The science of awe

What's up y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, 7-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Anne Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. When someone says they're in awe, usually they're talking about something big and grand, like a mountain range or a cathedral. Or maybe a beautiful piece of music or art that kind that overwhelms you when you see it or hear it. That is all good, but thinking about awe in those ways makes it seem like some kind of luxury feeling, something reserved for special places or super elevated states. And it makes awe seem like a fundamentally private, subjective experience. But it might be better to think of awe as something woven into everyday, ordinary life. Something that can show up in other people, or tiny moments of courage, or grief, or in any of those flashes where you forget about yourself for just a bit and feel caught up in something larger than yourself. If we do think of awe like that in a much more broad way, is it still an individual experience? Or does it become, in a deeper sense, a social experience? I'm Sean Elling, and this is The Grey Area. Today's guest is Docker Keltner. He's a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley in the author of "Aw, the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life." This is a book that was recommended to me by two recent guests on the show, Michael Pollan, and Allison Gopdick. And I'm glad they did because I really, really enjoyed the book. For Keltner, awe is a truly basic experience. One, we all need, and something that can happen almost anywhere. And maybe most surprisingly, he says awe typically begins not in those grand things I mentioned earlier, you know, mountains and cathedrals, but in the experiences we have with other people, or the experiences we have witnessing the actions of other people. He calls that moral beauty, which is different from natural or artistic beauty. This way of thinking about awe opens up a ton of fascinating questions, so I invited Keltner on the show to talk about it. Docker Keltner, welcome to the show, my friend. It's good to be with you, Sean. Let's just get right into it. I love this book, I love this topic, and I wasn't even aware that there was a science of awe. But now I am, and I'm glad I am. All is such a squishy word. I think we all use it. I think we all vaguely know what it's supposed to mean, but we use it interchangeably with other words, like wonder or reverence. Is that a mistake? Yeah, and thanks for starting there, actually, Sean. One of the hardest things about emotion science and the study of awe falls within that is we use words to try to describe these complicated subjective experiences, that are in our bodies and in the unconscious and part of our history. And that's true of awe, right? So that's why we do the science of awe. So conceptually, we differentiate awe, which is an emotion that you feel when you encounter vast, mysterious things for the most part. And we differentiate that from wonder, which philosophers have been interested in for some time, Descartes, Plato, and others, which is really what we might call an epistemological state that follows an experience of awe. And then we would differentiate awe from two other feeling states, beauty. And that was an old question of Edmund Burke and Emanuel Kant. How is this sublime or awe different from the beautiful? And then you got to differentiate awe from horror, right? You know, I did research with the veterans and they will feel horror on the battlefield very obviously, but also some awe. So we got to pull all these states apart scientifically to get precise. How would you distinguish awe from another ordinary emotion like fear or amazement? Are they just like intense, is all like an intense version of that or is it a difference of kind, not just degree? Thank you, Sean. You just asked a question that took us about 15 years to answer with science. So, yeah, so, yeah, when we study emotions and this really, you know, traces back in the Western tradition to Darwin, who wrote about the emotions in 1872, and then a more contemporary science beginning about 30 years ago, when we study an emotion, we look at the feeling state or experience, we look at physiology, we look at the brain, we look at your face, your voice, your body, we have all these different ways to measure what an emotion is when it happens. And so that science tells us very importantly, awe is really different from fear, right? It's different in its physiology, fear elevates heart rate, awe elevates vagal tone, the activation of the vagus nerve, which slows your body down and makes you open and connected. Fear activates the amygdala, awe activates different regions of the brain related to reward. Fear sounds like, "Ahh!" You know, awe has an entirely different vocalization. Sean, what's the sound you might admit if you were feeling awe? That's so interesting that you would say that and ask that because to me, the sound of awe is silence. Yeah, when I'm in awe, I'm sort of rendered speechless. I don't, I'm sort of overcome with a feeling and I'm just sort of captured by it and silent, I guess. I don't, I don't associate a sound with it, but, but would you tell me what awe sounds like? I don't know. Yeah, my hunch is, if you're around a bunch of giant trees, they'll all this living organisms on earth, you might be silent by yourself, but if you're with friends, you might, whoa, right? We've studied that sound, very universal around the world, really different acoustically than fear. So we take all these ways to measure an emotion and we do the very important work of differentiating it from closely related states. And what it tells us, I think is something really important, which is, you know, Einstein felt awe was a basic state of mind, a basic state of consciousness, of being in the world and seeing the world. And this science says that's true, that