The "Happy Life" Scientist: How To FINALLY Beat Stress, Worry & Uncertainty! Dacher Keltner

[0] Life expectancy's been declining for the last few years.

[1] How do we reverse that trend?

[2] These are the five safest things to do.

[3] Dr. Dacher Keltner.

[4] A renowned expert in the science of human emotion.

[5] Discovering ways on how we can improve our happiness.

[6] He's also the author of several books, including The Power Paradox.

[7] I read just someone touching you can make you live longer and be less stressed.

[8] Is that true?

[9] Yeah.

[10] There are all kinds of findings that speak to this.

[11] You have premature babies.

[12] They used to just put them in these little, you know, that warm them and they would die and then they figured out they needed skin to skin contact like they need food and they live they gained 47 % waking you know the deepest craving we have is to be appreciated by other people if you want to be happy practice compassion and if you want others to be happy practice compassion if I am kind to you my act of kindness makes you more kind downstream and then that person you've helped actually is kinder to another person and they've proven that Yeah.

[13] So that calmer is a very real thing.

[14] It's very real.

[15] That'll save eight, ten years of life.

[16] You've got to find a few moments just to be kind.

[17] Are we worst people, the richer and more powerful we become?

[18] Yeah.

[19] So we've actually done experiments, right?

[20] You know, it's a movie about a child who has cancer, and poor people show activation to Vegas nerve, which is part of compassion.

[21] Well, to do people, less activation.

[22] The wealthier you are, the more you've advocated for serious economic policies that hurt the poor.

[23] Jesus.

[24] And this is where it gets really where.

[25] them.

[26] Ducker, could you start by giving me your professional academic resume?

[27] Wow.

[28] Well, that, it begins early with my parents who were, you know, very important in my education and my formation.

[29] So my dad, it's a visual artist and my mom taught literature and poetry and romanticism and got me interested in, you know, all kinds of things about the human mind.

[30] and then I was at UC Santa Barbara as an undergraduate and then went to Stanford for Ph .D. Subsequent to that, work with Paul Ekman as a postdoc who's kind of a pioneer in the study of facial expression and inspiration for the show lie to me. And then became a professor, Wisconsin, and then UC Berkeley for 27 years and help run the Greater Good Science Center, which is about disseminating kind of the new knowledge, of meditation and compassion and stress to a broad audience and have taught at Berkeley, which I love for 27 years.

[31] You referenced there The Greater Good Science Center.

[32] Yeah.

[33] What's the mission of the Greater Good Science Center?

[34] Yeah, thanks for asking.

[35] You know, 20 years ago, post 9 -11, you know, we were in a world much like post -Trump and Boris Johnson and others, you know, like are we fragmented?

[36] what happened to humanity, what happened to community?

[37] Why are life expectancies in the United States dropping the last two years?

[38] What's going on, right?

[39] I saw that.

[40] Yeah, striking, right?

[41] Really disturbing.

[42] And we had the conviction and there was this new science of things like if you have strong social ties, it adds 10 years of life expectancy to your life, right?

[43] If you practice kindness, it quiets down the threat.

[44] regions of the brain and so we at berkeley in partnership of the journalism school kind of had the sense early like if we can get this knowledge out right in actionable pros where you read it and you say oh i could teach breathing to my my medical team or i could teach an awe walk to my neighborhood friends uh that would be good for the world you know i'm super compelled by that thank you the greater good science center can let's talk about some of the things that you've you've given away in terms of knowledge and some of the sort of discoveries that I think would surprise most people.

[45] You mentioned some of them in passing there about breathing and all walks and how you can add 10 years to your life.

[46] Give me some of the top line more detail on some of those top line findings.

[47] This really comes into focus for me, Stephen, when I speak to medical audiences.

[48] I do a lot of work with health care providers, you know, teaching medical doctors, residents, helping programmatically with kind of the spirit of hospitals and the like.

[49] I talk about awe that the feeling of awe reduces activation in the inflammation system in your immune system.

[50] Your immune system is all these cells distributed throughout your body that helps you protect against dangerous elements on the outside, viruses and bacteria.

[51] and the feeling of awe sort of reduces the activation of the cytokine system, which heats up your body.

[52] And if your body is always hot, that is bad news for your heart.

[53] It's bad news for your diabetes.

[54] And awe helps moderate that.

[55] I teach the work on compassion that, you know, I teach the work on compassion that, you know, 65 -year -olds who practice altruism and compassion have greater life expectancy.

[56] you know and you can go on each of these what used to be thought of as kind of new age soft things like awe or compassion or breathing benefit us you know just simple breathing if you breathe in and out counting to four as you breathe in counting out to four actually increases neural density in this part of your brain the prefrontal cortex which helps you handle stress what is all for someone yeah awe is just feeling an emotion you have when you encounter something big or vast that's outside of your frame of reference right of reality that you don't understand that I think I like the word mystery you know wow who I can't figure this out and and then that emotion of awe stimulates wonder right like how do I why do people why do rainbows exist what you know how are they produced when water, when light bends through water molecules.

[57] So it's, it's an emotion that drives wonder and creativity.

[58] What is the, um, positive net impact on humans of experiencing awe?

[59] Other than, because when I think of all, I think of going to like Machu Picchu and seeing those big mountains and saying, what the hell is this?

[60] This is insane.

[61] And I think of that as being like a memory.

[62] Oh, that's fun.

[63] That was amazing.

[64] I take the picture.

[65] Put it on my Instagram.

[66] Get the likes.

[67] Go home.

[68] Yeah.

[69] Yeah.

[70] But there's something deeper going on, right?

[71] in my physiology.

[72] Yeah, thank you.

[73] You know, one of the fascinating things, Stephen, when you're, you know, is when you study this complicated realm of emotion is we have these words that we all use to talk about an emotion.

[74] And they're much as we have words about, you know, ethnic categories or class categories, oh, he's lower class or he's African American, those are just words and concepts that may not capture reality at all.

[75] And all.

[76] suffers from this, which is when people talk about awe, or they share it on Instagram, they share the big moments of like, I was at the Grand Canyon or I was in the Lake District or by this cathedral.

[77] But in point of fact, you know, there are a lot of ways in which we feel awe all the time, right?

[78] Encountering somebody who's really kind in the streets.

[79] You're like, wow, that was really generous.

[80] So yesterday on the train, the team were coming up to Manchester to where I was speaking.

[81] And an elderly lady overheard them saying that they were going to climb a mountain for charity.

[82] The elderly lady got up, walked over, gave them five pounds, and said, I climbed that once.

[83] Here's five pounds.

[84] Put it towards the charity.

[85] And for all of us, it went into our company chat, but that had happened.

[86] It was a real moment of like an affirmation of what it is to be a human and kindness, I guess.

[87] Yeah.

[88] And what's stunning to me, and this is a digression is your story just gave me the chills.

[89] And that's amazing.

[90] It's incredible, isn't it?

[91] It is incredible that I wasn't there.

[92] I've just got the chills myself.

[93] Just you saying you had the chills has just given me the chill.

[94] It's amazing.

[95] And that we don't understand scientifically, the contagious power of chills and awe.

[96] But, you know, awe, it's not the stereotype that we are led to understand or think about with words.

[97] It's around us all the time, right?

[98] The generosity in the train, the beautiful clouds, a piece of music, a visual design, you know, driving here to your studio.

[99] all the incredible design of London, it's around us.

[100] And so it's there every day.

[101] And, you know, Stephen, I'm not a, I don't know why this happened to me, but I've taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people online and in classes and the like.

[102] I was a grouchy kid, stressed out most of my life, terrible meditator, but I was forced into this job.

[103] And, you know, serving the science of happiness we've been talking about, man, two minutes of awe every other day is about as good for you as anything you can do.

[104] You know, it calms stress, calm stress regions of your brain.

[105] Talked about inflammation.

[106] It reduces inflammation.

[107] Activates the vagus nerve, which is this bundle of nerves that wanders all throughout your body and calms your heart rate.

[108] It's good for digestion.

[109] So, you know, it's good news for the human psyche.

[110] And when we talk about giving a little stressed out 12 -year -old, a young, 12 -year -old, some awe each moment in a classroom, we know that's really good for health and creativity.

[111] So it's good news in terms of what it can bring to us.

[112] Talk to me about some science then that supports that assertion where the science shows that everyday awe.

[113] So like accessible or, be all that I could go get out in the street or that I could actively go practice after listening to this conversation has proven to have a positive physiological impact.

[114] on humans or their emotions or their behavior yeah yeah you know this was one of the most exciting developments of the science of awe when we started to get this picture of the health benefits of all less stress a sense of time reduce loneliness right loneliness 40 % of people in globalized cultures feel lonely right that is hard on the body we started to think about all interventions and You know, one of my favorites that has compelling health data, if you will, is a lot of people go for regular walks.

[115] The U .K. is famous for its walking traditions.

[116] You know, it's one of the great cultural strengths, you know, just paths and, you know, and walks and, you know, etc. And so we just added one element to people's regular walk.

[117] And we called it the awe walk, which is when you go out, pause take some breathing deep breathing get synced up with your footsteps this is a classic kind of walking meditation approach and then look for awe right look take a moment to look at small things look at the reflection on this cool mug then pan out and look at you know the vastness of where you are city or nature up at the sky that was it right and that gets you into this awe mindset and our participants were 75 years old or older at that age a lot of data suggests you start getting more anxious and depressed right your people you love are dying your body's falling apart you are facing your mortality and the awe walk over eight weeks once a week compared to a really rigorous control condition led our 75 years old participants to feel less distress less less pain and more awe and joy in their lives.

