#116 - Dacher Keltner - Why Awe Is The Missing Key To A Meaningful Life

Dacher Keltner explores why awe may be the most transformative emotion we experience. He explains how awe quiets the ego, reconnects us to meaning, and reshapes how we understand things like grief, spirituality, music, nature, and even health. From the loss of his brother to the hidden ways awe changes our inner lives, Dacher reveals how moments of wonder can make us feel more fully alive and more deeply connected to something larger than ourselves. 

Timestamps:
00:00 Why Awe Matters More Than Happiness 
02:02 Dacher Being Given This Work On Awe
03:37 What Awe Is & The Process Of Defining It
08:48 Importance Of Stories For Dacher's Work
11:00 Awe & The Individual Self 
16:16 Dacher Still Feeling Connected To His Brother After His Death
19:18 Why We Experience Grief & Presence Differently
26:11 How Environment Impacts Awe
29:20 Awe-Like Emotions, But Aren't Fully Awe
31:31 Relationship Between Awe, Wonder, & The Soul
37:00 How Awe Affects Our Health
40:51 Why Suffering Often Leads Us To Awe
46:56 Numb - Contrasting Force To Awe
50:12 Commercialization & Commodification Of Awe
52:52 Working With Pixar & Emotional Power Of Storytelling
57:04 What Gives Dacher Keltner Hope About the Future
59:22 Parting Words

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Transcript

Dacher Keltner explores why awe may be the most transformative emotion we experience. He explains how awe quiets the ego, reconnects us to meaning, and reshapes how we understand things like grief, spirituality, music, nature, and even health. From the loss of his brother to the hidden ways awe changes our inner lives, Dacher reveals how moments of wonder can make us feel more fully alive and more deeply connected to something larger than ourselves. 

Tim Doyle (00:05.898)

Why doesn't awe get the attention the way that happiness does?

Dacher Keltner (00:08.141)

That's a good question. Yeah, well, I think, you know, the, in some sense it has. And when you consider, for example, that for hundreds of years before the age of enlightenment in the 18th century, people were writing about spiritual experience. And our fascination with spirituality in some sense is about awe, right? It's about.

encountering the divine and feeling that. But you're right. The focus on happiness today, I believe, can be traced to positive psychology and then the science of happiness. About 40 years ago, Marty Seligman and Ed Deener, Mike Csikszentmihalyi and Sonia Lubomirski, myself, Jonathan Haidt, started to get interested in what makes people happy and it just blew up.

It's a worldwide phenomenon now. And within that scientific community, people thought it would be weird to study awe. People thought it was for long-haired hippies who don't know how to do science and maybe it's not serious, etc. And so it took a while to get to awe, even though we're making progress and understanding gratitude and love and compassion and so forth. And then John Height and I wrote a paper about awe.

in early 2000s, kind of caught people's attention and then our lab really started to do the hard science to say this is as important a mental state as anything you can feel.

Tim Doyle (01:47.318)

We tend to see work as something that we choose, but you've described this work on Oz something that you were given. Why do you see it that way?

Dacher Keltner (01:55.011)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (01:58.306)

What a great question and thank you. You just gave me a rush of goosebumps. Yeah, you did, seriously. Yeah, you know, I mean, when you, you know, live life and you work hard as I have and you do a lot of things, there are just moments where, you know, the work that you do, you really feel like this is why I'm here on earth, you know, and.

Tim Doyle (02:02.998)

I just gave you some more.

Dacher Keltner (02:27.179)

That's how I feel with awe. I was raised by a visual artist, my dad, and just the wildness of his art. My mom taught literature. I grew up in the late 60s in Laurel Canyon, which was very wild, and rock and roll and the doors, and I grew up out in the country later. So my life was full of awe, you And then to realize that I could do science that would try to understand this really

mysterious emotion and then have a conversation like this with you, Tim, where we're just talking about like, how do we bring on to our life and our culture and our times? It's, you know, it's a privilege. was felt like it was given to me. It was given to me by my parents. It was given to me by Paul Ekman, who knew how to study emotion. It was given to me by our times. Like we, need this right now. So it's been a gift.

Tim Doyle (03:22.466)

Can you define what awe is and what the process was like of, I guess, gaining that confidence that you felt like you found an accurate definition of it?

Dacher Keltner (03:25.261)

Hehehe.

Dacher Keltner (03:34.381)

I'm not sure I have, but yeah. you know, it's funny, is something that a lot of people have been trying to grapple with in terms of how to define it, Philosophically, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, 18th century, a lot of writers about spiritual experiences that we've talked about, and then science. And John John Hight and I said, awe is an emotion you have, so it's a brief state.

when you encounter things that are vast or beyond your frame of reference, right? I'm walking along or I'm looking at the sky and I see the stars and then a shooting star goes by and it transcends my frame of reference. That's mysterious, right? That's unpredictable that you can't make sense of. So it's vast and it's mysterious. And there are counter examples, you know, there's microscopic awe, right?

Whoa, I'm looking into a microscope and there's a little cell and look all that's happening in a cell, the mitochondria and the like. But for the most part, that definition works. Do I feel confident that we've figured it out? Yeah. feel like when you, and it's an interesting question, Tim, and Michael Pollan writes a lot about this in his new book on consciousness, which is, I feel something and I say that's awe or you might feel.

