 All right. Hello, David. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you doing today? I'm doing fine, Chris. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. I was only recently introduced to your books. I binged two of your previous books, then this one came out. So today we're talking about your new book, How God Works. And yeah, so this is a topic that I'm pretty passionate about because I'm a recovering drug addict, sober in 12 step meetings, and I was afraid of the whole God thing until I started learning about this stuff. So for those who have yet to pick up the book, what inspired this book? What's it kind of about and all that? Yeah, it's a good question. People often ask me, Dave, you're a scientist. Why are you writing about God? I was raised Catholic, but then I kind of left the church and I'm not particularly religious right now. But I run a psychology lab where for the past 20 years, we've been focused on trying to find ways to help people live better lives. And as you said, my other books are on things like gratitude and compassion and honesty and generosity and how do we do these? And so we spend our time trying to devise little tactics and life hacks, whatever it might be that help people. But every time we find one, I look around and I'm like, wait a minute, they're already using this in religion. I mean, sure, they didn't understand. I mean, they can't scan your brains or run randomized controlled trials, but they intuited this. And so when you look at the data, people who say you believe in God doesn't matter, but people who actually daily and regularly, daily, weekly engage with religious or spiritual practices live longer, are happier and are healthier. And so as a scientist, I want to know why. And what it seems to me and I'm sure we'll talk about today is that a lot of these practices just help people meet the challenges of life. And so the question is, whether you believe whether you're a believer or not, I don't want to touch on the question of God exists. That's not a question science can answer. Right? I mean, even if you're an atheist, it's it's it's on faith that probability favored us in this corner of the universe. There is no test even Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous atheist will tell you he can't be sure God doesn't exist. But we all care about making life better. So let's look at how this stuff works. And we've kind of done it with meditation, right? We know meditation helps people in lots of ways, but it can't be a fluke, right? There's the other spiritual practices too. And I'll be interested, you know, in your thoughts too, you know, a lot of addiction programs do things like self compassion and gratitude journaling and pride coins and all of this stuff. And so my take here is, let's figure out what these tools are and how can we adapt them to make life better for everyone? You don't you don't need to know how where technology came from. Yeah, right? That's my message. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I and I love what you just said right there. Like we, you know, we use our cell phones every day. Right now, you and I are talking over zoom, right? And I don't think either of us are experts in how the internet works and, you know, or how our cell phones work and stuff like that. But, you know, we drive cars are so many things that, you know, we don't know how they work, we just know that they work. And I think that's kind of what I found when I got sober, because I was a chronic relapser, right? And, you know, I had no money, no health insurance, like so many people struggling with addiction. And they're like, Hey, here's 12 step programs, they're free, right? And they were at churches. I'm way too smart, right? I'm way too smart for any of this religious nonsense. And they kept telling me like, Listen, you can work these programs without being religious. I'm like, Yeah, sure. But finally, I went in there and I realized exactly what you talk about in this book, I can do the practices, whether or not I believe, right? And I think you touch on something, you know, you know, you just touched on it. And it's, you know, said greatly in your book to like, like, if we look around, we see that there are people doing these things, and they're happy, they're living better lives, right? Like I grew up here in Las Vegas, there's actually a lot of people from the Mormon Church here in Las Vegas, right? And while I don't, you know, agree with all aspects of the religion, I, you know, I grew up, you know, miserable, I struggled with depression, I would look at their families, I'm like, How are you guys so happy? You know what I mean? But it was from these, this faith, these practices, the connectivity and all that. But, you know, one of the things I wanted to get your perspective on, like, especially when it comes to like addiction, people are dying by the thousands, like the recent report from 2020 was like 93,000 drug-related deaths in the United States, right? And I worked in addiction treatment for a few years, and the main block is, we call it the God thing, right? So, you know, when you talk about this in the book, and you've been researching this, what do you think that block is? Like, do you think it's like us just thinking we're too smart for this? Or, you know, like, I'm curious what you've seen throughout your research. Let me just make sure I understand you, right? When you're saying the God thing, you mean the block is thinking you have to believe in God and you feel like I don't want to do that? Yeah, or yeah, or just any of the practices. Like, why do people think that they can't do the practices? You know, they can't even touch it. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I think it's because a lot of these practices are wrapped up in kind of institutional religions. And, you know, it's an interesting question. I'll get back to your point on addiction in a second. But right now, people are leaving institutionalized religion in droves. I mean, this is the first year, you know, since Gallup started asking the question in the 1930s that the majority of Americans do not identify as belonging to a church or synagogue or a mosque. And I think a lot of it is, some of it, it's scandals, financial or otherwise, some of it, you just don't agree with the policy anymore. But a lot of the people who were leaving are not becoming atheists. They're looking for new ways to be spiritual. And I think it's because, on some level, they realize there are these tools. And so I think this idea of the God thing, as you're saying, gets in the way for a lot of people. And I'm not saying that belief in God isn't important for a lot of people. It's a very important factor that gives a lot of benefits. But these tools can be taken out of traditional religions. It's not cultural appropriation. We're not taking the prayers. We're not doing all that stuff. But we're just looking at these practices that you can incorporate in a completely secular way. And I'm not owned by any one religion. A lot of these you'll see in multiple religions. And I think that that helps people. I mean, look, so, so I don't know if you did this, right? But, but I know, I know, like, gratitude plays a big role in programs, right? And so what we know in our research is when people cultivate a feeling of gratitude, it increases their self-control, it increases their patience, it reduces their impulsivity, right? These are all things that help you when you're dealing with addiction. And so we get the same results whether people report, I'm feeling grateful to God, or I'm feeling grateful to my parents, or I'm feeling grateful to the guy who let me on the highway. It's just that religion by, by ritualizing these practices and making them something you do regularly, right? If you're a Christian, you say grace at every meal. If you're a Jew, when you wake up every morning, you say the Modani, which is, thank you, God, I'm, I'm for letting me wake up this morning, by cultivating those things, right? It's going to push our minds in certain ways. And if you look at it as a tool, I think it helps you get beyond the God thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's interesting too, because, you know, I read a ton, I love psychology. And it seems like just intuitively the gratitude thing makes sense, right? Like, because we're prone for this, like negativity bias, and, you know, we spot the bad and all these other things. But gratitude, like you said, it played such a huge role. Like when I, when I, for example, when I got sober, I had nothing. I wasn't allowed to see my son. I had no money. My friends wouldn't talk to me. Like it was bad, right? But, you know, even, you know, weeks or months into my sobriety, and I was still trying to get on my feet, still didn't really have anything. I was, I was, you know, they taught us to be grateful for those little things. And just yesterday, I was talking with another author about his book was on, you know, the political landscape and, you know, all the polarization and anger and everybody thinks, you know, right now, like they're, their certain population is getting screwed, right? And we were talking about gratitude. And, you know, the last thing I'll say about gratitude, it's something that when my son, he's 12 now, when he was about seven, eight years old, I got him a journal and part of his day was writing five things he's grateful for, right? How to do that daily as a ritual. And, and like you were saying, that's completely secular, right? And therapists even use this practice. So have you, you know, you, you've, you've done the research, you've seen the science and something simple, like a gratitude list. Do you see, do you see certain resistance with some of the practices you've seen? Like this seems really easy, right? Like meditation is a little bit harder, but is this something that is, is like most people are like, okay, I'll at least try it. You know, I don't think people, for gratitude journals, I don't think some people think it's, it's, oh, that sounds just kind of fluffy or silly, you know, new agey stuff. But, you know, I mean, this is my job, right? So it's my job to show you the data, right? There's lots of pop psychology that's nonsense. It's my job as a research science to actually show you the data. But you know, I mean, just to give you an example, we'll bring people into the lab and we'll either have them count their blessings and recall things that they're grateful for, do a gratitude journal, or we set up crazy scenarios where, you know, their computer crashes and they have just done all this work and they're losing it. And then somebody who's an actor comes in and helps them and they feel gratitude, we get the same results. So one thing we'll do is we'll give them the opportunity to flip a virtual coin and heads they get a lot more money than tail. So we can know who's cheating and who's not, you know, on average, 53% of people cheat. But if they're feeling grateful when they do it, it drops to like 25%. People are much more willing not only to help people who they feel grateful toward, but if I'm, if you just help me out, Chris, I'm feeling grateful to you. When I go outside, if someone asks me for help, it also makes me more likely to pay it forward. It makes me more patient, more future oriented. And so I, as you're saying, you know, I think these practices can be done in a secular or religious way, it just kind of makes it happen every day. And that's the trick. So there are lots of people who, who say, okay, I'm going to gratitude journal, but then they get home after a long day of work and they're like, I'm just too tired, right? And they don't do it. But the benefit of, of the religious way of doing it is you have to do it, right? It makes you do it. Yeah. So one of, one of the things, you know, aside from gratitude is, is you talk a bit in the book about this, this topic of stress, anxiety, and how faith kind of counteracts that. So I would, I would almost guarantee that anybody listening to this episode struggles with stress, right? Whether it's at work, whether it's at school, whether it's bills, kids, whatever, right? So this, this was one of the biggest benefits I found because I struggled with just extreme anxiety, you know, and, like, I was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder. And aside from, like, you know, working with a therapist and a doctor and medications, like having this kind of faith, even though I teeter between like atheists and agnostic most of the time, this idea of faith really helped me out, right? This kind of letting go. And from what