[118] So it's just this simple addition to a daily walk, right?

[119] Listening to some music, do it more intentionally.

[120] And a lot of the studies of awe are really simple.

[121] You know, just watch an awe video, share an awe story, which you shared to me that just gave me the goosebumps.

[122] You know, that goosebumps is a register.

[123] It's these little muscles around hair follicles that are part of what are called your parasympathetic autonomic nervous system, which calm you down.

[124] So share stories of awe.

[125] So there's a ton of ways in which you can build more everyday awe into your life.

[126] What's the evolutionary basis for this?

[127] The, you know, in 1978, I think, Richard Dawkins published Selfish Gene.

[128] Massive book, right?

[129] You know, if you read that, it's the argument, which is true, is there, we are, we have these genes that are replicating themselves through us.

[130] We are these machines that replicate genes, right?

[131] And all of our characteristics are ways to do that.

[132] And it's all, the language is very aggressive and adversarial.

[133] These genes are competing with these genes.

[134] I'm competing with other people in the game of evolution.

[135] And there's been this massive shift in evolutionary thinking in the past 40 years where, you know, we're just starting to discover, you know, around the world, people share 40 to 50 % of a resource with a stranger, if asked.

[136] just like as a default.

[137] That's our intuition.

[138] We have neurophysiological systems like oxytocin, parts of the brain, and the vagus nerve, which help us sacrifice and give.

[139] We readily are contagious in our feelings.

[140] Your story gave me the chills, and then my chills bounced back to you, and you got the chills.

[141] So we're united and connected.

[142] And now, you know, the thinking is we're very cooperative alongside violent and rapacious and the like and collective.

[143] We're hyper -collective.

[144] We synchronize with each other physiologically.

[145] We mimic each other.

[146] We collaborate unlike any other primate.

[147] That's just who we are.

[148] It's probably our big strength.

[149] I think because in part, hyper -vulnerable offspring needed a lot of care, right, to live.

[150] Food scarcity, warming in the face of cold.

[151] and we need emotions and social practices that make us feel like we're collective.

[152] And awe is it.

[153] When, you know, it's so striking, Stephen, I don't know if you've had an awe experience in nature recently, just being outdoors.

[154] Oh, yeah.

[155] I mean, yeah, so I went to, I went to Bali and Indonesia to write my book in Ubud, and that's one of the places where, I mean, you're in a vast jungle.

[156] Yeah.

[157] But also, whenever you get to the top of a mountain, you look out across the jungle.

[158] jungle and I remember one particular moment looking out across the jungle sort on this platform that was awe -inspiring.

[159] Yeah.

[160] But also, it's quite weird that I, my awe -inspiring experiences in that country are always just being on the moped and going to the countryside.

[161] Yeah.

[162] Because there's, because it's this, it feels like the essence of nature.

[163] There's something about, I don't know what it is.

[164] There's, there's this realness to it that makes me feel like I'm at home.

[165] It's hard to explain, but.

[166] And that's, feel like you're at home, right?

[167] And it's striking.

[168] think about it conceptually like here I am on a moped in nature with you know the the ecosystems kind of moving into my body and my brain and out of that comes the concept I'm home and that's what awe does is it says I'm part of this people right the other time was actually last week I was at soho farmhouse which is a sort of like a like a hotel village they've constructed where you can go on the weekend to be in nature and it was actually walking back to my cabin I looked up up for the first time and obviously when you're in the countryside you get to see the stars in London you don't have that luxury and I looked up and I saw the stars and I started talking like having a mental conversation about what that is like what I'm looking at that is a I mean that one over there is a bigger than planet Earth and it's I'm basically this tiny little seemingly insignificant piece of irrelevant dust and that made me full a sense of all the feeling is really because I am so small, I am part of this bigger thing.

[169] Yeah.

[170] You know, when you don't look up and when you're looking down, let's say, figuratively, there's sort of an individualism.

[171] Yeah.

[172] Whereas like, it's me. I'm the center of the universe.

[173] But when you look up, you realize that you are irrelevant, but therefore also part of this greater thing, I guess.

[174] Yeah.

[175] Thank you for bringing that up.

[176] And one of the simple, actionable things that we've been teaching at greater good.

[177] We have a practice on this is look at the sky.

[178] Just like, look up.

[179] take a minute.

[180] If you ask the average citizen in a city like London, when's the last time you looked at the sky?

[181] Yeah, I don't see it.

[182] Yeah, and it's powerful.

[183] Yeah, the, you know, one of the paradoxical qualities of awe and is this shift, this transformation and sense of self that you're talking about.

[184] And it's profound, which is, you know, in the, in one of the early writing traditions around awe, which is spiritual journaling.

[185] A lot of people, early accounts of awe and the Bhagavad Gita and Julian of Norwich and, you know, the great Christian writings, almost every spiritual tradition, the Buddha, it's this like, God, I'm having this ecstatic, awe, mystical experience, what's it like?

[186] And they write about the self just like vanishing, you know.

[187] Psychedelics has a rich tradition of ego death in it.

[188] Carl Sagan has this great statement about space like yours like man when I think about the universe look at me I'm just this little I'm a little speck of dust you know but the self is huge in our minds yeah and awe quiets it it puts it into perspective and what's striking Stephen which you know it took us a long time to figure this out scientifically is it actually feels liberating you know oh it's the do you know what when I'm stressed I remind myself of how insignificant I am because stress is often are like the fatal decision to overestimate the significance of your problems, like relative to, you know, to whatever.

[189] But the other day, I was a little bit, I was overthinking something a lot and I could feel myself getting a little bit stressed.

[190] And I reminded myself of looking down on a plane over a country and just how irrelevant I am in the grand scheme of things.

[191] Because of, you know, I became a dragon on the, on dragon's den and the podcast became bigger.

[192] You know, It's easy sometimes to fall into the trap of when there's a lot of people talking about you or writing about you to think that this is the center of the universe in some respect.

[193] I'm leading a movement of two million people.

[194] Yeah, but whenever I go up in a plane and I let down, I go, nothing that I do is really matters in a good way.

[195] Yeah.

[196] It's funny because it's a paradox.

[197] It's like, I want to be empowered and I want to think that I matter.

[198] Yeah.

[199] But at the same time, I like to realize that I absolutely don't matter in any respect.

[200] And I love saying this to people because you can see that kind of their easy.

[201] ego square.

[202] When you go, when you put in context that we are, as an individual, we absolutely don't matter.

[203] You know, in the, in the millions or whatever, billions of years that the universe has existed, we are just this blink and I'm just this irrelevant speck of dust.

[204] And once I'm gone, you know, give it another million years.

[205] No one's even going to remember.

[206] Yeah.

[207] Or whatever, probably a couple of years, but.

[208] But that's what's great about all in the human mind, right?

[209] We need the ego and the self and we need to maximize our interests and desires and reproductive of possibilities, et cetera, status, you know, all that obsessive stuff.

[210] But man, we have this great realm of transcendence that awe is part of that, you know, and in our studies, you know, we literally, we took students up to this tower on the UC Berkeley campus.

[211] They got to look out at the, and they no longer felt stressed about things.

[212] We had students look up into trees and just admire these.

[213] We have a lot of tall trees on campus in, I hope you visit it sometime, that are beautiful and tall and make you feel like you know there we have redwood trees that are a thousand years old you know that oh this little moment of consciousness that is so self -critical or or stressed or or egomaniacal it's just a moment in time of seven nine billion people it's you know for me personally it was liberating to find this in awe like like you're saying like this is all this is just one human's effort.

[214] Why did you write this book?

[215] Of all the things you could have written about, you're a very smart individual.

[216] You've studied so many things relating to sort of social sciences and how humans behave and why we do what we do.

[217] But to commit your life to writing a book about this subject matter is writing books is not easy.

[218] It takes a long time, a lot of effort.

[219] Yeah.

[220] To promote them, etc. Why this book?

[221] Why now?

[222] Yeah.

[223] Thank you for asking that.

[224] Yeah, you know, it is hard to write books.

[225] And we had done a lot of research on awe.

[226] And, you know, one of the reasons I wrote the book was, you know, I'm now at an age where I've been following how we're doing as cultures.

[227] And a lot of the things that have surfaced here, Stephen, are true.

[228] Like, you know, people feel lonely.

[229] They feel adrift.

[230] They're seething.

[231] They're.

[232] searching for something more meaningful than elevating a paycheck.

[233] And I felt that awe was part of that story, that awe gets us to what is meaningful to us as individuals at a moment in history.

[234] And then my younger brother died.

[235] And he was, he was born, I'm one year older.

[236] We had this wild childhood, you know, like born in Mexico and raised in the late 60s in Laurel Canyon, a very experimental place, wandering the foothills of the Sierras.

[237] And he was my source of meaning in many ways in life.

[238] And he got colon cancer and died.

[239] And it was brutal and horrifying.

[240] And at the moment of his dying, the last night, he was sitting by his bed.

[241] And he, and he, He was my moral compass in life.

[242] You know, he really, he was very courageous, super kind, really only cared about, like, devoted his career to the least resource kids in the country, these four poor kids.

