Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

I'm Laura Owens.

And I'm Jan Black.

And on this episode, we'll be finding out about a new way to take charge of your own happiness and health.

Our guest, Dr. Kelly Harding, says love, friendship, community, purpose, and our environment

can have a far greater impact on our health than anything that happens in the doctor's office.

Dr. Harding is a Columbia University trained, board-certified psychiatrist who specializes in the interplay between

mental and physical health. She's the author of the book, The Rabbit Effect, Live Longer,

Happier and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness. Dr. Harding, we thank you so much

for joining us. It is such my pleasure to be with you both. I just love

what you're doing. Oh, well, we love what you're doing as well. And, you know, I was thinking

about it. Kindness is a concept. We understand from the time we're really young. So tell us about

the science of kindness and why it's groundbreaking. Yes.

Well, so that's the thing, right?

It seems so simple.

It's something that we know, you know, even the youngest child has a sense of kindness.

And yet it's something that becomes so challenging in so many different areas of our lives a lot of times.

But what's so nice about it is it's something that we can come back to. And what's incredible, and especially as a physician, I was just blown away by how

there's decades of science showing how kindness boosts our health. So tell us how a study in the

1970s with rabbits ended up inspiring your work and your book so many years later.

As a student, I got really interested in this idea of what are we missing in medicine? Because

I kept seeing on the wards, you know, patients who would defy diagnoses and continue to live

...