The Awe Effect

Send us Fan Mail 📖 Read Why shrinking your ego might be the healthiest thing you do this week Why does standing under a night sky, or watching 30,000 strangers sing in unison, feel like the best thing in the world — even though it makes you feel impossibly small? This episode traces the science of awe from its overlooked years in psychology labs to its emerging role as a measurable driver of physical and mental health. Drawing on Maria Monroy and Dacher Keltner's research, we unpack the two ingredients required for true awe, the neural cascade that quiets the brain's default mode network, and the surprising discovery that awe — more than joy, pride, or contentment — predicts lower levels of the inflammatory marker IL-6. We also cover Paul Piff's Berkeley pen-dropping experiment, cross-cultural differences in how people experience awe, and a simple, research-backed "awe walk" you can start this week. Awe as a Pathway to Mental and Physical Health and nine other references Chapters 00:00 Intro & Show Signature 00:25 What Awe Actually Feels Like 02:16 The Paper: Awe as a Pathway to Health 04:38 Why Psychology Ignored Awe for Decades 07:10 Defining Awe: Vastness + Accommodation 11:32 When Awe Turns Dark: Threat-Based Awe 13:01 The Small Self and Emerson's Eyeball 14:12 Measuring the Unmeasurable 15:22 The Yosemite Study 17:54 Awe-Smallness vs. Shame-Smallness 19:54 Culture, Diaries, and Self-Awed Americans 22:15 Meet the Default Mode Network 24:43 Inside the fMRI Scanner 26:37 The Six-Step Neural Cascade 29:20 What EEG Waves Reveal 31:53 Goosebumps and the Vagus Nerve 34:09 The IL-6 Inflammation Breakthrough 38:28 Awe as Clinical Medicine 40:25 PRISM, Ego Depletion, and Prosociality 42:22 The Pen-Dropping Experiment 44:52 Time Dilation 46:16 The Transcendent Collective 48:04 Awe vs. Meditation vs. Psychedelics 50:00 Where to Find Awe 51:05 The 15-Minute Awe Walk Prescription 54:04 Recap 55:14 Homework and Closing Thought 56:14 Credits This is Heliox: Where Evidence Meets Empathy Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter. Breathe Easy, we go deep and lightly surface the big ideas. Support the show Disclosure: This podcast uses AI-generated synthetic voices for a material portion of the audio content, in line with Apple Podcasts guidelines. We make rigorous science accessible, accurate, and unforgettable. Produced by Michelle Bruecker and Scott Bleackley, it features reviews of emerging research and ideas from leading thinkers, curated under our creative direction with AI assistance for voice, imagery, and composition. Systemic voices and illustrative images of people are representative tools, not depictions of specific individuals. We dive deep into peer-reviewed research, pre-prints, and major scientific works—then bring them to life through the stories of the researchers themselves. Complex ideas become clear. Obscure discoveries become conversation starters. And you walk away understanding not just what scientists discovered, but why it matters and how they got there. Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter. Breathe Easy, we go deep and lightly surface the big ideas. Spoken word, short and sweet, with rhythm and a catchy beat. http://tinyurl.com/stonefolksongs