[243] And when I was watching him die, I had an awe experience.

[244] I was like, you know, what is going on?

[245] He seems really calm.

[246] He's heading into a space I don't understand.

[247] I saw like pulsating light, you know, that was uniting everyone around him in this sense of reverence and the sacredness of his life.

[248] And afterward, I was knocked into a really profound state of grief where this is about five years ago.

[249] I couldn't make sense of the world.

[250] You know, I could do my work.

[251] but I just didn't I was lost because he was a very important voice to me you know and I was waking up wasn't sleeping panicky and I like a lot of people in grief I was like you know hallucinating like I would see him follow a guy in the streets like and he wasn't him I'd wake up thinking he was there I felt his hand on my back a couple times and it was weird i was i had this epiphany in this really bad state of mind the worst i've ever felt like um i got to find awe again you know i have to my brother you know he and i went dancing and did wild things and backpacking and you know just live this life of awe he was my source and he was gone um and so i wrote the book you know and i dug in and just started writing about him.

[252] And he features prominently in the book, you know, what he meant to me and how I grieved his loss and then worked up the science, too.

[253] So in many ways, you know, what we're observing in our globalized culture is this, the problems of capitalism, the search for meaning, the, you know, rising, the reduced life expectancy, U .S., rising anxiety, depression.

[254] And I was kind of in that state, you know, suddenly like, wow, my career is good, but, uh, you know.

[255] And so, um, knowing a little bit about the science, I was like, I've got to do this myself and go get it.

[256] Did you find that organ?

[257] I did.

[258] It, it took a lot of work, you know, I was in a really tough place.

[259] And, uh, you know, I, um, I just was, I just started anew.

[260] Like, where do I find me?

[261] meaning.

[262] And I find meaning working with prisoners.

[263] I don't know why, you know, but just, you know, being in prisons, volunteering, helping with the formerly incarcerated, I challenged myself to find awe in places I wouldn't ordinarily find it, like just to open my mind, like, well, I'm at a symphony.

[264] You know, I love African music and Sonja Jobarte and, you know, and here I was in the symphony not understanding it but starting to feel it um you know nature is easy for me i've always backpacked and gone into the mountains i had a lot of spiritual conversations you know of like i'm not a religious person and i was like what is this you know why why mystical awe so and what it gave me i think with respect to my brother's death is an openness like we don't know what life is we don't where it goes we don't you know uh and it opened my mind to a lot of new sources of all there's almost an injustice i heard in that story because of the way you characterize your brother and his behavior yeah for him then to have passed early from cancer yeah feels in many respects to me like the opposite of or or you know the universe being uh compassionate or or whatever.

[265] And that.

[266] Yeah.

[267] Yeah.

[268] It hit me hard.

[269] You know, it was, and that's well put.

[270] Like, for the first year, you know, you ask these questions, like, why would a guy who teaches speech therapy to the poorest kids in the United States go and is with a teenage daughter and a young family, come on, you know, come on.

[271] And Donald Trump is, you know, indestructible.

[272] And you're like, the world is fucked, you know.

[273] And, and I grappled with that.

[274] very hard and then I was as you well put I was in this antithesis state of awe I was like nothing meant anything you know it was all pointless I could sense nothing bigger about life that mattered and that's why you know that's why I said all right I have this career that allows me to do these investigations and we're all investigating we're all certainty searching for these things in music or moral beauty or being in collectives or sports and I just threw myself into it and and you know frankly it you know the idea of everyday awe which is very important in the book we can find it anywhere you know on the train with the act of generosity that is now it just feels alive all the time what's kind of the through line to gratitude because when you were talking about the old walk and you picked up this mug, this silver mug we have in front of us, and you started admiring it, it almost sounded a bit more like gratitude to me. Yeah.

[275] And even the study where you had the elderly participants do the walk and then sort of self -report, I'm guessing on how they felt.

[276] Yeah.

[277] It sounded like nature also gives us a sense of sort of gratitude for our lives, for the world we live in.

[278] Yeah.

[279] What's the distinction or difference if there is one.

[280] Yeah, what a terrific question.

[281] And there's a deep philosophical tradition.

[282] of David, David Hume, Scottish philosopher, Charles Darwin, Martha Nussbaum more recently, a Chicago philosopher that we, and it really animates a lot of this conversation.

[283] The work I've done is like, we have these amazing emotions that are like deep intuitions about the world that are good for us and good for the world.

[284] You know, compassion, take care of people who are vulnerable.

[285] Aw, you know, connect to others to face vast mysteries and gratitude.

[286] Adam Smith, the great economist, felt like this is the emotion that holds societies together.

[287] Gratitude.

[288] The feeling of reverence for things are like, wow, this is really important and sacred of things that are given to you.

[289] And that is key.

[290] Like, oh, my friend helped me with my work.

[291] My work colleague brought me lunch.

[292] You know, my child did the dishes tonight.

[293] You know, whoa.

[294] I feel grateful.

[295] gratitude really close to awe as you intuit but it tends to be different in that awe tends to be about vaster things like you know uh you almost get into a car crash or you get into a car crash you almost die and you're like oh i'm just i feel awestruck that i'm alive you know and then awe has more mystery to it you can't understand it like music or right like music yeah exactly you know music rushes into you and you start crying right and you're like oh my god so what's a recent experience of that for you of music yeah um it would be where you just start sobbing and you know or not sobbing oh sobbing or chills it would be we do this live show for it's called the driver's seal live and we toured the country last year we did three nights at the pladium then we took it to all these theaters and i'm stood and there's a house gospel choir about about 40 people behind me for the whole two hours while I'm speaking.

[296] And I mean, Jesus.

[297] Yeah.

[298] They sing a lot of like religious songs as part of the message that I'm conveying.

[299] And I mean, every night I'm, you know, I'm crying.

[300] It's funny because I rehearsed it.

[301] I rehearsed it.

[302] I practiced.

[303] I practiced it.

[304] But then with the people there, the audience of 2 ,500 people and the choir there, I would cry every night.

[305] Yeah.

[306] Which is bizarre, which is strange.

[307] Isn't it striking?

[308] It's a sense of connectedness, maybe.

[309] I wonder why in the live show, when there's thousands of people there, then I feel the most intense emotions.

[310] Yeah.

[311] Versus when we're in rehearsals.

[312] Yeah.

[313] That's a complicated question.

[314] But your examples tell us that you, the vastness of that experience of like, wow, there are sound waves that I'm producing that are moving bodies.

[315] I see this pattern of movement.

[316] And I am part of that.

[317] And as the poet, Ross Gay says, these boundaries between self and other become very porous.

[318] You know, like, whoa, we're our one organism.

[319] That's awe, vast.

[320] And I don't understand why.

[321] gratitude is more, you know, you're at the show and, you know, somebody looks you in the eye and smiles and you feel like they're grateful for you.

[322] It has this more readily understood economy to it almost.

[323] And why, you know, in writing about awe, the, you know, there are some things that are intuitive like, oh, nature makes us feel awe and people's moral beauty and kindness, your story on the train.

[324] But how in the world music, sound waves, hits our ear, produces a neurochemistry in the brain.

[325] And the next thing you know, you're crying, you know, and feeling one, that's amazing to me. And we still, I don't know if science will ever answer it.

[326] You know, it's just the transcendent power of music.

[327] And you're lucky to share it.

[328] Do you have any insight into the positive impact that gratitude has on us based on any sort of studies that have been done?

[329] It's huge.

[330] And, you know, Stephen, like when following and teaching the science of happening, happiness literature for 25 years.

[331] You know, at UC Berkeley, I started teaching a happiness course.

[332] I think it was Harvard and us for the first 25 years ago and tracking like what are the what are the things you can count on, you know?

[333] And when I go out and teach happiness, it's very humbling like you asked me in some sense a related question to have a parent come up to me and say, you know, my son is massively depressed and suicidal.

[334] What do I do?

[335] You know, and obviously you go see a therapist and you consider medication.

[336] But the happiness literature can point to like these are the five safest things to do, social connection, develop some way to use your body to calm down, breathing, yoga, sports, whatever, and gratitude is a winner.

[337] And I think awe is up there now too.

[338] But gratitude, practicing gratitude benefits the cardiovascular system.

[339] It helps people who have heart vulnerable abilities, patients, they do better.

[340] It is very good for your place in social networks.

[341] Like, I join a group.

[342] I'm worried.

[343] I'm socially anxious.

[344] What do I do?

[345] Practice some gratitude, you know, say thank you and show a little appreciation of people.

[346] You will have stronger social ties.

[347] We did research showing it's good for romantic bonds.

[348] You know, the if partners simply say, on a occasion, like hey thanks for doing the dishes or I appreciate how you the jokes you tell or I love your music selection it helps right so it's it's a safe bet for a happier life you know this I've come to learn that there's so many forces in our day to day lives that act against gratitude yeah and stifle its presence but in the context you've given there whether it's in a social group or at work or in a relationship or even with yourself I've come to learn how important it is, to not rely on gratitude just showing up, but to try and create a system for frequent gratitude.

[349] Now, one of the things that's been a real unlock for me, my companies over the last couple of years, is in every company that I run, we have a gratitude chat.

[350] So it's just a channel.

[351] Yeah.

[352] And it's open.

[353] There's really no instruction.

[354] But it's funny that we created the channel first at social chain and then in my current companies.

[355] and when you just create the channel, what happens is gratitude pours in.