it's just part of our, the organization of our minds. An important difference between a feeling and a state. This is getting hard. Yeah, I think we would use the term state as a broader term to say, this is a mental state, right? And the mental state can be a feeling, I feel awe, it can be a sensation, my body itches, right? It can be more of an epistemological state. I can't remember how to do that mathematical function. So states are our episodes of mental activity or consciousness, if you will, and then feeling is one kind. And I was reading your book and thinking about how I've used the term awe. And I basically realized that I usually use that word when I don't really know what I'm trying to describe almost like it's a poetic umbrella for feeling for which there isn't an adequate word. So I just say, I'm an all. Would you quibble with that or is that sort of kind of what all is that it sort of speech almost feels surface before it because you're overwhelmed in that way and it seems. I don't know beyond language. I just got goosebumps at your observation. That's a wonderful thought. In moments of awe, great thinkers come up blank when it comes to words. William James, one of my heroes, had this almost psychedelic experience on nitrous oxide of all things. And he called words tattered fragments. And Michael Paul on the dresses is in his new book on consciousness that words can't capture the full experience. And subjectively, what we know with awe, as you say, is it is it is it's a state of deep humility. We don't know your knowledge can't make sense of how big the trees are or how beautifully children play or what how music can make us cry in an instant. We just don't know the rational mind in that moment. And I love the idea that one of the purposes of awe is it points out the limits of our knowledge. knowledge, right? And then in the state of humility, and then we go in search of meaning and understanding, which is wonder. I got a hold for a second. Did you just call me a great thinker? I don't want to pass over that. Did I hear that right? Or I thought I was, you can hear me directly to William James, me and William James, basically same quality of thinker. That's very kind of you. Well, you know, I love the idea that here's an emotion that makes us excited about what we don't know. And what a wonderful emotion to have. You know, I was thinking about the last time consciously felt all. And I think it was when did you see, you know, you know who Alex Hennel is, the climber? Yeah. Yeah. They had a show on Netflix where he Alex climbed a massive skyscraper in Taiwan. I think it was by far the largest or the the tallest urban climb in history. Did you see that? I didn't see it, but I I was awestruck by free solo. And what he did when I was watching that, well, he got to the top of that building. I had some feels. I felt some real feels and I was surprised by it. I mean, obviously it's it's an incredible physical feat, right? But I mean, I watched the Olympics or other other sporting events and see people do incredibly physically excellent things all the time. And it didn't make me quite feel in awe in that way. It was like weirdly moving in a way that went beyond just the physical excellence. What do you think's going on in that example? What is going on there? Why am I connecting to that in that way? Yeah, it's, you know, one of the kinds of all that we study in our lab is moral beauty or just how we're moved by observing human excellence. And there are a couple of kinds that sort of separate in this literature. And one is when we are around physical excellence, you know, and so you might see a chef dice vegetables or ballerine or hip hop artist dance. I got to stand next to Steph Curry as he shot three pointers after practice. And he made 88 out of 100. And it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And that's one form of this response to human excellence. And then the others, when there's virtue mixed into it, kindness and courage and fighting for justice or humility and and Honnold has tons of courage. He's his life's on the line all the time. And so you mix and courage with the physical excellence. And it gets you to this feeling of moral beauty or this feeling of elevation or awe. Why is really interesting and the Scottish philosopher David Hume, a couple hundred years ago, got close to it where he said, and this is interesting, Sean, like when we see the extremes of human potential that we aspire towards or feel like we could be part of, we ourselves begin imagining having those qualities and doing that. And we are moved in this realm of the imagination. And I think there's a small part of that that's what happens when I see a great physical achievement I'm thinking, you know, I should pick up the basketball again and start shooting around or whatever. It won't look like that. And that's one of the great pathways to aspiration and what we do in life is to be inspired by others. What was different about the Alex climb is I almost felt like a vague pride. Like, wow, look at what a member of my species is capable of doing. And, you know, I have a similar feeling if I'm watching film of, you know, big wave surfers riding a hundred foot waves and Portugal or ultra marathoners or something like that, right? But when I see that, I'm more like, holy shit, that's crazy. When I watch Alex get to the top of that building, it's like, I don't know, but maybe it just climbing is a more direct metaphor for life or something. I don't know, but it felt triumphant in a way. Like we did it. We did it. But when I watch it, big wave surfers, I'm like, I can't believe what that person just did. But without it, look at us. I don't know. Yeah, no, that's wonderful. It's this, you know, we, and one of the things that all surfaces is that we have this collective self that's a very interesting part of our evolution that we think of ourselves as part of tribes and groups and species and