0:02

My sleep troubles and my anxiety

0:05

in almost fear around sleep

0:07

started when I was it like

0:09

fifth or sixth grade. The

0:11

biggest battle at bedtime if we're

0:14

putting a label on it is

0:16

against hopelessness right? That's really what

0:18

underlines my lack of sleep and

0:21

the things that cause my

0:23

like sleep. It's

0:26

like this underlying hopelessness that all

0:28

will not be well. As

0:31

a kid I tried like

0:34

different nature loops. The streams

0:36

are waterfalls. Sunder

0:42

Storms. And

0:49

I think more popular was like more

0:51

exotic nature sounds back in the nineties.

0:57

I guess those are all or nothing vague because was

0:59

like this just as never going to work for me

1:02

and I couldn't put me to sleep. I

1:04

was deathly rog. My impression was mistaken.

1:08

If you're. Dealing with stuff that underlying

1:10

it is hopelessness. There.

1:12

Is something hopeful about listening

1:15

to bird songs. It

1:23

definitely help me feel more relaxed in almost

1:25

a sense of like I guess smiled

1:27

security like hey I wanna be here This

1:29

is a nice place to be. High.

1:45

On Decker Kellner welcome to the

1:47

science of Happiness were On each

1:49

episode we share lab tested practices

1:51

you can try at home to

1:53

support your wellbeing. Hundreds.

1:57

of studies have shown that being in

1:59

nature is good for our bodies and our

2:01

mental health. We know that

2:03

being immersed in nature or gardening or going

2:05

for a walk outdoors or backpacking reduces

2:08

the stress response, reduces cortisol, helps

2:10

with the inflammation process in our

2:13

immune systems, and

2:15

psychologically reduces anxiety, helps us

2:17

focus more, and brings

2:19

us greater calm and well-being. In

2:22

my own lab at UC Berkeley and in other

2:24

labs around the world, we're finding

2:26

that we can bring nature home with

2:29

us and enjoy some of the

2:31

same benefits. It could be

2:33

watching a documentary about the Pacific Ocean,

2:36

reflecting back in our memories upon

2:38

an inspiring sunset that brought us

2:40

all, or listening

2:42

to recordings of birds singing.

2:49

That's what our guest, Drew Ackerman, tried

2:51

today for our show. Each

2:54

night before bed to see if it

2:56

could help him feel more relaxed and

2:58

at ease in the evenings with

3:01

the ultimate goal of helping him fall

3:03

asleep. Drew is a

3:05

self-proclaimed insomniac, and it

3:07

inspired him to create an amazing podcast

3:09

about it called, Sleep With Me. If

3:12

any of you listening have sleepless nights like I

3:14

often do, I recommend you check it out.

3:17

Some of you may remember Drew. A couple of

3:20

years ago on our show, he tried to practice

3:22

where he wrote in a worry journal each night

3:24

to help him sleep. We

3:27

hear from Drew and also from scientists

3:29

who are studying how listening to birdsong

3:31

can lead us to feel more calm

3:34

and content. More after

3:37

these messages. How

3:46

much awe and wonder do you experience in your life?

3:50

From the John Templeton Foundation, our

3:52

sponsors at the Science of Happiness,

3:54

the Templeton Ideas Podcast, explores the

3:56

most awe-inspiring ideas in our world

3:59

with the people who- investigate them. Host

4:01

Tom Burnett sits down with inspiring

4:04

thinkers like Allison Gopnik, David Brooks,

4:06

Tyler Cowans, and Gretchen Rubin

4:09

to discuss how their investigations

4:11

have transformed their lives and

4:13

how they may transform yours. Learn

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more at templeton.org podcast.

4:21

This is the science of happiness. I'm

4:23

Dacher Keltner. Today we're

4:25

talking about what happens to our brains

4:28

and bodies when we listen to birdsong.

