Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner
In a Nutshell
Dr. Dacher Keltner explains awe as a shift from small-scale to vast perception (e.g., horizons, music, nature), reducing inflammation, boosting vagal tone, alleviating long COVID, and fostering emotional bonds via elevated kindness and collective consciousness. Practical tools include weekly "awe walks" (slow walks seeking surprises, scaling from details to expanses) and communal activities like concerts, sports, campfires, or teasing in friendships to counter self-focus, narcissism, and online isolation. Awe quiets the default mode network, promotes equanimity through temporal distancing, and is essential for health, rebuilding community amid tech-driven fragmentation.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Awe reduces inflammation, elevates vagal tone, reduces long COVID symptoms. People with long COVID: just one minute of awe a day reduces symptoms. Medical doctors starting to prescribe nature and music as mechanisms.
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast discussing science and science-based tools for everyday life. Andrew Huberman, professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Guest: Dr. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology and co-director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Expert in science of emotions and their role in social dynamics and bonding.
Science of emotions: role of teasing in social bonding, embarrassment in social bonding, science of awe and things that lead to awe. Awe happens when shifting perception from small scale to large scale or back, e.g., suddenly reaching a new horizon or visual vista. Practical and conceptual conversation on creating awe in everyday life, human bonding in groups, what establishes and inhibits deep human bonds.
Dacher Keltner known for rigor and creativity in studying emotions, offers public ways to feel better and get more out of life.
Podcast separate from Stanford teaching/research, brings zero-cost science information to public. Episode includes sponsors.
Everyone intuitively knows awe but hard to articulate. Words: overwhelm, excited, physical sensation of a lift. No one collapses into turtle position upon hearing 'awe'.
Young scholar in emotion science, Paul Ekman pioneer. 90s/early 2000s focused on negative emotions: anger, fear, fight-or-flight physiology, amygdala, cortisol, disgust (Paul Rozin, John Haidt). Did not connect to personal life: raised as wild child in late 60s Laurel Canyon with music, social change, protest, beauty; dad visual artist, mom taught Romanticism, Virginia Woolf, awe, mind. Science missed music, visual patterns, dance, collective movement, Martin Luther King speeches causing tears. Asked Paul Ekman for career advice: study awe.
Every psychology/neuroscience student sees Darwin's faces of disgust, pleasure; babies shown recoiling or wide-eyed leaning in. Motor component to emotions.
Paul Ekman: revolutionary work in New Guinea showing static photos of six emotions (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, smile); interpreted like Westerners. Became the field, debates on reliability/universality contested by James Russell, Lisa Feldman Barrett. Controversies on hardwiring, reliability in child development.
Young children show disgust (wrinkled nose at bad smells like social mammals). Anger trickier developmentally. Labs (Dacher Keltner, Jess Tracy at UBC, Disa Sauter): expanded to 20 facial expressions: laughter, love, compassion, awe ('whoa'), embarrassment, shame, pain. Broadened taxonomy from 6 to ~20 distinct mental states. Field heading toward physiological/brain patterns for these states.
Hard to study: videotape emotions from 5 countries. Used to take 1 hour to code 1 minute of facial muscle movements. Alan Cowen (Berkeley grad student, computational genius) with Google engineers: AI-coded 2 million videos from 144 cultures, 16 facial expressions. 75% overlap across cultures (awe at fireworks, concentration on test, laugh at friends). 50-60% hardwired from evolutionary history, rest varies.
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Relationship between emotions, motor patterns/movement, language. Hypothetical: person angry but body still, articulate, no hand movement (seems sociopathic?). Extreme: angry, gesticulating a lot (makes sense). Applies to any emotion. How to think about emotion experience/expression along motor, language, emotion axes?
Motor patterns universal: soothe crying child (bring close, caress, touch); fighting rival; rotten food (recoil). 75% motor patterns in facial musculature, body/skeletal muscles. Conceptual system puts words to experience (e.g., 'angry', 'ashamed'). Motor/language correlate ~0.2 (weakly). Cultures valuing calm (East Asian: be calm, don't disrupt/blurt/protest) show disconnect. Authentic people: motor/expressions match words.