living forms. And when we see reminders of the strength of our kind, we take it in personally. We feel like it's part of who we are. And one of the reasons we need this kind of, these kinds of stories is to, to remind us of what we can do. One of the things you argue in the book that is that the experience of all, quiets the self. What do you mean by that? What is the self that's being quieted? You know, you can think about our identities or our minds, our consciousness as one part of it is the self, is the ego, is making sure I have food and I'm safe and I have, I'm rising in status and I'm getting paid and I'm achieving my goals and I'm beating out the other people and that's the self. And there are a lot of good reasons evolutionarily why we have a very active self in our consciousness. But we're also very unusual in that we relate for evolutionary reasons to things that are larger than the self, right? Collectives, groups, cultural forms like music or art in indigenous traditions and in our own experienced ecosystems. It's very advantageous to have fuel related to your ecosystem. So we're constantly moving from self to self in relation to larger things. And, you know, social scientists for the past 40 to 50 years, you know, Christopher Lash, the culture of narcissism. We are in the most individualistic self-focus. Some data suggest narcissistic period in human history. You know, just think about, you know, not only individualism rising in our culture. Hey, I got to express myself instead of following duties, et cetera. But now we've added technology to the mix where, you know, here's just a finding that won't surprise your listeners and viewers like 25% of the photos we take and post on Instagram or of the self. And another 24% are me with another person. We're so self-focused and that's harmful for us. And awe gets us out of it, you know, just like you said, it quiets things down. It makes us aware of what's around us. It, it, the neural activation of the self, the default mode network is quieted down. And we start to see the beauty and the wonder of things around us. And that is good news. I agree wholeheartedly, but let me ask just to hear your answer when you said just now that focusing on the self is harmful. Yeah. Why? Yeah. And I don't mean to get on a soapbox about this, but you know, go for it. Yeah. I mean, I teach young people, Jonathan Height, the anxious generation, you know, the new data, even more definitive, being online is making us anxious and detached and lonely. It's a struggle. And one of the pathways to that, those struggles of anxiety and self-criticism and perfectionism and self-condemnation is too much of a focus on the self. We ruminate. What did she think of me? And did I say the right thing? And, you know, what are other people saying about my talk or whatever? That's all good in balance, in moderation, but it's way out of balance. And, you know, I think that's why awe struck such a chord is it tells us if you go dance with some friends, you'll lose yourself and feel wonderful. If you go here some music, you will lose yourself for a moment and feel wonderful. If you get out of nature and backpack by yourself, you suddenly feel like you're part of the natural world. If you take psychedelics or spirit medicines, same thing, the self dissolves and we feel uplifted and strong. I think most people think of awe as a almost personal spiritual experience, but you seem to be suggesting that it's also deeply social, maybe even primarily a social experience. I mean, is that a fair way to put it or am I overstating it? Yeah. You just gave me goosebumps with that question. Thank you. You know, so twice. And one, look at this, man. I'm going to roll. Yeah. And isn't that interesting that a great idea, that you know, great distillation of a complicated science, he just offered moves me. Yeah, you know, we gathered stories of awe from 26 countries all over the world. India, Mexico, China, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, US, all these different countries. Just write about what made you feel awe when you encountered what's vast and mysterious and off the road. And, you know, I thought it would be nature as kind of the primary source of awe. It was close, but it was the social stuff that was our most reliable source of awe. Other people's courage and virtue and strength and intelligence. And then also shared movement with other people, sports, politics, dance. So it was, it really caught me off guard and got me to think much more deeply about awe in ways I hadn't thought about before that this emotion really makes us feel wonder about other people and our connections to them and how vital that is to our driving. 26 countries is a lot. Do you recall any major differences that emerged there in the picture, in terms of like are there big cultural differences in what people respond to or how they answer these sorts of questions, or did it really end up being pretty universal across the board? Oh, yeah. It was probably 50 to 60 percent pretty similar across cultures and then 30 percent going in really profound ways. If you look at the broader history of all, you know, going back to the spiritual writings of five, six hundred years ago, and you think about different spiritual traditions, there's kind of an oceanic kind of all, right, where you're merging with others, you feel oneness, right? And then there's a more hierarchical threat based all of you think about being judged by God in the Old Testament and, you know, and just this, whoa, this, wow, I am so submissive vis-a-vis, awe-inspiring entities. And that one varies across cultures. Cultures with a lot of economic inequality have more threat-based fearful awe. That's profound, right? So it tells us, you know, over, you know, in the United States where we're, you know, in certain contexts, or may feel more egalitarian or if you talk to somebody from Japan, there are a really quite different. It has more fear in it, dread, feeling judged. So we found that as one of our key differences. So in those very hierarchical, religious cultures, is awe in that context almost indistinguishable from fear? Yeah, and that's, you know, in this other line of science that I've done with Alan Cowan, we've really gathered a ton of data with statistical techniques to map, you know, experiences in these spaces of meaning or semantic spaces. And we get tricked by words because words imply that awe is really different from fear. But in actuality, as Alan and I have found, our emotions are always blending with other states, becoming intermingled with them in their meanings. And yeah, in those instances, awe will start to feel like fear or terror or horror, right? And that's the complexity of a motion that we try to study is that inevitable mixing of states. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Whenever you're taking on something big, it's natural to wonder, what if I fail? Especially when it's something as uncertain as starting a business. But maybe the better question is, what if I don't? What if I really knock it out of the park? Shopify can help you get closer to finding out. They say they're the commerce platform powering millions of businesses worldwide and nearly 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From established names like all birds and shubbies to brands just getting off the ground. Their design tool makes it easy to build the exact online presence you're imagining, with hundreds of ready-to-use templates to choose from. And with built-in marketing features, you can create full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks so you can reach your customers wherever they are. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. You can sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com/vox. You can go to Shopify.com/vox. That's Shopify.com/vox. Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough Podcast. Each episode I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today. I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your world and the world. It is non-stop! Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. Pregnant athletes are not fragile. Yeah, that's right. I said pregnant athletes. I'm Robin Houchson, VPN head instructor of Peloton and I paired my deadlift the week before my son was born. I was also a quote "jerry atric" type 1 diabetes pregnancy and so I know there can be a lot of fear and uncertainty about what is healthy movement when you're pregnant. That is why I got trained in a pre- and postnatal fitness and this week on my podcast Project Swagger, I am sharing some key guidelines and the story of how I stayed active during my pregnancies. Listen now at Project Swagger. This really does push on our intuitions, I think, about all because all sort of, again, it feels like an experience that almost takes you out of the regular world to transport you momentarily. And you're just sort of, you know, floating as it were. But in a lot of ways it seems like what you're saying is that it really does the opposite. It actually reconnects us to it or regrounds us to the human world, which is a very different thing, which makes it all the more interesting that. I think we miss that and almost think of it in a way that's directly at odds with not only what it is, but what the great beauty of a thing is that it is a reconnection or a thing that takes us out of our self and reconnects us to other selves. I mean, it's so important just for us to dwell on that, you know, Jane Goodall, one of my heroes, wrote about all she observed it in chimpanzees and I agree, as did Charles Darwin, felt that reverence and devotion were seen in other species. So it is a mammalian thing and Jane Goodall said that awe is really being amazed at things outside of the self and I love that phrase for our times. And, you know, I think we've thought of awe very much influenced by the 500 years that we've lived through of, you know, spiritual writings about awe. But the wonders of life and the natural world and human collectives and sports and culture and music are also outside of the self and that's what happens with awe is you are walking along and suddenly, you know, as in some of our research you start looking at the light on a tree and the leaves and the clouds drifting by and you pause and you see all these patterns and your sense of self starts to be connected to that, those patterns in nature and you feel awe and that is right here in front of us, as he said. And it's one of the most important discoveries in our research is what I call everyday awe. People are finding it pretty regularly and it's just right around them. It's definitely one way to read the book as saying that that, I'll show you what this, that modern life over develops the ego. You know, the striving self, the comparing self, the isolated self and awe is very valuable because it just explodes that. I mean, is that, do you think of that as like the chief psychological, maybe even spiritual benefit of all as an emotion? I do, and we've got that empirically that, you know, in terms of what we call the diminishing of the self or the small self, you know, when you're near your semity and you're asked to draw yourself, you draw a really small being in a bigger context compared to other studies. That's fascinating. Yeah, you know, when you are feeling awe and you're in conversation with someone else, you're not as inclined to talk about yourself. You're more curious about the other person or humble. When you take psychedelics and when you feel awe and music, that self-related region of the brain is smaller, deactivated. So there are a lot of ways in which the self gets small. The thing we haven't done is good a job at capturing, I feel, and it's also part of the power of awe is the relationality to large what I wrote about as systems of things. You know, when you're a, if you're a backpacker or you're Alex Honnold whom we started with climbing a big mountain, there are going to be moments where you're just feeling like you are part of all of the surroundings. And that's also part of the power of awe. It's like, God, I'm part of this. When you me Kendall, whom I interviewed for the book, who's one of the country's great cellists in Philadelphia, when she wrote about playing, you know, she says she gets up on stage and starts playing and tears up and cries and gets goose bumps. And she said, I feel like I'm part of the audience and I'm part of the history of music. And that's what all does is it makes you feel part of a very big thing. I mean, I would say I'm kind of a cryer anyway. That's a good time. I cry a lot during movies and especially at concerts. You know, there's been a handful of concerts that just absolutely like reduced to me to like a grove. leveling ball of tears. One of the experiences. - You're a giant, you gotta tell me one of the experiences. - Jose Gonzales is in position. I've seen live, he reduced me to tears. Sufjan Stevens, I think also did it. There's an Icelandic band called Sagoa Rose. - Oh nice. - I saw it with my wife and New Orleans, and she was basically propping me up. I didn't even know what they're speaking language. I don't even speak, but it doesn't matter. - Because music is sort of a proto-language, right? So whatever, it's just, it's happening to something that's beyond before words. And so you just feel it. You just feel it. Then the only way I knew how to express that was just, was just crying. But I mean, is that, I just thought of it as like a response to unbelievable beauty. But is it really all? Is that really what that is? - I think so, I think, you know, and there's a little bit of work that helps us answer the question. And what a beautiful kind of journey to the question. I'll just call out Sufjan Stevens, who in my brother passed away, and I write about it in the book. There was something about his music that brought me into an understanding of grief and the universality and meaning of grief. So thank you to Sufjan Stevens. - Yeah, so the tears are a physiological process. They're at least little lacrimal glands that release tears. There are a few different kinds of tears. You can look at the protein structure of tears and kind of make inferences based on that. But importantly, is one, tears are part of a branch of your nervous system called the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system, which is really calming, orienting to others, being open to connection, the vagus nerve is part of it, which I studied in my lab, also activated by awe. So it already tells us tears in the semantic space of emotions are different from fear and anger and disgust. They're really about connection and love, right? So that's interesting in its own right. And then Alan Fisk at UCLA has been doing really nice work, showing that tears are kind of arise when you feel like you're merging with others. You share identity. And that feels right to me and it's part of awe, which is your body's in this open physiological state. You're seeing Sufjan Stevens or Jose Gonzalez and you're with people and your tears are saying, this is who we are, this is my people. And we need that information as we navigate life. I do think there's something to the idea that Western philosophy and enlightenment thinking for all of its fruits and there are many has tended to forget the body to elevate language and thought. I mean, even though the body is master in so many ways and so many of the most important human experiences like awe often arrive in the body first and only later get translated imperfectly into language. I mean, I don't know, I'm ranting, but there's something there, I hope. - No, it's profound. And the two heroes of the science of all early and Western thought are David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher who wrote about moral beauty as we've discussed and he was called a sentimentalist in the 1740s and 30s. And then he influenced Charles Darwin who, I'm just publishing this paper on everything that Darwin said about the body as it relates to consciousness. - Yeah, and now we know neuroscientifically that all this information from the body goes up through the vagus nerve to your brain, goes up into the insula in your brain and tells you what's going on in the gut or your heart, et cetera. And the body drives a lot of our basic perceptions of the world, of morality and kin and who we love and what our political concerns are. So Western thought was not only ignored but was openly hostile to the body, in part because of original sin and Christianity and that's changing because of Western science in some sense. - Let me go back to what you just said about moral beauty. It's come up a couple of times. Why is that so powerful? Like why is other people's kindness and strength so moving for us, maybe even more moving than mountains or cathedrals? Like what is it about moral excellence that really moves us? - You know, and we in the social biological sciences have been in the midst of a rethinking of our evolutionary history and how we've evolved as a species into what Darwin called, he called sympathy our strongest instinct and those communities with the most sympathetic members will flourish. And there's all this convergent scholarship and thinking that says we need to cooperate with groups. We need to share resources so that we in the common famines of our evolutionary history we didn't die, we need to warm each other. Most importantly Sarah Blaffer-Hurdy, we have these hyper-vulnerable offspring that take decades to reach the age of independence. They are offspring are more vulnerable than any mammal on the face of the earth than we cared for them in communities. So we need a lot of mechanisms within this framework to build groups, to sacrifice, to be selfless, to share and care. And there's a ton of scholarship on