points out the limits of our knowledge. Right. Yeah. And then in this state of humility and then we go in search of meaning and understanding which is wonder. I got to hold for a second. Did you just call me a great thinker? I don't want to pass over that. Is that Did I hear that right? Or I thought I was Did you compare me directly to William James? Me and William James basically same quality of thinker. That's very kind of you.

Well, you know, I love the idea that here's an emotion that makes us excited about what we don't know. And what a wonderful emotion to have. You know, I was thinking about the last time I consciously felt awe. And I think it was when um did you see you know who Alex Hunnel is? The climber? Yeah. They had a show on Netflix where he uh Alex climbed a massive skyscraper in Taiwan. I think it was by far the largest or the tallest urban climb in history. Did you see that?

I didn't see it, but I was aruck by Free Solo and what he did when I was watching that when he got to the top of that building. I had some feels like I felt some real feels and I was surprised by it. Um I mean obviously it's it's an incredible physical feat, right? But I mean I, you know, watch the Olympics or other sporting events and see people do incredibly like physically excellent things all the time and it didn't make me quite feel in awe in that way. It was like weirdly moving in a way that went beyond just the physical excellence. What do you think's going on in that example? What is going on there? Why am I connecting to that in that way?

Yeah, it's, you know, one of the kinds of awe that we study in our lab, uh, is moral beauty or just how we're moved by observing human excellence. And there are a couple of kinds that sort of separate in this literature. And one is when we are around physical excellence, you know, and so you might see a chef dice vegetables or ballerina or hip-hop artist dance. Um, I got to stand next to Steph Curry as he shot three-pointers after practice and he made 88 out of 100. And it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And that's one form of uh this response to human excellence. And then the other is when there's virtue mixed into it, kindness and courage and fighting for justice or humility. And Hunnled has

tons of courage. He's his life's on the line all the time. And so you mix in courage with the physical excellence and it gets you to this feeling of moral beauty or this feeling of elevation or awe. Why is really interesting and the Scottish philosopher David Hume a couple hundred years ago got close to it where he's he said and this is interesting Sean like when we see the extremes of human potential that we aspire towards or feel like we could be part of we ourselves begin imagining having those qualities and doing that and we are moved in this realm of the imagination and I think there's a small part of that's what happens when I be a great physical achievement. I'm thinking, you know, I should pick up the

basketball again and start shooting around or whatever. It won't look like that. And that's one of the great pathways to aspiration and what we do in life is to be inspired by others. What was different about the Alex climb is I almost felt like a vague pride like, wow, look at what a member of my species is capable of doing. And you know, I have a similar feeling if I'm watching film of, you know, big wave surfers riding a 100 foot waves in Portugal or ultra marathoners or something like that, right? But when I see that, I'm more like, "Holy that's crazy." When I watch Alex get to the top of that building, it's like I don't know if maybe just climbing is a more direct

metaphor for life or something. I don't know. But it felt triumphant in a way, like we did it. But when I watch a big way surfer, I'm like, I can't believe what that person just did. But with Alex, I'm like, look at us, you know? I don't know. Is that weird? Yeah. No, that's wonderful. It's this, you know, we and one of the things that awe surfaces is that we have this collective self. That's a very interesting part of our evolution that we think of ourselves as part of tribes and groups and species and living forms. Um, and when we see reminders of the strength of our kind, we take it in personally. We feel like it's part of who we are. And uh, one of the reasons we need this kind of these kinds of stories is to uh,

remind us of what we can do. One of the things you argue in the book that is that the experience of awe quiets the self. What do you mean by that? What is the self that's being quieted? You know, you can think about our identities or our minds consciousness um as one part of it is the self is the ego is making sure I have food and I'm safe and I have I'm rising in status and I'm getting paid and I'm achieving my goals and I'm beating out the other people and uh that's the self and there are a lot of good reasons evolutionarily why we have a very active self in our consciousness.