I found, it's because I'm a control freak. I want to know, Hey, if I do this, I'm going to get these results. And then if it doesn't work, I lose it. So if you could, for all the beautiful people out there, if you can kind of break down what you've seen or what you've researched between how faith helps reduce, reduce stress or anxiety. Yeah, I mean, that, that's a huge point. And I think you said something really important there, which was I'm a control freak, and I just need to let it go. Right? And so that, that's the issue. So, so stepping back, the big issue, and I think it was Barry Schwartz who coined this term, right? There, there's like the tyranny of choice. Right? We, when we're always trying to control everything, it stresses us out, right? Because you're running every, if then, possibility simulation in your head over time. And there's lots of work showing that when you get people too many choices, even over mundane things, they find it stressful. So you can imagine when it's important things in life. And, you know, there's this work by, by Mickie Inzler, who's a neuroscientist at Toronto that shows people that have stronger faith when they look at their brain's responses to making choices and potentially making errors. It's almost like a bomb, right? They show less, less, oh, shit. Oh, no. I've got to do this, right? And so what it means is when you have belief, it means that you don't have to always feel like you're trying to maximize everything. I mean, it doesn't mean you give over everything and don't think about it. It doesn't mean you don't try and make good choices, but you can let go a little bit and you can feel like, okay, there's something else out there that is going to try and control things and make things, make things better and, and has my best interests at heart. Now, you may think that that's a delusion, right? And that's, and that's causing harm, but in terms of stress, it's actually better. But even, even Buddhists, right, who may not believe in a divine entity the way we normally think of it, have this idea of, of letting go, like why worry about something if you, if you can't really control it, right? Do the best you can. And so having some faith, some belief is correlated with, you know, lower depression, lower anxiety, lower stress. It doesn't mean for people who are, who are completely against the idea of a theistic God who's coming in and manipulating everything in your life that you have to buy into that. But it does mean you can kind of adopt certain principles like, like Buddhism does about what you can worry about, what you shouldn't try to control, how you can be more accepting and not kicking yourself if you feel you're going to make the wrong decision, et cetera. Yeah. It's, and as you were talking about that, it's so interesting how all of this kind of ties in together. So just, just for example, like real quick, like in 12 step programs that teach us the serenity prayer, which it's all about control, right? Like it's like, Hey, let me focus on the things I can't control, like all the things that I can't. And, you know, I've been really interested. I loved your book on like kind of like trust and everything. And something, you know, I started reading into as well was like self delusions, right? Like why, why do we evolve to lie to ourselves, right? And if, if we didn't, like, why would I, why would I reach, for example, why would I reach out to you to see if you want to come on the podcast, right? Have to have some kind of faith that maybe you'll say yes, or like, Hey, maybe I'm good enough, you know, whatever. And that kind of works out. And that, you know, that kind of makes sense with this kind of like faith reducing like some stress, some depression. But when you, when you look at, you know, some of the child development research, and, and I want to dive into, you talk about like, you know, raising kids and these kind of like practices and stuff. But even with children, you know, we, we've seen that it's better to have them focus on the effort, rather than the result, you know, and that's kind of a practice that's great for us adults as well. And that's kind of letting go of that, right? Because we're, we're taking into account what we can control and not what's going to happen. You know what I mean? Like, is that, is that anything you've researched, particularly? I don't, in particular, but there's a lot of people who do. And I think you're hitting on the, you know, on the point there that is we have to focus more on, on the process than, than always worrying about the goal down, down the line. And it's also important to have, you know, self-compassion for yourself. And what I mean by self-compassion is, when you put in a good faith effort and you fail, don't condemn yourself, right? Self-compassion doesn't mean just like, ah, I was supposed to go to the gym today. I just sat on the couch. Well, that's fine. No, that's, you know, that's not self-compassion. I did my best. And it didn't work out, but tomorrow I'm going to get up and do it again. And I'm not going to be self-critical because if you are self-critical, if you feel guilt or if you feel shame in the moment, that can be a powerful motivator, but over time it's really toxic. So the best way to think about it is, is to have more positive states, like take pride in each little step that you do as you're moving towards something, right? Take, you know, forgive yourself when, when, when you try and you do these things. And I think all these ideas about, about, about the process, rather than focusing on, on me and my ego and where I'm going helps people deal with these, with these, with these stresses a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And, and something, something I think that you, you make a great point about, I believe it's in the introduction is that so many people, you know, who are atheists, just, you know, non-believers and stuff, we're already doing a lot of this stuff. We just don't realize it. And I think that's helpful too, because it's like, oh, I'm already doing half these things. But, but, you know, you have, you kind of, you kind of lay out the book and like, you know, infancy that you're like young adulthood and everything. Yeah, follows the path of life. Exactly. I love it. So can you, can you talk a little