Dacher Keltner
speaker
526 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 3 Jun
Dacher Keltner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You know, if I hear running water, it activates parts of my heart, right, that calm me down.
If I hear birdsong, parts of the brain light up that feel rewarding.
If I smell certain scents, like the trees around here, that activates specific chemical processes in your brain that make you feel part of something larger, the ecosystem.
And that took us 10 years to figure out and you just put it in one sentence.
So thanks a lot, but you know, it, yeah, time and time again, we started to realize that moments of all in nature, moral beauty, music, et cetera, that nagging voice of the ego quiets down your to-do list and your sense of status and what it just quiets down.
In fact, the brain regions of the ego quiet down.
And importantly, what you said, which is you become more aware of how you're connected to larger things than you.
a musical tradition, gospel music, a social cause, the environment around you, the gardens.
That's really what's going on.
That is what's going on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's profound.
Yeah, I mean, you think about the Islamic tile patterns or the Mesoamerican basket weaving and sculptures and temples and our minds are wired to detect these sacred geometries of the visual world.
Yeah, but you feel struck by the facade of a cathedral or...
Some painting, I was lucky to be raised by a painter, my dad, who got me looking at paintings early in life and they changed my life.
And so, yeah, the visual world is a very rich realm of awe to explore.
Yeah.
And it's important because, you know, in this complicated time in American history, spirit and religion can divide.
And in some sense, as William James argued, underlying that is this feeling of the divine or mystical experience.
Showing 321–340 of 526 · page 17 of 27
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