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Speaker 1: We need the tonic of wilderness. To wade sometimes in marshes,

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Speaker 1: where the bittern and the meadow hen lurk, and hear

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Speaker 1: the booming of the snipe, to smell the whispering sedge,

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Speaker 1: where only some wilder and more solitary foul builds her nest,

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Speaker 1: and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

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Speaker 1: At the same time that we are earnest to explore

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Speaker 1: and learn all things, we require that all things be

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Speaker 1: mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed,

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Speaker 1: and unfathomed by us. Because unfathomable, we can never have

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Speaker 1: enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight

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Speaker 1: of inexhaustible vigor, the vast and titanic features, the sea

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Speaker 1: coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and

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Speaker 1: its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which

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Speaker 1: lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness

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Speaker 1: our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where

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Speaker 1: we never wander. Welcome to stot to blow your mind

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Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robbert Land and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and that opening reading was from Walden

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Speaker 1: by Henry David Thureaux, a classic piece of of literature

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Speaker 1: appreciating nature. So today is a Monday, which is usually

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Speaker 1: the day of the week we would feature a bit

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Speaker 1: of listener mail, but instead, today we've got a special

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Speaker 1: bonus episode for you. Unlike in our regular episodes, this

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Speaker 1: is what we call in the industry a branded episode,

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Speaker 1: which means it was created in partnership with our sponsor today, Mazda. Basically,

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Speaker 1: Mazda came to us with a set of themes, mostly

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Speaker 1: relating to the well documented positive effects of spending time

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Speaker 1: in nature, and we thought, yeah, well we could absolutely

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Speaker 1: do an episode on that, because the effective nature on

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Speaker 1: the human body and is a huge, fascinating and complex subject,

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Speaker 1: worthy probably of an entire series in itself. But in

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Speaker 1: today's episode, we're going to focus on a few interesting

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Speaker 1: questions and studies in the subject area that really struck us.

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Speaker 1: So today's bonus episode will be our branded feature with

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Speaker 1: Mazda called Why Nature, which we hope you really enjoy.

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Speaker 1: And then we're going to be back to our regular

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Speaker 1: schedule with a new Core episode tomorrow, and when I

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Speaker 1: first started pondering the subject, I was thinking about how,

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Speaker 1: you know, there are really multiple ways that we can

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Speaker 1: frame our personal relationship with nature, because, of course, there

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Speaker 1: is the very blunt fact that life depends on life,

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Speaker 1: and that nature is the word we use for that

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Speaker 1: complex web of relationships between the sun, the earth, the water,

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Speaker 1: and all the different life forms that inhabit this environment,

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Speaker 1: which in a literal sense, we could not live without,

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Speaker 1: even with all of our technology. There's a line from

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Speaker 1: the poet Denise Levertov where she writes that we call

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Speaker 1: it nature only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be nature too.

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Speaker 1: We could not live without it because we are it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: even when we put up walls against nature, often to

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Speaker 1: distance ourselves from the aspects of nature that we're not

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Speaker 1: crazy about, it's still there with us inside, hopefully in

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Speaker 1: the plants and animals and works of art that we

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Speaker 1: surround ourselves within our our unnatural habitats. But also nature

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Speaker 1: is there in the biological reality of our existence and

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Speaker 1: in the environmental conditions our senses are heightened to appreciate. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So that's like the first level. It's just like we

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Speaker 1: bluntly needed. We can't live without it. The second thing,

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Speaker 1: of course, is that there's a sort of metaphysical or

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Speaker 1: metaphorical facet of nature, which I think is the main

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Speaker 1: subject of that passage I read from thorough in the beginning.

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Speaker 1: We're creatures that search the environment not only for aid

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Speaker 1: and physical survival. You're not only looking for food and

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Speaker 1: shelter and water in the in the landscape around you.

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Speaker 1: But you know, because of our complex brains, we also

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Speaker 1: search for meaning. And I think it's a surprisingly widespread

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Speaker 1: suspicion that there is somehow meaning to be found in nature,

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Speaker 1: that somehow the rocks, the trees, the birds, the vines,

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Speaker 1: the algae, and the insects in some profound and ineffable

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Speaker 1: way have implications for our lives. So you take a

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Speaker 1: walk in the woods, and somehow it tends to suggest

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Speaker 1: conclusions about the meaning of life and your place in

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Speaker 1: the universe. So these conclusions can often be very difficult

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Speaker 1: to put into words. Sometimes people like throw give it

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Speaker 1: a try. Yeah. I think of it in two ways. First,

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Speaker 1: there's the metaphorical side of the situation. Linguistically and cognitively,

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Speaker 1: we need things to make sense of life, and everything

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Speaker 1: in it, from skyward branches of the tree to tow

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Speaker 1: its deep diving roots, from soaring hawks the snunbering dogs.

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Speaker 1: We find metaphorical mirrors for our world and our thoughts

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Speaker 1: in all of nature's details. But on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: and this is something driven home by spiritual teacher at Cartole,

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Speaker 1: if we engage with, say a flower in the wild,

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Speaker 1: and experience it all of itself in the moment, and

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Speaker 1: then we have in that case we have an excellent

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Speaker 1: tool by which to momentarily step outside of our egos,

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Speaker 1: uh quiet the voices of the default mode network and

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Speaker 1: our head worrying about the past and the future, and

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Speaker 1: simply experienced the now like that that flower. And the

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Speaker 1: flower is especially good because of its enhanced if if

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Speaker 1: a marility, it becomes a window into the now, a

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Speaker 1: window into the timeless, and we're able to sort of

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Speaker 1: let everything else, all the human complexities, fade away, and

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Speaker 1: we become quite literally one with nature in the moment.

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Speaker 1: I think we've all had some of these moments of

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Speaker 1: a kind of profound connection with the natural environment. I

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Speaker 1: think often in solitude, but sometimes with other people around

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Speaker 1: as well. I mean, I think particularly of a time

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Speaker 1: I felt a really strange kind of relationship to all

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Speaker 1: of the dry desert brush when I took a very

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Speaker 1: brief solo hike and Big Ben National Park. Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: this was like half an hour. But but but something

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Speaker 1: happened to me on that walk and I still remember it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Nature is is pretty weird though, when you stop and

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Speaker 1: think about it, because we do have countless reasons to

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Speaker 1: wish to avoid it. Uh, let's let's not deny it.