But we're also very unusual in that we relate for evolutionary reasons to things that are larger than the self, right? Collectives, groups, cultural forms like music or art. Uh in indigenous traditions and in our own experience, uh ecosystems, it's very advantageous to have fuel related to your ecosystem. So we're constantly moving from self to self in relation to larger things. Um and you know social scientists for the past 40 to 50 years you know Christopher Lash the culture of narcissism we h we are in the most individualistic self-focus some data suggests narcissistic period in human history you know just

think about you know not only individualism rising in our culture hey I got to express myself instead of following duties etc. But now we've added technology to the mix where you know here's just a finding that won't surprise your our listeners and viewers like uh 25% of the photos we take and post on Instagram are of the self and another 24% are me with another person. We're so self-focused and that's harmful for us. And awe gets us out of it. You know, just like you said, it quiets things down. It makes us aware of what's around us. it the neural activation of the self the default mode network is quieted down and we start to see the beauty and the wonder of things around us. Um and that is good news.

I agree wholeheartedly. But let me ask just to hear your answer when you said just now that focusing on the self is harmful. Yeah. Why? Yeah. And I don't mean to get on a soap box about this but you know go for it. Yeah. I mean I teach young people uh Jonathan height the anxious generation you know the new data even more definitive being online is making us anxious and detached and lonely it's a struggle and one of the pathways to that those struggles of anxiety and self-criticism and perfectionism and self condemnation is too much of a focus on the self. we ruminate what did she

think of me and did I say the right thing and you know what are other people saying about my talk or whatever that's all good in balance in moderation but it's way out of balance and you know I think that's why awe struck such a chord is it tells us if you go dance with some friends you'll lose yourself and feel wonderful if you go hear some music you will lose yourself for a moment and feel wonderful if you get out in nature and backpack by yourself, you suddenly feel like you're part of the natural world. If you take psychedelics or spirit medicines, same thing. The self dissolves and we feel uplifted and strong.

I think most people think of awe as a almost personal spiritual experience, but you seem to be suggesting that it's also deeply social, maybe even primarily a social experience. I mean, is that a fair way to put it or am I overstating it? Yeah, you just gave me goosebumps with that question. Thank you. You know, so twice in one, look at this, man. I'm on a roll. Yeah. And isn't that interesting that a great idea that you know, a great distillation of a complicated science you just offered moves me. Yeah. You know, we uh we gathered stories of awe from 26 countries all over the world. India, Mexico,

China, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, US, Germany, all these different countries. Just write about what made you feel awe when you encountered what's vast and mysterious. And off they wrote and uh you know, I thought it would be nature is kind of the primary source of awe. It was close, but it was the social stuff that was our most reliable source of awe. other people's courage and virtue and strength and intelligence and then also shared movement with other people, sports, politics, dance. So, it was it really caught me off guard and got me to think much more deeply about awe in ways I hadn't thought about before that this emotion really makes us feel wonder about other people and our connections to

them and how vital that is to our thriving. 26 countries is a lot. I mean, do you recall any um major differences that emerge there in the picture in terms of like are there big cultural differences in what people respond to or or how they answer these sorts of questions or did it really end up being pretty universal across the board? Oh, there you know it was probably 50 to 60% pretty similar across cultures and then 30% varying in really profound ways. If you look at the broader history of awe, you know, going back to the spiritual writings of 5 600 years ago and you think about different spiritual traditions, there's kind of a an oceanic kind of awe, right? Where you're merging

with others, you feel oneness, right? And then there's a more hierarchical threat-based all of you think about being judged by God in the Old Testament and you know and just this whoa this wow I am so submissive visav this all-inspiring entity and that one varies across cultures with a lot of economic inequality uh have more threatbased fearful awe that's profound right so it tells us you know over you in the United States where we're, you know, in certain contexts where it may feel more egalitarian or uh if you talk to somebody from Japan, their awe is really quite different. It has more fear in it, dread, feeling judged. Uh so we found that as one of our key differences. So in those very hierarchical religious cultures, is awe

in that context almost indistinguishable from fear? Yeah. And that's, you know, in this other line of science that I've done with Alan Cowan, we've really gathered a ton of data with statistical techniques to map, you know, experiences uh in these spaces of meaning or semantic spaces. And we get tricked by words because words imply that awe is really different from fear. But in actuality, as Allen and I have found, our emotions are always blending with other states. becoming intermingle mingled with them in their meanings and yeah in those instances all will start to feel like fear or terror or horror right and that's the complexity of emotion that we try to study is that inevitable mixing of states this really does push on our intuitions