Michael Pollan: conscious feeling. Words don't capture it. In other species, mixture of bodily happenings. Feeling (compassion/awe) uncharted: how motor patterns, words, images, memories converge?
Chakras: confluence of nerves/vessels for rooted/calm vs. head. Voice actress on Instagram analyzes ER doctor actor: larynx/pharynx control changes with maturity/mentoring; breakdown moves voice to head. Intuitively: excitement rises from bottom, relaxed sinks to diaphragm.
34-35 years in emotion science. Breath power from contemplative traditions (Huberman, Richie Davidson): deep exhalation activates vagus, calms, warmth in chest ('heart chakra'). Alex Grey paintings visualize neurophysiology synchronizing in love.
Measures: facial muscles, gaze patterns, face coloration, breath patterns, vagal tone, immune/gut activation, brain activation, voice (Darwin modality).
Publishing paper: Darwin's Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals covers 53 emotions in 8 expressive modalities (with Darwin scholar Frank Sulloway).
Choose study based on real-life phenomena: awe (big trees, concerts, museums); embarrassment/modesty (young men teasing).
Teasing relevant to 'manosphere' (healthy male rivalling/interaction).
Can measure awe well: vocalization ('Oh'), facial expression, brain deactivation, vagal tone, goosebumps.
Stimuli: awe videos (BBC Earth, slow-motion wildlife like Slow Mo Guys dropping wine glass: vast, mysterious). Field studies proudest:
- Berkeley paleontology museum T-Rex skeleton replica: people expansive/collective (changed Keltner's life at age 5 in LA Natural History Museum).
- Giant eucalyptus trees.
- Yosemite: Yang (lab student) stopped hundreds of travelers: 'I feel small and quiet, but part of something really large.'
- Mosh pits, surfers, rock climbers, backpackers.
- Rafting American River (Stacey Brown, veteran, awe pioneer).
- Art museums, Carnegie Hall.
Dream study: participant converses with Shaquille O'Neal (7'2", 350 lbs) for 'whoa' reaction.
Andrew: would have skipped neuroscience for Keltner's lab. Make-A-Wish: dying kids meet idols (e.g., Shaquille O'Neal) experience awe, life-affirming override of mortality thoughts (layers of grief for observers). Horizons fascinate vision scientists: visual angle widens, more parasympathetic, off the accelerator.
Relaxation occurs by coming off the focusing component of the sympathetic nervous system. Focusing through a tunnel is the opposite. There's something unique to experiencing a tunnel thinking about Yosemite or being in trees or height, then the horizon opens up—a transformation of visual space. These moments feel distinctly bigger than hiking along a ridge line for a long time.
Experience of going from confinement to openness. This could be brought to the lab. In Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, do workers attenuate? Rangers find big expansive awe attenuated but still in subtler ways.
Pete Docter at Pixar; worked on Inside Out and Inside Out 2. Techniques for producing awe in children's animated films: film narrows like sympathetic fearful checking, then suddenly vastness appears. Neuroscientifically, basic awe is shifting from small to vast in vision and perception, then metaphorical—big ideas and epiphanies. Working hard on a paper or technology, suddenly realize it's part of something larger.
Yumi Kendall, cellist for Philadelphia Symphony: practices five hours a day, hard and narrow—where's my finger? On stage, notes go out into vast space, feels part of history, tears up and cries.
Small to vast is fundamental.
Study with Virginia Sturm at UC San Francisco: brain health, old people (75+ years old) go on awe walk once a week for eight weeks. Asked to go from small to vast in looking: look at tree, leaf, pattern of leaves. Brought awe, less physical pain over eight weeks; six years later, better brain health.
Humans are a walking species, meandered from Africa to all continents. Walking is sacred, a kind of consciousness picking up vaster view.