bit, like I need people to go out and get the book, but like as parents, right? When we first have a kid, can you talk about some of the rituals and how, you know, they're helpful. Like you talk about like naming or, or just even like what I love was like the sunk cost fallacy of taking care of our kids and stuff like that. Yeah. So, you know, one of anybody who's a parent knows that of course you love your child, but, but there are trying times. And, you know, unfortunately a small percentage of, of new parents because of the stress and anxiety they're feeling have a hard time bonding to their kids, right? It's nothing to be ashamed of. It happens. The question is, how do we, how do we all strengthen those bonds with our kid? And what you were talking about there is, is this idea of the sunk cost fallacy. And then for those people who don't know what it is, the sunk cost fallacy is when you put a lot of, lot into something, it's hard to let it go. So you may have had this with like, you signed up for a course halfway through the course, you hate the course, but you're like, I put in all this time, I can't let it go. Or I put all this time in this job, even though I hate it, I better stick with it. When realistically, your best option is to cut and move forward. Why keep doing something that's not bringing you joy, but that's the sunk cost fallacy. And, you know, kids aren't sunk costs, but in some senses they are a little bit to your brain because when they're young, you're doing everything for them. You're not getting much back. I mean, yeah, you're getting smiles, maybe hugs, but you know, you're changing diapers, you're feeding them, you're up all night. And it can be very, very stressful. Well, if you look at ethnographically, who has the closest relationship with their kids in terms of actual physical contact time spent with them, etc. It's typically the Japanese. Nowadays, it's more Japanese moms because of the way the work culture is there. The dads work huge amounts of time and that's not a healthy thing. But they've developed this emotion called a Mai, which is distinct to them, which is basically this emotion of like cherishing your child. You can think when you're working and your child comes up to you and pulls on your pants and wants you to read his story and that feeling you have like, oh gosh, okay. And one reason I think they do this is because if you look at Shinto, which is the national kind of religion of Japan, one that most people practice, the first year is loaded, actually all of the child, but especially the first year or two is loaded with multiple ceremonies, right? When the mom is pregnant, you have a ceremony where people come and put a sash around her belly to protect the child. When the child's born, you have a ceremony. When the child has his first meal, you do a ceremony. When there's a blessing ceremony, the first birthday, there's a ceremony. There's all these things. And when you think about it, what you're doing is in those ceremonies, parents are always giving thanks publicly to their, for their child. They're also publicly spending a lot of money to organize these rituals and rights. And what it's doing is it's reminding you in a very public way that you can't forget, that you value this child. So we all think, we care for something because we love it and that's true. But the psychologist Allison Gopnik also said, sometimes we love because we care. What she means by that is the simple act of engaging in the effort of caring makes us think, well, I must really love this, this, this thing. And so it convinces our mind that, that these, these, this little creature that's stressing us out is really, really, really worthwhile. And so what I recommend, you know, if you see, if you see physicians often pediatricians say to parents, well, if you're having trouble bonding with your baby, set time away to spend time with it, to read it, read to it, to massage it. What you're doing is creating little rituals that show you value this child. When I, when my kids were young, we would do half birthdays instead of just one, you know, yearly birthdays to have an extra ceremony where we actually show them how much we love them. Just things like that, because of the way your mind works will reinforce how much you really value this child and just tend to reinforce that connection that you have. Yeah. As I was reading that section, I was, I kept thinking about my son's first birthday, right? Like if you ask anybody, you know, like, Hey, what was your first birthday like? None of us remember, but we, we probably spent more money on his first birthday than any other birthday. I'm thinking about that. Like there were like balloons. We were actually living in California during that time and all our families here in Nevada and they came out there just, it was such a big thing for his first birthday and I, you know, it's always thinking about that as we were reading like, no, you're right. And it's for him, but he has no memory or experience because I slept through half of it, but that's exactly right. But if you look at Shinto, they take that first birthday, but they have that size celebration so many multiple times during the first year and even, you know, in multiple times after that. And it's just a way of just reinforcing how much this child means to you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and yeah, like, uh, like you were talking about it in the book, like these are things that we're already doing. And maybe if we like understood a little bit and we can understand, I think, you know, one of the more important parts is, you know, there's often like this divide between like atheists and believers and, you know, and it's just like, Hey, we're doing a lot of the same things for the same reasons, even though we might not even, you know, realize it. But one of, one of the topics that like, I'm so interested in is morality. Yeah. And you talk a little bit about that. I'm hoping you could better explain it to me because I've read about it in a few books. I'm trying to fully grasp, get my head around it. But it's, it's this kind of, uh, why we evolved to believe or, uh, you know, one of the strongest theories, which is like this kind of accountability aspect. And we see, like, yeah, you can probably explain this better, but we see