Dr. Dacher Keltner on Huberman Lab: Why awe walks ease pain

1. 0:00 – 1:55

   Dr Dachner Keltner

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner0:00

      Awe is good for reduced inflammation, elevated vagal tone, reduced long COVID symptoms. We have people with long COVID, just a minute of awe a day reduce long COVID symptoms. It's good news, right? And, and there's so much science on it that I just f- now I think medical doctors are starting to think like, "I'm going to prescribe nature. I'll prescribe music through awe," right, um, as a mechanism.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman0:27

      [on-hold music] Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Dacher Keltner. Dr. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Dacher is an expert in the science of emotions and their role in social dynamics and bonding. Today, we discuss his fascinating work on the science of emotions, including the role of teasing in social bonding, the role of embarrassment in social bonding, and his fascinating work on awe and the things that lead to awe. As he describes, awe is not elusive. It happens when we shift our perception from a very small scale to a very large scale or back again, such as when we suddenly reach a new horizon or visual vista. Today, you'll understand what all of that really means, and more importantly, how you can create this incredible thing that we call awe in everyday life. We also talk about the critical aspect of human bonding in groups and the things that both establish and inhibit deep human bonds. So today is a very practical as well as conceptual conversation that no doubt will change the way that you think about your life every day and think about opportunities for awe every day. As you'll soon see, Dacher Keltner is a truly special scientist, known for his incredible rigor and creativity in the study of emotions, but also continually

2. 1:55 – 8:11

   Emotions, Awe; Facial Expressions & Culture

   1. AHAndrew Huberman1:55

      offering you, the public, ways to be and feel genuinely better and to get more out of life. It was a true honor and pleasure to host him. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Dacher Keltner. Dr. Dacher Keltner, welcome.

   2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:25

      Good to be with you, Andrew.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman2:27

      Awe.

   4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:27

      [chuckles] Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman2:29

      We all intuitively know what it is, and yet we also don't know how to articulate it.

   6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:35

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman2:35

      I want to say the words overwhelmed, excited. I get the physical sensation of a lift.

   8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:42

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman2:42

      I don't think anyone ever said the word awe and then collapsed-

   10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:45

       No. That's interesting

   11. AHAndrew Huberman2:45

       ... into a turtle position.

   12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:46

       That's right.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman2:47

       Maybe we could explore that and your thoughts about that. But what got you into awe?

   14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:52

       Yeah. And I, and I love the word lift. That's really interesting. Um, yeah, I was, uh, a young scholar in the science of emotion that really Paul Ekman was a pioneer in, you know, and, and that field in the, you know, nineties and early 2000s was, uh, really focused on negative emotions, you know. And, and you know the science, right? Anger, fear, fight or flight physiology, amygdala, cortisol, uh, disgust, you know, Paul Rozin and John Hajt. Um, and thinking about emotions from that lens and, and it, as a young scientist, uh, and given the powerful tools of emotion science of Darwin and Ekman and how to just observe phenomena, uh, it didn't make contact with my life and my own experience. You know, I was raised as a wild child in the late sixties in Laurel Canyon and, you know, it was like music and social change and protest and, uh, you know, and beauty. And I was raised by a dad who's a visual artist, and my mom taught romanticism and Virginia Woolf and awe and the mind and, and I was like, "Wow, there's all this stuff that our science, my science can't speak to, music and visual patterns and dance and collective movement, and, you know, someone like Martin Luther King and why he makes me cry," you know. And I remember feeling this and asking Paul Ekman, I was like, you know, "What should I do with my career?" And he's like, "Study awe," you know. And so that got me going.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman4:31

       If we could, l- maybe we could talk about the faces for a moment. You know, I think every psychology and neuroscience student-

   16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner4:38

       Yeah

   17. AHAndrew Huberman4:38

       ... sees these faces of-

   18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner4:40

       Yeah

   19. AHAndrew Huberman4:40

       ... disgust, of, of pleasure. Uh, Darwin talked about this.

   20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner4:43

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman4:44

       Babies are often presented in parallel with those pictures of adults-

   22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner4:48

       Yeah

   23. AHAndrew Huberman4:48

       ... where they'll show a baby like, you know, recoiling from-

   24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner4:51

       Right

   25. AHAndrew Huberman4:51

       ... something or, you know, wide-eyed and leaning in. You know, there's always seems to be a motor component to this that maybe isn't as captured in those two-dimensional photographs. But-

   26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner4:59

       Yeah

   27. AHAndrew Huberman4:59

       ... what's the story about sort of hardwired facial emotions, and w- what are the revisions to that story that I, I'm probably not aware of?

   28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner5:09

       Yeah. Thank you for asking that. Um, you know, I've spent thirty years working on that very problem. Um, Paul Ekman came in and, you know, as, as you've suggested, right, he did this revolutionary work in New Guinea, you know, showed photos of six emotions, static photographs of anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, and a smile. They kind of interpreted the faces like you or I would, uh, naming it, using the right words to describe those faces. And that, you know, and this is how science occasionally works, which is just by accident, that became the field. And there are a lot of debates about how reliable those faces are, how universal are they in different cultures. Uh, Ekman really posited sort of a strong universality that's been contested by Jim Russell, Lee- Lisa Feldman Barrett, and others. Um, but since thenThere are controversies around how wire, hardwired they are. Do they occur reliably in a child's development? Yes and no. You know, young children show disgust expressions, uh, like social mammals do. They wince at bad smells just like you or I would. Uh, anger's a little bit trickier to pin down developmentally. But then our lab and several labs around the world, you know, Jess Tracy at UB, British Columbia, Disa Sauter, uh, and I wanna talk about this computational work, started to expand, uh, the vocabulary of faces. And now we-- there's a lot of data that suggests there are twenty different facial expressions: laughter, love, compassion, awe, you know, whoa, uh, embarrassment, shame, pain, uh, you know. And that, uh, in some sense has broadened the taxonomy of emotions. We used to think of six, now there are probably twenty distinct states in the mind, and that's where the field is heading, is to really start to think about physiological patterns, brain patterns of, of these distinct states. And, and I'll tell you, um, the hardwiring question, I mean, it's hard science to do, right? Just to imagine videotaping people from five different countries, getting their emotional expressions, and then making sense of them. Uh, it used to take one hour to code the facial muscle movements of o- of one minute, right? So this is slow science, and I would really encourage listeners, uh, and viewers to go to alancowan.com. And I had a grad student at Berkeley, Alan Cowan, who, you know, [laughs] he's a computational genius, and he looked at our old science and said, "We can use AI to code the face." And he did it with Google engineers. He coded a hundred and forty-four... uh, two million videos from a hundred and forty-four

3. 8:11 – 11:05

   Sponsors: Joovv & Helix Sleep

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner8:11

      cultures and sixteen facial expressions. Uh, seventy-five percent overlap across cultures in how we show awe at fireworks, concentration on a test, you know, laugh at friends. So right now I would say fifty to sixty percent is hardwired as part of who we are in our evolutionary history, and then the rest is subject to variation in interesting ways.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman8:38

      I would like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health. Now, in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, red light, near-infrared, and infrared light have been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health. These include faster muscle recovery, improved skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision. Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there, but what sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near-infrared, and infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about ten to twenty minutes per session, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Joovv, they're offering up to four hundred dollars off select products for listeners of this podcast. To learn more, visit Joovv spelled J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman. Again, that's J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and on other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. When we aren't getting great sleep on a consistent basis, everything suffers, and when we are sleeping well and enough, our mental health, physical health, and performance in all endeavors improve markedly. Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night. How soft it is or how firm it is all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it will ask you questions such as, "Do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach?" Maybe you know, maybe you don't. "Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?" Things of that sort. You answer those questions, and Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk, D-U-S-K mattress. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for more than four years now, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.

4. 11:05 – 15:36

   Emotion, Motor Movement & Language

   1. AHAndrew Huberman11:05

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   2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner11:32

      I'm gonna ask a question that may or may not be possible to answer.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman11:37

      Yeah. [laughs]

   4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner11:37

      But if anyone could, it would be you. And it's not a test. Here's w- what I'm thinking. The relationship between emotions and what we call motor patterns, movement-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman11:47

      Yeah

   6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner11:47

      ... is obviously very close, right? Disgust or recoil.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman11:50

      Yeah.

   8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner11:51

      Um, we'll explore awe, um, anger, et cetera. And then there's this other node, which is language, right? So we have like emotions, motor, language.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman12:02

      Right.

   10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:03

       Obviously, those can't be dissociated.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman12:05

       Yeah.

   12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:05

       But can we imagine somebody, let's just like hypothetical person who can

   13. AHAndrew Huberman12:12

       Keep their body very still while they're angry and be very articulate. That includes not moving their hands. We'd probably think perhaps that person's, like, sociopathic, but-

   14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:24

       Yeah

   15. AHAndrew Huberman12:24

       ... that's not the picture I'm trying to paint. Then on the other extreme, you can imagine somebody who, um, is very angry and is gesticulating a lot and moving we... Like, we can immediately say, "Yeah, that make, that makes sense." And we could do this for any emotion.

   16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:40

       Yep.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman12:40

       Right? So how should we think about emotion as an experience and how it's expressed along these three axes-

   18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:48

       Right

   19. AHAndrew Huberman12:48

       ... right? Which is motor, language, and then the emotion itself.

