Neuroaesthetics: How Art Can Improve and Extend Your Life | Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2023
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Did you know that just 20 minutes of art a day is as beneficial as exercise and mindfulness? Or that participating in one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years?
Our guests Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen talk about their new book, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Together they explore the new science of neuroaesthetics, which explains how the arts can measurably change the body, brain, and our behaviors.
This is the first installment in a three part series we're running called, Mundane Glory about learning not to overlook the little things in your daily life that can be powerful and evidence-based levers for increased happiness.
In this episode we talk about:
- Their definition of the arts and aesthetic experiences
- How they see nature as, "the highest form of art"
- How simple actions like humming in the shower & gardening can be categorized as art experiences
- How you don't have to be good at making art to benefit from it
- The difference between "makers" and "beholders" of art
- What they mean by art being a part of our evolutionary DNA
- How engaging in the arts can help strengthen our relationships and connectivity
- How arts and aesthetic experiences create neuroplasticity in the brain
- How society's emphasis on optimizing for productivity has pushed the arts aside
- The four key attributes that make up a concept called an "aesthetic mindset"
- The benefits of partaking in a wide array of art experiences
- The importance of infusing play and non judgment into the art you make
- How art can be a form of meditation and mindfulness
- How artistic experiences can extend your life, help treat disease and relieve stress
- How the arts affect the way we learn
- The emerging field of neuroarts and neuroaesthetics
- How food fits into the arts category
- Simple ways to integrate the arts into our daily lives
- Technology's relationship to the arts
- And the importance of architecture and your physical space as a form of art
For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:
https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/ivy-ross-susan-magsamen
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is The 10% Happier Podcast, I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:19.4 | Hello my fellow suffering beings, welcome to the show. |
| 0:22.6 | When the idea for this particular episode was pitched to me, I'll be honest, I was not |
| 0:28.2 | enthusiastic. |
| 0:29.6 | One of our producers, shout out to Lauren Smith, wanted me to interview the authors of |
| 0:34.3 | a book called Your Brain on Art. |
| 0:37.4 | And I immediately assumed that these people were going to try to get me to go to museums |
| 0:41.6 | more often. |
| 0:42.6 | And I don't want to go to fucking museums, I know, I know, I know that disliking museums |
| 0:46.9 | makes me a Philistine or whatever, but it's my truth. |
| 0:51.3 | What can I say? |
| 0:52.3 | However, one of the things I've been really trying to work on in recent years is being |
| 0:57.9 | less dismissive. |
| 0:58.9 | So I endeavored to keep an open mind as Lauren made her case in one of our recent pitch |
| 1:04.1 | meetings. |
| 1:05.1 | We have these pitch meetings where the whole staff gets together and discuss his ideas |
| 1:08.2 | for the show. |
| 1:09.2 | And I'm glad that I kept an open mind because the book is actually making a fascinating |
| 1:13.4 | argument. |
| 1:14.4 | The first thing to know is that the author's defined art very, very broadly. |
| 1:18.9 | The way they use the word, it's basically interchangeable with beauty. |
| 1:22.1 | So it can encompass not only a death march through a huge museum, but also music, dance, |
... |
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