In this episode of the Human Upgrade podcast, Dave Asprey and guest Radha Agrawal discuss innovative approaches to understanding and cultivating joy through neuroscience, technology, and community dance. They recount a Burning Man anecdote where a military neuroscientist could identify drug use by observing dancers, prompting the idea of AI systems that detect substances via movement patterns. They introduce a new, lab‑approved software that records video across a dance floor to map facial expressions and emotional states—from sadness and anxiety to elation and euphoria—aiming to produce the first comprehensive study of collective joy. The conversation highlights Dr. Dacher Keltner of the Greater Good Science Center, who consults on Pixar’s emotional storytelling and is authoring a book on awe, underscoring the scientific credibility behind the project. Radha proposes that doctors could prescribe collective dance experiences (e.g., Burning Man, Daybreaker, ecstatic dance) as therapeutic antidotes to loneliness, depression, and anxiety, complementing traditional internal practices like meditation. She frames this as a “joy practice” for people who have moved beyond trauma and are seeking ways to sustain happiness without substances, describing platforms that help individuals become their own “pharmacists” by bio‑hacking neurochemicals. The overall narrative blends anecdotal insight, emerging tech, and a vision for community‑based joy prescriptions.
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You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. The first year I went to Burning man was 2011, and in the camp next to us there was a leading neuroscientist for the military who was a top expert on substances. And we looked at a group of people dancing and he looked and he said, that one's on ecstasy, that one had acid, that one had mushrooms. And he could literally tell by the way they were dancing and moving. And I validated that with my wife, who's a drug and alcohol addiction emergency medicine doctor by training. She said, oh yeah, you can spot movement differences, but he's really good. So I'm thinking your AI software that's looking at faces, you could probably look at how people dance and pick out what substances they're on and then you'd have great data.
Absolutely. Well, so there's, there's several things and it's brand new software. It's just now being, being approved for use in sort of this lab setting. But essentially we're going to put sort of essentially videos all around the dance floor and we're going to be able to sort of track what's happening to facial expressions, from states of sort of like, you know, stasis or sadness or kind of confusion or, or insecurity or anxiety to states of joy, elation and states of euphoria. So it's a really interesting software that, that Dacher actually just made me aware of Dr. Keltner at Greater Good Science Center. He does all of the consulting for Pixar, for Inside out and For Soul, and he did all of that. He essentially really supported the storyline and the design thinking for these movies because so much of it is connected to the brain and what's happening in your mind. So he's a really interesting pioneer. He's writing a book on awe right now. And it just to have someone like him supporting a comprehensive study, the first comprehensive study on collective joy and dance is extremely exciting and we'll have hopefully data by mid next year. So really exciting.
I'm excited to see that because there's joy, there's awe. And one of the reasons I tell.
People, right, to prescribe to then to prescribe joy, to have doctors prescribe not only joy, but to prescribe collective dance experience. Like could you imagine a doctor prescribing Burning man or Daybreaker or, you know, some community dance experience as, or ecstatic dance or, you know, other dance experiences, collective dance experiences as a antidote to loneliness, depression, anxiety, you know, any type of, of sort of mental ailment to be able to not just turn to quiet forest bathing, sitting in a seat, quietly closing your eyes, meditating, tapping. All of these beautiful practices that are internal, you know, are so, so important. State of. I'm traumatized to. I'm okay now, but the real delta, the real opportunity that I'm seeing because I think there's so many epic humans in the space of from trauma to okayness. I'm now no longer in trauma. I'm now feeling good. But we need more people in that delta of okay, now I'm good, but now what? Where do I. How do I make friends? I'm no longer in my. Just myopic. Like, how do I get through my trauma? But now I'm. Now I'm okay. I want to see the world now. How to make friends, how to find joy. You know, how do I actually, like, do the ecstasy, the euphoria of life thing without having to take substances to get there? And I think that's. That's where joy practice comes in. That's what Daybreaker plus comes in. That's where this platform that we, that we. That we brought together to curate sort of a space for those who are like, okay, I'm good. Now what? Now how do I. How do I learn how to be my own pharmacist? How do I learn to unlock my happy neurochemicals? How do I learn to. To biohack joy? Right? And that's. That's the exciting opportunity right now.