Awe walk: slow down on regular walk once a week. Go somewhere you wouldn't ordinarily go, someplace that may surprise you. Example: walk past playground daughters played at, Cordes Park with rock slide and tunnel.
Secret hiking trail through private property backyard (quiet, pick up trash): incredible waterfall, stand at top on beam looking over trench of trees—total transformation of space.
Near rose garden, swinging gate not locked, little monastery nearby. Spent time there eating pizza from Cheese Board on log.
On awe walk: find surprising place for childlike wonder. Slow down, deepen breathing synced with walking. Go from small to vast: look at clouds then pattern of clouds; trees, light on trees, points of light then patterns; playgrounds—listen to one laugh then symphony of kids' laughter.
Do for half hour: become more vast in consciousness, more aware (in photographs), more kindness and awe over eight weeks, less physical pain (via reduced inflammation). Other benefits: reduced inflammation, elevated vagal tone, reduced long COVID symptoms (one minute awe/day). Medical doctors prescribing nature, music through awe.
Awe not just forgetting self or getting outside ourselves, but tethered to larger picture. Getting out of heads but embodied, full body experience.
Relationship between visual aperture and time perception. Small aperture (soda straw, watchmaker, text communication): fine-slicing time dots, feels like eternity, bidirectional with alertness/sympathetic nervous system. In line at store, aperture shrinks, person ahead takes forever.
Relaxed, wider aperture, fewer time bit snapshots (opposite of slow motion high frame rate). Car crash: feels slowing down, more snapshots.
Auditory too: specific conversation at party fine-slices; listening to whole relaxed.
Spacetime bridging meditation: close eyes, three breaths interoception on skin inward. Open eyes, look at hand three breaths (visual tether). Look 8-10 feet away same. Find horizon, pale blue dot (on planet floating in space). Back to self.
Not small or big aperture per se, but process of going from one to next—like biology/psychology, process not event.
See horizon in morning important, but also focus indoors on work. No place/event right way to live—e.g., Big Sur or Yosemite awesome because came from office, then go back.
Paper (senior author): A Balanced Mind: Awe Fosters Equanimity via Temporal Distancing—about time not space.
Matias Tarnopolsky (Berkeley, ran, Philadelphia Symphony music director): awe in music about time—why cry, goosebumps.
Hypothesis: awe to sense of self. Jane Goodall: chimpanzees feel awe (waterfall display: sit quietly around vast nature/rivers, look, goosebumps, touch, rock). Beginnings of spirituality: amazed at things outside self.
Awe: self-interoception to connect to vast things (Yosemite, T-Rex skeleton, passage of time, evolution, nature, ecosystem). Changes neurophysiology: quiets default mode network, activates vagal tone. Tethered to music, culture, political movement, team. Transcendent.
Need young people connecting to big things.
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Christof Koch on consciousness. Connecting through time in own life unique awe: song reminds of age 15, magic library—brain associative, Harry Potter books around it change.
Linking past/present/future to others'—past, present, future connected, part of it together, conscious fleet not individuals. Real even for resistant to collective consciousness language. Concerts: shared perceptual/emotional experience.
Getting young people connected: openness first, connect own past/present/future, window opens to one or thousand people.
Vs. individual at party wondering about teeth between teeth.
Individual awe (awe walk), couple awe walk, whole group (never met). Dynamic of awe experience; limited measurement.
Awe connects through layers of consciousness/experience, micro to expansive narrative of mind.
Grew up around UCLA eucalyptus trees; first day UC Santa Barbara, smell was awe via olfactory, connecting through time.
Brain synchronization literature: always syncing with others. Nine-month-old listening to music syncs to cultural sounds/rhythms, physiologically with others. Concerts, sports: heart rate, brains synchronize—materialistic collective consciousness, sharing brain patterns/awareness.
Music: hard to get collective thinking in classroom, but music in milliseconds. Taylor Swift shows: Swifties instantly bonded, united in moral/identity cause.