You go hear some music or outdoors in the great parks in near Austin. So how do we know it's happening? And we have a definition. I feel it in my body with the chills and the tears. So I feel pretty good that we can measure awe. Do we understand it? You know, we're getting there, but there's still a lot of mysteries to take on.

Tim Doyle (05:28.117)

Yeah, I mean, feel like when talking about any type of emotion, these are feeling things and a lot of the time it can be challenging to articulate it and put it into language. I feel like a lot of the time it's like you do not that you do harm, but it's just like you can't fully grasp it. You can't fully grasp the power of the emotion. And you've worked with

Dacher Keltner (05:38.685)

Yeah.

Tim Doyle (05:56.522)

other emotions. It hasn't just been awe for you. How has your work on other emotions helped you with your work and sort of further informed you on your understandings of awe?

Dacher Keltner (06:08.545)

Yeah, what a deep comment. I remember Edmund Burke, the great Irish philosopher who wrote probably the most important book on awe in the early enlightenment of the 18th century said, words are unreliable ways to understand emotion. And we trick ourselves, scientists above all else, like, I asked you how you feel. That's what it is. That's not what it is.

really complicated. And thank you for the question because, you know, I've studied embarrassment and shame and anger and love and desire, compassion and gratitude, kind of being the foci. And, you know, I really, I really felt like with words and physiology that we use in the lab, like the vagus nerve activation of the vagus nerve and oxytocin, I felt like at the end of that work,

I really kind of understood the emotion. And awe really felt different. You we had done 10 years of science of awe, measuring brain and words and feelings and vagal tone and what it does to our minds and small self and humble. And I just didn't feel like it got to it. And we gathered these stories from 26 countries around the world. And that's in

It was in some sense in honor of William James. And when he was trying to understand mystical experience, he gathered stories. know, Tim, I feel like you get a paragraph or a page of a person's story about, you know, this mom in Ireland, awestruck at seeing her daughter ready to perform in a dance performance because she was born with club feet and her feet were born upside down and she had these surgeries and now she's dancing.

Once you hear that, you're like, yeah, you know, or this story of a Russian guy who's, you know, this is eight years ago, and he's like wandering through the forest and he discovers these little mushrooms and they're all sitting in a circle. And he's like, man, it's almost as if they're aware of me. Right? Once you read that, you're like, that's it. And you can't reduce it to single words, but the stories really make, help us make progress. So I think we're getting there.

Tim Doyle (08:32.993)

stories play a crucial part of your work in bridging that gap between science and culture? When you started your work on Odd, did you have an understanding for the importance of stories or how did that come to be?

Dacher Keltner (08:44.301)

Thank you. I didn't. Man, what a nuanced read of the book. I wrote this book because my brother passed away and he was my companion in awe. was an incredible human being, younger brother. We did everything together and I was like, I had these experiences of grief and also in his passing, like it was transcendent. I was like, what is this? And oh my God, I'm studying awe. And then I was like, well,

I got, I have to talk about spirituality and I have to talk about music. I don't know much about spirituality and music. I don't feel the science of spirituality or music gets to the heart of the phenomenon. And like you said, and it was an impulsive move. I'm a scientist. didn't, I'm not a journalist. I'm not an ethnographer. And I just interviewed people. I interviewed ministers and cellists and prisoners and environmentalists and you know, and

And once I started, you know, talking to Malcolm Clemens Young, who's a Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and he's like, awe, spiritual awe. was when I was 10 years old, got up out of a tent in the Sierras and looked at the light on this lake. And I just was overwhelmed with the sense of beauty and what could create this, right? And it was really in the stories, know, Yumi Kendall, who's this cellist in Philadelphia, and she's like,

Every time I'm not good at music, I love music, but I'm not good at it. You know, and I was like, man, what is musical law? And she's like, every time I play the cello and I feel it next to my body and I feel the sounds and I know that my notes are going out to people and joining us. And this is thousands, hundreds of thousands of years old. I start crying, you know, and I was like, that's it. That's all. And so I had to do stories and talk to people and interview people, which was.

Really enlightening.

Tim Doyle (10:45.46)

One of my favorite guests that I've had on the show was Dr. Dan Siegel last year to talk about. Yeah, mean, incredibly enlightening conversation about his work on interconnection and the rise of the solo self. Can you talk more about the relationship between awe and the individual self?

Dacher Keltner (10:51.082)

Yeah, I love Dan. Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (10:58.923)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (11:07.754)

Yeah, thank you. And you're asking good questions. I appreciate it, Tim. So, you know, Dan is a revolutionary in the kind of the neuropsychiatric world because he's like, Freud was so interested in what's going on inside the mind and and the self and the ego. And he was part of a really the beginning of individualism that, you know,

We're all individuals, we're in our minds, that's all that exists, Jean-Paul Sark, right? And now individualism has spread throughout the world. And your generation is like, you know, there's a lot that matters in terms of community and connection to other people and you go to a festival or you hear music and it's like, God, there's this transcendent sense of me or we as Dan would say.

And Dan wrote about that, and awe is all about that. Awe, you know, awe, we have lots of studies, many different countries. It just quiets your ego. You you're just like, I don't hear that voice of who I should be as loudly. Not only that, but you start to realize that you are really part of a collective. part of, you and I, your and my minds are linked right now.