that. And one of the ways, one of the powerful mechanisms for that is moral beauty. And if I see a stranger act in a kind way, I instinctively become kinder. And so what that means is we create these little networks of cooperation and kindness. If I see a stranger act in a kinder, courageous way, I aspire in my identity to be kinder and more cooperative. Here's where it gets really interesting. It's a very powerful tool for young people. If young people, it can be really threatening to be courageous if you're five years old, right? And it may not be the optimal thing for our group. But if they see it in other people and they say, "Oh, that's what it means to be an upstanding person or somebody of character." And they start to learn in their bodies and minds that how to embody these principles, these cooperative principles. So the consensus now is we need a lot of different pathways to collaborate with each other. It's good for societies who cooperate better, do better. If you yourself cooperate more or kinder, you will live longer in empirical science shows. It's good for your nervous system. It's good for your relationships around you. And moral beauty is just this superpower of promoting that. - Well, I mean on some level, when you're seeing moral beauty, you are seeing the phenomenon that makes life together possible on some level, right? And instinctively, evolutionarily, somewhere in our brain, we know that. - Yeah, and you just gave me goosebumps again. So that's three, that's enough. - That's three. - Yeah, so yeah, you know, check this out. Think about folklore and the stories we tell. So fires are 400,000 years old, New Archaeological Evidence suggests. And one of the things that happened with fires, it changed our diet, you know, fair enough. But we gathered together at night, and we started to tell stories. First with our bodies in these, you know, proto-languages, like you said, and then with stories. And all cultures have fables and legends in fairy tales. And they're really important forms of culture and how we learn how to be a good human being. And a new science is finding that their chief ingredient is moral beauty. You hear about Cinderella who worked hard and had these mean step sisters and wins the prince, you know, through her virtue, et cetera. So that power of moral beauty gets into our culture, it gets into the stories we tell, and the fiction we write, and I believe the art that we were working on visual art is a form of moral beauty, right? That inspires us to, like you said, kind of get along so that we can survive. - I mean, for me, it's often about political courage, which really is a speech, that's a species of moral beauty, really. - Yep. - And whether it's a reigning women, publicly removing their hijabs in protest, knowing it might mean death, whatever you think about the hijab, that's courage. Or Nelson Mandela, or a soldier jumping on a grenade to save a friend, or a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in protest. I mean, pardon me, thanks. Yeah, pardon me, thanks. Man, that seems really tragically misguided and sad, but also I'm completely in awe of the physical, and especially the spiritual courage. - Yeah, I mean, his story, Koreans in political theorists are starting to suggest like these moments of profound moral courage change the world, you know? So the Vietnam monks setting himself on fire and protested the Vietnam War, I remember it as a kid like, wow, this situation is that serious that a human would do that. And you know, you can go through history, you know, Thomas Clarkson is one of my favorite stories where he, he at the time, the institution of slavery was three quarters of the European economy and he wrote an essay about, should we be allowed to enslave humans? And he was, he just fell over weeping at the thought that that's what we do to fellow humans. And he courageously bonded with abolitionists, started spreading the word, showed images of a human atrocity on the slave ships and it changed Europe, right? These little moments of moral courage where you will sacrifice yourself for others or for some idea are really, really important. It was interesting in our stories from around the world, Malala kept coming up, you know? And people were like, man, you know, this young girl fighting for the right to educate against the Taliban, you know, being harmed physically, move people in Japan in Norway just to see it on TV. And it's interesting to think about our current political times that that's what we need, you know? We are in a really debased state right now politically for a lot of reasons. And that's what we should be thinking about is where is the moral courage as a direction for future politics. (upbeat music) In the span of a decade, Ben Shapiro built the daily wire into a conservative media empire. He produced hit podcasts that bit at liberal excesses and documentaries and lectures about founders, the genders, the gospels. He peddled polos, hats, candles, provided a home for de-platformed conservative stars like Matt Walsh and minted stars like Candace Owens. Let's put a pin in that. The daily wire even has kids programming, a judgmental puppet named Zoodles. Zoodles. Zoodles. Who shares Shapiro's load bearing eyebrows? This year though, the empire showed signs of collapse. The daily wires, YouTube videos are down for millions of views to the low five figures. Web traffic is plummeting and recently, Shapiro laid off 13% of his employees. As by the Washington Post, what had happened? Shapiro accused other conservatives of click-horing by embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk. The kid still got it. On today's explained, the fall of Ben Shapiro. (upbeat music) Today's explained drops every weekday afternoon. Binau pay later is everywhere. And honestly, we need to talk about it. 60% of Coachella Goers put their tickets on Binau pay later this year. You can even pay off your door dash order and installments now, like your sushi. So this week on "N Outward and Chill," I'm breaking down exactly how these companies are making money off of you while missing one payment can flip your interest rate from zero to nearly 36% overnight. And the uncomfortable truth about what it really means when you need to split a $200 purchase into four payments. Plus, I'm answering your questions, including what to do if you're already in over your head. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com/yourrichbf. (upbeat music) - I really didn't wanna ask you about your experiences at San Quentin, the legendary. California prison. What did that experience, what did that experience teach you about all? And maybe you could just say briefly what you did there, just for context. I was moved by that part of the book. - Thank you. - Yeah, I used to teach this essay by a tool Go One Day on, I think it was in the New Yorker about solitary confinement. And when you put prisoners in solitary confinement, they go crazy and it is torture. And they become psychotic and they beat themselves. And then I had the privilege of being asked to write an amicus brief against solitary confinement and there was this protest by prisoners that led to the largest hunger strike in prison history against solitary confinement at Pelican Bay, maximum security prison. And it was led by rivals of several different gangs who are usually violent against one another and they bonded together over this issue, protested. I got called into the case and I wrote about how in solitary confinement, you're not allowed to in Pelican Bay, you don't even touch fellow human beings, you don't get to hug your kids when they visit, they work against that. And I wrote about the touch deprivation and that case was cited in favor of the prisoners, a couple thousand prisoners got out of solitary. I felt very good about that. And then I got invited because of that to go to San Quentin as part of the restorative justice program led by people like Lewis Scott inside Darnell Washington who's now an LA teaching meditation to the kids in the parking group and he was formerly of the bloods. So I go inside, there are a few of us in there, 180 prisoners. They're all bigger than me. They lift weights a lot. And I'm like, wow, I'm here all day and I did this many times. And then you start to feel the hunger for moral beauty inside like these guys, they know they've harmed, they know they've killed, they feel horrible, they've hurt their families, they're in constant meditation and reflection on making a man's like we do. And then they grow things, you know, they, they as Tupac Shakursa roses out of concrete. They create newspapers and music and drama and humanity. And I, Shawn stood up, I was asked to give a talk and I report on this in the book and I was like, I got to ask these 180 guys like where do you find all right here? And they're the best answers I've ever heard, you know, and it was like my granddaughter learning how to read, getting my high school diploma, learning about the law, the light in San Quentin, you know, in off the bay, my celly reading the Quran, reading the Bible, meditate, I was just like, wow, here it is. Einstein's right, this is everywhere. And to this day, I'm still involved with a lot of prisoners in their efforts and friends with them. When I'm around them, they tell me we can overcome anything and we have so much moral beauty inside. - You know what I love about just that whole scene is it really does illustrate your point that awe is not. Some kind of luxury emotion for the privilege that it's this core human experience. And it shows how even in prison awe is still fundamentally a relational thing. People are experiencing it through their relationship with their children or fellow inmates or through their relationship with music or scripture or through restorative justice, as you were just saying, which is fundamentally about moral repair, which is fundamentally about our relationship to other people, right? It's still the same thing in prison or outside. And it's just, I don't know, like I said, I was really moved by that part of the book and I just think it concretizes your point in a really powerful way. - Yeah, I thank you for saying that. And I was surprised I really was, you know, when you go in, you're with 180 men in blue, you know, I look, you know, I look a lot different and I've come out of this life of privilege, you know, Berkeley professor and the like. And you see this humanity and this urge to connect and promote the good, tell stories of moral beauty, stories of protest, how they're charged five times what they should pay for a candy bar, you know, et cetera. The labor, the what they earn in their labor. You're weeping, you know, it's just that's what people do because you're open to this essential quality of who we are that you can't suppress, you know, it's there when I work with veterans, it's very common in combat when you're, you know, and historians have written about this, you see your adversaries in Iraq or now Iran very horrifically you see the humanity, it's right there, you know, and you got to build upon it and it blew me away. I wanted to ask about your brother, who passed away and you mentioned him a few minutes ago. After your brother died, it seems like your relationship to awe and mystery changed or evolved a little bit. How did the grief of that alter the way you think, not just to maybe about awe, but about things that science can fully explain? Yeah, I was blessed to have a brother of awe, Ralph. He was working on a new book on moral beauty and it's like asking me to define moral beauty was my brother. He fought off bullies, he taught the poorest kids in the foothills of the Sierra as he didn't tolerate any racism, he broke up fights, he just had this quality to him. He had a very humble guy and he passed away from colon cancer, which is, you know, and you don't want to, I don't want