Dacher Keltner on awe, humility and purpose

08/03/23 • 49 min

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I stumbled across Dacher Keltner’s work when I was first researching Enchantment, and now - for the final episode in this season - I’m honoured to speak to him about Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

Dacher’s research attempts to understand this very fleeting, ineffable emotion. He and his colleagues have shown that awe induces a feeling of being small within a vast universe - a radical shift into context. What’s more, by absorbing ourselves in awe, we become better people, more motivated to go out and do good. In this episode, we explore how it feels to experience awe, how we can seek it out in the everyday, and we share the personal experiences of awe that have inspired both of our books.

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. He has written for many popular outlets, from The New York Times to Slate. He was also the scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Dacher’s website
Dacher’s book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
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Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Dacher’s website
Dacher’s book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Marjolijn van Heemstra on the overview effect

1 Recommendations

Marjolijn van Heemstra believes that we can change the world by gazing into the night sky. Her book, In Light Years There’s No Hurry, explores the ‘overview effect’, a personal transformation reported by astronauts who have seen the earth from space. People who’ve experienced this rare view often report an ethical shift taking place, a new sense of mission in their lives. They come to see themselves as guardians of their planet, rather than its passive citizens.

Clearly not all of us can - or want to - leave the atmosphere to gaze over the earth from space. But in this thought-provoking conversation, Marjolijn makes a case for us learning to draw on the overview effect from where we stand, suggesting that this could lead us to become better stewards of our environment, and form closer bonds with the communities around us.

Marjolijn is a Dutch theatre-maker, journalist and poet who has recently been named Amsterdam’s Poet Laureate. Her most recent work has focused on reacquainting ourselves with darkness, and this includes her creative project The Night Watch, and the Amsterdam Dark Festival, of which she is the founder.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Marjolijn’s Instagram
Marjolijn’s book, In Light Years There’s No Hurry
Amsterdam Dark Festival
Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Erica Berry on the meaning of wolves

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The wolf carries an almost unbearable amount of symbolism in western culture, encapsulating the predatory, the carnal, the supernatural and the ravenous. But in her book Wolfish, Erica Berry suggests that it’s time to understand wolves differently: as tender, as hunted, as guardians of the landscape.

What’s more, those evil qualities may be better attributed to ourselves than to wolves. Berry weaves memoir with natural history, cultural critique, folklore and conservation to show that wolves have too often been a cypher for all our fears, and that this has left them under threat of extinction.

In this fascinating and wide-ranging conversation, recorded as part of Katherine’s True Stories Book Club, Erica discusses her experiences with wolves real and imagined.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Erica’s website
Erica’s book, Wolfish
Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.