4:31

For our show, Drew Ackerman, a sleep

4:33

with me podcast, tried listening

4:35

to recordings of birdsong, a

4:38

new frontier in the study of well-being, each

4:40

evening to help her relax. Drew,

4:44

welcome back to the science of happiness. Thanks

4:46

for having me on. You know, you've been

4:48

one of our culture's great

4:50

advocates for giving people different

4:52

approaches or remedies to the sleep debt that

4:54

many of us experience. And you've

4:57

tried all kinds of different things and you hear

4:59

these birdsongs like and you're lying there thinking, okay,

5:01

I'm gonna fall asleep. What was it

5:03

like for you? Was it strange? It

5:06

was strange. I did try to

5:08

set a pause and be like, okay, well, let's just listen

5:10

to this and kind of see how it goes without

5:12

expectation. And I think that's one of the

5:15

first things that I've discovered works is

5:17

like, hey, this is not binary. I don't have to decide

5:19

if it's gonna put me to sleep or not put

5:21

me to sleep. Let's just see how this goes. And

5:24

I don't know, the effect it

5:26

had on me was much different

5:28

than the expectations I brought into

5:30

it. That's good to hear. The

5:32

science shows, man, you listen to

5:34

natural sounds, running water waves, you

5:36

know, you get calming of the

5:38

body, elevated vagus nerve activation, less

5:40

cortisol, less psychological stress. And

5:43

birdsong study show can have similar

5:45

effects. And so I just

5:47

want to kind of get your impressions right now

5:49

and we'll listen to a birdsong recording and just

5:52

give us a stream of consciousness report on what it

5:54

made you feel. Okay. I

6:14

bet you're an expert at introspection

6:17

given all the work you've done with sleep. I'm curious

6:19

what was your stream of consciousness like when you heard

6:21

that? Well, that's funny you say

6:24

introspection because I guess my experience is

6:26

the opposite of introspection. Yeah. And

6:28

that was like what kind of surprised me

6:30

so much was that there is this texture

6:33

to the audio and I'm not talking about

6:35

from a producer standpoint but from I guess

6:38

like an intangible way that like is drawing

6:40

me in and particularly

6:42

that one it was like it was almost

6:44

like my brain started to fill in details.

6:46

What's the humidity like? What's the taste in

6:49

my mouth? It was

6:51

like a gravitational kind of pull of like hey

6:53

you're coming to this non-specific place.

6:56

What's it like? It's pretty nice actually that

6:59

being in my own head which has no

7:02

green leaves or chirping birds my

7:04

brain is lacking of dew and

7:06

moss and stuff like that. When

7:09

I teach students happiness I often one of the

7:11

exercises I do is it's

7:14

about savoring and it's imagine a place

7:16

that just feels content and calm out

7:18

in nature and just vividly

7:20

imagine it and bird songs it seems

7:23

took you there. Yeah. Yeah.

7:26

So what about your routine? I know I gather

7:29

from sleep experts that routines are so

7:31

important and walk us through your routine

7:33

for listening to bird song as

7:36

you prepared for going to sleep. A

7:38

normal routine when the weather is nice

7:41

is I sit outside and I do

7:43

like my bedtime routine which is like

7:45

a little bit of journaling, a little

7:47

bit of meditating and just kind of

7:49

reflecting on you know how my day went

7:52

And I was like okay, when I'm done with them

7:54

and I listen to bird songs, then I just added

7:56

it in as I was getting in bed just listening

7:58

to the bird songs. And trying

8:01

different ones out here to see

8:03

those ones that didn't work. Am

8:05

a huge Mourning Dove fan. I

8:12

just love that sounds in it's

8:14

various avast Iv of this a

8:16

sense memory and add anything specific

8:18

purchase A nice feeling. Of

8:20

hearing their kind of sounds. Yeah.

8:23

Like the mines is kind

8:25

of cranks and reiterate list

8:27

of worries over and over.

8:30

And. I think a lot of us

8:32

know our sleep issues are closely related

8:34

to rumination. How. Did this edition

8:36

of the birdsong tears sleep routine affect your

8:38

rumination? I don't know if I just have

8:40

one ruminate or I might have like a

8:43

team, a robot eight or submit it isn't

8:45

And hey, let's go and sit out like

8:47

a little sit out here. We got this

8:49

nice view, Ember just listening and what are

8:51

you all here in compared to ruminating about

8:53

oh boy yeah you're right. I'm a defective

8:56

because I have unfolded well. my laundry. It

8:58

okay. What about in spurts? where do you

9:00

think about these birds So baby? that idea

9:02

of a this is opportunity I think a

9:04

lot of times. The. Stuff around bedtime.

9:06

I've never been able of banish the room

9:09

and eight years my life and the more

9:11

at I've tried to banish them or go

9:13

to war with them or use their tactics

9:15

against them. It's failed But that same attitude

9:18

of like maybe you're just a little sick

9:20

and I can help you along little bit

9:22

and can show you something different. That.

9:24

Does work, So. It's almost like

9:27

instead of hopelessness this author since like. Being.

9:30

Opportunity. Pages

9:34

triumph this new type of being

9:36

and see how it feels. When.