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Speaker 1: There are risks in nature, and for most of human history,

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Speaker 1: nature itself pose the greatest risk to life and well being.

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Speaker 1: Even today, our relationship with nature is often strained. Is

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Speaker 1: it a thing we seek to distance ourselves from? Is

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Speaker 1: it a thing we wish to dominate and control? I

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Speaker 1: find that I find that even myself, when I venture

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Speaker 1: into nature, I can still feel myself very much on

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Speaker 1: the path. You know, I'm experiencing nature on my own

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Speaker 1: particular terms. But then sometimes when you let that go,

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Speaker 1: you can experience nature on its own terms and allow

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Speaker 1: yourself to sort of dilute just a little bit back

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Speaker 1: into the thing that we've always been a part of.

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Speaker 1: So for my own part, I'd say some some of

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Speaker 1: the more pronounced. Experiences like this that I've had include

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Speaker 1: glimpsing a wild sloth in the cloud forests of Costa Rica,

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Speaker 1: um tracking the movement and shifting form of an octopus

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Speaker 1: beneath the waters in Maui. And and I have to say,

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Speaker 1: you know, the encounters, of course, don't have to be

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Speaker 1: anywhere near this exotic. I finally remember spotting some wild

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Speaker 1: turkeys with my family while strolling through a local cemetery.

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Speaker 1: Year around town, and on certain days in different parts

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Speaker 1: of my life, you know that the sky has been

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Speaker 1: just blue enough, something about a particular shade of blue sky,

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Speaker 1: the clouds wispy enough, uh, that it kind of kind

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Speaker 1: of forges as a renewing moment that is kind of

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Speaker 1: unshackled from time itself. And when I get to experience

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Speaker 1: the sky in just such a way, a combination of

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Speaker 1: circumstance and awareness of the moment, it's the same sky

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Speaker 1: you know that I saw these other times, and I'm

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Speaker 1: the same person, and it's, uh, you feel this kind

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Speaker 1: of connection to yourself into nature, and you get this

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Speaker 1: a great sense of calm, and and that's something I

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Speaker 1: could potentially experience anywhere as long as the sky looked

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Speaker 1: just right, and I took the time out of my

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Speaker 1: day to appreciate it. Right. So lots of us have

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Speaker 1: these moments, we remember, these profound moments of connection with

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Speaker 1: with nature and the natural environment. But of course those

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Speaker 1: can be um, you know, difficult to put into words,

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Speaker 1: much less to study in an organized way. Though when

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Speaker 1: you want to get down to to quantifiable effects, you

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Speaker 1: can actually look at like empirically documented effects of nature

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Speaker 1: on our health, both mental and physical, and on our

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Speaker 1: thoughts and behavior, Like what can scientific experiments and surveys

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Speaker 1: tell us about the measurable impact of proximity to or

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Speaker 1: immersion in natural environments? And to go a step deeper,

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Speaker 1: do we have any idea why these effects would hold true?

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Speaker 1: And it's this last set of questions that we're going

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Speaker 1: to be primarily focusing on for the rest of this episode.

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Speaker 1: So to start off by mentioning a few of the

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Speaker 1: huge human health and life outcomes that have been correlated

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Speaker 1: with exposure to nature or what sometimes called green space,

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Speaker 1: a pretty self explanatory concept. Uh, this is by no

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Speaker 1: means going to be a comprehensive overview, but it's we're

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Speaker 1: worth mentioning a few things that seem to have good

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Speaker 1: evidence behind them and caught our attention. Now, Fortunately, at

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Speaker 1: this point there has been enough research on exposure to

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Speaker 1: nature that we don't have to pick through all of

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Speaker 1: the individual uh papers over the decades this has been

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Speaker 1: looked into. We can actually look at meta analyzes that

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Speaker 1: compile these existing studies to see what kind of trends emerge. Now,

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Speaker 1: there is some difficulty in this domain because uh, not

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Speaker 1: all studies that look into the benefits of nature study

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Speaker 1: the exact same thing. Like one might look at people

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Speaker 1: making trips out into the woods, and another might look at, uh,

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Speaker 1: the outcomes in neighborhoods with nearer access to parks and

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Speaker 1: urban forests, and other ones might just look at what

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Speaker 1: are the effects of people looking at pictures of trees

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Speaker 1: and stuff. But despite that heterogeneity, there is enough research

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Speaker 1: now that you can kind of do this meta analysis

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Speaker 1: and some signals come through pretty strong. So in terms

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Speaker 1: of physiological health benefits benefits to the body, I was

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Speaker 1: looking at an article by two big Bennett and Jones

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Speaker 1: published in Environmental Research in called The Health Benefits of

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Speaker 1: the Great Outdoors. A systematic review and meta analysis of

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Speaker 1: green space exposure and health outcomes. So this review looked

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Speaker 1: at a hundred and forty three studies on the health

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Speaker 1: effects of exposure to green space, and when analyzed together,

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Speaker 1: these studies show statistically significant reductions in diastolic blood pressure,

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Speaker 1: in heart rate, and in salivary cortisol. Now you might wonder,

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Speaker 1: what is that last one, salivary cortisol. This would be

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Speaker 1: a measure of the concentration of the hormone cortisol in

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Speaker 1: your spit. Cortisol is usually interpreted as a physical biomarker

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Speaker 1: of stress. Cortisol is secreted by the adrenal glands and

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Speaker 1: is largely responsible for can trolling the body's fight or

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Speaker 1: flight response. The meta analysis also found reductions in the

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Speaker 1: incidents of diabetes and cardiovascular mortality. And again these are

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Speaker 1: not the only correlations that have been found, just the

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Speaker 1: most significant and consistent ones. So these are some physiological

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Speaker 1: outcomes measured in the health of the body. But what

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Speaker 1: about like mental well being and cognitive performance. Well, first

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Speaker 1: of all, I would say there is the simple, well

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Speaker 1: documented fact that people seem to just really like nature

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Speaker 1: in a subjective sense. Lots of people have a baseline

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Speaker 1: preference for looking at nature, for hearing nature, for touching it,

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Speaker 1: for being in it, and this has been measured dozens

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Speaker 1: of different ways. Uh, this actually would probably be a

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Speaker 1: good place to talk about the idea of the biophilia hypothesis. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the biophelia hypothesis that was brought to us by American