Jonathan Haidt and Dacher Keltner early paper: awe makes part of collectives, signature strength to fold into groups, cooperate, share. Hard, vulnerable to exploitation. Fastest pathways: physical dancing, chanting, sports (collective effervescence), music syncing.
Concert changed life? Some most important experiences.
Sister Grateful Dead, Cat Stevens. Punk rock kid. Friend Jim Thiebaud (skateboard community dean, texts daily; friends with Tommy Guerrero). Gave first black coffee, inspired journaling at 14. Put on Thunder Trucks sympathy. Gave tape of Crimpshrine from Berkeley.
They were on Lookout Records, first releases of Green Day. Heard that tape and it was amazing, super raw. Needed more of it. Received a Stiff Little Fingers tape, then Operation Ivy, Rancid. Could do a thesis on that era and genre of punk rock. Huge Joe Strummer fan, Mescaleros, biggest Rancid fan. Good friends with Tim Armstrong, met him later in life, still freaks out seeing him. Those guys were gods in the Bay Area scene, still so good.
Show between 93 and 94 at Stage House or Stage Coach in Santa Barbara near railroad tracks downtown. Rancid playing with Sick of It All, East Coast hardcore band from Albany and West Oakland. Friend Toby Morse was there. Felt scared, older guys, violent feel, edge. Exciting, part of it, knew every lyric, frightened but loved it. Adrenaline, uncertainty, little dangerous but mostly benevolent, irreplaceable feeling.
When writing book on awe, eight wonders give awe: nature, spirituality, meditation, music. Description captures richness: sound patterns through eardrums to auditory cortex, give meaning, remember things, bond with people, instant friends for life, brothers and sisters. This is what life's about. Susan Langer: music is tonal language of emotion and identity. Awe in music when sounds move you and connect to what you care about in life.
Grew up in Laurel Canyon late 60s: Mamas and Papas, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison and the Doors, Bob Dylan passing through, the Byrds, Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac in Topanga. Music everywhere. Grew up on Bob Dylan, cried watching recent film with Timothée Chalamet. Music is great technology, research shows good for chronic pain, frontier in healthcare, contemplative meditative approaches to music and awe.
Grew up in foothills of Sierra as teenager, Ted Nugent, AC/DC. First heard Sex Pistols in England when Never Mind the Bollocks came out, in working class fighting town. Led to Iggy Pop, moral hero, into Chi Gong breathing to stay in shape.
Music has lyrics or not, but experience divorced from language. Book A Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan, his wife wrote Monster with Charlize Theron. Explores martial arts. Sparring or fighting bonds because primitive non-language state, like one night stand, sharing bodily fluids, feel connected. Both vulnerable, trying to hurt each other, obeying rules, transcends language, creates forever bond. Respect after going through something hard, even three three-minute rounds.
Emotion as triad: feeling, motor component, language. Language piece can go.
Darwin on motor components, William James on body physiology. Language what social scientists rely on, but William James on laughing gas transcendence: words are tattered fragments, barely touch real thing.
Learned from veterans, work with Stacy Bare, Sierra Club research getting veterans on rivers, tens of thousands find awe in nature. Guys lost limbs rock climbing. Awe at edge of life, violence, horror, carnage. Martial arts transcend death or violence in contemplative form for body. Favorite movie Raging Bull, Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Robinson epic battles, look at each other united, beyond the fight. Transcendent moment of people crashing. Mosh pits have laws, physics studied, bruising but transcendent.
Raging Bull soundtrack Clash-inspired, per documentary The Future Is Unwritten on Joe Strummer, Scorsese big Clash fan.
Why Joe Strummer person of moral beauty, source of awe: courage, strength, kindness, justice.
Always worn button-down black shirts, saw Mescalero show where Strummer wore black button-down soaking in sweat, wouldn't take off, punk as hell. Died at 50, now 50, sees mural off Tompkins Square Park in Alphabet City, Aviator says future is unwritten.