how it kind of changes the larger societies get, right? Can you explain the hypothesis behind that and why that kind of works out the way it does? Yeah. So, um, there's a few things there. One thing, and, and, and this is worked by, by, by Joe Henrich and colleagues. Um, what you see is if you, is if you chart the growth of societies over time, where, uh, initially, right? Lots of smaller societies had kind of a transactional relationship with their gods or lots of little gods or spirits. And if you wanted something, you gave them an offering and they gave you something bad. But when we start seeing these kind of what they're called, they're called big gods. What they mean by that is kind of omniscient, all-knowing gods. And this is the gods of the, of the kind of the, the Abrahamic religions today. Or in some ways, even like Buddhism and Hinduism, because they have this idea of karma, which is the same thing. And the idea is someone, whether it's God or the scales of karma knows what you're doing and can keep track of it. So in a small society, if I were going to cheat you, Chris, it'd be hard for me to hide. If I were going to be freeloading on people, it'd be hard for me to hide. Everybody would kind of know it. And I would get social, socially ostracized or sanctioned for doing that. But as society's got bigger, it became easy to cheat, right? If I'm a scribe in a temple recording taxes or grain offerings, I can embezzle a little bit. Who's going to know, right? Have something, you know, now if I, if I cheat in certain ways, it's easy to cheat because society is so big, no one's seeing exactly what everybody's doing. And so you saw these, at least this is the theory that they have, you saw these big gods emerge to keep cooperation going because suddenly maybe your friend or your neighbor wouldn't know if you were cheating someone in these larger societies, but God knows karma knows, and you're going to pay a price for that. Because if you think about morality, really, most of morality boils down to kind of cooperation, right? If you give me money, if I don't pay you back on the head, but if I don't pay you back, you're never going to want to interact with me again. And so over time, I'm going to lose those benefits. That's why I do it. If you cheat on your spouse, that may feel good to you in the moment, but when that person finds out, long-term, it's going to ruin that relationship. So morality is a lot about suppressing your desire for immediate gratification, accepting a sacrifice in the moment to do something that's better for everyone. And that's the idea behind what some of these moralistic religions do. But the other thing that I like to talk about in my book is God or someone can tell you, be good, don't lie, don't cheat. It doesn't always work. In studies we have in my lab, 100% of people say they wouldn't cheat on a task. And some of them are lying, but I think the majority aren't lying. They just don't think they would. But when push comes to shove and we give them anonymity and they can save a lot of time or earn a lot of money, a good percentage of them will cheat. And they'll create a story for why it was okay so they feel justified. And so what religions do are they also give us these tools that help us combat that. So I told you before, when you feel gratitude, you become more moral, less likely to cheat. And there's lots of other tools like that. So it's not just from the top down, be good. It's from the bottom up changing your beliefs, changing your feelings that help you fight temptation. So here's where I struggle. And I'm guessing you have some answers for me. So morality, it's a lot about cooperation. This evolving to believe in a God, societies grow bigger. That makes sense. I'm not going to do some shady stuff, even though I think I can get away with it and all that. So a common argument I see from a lot of people from different religious backgrounds, well, mainly Christianity is if we don't have God, we don't have morality. And then the whole world turns into chaos. And I'm like, well, no, I can look outside and see how many people don't believe and they're not running around raping, killing, murdering, stealing, all sorts of stuff. But at the same time, how do we explain that? How do we explain how people have moved further away from not just organized religion, but we have more and more people just being atheists doing their own thing. But society's still running. We're still cooperating. Is this just some kind of, is this more just cooperation being built into us? Do you think then the God stuff? Yeah, I mean, so let me say, I don't believe you need religion to be a good person. And as you're saying, I think that's exactly right. I mean, Nietzsche said, God is dead. We have killed him when this secularization movement really was taking off. And the world was going to burn. It didn't, right? We're still here. And if you look at that big God data, the one point they make is in really modern, complex societies that have really good rules of law that people adhere to, the effect of those big moralistic gods isn't as large because we've built into our society guardrails and expectations. But human nature is always back and forth between what's good for me now in the moment to gain power resources and the fact that we have cooperated to all live together. And so when the rules of law begin to be violated, and you can see this now in politics as we're beginning to, what's the word I'm looking for, kind of denigrate institutions and not believe in these institutions that provided guardrails for the rule of law, chaos is breaking out in ways that are frightening. And so I think religion is just one set of tools that can help people be more moral. Now I should say, right, the whole point of this book is religion offers tools that nudge the mind. On average, they help people live better lives. But like any tool or any technology, they can be used for nefarious purposes, too, because people always say, well, Dave, don't you know religion is the source of war? And I'm like, yeah. But that was because it was the intentions of the people who were using the tools. It's not baked into religion itself. Okay. So that kind of leads me to my next question. Maybe it's the same answer. So and, you know, like, I don't want to get too political, but like there's because there's plenty of there's plenty of people on the left who are religious, right? But I'm looking to understand because in a book, like, you know, you talk about like, people who are more religious or they pray, they're less likely to cheat. And like, you know, there's been some research around this and stuff. And less likely it doesn't mean impossible. But but for example, on the topic of morality, like when I look at, you know, politicians, especially on the right, who push these kind of ideas of like, you know, they're against, you know, abortion, you know, the pro gun laws and all these other things that, you know, a lot of are against like gay marriage and just things like that, right? But then these scandals break out, right? They're stealing or doing something or cheating or just insane things. And I'm like, okay, how do we explain that? Is this, is this, should I be thinking of that as like just these one off situations? Because I think that's what a lot of atheists say, like, why would I ever do any religious stuff? Look at that religious guy. Yeah, cheating and stealing and all that. Yeah. I mean, I mean, a few things there. And let me say one thing. It's not that that religious people tend to be always more honest. It really, it really depends, right? So people who are engaged in their faiths tend to be more honest. People who just say, I'm religious and are like, you know, a poser of like using it, they're not more, they're not, they're not more honest. So it's certainly not a guarantee. But I think what you're seeing there is, well, some of it is, is people using, using religion as a tool is that it's really powerful. You can motivate people to do all kinds of things with it. And so a lot of politicians, dictators, everybody else will use it as a tool. But when you talk about things like, like abortion or the death penalty, I, I kind of want to separate, and this is not a cop out, but I want to separate what I'm looking at from theology, right? So religion set, set out social policies that are beliefs about theology and what is a sin and was not a sin. And on a general level, they all kind of have been the most basic stuff like, right, thou shall not kill, we should be honest, you should care for your fellow neighbor. But when they start, you know, looking at very specific theological elements and policies, that may or may not appeal to people based on what they believe. To me, that's the institutional part of religion, just like the Republican Party, the Catholic Church, right, or the, or, or a group of, or, you know, the certain sects of Islam or whatever it might be, have certain theological policies. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about are the spiritual practices and rituals that we engage in. Those are helpful. The policy standpoints you may or may not agree with for lots of reasons. And I think a lot of people now are, are leaving religion because they don't agree with those policies. Politically, or, you know, a lot of people are leaving churches because like Catholic Church, because like, you know, women can't be priests, there's gender discrimination, there's all kinds of things going on. And so I think we're in this period where what we believe is right and what we believe is factual is in flux from these traditional standpoints of these religions that have been around for a long time, which is why people are looking for new ways to be spiritual because the theology of these other faiths don't speak or resonate to them anymore, but they still feel in need for something in their life. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That, that, that helps make a little bit more sense of it. So that's what I kind of look at this, but yeah, I, I, I think, you know, I've, I've recognized this too. I've seen more churches pop up where they're like, Hey, we're LGBTQ inclusive. We're, you know, and all sorts of things, even like I mentioned, being here in Las Vegas growing up, like, you know, I'm, I'm 36. So kind of like in that millennial age. And I've seen even certain aspects of the Mormon churches, just, you know, at least here in Las Vegas, Utah's next door, I think that's a different story because that's like the hub, but things are, have shifted a little bit here. Like one of my good friends is his brother came out as gay in high school. It was really, you know, an issue at first, but now it's more like accepted and things like that. And I don't know if it's just specific to, you know, this anecdote or our city or whatever, but it is, it is cool seeing it kind of modernize and become a little bit more loose with some of that stuff or people just starting their own things. Yeah. And all, I mean, I mean, all religions that exist now exist because somebody figured out there was a better way, or they spoke to people in a different way, right? You know, I mean, that, that's how different sex arise. And there are new religions are rising all the time. The ones that last are the ones that speak to certain people's values and needs and meet them. But really what they do besides forming belief is they form a community, right? And that's what in many ways helps people at all stages of life. You know, loneliness is as bad for you in terms of morbidity statistics as is smoking, as is drinking. And, you know, religions form community. And so one of the things that we studied in my lab was how do we make people feel more connected? And so we studied this idea of what's called motor synchrony, it's moving together in time. And you know, you see this when you see a flock of birds moving together or a school of fish, suddenly it doesn't seem like individuals, it seems like things that are together. And so we brought people into the lab and we had them just put on earphones and simply tap a sensor in front of them with tones. And the tones were either rigged so that they were in sync so people were moving their arms in sync or they were random and they weren't. After that, we asked people, how, you know, how similar are you to that person? They never met, I mean, never met before, they never talked. That simple act of moving together in time, people reported being more similar than if they moved out of time. They reported feeling more compassion when we took one person in each group and we had, we got them stuck doing some God awful task. And they also became about 30% more likely to say, hey, that person got stuck doing this God awful task, can I go help them? Yeah. Right. And so this was a little life pack to simply make in that moment, turn strangers into friends who were willing to do something for each other. I thought, well, this is great. But every religion we looked at, that's what you see. Yeah. People kneel and stand and sing together. And it's forming that sense of community and reinforcing it among strangers and in lots of different ways. And I think that's another fundamental way why, how religions build resilience in people. Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest things I saw just, you know, going to 12-step meetings. And I get kind of defensive. You know, there's always things like, oh, it's like calls, it's there as they force God on you or something. But I saw all these like benefits that people like yourself have proven with science. It was the community and, you know, a lot of people, you know, a lot of people struggling with like depression and stuff like very isolated, very alone. And doing things like, you know, for example, I was going to three meetings a day with similar groups of people, right? That was me building this community. And then there's certain, you know, rituals. I think rituals just even saying that gives kind of like this woo woo kind of feeling. But yeah, just things we do regularly. But I have a few more questions that I have to, I have to ask you before I let you go because you are a researcher, you're very scientific method and all that. And here's something that I struggle with because I'm like, yeah, science. All right. So there have been a lot of debates about like scientists being religious, right? And religion and science. So I'm not so much like can religious and science kind of like overlap? Like, of course it can. But here's where I struggled, David. I'm hoping you can help explain this to me. So when I think of like a scientist who is a church going or regardless of their religion, like very religious, to me, it feels like at some point, like at some point in that process, there's going to be this wall where they hit their religion, right? Where it seems like their beliefs because it seems like, you know, when you grow up of a faith, it is just so deeply ingrained in you, it's going to be hard to be completely science minded or objective. So I'm curious thoughts on that with what I think, I mean, I think it really depends what you're researching. So, you know, I mean, Francis Collins, who's head of NIH right now is a person who is who is deeply religious faith, right? But he, you know, and he formed this organization called Biologos, which is designed to say, look, religious people, don't take the Bible literally, evolution is real, et cetera, right? But you know, I think you can have faith in where that maybe God had a hand in the creation of the world, but still believe that the way it operates now and the science we used to understand it, and our ability to understand that is a gift from that God. I think where it becomes a problem is if you are so, so devoted to a faith, and that faith makes strong claims about the thing that you are researching, then it can be a problem. But for a lot of scientists, you know, I don't know that the things that we're searching are related to their beliefs. But if you believe that, you know, God put you on this earth and you can use the tools that you have to study that creation using the scientific method, I don't see a problem with that. But I think it, you know, it just it just depends. I mean, no scientist, even if even if I'm doing an experiment, even if I'm not religious, but I have a really strong view that my idea has to be right. That's not good for any scientist, right? You have to follow the data. And as I tell people, that's what got me here, right? I'm not here on an agenda saying religion is good. I'm here after doing lots of work saying, gee, a lot of the things I'm studying that I see work religions have been using, maybe there's something here. And so it's it's it's following that data, right? On the other side, there are people like, you know, Richard Dawkins or Steve Pinker, who are so against the idea of religion as a superstition, that they think it's it's an extremely harmful thing to look at and have no redeeming elements. And I'm like, guys, look at the data, we're not arguing about does God believe does God exist? But if you look at the data, there are benefits to it. And I think for some of those folks, it's hard to actually accept that. And so I think no matter when you're a scientist, whether it's a theological belief or just a strongly held notion, you've got to be willing to go where the data takes you and not try and force it to be what you want it to be. Yeah. And David, I think you just blew my brain up because that makes sense too. Some people can be so atheistic, like when I think of, you know, like really devout devout atheists, it's, you know, just toting this idea like I am scientific. That's why I don't believe in anything. But for example, your book has plenty of research and plenty of data. So you could be so against religion that you neglect some of that stuff. And I guess that's a concern I would have for somebody being like a religious scientist, right? Right, right. Exactly. And, you know, my argument is, look, let's not argue about the theology whether God exists or not. Let's just study these things scientifically in a respectful way. And I think that's a huge benefit. Yeah. That actually perfectly transitions into one of the last questions I was going to ask you because I've seen you, you know, on Twitter, I think you and I even talked a little bit about there are, you know, the new atheists with, you know, like, I think we talked a little bit about Sam Harris and all that. Like, for example, and I, you know, I think it's kind of a spectrum, like Sam Harris, one of the books that really helped me actually, when I got sober was his book Waking Up. And it was like, yeah, spirituality without religion. And it wasn't so much, you know, like, like your research and everything, but he just kind of talked about the practices because he's really into meditation, gets into some psychedelics and stuff, which you talk about a little bit in your book as well. But I'm curious, I'm curious your thoughts like it almost seems like in for certain people, atheism has almost become sort of like this religion like I noticed, right? I come from a YouTube background. There are a lot of like YouTube channels that are purely based around atheism. Like there's even like conferences for atheists. When I go to the bookstore, I'm browsing books or some books on atheism. And it's like 300 pages telling you why God doesn't exist. I'm like, isn't this a little much so like it's like any other identity that we map on to just like Republican versus Democrat versus and everybody's entitled to their own, right? I don't, you know, and I'm not going to tell you atheism is wrong or Catholicism, right? Or Judaism is wrong, right? That's up to you. But when you're out there making such a strong case as a scientist, right? I can't tell you God doesn't exist. I can tell you, I see no strong evidence that God exists. But I can't tell you that God doesn't exist. And any scientist when push comes to shove will have to admit that, right? So let's not, let's not, when you're having those books on either side, it's really just agenda driven, right? Based on a social identity. But then here's, so here's what I think, right? So let's look at it before we go. One big problem I talk about in the book is how people deal with grief. And if you look at religions, the way that they deal with grief is tremendously helpful and insightful in ways that scientists are only now figuring out. So when somebody dies, what's one thing all religions do, when you go to a funeral, you eulogize the person, you talk about why this person was a good person. Now that seems normal, but if you think about it, Chris, it's kind of strange. If I just lost a job I loved or my partner who I love dumped me, I wouldn't want to spend time thinking about how wonderful that job or partner was because it sucks. I don't have them anymore, right? That would make me miserable. But we do it. Why do we do it? Well, work by George Bonano, who's one of the world's major grief researchers shows that when you have, when you can solidify positive memories of a person who is gone, it's one of the big predictors of limiting grief. And in fact, people who are more depressed and more anxious and more paralyzed in grief can't make those memories. What's the biggest predictor of coming through grief? Instrumental support. That's not social support. It's not like how many followers you have on Twitter. It's who shows up. And if you look at like Judaism and sitting Shiva, it's a midst vote. It's a sacred obligation that you must go to these people's houses and visit them and bring food and support them. And when you go, they say these prayers in groups that are called minions where people are praying together. And you know what? They're doing this and they're chanting together and moving together. That's like we just talked about before reinforces compassion and connection. They cover their mirrors in Shiva or in Irish wakes or in Hindu ceremonies. Why do they cover their mirrors? It seems strange. Well, there's science. There's lots of scientific research that shows self focus, even specifically looking in a mirror intensifies whatever emotion you're feeling. And so if you're, if you're mourning, looking in a mirror is going to intensify your grief. And so there are all these little nudges packaged in ways that figured out a long time ago factors that we are just learning now that mitigate grief. And so my argument is let's go look and see what else there is that we can put to the test and that we can help people use and bring into their own traditions and their own, their own habits. Yeah. No, I love how you said that. And, and yeah, just to, just to wrap this up, like, you know, for the book, like I'm curious who, who do you hope is going to read this book? And it might be both of these. Like when I think I'm like, is this mainly for non-believers to show them the scientific evidence and the research that kind of the benefits of these kind of rituals or the kind of like, you know, religious people to be like, Hey, there's actually some research behind this that shows why this stuff works. Who, who are you hoping picks this book up? I, you know, I love course, I want everybody to take it. But realistically, it's, it's, it's, it's both. I mean, I'm sure there are some hardcore atheists who will just not countenance at all. There are some hardcore kind of fundamentalist or orthodox religious folks who won't countenance at all. But everybody in between, I want to think about it because if you're a person who's not religious, I want you to see that these traditions have some things that you might use. And for people who are religious, I want you to say, Oh, that's why I do this in my faith. And here's how it works. And it might encourage people who are kind of on the fence and religious to adopt some more of those. And again, my, my goal isn't to make anyone religious or not religious. It's to foster a conversation between two areas of life that have become more diametrically opposed to help us all hopefully figure out ways to make life better for everyone. Yeah, absolutely. I think I mentioned this on Twitter when I was reading, reading the books, like if I was still working in a rehab, I would just hand this out to everybody like, look, here's some, here's some reasons why we do this. But, but David, thank you so much for your time. The book is out now. So could you tell everybody like, is it available internationally? Like, is it available everywhere? And where can people find you to keep up to date with your research? And when you write your next book? Yeah, sure. So the book is called Write, Write, How God Works, the Science Behind Religious Benefits. It's available in the US and Canada right now. It comes out in the UK and Commonwealth countries on the, I think at the end of October. But if you want to find anything else about it, you can come to my website, which is www.DavidDisteno.com or I'm at DavidDisteno on Twitter. Beautiful. Awesome. And I'll link all that down in the description below. And yeah, again, love, love the book. Thanks so much for your time. And, and yeah, I'm sure we'll be doing this again some other time. Thanks, Chris.