The people who hear us are linked into a shared awareness or consciousness. That message will go out and link up people as they move through their day. So we are collective, as Dan's argued. And we need that. was one of our great evolutionary strengths, is to form groups, to take care of very vulnerable offspring, to defend ourselves, to gather food, to stay warm. And awe makes you aware of that.

You know, my favorite example is music, you and you go to a show, the band comes out, you hear the sounds, you're like full of goosebumps. And literally like falling in love with people nearby, you're proposing camping trips, you're like, let's be together. You know, that's incredible. That's why we have Oz to remind us like the individual self is just one part of the story. We're very deeply collective.

Dacher Keltner (13:32.46)

consciousness.

Tim Doyle (13:34.197)

bring another word into this conversation to further understand our relationship between awe and the individual self. In your writing, you use the word a lot decay to describe what happens to the self when we experience awe. Why was that the word that stuck out to you that felt like it fully described this? Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (13:36.299)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (13:50.379)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (13:56.949)

The decay? Yeah, I felt that, you know, one of the things that happened to me in writing this book, Tim, and in particular watching my brother pass away was, and I had, know, a lot of Westerners think like life is this linear thing upwards and then it ends and then we're like, well, it happens then. And as I thought about my brother's passing,

And then I felt him all around me through, I do to this day, like he is alive in my mind and cells and consciousness. And a lot of people who go through grief feel that way. And then I took, to this day, I've thought for years, like, well, what is this? And really life is a cycle, right? And in fact, Darwin, you know, writing about evolution of endless forms, most beautiful.

That whole theory is about a cycle of birth and growth and plateau and decay and ending and regrowth and rebirth. And that's what happens in our minds and what happens in societies and what happens in politics and what happens in evolution is this cycle. And decay is really important, right? Bad ideas, ideas have their moment in time and then they decay.

They are less useful. And same with the self. We have a very strong need for an individual self. It keeps us surviving. It keeps us well fed. It keeps us rising in status. It keeps us good. But those ideas will decay and allow for the emergence of other things like, wow, I'm supposed to give to this group, or I'm part of a collective, or I can sacrifice in this moment. It doesn't have to always be the strong ego.

And through awe, I really have a much different view of decay, that it's organic, it's part of growth, like the decay of the self.

Tim Doyle (16:00.511)

Go into that feeling of having your brother still with you even though he's passed and tying this into this relationship of it being challenging to bring language to certain emotions or feelings. Are you able to do that in a certain way? Because I'm curious to know what that feeling actually feels like.

Dacher Keltner (16:21.035)

I, it's almost, you know, and I'm so glad you raised the challenge of, you know, how do we use words to describe transcendent feelings, which is what awe is. It's a transcendent state. And, you know, when I'm, I am a,

You know, I'm a scientist and I like data and I study neurons and I'm reductionistic and I watched my brother on the last night of his life and I saw his soul. You know, I saw like a lot of people do at the end of life is they're like, there's something to him that transcends the body that is, that is beautiful and good after he passed to the present day. After he passed, I had a year.

And I'm not a very, I'm not prone to wild thoughts or, you know, I'm a pretty, you know, rational human being, if you will, for better and for worse, but like I heard his voice and I saw him, I felt his hand on my back. He would, you know, I remember he would, like I'd hear his voice in the wind and he'd be saying things like, it's okay, you know.

And I am here and so I felt him and what happened for me, the experience, which is what you asked about, was this was a transcendent experience of awe of like, wow, I'm feeling like my brother in this different form is around me. And then I started to, there's interest right now in quantum physics and quantum self.

of what is consciousness if there's quantum physical reality, which Dan Siegel may have talked about. Well, our consciousness goes in a lot of different dimensions, not just time and space, multiple dimensions that go where time goes backwards and forwards and so forth. And I feel that now. feel his presence in my life is out in these dimensions that transcend my simplistic understanding.

Dacher Keltner (18:28.039)

So much so, you my daughter, Sarafina was asking me like, dad, you know, I'm thinking about God and spirit and what do you think, you know, I know you don't think about it's there. And I was like, hold on, you know, like after all, if I feel like. Not only is it way more complicated than what science can say, but we're all part of some larger life patterns. You know, they're starting to discover like our electromagnetic fields interact with others and persist over time. So it's just, it's just.

mysterious and magical and I feel that.

Tim Doyle (19:03.071)

It's beautiful and I think a natural follow-up question, especially if somebody were listening to that, who we've all had loved ones pass within our lives, I think the natural inclination would be like, well, why don't I feel that? Or like, that's a very special, beautiful thing that somebody can have with a past loved one. Why don't I feel that? And you've obviously created this objective definition. How have you gone about

Dacher Keltner (19:23.829)

Yeah.

Tim Doyle (19:30.897)

understanding that relationship between an objective understanding of all, but then subjective experiences and the ways that we experience it in different ways.

Dacher Keltner (19:41.472)

Yeah, what a deep question. know, rational understand, so Einstein believed that awe is a fundamental state of consciousness. And what I take that to mean is that as you and I move through our day, it's in there, right? It's a primary state, like beauty and love and horror and rage, it's just ready.