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Speaker 1: biologist E. O. Wilson. Now I do have to to

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Speaker 1: mention briefly that that on December one, EO. Wilson passed

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Speaker 1: away at the age of ninety two. Uh. So you know,

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Speaker 1: rest in peace, U E. O. Wilson. But he leaves

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Speaker 1: behind a career full of admiration for and study of

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Speaker 1: the natural world, with a special focus on the world

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Speaker 1: of ants. He's widely known and respected for his work

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Speaker 1: and mermacology, but he will always be remembered as well

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Speaker 1: for what he called the biophilia hypothesis. So Wilson proposed

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Speaker 1: the term love of life in a short publication back

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Speaker 1: in Biophilia the human bond with other species, and he

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Speaker 1: defined it as humanities innate tendency to focus on living

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Speaker 1: things as opposed to the inadamant. In effect, he argued

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Speaker 1: for an innate love of nature. He wrote, quote, the

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Speaker 1: object of my reflection can be summarized by a single word, biophilia,

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Speaker 1: which I will be so bold as to define as

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Speaker 1: the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes

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Speaker 1: quote from Infancy. We concentrate happily on ourselves and other organisms.

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Speaker 1: We learn to distinguish life from the inanimate and move

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Speaker 1: toward it like moths to a porch. Light. Novelty and

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Speaker 1: diversity are particularly esteemed. The mere mention of the world

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Speaker 1: extraterrestrial evokes reveries about still unexplored life, displacing the old

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Speaker 1: and once potent exotic that drew earlier generations to remote

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Speaker 1: islands and jungle interiors. That much is immediately clear, but

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Speaker 1: a great deal more needs to be added. I will

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Speaker 1: make the case that to explore and affiliate with life

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Speaker 1: is a deep and complicated process in mental development, to

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Speaker 1: an extent, still undervalued in philosophy and religion. Our existence

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Speaker 1: depends on this propensity. Our spirit is woven from it.

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Speaker 1: Hope rises on its currents, and he goes on to

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Speaker 1: state that the modern scientific understanding of biology allows us

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Speaker 1: to place a greater value upon them and ourselves quote,

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Speaker 1: the living environment is what really sustains us. The living

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Speaker 1: environment creates, the soil creates most of the atmosphere. It's

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Speaker 1: not just something out there. The biosphere is a membrane,

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Speaker 1: a very thin membrane of a living organism. And we

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Speaker 1: have to stress that this hypothesis goes beyond the mere

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Speaker 1: generalities of hey, people love nature. It gets into the

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Speaker 1: idea that there's at least impart a genetic link involved,

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Speaker 1: that there are genes for biophilia. In the same way

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Speaker 1: that humans are wired, hardwired, as we say, to respond

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Speaker 1: to an infant's laughs and cries, we are also wired

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Speaker 1: to respond to various things in nature. Uh, and it's

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Speaker 1: been a part of our evolution, or so argues the hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: and in the end Wilson ultimately argues that yes, nature

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Speaker 1: is out there, it's in here, and nature is the

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Speaker 1: thing that sustains us. Wilson also embodied biophilia in a

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Speaker 1: very inspiring way. I think you you'll recall that documentary

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Speaker 1: we watched where he goes up to a mound of

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Speaker 1: fire ants and he plunges his hand into it and

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Speaker 1: he's just beaming with delight, saying, look at how they're

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Speaker 1: biting me, and he just loves these ants. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean my son likes to um to carefully stir up

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Speaker 1: a fire ant nest and watch them swarm and uh,

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Speaker 1: and just observe them, you know, not not harm them

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Speaker 1: in any way. It make can make walks very slow.

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Speaker 1: But in a sense like this drives home the difference

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Speaker 1: between what sometimes a busy adults walk can be and

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Speaker 1: what like the pure biophilic walk of a child is like,

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Speaker 1: I just want to get from point A to point

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Speaker 1: B and back. I need to get a certain amount

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Speaker 1: of steps in and I needed to be back to

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Speaker 1: work on something. But to to the child, uh, it

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Speaker 1: is that you're just on the way and here is

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Speaker 1: some nature. Let us observe it, let's watch it, even

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Speaker 1: though Dad thinks that a walk at least this afternoon

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Speaker 1: is supposed to be there and back again in under

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of time. Yeah. So there are tons

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Speaker 1: of demonstrations that people have this this baseline attraction to

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Speaker 1: and subjective aesthetic preference for nature, and this this is

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Speaker 1: translated even to very abstracted form. So it's not just

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Speaker 1: like people like being out nature. You can even show

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Speaker 1: like there are a lot of experiments that show people

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Speaker 1: prefer looking at pictures of nature as opposed to pictures

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Speaker 1: of other things, you know, built human environments or objects,

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Speaker 1: inanimate objects, or other types of imagery. There was one

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Speaker 1: study I was looking at from nineteen seventy two that found,

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Speaker 1: interestingly that there was a preference not just for imagery

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Speaker 1: that had nature in it, but especially imagery that had

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Speaker 1: nature in it with a certain amount of visual complexity.

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Speaker 1: People kind of like an intermediately complex natural scene, something

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Speaker 1: that might involve many different kinds of plants, landscape patterns

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Speaker 1: and shapes, and so forth. Yeah, there's been some interesting

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Speaker 1: work on this talking about these these vistas and paintings

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Speaker 1: that you could essentially walk into and then once you're

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Speaker 1: in there, you could develop a foraging strategy. You can

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Speaker 1: decide where you might seek shelter, where you might get

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Speaker 1: the best view of the surroundings, and so forth. But

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Speaker 1: there have also been empirical studies into the effect acts

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Speaker 1: of exposure to nature on mental health and cognitive performance,

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Speaker 1: so not just physiological health like we already mentioned. Uh,

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Speaker 1: some of the things that have been found are that,

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Speaker 1: like access to green space has associations with lower levels

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Speaker 1: of stress and anxiety. This would sort of go along

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Speaker 1: with the lower concentrations of salvary cortisol that we mentioned

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Speaker 1: in the Physiological Review, fewer symptoms of depression, improved mood.