Three reasons: 1) Bob Dylan-like lyrics, especially Mescaleros, not sure what song about but makes sense, taps fundamental beyond lyrics, e.g., On the Road to Rock and Roll transcends obvious. 2) Use of breath, unparalleled intonation. 3) Rick Rubin insight: everything he said brought whole life experience, sense bringing all of himself even when quiet.
Rick knows true feeling vs false, only interested in truths. Challenge of awe science: layers of meaning, figure true moments with measures.
Awe walk, small to large aperture, maybe back. Coming home to dog, kids, spouse, plants.
Inhibitors: language as dominant negative, suppresses functions. Overidentified with self.
Tim Armstrong recommended Grateful Dead, punk rockers because different show every night, unique, followers part of it.
Documentary: what killed collective music feeling? Cocaine, me drug. Dopamine and adrenaline elevated, me thing, every idea mine is important. Different from cannabis, psychedelics, sober music experience.
Grew up Laurel Canyon 68-70, then Sierra foothills. Peak Laurel Canyon: Joni Mitchell, Byrds, Beach Boys. Shifted early 70s to cocaine from marijuana, mushrooms, psychedelics, changed spirit.
Great enemy of awe is meanness, per Ralph Waldo Emerson: standing on bare ground, head bathed by air, uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. Awe quiets self.
Longitudinal data: more self-focused, quarter of pictures are selfies, half selfies or self with another. World more narcissistic, led by narcissists, corruption of minds. Mind good at looking at others, eye contact, seeing beauty, hearing words, collectives, patterns of nature, works against awe. Self-focus, striving, money countervail awe.
Awe important for times of too much self-focus, costs young people, makes anxious. Need to dance, hear music, share, backpack, get out of self.
Sports example for awe. Professional sports: Seahawks Super Bowl, connection through shared history, trials, not solitary like PhD.
Awe stories from 26 countries: India, Brazil, Poland, Chile, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Russia. Brazil/Argentina: football. US: American football, baseball, Boston Red Sox.
Emotion scientists not good athletes, picked last, grouchy about sports, yet super emotional. Collective effervescence.
Being a fan of Taylor Swift, in a punk mosh pit, or sports is awesome. Following a sports team live is powerful. An obscure sociology paper describes being a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers as like being in a religion: rituals with towels, singing, Steeler Nation, godlike experiences on the field, spiritual moments in freezing days where fans take off clothes, cheer, and cry together. Steeler fans confirmed this. Steeler bars exist everywhere for fans to gather during games. If the Steelers lose and a kid is upset, elders say, "I remember when we lost in 1983, and we'll recover," expanding time with rich shared history.
Sports like the Olympics (3,000 years old) and Mayan ball court games gather community and foster collectivity. Talking with Steve Kerr, coach of the Warriors during their amazing period, about coaching a game and seeing 10,000 people dancing in the stands. Steve Kerr is a meditator, has wildlife experience, trauma from losing his dad early, orienting him to what matters.
Ice baths (cold plunges) build mental strength as cold is a universal stressor; psychologically painful but feel better after. Sauna is loved socially, especially by Finns. Wellness experiences can be solitary or communal, knowing others do them too. Health and wellness community criticized for supplements or cold plunges, but deeper layer: people gather for sauna, breath work, cold plunges. This mirrors ancient human practices. Connection forms among those taking care of health to control their state. Esalen is historic; important events like bringing Russians to end the Cold War. Now, communal wellness builds community linked on social media (e.g., morning sunlight). Original intention of social media was community; can counter isolation and ego-fracturing effects.
Enemies of awe: online life produces anxiety and opportunity costs, depriving awe. In study of 2,600 people worldwide, no one said Meta, Facebook, or Instagram made them feel awe. Online content algorithmically designed to make people hate; disrupts sharing (e.g., music sharing down, movies down 40% due to streaming). Challenge: enable sharing of experience. Farmers markets: non-existent in 1990s, now 9,000 and growing; profound community benefits 10 years of life expectancy (meta-analysis of 350,000 participants). Greatest longevity benefit from social community (5-8 years from high-intensity sports like pole vault, sprinting, gymnastics).