[356] So today there'll be, I can guarantee at some point today, there'll be a message in there that says, thank you so much, Ross, for going and getting me that cup of coffee that I didn't ask for, but you knew that I needed or whatever.

[357] Well, thank you, Jack, for helping me lift that box upstairs.

[358] And it pours in, and it's such a simple thing to do, but it creates this insane, um, um, hard to understand.

[359] amount of like connectiveness and appreciation.

[360] And I imagine for the individual on the receiving end of the gratitude, a sense of like worthiness or respect.

[361] Come on, yeah.

[362] And it's such a small thing to do.

[363] It is.

[364] That I think every company should consider, which is having a system to move gratitude, friction -free, across your organization.

[365] Yeah.

[366] To bind it together.

[367] But in your relationship, the same thing.

[368] Yeah.

[369] Like you can rely on it being a, you know, your partner helping you with the bags or helping you with your packing or whatever.

[370] But it's great to also in a relationship have a system for gratitude.

[371] And what I love about your systems, Stephen, you know, I've taught gratitude in a lot of organizational contexts.

[372] And sometimes people force it.

[373] Like, you know, okay, let's say what we're grateful to for each person in this, you know, this meeting.

[374] And it's like, oh, God, you know, that's tricky.

[375] But to allow it to be spontaneous and intuitive like you did, right, and let it flow.

[376] That's the strong source and manifestation of gratitude.

[377] And it reminds us, you know, in Western European thinking, probably largely Western European male thinking, has been so hostile to emotion.

[378] This is what I was saying when I said there's so many forces acting against it.

[379] Yeah.

[380] And it's just like, why would you ever say thank you?

[381] It makes you weak.

[382] It makes you vulnerable and the like, et cetera.

[383] But there are a lot of great thinkers from David Hume, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, you know, early, a lot of the East Asian, you know, contemplative philosophies, like our best human tendencies come out of emotions, of gratitude, and express them.

[384] And I think that your example speaks to sort of a big shift culturally and what do we do with these emotions at work?

[385] They're really vital to our sense of connectivity and community.

[386] Makes me think a lot about relationships.

[387] And I know that this is something you've written about, extensively the role that a romantic relationship plays in health outcomes, etc., etc. But then I also was, I was pondering this idea of monogamy broadly.

[388] So my kind of question is kind of twofold is, are we meant to be monogamous?

[389] And also this, I'm thinking a lot about how the relationship dynamics and monogamy is changing, in some ways eroding.

[390] Yeah.

[391] I was reading some stats around marriage and how people are getting married less.

[392] you know, having less kids and all these kinds of things.

[393] So what's your thoughts on all of that?

[394] Are we meant to be monogamous?

[395] You've done a lot of research on apes and you talked a lot about them in your work.

[396] Yeah.

[397] But are we meant to be monogamous?

[398] And if so, how does that relate to the fact that being in a relationship extends our life?

[399] What a terrific question.

[400] Well, you know, anytime that you pose these questions, right, you have to remember, you know, and I always approach things from an evolutionary framework, which is humans are many different kinds of individuals.

[401] there's massive individual variation.

[402] And when I, you know, and there's cultural variation.

[403] So some cultures will be less monogamous, others more.

[404] Yeah, I think that the safest answer we can offer and it's dispiriting.

[405] And I teach it to my young students at Berkeley is, you know, I hate to tell you this, but you're in love right now, but odds are very good that that's not going to be the last relationship you're in.

[406] And so we tend to move from one semi -committed relationship to another.

[407] other.

[408] So serial monogamy is what many believe to be kind of our default orientation.

[409] There's variation around that.

[410] Some are more polyamorous.

[411] Others are really fiercely monogamous, given genetic makeup and cultural makeup.

[412] My belief is, and your generation is really bringing this to the four, which is that the old model of single monogamous relationship for 60 years, probably is not working.

[413] When you look at divorce rates, 50%, those people who stay together, half of those marriages are really pretty unhappy, so it's not working.

[414] You look at certain cultures.

[415] I was struck, Stephen, recently, the Scandinavians always do really well in happiness measures, right?

[416] And I was like, and I just Google, like, you know, what is the sort of living configuration, romantic relationship configuration in Sweden?

[417] Sweden has really high rates of people co -parenting but not living with the parent, right?

[418] And that may be a model to be not living with a partner, sorry.

[419] And so I think that we have many kinds of love, one of them being a monogamous love.

[420] It puts a lot of pressure to, with this old kind of romantic, chivalrous, Victorian ideal of like, that's the only person.

[421] I don't think that works, right?

[422] And so we're moving towards more flexible arrangements where we express many kinds of love.

[423] And it comes with a lot of complexity.

[424] So when I teach love, I say there are all these kinds of love, right?

[425] Walt Whitman, love friendship, you know.

[426] I mean, friendship love, and in a lot of the data, friends give you more happiness than any kind of relationship, right?

[427] Oh, I shouldn't say.

[428] I shouldn't say I agree.

[429] My girlfriend is somewhere upstairs.

[430] You're young, man. You get tough.

[431] I, you know, I understand.

[432] Yeah.

[433] So the, I think this, this model of like, you know, singular, devoted, all consuming romantic love is Miss Lettis.

[434] And we need varieties of romantic love, which your generation is creating, which is exciting.

[435] And then we need to remember the other forms to have the rich life.

[436] And then you get at that, you know, I got the right social configuration.

[437] to give me those 10 years of life expectancy.

[438] I've always been going back and forward about marriage because I understand some people say marriage is a system that allows for the rearing of kids.

[439] It's a form of commitment which changes things in the relationship.

[440] But I've always wondered if there's another way.

[441] Yeah.

[442] That's more, you know, where, which kind of, I don't know, it's a controversial topic.

[443] Is there another way?

[444] Like, I'm not even sure me and my partner would get married, but I'm sure we'd make some kind of.

[445] commitment to each other, but, you know, I'm not sure involving the law and church and all these things in the process is necessarily conducive with a productive outcome.

[446] I know.

[447] And not only that, but just think about, like, you know, I'm going to be, wait, I'm going to do everything from physical exercise to streaming movies to cooking food with one person, right?

[448] You know, it's interesting, Stephen, the, there's this really striking literature.

[449] You know, one of the raw facts of our evolution is our offspring are very vulnerable.

[450] They're the most vulnerable offspring of any mammal on the face of the earth.

[451] They take seven to eight to 20 years just to, I even say like 55 years to, you know, to even be semi -functioning as an individual.

[452] But what that meant is love in our hominid evolution was distributed in communities, right?

[453] And there's this concept called alloparenting, which is we all kind of take care of.

[454] of young ones, even if they're not our own.

[455] We're all affectionately related to each other in that work.

[456] There's much more sexual validity in that dynamic that probably reflects the truth of today that we don't face with this Victorian ideal of singular romantic love.

[457] And maybe your generation is moving us toward that sort of more communal approach to love.

[458] And it's complicated, right?

[459] involves different ideas about sexuality and different ideas of caregiving, but probably healthier.

[460] And I hope it happens.

[461] Why won't it work?

[462] And why doesn't it work?

[463] Because, you know, when we think about polygamy or being polyamorous, I don't know the difference.

[464] I've got to be honest.

[465] Yeah.

[466] They sound similar.

[467] Polygamy, multiple wives, polyamorous, multiple people you love.

[468] Okay.

[469] Yeah.

[470] So when we think about those polys, it seems impossible in the modern world to to execute a polly situation without jealousy and all the other bullshit.

[471] Yeah.

[472] And, you know, I grew up raised around hippies.

[473] You know, my parents were counterculture.

[474] I grew up in Laurel Canyon in the late 60s, very wild place.

[475] And I saw a lot of this as a young kid, and it was comical.

[476] You know, it's like, you're fighting over the dishes and I don't get to sleep with my wife tonight.

[477] That's, you know, he gets, my roommate does, ah, you know, it's hard, you know.

[478] Yeah.

[479] You know, and a lot of things get in the way.

[480] I think that, you know, I forgive me, but, you know, I think of the U .S. and how much of United States culture is designed around, you know, the nuclear monogamous family of, you know, single homes, suburbs, driving in a car, you know, really structured around that.

[481] And maybe that's poor design.

[482] It doesn't seem to fit our evolutionary past of being in these, you know, these collectives that are sharing in the raising of offspring and sharing to a certain extent in romantic partnership.

[483] So are you married?

[484] Yes.

[485] You've been married for a long time?

[486] Yeah.

[487] They're 90, I think it's 33 years.

[488] Wow.

[489] Important context.

[490] Yeah.

[491] Some people might, you know, think that you were like anti -marriage or anything like that, but you'll clearly, I can see from the room on your finger.

[492] No, but yeah.

[493] Yeah, but I grew up around a mom who, you know, she taught women's literature and feminism in the 70s.

[494] And, you know, that early feminist critique of marriage is right.

[495] You know, early on it, women did a lot of the work.

[496] It constrained them.

[497] It costs them in terms of job mobility.

[498] And so I've always questioned it.

[499] And then I think the evolutionary literature we talked about is like, wait a minute.

[500] Maybe love is more distributed.

[501] It comes in many varieties.

[502] And that's how we get this love work done.

[503] So I'm glad you guys are questioning it, seriously.

[504] Yeah.

[505] But good luck.

[506] Yeah, the good thing is we're really like, we're really open to new things.