I think about awe because awe sort of again it feels like an experience that almost takes you out of the regular world. Yeah. Right. It transports you momentarily, right? And you're just sort of, you know, floating as it were. But in a lot of ways, it seems like what you're saying is that it really does the opposite. It actually recconnects us to it or reggrounds us to the human world, which is a very different thing. um which makes it all the more interesting that I think we miss that and almost think of it um in a way that's directly at odds with not only what it

is but like what the great beauty of a thing is that it is a reconnection or a thing that you know takes us out of oursel and reconnects us to other selves. I mean it's so important just for us to dwell on that. You know Jane Goodall, one of my heroes wrote about awe. She observed it in chimpanzees and I agree as did Charles Darwin felt that reverence and devotion were seen in other species. So it is a mamalian thing and Jane Goodall said that awe is really being amazed at things outside of the self. And I love that phrase for our times. And you know, I think we've thought of awe very much influenced by

the 500 years that we've lived through of, you know, spiritual writings about awe. But the wonders of life and the natural world and human collectives and sports and culture and music are also outside of the self. And that's what happens with Oz. You are walking along and suddenly, you know, as in some of our research, you start looking at the light on a tree and the leaves and the clouds drifting by and you pause and you see all these patterns and your sense of self starts to be connected to that those patterns in nature and you feel awe and that is right here in front of us as you said and it's one of the most important discoveries in our research is what I called everyday awe.

It's people are finding it pretty regularly and it's just right around them. That's definitely one way to read the book as saying that um how should I put this that modern life overdevelops the ego um you know the striving self the comparing self the isolated self and awe is very valuable because it just explodes that I mean is that do you think of that as like the chief psychological maybe even spiritual benefit of awe as an emotion I do you know and we've got that empirically that you know in terms of this what we call the diminishing of the self or the small self you know when you're near yuseite and you're asked to draw yourself you draw a really small being in a bigger context compared to other studies

that's so fascinating yeah you know when you are feeling on you're in conversation with someone else you're not as inclined to talk about yourself, you're more curious about the other person or humble. Uh when you take psychedelics and when you feel awe in music, that self-related region of the brain is smaller, deactivated. So there a lot of ways in which the self gets small. The thing we haven't done as good a job at capturing I feel and is also part of the power of awe is the relationality to large what I wrote about as systems of things. You know, when you're a if you're a backpacker or you're Alex Hnold, whom we started with climbing a big mountain, there going to be moments where you're you're just

feeling like you are part of the all of the surroundings. And that's also part of the power of all. It's like God, I'm part of this. when Yumi Kendall, whom I interviewed for the book, who's one of the country's great chists uh at in Philadelphia, when she wrote about playing, you know, she says she gets up on stage and starts playing and tears up and cries and gets goosebumps and she said, "I feel like I'm part of the audience and I'm part of the history of music." Uh, and that's what a does it makes you feel part of a very big thing. I mean, I would say I'm kind of a crier anyway. Yeah, I just that's a good sign.

