- It's not unusual for friends, family members, and even good bosses to tell us, "Practice some self-care."

But today's guest says there are physical and emotional benefits to practicing care for others too.

She's Nicole Karlis, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Nicole Karlis, an award-winning journalist and author who writes about health and science.

Her new book is "Your Brain on Altruism: The Power of Connection and Community during Times of Crisis."

She joins us today from Florence, Italy.

Nicole, thank you so much for being with us, and congratulations on the book.

- Thank you for having me.

I'm so happy to be here.

- Well, the book is, I gotta tell you, just a really remarkable and interesting read.

For those who haven't had a chance to read it yet, do you wanna give us a quick overview?

- Sure.

So my book, "Your Brain on Altruism," it starts with the Napa wildfires, and it explores this phenomenon called bounded solidarity, where people come together in the wake of a crisis, and I'm sure we'll get into that later in our conversation.

And really, when people come together, they feel this deep desire to give to each other that they wouldn't normally feel in non-crisis times.

And I ask in the book, you know, why does that fade, and what are the health benefits of altruism?

And that really set me on an investigation to interview psychologists, neuroscientists, sociologists, disaster resilience study professors about these health benefits and how we can really nurture them individually and build what I call a culture of caring in our society.

And I also investigate people who are prioritizing a culture of caring right now in America.

- How did you stumble on this and the whole phenomena of the, you know, the impact on both your physical and your emotional health from altruism?

- Right.

So, I mean, it really started about 10 years ago.

I, as a journalist, was really interested in the rise of the wellness industry and the whole hashtag self-care movement.

And one time I was at, personally, a yoga teacher training in India and I met with a Vedic astrologer.

And I was struggling with anxiety at the moment, and I asked, "What would you do to help your own anxiety?"

And he wrote a prescription of acts of kindness, and that really set me on this path of investigating the health benefits of altruism and thinking about how self-care can be other care, and to, you know, really as a journalist ask, who is studying this?

It's so simple, and people are frequently willing to pay so much money to feel good.

And what if we knew that, you know, it could just be as simple as volunteering in your community?

- So let's go back to the 2017 Napa wildfires.

You write about a junior in high school.

Tell us about him and how he turned things good for a while.

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so my book begins with the story of Michael Rupprecht.

And he was a high school junior when the Tubbs Fires took place.

At the time, it was the most destructive wildfires in the history of, in modern history in California.

The smoke outside, it made it almost impossible to breathe.

You know, but instead of just going in his house and playing video games, him and his friends got together, and they just wanted to help their community.

They were like, what can we do?

So they started driving around.

PG&E at the time shut off the power, it was literally quite a apocalyptic scene for these high schoolers.

But they started driving around together to evacuation centers and asking, "We want to help, we want to help our community.

What can we do?"

And at first, they were actually told, "Oh, there's nothing you can do, go home."

But they kept trying.

So they drove to another evacuation center, and the volunteers there said, "We could really use some help in delivering supplies to another evacuation center."

So they started, you know, just kind of delivering supplies and just really, like, you know, here and there, helping where they could.

And they noticed at the time, Michael told me in an interview five years later that he felt more connected to his community than he had ever felt before, that he felt less lonely.

And even as, you know, the days passed and the wildfires were finally being put out, he and his friends kept engaging in these altruistic efforts and trying to volunteer in their community.

And they noticed when they did that, they felt noticeably happier.

- So that's an example of what you mentioned before, bounded solidarity.

Tell us about what that is and what happens after that fades.

- Mm-hmm, yes.

So, like I said, bounded solidarity is a sociological term to describe what happens in the wake of a crisis, and it's when people really come together and they feel this deep sense to help others.

And it's interesting 'cause it's sometimes in contrast of how media can portray what happens in a crisis, that maybe people are their worst selves, but we know, and people know who have, you know, lived in the wake of a natural disaster, that people often really want to give and to be of service, they put their differences aside, and we actually, we need that to survive.

But that usually does fade, that disaster resilience professors might, you know, describe that time as kind of the honeymoon period, but it usually does fade and...

But in my book, I ask, you know, what happens if it doesn't?

And also equally as importantly, do we need a disaster to access that phenomenon to really, do we need a crisis to trigger it?

- So we saw that during the COVID pandemic too.

I mean, it's not just wildfires, it's many different types of catastrophic events that can bring out the good in people and bounded solidarity, and again, it fades, I just wanted to mention that.

So, question, can altruism improve your health?