[507] As in we're open to like building new systems for our relationship in the modern world based on how we feel.

[508] We're very good at being resistant to like social pressure to follow a conventional path.

[509] Yeah.

[510] So even with Valentine's Days and things like that, we have a conversation about like, does this make sense?

[511] Like, why would we do this?

[512] Yeah.

[513] What's more important?

[514] Yeah.

[515] Which a lot of people don't.

[516] I've been in relationships before where you don't hit the perfect, like a social cube to show up or give flowers or whatever and you get like a, fucking an essay.

[517] And you're, you know, you're a bad guy for that day.

[518] But going back to one of the points you said, you were talking about how men in particular struggle to show, express those emotions.

[519] Yeah.

[520] And, you know, stereotypically, we're not as affectionate and kind as our female counterparts.

[521] One of the things that you talk about is the difference in social class and how things change.

[522] Oh, man. Are we worst people, the richer and more powerful we become?

[523] Because your research seems to show that.

[524] Yeah.

[525] I would say yes.

[526] And I'm sorry to say that.

[527] You know, it's, you know, we, um, uh, I, uh, I, um, uh, I, got interested in social class, actually living in England.

[528] I lived in England in 1978 and United States is very blind as social class.

[529] We're now more aware of it, Bernie Sanders, etc. Rightfully so, one percent critique.

[530] You know, 80s, 90s, we're just blind to it as a more egalitarian time.

[531] And I lived in Nottingham, England, very working class town in a very tough time in England's history of, you know, coal strikes and the like.

[532] And it was tough.

[533] And the English had this just much more sophisticated understanding of class and differentiations between on the dole and working class and posh and, you know, all these categories.

[534] I was like, wow, classes everywhere.

[535] It affects how people speak and dress and eat and so forth.

[536] And so we started to apply social class to what we've been talking about, like the compassion, awe, gratitude, empathy, kindness, sharing, altruism.

[537] And just, you know, across studies and, you know, largely in the United States, I think you could question whether this applies to Holland or UK or Japan, or there's less inequality, I might add.

[538] You know, as you rise in wealth and privilege, you share less, you feel less compassion to images of suffering.

[539] You know, you see an image.

[540] This was a striking study to me of, you know, it's a movie about a child who has cancer.

[541] and poorer people show activation in the vagus nerve, which is part of compassion, you know, causes you to like want to help, well -to -do people, less activation.

[542] They feel less awe as you rise in the social class hierarchy in the United States, are more impolite.

[543] And so that was part of my power paradox book was that story about the class.

[544] I, you know, I hesitate, I worry about like in my worst person and I'd rather use your earlier language, which of like, what are the structural conditions that get in the way of this?

[545] And you think about, you know, rising in wealth and privilege in class as introduce, you create a life that makes it harder to be kind, you know, that your people are assisting you with things and you don't come into contact with suffering, you know, you live in a neighborhood in the United States or probably UK where it's like, you don't see it, you know, and so it doesn't train those tendencies.

[546] And, you know, frankly, Stephen, I, you know, I think this is increasingly true in the UK, but in the United States, you know, with one in six people impoverished, life expectancy is dropping, you know, six, 700 ,000 unhoused people in the United States.

[547] Where I live, Berkeley, California, everywhere you go, you're bumping into somebody who doesn't have a home.

[548] I think it's our central failure in the U .S. is how.

[549] privilege has short -circuited our better human tendencies.

[550] How do we know that it's the increase in wealth and social class that is causing us to become less kind, less empathetic, less compassionate?

[551] Or it's just assholes go further.

[552] Yeah.

[553] Like there's a distinction there.

[554] Like maybe these people were always assholes.

[555] and that's why they became successful or rich or wealthy or whatever or in a higher social class.

[556] Yeah, I mean, there are two, and that's a critical question, right?

[557] And people have long championed this idea that, well, maybe all of this, what it really tells us is if you practice our compassion, you don't rise in the ranks and you don't gain wealth and the like.

[558] And there are two rebuttals to that idea.

[559] The first, which I chart in the power paradox, which people still don't believe too much, But on balance today, people who practice empathy, who listen and share resources, practice gratitude, rise in the ranks.

[560] They do better in social hierarchies.

[561] And that replicates in a lot of contexts.

[562] And really what happens is, this is why I call it the power paradox is once I have everybody's respect and, you know, wealth and the like, then I tend to misbehave, right, in the ways we've.

[563] talked about through a lot of different forms of unethical behavior.

[564] The other rebuttal is we've actually done experiments, right?

[565] And you can take a middle class individual and you can get them into the mindset like, hey, you're actually have a lot of advantage vis -a -vis most of society through simple manipulations, right?

[566] Just think about how you compare to a lot of poor people.

[567] And they're like, oh, I'm doing really well.

[568] And that simple shift in mindset leads to, reduced compassion, reduced empathy.

[569] So you can actually move people around where you give them the sense that they're privilege and it tends to undermine these tendencies.

[570] Jesus.

[571] I know.

[572] That's fucking how horrible.

[573] It is.

[574] And, you know, I worry about it.

[575] I worry about it a lot.

[576] What, you know, the kind of poor distribution of privilege in the United States and increasing UK and other countries is doing to the social fabric.

[577] it's it's uh problematic it's interesting because there is there's kind of a long um prevailing stereotype that rich people are like bad like less compassionate um less empathetic and i and i always wondered whether that was just i don't know was it true was it um was it was it people being jealous was it um just too much of a broad generalization was it you know based on the acts of maybe a few yeah but you're telling me that the science supports the fact that generally the more, the richer you are, and the high you are in terms of social class, the less compassionate, less empathetic you are as a human.

[578] Yeah, and, you know, and it is, I mean, that's the broad argument.

[579] I've given you a couple of findings here.

[580] There are all kinds of other findings that speak to this.

[581] Jesus.

[582] You know, one, this is one of my favorites is, you know, in these epidemiologists who are studying broad trends in social behavior, discovered this accidentally.

[583] they're interested in who shoplifts as a teenager in the United States, you know, a basic unethical tendency really costly for businesses in the United States.

[584] Is it the rich or the poor?

[585] Well, you know who I would assume it would be, but I feel like I'm wrong.

[586] It's the rich.

[587] Rich high school kids in the United States are more likely to shoplift, right?

[588] And that's striking.

[589] They've got their parents' credit card.

[590] They can buy whatever they want.

[591] And they violate that social rule.

[592] This is where it gets really worrisome.

[593] My former student, Michael Krause, did really nice work on U .S. senators and U .S. policymakers.

[594] You know, American politicians are rich.

[595] They increasingly so.

[596] And he was simply interested in, does your degree of privilege or wealth predict regressive policy preferences?

[597] Like, let's not give resources to schools for the poor.

[598] let's not fund, you know, Medicare.

[599] Let's really move wealth through taxation policies to the well -to -do.

[600] And the wealthier you are, the more you preferred and advocated for, you know, serious economic policies that hurt the poor and benefit the well -to -do who already have, you know, in the U .S., the 1%, they have enough.

[601] They have more than enough, right?

[602] Why not share a little?

[603] So it's deep.

[604] And I think, and then you look across history.

[605] European aristocracies and, you know, the popes and so forth.

[606] And it's, I think it's one of the, you know, frankly, Stephen, and I hate to say it, you know, Lord Acton, you know, power leads to abuse and absolute power, absolute corruption, our power is corrupting.

[607] It's a pretty safe law in human behavior.

[608] I hate to say it.

[609] It's because you're rising in prominence and facing a new life and you better watch out.

[610] I was thinking most of the time you're talking, which is like, how do you avoid that?

[611] How do you avoid that scientifically supported tendency to become an asshole with the more wealth and power you accrue?

[612] I guess my assumption was just being conscious of the fact, the first thing.

[613] But also just like, there's probably things you could do actively to remain aware of your own insignificance, maybe not the word, but like the fact that everybody is exactly the same.

[614] It's like the way I describe it.

[615] Yeah, I mean, I think that there's an awareness dimension to this that you've suggested.

[616] There's an ethical practice of like, how do I create more gratitude in an organization, if that's what we care about, et cetera.

[617] How do I counteract my own biases then as well?

[618] So how do I put people around me who represent, and we're thinking here, I'm thinking here about governments, that represent the entirety of the population, not just the rich private school colleagues that I might surround myself, which has often been the case in government.

[619] And that is hard to work against, right?

[620] That is a deep sociological process that, like, you appoint the cabinet member from Oxford or whatever, and you're in trouble.

[621] Yeah, you know, it's, it is, you know, a lot of economists, a lot of the work coming out of, you know, spirit level, UK, this is a central challenge of the structure of our societies today.

[622] It's this increasingly unequal distribution of privilege and wealth and all that goes with it.

[623] To people that are wealthy and in higher social class live longer because I say that because the attributes are becoming less empathetic and rude or all these things seem to be the antithesis of social connectedness and all of these things.

[624] And you even said earlier that, you know, wealthier people experience less or...

[625] Yeah.

[626] And all of those things are...

[627] are associated with living longer.

[628] Yeah.

[629] So one would assume that if you become rich and powerful, there's also then also a risk to your life expect Yeah, that's terrific.

[630] That's a really striking question, and we don't know.

[631] And I think your reasoning is right on the point, which is, wow, you have less friends.

[632] Right.