I cry a lot during movies certain and especially at concerts, you know, there have been there's there's been a handful of concerts that just absolutely like reduced me to like a graveling ball of tears. Um, one of you got to tell me one of the experiences. Jose Gonzalez is a musician um I've seen live. He um he reduced me to tears. U Sufan Stevens I think also did it. Um, there's an Icelandic band called Sigor Rose that I saw with my wife in New Orleans and she was basically propping me up. I don't even know what they're they're speaking a language I don't even speak but it doesn't matter because like you know like music is sort of a proto language, right? So like whatever it's just it's tapping into something that's

beyond before words. Um, and so you just feel it. Um then the only way I knew how to express that was just crying. But I mean is that I just thought of it as like a response to unbelievable beauty. But is it really all is that really what that is? I think so. I think you know and there's a little bit of work that it that helps us answer the question. And what a beautiful um kind of journey to the question. I'll just call out Suf John Stevens who when my brother passed away and I write about it in the book. Uh there was something about his music that brought me into an understanding of grief uh and the universality and meaning of grief. So thank you to Suf John Stevens.

Um yeah so um the uh tears are um a physiological process. There are these little lacrimal glands that release tears. There are a few different kinds of tears. You can look at the protein structure of tears and kind of make inferences based on that. But importantly is one tears are part of a branch of your nervous system called the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system which is really calming, orienting to others, being open to connection. And the vagus nerve is part of it which I study in my lab also activated by awe. So it already tells us tears in the semantic space of emotions are different from fear and anger and disgust. They're really about connection and love. Right? So that's interesting in its own right.

And then Alan Fisk at UCLA has been doing really nice work showing that tears are kind of arise when you feel like you're merging with others. You share identity. Uh, and that feels right to me and it's part of awe which is your body's in this open physiological state. You're seeing Suf John Stevens or Jose Gonzalez and you're with people and your tears are saying this is who we are. This is my people. Um, and we need that information as we navigate life. I do think there's something to the idea that western philosophy, enlightenment thinking for all of its fruits and there are many has tended to forget the it has

tended to forget the body to elevate lang language and thought. I mean even though the body is master in so many ways and so many of the most important human experiences like awe often arrive in the body first and only later get translated imperfectly into language. I mean, I don't know. I'm ranting, but there's something there, I hope. No, it's profound. And you know, the two heroes of the science of all early in earlier in western thought are David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher who wrote about moral beauty as we've discussed and he was called a sentimentalist in the 1740s and 30s. And then he influenced Charles Darwin who, you know, I'm just publishing this paper on everything that

Darwin said about the body as it relates to consciousness. Yeah. And now we know neuroscientifically that all this information from the body goes up through the vagus nerve to your brain, goes up into the insula in your brain and tells you what's going on in the gut or your heart or etc. And the body drives a lot of our basic perceptions of the world, you know, of morality and kin and, you know, who we love and what our political uh concerns are. So, western thought was not only ignored but was openly hostile to the body. Um uh in part because of original sin and Christianity uh and that's changing because of western science in some sense. Let me go back to what you just said about moral

beauty. You we've it's come up a couple of times. Um why is that so powerful? Like why is other people's kindness and strength so moving for us? Maybe even more moving than mountains or cathedrals. Like what is it about moral excellence that really moves us? You know, and we in the social biological sciences have been in the midst of a rethinking of our evolutionary history and how we've evolved as a species into what Darwin called um he called sympathy our strongest instinct and those communities with the most sympathetic members will flourish. Uh and you know there's all the this convergent scholarship and thinking that says we

need to cooperate with groups. We need to share resources so that we in the common famines of our evolutionary history we didn't die. We need to warm each other. Most importantly Sarah Blaferie we have these hypervulnerable offspring that take you know decades to reach the age of independence. you know they our offspring are more vulnerable than any mammal on the face of the earth and we cared for them in communities. So we need a lot of mechanisms within this framework to build groups to sacrifice to be selfless to share and care and that there's a ton of scholarship on that and one of the ways one of the powerful mechanisms for that is moral beauty and if I see a stranger act in a kind way