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Speaker 1: And some studies have found that immersion in or interaction

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Speaker 1: with nature gives a sort of time dependent power up

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Speaker 1: to some forms of cognition. Just to cite one study,

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Speaker 1: there have been many like this, but one was by

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Speaker 1: Andrea Faber Taylor and Francis E. Co published in Journal

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Speaker 1: of Attention Disorders in two thousand nine called children with

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Speaker 1: Attention deficits concentrate better after a walk in the park.

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Speaker 1: And so this points out that other pre existing studies

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Speaker 1: had already found that working memory and the ability to

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Speaker 1: pay attention are enhanced after spin time in certain physical environments,

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Speaker 1: particularly in natural settings, and this study tried to apply

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Speaker 1: the principle to children diagnosed with a d h D

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Speaker 1: between seven and twelve years of age. So the study

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Speaker 1: compared the children's performance on a test of attention and

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Speaker 1: working memory known as the digit span backwards test. Basically,

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Speaker 1: you read out a sequence of numbers and then you

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Speaker 1: test how well the subject can repeat those numbers back

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Speaker 1: to you in reverse order. And so they tried this

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Speaker 1: test with children after three different walks of twenty minutes

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Speaker 1: in length, that walk through a neighborhood, will walk through

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Speaker 1: a downtown area, and to walk through a foliated park

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Speaker 1: most resembling the natural setting, and the children apparently performed

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Speaker 1: substantially better after the walk in the park than after

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Speaker 1: the other two walks, adding to this pile of evidence

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Speaker 1: that for some reason, people including children with a d

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Speaker 1: h D, can pay attention and use their working memory

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Speaker 1: better after a short period of immersion in nature, and

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Speaker 1: the author has used this finding to suggest it's possible

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Speaker 1: that regular quote doses of nature, just nature walks or

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Speaker 1: other ways of immersing yourself in those kind of surroundings

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Speaker 1: might be helpful to kids with a d h D

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Speaker 1: on on attention taxing tasks. But it doesn't stop there.

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Speaker 1: There have been plenty of other findings about cognitive improvements

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Speaker 1: after periods of exposure to nature. One example I came

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Speaker 1: across was a study by heartig at All published in

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Speaker 1: Environment and Behavior in nineteen one called Restorative Effects of

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Speaker 1: Natural environment Experiences. This apparently found that compared to relaxing

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Speaker 1: indoors or taking a walk in the city, people who

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Speaker 1: took a walk in nature scored better on a proof

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Speaker 1: reading task that's something else that is sort of taxing

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Speaker 1: on your your find a control of attention. And another

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Speaker 1: common finding seems to be that spending time in nature

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Speaker 1: may improve our ability to block out distracting stimuli or

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Speaker 1: unnecessary information when we're trying to focus, which I would

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Speaker 1: say that absolutely checks out with my experience when my

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Speaker 1: brain is taxed and like I can't read the words

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Speaker 1: on the computer screen anymore, going for a walk in

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Speaker 1: in the forest does noticeably make a difference there for me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And and it's interesting how it can work in both ways,

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Speaker 1: like just on a not only on an audible level,

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Speaker 1: but also visual level. Walk in nature can give you

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Speaker 1: less stimuli when you're over stimulated, and it can also

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Speaker 1: give you the stimulation you need when you feel understimulated.

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Speaker 1: So regardless if you're you know, especially in today's work environment,

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Speaker 1: you might be at home and working most of the

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Speaker 1: day and then you're just like, I gotta get out.

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Speaker 1: I've got to see something different than what I've seen,

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Speaker 1: and here's something different than what I've been listening to.

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Speaker 1: And then likewise, you could be in the office across

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Speaker 1: town and you've had back to back meetings and constant

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Speaker 1: stimuli and you're like, I need to bring it down

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Speaker 1: a notch. You can also you can both go to

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Speaker 1: the same forest and you can find your relief. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And I think we'll come back to that a little

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Speaker 1: bit later in the episode because that connects to ideas

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Speaker 1: about different types of stimuli that capture our attention in

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Speaker 1: different ways. Um, but this whole thing we've been talking about,

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Speaker 1: like the the ability of nature to say, improve cognitive

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Speaker 1: performance in certain ways. This is what is often referred

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Speaker 1: to in the scientific literature as the quote restorative potential

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Speaker 1: of nature immersion. The finding is that natural environments tend

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Speaker 1: to speed our recovery from conditions like stress or mental fatigue.

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Speaker 1: So we have pretty strong evidence from many different studies

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Speaker 1: over decades now that exposing oneself to nature and green

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Speaker 1: space is correlated with a range of positive effects on

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Speaker 1: body health, on psychological well being, and on temporary mental performance,

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Speaker 1: which brings us to the big question why nature. If

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Speaker 1: exposure to nature does in fact bring these measurable benefits

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Speaker 1: to mind and body, Why why nature in particular, and

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Speaker 1: what is the biological mechanism leading to these positive effects. Now,

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Speaker 1: I think it's worth noting that it's possible that different

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Speaker 1: effects have different explanations, or that a single effect could

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Speaker 1: arise from a combination of inputs. For example, one question

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Speaker 1: that immediately occurred to me when I was reading about

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Speaker 1: some of the physiological benefits benefits to body health. Could

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Speaker 1: things like lower blood pressure and lower risk of cardiovascular

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Speaker 1: disease from spending time and nature be due to the

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Speaker 1: fact that green space encourages people to get more exercise.

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Speaker 1: That seems possible, so I found one study directly addressing

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Speaker 1: this question when I looked. This was by Richardson at

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Speaker 1: All published in Public Health in called Role of Physical

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Speaker 1: Activity in the Relationship between Urban green space and Health. Basically,

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Speaker 1: it found that exposure to green space was in fact

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Speaker 1: correlated with better mental and physical health outcomes, and this

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Speaker 1: was true when you controlled for other confounding factors, and

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Speaker 1: people who lived in places with more access to green

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Speaker 1: space did actually get more exercise, but that difference wasn't

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Speaker 1: enough to explain the full green space effect on health.

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Speaker 1: So just as a hypothetical, it's possible that part, but

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Speaker 1: not all, of the improved health outcomes UH could have

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Speaker 1: something to do with increases in outdoor exercise, while other

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Speaker 1: outcomes such as performance on attention and working memory tasks

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Speaker 1: could have a totally different cause. But for the rest

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Speaker 1: of the episode, I think we're going to focus on

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Speaker 1: several hypothesized frameworks for explaining these effects of nature on

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Speaker 1: our brains and bodies. Why are we drawn to nature

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Speaker 1: and why does it appear to be so good for us?