And we know neuroscientifically and also in the contemplative traditions of Buddhism and the Abrahamic prayers and the Lao Tzu and the practices coming out of Taoism that

When we immerse ourselves in the knowledge about something or we practice it, right? If when I walk to work, I always pause and look at this redwood tree and look at the stream and listen to music, minimalist music a little each day. When we practice it, it accesses this fundamental state in our psyche and also in our body, the vagus nerve and the inflammation, the immune system and things we don't even know.

skin and the body. And so, you know, what we know is with knowledge, it activates all of this deep, you know, architecture of the experience of awe. And that's why, you know, some of our research shows knowing about awe and understanding it through different modes like music doesn't ruin the experience. It actually deepens it, right?

and knowing about what brings you awe with music, once you know that and then you sit and you listen to what music brings you awe.

Tim Doyle (21:35.155)

Honestly, probably the most spiritual, I'm a Catholic, so spiritual Christian music.

Dacher Keltner (21:41.225)

Yeah. So once you know, like actually though, that music has the sounds of the human voice that people have been singing in honor of God for thousands of years, and it has a structure and affects your body that will probably potentiate the experience when you go hear that music. And that's how it is for people. And so, you know, the, the real lesson is, is a bit counterintuitive for some, which is that our knowledge about our minds doesn't harm or

minimize those experiences, it only deepens them, right? Our understanding of the science of the universe doesn't make the universe less awe-inspiring, it makes it more awe-inspiring. So yeah, I think from knowledge we get to the experience and that's what it's been like for me.

Tim Doyle (22:32.201)

follow-up question to that are you to further understand what you're saying are you saying that we can like anticipate awe like if me knowing that faith-based music creates this kind of like awe feeling like that I know the next time I most likely will feel that again

Dacher Keltner (22:50.226)

Yeah, and you know, so we've tested that in different paradigms, you know, that if I anticipate an experience of awe and kind of develop a map of it and study up on it, it'll deepen that experience. You know, when I walk to work, I go do this awe walk every day and just starting, you know, I just read a bunch about flowers and grasses and the color green. Just knowing that suddenly as I walked to work, was like,

wow, and if you were to read about a favorite piece of choral music that might move you, and you read about its history and who created it and the town and the people who felt it, and then you hear that music, it's gonna deepen the experience. And that's the beauty of this emotion is as we dive deeper into it, it only grows, which thank goodness.

Tim Doyle (23:44.545)

Yeah, I completely agree with you because when I first got exposed to your work, I don't even know how I first got exposed to it, but when I did, and even just like having the conscious awareness of simply this word awe and understanding that this is an emotion, I could just like see a sunrise and it felt like it stirred something in me now that I knew what this word awe actually was.

Dacher Keltner (23:57.343)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (24:02.228)

Yeah

Dacher Keltner (24:08.138)

Yeah, no, and I think that's, you know, I wish we had data on that, but I totally believe that, you know. It was interesting because for me, it was very poignant. I had to write about the passing of my brother, where in the moment of seeing his soul, I was like, God, I'm feeling awe about the mystery of life, even though I'm losing, in some sense, my soulmate, you know. And, but...

When I told that story in the book, every day I get emails from people who are like, I'm so grateful that you wrote about the awe of the passage of life because I lost a brother and I felt that there, that moment, and I feel him with me now. The stories just flowed in and I think that's the power you're speaking to of just thinking about this moment of awe and where we can find it.

It just enriches it in our lives.

Tim Doyle (25:07.872)

Can places accumulate all, like, can the repeated experiences people have within a certain environment kind of shape the emotional energy of that environment?

Dacher Keltner (25:17.737)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (25:21.736)

Man, you're totally on top of what I'm trying to figure out. Yeah, you know, one of the things I'm really interested in is, and I'm working in museums and at music festivals and in art galleries and also in cities, guided by the very idea that you talk about, that our sense of public life and home

Tim Doyle (25:26.762)

Hahaha.

Dacher Keltner (25:52.251)

is shaped by a feeling of awe, right? And I've been calling them hot spots of moral beauty. And it's really a testimony to exactly what you're talking about, that when we go to certain spaces and we have the repeated experience of awe, they become sacred to us. So church is the canonical example. And I don't know if you go to church, but when you do and you set foot into the

church or the cathedral or the temple, you are likely to be filled with awe. You may tear up. You feel a sense of grace, a sense of being touched by God, right? When people go to farmers markets, farmers markets didn't exist 100 years ago. They were wiped out by various forces. There are now about 8,000 or 9,000 farmers markets. You go to the one and just the community there and the

little piece of music you hear and the generosity of someone giving you some kale and the daughter, the young girl selling earrings. And you're just like, God, so beautiful here. Those become sacred, right? In a broad definition of sacred. And this happens everywhere. You know, people feel this, you know, in museums and in nature and a campsite. I feel it at campsites. If I'm in a tent, I've camped a lot. You know, it's like this is, people feel it in basketball, on basketball courts. You know, I played a lot of pickup basketball.

And you're like, this place is meaningful. And so yeah, that's one of the great, you're the first person to ask me that question, so thank you. And I think it's one of the great opportunities for all practitioners is like, what are the hot spots of moral beauty for you or just awe? And go to them, feel them, and most parents will tell you, and I felt this acutely, Berkeley has amazing parks for children.