   20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:53

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman12:53

       I feel like without, um-

   22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner12:55

       Yeah

   23. AHAndrew Huberman12:55

       ... conceptualizing that, I, as a true novice of this, right? This isn't my area of-

   24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner13:00

       Yeah

   25. AHAndrew Huberman13:01

       ... of, of understanding or expertise. I can't really understand what an emotion is. But if I c- understand how those are linked, may- maybe that's a, a portal into that.

   26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner13:11

       Yeah, no, I, I mean, it's a profound question, Andrew, and, and it's central to our field, which is, you know, the... And, and I appreciate it coming out of your scientific background of studying other mammals and other species and, and, and there are these motor patterns that you see in emotion around the world. When you soothe a child that's crying, right, you're gonna bring it in close and caress and touch and have emotion. When you're, you know, when you're, uh, fighting a rival or when you're, you see rotten food, you're gonna... That motor pattern will be there. You know, and that's part of our research, that seventy-five percent of that is this motor pattern of facial musculature and body and skeletal muscles and how we respond to the emotional events of life. And then we have this massively complicated, you know, conceptual system that puts words to experience, and that's mainly what we study in psychological science is just, "Oh, I'm feeling angry or ashamed or embarrassed or love or compassion." And we know, and, and your question points to this, like, very often they're disconnected, right? The motor pattern and the language we use and how I would interpret it in another person. Uh, on balance, they correlate point two, so they're just weakly. They're kinda these streams of behavior that pa- are just part of who we are, right? Our motor patterns and language. And there are a lot of ways to think about it. You could think about cultures that value being calm, like a lot of East Asian cultures. Be calm. Don't disrupt things. Don't blurt out. Don't protest, right? And, and you'll see this disconnect. Um, you could think about certain people who, they just are more authentic, and their motor patterns come out in expressions, and they will tell you how they feel. Uh, so it's a central problem that we grapple with. And then I love your, your third part of this equation of emotion science, which is the feeling, the emotion. Michael Pollan is right, you know, this new book on consciousness, the conscious feeling of something. We think we can get it to it with words. I don't think so.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman15:26

       Mm-hmm.

   28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner15:27

       You probably wouldn't either, right? S- studying the other species you've studied, right? Uh, it's some weird mixture of everything that's happening in your body.

5. 15:36 – 24:10

   Measuring Emotion; Studying Awe

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner15:36

      And ironically, f- the emotion or the feeling is still one of the uncharted territories [chuckles] of our field is why, as these complicated motor patterns take, unfold and words are unfolding and images and memories and visual things that you study, how does that all come together in my feeling of compassion or awe? And we barely know. You know, we just, we don't know.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman16:03

      Every once in a while, I'll try and think about a concept from way outside of standard science.

   3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner16:08

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman16:08

      Like the chakras or something.

   5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner16:10

      Yeah. [laughs]

   6. AHAndrew Huberman16:11

      And it's kind of interesting, right? I mean-

   7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner16:13

      Yeah

   8. AHAndrew Huberman16:13

      ... even, even if just if one looks at it just purely as a Western scientist, this idea that maybe there's a confluence of, of nerves and of vasculature and stuff that makes you feel kinda, like, rooted at, like-

   9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner16:25

      Yeah

   10. AHAndrew Huberman16:26

       ... and, and calm, right? Versus, like, up in your head.

   11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner16:30

       [laughs]

   12. AHAndrew Huberman16:30

       Uh, I've been, um, watching this really interesting Instagram channel. It's a woman who does voices for cartoons.

   13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner16:37

       [laughs]

   14. AHAndrew Huberman16:37

       And she has the most incredible understanding of voice. And she's commenting a lot of the time on people in shows that I don't watch, but they have little excerpts of where, like, I guess there's this doctor on the, this... It's like an ER type show. It's like a revisiting of the, the show ER. But she talks about how as he's matured from season to season in his role on the show, and he's mentoring, how she literally talks about how, um, his larynx and pharynx are, how he's controlling those differently as he matures. And then when he has a breakdown, how the, the voice moves further up into his head and what, uh, what that's about. And I, and so I was thinking about this. I'm like-

   15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner17:16

       [laughs]

   16. AHAndrew Huberman17:16

       ... you know, here's somebody that's a very unique, uh, you know, window into all of this. But we sort of know this intuitively. Like, when we're excited, like, there's this kinda rising from the bottom, and when we're relaxed, everything just kinda sinks down to a, the diaphragmatic breathing and things.

   17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner17:32

       Yeah.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman17:33

       As a scientist who studies emotion, how do you sort of decide what, what, uh, which lens to look at things through? Um, because a lot of the stuff I'm talking about might sound a little esoteric, but it's actually the stuff that's easiest to measure.

   19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner17:46

       Yeah.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman17:47

       Presumably, you can quantitatively measure, like, breaths per minute when somebody's looking at an awe-inspiring image versus, like, a trivial image.

   21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner17:56

       I love your reference to chakras and, you know, the older I get, uh, you know, I've been doing emotion science for thirty-four years or -five years. It's good to think about the other traditions. You know, we wouldn't have thought about the breath, the power of the breath, uh, without the contemplative meditation traditions that you've in part tested and Richie Davidson and others. And lo and behold, the breathDeep exhalation activates the vagus nerve, calms us down. That activation of the vagus nerve gives people a sense of warmth in your chest, which kind of sounds like the heart chakra and all the speculation around how your soul is in your heart. Well, there's a neurophysiological correlate of that. Uh, I love the paintings of Alex Gray, the psychedelic artist. Like, if you want an image of what our neurophysiology is as it synchronizes in love, you could... It's pretty close or it's interesting, right?

   22. AHAndrew Huberman18:50

       Mm-hmm.

   23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner18:51

       So it's good to find inspiration in that. One of the great things about the science of emotion, and, and I brought these tools into the study of awe, you know, which is we have learned a lot about how to measure emotion. You know, you can measure it with facial muscles and gaze patterns and coloration of the face and breath patterns and, you know, different measures of vagal tone, uh, and immune system activation and activation in the gut, and of course, brain activation and the voice, which is one of my favorite modalities. I learned this in some sense from Darwin. Darwin's expression of emotion in man and animals is in my view, and we're just publishing a paper on this, uh, on everything that he said about human emotion. Fifty-three emotions annotated with eight modalities of expressive behavior. I wrote it with, uh, Darwin scholar Frank Sulloway, who knows everything about Darwin. And I choose how to study an emotion based on what's, what's happening out in our lives, in our... the phenomena out there, right?

   24. AHAndrew Huberman19:56

       Mm-hmm.

   25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner19:56

       So if you're studying awe, you should get people around big trees or in musical concerts or in museums, right? Uh, if you're-- I studied embarrassment early in my career and modesty, and I'm like, "I gotta study young men teasing each other," 'cause we embarrass each other, you know, intentionally.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman20:15

       Oh my goodness. We have to hear about that-

   27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner20:16

       Yeah. So-

   28. AHAndrew Huberman20:17

       ... that, that work again.

   29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner20:18

       You know. [chuckles]

   30. AHAndrew Huberman20:18

       It's become very relevant nowadays because of the-
6. 24:10 – 29:27

   Horizons, Small to Vast, Shifting Perspective

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner24:11

      you know, just in the spirit of your questions, it's like, "Well, what should I really do here?" Right? I could stay in the lab, but it's like, no, you know, we gotta go do stuff, you know, that, that, uh... My dream study was to, like, have a participant come inAnd, and engage a conversation, the other participant is Shaquille O'Neal, right? And it's like seven foot two, three hundred and fifty pounds. You'd be like, "Whoa," but couldn't do that. So, uh, so there... It's been fun. It's been a wild ride.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman24:37

      And so many thoughts. Uh, first one, um, I'm lucky I didn't rotate through your lab because I, uh, would have never become a neuroscientist, but I'm unlucky-

   3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner24:45

      We're glad you, you missed that opportunity.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman24:47

      But I'm, but I'm unlucky because it would have been so much fun to... 'Cause I-- while I loved the, the wet lab, as they call it, getting into these experiments would just be incredible. Couple things. Uh, the Shaquille O'Neal thing. I-

   5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:01

      Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman25:01

      Um, you know, I think we're all moved by these, uh, I guess they used to call them Make a Wish Foundation things, where a kid who sadly is dying gets some last wish, and it's a tragic circumstance, but then you get to observe these kids and-

   7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:15

      Oh, man

   8. AHAndrew Huberman25:15

      ... most importantly, they get to experience something that they never could have imagined happening. Like-

   9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:20

      Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman25:20

       Like a Shaquille O'Neal walking in.

   11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:22

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman25:22

       I feel like that's probably happened or something.

   13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:24

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman25:24

       And I think what we're witnessing in those moments has to be awe. Like, they can't believe that this human or this event, whatever it is that they, they wish for, is happening there. And so it's sort of layers upon layers of... There's like a grief component for those of us watching.

   15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:36

       Well put.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman25:37

       But a huge aspect of the, of just how touching it is, is the fact that, like, for those moments, they're not thinking about their mortality. And no-

   17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:48

       Yeah

   18. AHAndrew Huberman25:48

       ... kid should have to think about their mortality, right?

