Listen To This If Your Life Feels "Meh" (A Simple Science-Backed Fix)

April 29, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Awe Is the Missing Ingredient for a Better Life

Dr. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley and scientific advisor for the Inside Out movies, has spent over a decade studying awe—and the evidence is striking. Fifteen years of research shows that experiencing awe regularly reduces inflammation, lowers anxiety, decreases daily stress, improves heart health, and even makes people more generous and less politically polarized. "If you can go find three minutes of awe a few times a week, you'll do better," Keltner says. "And that's what the science says."

What Awe Actually Is (And Isn't)

Awe is an emotion we feel when encountering something vast and mysterious—something beyond our typical frame of reference. A massive tree, a powerful storm, a profound idea, or watching someone die with dignity can all trigger it. Keltner's team gathered 2,600 stories from 26 cultures and identified eight universal "wonders" that produce awe: moral beauty (other people's kindness and courage), nature, collective movement (dancing, cheering at games), music, visual art, spirituality, the life cycle (birth and death), and big ideas (infinity, black holes, evolution).

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What you'll learn

1 (00:49) **Why Awe Deserves a Spot in Your Life** - Dacher Keltner makes the case for prioritizing awe, citing 15 years of science.
2 (04:44) **The Mechanism: How Awe Actually Works** - Keltner explains the three-pronged physiological and psychological changes that make awe so powerful.
3 (07:29) **Defining Awe: What It Is (and Isn’t)** - A clear breakdown of awe’s core ingredients and how it differs from fear, beauty, and terror.
4 (11:48) **The Everyday Awe Discovery** - Keltner shares the surprising finding that awe is not a rare, once-in-a-lifetime event, but a readily accessible state of mind.
5 (14:12) **Awe in the Midst of Grief and Trauma** - A powerful exploration of how awe can emerge from life’s hardest moments, including the death of a loved one.
6 (19:10) **Micro-Dosing Awe to Inoculate Against Stress** - How small, daily doses of awe can build resilience against the accumulated stress of modern life.
7 (29:19) **The Eight Wonders: A Universal Map of Awe** - Keltner runs through the eight categories of awe found across 26 cultures.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

My team is on our first ever retreat this week! I wanted to practice what I preach and give everyone the chance to relax and restore in Arizona, so this week, I hand picked one of my all-time favorite episodes to share with you. If you care about feeling good, about happiness, this episode is gonna change your life—I recorded it over a year ago and I still talk about it weekly. Also, it’ll make you feel good while listening. Enjoy, and see you next week for a fresh new episode! - xo Liz

You've probably heard that you should spend more time in nature, practice gratitude, or meditate—but you may not know that one single emotion underlies the benefits of all of those things. Today, we're talking about awe: what it actually is, why the science says it might be the most important emotion you're not prioritizing, and exactly how to build more of it into your life starting today.

I'm joined by Dr. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, founder of the Greater Good Science Center, and the world's leading researcher on awe. He's also the scientist behind the emotions in Pixar's Inside Out and Inside Out 2. Over 15 years of research, Dacher has studied awe across 26 countries, gathered over 2,600 stories of awe from around the world, and built a growing body of evidence showing that this one emotion can reduce anxiety, lower inflammation, ease chronic pain, combat loneliness, and even help with PTSD, sometimes more powerfully than pharmaceuticals.

The best part? You don't need a trip to the Grand Canyon to find it. Awe is closer than you think.

🎧 What you'll learn:

• Why three minutes of awe a few times a week can measurably change your physical and mental health

• The surprising sign that tells you you're actually experiencing awe (and how to know it's not just fear or beauty)

• How the eight universal sources of awe can act as a personal compass pointing you toward your life's meaning

• The one mindset shift that lets you find awe without going anywhere new

• Why grief and trauma can actually be gateways to awe, and how to use that to feel better stat

• The unexpected connection between awe and psychedelics (and how to get similar benefits without either)

• How religion is immensely helpful for awe, and how to build a secular version

• The "awe prescription" Dacher recommends based on the latest research

• The micro habit that helped healthcare workers fight depression and burnout during COVID in just one minute a day

Check out the previous episodes of The Liz Moody Podcast discussed today:

The Secret To Happiness, From The World’s Longest Study With Dr. Robert Waldinger

For more from Dacher Keltner:

• Book: Awe: The New Science of