I instinctively become kinder and so what that means is we create these little networks of cooperation and kindness. If I see a stranger act in a kind or courageous way, I aspire in my identity to be kinder and more cooperative. Here's where it gets really interesting. It's a very powerful tool for young people, right? If young people, it can be really threatening to be courageous if you're 5 years old, right? And it may not be the optimal thing for our group, but if they see it in other people and they say, "Oh, that's what it means to be an upstanding person or somebody of character." And they start to learn in their bodies and minds that how to embody these principles, these cooperative principles. So, you know, the

consensus now is we need a lot of different pathways to collaborate with each other. It's good for societies who cooperate better do better. If you yourself cooperate more, are kinder, you will live longer. Empirical science shows it's good for your nervous system. It's good for your relationships around you. And moral beauty is just this superpower of promoting that. Well, I mean on some level when you're seeing moral beauty um you are the phenomenon that makes life together possible on some level, right? And instinctively, evolutionarily some somewhere in our brain we know that. Yeah. And you just gave me goosebumps again. So that's three. That's enough.

Yeah. So yeah, you know, check this out. Um, think about folklore and the stories we tell. So, yeah, uh, fires are 400,000 years old. Uh, new archaeological evidence suggests. And one of the things that happened with fires, it changed our diet, you know, fair enough. But we gathered together at night and we started to tell stories. First with our bodies in these, you know, proto languages like you said, and then with stories. And all cultures have fables and legends and fairy tales. Uh, and they're really important forms of culture and how we learn how to be a good human being. And a new science is finding that their chief ingredient is moral beauty. You hear about Cinderella who worked hard and had these mean

stepsisters and wins the prince, you know, through her virtue, etc. So, so that power of moral beauty gets into our culture. It gets into the stories we tell and the fiction we write. And I believe uh the art that we're working on visual art as a form of moral beauty, right? That inspires us to like you said kind of get along so that we can survive. I mean for me it's it's often about political courage which really is a that's a species of moral beauty really, you know, and whether it's um Iranian women publicly removing their hijabs uh in protest, right, knowing it might mean

death, whatever you think about the hijab, that's courage. Um yeah, or Nelson Mandela or a sold uh a soldier jumping on a grenade to save a friend or uh a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in protest. I mean, part of me thinks, yeah, part of me thinks, man, that seems really tragically misguided and sad, but also I'm completely in awe of the physical and especially the spiritual courage. Yeah. I mean, historians and political theorists are starting to suggest like these moments of profound moral cur courage um changed the world, you know. So the Vietnam monk setting himself on fire in protest of the Vietnam War. I remember

it as a kid like wow this situation is that serious that a human would do that. Um, and you know, you can go through history. Um, you know, Thomas Clarkson, uh, is one of my favorite stories where he at the time the institution of slavery was threearters of the European economy. And he wrote an essay about should we be allowed to enslave humans. And he was he just fell over weeping at the thought that's what we do to fellow humans. and he courageously bonded with the abolitionist, started spreading the word, showed images of a human atrocity on the slave ships and it changed Europe, right? These little moments of moral courage where you will sacrifice yourself for others or for some idea are really

really important. It was interesting in our stories from around the world. uh Malala kept coming up you know and people are like man you know this young girl fighting for the right to educate against the Taliban you know being harmed physically move people in Japan and Norway just to see it on TV and it's interesting to think about our current political times that's what we need you know we are in a really debased state right now politically for a lot of reasons. Um, and that's what we should be thinking about is where is the moral courage uh as a direction for future politics. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Whenever you're taking on something big, it's natural to wonder, "What if I fail?" Especially when it's

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I was moved by that part of the book. Thank you. Yeah, I uh I used to teach uh this essay uh by Atulgo one day on um I think it was in New York, the New Yorker about solitary confinement. And when you put prisoners in solitary confinement, they go crazy. Um and it is torture. Uh and they become psychotic and they beat themselves. And then I had the privilege of being asked to write an amicus brief against solitary confinement because and there was this protest by prisoners that led to the hard largest hunger strike in prison history against solitary confinement for at Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison. And it was led by rivals of several different gangs who are usually violent