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Speaker 1: But first we're going to take a break to hear

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Speaker 1: from our sponsor, and then immediately on returning, I think

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Speaker 1: we'll we'll ease in with a short meditation of some

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Speaker 1: natural sound. All right, we're back. We hope everybody's refreshed

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Speaker 1: from that that meditation moment. Now, before the break, we

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Speaker 1: were talking about some of the documented positive effects of

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Speaker 1: h immersion in an access to nature, and now we're

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Speaker 1: going to take a look at some possible explanations for

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Speaker 1: some of these effects. So I figured we should start

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Speaker 1: with the semantic stuff, the body health, and then and

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Speaker 1: then come to the more mental realm. So I already

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Speaker 1: mentioned that meta analysis by to Hick, Bennett and Jones

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Speaker 1: about the the health effects of nature, and it actually

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Speaker 1: has a good background section reviewing some of the main

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Speaker 1: ideas that have been put forward about why exposure to

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Speaker 1: nature might be for health. Uh. These are by no

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Speaker 1: means exhaustive of the possible explanations. None of them are

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Speaker 1: proven to be the main one. But these are some

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Speaker 1: of the main ideas that scientists have offered as as

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Speaker 1: good possibilities. One is the one I already mentioned that

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Speaker 1: maybe natural environments promote opportunities for and motivation toward physical exercise,

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Speaker 1: and the positive health effects of exercise are pretty obvious.

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Speaker 1: Another is that some public green spaces may actually promote

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Speaker 1: social interaction, which is also highly correlated with health and

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00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 1: well being, though this seems to vary a lot depending

434
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: on what kind of natural environment you're talking about, though

435
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 1: I can certainly say from experience that's say, I don't know,

436
00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 1: I feel like I probably am more likely to to

437
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 1: chat it up with with strangers when walking around in

438
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: a park that as opposed to walking around on a sidewalk.

439
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:50,400
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what the difference is there,

440
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: but that that does ring true to me. Well, I

441
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 1: guess part of it is you generally have a pretty

442
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: good idea why the other person is there, Like you

443
00:25:58,119 --> 00:26:01,160
Speaker 1: both have a shared reason to be here. Uh, you're

444
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 1: not on your way to somewhere else. This is the destination.

445
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, on the sidewalk, you just assume

446
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:09,120
Speaker 1: people are trying to go about their business. You're you're

447
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 1: less likely to strike up social conversation, right, But then again,

448
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:17,000
Speaker 1: there is something different about nature versus say a video store.

449
00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: You go to a video store, everyone's there to potentially

450
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:23,480
Speaker 1: rent a video, but it's more it's often more of

451
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:28,640
Speaker 1: a solitary situation with occasional conversations uh popping up. But yeah,

452
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: you go and you go into nature. There is this

453
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:33,360
Speaker 1: kind of sort of shared understandings like, hey, we're all

454
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: here because we dig this, and and there's something about

455
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: this that opens opens us up for conversation. Sure, yeah,

456
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Another idea they offer exposure to sunlight.

457
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 1: This may be increased when you have access to pleasant

458
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: natural environments, leading to increases in vitamin D synthesis and

459
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 1: possibly counteracting seasonal mood disorders. Another idea this is pretty interesting,

460
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: is the old friends hypothis versions of this I think

461
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 1: we're formerly known more as the hygiene hypothesis. Old friends,

462
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: I think is an attempt to recast it to focus

463
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 1: on ancestral relationships with certain microbe strains. So the idea

464
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: here is that spending time in green space may increase

465
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: our exposure to beneficial strains of micro organisms, which could

466
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: help the development of a healthy immune system. So I

467
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:27,639
Speaker 1: think this is still partially in the phase where the

468
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:30,959
Speaker 1: details are being worked out, but it has been hypothesized

469
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 1: that too little exposure to certain environmental microbes contributes to

470
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: immune system disregulation and inflammatory disorders, which in turn are

471
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 1: major contributors to a host negative health outcomes. And so

472
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: spending time exclusively in built synthetic environments might well give

473
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,120
Speaker 1: us too much exposure to the wrong kinds of germs

474
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,600
Speaker 1: and too little exposure to the right kind. Yeah. I've

475
00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: seen it argue that just having a dog that goes

476
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: outside and there's an indoor outdoor pet exposes one to

477
00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: secondhand microorganisms that can have a beneficial effect on your

478
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 1: health and well being. So to be clear of sending

479
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:14,199
Speaker 1: your dog out on one of those hike in the

480
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:16,600
Speaker 1: wood dog walking trips, you know where the van comes

481
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: and collects all the neighborhood dogs. That's not going to

482
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: make up for your time away from the forest, your

483
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 1: time away from nature. But the argument is out there

484
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: that it might help you a little bit. Okay, here's

485
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,639
Speaker 1: one where I abandoned all skeptical scrutiny. I just choose

486
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: to believe, whatever the evidence, that when my dog goes out,

487
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: gets filthy, and then comes inside and loves on me,

488
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: that's good. That's good. Now, Again, as I said earlier,

489
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: that these explanations are by no means exhaustive, and it's

490
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: not just one or the other. It could be a

491
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 1: combination of these things. But there's another thing that occurs

492
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: to me that has been touched on in a number

493
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: of the studies I looked at, which is the effect

494
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 1: of stress. There's already plenty of empirical evidence that exposure

495
00:28:55,720 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 1: to natural environments can cut down on subjective or ports

496
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 1: of stress and can help measurably reduce levels of cortisol,

497
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: which again is a biomarker of psychological stress. Chronic stress

498
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 1: and the cascades that it creates in the body are

499
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: are known to have a number of bad consequences for health.

500
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: So I would also wonder if just simple stress reduction

501
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: were not a pretty large contributor toward improved health outcomes

502
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: from time and nature. Now, of course, this raises a

503
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: secondary question, why is it that nature reduces stress? Uh?

504
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: This is probably a harder question to answer, but there

505
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: have been attempts, and and here I think we have

506
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 1: to stray more into the realm of the totally hypothetical.