You've already answered that it can, but get into that in some detail, both physical and mental health.

- Yes, so, through my investigation of, it was like a seven-year investigation interviewing everyone who is studying this, I found that there are numerous health benefits to altruism.

Specifically, it can improve cognitive function and slow cognitive decline.

Some research suggests that it can build immunity to protect against disease acceleration.

Other research suggests that if you regularly volunteer later in life, you could actually live longer and have fewer hospital visits.

On a day-to-day basis, kindness can reduce stress, anxiety, and loneliness.

- That's a remarkable set of findings.

- Yeah, it is.

- Do we understand how, do we understand the why and how these acts of kindness, essentially, are producing such profound improvements in people's health?

- Mm-hmm, there are many answers to that.

One part is that it really provides people with a sense of purpose.

So when it comes to living longer and that research around having fewer hospital visits, that's really connected to the importance of having a sense of purpose as you age.

So volunteering, you know, regularly in your community can really give you that sense of purpose.

And for, like protecting against disease acceleration, that comes from a professor named Steve Cole at UCLA, and he talks a lot about also having a sense of purpose, but also how it can protect against loneliness and, you know, really the health consequences of feeling lonely and experiencing chronic stress, and how altruism and really having that sense of purpose in life can reverse those effects.

- You know, so you mentioned loneliness, you mentioned sort of social isolation.

And you, in the book, you talk very briefly about the work of Robert Putnam, who's the author of "Bowling Alone."

We literally just had him at the university earlier this month.

One of the questions that I continue to struggle with is, what accounts for this collapse in the engagements, whether it is volunteerism or, as Putnam talked about, you know, bowling leagues?

What accounts for that decline?

And is it altruism at the core or is it about social connections?

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think what accounts for the collapse, and what I write in my book does come a lot from Putnam's work, is the rise of technology and, like, really, technology replacing our leisure time.

That's, you know, kind of how I understand it.

A lot of what Steve Cole talks about, the professor I just mentioned at UCLA, in regards to technology is about how a lot of our in-person human interactions are being replaced by technology.

So, you know, people aren't even doing their own grocery shopping anymore because there's an app for that.

- Yeah.

- There's basically an app for everything.

And even just those small interactions during the day, going to the butcher to get your meat for your family's dinner that night, you start to learn about that person.

And then if you know that the butcher has a kid who is sick, you understand that, and maybe then you're motivated to do something nice for him to kind of make his day.

And that, you know, not only makes the butcher's day, but it also, there are, we know, as my book reveals, there are a lot of health benefits to, you know, to you to feeling that sense of purpose and, like, that you made someone's day.

So that's, yeah, we're losing all of these opportunities to have these small moments of, you know, delivering acts of kindness and these small moments of altruism because of technology.

- So the start of the second Donald Trump presidency is viewed by many as a political and financial crisis.

Has that stifled communal empathy for some people or many people or?

Just talk about that.

'Cause again, as I said, some people, many people, do view that as a crisis.

It's not a wildfire, but it's a crisis in their view.

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think, you know, this kind of relates back to the loneliness crisis that I talk about in my book.

The former surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, warned that loneliness, he called it an epidemic.

It had reached epidemic levels, that nearly six in 10 Americans were reporting feelings of isolation and deep loneliness.

At the same time, and like I was saying, a lot of these in-person interactions are being eroded and replaced by technology.

So what that means is that we have fewer opportunities to interact with each other in person and to really see each other's humanity.

I mean, you were asking before, is it the altruism or the social connectedness?

It's one thing to have friends, but it's another to have friends that you care for and that you feel in return they also care about you.

And what people are finding more and more in their lives is they have these friends and people in their lives, but they don't feel connected enough where they can go to them in a time of crisis.

And acts of kindness and acts of altruism are actually really vulnerable and can actually, you know, kind of deepen your relationship with another person.

But, I'm sorry, I'm getting a little off track.

But in regards to stifling communal empathy, I think that automate, like technology and automating human interaction is contributing to what we've seen as this decline in empathy levels.

I do wanna point out that more recent research has shown that empathy is on the rise, especially with younger people, but I think it doesn't feel that way because a lot of these big important conversations that people want to be having are actually happening online.

And online, it's really easy for people to be anonymous with each other, so they're more likely to be meaner to each other.

And I think, you know, that could be contributing to this stifling empathy that you asked about.

- You know, I wanna come back to this issue though of how we, how this manifests itself in a context of a crisis.