against one another and they bonded together over this issue. uh protested. I got called into the case and I wrote about how in solitary confinement uh you're not allowed to in Pelican Bay, you don't even uh touch fellow human beings. You don't get to hug your kids when they visit. They work against that. And uh and I wrote about the touch deprivation and that case was cited in favor of the prisoners. Couple thousand prisoners got out of solitary. I felt very good about that. And then I got invited because of that to go to uh San Quentin as part of the restorative justice program led by people like Lewis Scott inside Darnell Washington who's now in LA teaching meditation to the kids in the park he

grew up in. He was formerly of the Bloods. So I go inside. There are a few of us in there. 180 prisoners. They're all bigger than me. they lift weights a lot, you know, and I'm like, "Wow, I'm here all day." And I did this many times. Um, and then, uh, you start to feel the hunger for moral beauty inside. Like these guys, yeah, they know they've harmed, they know they've killed, they feel horrible, they've hurt their families, they're in constant meditation and reflection on making amends like we do. Um and then they grow things you know they as Tupac Shakur said roses out of concrete. They create newspapers and music and drama and humanity. And I Sean I stood up I was asked to give a talk and I report on this in the

book and I was like I got asked these 180 guys like where do you find all right here and they're the best answers I've ever heard you know and it was like my granddaughter learning how to read getting my high school diploma learning about the law the light in San Quent you know in off the bay uh my reading the Quran reading the Bible meditate I was just like wow Here it is. Einstein's right. This is everywhere. And uh to this day, I'm still involved with a lot of prisoners and their efforts uh and friends with them. When I'm around them, they tell me we can overcome anything and we have so much moral beauty inside.

You know what I love about uh just that whole scene is it really does illustrate your point that awe is not um some kind of luxury emotion for the privileged that it's this core human experience. Um and it shows how even in prison awe is still uh fundamentally a relational thing. People are experiencing it through their relationship with their children or fellow inmates or through their relationship with music or scripture or through restorative justice as you were just saying, which is fundamentally about moral repair, which is fundamentally about our relationship to other people, right? It's still the same thing in prison or outside. And yeah, it's just I don't know. I like I said, I was really moved by that

that part of the book and it I just think it concretizes your point in a really powerful way. Yeah, I thank you for saying that and I was surprised. I really was. You know, when you go in, you're with 180 men in blue. Uh, you know, I look, you know, I look a lot different. I've come out of this life of privilege, you know, Berkeley professor and the like. And you see this humanity and this urge to connect and promote the good. Tell stories of moral beauty, stories of protest, how they're charged five times what they should pay for a candy bar, you know, etc. Um the labor the what they earn in their labor.

You're weeping, you know, you're it's just that's what people do because you're open to this essential quality of who we are. uh that you can't suppress. You know, it's their uh when I work with veterans, it's very common in combat when you're, you know, and historians have written about this. You see your adversaries in Iraq or now Iran very horrifically. You see the humanity. It's right there, you know, and you got to build upon it and it blew me away. I wanted to ask you about your brother who passed away. you mentioned him um a few minutes ago after your brother died. It seems like your relationship to awe and mystery

changed or evolved a little bit. I mean, how did the grief of that alter the way you think not just maybe about awe but about things that science can't fully explain? Yeah. you know, I was blessed to have, you know, a brother of awe, Ralph. Um, he was, you know, I'm working on a new book on moral beauty and it's like asked me to define moral beauty. It was my brother, you know, he fought off bullies. He taught the poorest kids in the foothills of the Sierras. He didn't tolerate any racism. He broke up fights. He just had this quality to him. Uh, very humble guy. and he passed away from colon cancer which is you know and you don't want to I don't want to smooth over all

the hardship like there's a lot of violence in prisons there's a lot of ugliness uh there's a lot of ugliness as you die and as you are a brother of watching somebody pass away panic and grief and I didn't feel rage but just like existential confusion and then Sean you know on the and on the night of his passing Um, I was sitting there by his side and I was holding his shoulder and talking to him with our family, thinking about our past and throwing the baseball with him and the camping we did and uh I'm a you know a datadriven guy. I believe in neurons and cells and hadn't thought too hard about consciousness and like I had a transcendent experience seeing his soul and seeing space in a different way truly and I've had a lot of these you