   19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:51

       Yeah.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman25:51

       I mean, even as I talk about it, it's like-

   21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:52

       Yeah. It's profound.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman25:54

       Yeah. It's just, it's like o- there's an overwhelming in the opposite direction, right?

   23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner25:57

       Yeah.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman25:58

       That's an, uh, a particularly, uh, complicated and, and interesting, uh, case where you've got two things colliding, right? Because I feel like awe is so life-affirming.

   25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner26:09

       Yeah, it is.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman26:11

       And, uh, anyway, that's just a- an obser- an observation, but horizons are something that have fascinated me for a long time-

   27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner26:16

       Yeah

   28. AHAndrew Huberman26:16

       ... as a vision scientist.

   29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner26:17

       Yeah.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman26:17

       Because when we see a horizon, our visual, um, angle widens.
7. 29:27 – 33:53

   Tool: Awe Walk

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner29:27

      health. Old people go out on an awe walk once a week for eight weeks, seventy-five years old or older, and all we ask them to do is to go from small to vast in how they looked at things. You know, look at a tree, look at a leaf, go out to the pattern of leaves. It brought them awe and less physical pain, uh, over eight weeks, and now we're finding six years later better brain health, right? So small to vast is a big part of it.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman29:53

      I'm, um, struck by the, by the awe walk, um, and, and I know this comes up in your book and elsewhere, and you've done a lot of research on this. Uh, for those listening, um, what would an awe walk look like, and, um, what are some of the health benefits? You just mentioned a few that have, that have been observed both in the short and the long term.

   3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner30:10

      Yeah. Thank you. You know, uh, we, we are a walking species. You know, it is just in our DNA to walk. We meandered from Africa all the wa- to all the continents. A lot of people, Rebecca Solnit writes about this, like walking is almost sacred. It's a kind of consciousness.Like you're saying, like, whoa, I'm, I'm picking up a vaster view of what's around me. And I, uh, decided to just create this awe walk, you know, and I did it for a meditation group, the, or Mindful Magazine. You just slow down. You-- A lot of people walk. Hundreds of, you know, tens of millions of people have regular walks in the United States. Uh, it's good for you, you know. So we just add it all, like, on your regular walk once a week in our study, uh, go somewhere you wouldn't ordinarily go. Go someplace that may surprise you. Uh, I walk around Berkeley a lot, and it's like, well, I'm gonna go past the little playground that my daughters played at when they were young and just feel that, you know, Codornices Park.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman31:18

      Yeah. With the rock slide [laughing] and the tunnel.

   5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:21

      Exactly.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman31:22

      I love that place.

   7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:22

      Near the rose garden.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman31:23

      And there's a secret... Should we give this away?

   9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:25

      Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman31:26

       There's a secret hiking trail-

   11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:28

       [chuckles]

   12. AHAndrew Huberman31:29

       ... through, it's actually through a private property's backyard.

   13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:33

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman31:33

       And they allow you to go through if you are quiet and you pick up your trash, and there's an incredible waterfall and place to stand at the top. There's a beam there. You've been there, I'm sure.

   15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:44

       Yeah. No, I know.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman31:44

       We can look out over this, what is kind of like a trench of tree... It's, it's a total transformation of one space to the next.

   17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner31:52

       It is.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman31:52

       If you look for it properly, I'm sure now it's on the internet, uh, it's in kind of swinging gates, not locked, and, uh-

   19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner32:00

       So hard to find

   20. AHAndrew Huberman32:01

       ... l- and there's a little monastery maybe nearby.

   21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner32:03

       Yep. [laughs]

   22. AHAndrew Huberman32:04

       And, um, and you might, and you might see me. A couple years ago, you would've seen me and, me and my dog, but you might see me, uh, eating a slice of pizza from the cheese board sitting on that log. I spent a lot of time there.

   23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner32:13

       I'm getting goosebumps, Andrew. That is just pure Berkeley. Thank you.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman32:17

       Yeah.

   25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner32:17

       So yeah. So in this study, awe walk, go on your walk, find a place that's gonna be a little surprising, where it may make you feel a little bit of childlike wonder. And it's interesting, no one's asked me this question, you know, your observation about small to vast, and we just said, "Slow down, deepen your breathing, sync it up with your, your walking," which you've studied empirically, the breath, and then, um, go from small to vast. You know, look at clouds. Look at the whole pattern of clouds. Just slow it down. Look at trees. Look at the light on the trees, and look at points of light, and then patterns of light. Look at... You know, I love walking past playgrounds. It's one of my favorite sources of awe. Listen to one laugh, and then listen to the whole symphony of laughter of kids, right? That's all. And they walk through, uh, they do that for half an hour. And what we find in that study is, is they become more vast in their consciousness. They're more aware in the photographs that they provided of what's around them. They feel more kindness over the eight weeks. They feel more awe over an eight-week period. It rises. And then the, the finding that was, you know, important for people who are elderly is less physical pain. You know, your body starts to ache when you're seventy-five, you know, uh, or earlier. And, and awe, I think, through the inflammation process, you know, and reducing it, caused less pain. You know, this dovetails with other health benefits. Awe is good for

8. 33:53 – 42:13

   Time Perception, Tool: Space-Time Bridging Meditation; Chimps, Vastness

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner33:53

      reduced inflammation, elevated vagal tone, reduced long COVID symptoms. We have people with long COVID, just a minute of awe a day reduced long COVID symptoms. It's good news, right? And, and there's so much science on it that I just f- now, I think medical doctors are starting to think like, "I'm gonna prescribe nature. I'll prescribe music through awe," right? Um, as a mechanism.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman34:20

      I have a lot of thoughts about, um, this going from, uh, small to large.

   3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner34:24

      Yeah, I'd love to hear them.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman34:25

      But before [laughs] I do, um-

   5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner34:28

      You've asked me twice. [laughs]

   6. AHAndrew Huberman34:28

      I have a, I have another question. I have another question. I think for a lot of people, um, including myself, we assume that awe is this kind of forgetting of ourself.

   7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner34:40

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman34:40

      Like s-

   9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner34:40

      Yeah

   10. AHAndrew Huberman34:40

       ... like getting outside of ourselves. But I'm starting to, to think based on the way you're describing it, that it's about being tethered to the larger picture.

   11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner34:49

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman34:50

       That it's not a, a g- yes, it's getting out of our heads, quote-unquote, but it's actually very much an embodied experience. It's very m- like it's almost like full body.

   13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:00

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman35:00

       And so now I'll answer your question.

   15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:02

       [laughs]

   16. AHAndrew Huberman35:03

       Uh, this is usually where people start putting in the comments like, "You talk too much. Let your, your guest talk." But I'm trying, folks. He asked me.

   17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:10

       Twice.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman35:10

       So you asked me a question, I'm gonna answer it. Anyone that knows me, you know, if I... Okay, so I've thought about this, uh, this relationship between visual aperture and a time perception for a long time.

   19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:21

       Oh.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman35:21

       This is my, my deepest-

   21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:22

       Yeah

   22. AHAndrew Huberman35:22

       ... obsession, and it, uh, gets a little bit into the book I'm writing, but it, but it, it's probably reserved for after there's some experiments. And, and I, um, to the fear of my podcast crew, I actually am considering going back into the lab to do the-

   23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:36

       [laughs]

   24. AHAndrew Huberman35:36

       ... this experiment. So we know what, what do we know for certain? We know for certain that when your visual aperture is small, like looking through a soda straw view or watch, um, maker type aperture, or, um, you're in a, let's just say a, it could be a pleasant or unpleasant text communication that's going back and forth, that your perception of time is different. You're fine slicing.

   25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner35:59

       Nice.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman35:59

       Those dot dot dots coming through.

   27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner36:01

       Yeah. It's just like this.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman36:02

       It feels like an eternity.

   29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner36:03

       Yeah.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman36:04

       And it's bi-directional with your, let's just call it level of alertness. It doesn't even have to be stress, but sympathetic nervous system, right? So if I'm in line at the store and, and I, I have some place to be, uh, my visual aperture shrinks, and then it feels like the person in front of me is taking forever.
9. 42:13 – 43:37

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner42:13

      changes the neurophysiology of the mind, default mode network starts to quiet down, activates vagal tone, and you do feel like you're tethered, as you said, to like music or a culture or a political movement or the team you love, right? And it's transcendent. Um, and if you look at where we are today, we need more of that. You know, we need to, to get our young people to be connecting to big things.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman42:41

      As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly fifteen years now. I discovered it way back in two thousand and twelve, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single scoop that's easy to drink, and it tastes great. It's designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy, and it does so by helping to fill any gaps you might have in your daily nutrition. Now, of course, everyone should strive to eat nutritious whole foods. I certainly do that every day. But I'm often asked, "If you could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be?" And my answer is always AG1, because it has just been oh-so-critical to supporting all aspects of my physical health, mental health, and performance. I know this from my own experience with AG1,

10. 43:37 – 50:04

    Consciousness, Collective Experiences & Brain Synchronization

    1. AHAndrew Huberman43:37

       and I continually hear this from other people who use AG1 daily. If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away six free travel packs of AG1 and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your subscription. Again, that's drinkag1 with the numeral one .com/huberman to get six free travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your subscription. I didn't expect that we would, uh, land here, at least not so early in the conversation. But there, you know, we, we've had Christof Koch on this, uh, podcast-

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:14

       Yeah

    3. AHAndrew Huberman44:14

       ... talking about consciousness, you know, incredible neuroscientist and, and really thinker.