to smooth over all the hardship. Like there's a lot of violence and prisons, there's a lot of ugliness, there's a lot of ugliness as you die and as you are a brother of watching somebody pass away panic and grief and I didn't feel rage, but just like existential confusion. And then Sean, you know, on the night of his passing, I was sitting there by his side and I was holding his shoulder and talking to him with our family, thinking about our past and throwing the baseball with him and the camping we did. And I'm a, you know, a data-driven guy, I believe in neurons and cells and hadn't thought too hard about consciousness. And like I had a transcendent experience seeing his soul and seeing space in a different way truly. And I've had a lot of these, you know, psychedelics and meditation and yoga and exertion. This was in its own category when I was like, wow. And I knew from our research around the world it's common. When you watch people go, you feel awe at the mystery of life. And then after not only did I hear his voice all the time and wins and, you know, and I see him in places and I felt his identity in the sun, I felt his hand on my back two times where it was on my back, you know. And I was just like, okay, I'll wait. It'll pass. It was still there. So as a skeptic like me, it changed everything for me. You know, it opened me up. It opened me up to thinking about metaphysics and spirituality. It opened my spirit up to what we never will understand fully with science and rationality and I feel better for it. You know, I feel more open to dialogues with a fundamentalist Christian who has different political views than myself. You know, and that's happened through awe or a Mormon, right? And so, yeah, it was a, it was a big life-shifting experience of mystery and beauty. Do you think maybe the experience of awe is the birth of the religious impulse? I do. I really do. And, you know, that was a meal, Durkheim, the great French sociologist that vibrating together when you at that concert, you had this experience. Jose Gonzalo. That's what I've ever vessenced, right? Yeah, collective effervescence. You know, that was William James's project of the mystical feeling, which is a lot like awe is the beginnings of spirituality. And you know, this is what I learned from working with Jonathan Height on awe. John studied a lot of the world's religions when we wrote about awe 25 years ago, 20 years ago. You know, you read the Bhagavad Gita. You read the great Buddhist texts in sutras. You read the, you know, the yoga sutra, Patanjali. It's a lot of awe, right? And Emerson and Thoreau and Julian of Norwich. So it's right there. And what I like is it's back to our overarching thesis, which is, however we get to this emotion, what it does for us is it makes us be part of large things and take care of them. And indigenous traditions, the ecosystem around us. And then in religion, the people around us and we need that. If you're right, and I think you are, that awe is this basic human need. What is your advice to people looking to snatch a few minutes of it every day? Yeah, you know, I've taught happiness for 30 years at Berkeley and teach it to medical doctors and federal judges and hard, you know, people or people with hard jobs. And I always tell people like, look for a few minutes a week. That's it. And with awe, pause. So down your breathing a little, put down your devices, open your mind and rely on those eight wonders, right? So look around at nature, sunsets and clouds and trees. Listen to music that really, that means something to you, like stop the Spotify playlist and find something that means something to you. And the Bob Dylan movie came out. I was just weeping the whole time because I grew up on Bob Dylan when I was three years old. He was, I like the Beatles, but Bob Dylan was everything and it just opened me up. You know, nature, music. I've done someone who has inspired you and just named them and like, oh yeah, man, that teacher in high school, they gave me that, right? Just look for visual things, get to a museum. It's not that hard. And we got a ton of new data showing it's good for stress, anxiety, long COVID symptoms, loneliness, just a couple of minutes a week. Well, if you're looking for all, you certainly won't find it on your Twitter feed. So get the hell out of there. Yeah, and get off of the devices. I think that's a perfect place to go. If besides getting your book, where can people go to follow your work and your latest research? Yeah, I have the Science of Happiness podcast at the Greater Good Science Center. And we have a lot of all represented and things you can do. So there are, there's a lot we can start working with in terms of those a couple of minutes a week to find some more. All right, people, let's get started. Docker Keltner. This is great. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, Sean. It's been a great conversation. All right, here we are at the end of another wonderful episode. I love Docker. I love this topic. It really was catnip for years, truly. As always, we want to know what you think. So drop us a line at the gray area at vox.com or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749. Once you're finished with that, please rate, review, subscribe to the podcast. It helps us grow our show. This episode was produced by four new writer and Beth Morrissey who also runs the show. engineered by Shannon Mahoney, fact check by Melissa Hirsch, and Alex Overington wrote our theme music. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. The gray area comes out on Mondays and Fridays. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. If you watch podcasts while you listen, you can do that too. Go to youtube.com/vox for video versions of the gray area. The show is part of vox support vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to vox.com/members to sign up. And if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know.