[633] Privilege knocks out these important tendencies that help with inflammation and vaguely tone and the like.

[634] Rich people do live longer.

[635] That's robust.

[636] Yeah, yeah.

[637] And food you eat and so forth.

[638] You know, opportunity for health, you know, yoga, all the things that benefit us.

[639] rich people this is interesting surprised me rich people are less likely to experience anxiety and depression in the United States yeah interesting isn't it we think so lonely and anxiety producing to be at the top no mental health issues are really concentrated in the poor for obvious reasons working two jobs riding the bus you know schools are under resource etc but to your point and it's interesting The effect of wealth on happiness is much smaller than people think.

[640] People think, you know, in particular in a country like the United Kingdom or, you know, Great Britain or U .S., like, oh, once I make a lot of money, it'll be bliss and happiness and contentment.

[641] That turns out not to be true.

[642] It's a weak relationship.

[643] And I think part of the reason is, you know, when you gain in resources, you don't have these raw feelings of, compassion is often or god i'm grateful for that gift right that you gave me or this is awesome this person's courage or how they overcome overcome obstacles and so that diminishes how wealth could make you happier so i think it's at play in some of these phenomena and maybe in others you talked about how life expectancy has been declining yeah last few years why yeah you know in the united states and I don't know the data in the U .K. And it's really related to inequality and opportunity and the poor distribution of opportunity and resources is there have been these amazing findings related to what's called death by despair.

[644] And certain populations in the United States, very poor white people, large, group of the large subculture in the United States are often forgotten in the cultural discourse they're poor i grew up around these people very poor don't eat good food schools are not that good you know uh work is uncertain and they and they feel disrespected in some sense and those that subculture in the u .s has been killing themselves you know with opiates and and, you know, drinking and drug addiction and suicides and the like.

[645] And it's a serious problem and it's part of that statistic.

[646] And then I think that, you know, if you think about the problems of contemporary culture concentrated in the United States of lack of civility, rage, self -focus, a lot of things that undermine our physical health through the mind, that probably is part of this story too too much stress too much loneliness not enough music and joy and shared communal experience we are struggling and and that's part of probably that statistic too and so that's why you know as I mentioned like the surgeon general Vivek Murthy a very smart team looking at these kind of processes and saying how do we build community, you know, and they've got a big program now.

[647] So it is alarming.

[648] And that statistic is important for thinking about where we are.

[649] I looked at the life expectancy on Google a couple of years ago.

[650] And I could see that it was basically going up every single year.

[651] Yeah.

[652] And then there was these two years.

[653] I think it might have been last year of the year before.

[654] This was, I think, before the pandemic.

[655] There was these two years where it had dropped both in the UK and the US in a row.

[656] Yeah.

[657] And I was trying to.

[658] understand why that was.

[659] And I heard some social commentators say that there's this epidemic of purposelessness.

[660] Yeah.

[661] Yeah.

[662] And describe that as leading to the opioid crisis, but also suicides and all these other behaviors.

[663] Yeah.

[664] Is that a good way in your view to define it, like this epidemic of purposelessness?

[665] Yeah, it is.

[666] You know, thanks for bringing that up.

[667] And, you know, purpose, a lot of people now call it meaning.

[668] Yeah.

[669] Right.

[670] What vague term has many different definitions, but it's, you know, I as an individual, how do I connect to things that are larger than the self that don't have to do with income or status or directly?

[671] But like, what's my point here in my brief life on earth?

[672] You know, what am I going to serve?

[673] What's the big cause that I'm part of?

[674] And this is really emerging in the science of happiness as a central focus of, you know, You know, we know well how to find income.

[675] We have good ideas about sensory pleasures, what's good to eat, how do I drink wines, what's the great coffee and the like.

[676] But we've lost sight of meaning.

[677] You know, churches and religions used to give that to us, you know, and religious participations on the decline in the West, dramatically so for people your age, where they gave us a big picture of life.

[678] And now, you know, young people are hungry for it and they're challenging a lot of the approaches to happiness that don't give meaning.

[679] You know, new conceptions of work.

[680] Like, I don't have to stay at one career if it isn't meaningful.

[681] New conceptions of romantic relationship.

[682] And so I think, you know, I think a lot of different perspectives are saying this is one of the crises of our times is meaning.

[683] is what will be the big thing you're devoted to?

[684] If you were to fast forward...

[685] How would you answer that question?

[686] Which question?

[687] What are you devoted to?

[688] I'm devoted to so many things.

[689] I'm devoted to this, this podcast and this show for so many reasons, for very selfish reasons, but those selfish reasons happen to be selfless.

[690] Yeah, aligned.

[691] See what I mean?

[692] Like, doing the podcast, I know helps the people, some of the people that listen because they come up to me in the street and they tell me all the time wherever I go.

[693] And the stories they tell me are like, I remember I was at Old Trafford two days ago, the Manchester United Stadium, and a guy who was the, he said he was the nearest survivor to the Manchester terrorist attacks, approached me in his wheelchair and told me that of the impact this has had on him.

[694] Yeah.

[695] And I literally had to walk, like I took the fight with him, walked like two meters out into this balcony.

[696] And I remember feeling just overwhelmed with emotion.

[697] and it was this wonderful reminder of like why I do this for both the listener but also for me so this is something that I'm increasingly devoted to because of those experiences and thank you to that young man he's tweeted me about for doing that because I needed I needed the reminder so I feel like you need the reminders sometimes often I'm devoted to my relationship with my partner my dog my family yeah my team and I'm I'm devoted to myself I'm devoted to like my, my health, my, you know, of both my body and my mind.

[698] Yeah.

[699] I think that's what I'm devoted to.

[700] And I think I'm devoted to the, yeah, I'll probably answer this in the first piece, but the greater good of like the collective.

[701] So, you know, yeah.

[702] And, you know, it's so interesting, you know, Stephen, one of the reasons that I got really excited about awe as an emotion to study, a brief state that you, you know, you go out and you see the moment of generosity that you saw or look at the sky or, you know, think about a big idea that idea of space or infinity is it does bring people, it kind of moves people away from transactional considerations.

[703] So in one of our studies, look up into the trees, you feel awe, you're less interested in money, you're less focused on the self and you're really more focused on the greater good.

[704] Like what, how do my actions promote healthier society?

[705] societies.

[706] And I think that, you know, a lot of young people are raising questions of meaning right now with climate crises and economic inequality, the state of democracy.

[707] Like, what is the point?

[708] You know, when, you know, you think about conversations from the last century and the centuries before, you know, reading for all, people would use words like the soul and spirit.

[709] And like, this is what I'm really about.

[710] in life and we've lost sight of that you know and so hopefully with this book people how whatever language they want to use they're asking questions like what am i devoted to what's sacred what is why why do people suddenly care it seems like this younger generation i'd say millennials and gen z they all want to change the world yeah now they don't necessarily know what they want to change yep but they want to be involved in the process and i this is literally a quote and i say this because of the amount of young people that have come up to me, various times, DM me and said, like, what you want to do?

[711] They'll say things like, I want to change the world.

[712] Yeah.

[713] How do you want to change it?

[714] And they're like, they don't know, they don't know, but they want to be involved in changing the world.

[715] Yeah.

[716] I've always wondered if this is like virtue signaling because it's good for social media.

[717] Probably.

[718] Probably, right?

[719] Yeah.

[720] Or there's been some inherent change, you know, from my father's generation to my future kids generation and my generation where we suddenly are these great philanthropists and we want to change everything.

[721] No, it's exciting for me. I mean, you know, the, and there are a lot of good findings on this that when Thatcher and Reagan hit in 1980, and that's when I was 18, right, we had this big return to materialism.

[722] And you think about the movie Wall Street being iconic.

[723] Greed is good.

[724] And that truly, that was the idea, right, of like, the point of life is selfish genes and maximizing my wealth.

[725] And we had this massive, you know.

[726] know, shift in Wall Street and that became our ideology.

[727] And that's been documented sociologically.

[728] Like in my generation, you know, suddenly coming out of the 60s and all the social revolutions of those times, now young people are allowed to say, I want to make a ton of money.

[729] I want to live in a big house.

[730] I want to, you know, I want to drive whatever car.

[731] And your generation is reacting against that big pendulum shift, right?

[732] And suddenly it's like, hey, that didn't work.

[733] Look at the Amazon.

[734] Look at economic inequality.

[735] Bernie Sanders, right?

[736] What about climate crises, Greta Tunberg, right?

[737] Suddenly, new model, and it's coming.

[738] But it's not because it feels like that social media and the internet has played a huge role in making us this like one connected mind.

[739] And we know from our sort of evolutionary past that we prefer members of the tribe that serve the tribe that are good, you know, that are, I think there's a term you use when you're talking about gossip, how we will gossip against people who are not doing good for the tribe, essentially?

[740] Yes.

[741] So we know that, like, being part of the tribe and serving the tribe and being, you know, empathetic and caring about others is a good trait.

[742] Now, we're all connected on these glass screens as if we're one brain.

[743] And we're rewarded with these likes and these retweets when we do good.

[744] Yeah.

[745] So if I, you know, if I do something really, really good for society or whatever, then I'm rewarded with, I don't know, comments or likes or whatever.

[746] everyone claps and I feel part of the tribe.

[747] So is social media made us these philanthropic warriors that are seeking for ways to like virtue signal our goodness?

[748] Yeah.