So, you know, we talked about the Napa wildfires, we talked about the COVID pandemic, but, you know, I'm old enough to remember the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and that sense of bounded solidarity that you describe across the United States.

We were in this together.

My parents and grandparents would talk about the same sort of sentiment after Pearl Harbor and throughout those World War II years.

And I guess the fundamental question I wanna ask is, do you have to be, does it have to be in the aftermath of crisis?

Is this something that we can adopt as a practice, whether it's individual or societal, to produce the kind of positive benefits that you're talking about?

- Mm-hmm, that's exactly one of the main questions that haunted me throughout my investigation in the book.

And researchers think that we actually don't need a crisis to trigger this sense of bounded solidarity, which is really interesting.

But the reasons that it fades is there are a number of factors going against us once we kind of come out of that fog, out of that crisis, and resume to our normal lives.

And some of those factors are, and this is what researchers told me because I would ask directly, "Why does bounded solidarity fade?"

And the researchers told me it's because of capitalism, it's because we live in a society and a culture that's built on fear and scarcity, where people just don't feel cared for by our public systems, by society.

And so that does, you know, sort of force people to live in this mindset of survival of the fittest.

But the research that I found in my book actually shows that survival of the kindest might be a better mindset that we can have and adapt in our daily lives.

- Did you find or take a look at other parts of the world where there might be a culture of kindness already as opposed to what you were just describing in America?

- I didn't.

That was definitely one direction I could have gone with my book, but I really wanted to see where this culture of caring, which is what I call it in the book, because in the book I'm not saying that, like, go out and volunteer and you're gonna be happier and all of your problems are going to be solved, because that's not the reality.

The reality is that actually volunteering, with the way that our society is structured, is very difficult.

You have to have the free time, you have to have transportation, you have to find the right opportunity.

And I also talk in my book about how not everyone is in a place where they can go out and volunteer regularly because they might be full-time unpaid caregivers in their home to either young kids or older parents.

So I really wanted to focus in my book on who is building a culture of caring right now, what industries.

And when I say a culture of caring, I mean that they're prioritizing the act of caring, they see it as a strength in our society and not a weakness.

And so that set me on a different path instead of exploring, really, different cultures, but really saying like, who in America is prioritizing this right now?

- And that was gonna be my next question.

There are industries in America where a culture of kindness is being created, and you write about those.

Tell us about some of those and why that's happening in these industries.

- Mm-hmm, well, so yeah, there are many, and I think it, you know, it can come as a surprise to people that the government is actually prioritizing it.

In California, they have the California Volunteer Corps, and their mission is really to make volunteering more accessible.

They have a program where college students can volunteer, and I say that kind of in quotes, with their, you know, preferred non-profit, but actually receive a stipend that goes towards their college tuition.

So instead of maybe spending that time at a job where they don't, you know, really have a sense of purpose, they actually can have a sense of purpose in their community and be paid for it, and that money goes to help them not be in debt, which I think is really cool.

They're also in the healthcare industry.

There are a group of doctors who are focusing on what's called social prescribing.

So it's really getting to know your patients and trying to understand how, you know, connecting to their community could benefit their health, and part of that is potentially linking a patient with a local volunteer group.

There are many others, I'm drawing a blank right now, but if you read my book, (chuckles) (Wayne chuckles) you can, yeah, find more.

- Well, you know, so one of the things you also talk, it's not just about being altruistic, it's also receiving kindness and witnessing kindness.

Can you talk a little bit about the power of those two dynamics as well?

- Sure, yes.

So, in my book, I talk about how there are, people can either go through a season of giving, receiving, or witnessing, and really that's because when I was also going through this investigation, people would always ask me, "Well, caregivers are so burned out in America.

How can you tell people to go out and volunteer and help others as a remedy to what they're experiencing?"

And you can't argue with that.

I'm personally a mom of two people, and I say, like, oh, two people, (chuckles) of two young people, (hosts laughing) two young kids, literally a 12-week-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old.

So that's, yeah, why my brain can be a little scattered sometimes.

- Those are young people.

(everyone laughing) - Yeah.

- And that's tiring, that could be certainly tiring.

(chuckles) - (chuckles) Yes, yes.

So, it's, you know, not everyone is in a place where they can go out and volunteer and where they are in a place where giving more will actually be beneficial to them.

So, if you're not in that season of giving, then you are probably in a season of receiving.

And I think it's important for us to embrace being in a season of receiving because you're giving someone, you're actually also in a season of giving when you're in a season of receiving because you're giving someone the gift of helping you.

