Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rick Hanson & Joshua Greene on From Us and Them to All of Us | EP 704
18 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Coming up next on Passionstruck.
All living systems are built on a combination of cooperation and competition, right? So cooperation at multiple levels means starting with primordial soup, you have molecules come together to form cells and cells come together to form more complicated cells and colonies and individuals with organs that are worked together in complimentary ways.
And then we have individuals forming small scale societies, villages, chiefdoms, nations, and sometimes even United Nations. And all of that works because the parts are able to accomplish more together than they can separately, and so they form a whole.
Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters.
Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming.
Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention.
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Chapter 2: How do our evolutionary instincts shape our moral thinking?
Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Hey friends, this is episode 704 of Passion Struck. And today's episode is a little different. This is a special conversation I'm sharing to support an event that deeply matters to me and to our shared future. Our world is divided in ways we can see, and in ways we can feel.
Us versus them, my group versus yours. This conversation brings together two leading voices, psychologist and bestselling author Rick Hansen and Harvard cognitive scientist Joshua Green to explore how we widen the moral circle so instead of pulling apart, we expand toward compassion, cooperation, and shared humanity. This live event supports
Pods Fight Poverty, a joint initiative with Laurie Santos and the Happiness Lab, Giving Multiplier and GiveDirectly with one clear and urgent goal, to raise $1 million to provide direct cash assistance to more than 700 families across three villages in Rwanda. You'll hear more about how to get involved during the episode.
What you'll hear about in today's conversation is why humans default to us versus them, what neuroscience and psychology reveal about compassion and bias, how we expand empathy without burning out, and why direct cash transfers are one of the most evidence-backed tools we have to reduce extreme poverty.
Chapter 3: What role does compassion play in overcoming division?
Today's episode is about more than ideas. It's about action. All right, here's the conversation. from us and them to all of us. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I still remember the moment I realized something was off.
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Chapter 4: How can we train ourselves to be more compassionate?
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Take the guesswork out of pure, great-tasting water with this exclusive offer now at Aquatru.com. That's A-Q-U-A-T-R-U.com using code PassionStruck. Hey, welcome everyone. I'm John Miles. I'm host of the PassionStruck podcast, and I am so grateful you're joining us for this important conversation.
Chapter 5: What strategies can expand our moral circle?
Our world is divided in ways we can see and in many ways we can feel, us versus them, my side versus yours. But beneath those divisions, the science is clear. Human beings are wired for connection, for fairness, and for shared flourishing. So the question before us today in this conversation is how do we move from a world of us and them to a future of all of us?
To help us explore this shift, I'm honored to welcome two friends and two of the most impactful minds working at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and moral philosophy.
First is my friend Rick Hansen, who's a psychologist, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, a New York Times bestselling author, and he's also the president of the Global Compassion Coalition, something I hope all of you check out, and co-host of the Being Well podcast with his son Forrest.
And second, we have my friend, Dr. Joshua Green, who's a Harvard cognitive scientist, author of the amazing book, Moral Tribes, and co-founder of Pods Fight Poverty, which is a groundbreaking effort uniting the podcasting community, which I feel like I'm a small part of, to expand the moral circle in tangible, measurable ways.
Other podcasters who are friends of mine who are part of this are Adam Grant, Laurie Santos, Katie Milkman, and many others, Dan Harris, Dan Heath. and others.
Today's event supports a joint event we're calling Pods Fight Poverty, which is a joint initiative with Laurie Santos, the Happiness Lab, Giving Multiplier and GiveDirectly with one bold goal, to lift three Rwandan villages out of extreme poverty through direct cash assistance that restores dignity and autonomy. And why we're doing this is because while matching funds last,
Every hundred dollars donated becomes 150, amplifying your impact instantly.
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Chapter 6: How does curiosity help us build trust and dissolve fear?
So over the next hour, we're going to dig into why humans fall into us versus them, what science says about expanding empathy and cooperation, how compassion translates into real world action and opportunity. This is a conversation about human potential, not just to care, but to include. Thank you again for being here. So with all of that, Josh, I'm going to start out with you.
Why are human moral systems built so deeply around us versus them? And how did that help us survive? And how is it hurting us now?
Yeah, well, the story of humanity really reflects the story of life on Earth more broadly. That is, everything we see around us, all living systems are built on a combination of cooperation and competition. right?
So cooperation at multiple levels means starting with primordial soup, you have molecules come together to form cells, and cells come together to form more complicated cells and colonies and individuals with with organs that are, you know, work together in complementary ways.
Chapter 7: What is the impact of direct cash assistance on poverty?
And then we have individuals forming small scale societies, you know, villages, chiefdoms, nations, and sometimes even United Nations. And and all of that works because the parts are able to accomplish more together than they can separately, and so they form a whole. But what drives that process is competition.
That is, groups that are able to survive better and out-compete the competition are more likely to pass on their genes and pass on their ideas at a cultural level. And so the... Cooperation is built in to humans. It's built into the way the cells in our bodies cooperate with each other, and it's built into the way that we cooperate with each other as individuals.
And what we call morality, which has been my main topic of study for now, depending on you, count something like 30 years, is really a suite of psychological capacities that enable us to be cooperative. That's sort of the bright side.
The dark side is that the reason this stuff evolved is because teamwork is a powerful weapon, either for direct confrontation or for out competing in a more peaceful kind of way.
Chapter 8: How can individual actions contribute to collective change?
And as I see it, the sort of long term challenge for our species is can we take the cooperative apparatus that we've developed for life within the tribe and apply it in a broader way so that it doesn't have to be a destructive force?
Well, thank you for that, Josh. And Rick, I know a lot of your work deals with compassion. And one of the things that I love the Global Compassion Coalition is doing is creating compassion circles. And I wanted to ask, at a nervous system level, what happens inside of us when we sense we're part of the in-group versus the out-group?
First off, I wanted to say it's a pleasure to be here. And Josh, I've been a longtime admirer of your work. And I find it really quite haunting to feel within ourselves experientially.
I say this as a longtime therapist and a longtime mindfulness kind of teacher and also someone for a long time who was a very shy and dorky kid, very young going through school, who felt quite terrified by the groups and the alphas around him. And I was, you know, a living laboratory of some of the things we're going to be talking about here.
The longing to be part of an us and the fear and dehumanization and eventually often on a slippery slope, aggression, callousness and cruelty toward them. So as context here with your specific question, John, and then I'll back up into maybe a bit more of
the ways in which it's quite remarkable to appreciate, drawing on a metaphor from the great affective neuroscientist Jock Punxsut, bless his memory, that we are each a living museum.
We are each living in a body, as Joshua was pointing out, that's the result of three and a half billion or so years of life on the planet, evolving in 600 million years or so of an evolving nervous system, including the last only three million of those years in which the brain tripled in volume. which has a lot of implications.
So one example, if you do experiments with people and you show them faces for maybe a 10th of a second and you ask them what they see, if you speed up that interval or shorten it, increasingly people cannot name what they see. On the other hand, if you contrast a angry face, a threatening face with a loving, sweet, inviting face,
flashed on the screen for a 20th of a second or a 10th of a second below, any kind of conscious recognition, people will report, I didn't see anything. But if you have shown to them the angry face, their heart will start beating faster.
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