[749] You know, I mean, there's one argument that in general, any act of virtue and way of promoting the greater good becomes co -opted and exploited by people who have power, you know, and there's a critique, you know, I hate to say this, but you have a lot of nonprofits that they, kind of they create these virtuous organizations and pay people good salaries and don't do a lot in the world.

[750] And that is a critique out there.

[751] And I think it could be even more robustly levied against the digital virtue is like it's, you could say it's meaningless.

[752] Let's take that hypothesis, right?

[753] Oh, we turn acts of generosity and kindness and appreciation that you saw on the train into digital things that don't affect anything, right?

[754] Black Lives Matter, everyone was told to post a black tile on their Instagram on a Tuesday.

[755] Like I did a post about how much that misses the point in many respects.

[756] Yeah.

[757] If we're trying to deal with systemic racism, posting a black tile on a Tuesday really does nothing to address and evoke the conversation that needs to be had.

[758] Yeah.

[759] But it was like an easy, quick, cool way to say, I'm a good person.

[760] It's...

[761] And to do very little thereafter, you know.

[762] And if it's not changing hiring practices or pay practices or school admissions, it is BS.

[763] And probably counter works against social progress.

[764] I had a call during that time from one of the biggest brands in the world who asked me on a conference call, for those five of them, what should we do?

[765] You know, we do we do a donation?

[766] What should we post on our Twitter channel?

[767] Like what should we do and say?

[768] And part of, you know, it was the five executives at this huge company.

[769] And I said, I think the most important thing is actually to get your home in order first.

[770] It's startling that there's five white men on this phone call right now talking about race relations and inequality.

[771] I think it's better not to be the contradictions.

[772] It's better to get your home in order first before you start.

[773] And that's not, I mean, you can almost see the expression in their faces.

[774] It's like, oh, that's the hard thing.

[775] We'll get to work.

[776] Yeah, exactly.

[777] It's much easier just to do a donation, right, in those situations.

[778] I want to talk about compassion.

[779] It's a word I've struggled to understand, if I'm honest.

[780] Yeah.

[781] Because, like, what does it mean?

[782] Does it mean being nice to people?

[783] What is compassion?

[784] No, you know, compassion is the feeling of concern about other people's suffering.

[785] Okay.

[786] And then taking action, right?

[787] Empathy.

[788] Empathy is I feel the same thing as you.

[789] I understand your mental states.

[790] If you're in pain, I feel pain.

[791] Compassion is, you're in pain, and I want to make your circumstances better.

[792] I want to lift up your well -being.

[793] So it's interesting.

[794] Compassion is a very dynamic emotion.

[795] It's an empowered emotion.

[796] It isn't nice is great.

[797] You know, it's politeness and civility and being considered.

[798] I think we need more niceness in the world.

[799] And I think we often, I think the connotations of the word nice, sort of devalue how powerful it is, but compassion is powerful.

[800] It is the state of wanting to lift up the welfare of other people who suffer.

[801] And what's striking about it, and I love the neurophysiology of this, which really speaks to its power, which is that I can see somebody suffering, dying, cancer, flesh wounds, crying in pain.

[802] and when I lock into the compassion response, certain regions of the brain are activated that are different than empathy, the vagus nerve is activated, and it really just throws you into altruistic action, right?

[803] So, and that's why, you know, when the Dalai Lama, you know, who's now one of the most prominent spiritual figures in the world, says, if you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

[804] And if you want to be happy, practice compassion, that gets to it, right?

[805] Like, man, if you can stay close to compassion, you and other people and the greater good will do well.

[806] It's a really dynamic emotion.

[807] Is there scientific evidence that proves that you will become happier if you're compassionate to others?

[808] Yeah.

[809] And what does that scientific evidence show and prove?

[810] It's amazing, you know.

[811] And it begins with a study by Liz Dunn, famous study, replicated in many different which is you give people some money and they can give it away to us to help somebody or spend it on themselves giving it away boosts happiness more than spending it on yourself um there's research i love this work and contagion has been part of our experience here where um if i am kind to you stephen um this is kind of extending from the study uh that boosts my life expectancy it shifts my physiology, it shifts my stress.

[812] But I love this work where if I'm kind to you and then the experimenter watches you in your next interaction, you're kinder to that person, right?

[813] I'm not around.

[814] My act of kindness makes you more kind downstream.

[815] And then that person you've helped actually is kinder to another person in a subsequent interaction.

[816] So, you know, the - proven that.

[817] Yeah, and really nice research on the contagiousness of altruism.

[818] And compassion um yeah it is like gratitude it's one of these big winners you know if i there's a loving kindness practice where comes out of east asian traditions where you just calm yourself get into some deep breathing find a quiet safe space and orient kind phrases to other people i i may you be filled with loving kindness may you be safe from inner outer danger well and body and mind uh at ease and happy.

[819] And that simple practice, two minutes, right, just calms the amygdala, threat -related region of the brain, activates reward circuitry.

[820] So, you know, you talked about and you asked about what are these structural conditions of our busy lives that get in the way of the good life.

[821] And you've got to find a few moments just to be kind.

[822] I was blown away when reading your work and watching videos that you produced about so many things that one of the real startling things is the power of touch I read that if you pat a kid on the back in the classroom that child is three to four five times more likely to try hard problems on the blackboard and that touch can make you live longer and be less stressed, just someone touching you.

[823] Yeah.

[824] Is that true?

[825] Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, touch in a lot of mammalian species, including humans, is just connection.

[826] It's identity.

[827] It's I'm with you.

[828] You know, you think early in life we are constantly being held and in skin -to -skin contact with our caregivers, it's foundational.

[829] It's where my sense of me and you connection emerges.

[830] is the physiology of touch is mind blowing you know our hands are incredible they're spectacular um you know evolutionary adaptations they can do all kinds of things including touch our skin eight pounds billions of cells our immune system is in the skin you know it registers touch in many different ways from the sexual to the friendly to the cooperative goes up into the brain and says man you're being touched in this way uh And that has direct effects on your immune system and your vagus nerve and your heart rate and the health of your body.

[831] And so, you know, early discoveries, you know, you have premature babies.

[832] They're going to die.

[833] And they used to just put them in these little, you know, sort of units that warm them and had them sort of be comfortable and fed. And they would die.

[834] And then they figured out you've got to hold the premature baby.

[835] They needed skin -to -skin contact lately.

[836] They need food, right?

[837] And they live.

[838] They gain 47 % weight gain.

[839] And then, you know, there are just studies time and time again.

[840] You know, a nice hug, lower cortisol, nice embrace with somebody, elevated vagal tone.

[841] The studies that you refer to of, you know, patting kids on the back.

[842] They do better in school.

[843] You know, and it's so interesting, parts of English culture.

[844] You know, Victorian culture, Western European culture.

[845] They came up with the idea, like, touch is sexual.

[846] You've got to get it.

[847] And it is.

[848] But only certain kinds of touch are sexual.

[849] There's a lot of friendly touch we need, right?

[850] And it just shut it down.

[851] And now it's coming back.

[852] It's, thank goodness.

[853] It's good for us.

[854] We talked before we started filming about the study with the resus monkeys.

[855] Yeah.

[856] I can't remember who the researcher was, but I was saying to you that.

[857] Harlow.

[858] Harlow, that was it, yeah.

[859] how that was mind -blowing to me at 16 to learn that they put these monkeys in these cages.

[860] They had like a pretend -wire mother, so a mother made out of like metal.

[861] And then they had another one made out of like cloth.

[862] Yeah, yeah.

[863] Like a mother made out of cloth, which was essentially a teddy bear.

[864] And there was huge variance between the outcomes of those kids, right?

[865] Yeah.

[866] I mean, if you defy those monkeys of the nice touch, they don't learn how to behave socially effectively.

[867] You know, if you give them a choice between a wire monkey, mother that provides milk and then a terrycloth one, they always hang around the terrycloth one, right?

[868] They just love the social contact.

[869] If you deprive non -human primates of touch, they are almost schizophrenic or psychopathic or they're just like...

[870] Pass Nazi disorders.

[871] They can't handle social interactions.

[872] You know, orphans deprived of touch, famous orphan studies.

[873] You know, in human, same thing.

[874] They're just like, they don't become human in some way.

[875] Or they are human, but they have trouble with social contact.

[876] Yeah, you know, I mean, part of the questioning that you're engaging in, Stephen, of the literature is like, well, what can I do just to live a more meaningful life?

[877] And, you know, from gratitude to kindness to find some, oh, man, you know, if you're not hugging people you love, if you're not, if you don't have a rich language of touch with your friends, you know, I learned at playing pickup basketball.

[878] Basketball, which is the, I believe, the most fascinating sport in human history, it has this amazing language of touch, you know, and it's unique to the court, right?

[879] Your fist bumping, chest bumping, and the like.

[880] If you're not doing that with your friends, you're missing out on one of the great languages of human kind, which is to be in contact with each other.

[881] So, you know, parents, you know, when you have kids, and I hope some of your listeners are doing that.

[882] You know, it's this mystery.

[883] Like, should they take naps on my body?

[884] Should we, how should I hold them?

[885] Should I carry them in public?

[886] Am I indulging them?

[887] And I think the more friendly, kind touch, the better.

[888] So we're moving back to where we began evolutionarily.

[889] And I think it'll be a good thing.

[890] What if I'm touching a dog?

[891] Does it have the same effect?