507
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: But you know, at least there's some interesting ideas out there,

508
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 1: even though they may remain unproven. Yes, and of course

509
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: we want to drive home again that certainly just because

510
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: you're in nature doesn't mean you're having a stress free

511
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 1: right experience. There are plenty of ways that being in

512
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: nature can be stressful. But we're talking about, like, you know,

513
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: all things being equal. Uh, if I am here in

514
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: a building where I'm here in nature struggling about uh,

515
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: there does seem to be some sort of of benefit

516
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 1: and why would that be exactly? Yes, So one hypothetical

517
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: answer that addresses a lot of these questions like maybe

518
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: why is it we're less stressed after spending positive time

519
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 1: in nature, or why do we get some of these benefits.

520
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: One explanation has to do with the shape of our

521
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: ancestral environments, and this would actually connect to the biophelia hypothesis.

522
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: You already mentioned that this would be I say that

523
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: the class of explanations that you could put under the

524
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 1: umbrella of evolutionary psychology, and this would explain our preferences

525
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: for natural environments and their mental effects on us, because

526
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: our species arose in certain types of environments, and there

527
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: are features of those environments that represented clear risks and rewards.

528
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 1: So under this framework, you know, you would say that

529
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: to some extent, our brains are still affected by mechanisms

530
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: that evolve to help us select the right behavior and

531
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: maximize survival in those ancestral environments. Now, how would this

532
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: apply to natural environments. Well, for just a very simple example,

533
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: think about water sources. Humans without access to water will

534
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: die within a few days. Maintaining constant access to water

535
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: is about as close to a survival absolute as you

536
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: can imagine. Therefore, most evolutionary psychology frameworks would predict that

537
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 1: we will probably still to some degree have instinctual preferences

538
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: for proximity to water, even if those instincts are no

539
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: longer strictly relevant to survival anymore. Because now you can

540
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: get water out of a tap, or you can bring

541
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,360
Speaker 1: along a water bottle wherever you go, there may be

542
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: some evolved module in the brain that creates a kind

543
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 1: of mild stress response when there is not a water

544
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:51,800
Speaker 1: source in the nearby environment, and that motivates you to

545
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: get closer one and maybe maybe it alleviates some stress

546
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: when water is audible nearby or is in view. Now, again,

547
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 1: this is not something that I have direct evidence for.

548
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: This is just a possible example of how something like

549
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 1: this could work. But this could be applied to the

550
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 1: larger environment as a whole. The world around you is

551
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: full of sensory cues that could trigger instinctual reactions that

552
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: are attuned for survival in our ancestral environments. So why

553
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: do we enjoy the high ground with a wide view. Well,

554
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: it could be because this is a position of safety.

555
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: You can see other things approaching from a long way.

556
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: Why do we prefer certain types of tree shapes? You know,

557
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 1: people seem to This has been tested in experiments. People

558
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: seem to really like certain types of trees, trees with

559
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: like enmeshed canopy and like low lying limbs and stuff.

560
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 1: And it seems like a reasonable thing to say, Well,

561
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: those are also the trees that are like that provide

562
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 1: really good canopy habitats and are easy to climb and

563
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: you could get up away from predators in them. Now,

564
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: there's a very important caveat to evolutionary psychology explanations, which

565
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: is that they on one hand, on the pro side,

566
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: they can make a lot of sense of human preferences

567
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: and behaviors, but on the other hand, they can also

568
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: be notoriously difficult, though not impossible, to test in a

569
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: rigorous way. So you know, you've probably heard before people

570
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: just saying like, oh, you know, we do this or

571
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: we like that because of and then they give some

572
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: evolutionary story and it's like, but yeah, how do you

573
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: know that? So you know, it's always good to remember that,

574
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: just because you've managed to come up with a plausible

575
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: story in your head about why survival pressures in the

576
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: ancestral environment might have led to preferences and reactions we

577
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: still have today, you haven't necessarily discovered the explanation. You

578
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: would still need to like work out some predictions that

579
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 1: explanation would make and then test to see if those

580
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: predictions are true. But for the moment, dwelling in this

581
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: hypothetical space, you can easily imagine a pretty plausible chain

582
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: of mechanisms that would go something like this. So you

583
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:58,479
Speaker 1: have an ancestral landscape that affects our survival, and this

584
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 1: gives rise to instinct ual preferences for and against certain

585
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: landscape features. Maybe we like proximity to water, we like

586
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 1: certain kinds of tree cover, and so forth, and that

587
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:14,320
Speaker 1: perhaps those preferences still affect us today, exerting an influence

588
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 1: on our levels of anxiety and stress when the landscape

589
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: is less than favorable, and then anxiety and stress or

590
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: of course upstream of a raft of other mental health

591
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: outcomes in general cognitive performance. So I would consider that

592
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: like a very uh plausible explanation space, but unfortunately a

593
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:34,319
Speaker 1: lot of the stories that it comes up with can

594
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:39,720
Speaker 1: be difficult to test. Uh. There's another interesting explanatory framework,

595
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: especially for the restoration aspect of our nature experience, that

596
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: has come up in a lot of the papers I've

597
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: looked at, and this is a framework known as attention

598
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: restoration theory. This was developed by a couple of psychologists

599
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: affiliated with the University of Michigan named Rachel and Stephen Kaplan.

600
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:01,720
Speaker 1: I think, especially in their book from Cambridge University Press

601
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: in eighty nine called The Experience of Nature a Psychological Perspective.

602
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: Now essentially, attention restoration theory argues that uh, nature and

603
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 1: synthetic environments are different and their effects on us are

604
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 1: different because of the different ways that they capture our attention. Now,

605
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:22,520
Speaker 1: I found this one very interesting. I'll try to do

606
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: a brief summary of this idea. I found it summarized

607
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 1: in a paper by Berman, Jenniades, and Kaplan and published

608
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 1: in Psychological Science in two thousand eight called the Cognitive

609
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: Benefits of Interacting with Nature. Uh A art is based

610
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 1: on a body of research showing that there are two

611
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 1: functionally different types of attention. So there's involuntary attention, and

612
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: this is where your attention drifts effortlessly to things that

613
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:53,719
Speaker 1: are inherently interesting or important. And then on the other hand,

614
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 1: there is voluntary or directed attention, and this is where

615
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: you give attention to things through effortful cognitive control. I

616
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 1: think actually there's a pretty good linguistic shorthand for this.