Tech is asynchronous (texts delayed 18 hours, no eye contact). Zoom degrades eye contact (Steve Pinker observation). Platforms must foster connection; Mark Zuckerberg's original Facebook goal was "open and connected," but failed. Leadership wants connection; AI may offer opportunity without divorcing from gathering, facial expressions, voices.
Social media often opposite of awe: rage baiting, numbing out, silos. But could leverage to connect (e.g., Arab Spring, democratizing music, art, knowledge, podcasts). Avoid privileging hate; science can guide redesign.
Social media is the direct opposite of awe because awe-inspiring experiences are never forgotten (e.g., first concert, first love, first kiss, breakup).
Test: time on social media yesterday—nothing specific remembered despite sensory input; like drugs of abuse (no memories). Social media lacks memorability.
Awe design: working with Gail Architecture in Copenhagen to design cities for awe (music, green space, art, people talking). Smartphone life is antithesis of awe: small (awe vast), sped up (awe slows), fragmented (awe integrates), micro (awe systemic). Social media compresses spacetime into tiny aperture (past, present, future, different frame rates). Sphere in Las Vegas incredible for live music (band present or not). Digital can be awe-inspiring. AI can help (e.g., medical doctors with best brain trust).
Embarrassment begins with observing it after startle response (7-muscle motor pattern) in Ekman lab: blush, avert gaze, hide face. Darwin on embarrassment signaling commitment to collective (e.g., wrong name, fart in yoga class); people like, trust, give resources to embarrassed individuals, see them as good group members.
Teasing in pickup basketball: provoking to see if they care about group. Right teasing keeps in group; wrong is bullying. Study: fraternity guys given initials (e.g., AD) make profane nicknames (e.g., "another drunk"), tease about norm violations (pass out drunk naked). More embarrassment, better they liked each other; showed caring about accusations. Better teasers (playful, funny, norm-aware, non-humiliating) more popular. Replicated in storytelling, ribbing for healthy group functioning. Roasts at career end. Make fun of those loved most (siblings tease, wrestle, nicknames to enforce rules).
Embarrassment signals not a creep (e.g., flirting fail shows empathy, self-reflection; Dr. K). Darwin: blush as moral virtue, physical robustness in nonhuman species, moral robustness in humans. Early work with Bob Knight
Orbital frontal cortex patients with damage from brain trauma, such as falling off a motorcycle or ladder, do not show embarrassment where they should, making them feel creepy or like they're not playing by the rules. Irving Goffman wrote that embarrassment signals to others, "I know what the rules are and I care about them. I'm committed to them."
Teasing in Masculine Friendships
Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL, stated that in healthy masculine friendships, guys tease each other relentlessly to their faces but never behind backs, and back each other against criticism. Teasing to one's face builds bonds, with the assurance that the person would support you if you're out of the room. Lex Fridman emphasizes this loyalty in friendships: they can say anything harsh to your face but won't cut you down when you're absent.
Fraternity study documented teasing about human foibles like dance moves or free throws, followed by subtle repair work: "I'm teasing you, but I know you got it, and I'll support you." Teasing surfaces collective norms light-heartedly, encourages apologies for mistakes, and includes "I got your back" repair.
Dacher Keltner shares personal story: shy, small kid where high school teasing crossed into bullying, but basketball showed teasing as men enforcing game rules and sharing laughter, signaling support.
Brotherly Bonds and Group Loyalty
Observation of neighborhood brothers Peter and Michael: older brother relentlessly torturing younger by holding face in sprinklers, but if anyone interfered, they paired up to fight outsiders. Different from older sister hazing. Defines relationships one-on-one or in groups vs. against outside threats.
