Michelle: Alright Mark, before we dive in, what’s your one-sentence, brutally honest review of a book titled 'Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder'? Mark: Sounds like something you'd find in the gift shop of a planetarium. Probably has a lot of pictures of nebulas and quotes from Carl Sagan. Michelle: That is a hilariously accurate guess for the genre, but you'd be surprised. Today we're diving into Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner. And while there's a bit of cosmic wonder, the real story is much more grounded, and frankly, much more moving. Mark: Oh? How so? Michelle: Well, the author, Dacher Keltner, isn't a poet or a philosopher. He's a top-tier emotion scientist at UC Berkeley, the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He's spent his career studying things like compassion and embarrassment. But the real catalyst for this book was intensely personal. He started writing it in the wake of his brother's death, grappling with profound grief. Mark: Wow, okay. That completely changes my perception. That’s not a planetarium gift shop book at all. That’s... heavy. So, what did he find in awe that helped with grief? What does a scientist even mean by 'awe'? Michelle: That is the perfect place to start. Because his definition unlocks everything. Keltner says awe is simply "the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand." And the most radical thing he found is that experiencing it requires our sense of self to get out of the way.

Mark: The 'vanishing self'. That sounds a bit... new-agey. What does that actually mean in practice? Does my soul leave my body when I see a really nice sunset? Michelle: It's less astral projection and more about turning down the volume on your internal monologue. You know that voice in your head that's constantly narrating, worrying, judging? Awe quiets it. And this isn't a new idea. Keltner tells this incredible story about Margaret Fuller, a brilliant writer and thinker in the 1800s. Mark: I'm vaguely remembering her from a history class. A transcendentalist, right? Michelle: Exactly. But she was also a woman in a deeply sexist time, constantly fighting to be taken seriously, feeling constrained by her 'self'—her identity as a woman in that society. Then one day, she has this profound experience. She's outdoors, looking at the sky, and she's hit with this wave of awe. She later wrote that in that moment, she realized "there was no self; that selfishness was all folly... I had only to live in the idea of the all; and all was mine." Mark: Whoa. So feeling insignificant was actually empowering for her? The feeling of her 'self' disappearing was a release from the prison of her identity. That's completely counterintuitive. Michelle: It is! We're taught to build up our self-esteem, to focus on our personal brand, our achievements. But Fuller's experience suggests that true freedom comes from forgetting the self for a moment and connecting to that "idea of the all." Mark: That's a beautiful story, but it's from the 19th century. Is there any modern science to back this up, or is it just a nice anecdote? Michelle: Oh, the science is fascinating. Keltner's lab did this simple but brilliant study in Yosemite National Park. They'd stop people at a viewpoint looking at the spectacular valley and ask them to draw a quick picture of themselves. They did the same thing with a control group at a more mundane location, Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Mark: Let me guess. The Yosemite people drew themselves smaller? Michelle: Dramatically smaller. They called it the "small self." Being in the presence of that vastness made their self-concept shrink. But it gets even more concrete. Brain imaging studies show that when people experience awe—say, by watching a clip from Planet Earth—a part of their brain called the Default Mode Network gets quiet. Mark: The Default Mode Network? What's that? Michelle: Think of it as the 'me' network. It's the part of the brain that's active when you're thinking about yourself, your past, your future, your worries. It’s the hub of self-referential thought. When you're anxious or depressed, it's often in overdrive. Mark: So awe literally turns down the volume on our inner critic? It's like a neurological 'hush'. Michelle: Exactly. It gives the ego a brief vacation. And in that quiet space, we can connect with the world around us. But that raises the big question you asked earlier: most of us aren't having 19th-century transcendental epiphanies in Yosemite on a Tuesday. Where do regular people find this stuff?

Mark: Yeah, that's the real issue. It's nice to talk about grand canyons, but I live in an apartment and my view is a brick wall. How does this apply to someone stuck in traffic or drowning in emails? Michelle: This is my favorite part of the book, because Keltner's research completely debunks the idea that awe is rare or exclusive. After collecting over two thousand stories of awe from 26 different countries, his team identified what he calls the "Eight Wonders of Life"—the most common, universal triggers for awe. And the number one source wasn't nature. Mark: It wasn't? I would have bet my life savings it was nature. A sunset, the ocean... Michelle: Nope. The most common source of awe, across cultures, was what he calls "Moral Beauty." Mark: Moral Beauty? That sounds like a philosophy class. What is it? Michelle: It's witnessing the goodness of other people. Their courage, their kindness, their strength, their resilience. It's seeing someone overcome incredible odds or perform an act of selfless generosity. Mark: Huh. Like seeing a stranger help someone who fell down on the street? Michelle: Exactly that. Or a teacher staying late to help a struggling student. Keltner tells this absolutely flooring story about visiting San Quentin State Prison. He went in, expecting to find a place devoid of hope. He was there for a restorative justice program, and he asked the inmates, men in blue jumpsuits, many serving life sentences, "What gives you awe?" Mark: I can't even imagine what they'd say. The memory of freedom? Michelle: Their answers were breathtakingly simple and profound. One man said, "My daughter." Another said, "Visitors from the outside." Others said, "Singing in the church band," "My cellie sharing his food," "Learning how to read." They found awe not in grand escapes, but in small, everyday acts of human connection and goodness. Mark: Wow. In a prison. That's the last place I'd expect. That... that actually gives me a little shiver. Is that awe? Michelle: Keltner would say yes! That feeling of being moved by someone else's virtue is the experience. And it highlights how accessible it is. It’s not about where you are, but what you’re paying attention to. Mark: Okay, so Moral Beauty is number one. What's another one of these 'wonders'? Give me one more. Michelle: A big one is "Collective Effervescence." It's a term from the sociologist Émile Durkheim, and it describes the feeling of being part of a group moving together in unison. Think of the energy at a concert when everyone is singing the same lyrics, or the roar of a crowd at a sports stadium, or the shared purpose of a protest march. Mark: Oh, I know that feeling. You lose yourself in the crowd. Your individual identity just melts away and you become part of this bigger, pulsing thing. It's electric. Michelle: That's it exactly. You're no longer just 'Mark'; you're part of the team, part of the movement. Your self vanishes, and you're connected to the collective. But I should mention, the book has gotten some pushback for this. Mark: How so? Michelle: Well, some critics have said that categorizing awe into eight neat boxes kind of kills the... well, the awe. It feels a bit like trying to pin a butterfly to a board. Does it feel too much like a checklist to you? 'Okay, saw some moral beauty, check. Felt collective effervescence, check.' Michelle: That's a really fair critique, and Keltner himself acknowledges that tension. I think he would argue it's meant to be a map, not a cage. It's a way of showing people the many different paths to this feeling, especially if they think the only path is a trip to the Grand Canyon. But the most compelling argument for why this matters isn't just the feeling itself. It's what it does to us physically. The science behind why it works is what's truly mind-blowing. It's not just a feeling; it's a biological event.

Mark: A biological event? What do you mean? Like it releases endorphins or something? Michelle: It goes so much deeper than that. Let me tell you about another study Keltner did, the "Awe Walk" study. They took a group of older adults, people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, and had them take a 15-minute walk, once a week, for eight weeks. Mark: Okay, a walk. Sounds simple enough. Michelle: The control group was just told to walk. The other group, the "awe walk" group, was instructed to try and cultivate a sense of wonder on their walk—to notice things that were vast, mysterious, and beautiful. The patterns of light through the leaves, the complexity of a flower, the scale of a tall building. Mark: Just a 15-minute walk with a different intention. That seems too simple to have any real effect. Michelle: That's what you'd think! But the results were staggering. Over the eight weeks, the awe walkers reported feeling more joy and less anxiety and depression. Their smiles in the selfies they took became bigger and more genuine. And remember that 'small self' idea from Yosemite? The same thing happened here. Over time, the awe walkers started framing their selfies differently—they became smaller in the frame, and the world around them became bigger. Mark: They literally started seeing themselves as a smaller part of a bigger picture. That's wild. But is that just a psychological shift? Michelle: This is where it gets truly incredible. Keltner and his colleagues have found a direct link between the experience of awe and our physical health. Specifically, with inflammation. They measured levels of something called cytokines in people's bodies. Mark: Cytokines... I've heard that word. They're related to the immune system, right? Michelle: Exactly. They're proteins that signal inflammation. A little inflammation is good when you're fighting an infection. But chronic, low-grade inflammation is linked to a host of modern diseases, from heart disease to depression. And they found that people who reported experiencing more everyday awe had significantly lower levels of these pro-inflammatory cytokines. Mark: Hold on. Let me get this straight. You are telling me that feeling awe—by looking at a tree, or watching a video of a whale, or seeing someone do something kind—could actually reduce physical inflammation in my body? That it's a literal, biological medicine? Michelle: That's what the science is pointing to. It's a powerful antidote to the stress and loneliness that can drive chronic inflammation. Awe shifts us out of that threatened, self-focused state and into a state of openness and connection, and our bodies respond accordingly. It’s a mind-body connection that is just astonishingly direct.

Mark: This is blowing my mind. So this isn't just about feeling good for a moment. It's about a fundamental shift in our perspective. It's about quieting our ego, finding connection in the most unexpected places—like a prison—and literally changing our body's chemistry for the better. Michelle: Exactly. And Keltner's ultimate point is that this profound experience is not a luxury. It's not something you have to save up for or travel halfway around the world to find. It's a basic human need, and the opportunities for it are woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Mark: So the big takeaway isn't to book a trip to the Himalayas. Michelle: Not at all. The takeaway is to take that 15-minute awe walk. It's to consciously look for the moral beauty in a stranger's kindness on your commute. It's to put on a piece of music that gives you chills and just listen for three minutes. It's about cultivating the practice of paying attention to wonder. Mark: It really makes you wonder, what small moment of awe did you walk right past today without even noticing? Michelle: That's a great question for all of us to reflect on. We’d love to hear about it. Share your own moments of everyday awe with the Aibrary community on our socials. We could all use a little more wonder. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.