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:18

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman44:18

       I mean, I've watched his career evolve over the years and, and he's continued to evolve his concepts of-

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:23

       Yeah

    7. AHAndrew Huberman44:23

       ... how to think about consciousness. And, um, and, you know, we'll hear nowadays about, oh, like maybe consciousness is outside the brain. And-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:31

       Yeah

    9. AHAndrew Huberman44:32

       ... I, I think if nothing else, our brains are important components in it. May-maybe not.

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:36

        Heck yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman44:37

        I don't know. I, I don't wanna do the experiment on myself to find out.

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:39

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman44:39

        Like if I was decerebrated [chuckles] or something, which basically means having your cortex removed, fo-folks. Sorry for the nerd speak. But the idea is connecting through time, like in our own lives-

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner44:50

        Yeah

    15. AHAndrew Huberman44:50

        ... is a very unique form of awe. So, like, if I hear a song and it reminds me when I was, like, fifteen, and then all of a sudden all the, the, the ma- as I call it, like the magic library come... That, that's how the brain works, right? It's like-

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner45:03

        Yeah

    17. AHAndrew Huberman45:03

        ... it's like a Harry Potter, like you take out a book, you see a subject, and then all of a sudden the library r- the books around it change. And so I'm thinking about the time we did this and the time we did that, and everyone has these notions. But it's very much linked to them. That's one form of linking up through time.

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner45:18

        Well put.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman45:18

        And then there's this other one where you feel something with someone else. You know you're connected in that moment, but there's this idea, forgive me for getting squishy on here, but there's this idea that maybe your past, present, and future is connected to their past and present-

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner45:37

        Yeah

    21. AHAndrew Huberman45:37

        ... and future.

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner45:38

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman45:38

        And when you... If you let yourself go there, no drugs required, if you let yourself go there, you're like, "Oh, we're part of this together," and th-that we're sort of moving more now as, as a, as a, a conscious fleet than as individuals.

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner45:53

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman45:53

        I think that's a very real experience even for people that are, like, very resistant to kind of the, like, even the language of, of collective consciousness-

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner46:01

        Yeah

    27. AHAndrew Huberman46:02

        ... and things like that. And I think concerts are where we've generally-

    28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner46:04

        Yeah

    29. AHAndrew Huberman46:04

        ... feel that.

    30. DKDr. Dacher Keltner46:05

        Yep.
11. 50:04 – 1:01:28

    Music, Concerts & Awe; Sparring, Transcendence

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner50:04

       right? Music, just syncring, uh, syncing up with each other, feeling like we're part of this vast group, sharing a sense of humanity, a sense that we all suffer in the same way or exalt in the same way, and it's profound. You know, I don't think we'll ever get this with science, but I love, you know... You know, I've had all these conversations about awe and, and musical awe. I'm like, "When's a time," and I could ask you this question, "when being at a concert has changed your life?"

    2. AHAndrew Huberman50:38

       Oh, I mean, they're some of the most important, not just memorable, but important experiences of my entire life.

    3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner50:44

       So tell me about one or two.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman50:45

       My sister listened to the Grateful Dead and Cat Stevens and all that kind of stuff.

    5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner50:49

       Uh-huh.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman50:49

       And from the first time I heard... People will immediately think bullet, bullet belts and Mohawks, but I was, I was a punk rock kid. I mean, I'll never forget, like, uh, my friend who's now well-known in the skateboard community, Jim Thiebaud-

    7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:04

       I know Jim.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman51:05

       You know Jim?

    9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:05

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman51:05

        He's a close friend of mine.

    11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:06

        I take saunas with Jim.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman51:07

        Do you?

    13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:08

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman51:08

        I texted with him this morning.

    15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:09

        Say hi.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman51:09

        We text each other every morning.

    17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:11

        Yeah.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman51:11

        The great Jim Thiebaud. He basically runs skateboarding. He's the dean of skateboarding, the quiet dean of-

    19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:15

        And good friends with Tommy Guerrero.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman51:16

        Good friends with Tommy Guerrero. Uh, Jim gave me my first cup of black coffee.

    21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:22

        [laughs]

    22. AHAndrew Huberman51:22

        He was the person who inspired me to, uh, to start journaling when I was 14. I, I was put on out of sympathy onto, uh, Thunder Trucks, and he, at the time, he was around the, the factory-

    23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:33

        [laughs]

    24. AHAndrew Huberman51:33

        ... which at that time was over in Third Street, where all the, uh, Hunter's Point, um, on Yosemite. But anyway, Jim gave me a tape, 'cause back then it was tapes, of a band called Krimp Shrine-

    25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:47

        Uh-huh

    26. AHAndrew Huberman51:47

        ... which is from Berkeley.

    27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner51:48

        Uh-huh.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman51:49

        Um, and, uh, they were on Lookout Records, which eventually... Were first releases of Green Day. I wasn't so much... Forgive me, I like those guys. Um, I know some of them, but, uh, I was sup... I heard that tape. It was like, "This is amazing."

    29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner52:01

        [laughs]

    30. AHAndrew Huberman52:02

        Like, "This is amazing." Like, "I've never heard anything quite like it."
12. 1:01:28 – 1:06:04

    Joe Strummer

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:01:28

       of this transcendent moment that, uh, of people crashing into each other. Mosh pits. [laughs]

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:36

       Yeah. [laughs]

    3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:01:36

       They are one of my favorite objects of study and awe, and mosh pits have a law, a set of laws to them. [laughs]

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:43

       Yeah, people have studied, like, the-

    5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:01:45

       The physics

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:45

       ... sort of the physics of it.

    7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:01:46

       Yeah, no.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:47

       Yeah.

    9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:01:47

       It's like, and you think you're crash, and you are. You're bruising yourself, you know. But there's something transcendent there about what we find.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:55

        I could be wrong, but I think, um, Raging Bull, I think the, the soundtrack was Clash inspired.

    11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:00

        Was it really?

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:01

        There's something about it in the documentary, which I highly recommend, uh, called The Future is Unwritten-

    13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:05

        Uh-huh

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:05

        ... which is the, the Joe Strummer thing where some, there's some link up between The Clash. I think Scorsese says, you know, The Clash inspired the soundtrack to Raging Bull or something like that.

    15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:14

        Really?

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:15

        Anyway, he's a big Clash fan, so, um-

    17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:17

        Nice.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:17

        Or, yeah, so-

    19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:18

        All right, Andrew, I get to ask you one more question.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:19

        Yeah, yeah.

    21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:20

        So why is Joe Strummer a person of moral beauty to you? One of the sources of awe is we're amazed by people's courage and strength and kindness and justice, so why Joe Strummer?

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:32

        Oof, man. All right, I'm gonna try and keep this brief.

    23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:35

        [laughs]

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:35

        Um, I mean, just to give you a sense of how, h- what an impact he's had on me, I mean, I've always worn these button-down black shirts even before I was public facing, um, 'cause I saw him do a show, um, a Mescalero show. I wasn't there, but he... I... And by the way, Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros I actually think is better than The Clash.

    25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:02:57

        Right.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:58

        Clash was a short run. It was only five years.

    27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:03:00

        Yeah.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:01

        Only five years-

    29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:03:02

        Yeah

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:02

        ... pretty much, and then they're done. So it's one of those where there's Clash and then, and then he came back with the Mescaleros and just incredible... I mean, they're masterpieces.
13. 1:06:04 – 1:12:41

    Inhibitors of Awe, Self-Focus & Narcissism

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:04

       what a true feeling feels like.

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:06:06

       Yeah. Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:06

       And he knows what a false feeling feels like, and he's only interested in truths, period.

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:06:13

       And that's the challenge of the science that I'm part of, is exactly that. It's like there are all these layers to meaning and representation, and, you know, and we try to figure out true moments of awe with all of our measures, and, and it is this, like, it's all coming together as a, uh, a package that tells us it's happened.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:32

       So we can think about things that promote awe. The awe walk, going small to large aperture, maybe back again.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:06:38

       Yeah. Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:38

       You know, like, I guess we shouldn't assume that it's unidirectional. You know, coming back into our home after something big is-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:06:44

       Ah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:45

       There's nothing like that, right? The dog, the kids, the-

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:06:48

        Yeah

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:49

        ... the, the spouse, the whatever, you know? Like, the, those little things, the plants, even, you know, the, the, the, you know. So it runs both ways. It's no fun, but we should probably talk about some of the inhibitors of awe.Because as I step back from what we're talking about today and I think, okay, language, it can be part of it, but it can also in, uh, molecular biology or genetics, we call it a dominant negative. It's like a gene that basically suppresses a set of functions. [chuckles]

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:07:16

        A ton of stuff, yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:16

        There's a joke around molecular labs and neuroscience labs that you'd be like, "That person's a dominant negative."