9:40

Of the animating forces of your work

9:42

is anxiety around sleep and stress and

9:44

trying to relax and you know they're

9:46

nice. Studies showing that does listening to

9:48

Birdsong reduces stress, helps us recover from

9:50

stress. Gets. His to think a new

9:52

ways. How. did you observe

9:54

this edition of the birds on to

9:57

your bedtime ritual altering the stress and

9:59

anxiety have around sleep. I guess I see it

10:01

as today

10:19

was not great. I'm still not feeling great about

10:21

the day. Let me listen to

10:23

some of this because there is a large

10:25

number of bird songs available. It's

10:27

like, hey, I guess turn that critic to

10:29

a more curious person and be like, hey,

10:31

well, yeah, let's listen to four or five.

10:33

Yeah. You know which one you like better.

10:35

And then we'll listen to that for five

10:37

or 10 minutes. It's like making

10:40

a small decision and just seeing how it

10:42

goes. And

10:47

I think that's always interesting. We talk

10:49

about sleep, that most of us

10:51

sleep in the same bed the majority

10:53

of time in that that environment can

10:55

take on such different flavors

10:57

and feelings of safety and security

11:00

based on our thoughts and our feelings. A lot

11:02

of times as man, if I don't feel good,

11:04

or I don't feel like I'm going

11:06

to get some sleep, that place is not going to

11:08

be a pleasant place. It's not going to feel safe

11:10

and secure. But listening to the bird songs kind of

11:12

took me there. We're

11:14

feeling it physically immersed in the

11:17

moment really. And there's just this

11:19

richness to it. Another

11:22

thing that, and this is kind of

11:24

hard to explain, but my biggest sense

11:26

taking away from listening to these was

11:29

it most reminded

11:32

me of sunlight, like an

11:34

experiential way. Like,

11:37

I don't know if you have this experience or

11:39

anybody listening does where you just

11:41

go outside at a

11:44

specific time of day and it could

11:46

mean specifically tied to a season and

11:48

the sunlight is just in this very

11:50

specific way that you can't put your

11:53

finger on. And it gives you this,

11:55

at least for me, it gives me this overwhelming

11:57

feeling and part of it is like not quite

11:59

missing. nostalgia, but a

12:01

vague memory probably built up over time. I

12:03

liked it. I like this. And it just

12:06

is like, that's what the bird song did

12:08

for me. It's like, it's evocative of summer,

12:11

but not one specific summer memory. But it

12:13

just hit me in that way that's a

12:15

little bit beyond words, but that I can

12:17

feel good about. Drew,

12:21

thank you for taking the time to come back

12:23

to Science of Happiness and try another practice on

12:26

your sleep journey. Thanks for having me. Up

12:32

next, we're going deeper into the science

12:34

of why hearing bird song can soothe

12:36

our minds and our body. Support

12:41

for the science of happiness comes from Odoo. If

12:44

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odoo.com/happiness. That's odoo.com/happiness.

13:13

Odoo, modern management made

13:15

simple. Welcome

13:18

back to the science of happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner.

13:21

Empirical studies have demonstrated that listening to

13:23

bird song can change the way we

13:25

feel and think. But why

13:27

do these sounds have such an impact on us? Shuka

13:30

Galantari spoke with scientists to learn more.

13:33

Here's Shuka. Thanks, Dacher. First,

13:38

let's try out a little experiment for ourselves.

13:41

Listen to this. Okay,

13:47

now listen to this. Scientists

14:00

in Germany had 295 people

14:03

listen to six minutes of both of those

14:05

sounds, one after another. People reported

14:07

to have less depressive states, less

14:09

anxious states, and also less paranoid

14:11

thoughts after listening to the bird

14:14

sounds. That's Emil Stoba. He

14:16

led the study. And

14:18

depressive states were actually

14:20

heightened for the people after

14:22

they have listened to the traffic noise soundscapes.

14:25

This was an online study. People listened

14:27

to the two sounds and then filled out questionnaires

14:30

reporting how each one made them feel. He

14:32

kind of proved what we already know, that

14:35

the tweets, coups, and chirps of birds are

14:37

nice to hear. They can

14:39

make us feel better. But a psychologist

14:41

in Sweden took this line of research

14:43

even further. We want to check

14:45

if urban noise environments compared to

14:47

a nature sound would have some

14:50

effect on restoration. Jesper Albersson

14:52

brought 40 people into his lab and

14:54

wired them up with electrodes to measure

14:56

their skin conductance, the skin's

14:58

electrical activity. So if you start to

15:00

sweat, you will have more current going

15:02

between those electrodes compared to if you're

15:04

not sweating. It's a good way

15:07

to assess the body's stress response. And

15:09

to get them stressed, he gave them a surprise

15:11

mass test. So there was

15:13

a voice that said, now we're soon going

15:15

to start a mathematical test. Please get ready.