Science of loneliness (John Cacioppo) highlighted fragmentation, isolation, exacerbated by COVID lockdowns. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared epidemic of loneliness. Raw facts: picnics down by half, fewer movies, less shared music listening, 30% of US meals eaten alone, solo walks, church attendance way down.
Young generation (25-30 year olds) rebuilding: interested in game nights, cooperative living, cooking together, prioritize community over individualism (unlike prior generation). Choose jobs with liked colleagues. Festivals reappearing, farmers markets, dance groups, contact dance, yoga studios (1 out of 8 Americans does yoga, up dramatically in 15 years).
Weightlifting shift: now key health intervention for bone health, brain health, longevity; if only one exercise weekly, that's it. Previously only bodybuilders and football players; now women lifting heavy weights in gyms, contributing to collective feeling through training around others.
Vivek Murthy emphasizes social dimensions to health: cells, DNA, vagus nerve, oxytocin, cortisol. Farmers markets for community, yoga for synchronized awe and transcendence, gyms for banter and cultural history.
Japanese onsen: communal hot springs with washing, bathing, eating together, sayings on walls, family time.
Bridge technologies with nervous system, biology, psychology. Aquascaping (Japanese aquariums with plants, freshwater fish) brings awe when ecosystem thrives. Care for fish: no isolation, hiding spots for dominance hierarchies (e.g., discus fish), proper light cycle, balanced feeding. Humans do worse to themselves: isolate, show videos of others instead of real interaction. Simpler organisms teach care and community basics, rooted in evolved nervous systems.
Caveat: powerful compounds; caution for psychosis or bipolar family history.
Two views: some say inward-focused, opposite of awe; others report profound post-experience connections to people, plants, animals, life, enhancing awe.
Constrain to classic psychedelics: LSD, psilocybin, DMT, ayahuasca (not MDMA empathogen, ketamine dissociative).
Dacher Keltner: friends with Michael Pollan (walked Berkeley Hills during his book); Berkeley center for psychedelics; use up 40% since book. Honor indigenous traditions as spirit medicines with resource sharing, acknowledgment.
Psychedelics induce awe: open mind, see life forms, altered time, self vanishes, connect to ecosystems, humanity (David Yaden, Johns Hopkins; Roland Griffiths; Robin Carhart-Harris).
Festival use leads to kindness a year later via awe (Molly Crockett, Princeton). Helps hard problems: death anxiety, addiction, trauma, veterans' PTSD (twice the rate, VA working on it), OCD, panic (Rosalind Watts? context Ivan Park).
Worry about microdosing: treated like coffee, but not; tens of millions using without cultural container of inquiry, guidance, knowledge. Data (Robin Carhart-Harris): no benefit for major depression vs. guided psilocybin therapy.
Personal: changed Keltner's life at 17-19, reduced anxiety/obsession, opened perspective; doesn't do now. Done embedded in culture (Castaneda, Doors of Perception, mysticism inquiry).
Plant technology: Chris McCurdy studies kratom, plant compounds; pharma biopropects for isolates (aspirin, kratom, cocaine anesthetics, opiates, stimulants from plant alkaloids).
Andrew Huberman: regrets early terrifying experiences, beneficial later in therapeutic settings.
Current era resembles 70s/80s with culture wars, politics, actual wars; yuppies, hippies, punks; John Hughes films showed underlying similarities.
Technologies like breathwork, cold plunges, psychedelics, awe, music, collective consciousness, social media—how to use for greatest benefit? Be open-minded like 80s parents, not reactive like 70s/80s parents to long hair, punk, small skateboard wheels.
Avoid towing party line blindly; be for what's right, open to rational arguments.
Advice for 40-70 year olds: control yourself, create environments for youth to flourish with technologies.
Amid AI, online polarization, climate crisis, white supremacy: focus on breakdown of collective/shared life (Robert Putnam), relationship to nature. Awe provides roadmap.