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:07:21

        [laughs]

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:21

        You know? [laughs]

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:07:22

        I now have a new phrase I can use.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:24

        Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You don't wanna be called a dominant negative. Uh, I call people that in my head a lot online. I go, "Oh, man, that person's dominant negative. They're not contributing to the greater good. They're just like..." So there's, you know, language can be that, um, or be neutral, be positive. It can definitely be that. And then there's something about being over-identified with self. You know, I... So on the recommendation of Tim Armstrong, someone you wouldn't associate with the Grateful Dead, he was like, "You gotta listen to the Grateful Dead." And I was like, "What? I didn't... What?" Says Tim, the Tim Armstrong, transplants Rancid, Operation Ivy, telling me I should listen to Grateful Dead. He's a big-

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:03

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:03

        He's a huge music fan of all sorts of things.

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:05

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:07

        I said, "Why?" And he said, uh, he said, "They're punk rockers." And I said, "How? [chuckles] What are you talking about?" And he said, he said, "Yeah, they, they played a different show every night. That's how they're..." I'm not gonna keep doing his... I can do a pretty decent Tim for those. Uh, but apparently they're-- the, the people that followed them, that was a big part of it. It was all-

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:31

        Oh, yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:31

        ... all, all new, right?

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:33

        Every show was unique.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:34

        Started getting really into listening to Grateful Dead in the last couple years, and then I started listening to documentaries, biographies of them.

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:42

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:42

        And there's this amazing moment in one of them, I can't remember which, where somebody says, "What killed it? What killed the collective of music?"

    28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:51

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:51

        Like that, that feeling. And, uh, the answer someone gave was cocaine. And then the question was-

    30. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:08:59

        Yeah
14. 1:12:41 – 1:13:52

    Sponsor: Function

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:12:41

       you know, or thinking about money, it countervails awe. So yeah, I, I think, you know, that's why awe is important for our times. We are in this, for various reasons, this period of too much self-focus. Uh, it's costing young people. It makes them anxious, you know. And they gotta, they gotta, they gotta go dance. They gotta hear some music. They gotta share stuff and go backpacking or whatever it is, you know, and just to get out of the self.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:08

       I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function. Function provides over one hundred and sixty advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health. This snapshot gives insights into your heart health, hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans. Function not only provides testing of over a hundred and sixty biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, it also analyzes these results and provides recommendations for improving your health from top doctors. For example, in a recent test with Function, I learned that some of my blood lipids were slightly out of range. As a result, I decided to start supplementing with nattokinase, which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol,

15. 1:13:52 – 1:19:03

    Sports, Collective Effervescence

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:52

       and it did. In a follow-up test, I could confirm that this strategy worked. My blood lipids are now back where I want them, in range. Comprehensive lab testing of the sort that Function offers is so important for health. And while I've been doing it for years, it's always been overly complicated and expensive. But now with Function, it's extremely easy and affordable. To learn more, visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code Huberman for a fifty dollar credit towards your membership. The example you gave of sports earlier I think-

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:14:21

       Yeah

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:22

       ... is, is an important one, um, only because I think some people, not me, but some people will like, "Oh, I don't really wanna go camping or backpacking."

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:14:31

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:31

       I do. Uh, I spend as much time in Yosemite as I can. The dancing concert, you know, may- maybe that's not for them. I do think... I'm not a big professional sports fan.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:14:39

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:39

       Um, I like a few things, but, but it is kind of interesting to put this lens on like when I see a game, one of our members of our podcast team that's not here today is, like, just obsessively excited about professional football-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:14:54

       Yeah

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:54

       ... and, uh, Seattle Seahawks.

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:14:56

        Yeah. [laughs]

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:56

        So this was a good year for him. [laughs] And I have to believe that when he goes to see his favorite team play in the Super Bowl and win the Super Bowl, that it's not just about his relationship to the team.

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:06

        It's transcendent.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:06

        It's about, it's about being a kid and, and everyone else there in a Seahawks jersey is like, they have, they must feel a connection.

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:16

        Totally.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:17

        Because they, presumably the super fans know that the other super fans know the history.

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:21

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:21

        They know how important this is.

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:22

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:22

        They know all the trials and tribulations of the team, and on and on. And so it's, um, gosh, it's so different. I'm just realizing, like, it's the, it's the furthest thing from, like, doing a PhD in the sciences.

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:34

        [laughs]

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:35

        Folks, doing a PhD in the sciences is a lot of fun. It's a hell of a lot of work, and there's nothing else quite like it. I- it's irreplaceable.

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:42

        It is.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:42

        I wouldn't r- redo it for, any other way. But it is a very, like you're... it's a very solitary thing.

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:15:48

        It is.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:48

        Like you don't, you don't even cross, you cross the finish line, your advisor's there, your family comes, but it's, it's like it is a tunnel like this big. Going to the Super Bowl to watch your favorite team play is, you're going through that, that tunnel with, you know, millions of people.

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:16:03

        One of the joys of awe science, you know, we gathered stories of awe from twenty-six countries, and it's one of my favorite parts of this research. And this is like India and Brazil and Poland and Chile and Mexico and Japan and Korea, South Korea and Russia. I mean, everybody. We brought them in, got these stories. You know, like what is vast and mysterious? What gives you goosebumps? What's amazing or awesome to you? And when you get stories from Brazil or Argentina, they're gonna write about [laughs] they're, they're gonna tell you about football, you know. And, you know, when you get stories from parts of the United States, they're gonna talk about, you know, American football and baseball. You get stories from Boston, it's, there's gonna be a Red Sox story. And we have not studied sports in my emotion science because most emotion scientists are not good athletes. They're picked last in grammar school. They're grouchy about sports, and yet it's super emotional. And I will tell you a story that has science and, uh, personal wisdom. Uh, as I s- I gathered these stories, like, God, you know, part of collective effervescence, just like Taylor Swift or being in a punk mosh pit, is also sports. And, and just like, uh, it is awesome to follow a sports team and be there live. And there's this great obscure sociology paper that said, "Being a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers is like being in a religion because you have your rituals, they have these towels they f- they sing around. You think of yourself as the Steeler nation. They talk about godlike experiences on the field. They have these spiritual moments where in freezing days they'll take off their clothes and cheer and cry together." Uh, and I was teaching this recently, and there were two Steeler fans in the audience, and they're like, "That's exactly it, but I'll tell you more. Like, everywhere you go, if you're a fan, a Steeler fan, there are Steeler bars that you can go to. [laughs] And when the Steelers play, they're gonna be Steelers fans. And if you're a kid and the Steelers lose, somebody who's old will tell you, 'I remember when we lost in 1983, and we'll recover. We'll...'" You know, we'll have this expansion of time. It was so rich to me. You know, it was like, we love sports. You know, sports, the Olympics are old. They're three thousand years old. The ball court games in the Maya, you know, in the Mayan traditions are, were amazing ways to gather community and, and become collective, right? So, you know, uh, it was really eye-opening for me just to sense the awesomeness of sports. And one of my great joys of writing the book was to talk with Steve Kerr, who was coaching the Warriors at the time. He's a righteous guy, you know. Uh, he is a, a person of truth, and just getting a sense of like how awesome

16. 1:19:03 – 1:29:51

    Social Media & Online Life, Social Community

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:03

       it is to... I mean, for him to coach a game, and the Warriors were in this amazing period, and look up into the stands and ten thousand people are dancing [laughs] because of your t- coaching, you know. I was likeThat's pretty good. So

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:17

       Yeah, he's really tapped in, isn't he?

    3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:18

       Yeah, he is.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:19

       He's a meditator and wildlife experience and um

    5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:23

       Yeah. And trauma early, you know.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:25

       His dad.

    7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:26

       Losing his dad.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:26

       Yeah.

    9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:27

       And, and that orienting him to what really matters.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:31

        I'm thinking about the things that inhibit awe-

    11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:33

        Yeah

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:33

        ... but I'm also thinking about solutions.

    13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:36

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:36

        You know, it sprang to mind that, you know, uh, it's, it's funny. Sometimes I get tagged to, like, ice baths for some...

    15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:42

        [laughs]

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:43

        Look, look, folks, that was whim, right? I mean, that was whim. I mean, sure, I've done some cold plunges. I like to do the cold.

    17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:47

        I gotta do them. They sound good.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:48

        Yeah, it's fun. I mean, you know, it, it's psychologically painful, and you feel better afterwards. And, um, it'll make you, it'll make anyone mentally stronger because cold is a-

    19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:19:58

        Yeah

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:58

        ... universal stressor. Um, but you know, it, it gets kind of a bad rap 'cause mostly 'cause people don't like doing it. Everyone loves the sauna. It's kind of funny. Everyone's cool with sauna.

    21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:20:08

        I love the sauna, yeah.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:08

        And the Finns love the sauna.

    23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:20:10

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:10

        And it's a social thing for them. And one thing that I think has been overlooked, and it just sprang to mind now-

    25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:20:15

        Yeah

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:15

        ... um, so I overlooked it as well, is that, you know, there's this thing that's wonderful about experiences that we can have with other people, but that we can also do on our own. And when we do them on our own, we s- we are-- no other people are doing it on their own too. And so it's kind of a d- it's a different version-

    27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:20:31

        That's cool

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:31

        ... of what we've been talking about. And, you know, the, quote-unquote, "health and wellness community," they take some heat, like people went, "Oh, it's all about supplements or all about cold plunges," you know, and I've got a, like a, like a particular finger I hold up when I hear that. But it's not about that.