15:17

They had three seconds to answer each question.

15:20

And then they started to see equations

15:23

appearing on a screen. The

15:25

equations could be like 573 minus 248. If

15:31

they answered correctly, they heard a sweet jingle.

15:35

If they got the answer wrong, they heard something like

15:37

this. So

15:39

that test was set up so it

15:41

would be hard and they would fail

15:43

often by not computing correctly within the

15:46

time limit. After the math

15:48

quiz, they all listened to four minutes of traffic

15:50

noises. Then

15:56

four minutes of ambient fan-like sounds.

16:02

And finally, the sounds of flowing

16:05

water and birdsong. The

16:10

main result was that if you look

16:12

at skin conductance, there was an increase

16:14

or a faster recovery if you listen

16:17

to the nature sound compared to

16:19

the road traffic noise. So

16:21

their bodies were able to recover from the stress of

16:23

the math quiz faster when they heard

16:26

the sounds of nature. But

16:28

that wasn't the case for everyone. Some

16:31

didn't mind the traffic noise. So

16:33

I had a participant that said, yeah, this

16:35

was nothing, right? I work as a taxi driver

16:37

and this is like every day at work. I

16:40

don't know what the fuss is about. Will you find

16:42

anything? Others didn't like birds

16:44

or their songs. If you

16:46

have some kind of phobia for birds,

16:48

perhaps bird noises isn't that relaxing. You

16:51

could have fearful water, right? And water

16:54

fountains would be horrible. And

16:57

perhaps you're grown up in a big city

16:59

where there's noise all the time and being

17:02

in a tent outdoors, everything being super quiet

17:04

would be stressful. Eleanor

17:08

Ratcliffe is an environmental psychologist in the UK.

17:12

She wanted to understand why some people think

17:14

a particular sound is pleasant and relaxing, while

17:17

others may think it's horrible. I found

17:19

that looking only at the more

17:21

kind of objective things like realistic properties

17:24

or the structure, complexity, pattern of the

17:27

bird sound, that wasn't telling the whole

17:29

story. She recruited 174 people

17:32

from the UK to listen to recordings of

17:34

bird songs. They were told to

17:36

imagine a scenario where they were stressed out

17:39

about anything at all and then

17:41

rate to what extent that bird song would

17:43

help them recoup. They

17:45

also answered questions like, does

17:48

the sound have any meaning or association to

17:50

you, any memories that it prompted? So

17:53

what I found in this study is

17:55

that when people heard these very short

17:57

clips of bird song, they actually elaborated

17:59

all the time. them a lot in their mind,

18:01

they would describe much richer

18:03

worlds or environments. They tended

18:06

to be related to quite

18:08

specific themes and imagery, so

18:11

green spaces, seasons like spring and summer,

18:13

someone would say like it takes me

18:15

back to my grandma's garden. So quite

18:18

often people were listening to these sounds

18:20

and going back in their mind's eye

18:22

to particular places, times, people that were

18:24

important in their life. On

18:27

the flip side, when people associated the

18:29

sounds with less green environments like a

18:31

city, or if the bird

18:33

sounded unfamiliar, they rated them as

18:35

being unpleasant or stressful. It

18:38

was really this issue of

18:40

meaning and the associations or the values

18:42

that people attached to bird sounds that

18:44

also had an important role. So

18:47

bringing that element of the person back into

18:49

the environment and you know not just thinking

18:51

oh I gotta get by you know 30

18:54

minutes of nature a day or something

18:56

but making it something that's really meaningful

18:58

and brings some relevance to your own

19:00

life. On

19:08

our next episode of the science of

19:10

happiness we explore how thinking about our

19:12

values supports our well-being. Thanks

19:20

for joining us on the science of happiness. I'm

19:22

Dakar Kettner. Our executive producer

19:24

of audio is Shuka Kalantari. Hali

19:26

Gray is our producer. Sound design

19:28

from Jenny Cataldo and a special

19:31

thanks to our research assistant and

19:33

my former science of happiness students

19:35

Dasha Zerboni and Selena Bilal.