Dacher Keltner

kind of accompaniment to awe, the feeling of warmth in the chest, which is your vagus nerve.

People tear up a lot, you know, it's just talking to some friends who's, you know, when you watch your children perform in school, you know, you just start weeping.

And that's a bodily response, awe, that tells us

in very interesting ways, this is a transcendent moment of the emotion.

That's so important because, you know, in the science of happiness that I've been part of for 30 years, we've studied pleasure and joy.

And now the field is getting interested in experiences that really are beyond our understanding, which we might think of as like meaning making.

And awe in some sense is the quintessential experience of like, I don't understand what

why my brother passed away or what is life or the cycles of life and death that are part of spring and evolution or the stars in the sky when kids ponder space.

And that's all, right?

It's like, God, how do I start to integrate what's beyond my understanding into my view of the world and just to return to wonder and what we might imagine is our next move.

Yeah, that's such a terrific question and observation, Ali.

We surveyed 26 different countries, had people write stories of awe.

We encoded them and placed them into what I call the eight wonders, which is music, art, spirituality, nature, big ideas, the life cycle, music, and collective movement.

But it's fascinating, and you've really brought something new, which is that in some fundamental way, the transcendent quality of all of these experiences occurs because we're connecting and merging with other people.

So music's the classic example.

A Swiftie goes to a Taylor Swift concert, sees Taylor come on stage, and suddenly is merging with 15,000 people and having a sense of transcendent self, right?

We find, we do research in museums like the National Gallery.

and some science museums.

And very often even you're looking at a painting and you're kind of sharing that experience with somebody and suddenly your minds are merging.

So in a lot of ways, collective effervescence is emerging, right?