And you're also still working on deepening a connection with someone, and that interaction of altruism can help lift you out of maybe you're feeling lonely or stressed and that's why you can't give, but then you receive an act of kindness.

And research actually shows that that could inspire you to want to carry that on.

Like we have a saying in society that, you know, kindness is contagious, but science actually shows that that's true.

And then where the witnessing comes in is there is research that shows that when you witness altruism that you can experience the emotion awe, and that can really, there are health benefits to experiencing awe as well, and there have been a few books written about that.

But also there's research to suggest that when you witness an act of altruism, you're also more motivated and more likely to go out and perform an act of kindness yourself.

- Yeah, so picking up on that last note, what practically can somebody do if they want to adopt, I don't know if it's a mindset or these practices in their own lives.

And stipulating that, you know, not everybody's in the same situation, but practically speaking, what can people do to adopt this in their own lives?

- Mm-hmm, yeah, I think people, when they think about kindness and altruism and volunteering, then there has to be this big to-do and it might require a lot of your time, but I really encourage people to go back to the basics.

And first, you can just listen to people.

And I have one chapter in my book that I talk about the Making Caring Common project at Harvard, where from a young age they go into schools and they do these deep listening exercises.

And listening without reacting right away is actually a form of caring, and science suggests that it can actually help people build more empathy.

From there, if you wanna level up, you can also engage in random acts of kindness.

And that doesn't have to be to a stranger, it can actually be to people in your everyday life.

Just even picking up the phone and calling someone who you haven't talked to in a while, surprising them with a phone call, say, "Hey, I'm doing a three-minute check-in on you.

Like, how are you?

I can just sit and listen to you for a few minutes."

Or, "I just want to call you and tell you I really appreciate you," or something.

Even just sending a text like that just, you know, it can really, it can brighten your own day.

From there, obviously volunteering regularly.

And if you have the time, the research does show that there are, you know, that's where the optimal health benefits are is when you're, you know, physically engaged in volunteering regularly in your community.

- So this really caught my eye when I read your book, and that's Nice News, founded by Sean Devlin, who lives in California.

Tell us about that.

And by the way, I read the book, and then I went to that website and I immediately signed up.

I got my first newsletter (Jim laughs) this morning, and it was nice.

But tell us about Nice News.

- Yeah, so, in my search to find, you know, what industries, who and what industries are trying to prioritize caring, I was really intrigued, especially as a journalist, kind of by this good news movement, and I came across Nice News, and I reached out and I interviewed him.

And yeah, his story is really interesting.

I mean, like many people right now, they find reading the news really depressing because there is so much reporting on all of these crises and all of the bad stuff that's happening.

And so he kind of just wanted to create something that focused on nice news, (chuckles) good news.

And he was, you know, I think he was met with a lot of skepticism when he did that.

People were like, "Who wants to read about nice news?"

But he's actually finding that, I mean, he's grown his newsletter.

I think when I interviewed him, it was like he had 450,000 subscribers.

I'm sure he has more now.

He shared with me how- - It's more than- - Daily he receives- - It's more than a million, actually, now.

- Oh, more than a million now.

Yeah, he receives daily letters, people saying, "I completely disconnected from the news, but your newsletter brings me hope and it's actually made me want to reengage with the news."

So I think as a journalist, that's really interesting.

I'm blanking on the journalism saying, but if it bleeds, it leads.

I think a lot of journalists have that mindset, but actually reporting on good news is what people want.

They're curious about it, they want to read it, and it actually goes back to that idea of witnessing, and it can inspire people to want to do more good and connect and be of service in their everyday lives as well.

- You know, Nicole, very briefly, how did this reporting change you?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

(chuckles) I mean, in my everyday life, like, I have tried to think about self-care differently.

I think it's really easy to think about, like, oh, self-care, I need to do yoga or I need to go exercise.

And yes, that's important, but I think if you reflect, or at least when I reflect, you know, what do I really need, I'm trying to actually have a deeper sense of purpose in my life.

I'm trying to have deeper connections with my community.

I wanna have a sense of purpose, I wanna help change the world in some way.

And I think we all have that part of us that wants to do that.

And so, you know, knowing that going to go volunteer, to do something nice for someone in my life or a stranger not only makes their day, but also there are health benefits to that, that I need, that I crave as a human, is really important.

- Nicole Karlis, "Your Brain on Altruism," this is important work, thank you so much for sharing some of it with us.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us at pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues) (lighthearted music continues) (lively music)