And so you go to a park, you're kind of grouchy, and there are all these little three-year-olds, and they're on a play train, and they're wrestling and laughing and falling and crying and creating the little society that they are. And you're like, this is awesome. And any time I walk by the playgrounds my daughter's played at 25 years ago, I'm like, I go sit there. I'm like, wow, this is why we're alive, is this feeling of the awe of place. Great question.

Tim Doyle (28:17.843)

Are there emotions that are all like but not fully all? And the thing that comes top of mind to me and tying it into what you're talking about, playing a basketball game, getting into a flow state, what's the relationship there between flow and all, but I was saying things that can be all like.

Dacher Keltner (28:38.302)

Yeah, what a good question. I really recommend your audience go visit the website of AlanKowen.com, A-A-L-A-N-C-O-W-E-N.com. He's now doing very serious work at DeepMind at Google, but he figured out this way to map states through a lot of data and statistics, and they're beautiful visualizations. And you'll see that we can place awe in a place

of all the mental states and it's next to related states. So it's close to beauty, you know. Wow, that field is so beautiful. The sky outside of Austin, the sunset's beautiful. And it's different from awe because it's not so vast and mysterious. Gratitude is close to awe, but gratitude is really, you you're like, God, thanks, my parents gave me education or love. But it's not.

so powerful and overwhelming. Flow is really interesting. Flow is when you are totally immersed in doing a task and you lose the sense of self. You're not criticizing yourself. You're like, God, I'm in this flow of writing or having this conversation with you or playing basketball or cooking, chopping up cucumbers or whatever. But it doesn't have this sense of mystery, right? Flow is really like, God, I know what I'm doing.

And so vast is, is right in that mixture of self-transcendent states where the voice of the ego, you just don't hear it so loudly as in flow or gratitude, but it really is different. And Alan did just really beautiful work showing that awe is its own, as Einstein said, this is a basic state that we can access in the right moments.

Tim Doyle (30:28.906)

further build out that ecosystem of awe and bringing two other terms that you've written about, wonder and soul. So starting with wonder, what exactly is that and how does it play a role?

Dacher Keltner (30:38.569)

I'm only laughing because you're the only person, we'll get to soul in a second, philosophers have been interested in is the state of mind that follows an experience of awe, right? And wonder is more of what we would call an epistemological state. It's devoted to getting knowledge. whoa, so my favorite example is the great

philosophers and mathematicians Descartes and Newton were awestruck by rainbows. You know, this is the 18th century. They're just like, what are these? know, color in the sky, like, you know, and they, in this state of wonder, they figured it out. Like, well, light bends through water and turns into a color spectrum. And here's the geometry of that. So wonder is what follows awe. And it's this state of curiosity where you figure things out, right? Now,

I'm very glad you asked me about the soul because as I was writing this book on awe, I'm a scientist, know, and people, scholars used to use the word soul all the time, a hundred years ago, you know, William James and of course theologians and Walt Whitman and, you know, was Ralph Aldo Emerson. And then it fell out of favor and science gets grouchy. And, and I was like, you know what, I'm a scientist, but

I feel like awe has to do with your soul. And soul is the individual sense of what is my truest, most beautiful identity or what I care about the most. And then most traditions have a sense of collective soul of how is my sense of this core to my being part of other

souls, right? Be it a culture or spiritual tradition, Catholicism for you and all the great Catholic thinkers and practitioners or nature, know, in indigenous traditions. How am I part of a life force out in the world? You know, Darwin wrote about the life force, Lao Tzu wrote about the life force. And I came to feel, Tim, that and really believe strongly, like when I saw my brother

Dacher Keltner (33:05.677)

And I saw his soul, I realized like there's a life force in him that we all share that transcends the body, that transcends the laws of physics or neuroscience that we get hints at. I, you know, I didn't, you know, it's rare to find a scientist who will use that word, but awe is a window into your soul. When you feel awe,

In the big moments, you're like, this is what my soul is and what I'm connected to that's large. And we need that today. We need to really, really be talking about what the soul is for people.

Tim Doyle (33:47.904)

Do you find your work trying to tap more into that of trying to make soul more of a scientific word now?

Dacher Keltner (33:55.335)

Yeah, you know.

Tim Doyle (33:58.603)

or guess trying to make it a scientific word again.

Dacher Keltner (34:01.671)

Yeah, I have been so gratified. When I published all the book, religious communities reached out with open arms and hearts and minds. And I've talked to Buddhist communities and its synagogues and interfaith churches and Catholic churches and with...

Islamic traditions, indigenous, it's been really remarkable because, you know, at the core of our inquiry into the transcendent soul and our part in it is awe, which is what I wrote about. my, what I'm excited about, and I've thought about a science of soul, we're doing the science of what's sacred in people's lives, which is close to the soul.

I may get there, you know, Tim, but you know, to be honest, I don't think science can, you know, there are certain things, it can't handle it, you know, and I'll tell you, it can't handle many different things. I, music, the fact that you can hear a piece of music, when I saw the Bob Dylan film, I grew up around a lot of rock and roll.

Tim Doyle (35:06.976)

Can't handle it

Dacher Keltner (35:26.761)

in my childhood and I listen to Bob Dylan since I was three. And when I saw the movie, I just start crying, know, didn't know why. And this is how people are with music, just with you with Catholic music, like, God, it washes over us. Science can't imagine how that works and what that means. Same with the soul. Like, but I think the fact that a scientific community would be engaging in the sense that people feel the soul says we can broaden our conversation about it, which is.

what I hope for.

