Mark Berman

And yes, I think...

What Betsy's intuition is about being in nature can get you sort of maybe less thinking about your yourself is something that we actually find.

So we did some studies where we had people walk in an indoor nature conservatory in Chicago, the Garfield Conservatory.

versus also interacting with a nice indoor space, the Water Tower Mall in Chicago.

And a few things really struck us.

So one is that in nature, people tended to think less about themselves and more about others.

even though there might've been fewer or the same amount of people in the Nature Conservatory versus the mall.

So that was pretty interesting and also kind of consistent with what Betsy was saying.

We also found that people's thoughts were more positive in nature, their thoughts were a bit more creative, and they felt more connected to the larger world, which I think is also really interesting.

So it does sort of seem like interacting with nature

can sort of make people maybe be a little bit less egocentric and feel a little bit more connected to the physical world, but also to people around the world.

It might help us to see each other as being a bit more human, which other studies have found too, that interaction with nature can actually make people

to humanize other people rather than dehumanize other people.

And I think it can make us feel more connected to the actual natural environment.

And we know that with the problems with climate change and things like that, that it's going to be important for us as humans to strengthen our relationship to nature.

Yes, absolutely.

Those are incredibly powerful stories.

I appreciate the listeners for sending them.

And yes, there has been work looking at how interacting with nature can help people when people are grieving.

And