Discover AWE Daily with Oprah and Dacher Keltner

The Oprah Podcast

Harpo

Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did you know that experiencing awe can improve your health and your overall well-being? Oprah talks with University of California, Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner to delve into his latest book "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life." During this inspirational conversation Dacher explains how each of us has the potential to experience awe every single day and shares how encountering awe can lead us to greater fulfillment and happiness. Based on his extensive research Dacher outlines and describes what he calls the “Eight Wonders of Life” or the eight experiences that most commonly trigger awe. Throughout the discussion Oprah and Dacher each share their own deeply personal encounters with awe. BUY THE BOOK! https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622175/awe-by-dacher-keltner/ 00:00:00 - Welcome Dacher Keltner, author of “Awe” 00:04:30 - Awe decreases depression 00:07:40 - Awe and death 00:10:20 - Finding awe everyday 00:11:05 - 8 awe experiences 00:20:20 - how Awe affects our health 00:21:36 - Awe vs gratitude 00:24:45 - How awe can heal divisions 00:26:50 - Making space for awe and kids 00:28:20 - Develop an awe practice 00:29:50 - Psychedelics and awe 00:36:00 - Everyone can experience awe The Science of Happiness Podcast What does it take to live a happier life? Learn research-tested strategies that you can put into practice today. Hosted by award-winning psychologist Dacher Keltner. Co-produced by PRX and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/series/the_science_of_happiness Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I love how you begin the book, your introduction.
0:02.0	This is funny to me.
0:03.0	You said, I have taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
0:07.0	It's not obvious why I ended up doing this work.
0:10.0	I've been a pretty wound up anxious person for significant chunks of my life.
0:14.0	And I love this, and was thrown out of my first meditation class for laughing while we chanted,
0:20.0	I am a being of purple fire.
0:24.8	I read that. I was like, what kind of meditation class was that? I'm a being of purple fire.
0:32.6	Yep, my best friend memo and I got tossed out of that class in college. Yeah, you know, and that's the point.
0:37.6	You know, I struggle to meditate. I am wound up. I can't. That's just what I got, you know, in my nervous
0:43.2	system. And awe really, as I wrote this book in a very hard time in my life, I was like, yeah,
0:49.4	that's what grounded me in life.
0:56.3	Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Oprah podcast.
1:01.8	I'm so pleased, honored, actually, that you chose to spend time with us here, where my intention is to offer some inspiration and maybe a bit of breathing space from the hustle
1:08.3	of your day or from the endless barrage of news hitting your timeline.
1:15.3	I hope you all are watching that, being careful about that because it can just be too much.
1:20.6	But I'm excited for you to hear from my guest today because he spent decades studying, searching, researching for the secret to this question.
1:31.5	How can we live a good life?
1:33.7	Yeah, that's really what we all are in search of, right?
1:36.6	How can we live a good life?
1:38.2	And he says the answer is really simple and something any one of us can access at any time and anywhere, no matter your
1:46.7	background, no matter your circumstances. His name is Dacker Keltner, and he's a professor
	...

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