Cities of Awe initiative with Gehl Architects (work in hundreds of cities; 70% population urban, most carbon emissions). For suicidal teens, alienated veterans: provide awe via nature (rewild cities), public art (visual art loved), moral beauty interactions, collective activities (yoga in town square, Mexican zócalo walks), big ideas, meditation/reflection.
Historically temples/churches integrated this (attendance down from 90% to 55%). Recreate coherently: gyms with music, art, nature, wisdom, moral beauty. Ironworks gym: climbing, monthly local artist exhibits, music.
CrossFit example: barbecues, gym cleaning, costumes, strong social community (though pandemic increased isolation).
CrossFit had barbecues, cleaned gym, dressed in costumes, fostering social community. Thought gyms were just for training, but saw social aspect in San Diego lab startup before Stanford.
Joe Strummer, after The Clash, entered a void, wandered, grew a beard, moved to Spain without telling anyone his identity until discovered. He searched deeply after losing his brother to suicide. He ran the Paris Marathon while smoking a cigarette, reportedly without training. Until his death, he hosted campfires in Manhattan by the river, inviting famous friends like Jim Jarmusch, kids, and adults. They stayed until 2 or 3 AM playing music, singing, drumming, and people sharing stories. Close friends confirm this was his lifelong practice. They filmed some, and he brought a radio to make it feel like a radio show, not for recording or distribution. Idea to start doing campfires.
Campfires are several hundred thousand years old. In small-scale societies, people gather at night around campfires to tell stories of connection, helping each other, and dangers in the dark—fundamental to humanity. Need to return to this. At climbing gyms, saunas lead to great conversations after sweating and elevated heart rate. Campfires as a good start to bring people together.
Campfires provide long wavelength light (red light therapy), beneficial for mitochondria. Long wavelength light penetrates the body, even through light clothing, absorbed by water in mitochondria, improving function in every cell with mitochondria. Sources: low solar angle sunlight (orange/red due to UV scattering, safe to look at); campfires do it naturally. People buy red light units, used clinically with good data. Staring at campfire at night, even late, leads to waking up feeling good.
Plan: team will organize campfires coming to towns. Dream of taking a bus town-to-town for science/health discussions, mostly listening, doing campfires, filming for content. Alternative dream: bus to all basketball courts for pickup games—people gathering, physical contact. Stanford developed cartilage regeneration in humans.
Do you believe in life after death? (Only question asked to this guest.)
Yes. After brother Ralph died of colon cancer at 55, watched his battle, acceptance, leaving. Had profound transcendent experience that night—saw space differently, something alive in him. Post-death grief experiences: his voice, hand on back. Thought about quantum reality beyond 3D/4D time-space, basic laws. Consciousness as patterns of electromagnetic waves around minds/bodies syncing with others, transcending Newtonian brain world. Hard to study, but sensed in life, many others do too. Moved from skeptical agnostic to believing something beyond what we know.
Thanks for trip, magnificent career doing purposeful science, caring deeply, raising 25 professors to continue work. Hope for bus trip to pickup basketball games—something to learn. Inspired deeper thinking on humanity, technology, doing real good. Links to work, books, including awe book.
It's been an incredible conversation. Let's do more.
Links in show notes/captions for Dr. Dacher Keltner's work and books, including awe book. Subscribe to YouTube (zero-cost support). Follow on Spotify/Apple, leave 5-star reviews/comments. Check sponsors. Comments/questions for Huberman Lab podcast on YouTube (reads all).
New book: Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body (first book, 5+ years work, 30+ years research/experience). Protocols for sleep, exercise, stress, focus, motivation with scientific substantiation. Pre-sale at protocolsbook.com.
Follow Huberman Lab on Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn for science/tools (some overlap, much distinct).
Neural Network Newsletter: zero-cost monthly, podcast summaries, 1-3 page PDFs (sleep optimization, dopamine, deliberate cold exposure, foundational fitness—cardio/resistance). hubermanlab.com, menu > newsletter (no email sharing).
Thanks for interest in science.
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