    29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:20:47

        Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:47

        There's this deeper layer-
17. 1:29:51 – 1:34:29

    Designing Cities & Places for Awe

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:29:51

       has been privileged, uh, and that's not human nature. We, we are not all trolls and, you know, tracking people and, and, you know, and that is a degradation of who we are, and I think science would guide us in, in many ways to a-avoid that. So I think it's... We're in this big reflection period about how to redesign, and I hope, I hope they listen to the social science. It has a lot of good things to say.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:19

       I've had this thought, uh, that the way social media is now-

    3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:30:23

       Yeah

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:24

       ... it's the direct opposite of awe-

    5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:30:25

       Yeah

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:25

       ... for the following reason.

    7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:30:28

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:29

       Awe-inspiring experiences, you never forget 'em. You never forget them. I mean, we could spend 15 hours talking about first concert, second concerts, first love, first kiss, you know, first get, breakup, you know, and which is its own form of awe, like-

    9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:30:45

       Yeah

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:45

        ... shit, like if [chuckles] this can... There's this flip side to this love thing, right? You know, I mean, there's all that. I sometimes do the test of myself. I go, "Okay, I spent, I don't know how much time on social media yesterday, but do I remember anything specific?"

    11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:30:58

        [laughs] No.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:59

        I, I don't think I do. I don't think I remember anything specific.

    13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:31:03

        [laughs]

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:04

        But there was tons of sensory input. A fair amount of time, I remember a damn thing. And so that's scary.

    15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:31:12

        It is scary.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:13

        'Cause the only thing that resembles that-

    17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:31:16

        Yeah

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:16

        ... is drugs of abuse, and I, I'm very fortunate that I don't have a drug thing. I never, I never felt drawn to them in a way that I felt like I couldn't escape from them or same with alcohol. Um, easy, easy, easy clip for me, um, to not drink, um, I will say. I real- but my friends who have had real-

    19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:31:35

        Yeah

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:35

        ... challenges with alcohol and substances-

    21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:31:39

        Yeah

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:39

        ... they'll tell you, like-It's this super compelling thing, but then you don't have anything to say about it or for it. It's just a space-time disintegration and not the space-time disintegration of psychedelics, which may have some benefits. We'll talk, we'll talk about that. So to me, that's the problem with social media-

    23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:31:59

        Yeah

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:59

        ... is there's nothing memorable about yesterday's social media. And I do think that the people who build it want it to be impactful on the day-to-day, uh, scale, but also-

    25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:32:10

        Yeah

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:10

        ... of course they'd want it to be memorable.

    27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:32:12

        Yeah. [laughs] Let's hope.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:13

        They should... Some kid should be talking about like Lor- like you're talking about Laurel Canyon.

    29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:32:17

        Yeah, I know.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:18

        But I don't know if they're gonna feel that way.
18. 1:34:29 – 1:35:44

    Sponsor: Our Place

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:34:29

       out about AI helping medical doctors, and it's, you know, and the writer of this book coming out of UC San Francisco is like, "It's like having the best brain trust about medicine right with you all the time. Who wouldn't want that?" You know? And I think let's remember that, and yeah, I think that's the challenge is to have these AI and the devices that it is manifest on get us to what's awesome, and, uh, we'll see. You know, I hope so.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:34:57

       I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFAS or forever chemicals are still found in eighty percent of non-stick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products. As I've discussed before on this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's very important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of Our Place. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin-free. I particularly love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first non-stick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it uses pure titanium. That means it has no harmful forever

19. 1:35:44 – 1:43:05

    Embarrassment, Teasing; Collective Values

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:44

       chemicals, and it does not degrade or lose its non-stick effect over time. I cook my eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. Right now, Our Place is having their biggest sale of the season. You can save up to forty percent site-wide now through April twelfth. Just head to fromourplace.com/huberman. Again, that's fromourplace.com/huberman to save up to forty percent. Can we talk about embarrassment?

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:13

       Yeah. [laughs]

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:13

       And, and, uh-

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:14

       My favorite e-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:15

       And-

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:15

       My other favorite emotion-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:16

       And, uh-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:16

       ... where I began my career.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:17

       It was guys, right? Guys-

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:18

        Yeah

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:18

        ... specifically, uh, teasing one another. I definitely experienced that, um, and I definitely participated in it, uh, in a benevolent way. But it... The teasing that happens in groups of good male friends can be pretty brutal.

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:34

        Oh, yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:35

        But there's a pleasure in it most of the time.

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:38

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:38

        [laughs]

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:39

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:40

        So what's that about?

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:36:40

        I know. Well, you know, it, it all begins really in m- like when I started scientifically to depart from the Ekman canon, if you will, of those six emotions we talked about earlier, and I was doing a project in his lab, and we were startling people and studying the startle response, a seven-muscle movement motor pattern built into the nervous system, and I noticed people got embarrassed after they were startled unexpectedly. You know, you blast them with a noise out of the blue in the lab, and they'd be like, "Whoa, I think I spit and, you know, peed my pants," or whatever. And they show this response, and I took it to Ekman, and it's the blush, and people avert their gaze, and they look away, and they hide their face, you know. And he's like, "That's a motor pattern of emotion. You should go study it," and I did. And, and then I started to notice, and there's a really rich literature on that, that, and Darwin wrote about this, that a person's embarrassment is a signOf their commitment to the collective, right? Like, man, you know, called you by the wrong name or, you know, I farted in the yoga class or whatever it is, and I'm embarrassed. Like, I'm sorry, man, you know, I apologize. That really matters. And when you see people get embarrassed, you like them more, and you trust them more, and you give resources to them, and you think they're a good group member. And then it's like, man, you know, like I've played a lot of pickup basketball in my life, thousands of games, and you're banging into... And there's just a lot of teasing and taunting and, you know, people I admire, you know, great athletes tease and taunt, you know. It's just part of what we do when we're banging into each other. And I started to put it together, like, you know, the right kind of teasing within a collective, you're kind of provoking people to see if they care about the group, right? And then the wrong kind of teasing, which we documented in our labs, like that's bullying and harassment, and we can pinpoint, like that's inappropriate. You know, you're trying to... You're not keeping people in the group. You're excluding them or humiliating them. So we did this study, uh, it was one of my first studies. We brought four fraternity... We brought groups of frater- four, uh, fraternity guys in each interaction, uh, from this fraternity house at the University of Wisconsin, and we gave them each nicknames. Or we gave them each initials, and we had them make up nicknames based on the initials. So two, [chuckles] two letters of a nick were AD, and I'm not sure I can say what the nicknames were like, but it, you know, another drunk and it gets pretty profane. And so we let them tease each other, and they start teasing each other, and they are really... Like, this is young men coming out of a fraternity house teasing each other. There are funny stories. People got embarrassed. Uh, the, the stories and the teasing was kind of about like, I'm gonna accuse you of something that you shouldn't do in this group, right? Like pass out drunk naked, you know, in the streets of Wisconsin. Don't do that, right? And then they get embarrassed, and they say, "Ah, I'm not gonna do that." And what we found is the more that they em- got embarrassed, the better they liked each other 'cause it's, it's turning to this motor pattern of like, "Wow, I'm showing you that I care about what you're accusing me of, and I get embarrassed. You see that in me, we become closer." The, the guys who are better teasers and that were more playful and funny and made people aware of the norms that mattered to the group but not really humiliate people, those guys are more popular in the group, and that's been replicated, right? Just storytelling and, and ribbing each other and, and, and it was part of healthy group functioning. It's just embarrassing each other. You think about roasts, you know. It's the end of your career. You're gonna get the... Someone's gonna talk about your career. You're gonna get hammered. [laughs] And it's wonderful.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:40:53

        I fear that day.

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:40:54

        Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of this phenomenon of like we, we, we, we make fun of the people we love the most. Siblings are... You have big families with a lot of siblings tease each other like mad, you know, and they joke and they josh and they wrestle and they give each other noogies and they have nicknames for each other, again, to like make sure everybody's aware of, of what matters and how not to violate those rules. So, um, it was, it was fun research. It was... Meant a lot to me.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:41:25

        I bet. I mean, I grew up in a big, big packs of boys. I mean, on my street growing up-

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:41:30

        Yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:41:30

        ... and the skateboarding thing, and then science, it was a little bit different.

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:41:34

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:41:34

        Actually, when I came up, there was more of that. It changed-

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:41:37

        I know

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:41:37

        ... over time for g-

    28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:41:38

        Yeah

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:41:38

        ... I think for good reasons.

    30. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:41:40

        Yeah.
20. 1:43:05 – 1:47:50

    Male Friendship, Teasing

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:43:05

       of the brain through brain trauma, you fall off a motorcycle or, you know, fall off a ladder, you don't show embarrassment where you should. And they feel creepy, if you will, or just like, like, hey, they're not playing by the rules. So it's, it's a very subtle thing. Erving Goffman wrote a lot about it, the great sociologist. Like our embarrassment is telling people like, "I know what the rules are and I care about them. I'm committed to them." So your psychiatrist friend is right.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:33

       Along the lines of, of teasing-

    3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:43:35

       Yeah. [laughs]

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:37

       ... um, uh, someone I'm, I'm proud to call a friend who's also public facing, uh, Jocko Willink, who's also, it turns out, one of our... We're friends for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is that he grew up really into East CoastHardcore music

    5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:43:50

       Yeah

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:50

       Not, not a genre I, I gravitate towards, but there's some marginal overlap-

    7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:43:56

       Yeah

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:56

       ... um, uh, with the types of music. Uh, I mean, two-- we've gone to shows together and, um, he put something up, you know, every once in a while on social media, somebody posts something that-

    9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:05

       Yeah

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:05

        ... really lands, Naval or so- Jocko, and he's-- Jocko's a man of few words, so I'm gonna put more words to it than, than he was able to. Um, but the quote was something like, um, you know, "If you wanna understand..." And he's a former Navy SEAL.

    11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:19

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:19

        SEAL team operator, most people know, know that. But, um, "If you wanna understand, um, males in groups and healthy, uh, masculine friendship, uh, guys are gonna tease each other relentlessly in front of each other, but they'll never tease behind somebody's back, and they'll back the other person who they were just teasing in person-

    13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:42

        Yeah

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:42

        ... against the rest." You know, they'll buffer them against any kind of criticism. So that's a very interesting, um, kind of, uh, contrast there that I think is true.

    15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:51

        Yeah.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:52

        Like, y-

    17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:52

        Well put

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:53

        ... you know, it's not like you tease your friend behind his back.

    19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:55

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:55

        It's the, it's the teasing to his face that actually builds the bond.

    21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:44:58

        Yeah.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:59

        There's another piece of that, which is that you know that that person would back you if you're out of the room. And you know, a, a couple friends, all my friends come to mind, but a couple people who, who really think about and talk about this loyalty component, uh, Jocko was talking about there, Lex Fridman. You know, it's a, it's a critical component to, um, I'm sure female friendship too, although I only know my own experience, so, uh, to male friendship, which is that they can say anything to your face, even be h-harsh criticism, but you know that if you're out of the room, they're not gonna cut you down.

    23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:45:30

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:45:31

        They're gonna reserve that for when you're standing in front of them, thankfully.

    25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:45:34

        We documented that in the fraternity study that, you know, when you, when you tease somebody and you're like, "Hey man, do you see this guy's dance moves?" Or, "You see this guy shoot free throw," whatever it is, you're just making light of human foible and, and all the funny things that we do, and there's, there's, there's just this really subtle repair work where they're saying like, "I'm teasing you, but I know you got it, you know, and I'll support you." And I agree, I think that, you know, part of what teasing does is it says like, "What do we as a collective really care about?" And let's surface those norms in a light-hearted way, and we know together. And if, and if you make mistakes, you should be apologetic about it. But part of it also is just, uh, this sort of I got your back repair work that they did. Um, and it's profound. It, it... You know, it's interesting, I was kind of this shy kid. I was very small growing up, and kind of the teasing often crossed lines in high school, just, you know, bullying and so forth. And then I started to play basketball and, you know, uh, and I realized like a lot of it's just, just men making sure they know the, the rules of the game, you know, and, and showing also in those moments of the joys of laughing together, like, "I support you. I'm with you," right?

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:58

        Mm-hmm.

    27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:46:59

        Uh, what a sophisticated thing to do, um, compared to the, the alternatives.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:47:04

        I have a sister, so I was always struck by the brothers in my neighborhood.

    29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:47:06

        Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:47:07

        There were two in particular, like I would hear screaming outside, go outside. This older brother, his name was Peter, holding Michael's face in the sprinklers.
21. 1:47:50 – 1:54:33

    Isolation, Loneliness, Reemergence of Community

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:47:50

       had her own form of older sister kind of, uh, hazing to her younger brother. But there really does seem to be something critical about kind of defining the relationship with people one-on-one, in groups, versus when there's an outside threat.

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:48:05

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:05

       And, and not that we want outside threat, but-

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:48:07

       Yeah

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:08

       ... as long as we're talking about the sort of the, the, I don't wanna say disintegration, that's too pessimistic.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:48:13

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:13

       The sort of, um, gradual erosion of this collective feeling. I- is there less just kind of grouping up together and-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:48:21

       Yeah

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:21

       ... and doing things?

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:48:23

        Yeah, you know, I, um, ten years ago, uh, fifteen years ago, ten years ago, um, first there was the science of loneliness and isolation, John Cacioppo, uh, and then those who followed like, whoa, we are fragmenting, and we would spend much too much time al-alone, isolated, and then COVID hit, lockdown, et cetera. And our surgeon general, former surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, got it right, like, uh, it's an epidemic of loneliness. And I, as a social psychologist, you know, interested in these social emotions, I'm like, you know, you just look at the basic raw facts, like picnics are down by half. We don't go to movies like we used to. We don't, um, we don't listen to music together. We don't... Thirty-- The estimate is that thirty percent of meals in the United States, people eat them by themselves. You know, I eat a lot of my meals by myself. Um, we go on walks by ourselves. We don't go to church. Church is way down. Um, so the kind of the broad sociological trends are alarming on that fragmentation. But I think the young generation is putting it back together in really interesting ways. You know, we know from survey data that twenty-five-year-olds, thirty-year-olds are really interested in game nights. You know, those are coming back. They're interested in living together, coop-cooperative living. They're cooking more with each other.Value-wise, they care more about community than my generation. I was the great explosion of individualism, and they're kinda like, "You know, if I, I, if I choose a job, I wanna make sure I'm working with other people I like." I didn't even... I didn't think about that. I don't know if, you know. Uh, so I think it's coming back, and, and I love the signs of, you know, festivals are appe- reappearing now. The farmers market that I've talked about, the, you know, the dance groups that are now returning, contact dance. I, I mean, these ... Yoga studios. One out of eight Americans does yoga, you know. I do yoga two to three times a week.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:38

        That's so wild.

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:50:39

        It's amazing.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:40

        15 years ago, no one would've predicted that. Also, 15 years ago, no one would've predicted that, that the single ... We're being told that one of the single most important health interventions that women and men should do is, like, lift weights. The only people who lifted weights when I was growing up were, like-

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:50:54

        I know

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:54

        ... bodybuilders and preseason football players.

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:50:56

        Yeah. Is that true?

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:57

        And now-

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:50:57

        Lifting weights is-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:58

        I mean, you never wanna actually live this way, but if you, if you could only pick one form of exercise-

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:51:03

        Yeah

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:04

        ... to do once a week, that's what you would do. I mean, just in terms of bone health. If it's done properly, you probably get some cardiovascular benefit too, but just in terms of brain health. I mean, obviously you wanna do both, but-

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:51:15

        Yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:15

        ... resistance training is, clearly has a longevity benefit. But for the longest time, I mean, you just didn't see women in gyms.

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:51:21

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:21

        Very few, excuse me.

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:51:22

        And now it's-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:23

        You saw very few

    28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:51:23

        ... it's gone.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:23

        And if you did, they were sort of, they, you know-

    30. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:51:25

        Yeah
22. 1:54:33 – 2:01:18

    Psychedelics, Awe, Treating Trauma; Microdosing

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:54:33

       Like, I know that wouldn't, that wouldn't work. Um, I know that they would die. I, I know that, uh, you know. And so I think we can learn a lot from m- m- more, uh, simpler organisms and, and the sort of basic units of, of care-

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:54:47

       Yeah

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:54:47

       ... and community.

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:54:47

       Yep.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:54:48

       They're very similar.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:54:49

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:54:49

       I mean, it gets played out differently, but-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:54:50

       Yep. Well put

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:54:51

       ... but they're very similar, uh, 'cause, uh, obviously we, we evolved, uh, similar nervous systems, let alone sim- uh, similar needs. I would like to talk about psychedelics, if you're willing.

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:02

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:03

        I think there are two, at least two views of psychedelics.

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:06

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:06

        With the caveat that this is not a call for people to just start taking them, that-

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:10

        Yeah

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:11

        ... you know, these are powerful compounds that, um, people with psychosis or bipolar c-

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:16

        Yeah

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:16

        ... conditions in their family really, really need to be careful, and-

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:18

        Yeah

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:19

        ... a- and on and on.

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:20

        Absolutely.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:20

        Just be careful. I don't say that to protect myself. I say that to protect whoever's listening and watching, really. These are... It's no, no s- no small bump. It's a whole thing. So some people will say, okay, they just send you inward, and that's the opposite of what we're talking about. Like, getting-

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:37

        Yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:37

        ... all the awe inside, like, okay, that's... I mean, that's pretty extreme. Um, other people will say that their experiences with psychedelics allow them to come out of that experience and really have a, a felt... connection to people, to-

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:55:56

        Yeah

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:56

        ... plants, to animals, to life that is, um, profoundly positive for their feelings of connection.

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:56:03

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:56:03

        And seeing awe perhaps-

    28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:56:04

        Yeah

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:56:05

        ... a bit even in lots of things. So how should we think about psychedelics? And we should probably constrain the question a little bit. Like I'm not talking about MDMA, which is not a psychedelic. It's an empathogen. Ketamine is not a psychedelic.

    30. DKDr. Dacher Keltner1:56:16

        Yeah.
23. 2:01:18 – 2:08:36

    Looking Forward, Awe Design

    1. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:01:18

       Right. Wow

    2. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:18

       ... and on and on. So, um-

    3. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:01:20

       I hope people hear that.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:21

       Yeah, I hope they hear that. Um, I had the opposite experience as you. Um, I actually regret having done psychedelics when I was younger.

    5. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:01:28

       Mm.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:29

       Uh, they were terrifying.

    7. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:01:30

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:30

       I didn't have a good experience. I stopped, d-didn't go anywhere near them, and then later f- in a therapeutic setting, um, had a few experiences with them, not many, but that were immensely beneficial for me. Um, so kind of the opposite direction there. But what we're talking about now, about kind of, okay, you know, there's this problem with certain technologies, there's the, the cultural, the culture wars, there's the political wars-

    9. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:01:57

       Yeah

    10. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:57

        ... there's the actual war that's also going on right now. In a lot of ways, this resembles, likeThe '70s, '80s. There's not that... I mean, I remember a time when you had yuppies, and you had hippies, and you had punk rockers.

    11. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:02:06

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:06

        I mean, watch a John Hughes film, and it was like the idea was that it was like, "Oh, we're actually similar," right? You know?

    13. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:02:10

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:10

        So the extent to which those films like showed people, hey, like people were actually similar along certain dimensions as opposed to so different. But, you know, I, I wonder because I think about the, the not so recent and recent history of things, everything from breathwork, cold plunges, psychedelics-

    15. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:02:29

        Yeah

    16. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:29

        ... um, awe-

    17. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:02:29

        Yeah

    18. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:29

        ... music, the collective consciousness. I mean-

    19. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:02:31

        Yeah

    20. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:31

        ... it's gonna look different now, the same way that it, it looked different back then, right? Like I'm, I'm trying to s- get outside my Gen X self these days and think like, so what would it look like? Like I'm the old guy now. So what would it look like if these technologies, I just mentioned a few-

    21. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:02:51

        Yeah

    22. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:51

        ... but all of them, including social media, what would it look like if those were all used to the greatest benefit? Like, what would that look like? Can we be the open-minded parents of the '80s, you know? [chuckles]

    23. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:03:02

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman2:03:03

        Um, can we be the... C- yeah, like, because I feel like I can scream all day or about what I think about the science of this and that to younger people, but the only thing I actually have control over is, like, me. How do we, um, the, let's say forty to one hundred year olds-

    25. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:03:28

        [laughs]

    26. AHAndrew Huberman2:03:28

        Let's really lean it on the forty to seventy year olds.

    27. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:03:30

        Okay.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman2:03:30

        How do we create the environment so that younger people can flourish with these technologies as opposed to being like the parents of the '70s and '80s that are like, "Oh, they got long hair," and like, "What is this, like, punk rock thing?" Like, I don't wanna be that person. That sucks.

    29. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:03:49

        [laughs] Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman2:03:50

        I also don't wanna be the, and I see this a lot, unfortunately, people who are part of those movements, and then they, they're just, like, towing the party line because they're, like, wholeheartedly adhering to one political group without thinking about whether or not-
24. 2:08:36 – 2:13:34

    Campfires, Connection, Red Light

    1. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:36

       of mine when I met her was, like, really into CrossFit.

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:08:38

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:38

       And they would do barbecues, and they'd clean the gym.

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:08:40

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:40

       And they would dress up in costumes and stuff.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:08:42

       [laughs]

    7. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:42

       And I remember this is when I moved to San Diego to start my lab down there before I moved to Stanford, and, and I remember thinking, like, this is kinda crazy. Like, I went to the gym growing up. I start, uh, always since I was in my teens, and I'm like, "Really? You guys like social?" And they had this awesome social community. I know CrossFit has somewhat fallen out of favor now. I think the pandemic brought us into our isolation. You may be, uh, pleased to hear, I, I just thought of this. I can't remember, uh, I can't believe that I didn't, uh, remember this earlier. Uh, one of the things that Joe Strummer was famous for after The Clash, 'cause, you know, he went into the kind of void of, like-

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:19

       [laughs]

    9. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:19

       ... he, he wasn't doing anything. He, he, he wandered for a long time. He went down to Spain.

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:23

        Did he really?

    11. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:23

        Oh, he grew out a beard, moved to Spain.

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:25

        Uh-huh.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:25

        And, um-

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:26

        Cool

    15. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:26

        ... didn't tell anyone who he was, and they-

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:27

        [laughs]

    17. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:27

        ... they kinda realized who he was eventually. He was really searching, you know, his life had... He lost his brother to suicide, I believe.

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:33

        Mm.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:34

        Um, he ran the, uh, the Paris Marathon.

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:39

        [laughs]

    21. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:39

        It was kind of famous, I think while smoking a cigarette.

    22. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:41

        [laughs]

    23. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:42

        Uh, people always say, and I don't think he did any training. One thing that he was very well known for until his death was he would do campfires.

    24. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:50

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:51

        In Manhattan, he would take people down to the river, and, and he had some famous friends like Jim Jarmusch and, and, uh, you know, and, uh-

    26. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:58

        Mm

    27. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:58

        ... well-known people in-

    28. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:09:59

        Yeah

    29. AHAndrew Huberman2:09:59

        ... in that world. Uh, but he would invite whoever, and there were kids. You gotta see this documentary. It's so good. We'll put a link to it, uh, for-

    30. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:10:07

        Good
25. 2:13:34 – 2:17:19

    Life After Death; Acknowledgments

    1. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:34

       And, um, we probably would film it just 'cause it-

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:36

       You should do it

    3. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:37

       ... I gotta create content.

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:38

       My dream was to take that bus and to go to all the basketball courts of the country. Like, pick up-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:42

       That's your thing.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:43

       Yeah. Pickup basketball is the same thing. It's like people gathering, banging into each other, hugging it.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:48

       Would you do it?

    8. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:49

       Would I-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:49

       You could probably figure out an experiment that goes with it.

    10. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:51

        Well, my knees are the, the [laughs]

    11. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:53

        But Stanford just developed this way to regenerate cartilage-

    12. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:56

        Yeah

    13. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:57

        ... in humans, so.

    14. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:13:57

        Okay. Well, then I'll look into it. Yeah. I think it'd be... I, I love the idea.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman2:14:01

        Do you believe in life after death? I don't ask every guest that, by the way.

    16. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:14:05

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman2:14:05

        You're the only person I've ever asked that. Do you believe that something happens after all this?

    18. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:14:09

        I do. I do. Um, yeah, you know, and I write about this in Awe, when my brother Rolf passed awayColon cancer, uh, 55 or so, uh, you know, and I watched the whole transition and, you know, his, his battle against it and his acceptance and then his leaving, and I had this profound experience that night, you know, a, a transcendent experience. And I'm like you, you know, Andrew, it's like neurons and statistics and cells, and we can figure it all out and characterize everything, and it's like I saw space in a different way. I saw something alive in him. And then afterward, I had... A lot of people had this kind of grief experience of he was around, his voice, his hand was on my back. And I just thought for several years and still to this day of, you know, um, quantum reality and things beyond our three-dimensional, four-dimensional view of time and space and, uh, you know, those basic laws, uh, and that there is, uh, you know, consciousness may be patterns of, you know, magnetic, electromagnetic waves around our minds and bodies that are syncing up with other people that transcend the Newtonian world of the brain, and I believe that. And we d- I don't know how to study it. Uh, I sense it in life. I think a lot [chuckles] of other people do too, and so that keeps me open to it. And now I've moved from, you know, being as skeptical but open, you know, agnostic to like, yeah, there's something there that's beyond what we know, so I believe it.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman2:16:03

        Very cool. I hope you're right. I believe it too, but I, I just hope you're right. I sense you're right. Dacher, thank you so much for making the trip down here to talk with us today and, and share what you've been up to for all these years. Uh, you've had and continue to have a magnificent career. You know, it's, it's really hard to do really good science, and it's even harder to do really good science with a purpose. Uh, and you're doing that, and you continue to, and you just have a way about you that everyone now has, uh, been able to experience firsthand that, like, you really care. That's clear. You put a ton of thought into the work that you're doing. Uh, you've raised 25 professors [chuckles] which is no small feat, I'll tell you. That's a monumental feat, which means that the work will continue. And, um, and you're still going. And [laughs] I'm grateful for your book and, and that you're continuing to do this, and, um, I hope you take that trip to, uh, may-maybe if you can't do it around the entire country, you get, you know, hit some pickup basketball games [laughs] uh, 'cause I think there's something to be learned there for sure.

    20. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:17:17

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman2:17:17

        I, I sense it. And, and thanks for inspiring

26. 2:17:19 – 2:20:18

    Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter

    1. AHAndrew Huberman2:17:19

       me, and, and I know you've inspired a ton of other people. So we'll put links to everything that you discussed and to your book, um, but you've definitely inspired us to, to think more deeply about basically what it is to be human and where to take all this technology that we have-

    2. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:17:34

       Yeah

    3. AHAndrew Huberman2:17:34

       ... and this opportunity that we have and really do, uh, real good with it. So I'm very grateful to you. Thank you.

    4. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:17:40

       Well, thank you, Andrew. It's been an incredible conversation. Let's do more.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman2:17:44

       Definitely do it again.

    6. DKDr. Dacher Keltner2:17:45

       Yeah. Thank you.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman2:17:46

       Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Dacher Keltner. To learn more about his work and to find links to his books, including his book on awe, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review, and you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than thirty years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation, and of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab Podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab Podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one- to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Dacher Keltner. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science. [outro music]

Episode duration: 2:20:19