know psychedelics and meditation and yoga and exertion this was in its own category and I was like wow and I knew from our research around the world it's common when you watch people go you feel awe at the mystery of life and then after not only did I hear his voice all the time in winds and you know and I see him in places and I felt his identity in the sun I felt his hand on my back two times where it was on my back you know and I was just like okay I'll wait it'll pass it was still there so as a skeptic like me it changed everything for me you know it opened me up. It uh opened me up to thinking about metaphysics and spirituality. It opened my spirit up to what we never will understand fully with

science and rationality and I feel better for it. You know, I feel more open to dialogues with a fundamentalist Christian who has different political views than myself. Yeah. Uh you know, and that's happened through awe or a Mormon, right? And so, yeah, it was a big life-shifting experience of mystery and uh and beauty. Do you think maybe the experience of awe is the birth of the religious impulse? I do. I really do. And you know that was Emil Durkheim the great French sociologist that vibrating together when you at that concert you had this experience. Jose Gonzalez

collective evercence, right? Yeah. collective effrovescence. Uh you know that was William James's project of the mystical feeling which is a lot like awe is the beginnings of spirituality and you know this is what I learned from working with Jonathan height on awe. John studied a lot of the world's religions when we wrote about awe 25 years ago 20 years ago. You know, you read the Bhagavad Gita, you read the great Buddhist texts and sutras, you read the, you know, the yoga sutra of Patanjali, it's a lot of awe, right? And Emerson and throw and uh Julian of Norwich. So, it's right there. Um, and what I like is it's back to our overarching thesis, which is however we get to this emotion, what it

does for us is it makes us be part of large things and take care of them. in indigenous traditions, the ecosystem around us, and then in religion, the people around us, and we need that. If you're right, and I think you are, that awe is this basic human need. Um, what is your advice to people looking to snatch a few minutes of it every day? Yeah. You know, I've taught happiness for 30 years at Berkeley and teach it to medical doctors and federal judges and hard, you know, PE or people with hard jobs. And I always tell people like look for a few minutes a week. That's it. And with awe, pause, slow down your breathing a little, put down your devices, um, open your mind, and rely on those eight wonders, right? So,

look around at nature, uh, sunsets and clouds and trees. Listen to music that really that means something to you. Like, stop the Spotify playlist and find something that means something to you. But when the Bob Dylan movie came out, I was just weeping the whole time cuz I grew up on Bob Dylan when I was 3 years old. Uh he was I like the Beatles, but Bob Dylan was everything and it just opened me up, you know, nature, music. Reflect on someone who has inspired you and just name them and like, "Oh yeah, man. That teacher in high school, they gave me that." Right? Um just uh look for visual things. Get to a museum. It's not that hard. Um, and we got a ton of

new data showing it's good for stress, anxiety, long COVID symptoms, loneliness, um, just a couple of minutes a week. Well, if you're looking for all you certainly won't find it on your Twitter feed, so get the hell out of there. Yeah. And get off of the devices. I think that's a perfect place to go. Um, if besides getting your book, um, where can people go to follow your work and your latest research? Yeah, I have uh the science of happiness podcast uh at the greater good science center. Um and uh we have a lot of awe represented and things you can do. So uh there are there's a lot we can start working with in terms of those couple of minutes a

week to find some awe. All right people, let's get started. Dr. Kelner, this is great. Thank you for coming in. Thank you Sean. It's been a great conversation. Hey, thanks for watching. Every week we bring honest and nuanced conversations about what's happening in culture, tech, and the world of ideas to your video and audio feeds. Episodes of the gray area drop every Monday on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite listening app. Comment below and let me know what you thought of this conversation. I promise I won't be offended. You can also send us an email at the grey [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 1 800-214-5749.

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