617
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 1: Voluntary or directed attention roughly corresponds to anything you would

618
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: describe as quote, paying attention to rather than just being

619
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 1: aware of it automatically. But so the basic idea goes

620
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 1: like this, So we engage with the world through the

621
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:26,280
Speaker 1: executive attention network, which is mediated by the brain's prefrontal cortex,

622
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: and like many other parts of the body, It can

623
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: become exhausted when it is used to consistently for too long.

624
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: You've you've been putting a lot of demands on it,

625
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: it gets overworked. Tons of tasks in our environment involves

626
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:45,359
Speaker 1: sustained use of executive attentional resources. Obviously, most kinds of

627
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: work do this. You have to pay attention when you're

628
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:51,399
Speaker 1: working on something, but even some recreational tasks or things

629
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:55,280
Speaker 1: you have to effortfully pay attention to, like misery scrolling

630
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 1: on your phone is despite the fact that it's like addictive,

631
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: you're still like paying attention to things with effort full control.

632
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 1: Attention restoration theory argues that engaging with nature is good

633
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:12,160
Speaker 1: at giving your attentional resources a replenishing rest period. By

634
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 1: immersing yourself in an environment full of things that attract

635
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: involuntary attention through what they call soft fascination, you make

636
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 1: yourself better at performing subsequent tasks that require directed, effort

637
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:29,240
Speaker 1: full attention. The executive attentional system is basically just allowed

638
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:32,760
Speaker 1: to rest during this type of fascination because there's nothing

639
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: that you have to fixate on, right It's that experience.

640
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: They're just walking through the woods and you're you're hearing

641
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: birds what birds? Who knows? They're just they're making bird noises,

642
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 1: You're passing trees, You're not necessarily identifying you know, not

643
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: to say that identification of various organisms isn't also a

644
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:55,040
Speaker 1: rewarding aspect of spending time in nature. But there's this yet,

645
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 1: this feeling of just moving through it, your attention drifting

646
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: among the various stimuli that you're presented with. Uh and

647
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:05,959
Speaker 1: and and also allowing your mind to sort of wander. Yeah,

648
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,839
Speaker 1: and I think it's in a special middle category because

649
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 1: it's also not just like a blank room with nothing

650
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:15,799
Speaker 1: in it, nothing that you can pay attention to. It

651
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 1: is an environment that is not boring, like boredom in

652
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:22,280
Speaker 1: itself can be a type of stress inducing thing because

653
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:25,359
Speaker 1: then maybe you start paying really close attention to, say

654
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: your internal monologue or something. Well, I mean, a boring

655
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: room is a human construction, you know. This is these

656
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: are not environments that we evolve to thrive, and we

657
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 1: evolve to thrive in spaces where other organisms have access

658
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 1: to those spaces, be they plants, their animals, where they're

659
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,759
Speaker 1: changes in weather pattern, where the sky is visible. I mean,

660
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: certainly you can there are caves and whatnot where I

661
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:52,239
Speaker 1: guess you could make a case for saying, well, this

662
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:55,880
Speaker 1: is a a sensory deprivation environment that one might encounter

663
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:58,319
Speaker 1: in the natural world. But for the most part, this

664
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: this is just not how it works. The boy Ring

665
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:04,200
Speaker 1: spaces are the ones we created for ourselves. Yeah, so

666
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: nature is this kind of perfect middle. It's not boring,

667
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: but it's also not something you have to pay attention to. Now,

668
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 1: A lot of studies about the restorative potential of nature

669
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: do appeal to UH to a art, but it's not

670
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: the only possible explanation. It's not the proven theory. We're

671
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: not going to get deep into it here. But there's

672
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: another similar framework I was reading about multiple times, called

673
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:27,839
Speaker 1: s RT instead of a RT, standing for I think

674
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: stress reduction theory, explaining some of the cognitive benefits of

675
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 1: nature via its stress reducing properties rather than through its

676
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 1: attention replenishing properties. I don't know how to sort out

677
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: between those right now, but it's possible that they may

678
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:44,399
Speaker 1: both have some kind of purchase on the truth. Now,

679
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should take another break to hear

680
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, followed by another brief natural meditation. But

681
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:52,359
Speaker 1: when we come back, I want to talk a bit

682
00:39:52,360 --> 00:40:24,720
Speaker 1: about creativity. Yeah, yeah, alright, we're back. I hope everyone

683
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: is refreshed and ready for more. Right, So we've talked

684
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:32,399
Speaker 1: about physiological health, mental health, and cognitive restoration, but there

685
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: have been a number of other positive, higher level mental

686
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: benefits to nature exposure that have been proposed. Just to

687
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: mention one, I wanted to talk about creativity for a minute.

688
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: So this question is can spending time in nature actually

689
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: make you better at creative thinking? I think the answer

690
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 1: is possibly yes. Some experiments do point in that direction,

691
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 1: and one, just one study in this area I wanted

692
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,719
Speaker 1: to look at was called Creativity in the Wild Improving

693
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,200
Speaker 1: Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings, published in Plus

694
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:10,439
Speaker 1: one by actually at all. Uh So, first big question here,

695
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 1: like how do you test for something like creativity? Obviously

696
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 1: that is much harder to quantify than say tests of

697
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 1: working memory that ask you to repeat a sequence of numbers,

698
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 1: the number sequence repetition. That that's a pretty straightforward test.

699
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: But like for creativity, what do you do? Do you

700
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: have somebody write a poem and then see how good

701
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: it is? I mean, no, obviously that would not be

702
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:37,160
Speaker 1: very objective, but there actually are some simpler tests for

703
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 1: creativity that that don't capture everything we think of when

704
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: we think of creativity, but they but they do get

705
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:46,439
Speaker 1: it some core aspects of it, and I think they're

706
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,319
Speaker 1: pretty clever. So the one used in this paper is

707
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 1: known as the Remote Associates test or rat, and the

708
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:56,320
Speaker 1: test goes like this, I'm gonna give you three words,

709
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: and then I ask you to come up with a

710
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 1: fourth word that and next the three I gave you.

711
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: So here's an example, same tennis head. Do we want

712
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: to do some some license for EE Jeopardy type music

713
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:18,880
Speaker 1: for this same tennis head. I don't know if I

714
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:20,799
Speaker 1: would have got this because the answer is right there

715
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: in the paper when I read it, so I didn't

716
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,280
Speaker 1: have a chance to like test myself. But the answer

717
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 1: is match matching. When things are the same, they match.