Tim Doyle (35:58.305)

How does awe affect our health?

Dacher Keltner (36:00.856)

It's profound. It's profound. you know, we started to gather data, you know, like, wow, it's good for your heart. It's good for your vagus nerve activates the vagus nerve. my goodness. It lowers inflammation. So it's good for your immune system. We've just done research showing. A moment of each day for, think it's 10 days published this reduces long COVID symptoms.

Long COVID is weird. It's like heart is flying all over the place. You don't know what's going on. You feel really weak. helps you with that. And then I started to read up on the, you know, the work on forest bathing in Japan and South Korea. There's new data that music and all reduces chronic pain. There's a lot of research showing when we find all in art museums, we're physically healthier. And I was like,

this, you know, and then I work with Stacy bear, who you should have on your show, a veteran, he was taking veterans outdoors, um, with the Sierra club, finding off rock climbing and rafting and a half day of all reduces PTSD and veterans 32%. I was like, this stuff is powerful, you know, and you know, you, and the veterans are so it's such a poignant story, you know,

I working with Stacey Bear, a veteran, being with his veteran friends, knowing that they have twice the rate of PTSD, higher rates of suicide. And these are young people, probably like yourself, who want to give to the world, right? And they want to do courageous stuff. And they're coming back from Iraq and they've seen their buddy get killed. They've had trauma and what they want is awe.

you know, and they were being given pharmaceuticals that they didn't react well to as they told me in their accounts, right? What they want is awe. So I was like, this should be a healthcare movement. And it's cool, you know, our former surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, he's very interested in awe as a healthcare solution. And the data are there. It's very good for you.

Tim Doyle (38:24.289)

would be fascinating if we got to a point where doctors started prescribing awe instead of prescribing medication.

Dacher Keltner (38:30.332)

man, you're almost making me cry, you know, because, you you go, I turned 60 recently, and when you go into the doc, when you turn 60, all the statistics change, right? And the doctor's looking at you like, what?

Tim Doyle (38:45.601)

Dacker, think the awe is keeping you young. It obviously has superficial benefits as well.

Dacher Keltner (38:49.448)

Not my knees, but you go into the doctor's office when you're 60, and you're like, God, you're tired, you've been working hard, raising kids, or whatever it is. And he starts like, okay, we gotta monitor this, and you probably should take this pharmaceutical, and get this, et cetera. And what he should be saying, or she should be saying, is like...

man, you got to get out in nature and you should go listen to some live music, you know, and you should go bang around in a sporting event and you should cheer for your favorite team and maybe think about some spirituality, right? They should be doing that. And, and it's too bad they don't. So you should be our surgeon general. And, and I know it's controversial because in some sense, you know, that's what Robert Kennedy jr. Is about. It's like, Hey, there's this alternative stuff.

And in some sense, there's a lot of good alternative stuff that you just don't hear about in the doctor's office, which is too bad.

Tim Doyle (39:49.099)

Does awe track more closely with trials and tribulations rather than joys and successes?

Dacher Keltner (39:53.737)

Yeah. Yeah, man, that's so important, you know, to just pause and reflect on your question, which is, um, you know, the, what I started to learn is there are certain positive states that are just about pleasure. Like this pizza is delicious. Or I love this easy IPA or whatever. And there are certain.

positive emotions that are about just feeling good socially. I feel so grateful for you in this conversation or my friend or my children. And then there are emotions that are about the meaning of life. And awe is right in that space. And people get serious about the meaning of life with trials and tribulations. Grief for me. Trauma in combat. Veterans, like, man, what was that?

all about, right? Struggles in life, very often, like in the spiritual traditions, with the Buddha and St. Paul on the road to Damascus and Ralph Waldo Emerson and, you know, is like, God, I'm really struggling with the meaning of life. And then you go outside and you have this experience that teaches you what you care about. Right. So it's such an important shift, this

focus on awe because it says, here's an emotion that in the hardest moments, you know, when you're a young person developing, when you are struggling to figure out your life's work and then you feel awe about something, that's what you should do. Right. When you're like me and your brother dies or you experience grief, you know, like, God, what is life? What is, what is this life cycle? What a spirit. will guide you to how you should relate to those questions. So it's

the great emotion of struggles and tribulations.

Tim Doyle (41:54.54)

from my own personal experiences and the way that I understand this and articulate it is that because I'm the same way, the trials and tribulations are the breaking of that self, going back to that word decay. The trials are what decay that identity, that ego, which allows for the soul to kind of come to the surface. And...

Dacher Keltner (42:08.114)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (42:16.818)

Hmm.

Tim Doyle (42:20.565)

That's not something that I think we can consciously do. Like, you know, you wouldn't ask to go through that grief willingly with your brother. People wouldn't ask for the pains that they go through. So it's like a pain that we didn't ask for, hopefully, and ultimately ends with gifts that we never knew could even be ours.

Dacher Keltner (42:23.516)

No, no.

Dacher Keltner (42:40.36)

Yeah, wow, you just gave me goosebumps, just that phrase, you know, and that analysis. I've always drawn so much from Buddhism and the first noble truth of Buddhism is life has suffering and decay and disease. It does, it's just inevitable. And, you know, when I, in the book, I write, I work a lot inside prisons and with former prisoners who are out.

trying to find their soul. And it is like, they have the hardest moments of life, and they've hurt people, and they feel horrible, and they've been hurt and traumatized. Their life has a lot of pain. And you can see the decay of those structures of their selves, and then the opening of a faith in Christ, or a commitment to promote life or help people.

And they do a lot of good work coming out of that and it is about decay when my brother was in the period of grief I was I had about nine months of just like and also the two years as he was fighting colon cancer Which is if you have a you know, my brother and I we were almost the same body, you know We played little you together and basketball and tennis. We're just like joined physically and to watch his body

be reduced to 147 pounds. It was all self pain. And I go into yoga and I just feel that sort of decay. And I hadn't really thought about it in that light. All that self ego pain decays and then out will come the soul. So yeah, I hope, we need to remember that in the United States.

right, that it's not all easy, it's not all success. And any older person will tell you like, you know, it was when I really struggled that I really did my best work for life, you know, and it was when I really was humbled by this thing or, or, or suffered this ailment that I really found my soul. And we got to remember that and I'm glad you're profiling it.

Tim Doyle (45:02.386)

It's probably the number one theme that I've parsed out with everyone that I've talked to on the podcast. We've all had one larger than most unwilling event that we point to as like that was the turning point.

Dacher Keltner (45:19.931)

Yeah. And, and you know, Dan McAdams, who I was at work at, who writes, who does work on the narrative, the story of the self and life, which you brought up earlier, how important stories are. And in his interviews with hundreds of people, it's the turning points that are about where you really get to the truth. You know, it's like, wow. And redemption, know, God, I, I didn't, this didn't work out. what am I going to do to grow?

And so good science.

Tim Doyle (45:53.569)

We understand emotions in pairs, feel like. You know, happiness, sadness, joy, pain, love, hate. What do you see as the contrasting force to us?

Dacher Keltner (45:57.339)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (46:06.991)

Yeah. You know, I used to think that it was horror, know, like, awe is about the magnificence of things that are vast and mysterious. Horror is about, you know, what's death enhancing of things that are vast and mysterious, the horror of battle or combat or a plague, et cetera. But I think that

Antithesis of awe is in some sense alienation. Alienation is like Jean-Paul Sartre, just like I'm by myself, the world is repulsive, people are repulsive. There's no meaning in any of this. It's all about meaninglessness, which is absurd. And awe is the antithesis. It's like...

man, there's so much goodness in people, there's so much beauty in nature, there's so much meaning around me, and I'm enlivened by all of this. And so I think, you know, I would go for horror early, but after conversations about awe, it's kind of the antithesis of just feeling alienated about life.

Tim Doyle (47:22.21)

I've got my own word and I'm curious to know if you think maps well or not and please feel free to tell me if you agree or disagree. But I think it's numbness or numb where, you know, going back to what we were talking about at the start of the conversation, you know, it's tough to bring language to emotions and all is on this one end of the spectrum where it's almost like this euphoric feeling that you can't even.

Dacher Keltner (47:23.687)

All right, let's hear it.

Dacher Keltner (47:32.933)

Yeah, that's cool.

Tim Doyle (47:49.699)

put into language and numbness is on the exact opposite side where it's a similar type of feeling where you just don't like feel anything and it's still like equally as hard to put into language.

Dacher Keltner (48:02.609)

That's fascinating and I think that's worth, we could test it empirically and I think you're onto something. feel, it was interesting when at the worst moments of grief for me, I am an energetic person and I'm always feeling like things are full of meaning, but I had these moments and I wrote about this, I felt all this and it did feel numb. felt like, God, the prettiest of music wouldn't.

touch me, you know, and I love hearing children laugh and play and, you know, just seeing that didn't move me. And so I think you're, I think you may be with the winner there, you know, Tim, that, and you know, right now I'm really worried about the design of the social media platforms, as are a lot of people. And one of the things that they do is they produce numbness, right? You're just doom scrolling. And it was like, you're numbed and we should be.

pop out of that and find out.

Tim Doyle (49:03.446)

Yeah, I think technology and numbness go hand in hand within our society today. You reference Jurassic Park in your writing as well, and you explain it as capitalists seeking to commodify awe. Do you see that happening anywhere in real life today?

Dacher Keltner (49:06.769)

Yeah.

Dacher Keltner (49:12.475)

Hehehehehe

Dacher Keltner (49:19.697)

Yeah.

yeah, you know, it's, you know, I mean, you know, and you know, it's, it's, it's just important to remember, you know, capitalism does a lot of good, but it also can get in the way of kind of the more direct experiences that are vital to us and change them. And so as with everything, they're going to be markets of awe and they're going to be

capitalistic forces that commodify it. You could argue that in some sense the psychedelic movement has forms of capitalizing on awe, retreats capitalize on awe. was driving in California where there's going be a lot of this like Austin, Texas and there was a spa awe. I was like, no, they're going to do that.

You know, all retreats, they're going to be all, you know, and I don't, all supplements, you know, so it is, it is. And I have to remind people, you know, we create things out of experiences that do a lot of good for humanity, you know, so music comes out of our love of music and song and our, our tendency before

Tim Doyle (50:28.002)

Yeah, it's the next wellness.

Dacher Keltner (50:49.478)

record companies to sing and enjoy music together. And music brings, it makes money for people and it brings enormous meaning to the world. It's a phenomenal technology. Same with films, right? Jurassic Park. yeah, what we have to do is make sure that people aren't exploited. within the psychedelic movement, indigenous peoples are being exploited. So we've got to watch out for that.

And we got to make sure that it honors the spirit of the original forms of choral music or what have you. So yeah, it's going to happen. I don't take it too cynically, you know, because we need it. And when done right, all of these money making technologies are actually pretty remarkable when you think about it. A good film, Steven Spielberg film who did Jurassic Park or great music.

He is a good thing for the world.

Tim Doyle (51:49.782)

You've had an impact on films as well. What was it like working with Pixar on Inside Out?

Dacher Keltner (51:56.369)

Yeah, thank you. Well, was humbling and there are moments in your life where you're just like, wow, I can't believe I was part of this. Yeah, they work on films for five years. When you go in, when they brought me into Inside Out 2010, they just wanted to hear about science and I rambled on.

like we are today about what are emotions, what's dopamine, and what's the voice and face. And the geniuses at Pixar, Pete Docter, who's the director of Inside Out, Kelsey Mann, Inside Out 2, take the science and create art. And then what's really exciting is you get to see how three-year-olds react to it.

at the opening of Inside Out and this little three-year-old was sitting next to his mom and when Bing Bong was about to die and sacrifice himself so Riley could get back to the control room, know, and Bing Bong fades away and decays and leaves the world, the little three-year-old stood like, not Bing Bong, mom, and they hugged, you know, and I was like, you know, there's no way any finding I could generate would ever do that.

And that's what Pixar is. So what was interesting for me is they're genius. Pete Docter is incredible. But also I feel that what Pete does with his films, and I was involved in the Inside Out films and Soul, his film about the soul, which I really like, is he's about the decay of the self and sacrifice.

Tim Doyle (53:22.904)

Mm.

Dacher Keltner (53:51.695)

and the joys that come from selflessness and loss. Pete's films, Up, Inside Out, Soul, are all about losing things and then the spirit that comes out of that. man, to be a small part of that is really humbling.

Tim Doyle (54:13.763)

I saw Seoul for the first time my senior year of college and I think it was a profound impact. It probably impacted me a thousand times more than if I saw it as a 10 year old.

Dacher Keltner (54:17.53)

What was it like for you?

And what did it say to you?

Tim Doyle (54:27.331)

I forget now because it was so long ago, but...

Like you were saying, just kind of, just the breaking of that shell where it's like, there's some, there's some type of covering here that we just need to release from.

Dacher Keltner (54:45.84)

Man, and you know, when I worked on Soul, much lighter than the Inside Out films, there was a moment, and I hope your listeners will go see it, I went in and I said, there's this emotion awe, I don't know when this was, 2018 or so, and it comes from laughing with friends and listening to music and looking at visual patterns and.

leaves falling out of trees and comes from the light on sidewalks, just rift and fireworks. if when in the film, when the character, the shell kind of breaks apart, right. And he's like, God, my soul isn't about the job I always wanted. It's not about some metaphysical concept it's about. And then it has a sequence of experiences and it's all.

In some sense, it's back to our point. When you really lay out the experiences of awe in your life, you're like, this is what I'm about here. This is my soul. And Pete did that. I could watch it a thousand times, and he changed a lot of young people with that film.

Tim Doyle (56:02.241)

What lights you up the most about your work today?

Dacher Keltner (56:10.245)

Uh, thank you for asking that. I, you know, I'm in, uh, you know, I'm in a period where, uh, you know, I'm 64 and, you know, raised my two daughters and they're doing well. And, and we have these challenges of mental health issues and climate and polarization and, know, we're struggling. Um, and I have been pulled into.

in the spirit of this conversation, can we do good work with awe, right? And rebuild fabrics of our world. So I'm working with parks, national parks, I'm like, man, 320 million visits to the parks each year. If they each have a little awe that they keep, that's gonna be good news for the world. I just worked with PBS Kids, Jim Henson Studios.

The parents who are listening to you can go watch Wowzebout, which is a Jim Henson production that I'm involved in. It's all about giving kids awe, teaching them that they should go out and whatever it is, if it's little league baseball or if it's prayer or if it's rock climbing or if it's doing math, poetry, they should find it, the soul. And I think that show, if it just

runs its course will teach the next generation. You know what's more important than writing code or making a lot of money or having a lot of likes on Instagram is finding your soul. And if that happens, I'll feel like this was worthwhile. I'm very excited about. And then your observation, it's like a 20 year project of mine. We've got to get doctors to say, you know, you're a little bit overweight.

You gotta eat less sugar. And here are 10 aw things you can do. And we should do that. And it's starting to happen with social prescription. But man, that needs to happen. And I wanna be part of that.

Tim Doyle (58:20.119)

Dacher, think that's a beautiful place to stop. Thoroughly enjoyed talking with you today. You've done some incredible work and it's so cool to see how it's seeped into so many different avenues of life, obviously with having a scientific foundation, then culture, art within our environment. So really grateful to be able to talk with you today.

Dacher Keltner (58:39.245)

It's been an amazing conversation, Tim, and thank you for asking about the soul. And I hope that people listening just take a pause and think about what their soul is and how this conversation may shine a light on things they should be feeling and thinking about.