[892] Yeah.

[893] I mean, dogs evolved.

[894] Yeah.

[895] Because we love them and they love us.

[896] And there's all this new amazing dog science where this is one of my favorite studies and touch releases oxytocin which is this little chemical that floats in your brain in your blood and it helps you be kind to other people and cooperate and there are now studies from japan showing you may do this with your dog steven where if you look into the eyes of your dog you your dog will have a surge of oxytocin and you will have a surge of oxytocin so so it's like all of this social stuff that's so simple of eye contact and touch brings us good things even with our dogs it makes me kind of realize two things the first is that men tend to be stereotypically much worse at that yeah much worse at touch we don't we we do the like the macho hug where you like on the back you know like we pat them on the back and say get the fuck off me we're we're less good at even things like eye contact and sort of emotional engagement and then you look at the stats around male suicides and all of those, you know, drug addiction and all those things and it's significantly higher.

[897] Yeah.

[898] I believe the stats say that the biggest killer of men under the age of 40 is themselves in this country by suicide.

[899] And they really feel it's like there needs to be a reversal of that.

[900] The adjacent point is just the one we talked about earlier, which is just loneliness.

[901] Yeah.

[902] And now it kind of makes sense as to why if you are lonely, you have a significantly worth worse health outcomes and a shorter life expectancy because you're not getting the compassion, the touch, you're probably experiencing less or gratitude, etc. And I feel like we have to talk about how we fix that.

[903] Yeah.

[904] Like, you know, because some of the saddest moments I can, I think about when I've had private conversations are men coming up to me after like a talk on stage and whispering to me that the part I said about me being lonely when I was like 23, 24, and I'd given everything just for this business, coming to the office every day, sacrifice friendships, family relationships.

[905] I'll have men come up to me and whisper to me that that was the part that they needed to hear the most, but then asking me what they can actionably do to fix that.

[906] Yeah.

[907] As if they don't want the group around me to hear that they are lonely and they want to do something about it.

[908] They are sat on their computers, often playing video games or on the internet, struggling to attract, you know, maybe the opposite sex or the same sex or whatever they're interested in.

[909] And it feels like it's going in one negative direction generally.

[910] I mean, the stats kind of support the fact that we're getting lonelier and lonelier.

[911] Yeah.

[912] Yeah, I mean, those are such deep insights and really worth thinking more concretely about what to do.

[913] I think that the, you know, kind of the gender complexities here are really striking, right?

[914] Men live significantly fewer years than women in most Western globalized cultures.

[915] And I think you're on a really interesting hypothesis, Stephen, which is that if the gender stereotypes and these rigid concepts and then the lives we lead don't allow us to hug and feel grateful and feel empathetic, it countervails that.

[916] And those are gender stereotypes, right?

[917] Oh, if I practice compassionate work, I'll be weak and I won't rise.

[918] That's not true.

[919] That's a gender stereotype.

[920] and it denies men this proportion of this opportunity for these emotions, right?

[921] And that's that, you know, with new conceptions of gender, new ideas about work is changing dramatically, that will shift.

[922] And I think it'll be good news for the health of men.

[923] And then loneliness, loneliness in some sense, is the deprivation of everything we've been talking about.

[924] It's that you don't get to hug somebody like you would.

[925] like to every day and that you don't hear the words of appreciation.

[926] William James, you know, the deepest craving we have is to be appreciated by other people.

[927] You don't hear it.

[928] You don't hear the thank you.

[929] You don't get to go out and feel awe with somebody or feel kindness.

[930] You know, so I think we have to think very actively about building these emotions into those contexts.

[931] In the United States, there are 35 ,000 long -term care facilities.

[932] The elder elderly in the United States, a lot of them live alone, you know, when people from India see how we treat the elderly or people from Mexico, it's just like the unhouse.

[933] They're like, what are you guys doing?

[934] You know, you're taking the vulnerable and sort of shunting them off alone.

[935] But these emotions point to really direct, actionable things to do, right, with all practices and compassion.

[936] So it gives me hope, but we've got, you know, I think in part historically, we took these prosocial emotions out of our lives right and now we got to build them back in and if we do it's good for not just ourselves but it's good for the reciprocants of those emotions you know hugging hugging my dad or hugging my mom or hugging anybody is a mutually beneficial behavior in terms of all the you know life expectancy happiness reduction in stress and not only that but you know i just heard 50 % of u .s. health care expenses are on the last five years of life when a lot of those people are living alone and feeling lonely.

[937] And there are simple ways to address that as we've been talking about.

[938] So there's a bottom line that's really relevant here too.

[939] And then the really the bit I imagine a lot of people will, especially those that I'm much more spiritually inclined will love is the idea of that karma and how, you know, if I hug one person or if I'm kind to some person or express that gratitude or compassion, it has this sort of cascading knock on effect and how they go through the day.

[940] So like in that sense, calmer is a very real thing.

[941] It's very real.

[942] Yeah.

[943] In every respect, even in the concept of gossip, where how you treat someone will spread.

[944] I think you said in your book that when we treat someone badly, people on average gossip that bad treatment to 2 .5 people.

[945] Yeah.

[946] Something to it, which is, you know, which is slightly terrifying.

[947] But it's, but it makes sense.

[948] Yeah, you know, it's, and part of our theme and our conversation is how we're all connected and united, in these superorganisms, some people call them, through practicing gratitude and sharing resources that spreads through these social networks.

[949] And then the compliment is also true, which is, you know, and as much as I don't like gossiped and I didn't like being gossiped about, it's a human universal.

[950] It can be horrifying and we've got to worry about it, like online catfights and it escalates.

[951] But we study these social groups, and the thing that people really gossip about is when you're not kind, right?

[952] they're like look at what that that person just said these harsh things that spreads through the network and it tries to keep those problematic tendencies in check i guess that's a good thing it's like a community sort of regulation tool yeah thank you so much i've had a wonderful brilliant time over the last week learning more and more about all of your work and reading and watching your your content in great detail this book is absolutely fantastic um it's very challenging but it's this concept of all was one was not one that I'd ever thought of before you know you think about these other sort of emotions gratitude compassion there's a lot written about them but yeah i've almost never heard someone talk about the topic of all as a very accessible but very profound powerful human medicine i would say and the way that you do that throughout your book is um is incredibly important and i've as i say i've really never encountered a book quite like it so i highly recommend everybody goes and gives it a try and the reviews on the back and by people like Adam Grant and Stephen Pinker.

[953] I mean, they speak for themselves.

[954] So thank you for writing such a brilliant book and thank you for having such a brilliant eye -opening conversation with me today.

[955] We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest.

[956] Huh.

[957] Okay, funny.

[958] The question that's been left for you is, do you think obesity is a choice?

[959] I don't.

[960] It's a terrific question, right?

[961] And obesity is, I think, in the U .S., I think the latest estimate is 56 % of U .S. citizens, probably pretty comparable here in the U .K. And man, when I think about the food that we put into our bodies, the lack of activity that are not chosen, right, that depend on what kind of soft drink that's readily available and cheap and how fast food is so cheap and provides us a certain kind of high.

[962] To me, that says that it's mainly not a choice of the people eating, but it is a choice of the policy makers.

[963] So I would make that argument.

[964] And there is some sort of through lines between the conversation we've had today about stress, connected mess and all of those things.

[965] Very much sense to food and diet and eating, which is, again, social constructs and access to awe.

[966] There is a movement, parks, living near parks.

[967] London is one of the greenest cities in the world.

[968] Living near parks boost life expectancy, I think, through awe.

[969] There's a movement in the United, in California, that everybody should be 10 minutes public transport away from a park for free.

[970] 360 million people went to the national parks in the United States last year.

[971] So there's a lot of, with this stress profile that we've been talking about culturally, there are easy solutions and one pathway is through being outdoors with all.

[972] I want to close then just on that point about a sort of an adjacent point to what you've just said, which is about, and you also talked about prisoners earlier.

[973] I read once upon a time when I was doing some research for one of my books that prisoners who had a exposure to nature were significantly less likely to become depressed than those that we're like basically looking out at concrete.

[974] Yeah.

[975] Which is mind -blowing to me. It is.

[976] The thought that just seeing nature can have a massive impact on our chances of depression and anxiety.

[977] Yeah.

[978] Do we need to put more of that stuff in prisons then?

[979] We do.

[980] We do.

[981] And that, you know, you've been challenging me, Stephen, like, all right, what do we do?

[982] Just look at a hospital, put some nature in it, right?

[983] Look at a prison.

[984] Prisons are horrifying in the United States.

[985] Norway has more open prisons with views and so forth.

[986] different recidivism rates.

[987] So I take from this science and I'm really grateful to you for profiling it, you know, in such a scholarly and thoughtful way.

[988] Like, we got to use this knowledge.

[989] And prisons is a nice application.

[990] But even in our own homes.

[991] Yeah.

[992] You know, most of us are living in these white boxes in big cities and those that live in social housing, unfortunately, are living in even worse conditions often.

[993] And nature is somewhat of a privilege, it seems it shouldn't be especially in the home environment just having some plants i have zero in here i've loads upstairs because i have a girlfriend and she's just she's very in touch with those things but she's she's filled my house with with plants but yeah that's a simple thing we can all do to be happier every day is just to have a bit more nature in our in our environment it's not a bad first step backer thank you so much thank you stevens been an honor and a pleasure