718
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: There's a tennis match, there's a match match head. And

719
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:35,319
Speaker 1: this is an interesting test because the path to the

720
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: answer in each puzzles, you know, they give you a

721
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:40,960
Speaker 1: long list of these things. It's not obvious. It requires

722
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:45,080
Speaker 1: you to make associative leaps and novel connections and to

723
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:49,439
Speaker 1: sort of reinterpret linguistic clues in a way that does

724
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: model part of what we mean when we say creative thinking.

725
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 1: Creative thinking, I would argue, is making connections that are

726
00:42:56,440 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: useful or fruitful, but that are not obvious. Right. I

727
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:01,600
Speaker 1: think I would have been thrown off by this test

728
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: because I would have tried to think of something like

729
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 1: maybe clever and humorous that ties them all together, without

730
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:09,800
Speaker 1: thinking of something that's something like match like maybe I

731
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: would think of say Pete Sampre's doppelgangers. Oh, you're too

732
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: creative for the test. That's the problem. Yeah, that's that's

733
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,720
Speaker 1: my problem. Well, so this particular study used that type

734
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: of test, and the different conditions were whether people had

735
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: um a multi day immersion in nature through a hiking

736
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,239
Speaker 1: trip versus control conditions where they did not go out

737
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: on a natural hiking trip. And they found a pretty

738
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: sizeable difference. They found it nearly fifty percent increase in

739
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: the in the performance on these puzzle tests by the

740
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,360
Speaker 1: group of naive hikers. Now, that sounds like a large

741
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:48,319
Speaker 1: effect to me, So I would want to see that

742
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: replicated in other studies. Um, But it again does not

743
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: seem implausible to me that there is some effect that

744
00:43:56,520 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: spending time in nature has not only the sort of attention,

745
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 1: restoring potential, but maybe clears the mind in other types

746
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: of ways that haven't even been fully articulated, uh, in

747
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 1: ways that allow you to make these sort of uh

748
00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:16,399
Speaker 1: non obvious connections and creative turns in logic more than

749
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: you would have been able to do otherwise. I mean

750
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:21,399
Speaker 1: I I I feel that I feel that process uh

751
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: in in my own creative work sometimes. And there have

752
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:27,400
Speaker 1: also been some other studies connecting time and nature to

753
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 1: higher level creativity. One I was looking at was not

754
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: actually an experiment. It was just a survey of creative

755
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: professionals about their processes and the role of nature in

756
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,360
Speaker 1: their process and and this one indicated that time and

757
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: nature was especially helpful in the early stages of a

758
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: creative project, more so than in the later stages. That

759
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: that totally rings true to me, because I think of

760
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: the early stages of a creative process are the ones

761
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: that require those sort of strange mental connections, and then

762
00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: the later stages are often more mechanical or about draft. Yeah. Yeah,

763
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 1: I find this to be true as well. Like from

764
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 1: from for me, if I need to then want to

765
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:08,880
Speaker 1: think creatively about something, uh, there's nothing beats just walking

766
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 1: on a beach. If I can get access to a

767
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,239
Speaker 1: beach with just enough of it to where I can

768
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 1: have a decent stroll up and down the beach for

769
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: a while, like that is where I do some of

770
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: my best creative thinking. And then once you develop some ideas,

771
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:22,839
Speaker 1: then yeah, you're gonna then you're gonna have to work

772
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: with them. Then you're gonna have to do the harder part.

773
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 1: And the beach might not be the best place for that.

774
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 1: But you didn't come out to the beach to to

775
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 1: do the harder part. You didn't. You come out to

776
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: the beach to feel the sense of renewal and to

777
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: then to get into this creative mindset. Yeah, anecdotally, I

778
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,759
Speaker 1: can totally get behind that process. If you're if you

779
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: want to start a new creative project, go for a

780
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: walk in the woods, go out to a state park,

781
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: you know, do whatever that's like. It's great to do

782
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 1: right at the beginning, and and then to do again

783
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 1: once you get sick of the harder part or you're

784
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:56,360
Speaker 1: fed up with the various meetings that you've had to

785
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: have to try and bring this idea to fruition, then

786
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:01,359
Speaker 1: go back of the woods because you'll need it. Then

787
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: too well. I feel like this has been really interesting

788
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,839
Speaker 1: and um again, as as we so often end up

789
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: lamenting after after a fun episode, like we we really

790
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:12,400
Speaker 1: only scratched the surface there. There was so much stuff

791
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 1: in the domain of the effects of nature on on

792
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:17,799
Speaker 1: our minds and our bodies that we didn't even have

793
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: time for today. It's something we could totally return to

794
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah. Yeah, And of course, as always,

795
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:25,759
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from listeners about this. Share your

796
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:29,320
Speaker 1: experiences with walking in nature both you know so certainly

797
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:31,719
Speaker 1: in the past, but also we challenge you to take

798
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: some of this new inside with you when you go

799
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:38,440
Speaker 1: back into nature again. So whatever your next you know,

800
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: minor neighborhood walk happens to be, or epic adventure that

801
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:45,560
Speaker 1: you've been planning for months and months. Uh. Once you've

802
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 1: gone on those adventures, right back to us and tell

803
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: us what you think and tell us how how all

804
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:53,759
Speaker 1: of that connects with what we discussed here today. I

805
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 1: want to hear about people's favorite trees. Tell me your

806
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:00,840
Speaker 1: favorite tree shape. This will not be a scientific sample,

807
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:02,880
Speaker 1: but I am interested. Do you like the trees with

808
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: the low, drooping branches, Do you like the tall trunk

809
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 1: with a big canopy up above. I want to know

810
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 1: all right, well right in, we'd love to hear from you.

811
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:13,600
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'll remind you to check out other

812
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind with core episodes

813
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 1: of our show on Tuesdays and Thursdays UM. On Monday's

814
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: usually we do a listener mail episode, on Wednesday's we

815
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: do a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and

816
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,399
Speaker 1: on Friday's we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time

817
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:31,399
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious concerns and just chat about

818
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: a weird film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent

819
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

820
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:39,720
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

821
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:41,800
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

822
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at contact.

823
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 1: That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

824
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. It's production of I Heart Radio. For

825
00:47:57,000 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my Heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app,

826
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:11,800
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows