Psychologist: DO This Every Day To Become 10x More Productive

There was an interesting study that was done with kids with ADHD and they found that a 20 minute walk in nature for these kids was about as good as a dose of Ritalin. Really why nature is so beneficial to us actually has to do with attention. We think attention is almost critical to so many different human behaviors. If we want to live life with a lot of meaning, you have to have attention. Wow. Dr. Mark Berman is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and.

Is the founder of the field of environmental neuroscience.

With us now for more in Chicago, Illinois, Mark Berman. There's something about the aesthetic of nature, the fractalness, the curved edges that maybe our brains like process that more efficiently and that that could have health benefits because again, mind and body are one.

That's interesting. How does being in nature compare with other common focus boosters like caffeine, meditation, exercise?

It's a really, really great question.

What kind of effect does nature have on our brains? And if we're not using nature the way it's meant to be used, how will it hurt our brains?

So I think the thing that we should kind of, that we focus on about why nature is so beneficial to us actually has to do with attention. And we think that nature has the ability to restore our attention. And we think attention is almost critical to so many different human behaviors. Like if we want to achieve our goals, if we want to have self control, if we want to be cooperative, if we want to live life with a lot of meaning, you have to have attention, you have to be able to direct and pay attention. And we do think that in modern times, now there are a lot of things that are robbing our attention. Social media, streaming services, all the advertising that we see, we're just bombarded with information and it's really taxing us. And you know, I and other people like Jonathan Haidt has his book the Anxious Generation, that all of this social media that's around us is making kids in particular more anxious. And we think that part of that is because all these different technologies are kind of robbing our attention. Now I, this isn't to say that all these attentions are, all of these technologies are bad. It just means we have to be careful. And so what we think interacting with nature does is it has this ability to restore our ability to direct attention, that we become refreshed. So if we're mentally fatigued, nature can restore our attention. So we talk about humans kind of having two kinds of attention. So one kind of attention we call directed attention. And that's the kind of attention where you as the individual person are deciding what to pay attention to. So presumably, Louis, you're deciding to pay attention to me, even though what I'm saying might not be the most interesting thing in the environment. And it's thought that that kind of attention is fatigable or depletable. You can only kind of focus or direct your attention for so long before you become mentally fatigued and you can't focus anymore.

Kind of like schoolwork. If I'm not interested in schoolwork or being in a classroom listening to something that I really could kill less about, or I'm thinking more about, you know, a girl or whatever from school or sports or playing my friends or video games. I only have so much attention as a 15 year old in a classroom to hear something.

Exactly.

I have to really like focus my energy and pay attention, I guess. Right. But you're saying that can only go so far.

Exactly. And we've kind of all had that sensation. Like at the end of a long workday, you might be staring at the computer screen and you can't really focus anymore. You start daydreaming or thinking about other things. We call that like a directed attention fatigue state. That's the time to take a break. And the kind of break that we think you should take is something involving interacting with nature.

Interesting. It's interesting because maybe like 8 years ago I used to live in an apartment and I had my studio in the apartment. So I'd work out of there, I live there, and I would record interviews out of there from the School of Greatness. And usually halfway through the day I'd be like, gosh, I just need to get out and like throw a Frisbee. And I'd go in the park and I'd throw a Frisbee for like 20 minutes. And it gave me a lot more energy. Just like stepping aside, being in the grass. Even though the city was around me, I was still in grass. I could see some trees and I was playing. That really gave me more attention to go back and do the next thing.

Exactly. And so one of the reasons why we think interacting with nature is so beneficial is that we think interactions with nature activate a different kind of attention that we call involuntary attention, or sometimes people call it like bottom up attention. And that's the kind of attention that's automatically captured by bright lights, loud noises, things that automatically capture our attention and we don't really have control over it. And we think that a lot of natural stimulation, like trees, forest, forests, rivers, those things Automatically capture our attention, which gives our directed attention a chance to kind of take a break or replenish. Another thing that you mentioned, Louis, which is interesting, is that you said when you were playing Frisbee, you kind of like got out of your studio environment and went somewhere else. And one of my mentors, Steve Kaplan, used to talk about this, that he thought many natural environments give people the sense of being away from, like getting away from their regular day to day, which could also kind of activate this involuntary attention and give the directed attention a chance to replenish.

So how many types of attention are there?

So we think there's kind of two main kinds. So one is this directed attention. That's the one where you are controlling what you're paying attention to, even if it's not the most interesting thing. Unfortunately, you can kind of only do that for a limited amount of time and then you kind of can't focus anymore. That's different from this involuntary attention that we think is automatically captured by interesting stimulation in the environment. And it's thought that that kind of attention is less susceptible to fatigue or depletion. So you don't often hear people say, oh, I can't look at that beautiful waterfall anymore, it's just too interesting. I can't look at it anymore. Or oh, I can't watch this movie anymore, it's just too interesting. I have to shut it off. So the idea, this is what's called attention restoration theory. It's a theory about why interacting with nature is beneficial. The idea with attention restoration theory is that if you can find environments that don't put a lot of demand on directed attention while simultaneously having interesting stimulation to activate this involuntary attention, you can restore or replenish this precious directed attention.

Resource directed attention. So I'm getting it right. Is you saying I'm going to focus my attention on a thing? Yes, like a person, a thing, my studies, my work, whatever it might be, I'm going to pay attention and think about this thing. And what I'm hearing you say is that there's only so much willpower where you can hold that focus for a certain amount of time. Maybe that's 30 minutes, maybe that's three hours, but eventually you're going to get fatigued is what I'm hearing you say. Whereas involuntary attention is less susceptible to fatigue, where you could pay attention longer and maybe you just get bored. But it's not like you're not exhausted from paying attention. Right. And that comes from being in nature. But I'm hearing, is it Also comes from like, bright lights or flashing movies or things like that that are just easier to watch. Is that what you're saying?

Things that are just kind of inherently more interesting. And you can kind of think, you know, sometimes too, we can kind of get into these like, flow states where a task is really interesting to do and you do want to pay attention to it. That doesn't really require as much directed attention. When we're talking about directed attention, it's like, oh, I've got this really challenging.

Don'T want to do this.

I don't want to do it.

You'll play video games. You guys are hanging out with friends.

Exactly. I don't. It's kind of almost think about, like you said, willpower. It's like this mental energy. I know there's this hard thing, I need to get it done. It's hard to do. And when you turn your directed attention to try to finish that task, it's just you don't, you don't have an unlimited amount of that direct attention resource to finish the job.

Are there any other health benefits besides improved focus that being in nature gives the body and the mind?

Yes, it's true. But one thing I want to kind of mention is that we don't want to minimize attention because we do think, you know, when, when people think about attention, they think a lot about kids squirming in their seats in school, not being able to pay attention or, you know, oh, I just couldn't finish this project, you know, at work. But we think attention, directed attention is fundamental to many, many other behaviors. Like, we think if you don't have enough directed attention, you might become really irritable, you might become aggressive, you might be less likely to be able to achieve your goals. You're going to be more impulsive. So I think one of the interesting things that we're saying here is that attention is not just about focusing in school. It's about almost like being our best selves, that we need to have this mental energy, this directed attention, to be able to achieve our goals.

So directed attention is what allows us to set and stay focused on our goals through challenging times.

Exactly.

Because when you set a goal, there's going to be obstacles, challenges. You're going to need to have repetition of something. You know, you became a professor, you wrote a book, you're leading a department now. That took decades of research, time, energy, and focused attention for you to accomplish skills, build relationships, develop bodies of work, research that was probably like tedious long days, long years of not Getting a lot of results right away that stack over time. And that takes directed attention focus in order to do that.

Exactly.

And if you're lacking the ability to develop that, then you're probably going to struggle at becoming your best self, is what I'm hearing you say. Accomplishing your goals, moving projects forward, getting a pay raise, whatever it is you're looking for.

That's right.

And so the whole goal that we should be having, based on what I'm hearing you say as a neurot, neuroscientist and environmental psychologists and all these things, is that we should be learning how to optimize our brain and our body for attention. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes. And treating it as this precious resource because again, there's a lot of things in the environment that are vying for our attention. And one other concept that I think is important too to talk about is the kind of stimulation that activates the involuntary attention.

Okay.

So we think that you want to be. To get this restoration benefit, to restore directed attention. We think that the environment has to have what we call softly fascinating stimulation. So when I say softly fascinating, it means it captures your involuntary tension, but it doesn't sort of capture all of your attentional resources.

It's not constantly like stimulating like this, right? Yeah.

So like when I look at a waterfall or when you look at a waterfall, it's interesting, you look at it, but you can still kind of mind wander and think about other things. If I'm in Times Square, that's also super interesting. But it sort of captures all of our attentional resources and doesn't let go.

You can't focus on like creating something in that space.

No, it's too overwhelming.

You're in stimulation mode. You're just like, ah, this is amazing. But you're not able to focus attention on actually creating something.

That's right. It leaves no room for any kind of reflection.

So as a, as a neuroscientist, then studying this, what are five key things that you do or you have in your environment every day to maximize your attention for growth in your personal life and professional life?

So a few things. So one, I try to be really, really mindful of when I'm getting into a directed attention fatigue state. And I don't usually try to power through. You don't? No, I say I need to take a break. And the reason why I say that is, you know, powering through. You might be able to get it done, but I don't think you're going to be as Efficient.

It's not your best work.

It's not your best work. So I think I. The first thing I do is when I feel like I'm getting in this direct attention fatigue state. I'm getting irritable, I can't focus, I can't concentrate. I say, you know what? I got to go take a break and I got to go take a break in nature.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay, so first key is take a break and take a break in nature. Right. And when you feel exhausted or tired or.

Yeah, yes. Mentally fatigued. It's like I have physical energy. I don't have to go to sleep, but I can't mentally concentrate. Exactly.

Yeah. Now I'm assuring this. Sometimes you might have to. You don't have the luxury of doing that.

No.

You're at school and you have long days or you've got your four kids and it's like, we've got to get something done here.

Right.

So there's moments where you're punching through.

That's right.

Exhaustion, mentally.

Right.

But your goal is to try to do that when you can.

That's right, exactly. And we can talk too. You know, a lot of us don't have easy access to nature. And the good news is, is that we find that you can get benefits from listening to nature sounds, looking at nature pictures, looking at nature videos. The effects aren't as strong as going into the real thing as to going in real nature, but you can still get benefits that way from the simulated nature. So that's really, really good.

Okay, so that's the first thing. Take a break in nature. The second thing that you do or you. You focus on.

So the second thing I focus on is sort of what I don't do. So I don't do social media.

Stare at your phone. Yeah, yeah. When you're tired.

I don't. I don't stare at my phone when I'm tired. I don't do much social media stuff. You know, I try to be. Because those activities, even though they feel restful, they actually aren't that restful.

It's interesting because sometimes when I'm tired and I want to break, I'll take my phone out and go into, I guess, the involuntary attention, which feels like it's. It's less fatigue because I'm being fed a movie or content. That is just allowing me to, like, not think about the task I was just doing.

Yep.

But you're saying that that's not a good thing.

It may not be because it's not. It may Be kind of taking you out of what you're doing before, but it might not actually be a restful behavior. So when you actually try to go back and do the thing, you might actually have less energy, less directed attention. You're still tired than you had with.

Yeah. So take a break in nature and don't get on social media or your phone, if you can, unless you're, like, for a break.

I mean, I'm not. Again, I'm not trying to demonize social media. It's just not restful. It's not restful. Right.

Okay. Third thing.

Third thing is, um, so I've got kids, and I like them to interact with nature, and I like to get them out in nature, but I don't count that as my break.

Really? No, because that's you having to still wrangle kids and, like, make sure they're not dying, you know, or falling on something. Right.

And they whine. They don't always want to go out. Right. So it takes a lot of mental energy for me to get them out of the house to do it.

So it's not like you're sitting there sunbathing in the forest or whatever, relaxing when your kids are out there. Exactly.

You have to pay attention to them. I'm using mental energy, direct attention. Get your shoes on. We're going. No, I don't want to go, dad. No, we're going out there. Right. That takes directed attention. So that doesn't count as a break for me. That's good for my kids, but it's not. It's not my break. The other thing, maybe we'll call this, like, the fourth element, is that when I go into nature, I don't have my earbuds in, I don't look at my phone, and I go by myself.

So you won't listen to music and also kind of.

No, no. Because I want all of my senses to be captured by the softly fascinating stimulation. In nature. You go alone and I go along.

You don't want to go with anyone in your family or.

It's not.

That's not. It's a different thought.

It could be different. It'll be different. Like, for example, I do, you know, sometimes when my wife and I, if there's something we're trying to figure out or something tricky that we're trying to understand, we will walk in nature together and talk about that issue, which can be good, but it's not. It's almost like the nature, like, helps us in communicating, but it's not like a break for Me or for her. So when I want. Because when you're having a conversation with somebody, you're using a lot of directed attention. You are so interesting. This is kind of a solitary process.

Interesting. And is there anything else that you do? A fifth thing.

A fifth thing.

What about in your personal environment at home to set up to make sure that you have nature involved in some way?

So we do. And my wife, I really thank her for doing this. We have this nice bay window in the front of her house, and she's got all these plants growing in that bay window. Some of these are really, like, big plants, like these huge leaves. It's just really gorgeous to look at. My office doesn't have great lighting, but we have artificial plants in my office. I kind of want to do more like even having, like, a fake green wall and things like that. So we do try to bring nature indoors into the home as well.

Is there benefits to having fake green plants in your home or office as, you know, instead of having a living green plants?

Well, I would say living is better, but you can get benefits from the artificial, too. And it's interesting. There have been studies in hospitals where a lot of these hospital environments have to be really sterile and there's maybe not much natural light. And they'll put fake plants, fake greenery into these hospitals. And people report feeling calmer in the hospital. They're not as agitated, even when they know it's a fake plant. So that's kind of interesting, too. So sometimes even just being able to mimic some of these patterns in nature can have some of these benefits.

What are the health benefits besides focused attention that being in nature has for people?

Yeah, it's really amazing, actually, and it has really important consequences. So maybe I'll start with a study that we did in Toronto. So we had health data from about 35,000 people in Toronto, and we had this incredible data set where the University of Toronto Forestry Department cataloged every single tree on public land in the city of Toronto. So we had data from 580,000 trees in the city of Toronto. We knew where each tree was. We knew the species of each tree and the diameter of each tree at breast height. So, like, how big or how old the tree was.

Just like Google Maps for trees?

Yes.

It's like, you know, every tree, every street, every alley, like, Exactly. Wow.

And so one of my students, Omid Cardan, what he did is he calculated how much tree canopy each individual tree provided. And we related that to this big health data set that we had, and we found that if you had 11 more trees of average size per city block, that reduced cardiometabolic disorders by about 1%. That's crazy, but that sounds kind of modest. 1% doesn't sound like much. But to get that equivalent 1% benefit economically, you'd have to give every household on that city block $20,000 and have them all move to a neighborhood with the median income that's $20,000 wealthier or make people about one and a half years younger. Wow. So that's pretty powerful. Now, again, that's that cause and effect, or is it core? Right. So that's the good question. So I can't claim strong causality there, because the worst case scenario would be maybe just healthier. People choose to live in neighborhoods that have more trees, but they can't be younger, they can't be more educated, they can't be wealthier because we're controlling for that. Here's another study that's even cooler. So Roger ulrich in the 1980s, he looked at a single hospital corridor in a hospital in Philadelphia, and he was looking at patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. And it just so happened that some of these rooms, hospital rooms on this single hospital corridor in Philadelphia, some of them had views of modest nature, like some trees or some grass, and some had views of, like, a brick wall, like the hospital, like, coming back around. Amazingly, the patients that had the views of nature out of their window recovered from gallbladder surgery a day earlier come on. And they used less pain medication than the people had the views of the brick wall. And what's really cool about this study is that the patients are randomly assigned to the different rooms. So it's not like younger people or healthier people get the nature view. They're just randomly assigned to whatever room is available. So there. You can almost claim causality there. The thing that's really interesting about this is why. Why does having the view of nature out of your window.

And they weren't going in nature every day. They were in a hospital. Yeah. They're recovering from gallbladder looking at nature.

Looking at nature.

So why do you think this impacts our health by just looking at nature?

So this is what's kind of crazy. So if we go back a second to the study we did in Toronto, okay, having more trees, maybe the air is better. Maybe having more trees, maybe I'm more willing to go outside and exercise. But that's not the case in the.

Roger Oliver, you're not getting more oxygen through the window?

I don't think so. So what we think might be going on there is that there's something about the aesthetic of nature, seeing the fractalness of nature, the curved edges, and then maybe our brains, like, process that more efficiently and that that could have health benefits, because, again, mind and body are one. So things that are good for the brain are going to be good for the body, just like things that are good for the body are going to be good for the brain. So that I think is really interesting and somewhat counterintuitive that actually processing or the sounds and the visuals of nature could have health benefits.

That's interesting. So looking at nature, this study proves that there's a health benefit to recovering from sickness or disease or anything you might have in there. Whereas staring at a brick wall takes you longer to heal and recover.

Yes.

That's crazy. When I think about people that live in, like, New York City or that have no light coming through their window or just looking at a building right next to them when they wake up or something like that. If someone does live in a concrete jungle with no access to parks or nature, what's the next best thing for their brain to heal and feel optimized?

So I think there's good news that we find even in our research that looking at nature on a computer screen can have benefits. Really, listening to nature sounds can have benefits. And again, in some of these hospital settings, people that are getting some painful procedures in hospitals, sometimes they bring in, like, nature posters or use virtual reality where they show people nature stimulation, and that helps with pain management. So it does seem like that artificial nature, like nature pictures, nature videos, nature sounds, they can improve attention, but they can also have some healing benefits. Now, I want to caution that it's not going to be as good as the real thing. The real thing is the best. But it's good to know that for a lot of us that don't have easy access to nature, these simulations can be beneficial.

If you had a friend or someone that reached out to you who is trying to recover from some type of sickness, disease, hospital surgery, and you were able to set up the perfect conditions for them to heal using nature, and they could use any tool in the toolbox, and you said if you do these things, it will drastically support your body and your brain's ability to heal itself faster, what would you tell them to do?

I mean, I would almost tell somebody to kind of try to heal almost in, like, a greenhouse, like live in a greenhouse, to be, like, surrounded by the nature, to get the natural light coming in. Like Andrew Huberman talks about the importance of natural light. Natural light is a big thing, but you want to be seeing all of these patterns in nature. So you'd like to be able to see the trees maybe out of the greenhouse. You'd like to have some plants inside that greenhouse. Do you want to hear the sounds? You want to hear the birds chirping? You want to hear the wind in the leaves? Maybe you can have some kind of water feature that's got. So you can hear running water. I think all of those things would have. Would have healing qualities.

Interesting. Like healing in a greenhouse.

Right.

Like sleep there for the next week in a greenhouse and just be in nature right now.

I will say this. There have been some other studies where if you make the environment almost too green, like, imagine the studio, if we increase the green space here by 10 to 20%, people really, really like it. But if you start going way, way above that, it starts to feel a little bit busy. Almost like a jungle.

Yeah.

So maybe you don't want to go too far, but some studies are suggesting if you can get the space to have 20, 10 to 20%, having green space in the interior would be beneficial.

So we just built this out a few months ago, so we're still optimizing this. We've got a couple of, you know, fake plants, you know, a couple of, you know, things. We've got a photo of a sky and some trees. We've got, like, some things here.

You got a fire.

Like, you know, it's not real fire, but it's like. Like we've got wood accents. How could we increase this? Or what would you suggest, as a leading environmental neuroscientist on how we could optimize for peak attention for guests here, but also people viewing where they see it, and they just feel. I feel more.

Right. So I think we probably want to get more natural patterns, like, on the walls and even, like, this fire. Maybe you could even have that. You know, this has natural patterns here, too. And people talk about, like, the flame.

Right?

The flame. Right. That and the crackling. Even the sound.

I love that.

Can have that. So, again, anything where you're mimicking the patterns of nature, we think it can be. It can be beneficial.

So would you add more plants? Would you do, like, a few more here and there?

I would do plants, but I think even if you could have, like, a. Even if it's fake, like a hanging green wall. Really? Yeah. Like down. Down some of the sides.

That could help.

That could help.

Okay, cool. What about a water feature? I Guess you don't want water because it's too loud in here.

But maybe, but if it was soft enough, maybe it's like a tranquil little stream of water.

Okay, that's right. Okay. Not too much, but a little bit more. How does being in nature compare with other kind of common focus boosters like caffeine, meditation, exercise? How does it compare if you're just sitting in nature for an hour versus drinking coffee, working out meditation?

It's a really, really great question. I don't have an easy answer. In fact, one of my students was asking me about this, that we should do a comparison. We do know a little bit about how it compares to meditation and the effects are pretty similar to meditation. The good news is that meditation requires training, whereas being in nature doesn't require sit there and lay there and look in nature. So it seemed at least like for these are like short term kind of exposures, like 10 to 20 minutes in nature, 10, 20 minutes of, of meditation, similar effects. There was an interesting study that was done with kids with ADHD and they found that a 20 minute walk in nature for these kids who had ADHD was about as good as a dose of Ritalin. Really? Yeah.

A dose of Ritalin was the same as just being in nature for 20 minutes?

That's right.

For kids with ADHD.

That's right.

Wow. When someone starts putting a child on Ritalin or an attention style drug to give them more focus, what happens to their brain's ability to just self regulate when they're not on it versus learning tools and strategies like being in nature or meditation or other things that aren't medication?

Right. Well, I'm not a pharmacological expert. Ritalin kind of acts like caffeine a little bit. It's kind of counterintuitive. It actually gives them more energy to focus. I don't think we're at a point yet where we could say, oh, kids with adhd, we can just prescribe them nature interactions and they don't have to go on Ritalin. I don't think we're there yet, but I do think we're at the point where we can say, look, walking in nature, being in nature could be a supplement to Ritalin and it's not just adhd. We find that walking in nature is really beneficial for people suffering from depression. In fact, the walk in nature for people suffering for depression that we found was actually stronger than our results with people with non clinical depression.

Really?

And now you have doctors.

So what are you saying that people with depression had better results being in nature than people without depression going in nature.

That's right. So people without depression going in nature. We found that when people went for a 55,0 minute walk in nature, they improved their ability to focus by about 20% versus a walk in an urban environment.

And they've just felt happier in general. They felt less depressed or what's the.

Well, here's what I think is interesting. So a lot of people have the intuition that, well, people just like nature more and so it just feels good. And that's why people are getting these benefits. And it's true. We had people, we did some of these studies in June when It was like 80 degrees Fahrenheit. These were done in Ann Arbor, your favorite place. It was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. People loved the walk. They showed really healthy attention benefits. We also had people walk in January when it was 25 degrees Fahrenheit. People did not. Participants did not like to walk in nature, but they showed the same attention benefits as the people that walked in June.

Interesta.

So you don't have to like the nature to get these cognitive benefits, these attention and memory benefits.

Yeah, they're freezing or sweating the whole time.

So here. So there's gonna be not enjoyable.

So.

Right, it's not enjoyable. So. But there has to be some minimum threshold. Like people sometimes ask me, mark, well, what if it's a wildfire or you're being chased by a bear? I would say, no, that's not, that's not restorative. You're going to have to use a lot of directed attention. So the kind of nature experience we're talking about is like, you feel safe, you know, relax, Your, your, your minimum levels of comfort have been met.

Yeah.

You don't have to love it. You know, it could be a rainy day, it could be cloudy, it could be snowing. You can still get the, the attention benefits.

It's interesting. Okay. And what happens in the brain when we trade an hour in front of our screen for an hour in nature?

Well, I think, you know, we're, you know, so here's, here's the interesting part about the, to think about the direct brain implications. Have you ever been in an MRI scanner before?

I have, yeah.

Yeah.

Full body?

Yeah. Yeah. Was it comfortable?

No, No, I was not comfortable. Right. You're like, for an hour in this tube, it's like you can't move. It's not enjoyable.

Right. So do you think I could give you a good nature experience in an MRI machine?

No, no, that'd be tough.

So that's the. That's part of the problem. So one of the reasons why it's hard to get direct brain evidence now is because I can't give people a good nature experience. In the MRI scan, you're not in nature.

You're surrounded by electronic tube, right?

That's right. A superconducting magnet. Yes. But now what's really interesting is that there's now mobile brain imaging technology like these caps that you can have people wear and have them go in nature. So that's what we're starting to do now is actually have people walk in nature while wearing what this is called functional near infrared spectroscopy, or fnirs. They're wearing this FNIRS cap, walking in nature versus walking in more urban environments to see changes in their brain. And what we think is going to happen is that we think we're going to see the brain exerting less effort in nature versus the urban environment.

That makes sense. We don't have the evidence yet.

We don't have the evidence yet, but.

That'S what we make sense. What effect does nature have on our nervous system?

Well, some people have found that it can change heart rate and help people recover from stress. So again, Roger Ulrich has shown that if you kind of stress people out, like show them kind of disgusting pictures of people getting their hand shot, which really stresses people out. If you then immediately show them pictures of nature, their stress response recovers faster than if you show them pictures of an urban environment right afterwards. So interacting with nature might help people to recover from stress.

So an urban environment, like just staring at straight lines all day long and concrete buildings and straight lines that don't mimic nature lines, I guess.

Right.

Doesn't support our health in any way, I'm hearing.

Right.

And I don't hurt us, but it doesn't support our.

Well, I don't want to. I don't want to demonize cities because there's other research that we do showing that cities are really great in other aspects. But it does seem like people do not like looking at straight lines and right angles. People really prefer looking at architecture that has more curvature, more fractalness. So fractalness is like if you see a snowflake, it's got a shape. If you zoom in on it. Same shape, Zoom in, same shape. So it doesn't matter what spatial scale you look at the snowflake, it's got the same shape. Nature is filled with fractals and people like that. And some architects take advantage of that. Like, I don't know, Architect Gaudi in Barcelona. He built these buildings.

Yeah, I was just in Spain two weeks ago, and I saw a Gaudi building.

Interesting. Yeah. And people really like that architecture. And it may be that that architecture might give people some psychological benefits. So I think this also has implications for how we design the built environment, too.

I saw a stat that the CDC has reported a 60% increase of depression in US adolescents and adults in the past decade. And I know who is the author you're talking about, the Anxious Generation. He's got a lot of stats in there as well about, you know, teens and preteens and the depression rates and all these things like that. But how can we combat these, you know, rates with nature? And I'm also hearing about this terminology called forest bathing. Like, what is that? And how can we use that to support that, decreasing these rates?

Right. So I think, you know, Jonathan Haidt would say that a lot of the rise in depression anxiety is due to us being addicted to our smartphones and not connecting with each other anymore. We're doing a lot of social comparison. That's not healthy. And what we would say, too, is that it's also robbing your attention. It is that it feels easy to just kind of scroll through, but it's actually draining your attention. It's draining your battery. So, I mean, the first thing that I would say is that, you know, we need to get kids and adults interacting with nature more and getting these breaks and taking some pauses off of the device and going into. Going into nature. You know, going into nature is kind of interesting, too. We did a study where we had people walk in an indoor conservatory versus an indoor mall. And when people were walking in the indoor nature conservatory, it's really beautiful. This Garfield Conservatory in Chicago, they thought more about other people and they thought less about themselves. So that's also very interesting that nature maybe has this effect of getting us to be less egocentric, interesting, and thinking more about others.

So explain this again. What is this? People went into a conservatory.

So we had people walk in the conservatory. It was Garfield Conservatory. So it's like an indoor nature conservatory. There's big plants and trees indoors. Or we had them walk in Water Tower Mall in Chicago, a beautiful indoor mall, not very natural. And we gave people cell phones that pinged them and asked them questions like, what are you thinking about right now? And it turns out that when people were walking in the nature conservatory, they thought more about other people when they were in nature, but they thought more about themselves when they were in the mall.

Why is that you think? Why are you thinking about yourself in a mall when there's also people around? I'm assuming. Right. There's people walking around and you could see other people walking around.

Yeah. Let's start with nature. I think part of it is that when you're in beautiful nature, I think it can sometimes make people feel a little bit small, but small in a good way, that you kind of maybe feel like you're part of something bigger. You're in this awe inspiring nature. You know, maybe my problems don't seem as big anymore. And I think it encourages people to feel more connected to the environment and also to other people. People are part of the environment and we also think that actually kind of being, you know, less egocentric and thinking more about others probably takes energy. And so if you're, if you're boosting your directed attention.

You think about others.

You think about others. Interesting in the mall. I mean again, I don't want anything.

About buying for you.

Exactly.

What can I get from me? I want to look good, which is you're comparing yourself to other people. What do they have? And I want that.

And people felt more impulsive in the mall. So again, the environment was designed for that reason. They want people to buy things. So I think part of our research and what we talk about in the book too is that, you know, in part this is more than just nature. This is about the environment in general. The physical environment in general and the physical environment in general has a significant impact on our behavior. I think sometimes as humans we forget that because we have so much control over the environment. But it doesn't mean that we're immune to the environment.

That's interesting. There's this, what is it called? Let me see. I think I have something here that I want to ask you about. Oh yeah? Have you seen the Gen Z trend of I need to touch grass?

No.

So there's this trend, I guess on TikTok or social media of Gen Z people saying I need to go touch grass. And I think it's about where there's just, they're in an addiction loop. They're on their phones non stop, they've been locked on their screens or they haven't gone outside and they feel like they need to go and actually feel the grass.

Interesting.

And feel connected to something that's not just a digital device.

Yes.

Of just obsession or self indulgence or whatever. Scarcity, mindset of what you're lacking.

Yes.

What happens when we go and touch the Ground and touch the grass, feel the dirt. Is there something that shifts instantly in our bodies when we touch grass?

I mean, I think it kind of goes back to this connection element that I think you feel more connected to, to the physical world. There's this really interesting book called the Finnish Way. And it's, you know, it's kind of cliche that, you know, the Nordic countries or the Scandinavian countries are just better at everything and they're happier. But one of the main things that the Finns do is they make sure they are out in nature all the time. Even swimming in nature in really, really cold temperatures. Yes. And so one thing that we haven't.

Talked about much, I've been to Poland and I've. I spent a week in Poland with Wim Hof. Just being in frozen rivers. I mean, not completely frozen, but like very cold rivers. We climbed a mountain that was snow and ice, like without clothes on, essentially, like just shorts and shoes. And it was just like extreme cold. But you felt happier, even though it was uncomfortable?

Yes.

It was for a purpose. It was controlled. It wasn't like, we're gonna sit here for hours, you know, like die. It was extreme heat and extreme cold. We were doing five to 10 minutes on like, ice baths and all this stuff. And there was something about feeling the cold air.

Yeah.

Being in cold water, jumping off of a cliff into a frozen river.

Yeah.

It was something about being in barefoot and like, skin to skin with the elements.

Yes.

That was very healing. It was uncomfortable, but it was healing. Freeing, Invigorating.

Yes.

Life giving, all these things.

Yes. And I think that's one thing we haven't. You know, we've. Because it's hard. These studies are harder to do. We've mostly focused on the visual of nature, the sounds of nature. But the tactile of nature is also really, really important. And so I think you're touching the grass. There's something about the feel of nature that's important. The bark of nature. You know, there have been these studies done in rodents where they give rodents, like plastic toys versus, like toys made of like, that are like real wood.

Right.

And the rodents brains, like they have more synapses when they have the real. Yeah. So again, like, we evolved in nature. This environment that we built is very, very artificial. Right. We weren't meant to, like, sit on a phone and touch this, you know, artificial thing. We're meant to, like, touch the real thing, you know, to do things with our hands. And so, you know, that could be another element to it too.

You've got four kids. How do you fight against the temptations of the modern world? And them being stuck in a school building all day and getting 10 minutes of recess or whatever it is, and them being on computers now and how they're learning versus with books. And just how do you deal with all this, knowing that you're a busy professor with a lot of responsibilities and your kids are in school, I'm assuming. But you know the side effects of all the things that they're experiencing.

Yep.

How do you combat against modern society? Peer pressure, school systems that are slow to evolve and change to have more things for kids to. To feel in nature. Like, how do you deal with this?

It's challenging, but I think, you know, it's moderation. Like, we let our kids watch tv. You know, our oldest daughter, she has a cell phone. We don't let them have any social media. They don't have that. And, you know, we chose to live in. And we were lucky. We're fortunate we chose to live in a neighborhood that's close to two nature trails so the kids can go out there. Right now, as we're having this conversation, my kids are at my wife's family's cottage that's like two hours north of Toronto where they're fishing, you know, so we try, you know, when we have the free time, we try to make it nature time. Yeah. But it's hard. And I think this is one thing, Louis, that maybe we can all do together is that let's make it easier.

Right?

I mean, this is important. And one thing that drives me crazy about schools is that they are kind of cutting recess. And imagine this. So right now they want to have an eight hour school day. They don't want to give the kids too many breaks because they want to give them as much instruction as possible. But if four hours through the school day, if you're in direct attention fatigue state, you might not be getting anything out of the last four hours.

Nothing.

So imagine this. Imagine it's still the eight hour school day. It's six hours of classroom instruction and two hours of being out in nature, play outside.

It'd be amazing.

It's possible. I mean, it's possible that the kids might actually learn more.

Do better.

Do better. So, you know, and I think if I say that to people, they kind of just, you know, laugh at me. Like, is this, you know, sounds too hippie or something like that? But it is possible, because just powering through doesn't seem like it works. Just like Matt Walker talked about, sleep Right. It used to be thought, oh, you'll sleep when you're dead. You don't need sleep. No. It turns out if you don't sleep, you're gonna die.

Yeah, earlier.

Earlier.

Right.

And I think we're kind of saying the same thing about nature, that if we're not interacting with nature and doing things in nature, we're just not gonna be our best self.

I've got twins on the way and it's 2025 and so I'm going to have two kids coming to the world in 2025. If you could say, hypothetically, in a perfect world, this is how you should set up your structure for your kids to thrive the best way possible. Whereas now when I see kids get out of the hospital that are getting, I don't know, a million injections and they're put in plastic blankets right away, they've got shoes in their feet, they're covered in synthetic clothing right away, they probably don't even touch the ground nature anymore. And they're put in controlled environments, perfect temperature, and then set in schools and industrial looking buildings for 20 something years of their life. If you could give a prescription for how parents could raise kids to try to set better conditions now, they may not have the luxuries or the ability to move or create the environment, but if you could have the perfect environment as an environmental neuroscientist that could try to optimize the brain and the body connection with kids today, what environment would you create for them? How frequently would they be in nature? What would you eliminate from their lives and what would you add?

I mean, I think again, it's going to have a lot of real nature in their lives all the time. And one thing that we find too in our studies, you know, adults typically like nature, but we've also done studies with kids and we say, you know, we show them pictures. Like, what picture do you like? Do you like this nature picture more? This urban picture more? The kids liked urban better.

Really?

Yes.

Why?

We don't know exactly.

You show like a photo of like a beautiful lake and mountains and you show a photo of New York City, like buildings.

Yeah.

The kids will gravitate towards the city.

That's right.

Interesting.

And it's only when they get older do they start to like nature more. So at 4 and 5, they prefer urban. As they get older, they start to like nature more.

Is it because it's so, like foreign to them? They're your, your involuntary attention is like, oh, it's this shiny thing. It's different.

And that could be part of it. You know, maybe the nature is too boring for them to some extent. And even we have some collaborators in the uk. You know, you can't ask a six month old what do you like better? But you can see what they look at. And these six month olds look at urban.

It's got more attention though, grabbing. It's like if you looked at whatever, Dora the Explorer or something like a cartoon, it's got to grab your attention.

Right.

Versus looking outside, you could be like, what is this shiny bright light?

Right, right.

You know, it's, it's not going to be calming.

Right, right. But so what I think is critical here though is that, and the four and five year olds in our studies, their preferences didn't match their parents either. It's only when they got older did their preferences look like their parents. So in some sense this love of nature is learned. And so I think it's really, really important that we demonstrate that to our kids. We have to get out in nature. We have to show them that nature is important. We can't just tell them their inclination actually is to urban. So we have to, we have to show them that it's nature. And then, you know, there's so many things that we can do again. Humans have so much control over the physical environment, but we've kind of built the physical environment to move goods efficiently and to house people efficiently. We didn't build the environment to like give you the best attention or to make you more cooperative or to give you the most contentment. So I think that's what we want to start to do. We want this like, this nature revolution that's going to incorporate nature into all these aspects. And you know, unfortunately too, I feel like cities often, especially in North America, are so car centric. So there's this beautiful park in Chicago, Jackson park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, same landscape architect to design Central Park. But it doesn't have the same feel as Central Park. And I remember taking my kids to this park and we're walking the park and this car zoomed by and literally a hubcap flew off of the car right in front of us and started spinning around us. It's like, okay, the nature is here, but the car traffic is wrecking it. So again, what I'm suggesting here is gonna be very expensive. But it's almost like you have to separate the car traffic from these nature spaces and to keep them more pure, let people walk around in these spaces. It's going to be expensive. But I really think. I mean, again, we. We can do it. We have the control of the environment.

Interesting. I grew up in Ohio. You grew up in the state of Michigan, unfortunately. But it's okay. And when I'm driving around Ohio, especially north northern Ohio, I see a lot of Amish communities up there.

Right.

I don't know if there's a lot of Amish in Michigan as well. Maybe the southern part, maybe northern Ohio, southern Michigan. And for whatever reason, I don't know all the studies and I don't know, like, the actual facts about it, but it seemed like they're out in nature a lot working. They're working with family, the kids are working with the parents. They're learning, working. They're outdoors most of the time. From the outside observation, it doesn't look like there's a lot of obesity. Again, they're not using cell phones or they are. It's very minimal to just make business calls, I guess, or to deal with logistics. And is there any information around communities like Amish communities that seem to be working in nature more or other communities like that on the health benefits that they have versus the rest of modern society or anything like that?

It's a really good question. I know a little bit about allergens. Like, for example, I've heard that, like, the kids in those Amish communities don't usually have many allergies.

Really? Why do you think that is?

Because they're getting exposed.

They're in nature.

They're in nature. And, and. And there are some studies done in Finland of these forest schools where the kids are out in nature in school. They don't, like, sit in the classroom. They're, like, eating dirt, like playing in dirt. And the kids have better immune systems. They're ingesting the microbiota of nature, which is beneficial.

So they're probably not getting a lot of like. And shots also, as. As kids like the Amish or these other.

Maybe not, you know, who knows?

But they're just more. They're more. They're more exposing themselves to these things.

To these things, which is allowing their immune system to be stronger.

Interesting.

Yeah. You know, again, those communities are so different in so many ways. But, you know, I think that. I think one thing that you mentioned, too is that the sterile environment that we're in has downsides. Right. The natural environment is kind of dirty, but it's good dirt.

Interesting.

And so I think we need to have more exposure to that.

We don't need to be clean all the time. We don't need to Be clean, especially as kids. Like allow kids feet and hands dirty sometimes.

I don't know if you can see.

This, but like dirty your fingernails.

Well, it's because my son and I, we were picking black walnuts and I was opening the black walnuts. The black walnut juice is very staining. I cannot get it off. I can't get it off. But there's something about getting our hands a little bit dirty that I think is important.

Is it better to have plants and a garden in your environment or is it better to be actually planting things in your environment? Is there differences of both?

Well, I think, I think you, you know, people have different interests. I think there's, there's definitely benefits to just having the nature around. There was my mentor, Steve Kaplan, with his wife Rachel. Kaplan did do a study with gardeners and they did find that a lot of these gardeners did show a lot of benefits to gardening. What was interesting though, the gardeners that didn't use pesticides showed the most benefit really. And they thought the reason for that was that if you're so stressed out that the plant's going to die or something like that, I need to protect this plant that's going to use a lot of directed attention. And the people that just were more naturalistic with it, I think they were just letting nature take its course. They were just kind of going through the feeling of the gardening without that strong, strong attachment and, and that might have been more, more beneficial.

Wow.

So again, yeah, I think if you can get your hands dirty a little bit, it's going to be beneficial. Yeah.

What about grounding? Have you heard about grounding? You know, there's this, you know, kind of spiritual movement of people talking about grounding, which is essentially just having your bare feet on the ground, not like on a synthetic ground, but on the grass, on dirt, on rocks, on sand. And the, the benefits of that. Is there any science that you're aware of around either the, the earth's, you know, energetic forces on how it's connecting to the skin and how it actually gives you more energy? Have you had any research or study around that?

I haven't seen anything like that. But again, I think it's kind of back to touching grass that, you know, again, the natural tactile stimulation might be beneficial. Getting those, getting those feelings. And again, a lot of people are just so disconnected. They don't do. People don't do anything with their hands anymore. I think actually engaging more with those, with that tactile stimulation, you know, could be beneficial.

Why is it when I'm in the ocean, in a lake, in a pool or in the shower, I feel more relaxed and I feel like more ideas come to me when I'm immersed in water. Is there anything around how water impacts our brains and our health?

I think it's also related to involuntary attention and people have found that blue spaces can have some of these benefits. So water has some of these fractal sounds. It even has some of the, you know, whey is kind of crashing, has fractal stimulation. So I think it's kind of again it's, it's these nature patterns that, that you're getting in water that might be leading to some of these benefits. Get capturing your involuntary attention really in a softly fascinating way.

Do you think it has any, besides the attention factor, do you think it has any health benefits to being in water? Do you know that? Have you seen those studies?

I've seen a little bit. Even they've been saying about like open water swimming, it can have some health.

Benefits like swimming in the ocean or.

Like swimming just in large bodies of water, not in like an indoor pool.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know exactly what the mechanism.

Not a man made, not a man made pool.

But being in open water can be beneficial.

It's just more scary for me if like a shark or like some weird fish is going to come up. That's the only thing. Like maybe you're more focused about your attention. Like what is that feeling? Oh man. I used to go to. The only time I went to Michigan was in the summer. I'd go for weekends to Torch Lake. Yeah. You ever heard of Torch Lake?

Yes, I've been there.

This is probably one of the most beautiful places that I've ever been to in terms of a lake. And it's all white sand and like this perfect blue lake.

Yes.

It's unfortunate. It's not in Ohio and it's in Michigan so I have to cross the border. But it's beautiful. It's beautiful and you feel, it just feels so calming.

Yes. And it's a very deep, very deep. The only negative thing I find with Torch Lake is that they have so many boats, sometimes a lot of boats. The summer has passed, so that's my only complaint.

That's true. You can't really enjoy it anymore because there's so many people there now.

Right. But otherwise you're right. It's a fantastic thing again because it's just, it's, it's so softly fascinating.

It is incredible.

Yeah.

What else is there in the Research that you've seen recently about spirituality in nature.

So it's really interesting that you asked that. So there was this private foundation called the TKF Foundation. Now they're called Nature Sacred. And they built, like, 150 parks in the D.C. baltimore, Annapolis, Maryland area. And this foundation built these characteristic benches in these parks, these wooden benches. And underneath the bench was a journal or diary, and people could write their thoughts in the journal entry. So what this foundation did was they digitized all of these journal entries. So they had, like, 12,000 journal entries that they had digitized. And so we were interested in what are people thinking about or writing about in these parks. So one of my former students, Kate Shirts, she. She analyzed all these journal entries, and turns out people were pretty reflective in these parks, you know, writing things about, like, nature and time and place, but also things related to spirituality. What was interesting, too, is that we had pictures for a lot of these parks, so we could, like, quantify how many curved edges there were in these parks. And it turned out that the amount of curved edges in the parks correlated with people writing more about spirituality.

Really?

Yeah. Huh. So it gets crazier. So why is that? You know, what's going on there?

The more curved edges in the park. So what does a curved edge mean? So it man made curves or curves of nature?

It could be both. So, like, a tree will have a lot of curved hedges. Some of these parks also had, like, a labyrinth, like this kind of, like, maze that also had a walking maze. Yes. So don't really know yet. Was it something about man made about the park or was all the natural things? So what Kate did is. And that's very correlational. We don't know what's going on. So Kate designed a study where she would show people a picture of nature or a built environment. And we could manipulate how many curved edges there were in the environment by, like, how many trees there were or, like, how intricate was the architecture. And it turns out if the image had more curved edges, people thought more about spirituality. It gets even crazier. So one way that we manipulated curved edges was actually sometimes putting in water, because flat water doesn't have a lot of curved edges. So maybe there was just something about seeing water that you don't think about spirituality. I don't really believe that. But to get around that, what Kate did was she scrambled the image. So she would, like, take all the curved edges and then scramble it. So it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. You can't really tell what it is, but it Preserved all the curved edges. And it turns out if this image that looks like abstract art, if it had more curved edges, people thought more about spirituality.

Interesting.

And that's kind of like independent of nature.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

It's just seeing curve.

Do you have an example of that in the book or is that a more recent.

We do have an example picture in. In the book.

You know where it is.

Skim through, which it might take me a second here. Yeah. I'm trying to find the one where it shows the image intact and then where we scrambled it. I've got it on my computer.

Is this the page 140?

Bingo. Yeah.

Yeah.

You got it.

I saw this earlier in here.

I thought that's it.

So it's like an image of a nature and then an image of just kind of like a building, I guess, and some benches.

Right.

And then you scramble the images.

That's right. That's right.

And so people looking at the nature one with more curved images still, even though it's scrambled, you can't really tell what it is.

Right.

It's still more pleasing.

Well, guys, think more about spirituality.

You think more about spirituality.

Right.

Just looking at a scrambled image of curves rather than straight lines from this other building. Let's see that. That's interesting.

Yep.

Yeah. Page one, 140.

Yeah.

Nature in the mind.

Yeah.

And then you have the two.

Yeah. So like the one on the right here has more curved edges. So people think more about spirituality looking at that one versus that one. Yeah.

In the page before 138, you have something that has fewer curved edges. These are all fewer curved edges and more curved edges in nature versus less natural. Fewer curved edges and more curved edges in urban cities. Yes. So if you're in an urban city, but the architecture is more curved and more flowing, it's going to be more aesthetically pleasing to think spiritually rather than.

People like it more, but they'll also think more about spirituality. So if you. In this environment, people think more about spirituality than this environment, and people think more about spirituality in this environment versus that.

Interesting, isn't it?

Yeah.

With more curved edges. More curved edges. And a curved edge doesn't mean you have to have a big circular thing. It could be tons of leaves. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Interesting. That's really cool. Because in this one example here, with fewer curved edges, it's in the ocean, so you see lots of water. There might be benefits to seeing water or hearing the waves, but you're not thinking as much if it's not as.

Curved, it might not cause you to think as much about spirituality. This is like one thing too, where it's sort of like, I don't know, Louis. If there's going to be like one perfect environment, it's like, what do you want people to get out of it? Like, do you want them to think about spirituality or do you want to improve their intention more? Right.

Or maybe being in water is more healing for the body.

That's right.

It's like, what are the purposes of it?

That's right. And I don't. I mean, not to get. You might get more confusing. Did you know what the broken windows theory is?

No.

The broken windows theory is this sociology theory that if you see broken windows or graffiti or litter, it suggests that people aren't paying attention and you can like, steal or commit crimes. Okay. Okay. So that's kind of interesting.

You can commit crimes in that space.

In that space because nobody's watching. It's like a social cue.

It's. It's abandoned.

It's abandoned. Right.

So if there's something in there, go in there. And no one's gonna catch.

No one's gonna catch it. No one's watching. So. And they've done these studies, like in Europe. It's kind of interesting. Like, they'll have a mailbox. The mailbox will have a package sticking out with like a five dollar euro. And they're looking to see who steals the interest to bill. And if the mailbox has no graffiti, maybe 10% of people steal the bill. But if the mailbox has graffiti on it, 30% of people really steal it.

That's so interesting because they just psychologically think, no one's gonna catch me.

That's right.

No one's paying attention.

No one's watching. Right, Right. No one's watching. So but we wondered, like, is it just the graffiti that's doing it or is it like, the graffiti is kind of messy and somehow, like, processing this messiness might lead to more cheating. So we did a study where we gave people a stupid math test. They're shown this matrix of numbers with two decimal points, and they have to find the two that add up to 10. It's annoying. They have to do this in a short amount of time. They get two minutes. Then we show them their answer and what the correct answer was, and we tell them beforehand. The more you get correct, we're going to pay you more. So it gives people the opportunity to cheat.

Interesting.

But in between taking the math test and grading themselves we show them images that are more disorderly or less disorderly. It's just like the Jackson Pollock thing, just nonsense. It turns out if we show them the images that are more disorderly, they're more likely to cheat and to cheat by a bigger amount. So that's kind of weird. Like, okay, these curved edges are causing people to think about spirituality, but they might also cause people to cheat more.

That's interesting. I wonder if it's like, I used to cheat all the time in school, like, constantly one, because I was in the bottom of my class. It's not like it's funny, but it's also, like, not a good thing. Right. It's like. But I used to cheat all the time. It was almost like survival, because I would. I was in the bottom of my class. I had, you know, tutors every year, all through high school, college, elementary school, everything. And I just. I wasn't able to pay attention. It was very hard for me to have focused attention after the first hour of class. I didn't understand what the teacher was saying. I couldn't read and write. And so I just felt, like, exhausted. And all I'm thinking about is, when is school over so I can go play.

Yep.

And you're stuck in a little desk, and you have to sit there like this. And there's so much mental pressure. The least it was for me.

Yeah.

So it was almost like, out of survival. I just found ways to cheat on tests, on homework. And it's not like something I'm proud of. Like, I want to look back at this, but it's really a survival strategy.

Yep.

And I wonder if there is a. Any research to how much someone cheats or steals if they're in nature more versus if they're just stuck in a industrial box at an industrial desk, you know, eight hours a day. Being forced to pay attention to something that's really hard, you don't understand and have pressure of performing well versus just being in nature.

Yep.

I wonder if I would have cheated less, you know, stole less. All these things, just being outside doing the work versus being inside doing the work.

Yeah, that's an interesting question. So, I don't know exactly for cheating. My hypothesis would be that if you're in more nature, it would lower cheating. That would be my hypothesis.

The work, relax more. Your call.

Well, I think. I think, you know, in some sense, Louis, I think cheating was the easy thing to do, and the hard thing to do would have been to not cheat. Yeah. And so, again, I think that depends on attention and if you don't have enough directed attention, I think it's easier to go to your impulse, of course, and not to control your impulse. The work that I know about nature and sort of, you know, what I call like bad behaviors. There have been studies with nature and aggression. And so these are really, really interesting studies in Chicago public housing projects like the Robert Taylor Homes that aren't around anymore. And these were not nice places to live.

No.

Some of the apartments had modest views of nature and some of them had like no views of nature. And it turns out the families that had the modest views of nature, the kids had better attention, they had better self control. In the adults, there was lower aggression, better attention, and lower reported crime. And what's interesting too, this is just like the Roger Ulrich study. It's not like the wealthier, more educated families got the views of nature. These families are just randomly assigned to these different apartments. And it had this significant impact on behavior. So I think that's really, really interesting. And we kind of followed up on that with a cell phone trace data set. So this is kind of a creepy data set, but interesting. As a researcher, we knew where 100,000 people lived in Chicago, where 300,000 people lived in New York, and we knew where they went for an entire month.

Wow.

And so from those data we could quantify how often did you leave your neighborhood and go and visit a park? And we found that if in neighborhoods where people left their neighborhood more and went to visit a park, there was less reported crimes in those neighborhoods controlling for age, education, income and ethnicity.

Crazy.

So again, this is kind. I think what's going on there is that when people go out and get a nature break, they're restoring their directed attention and they have more ability to control, to control impulses. Wow. And what's interesting too, we also quantified how often people went to go to visit a museum that did not relate to crime. So it seemed like it wasn't just going to anywhere that had cultural value or anywhere that was nice. It seemed to be specific to nature, to going in nature.

Nature and the mind. I've got a couple final questions for you here, but I want people to get the book Nature and the the Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical and Social well being. It's probably something we need the most. But we've been lacking a lot in our lives. Just in the modern society. There's so many things we can do to improve the quality of our life. But I think nature is definitely, it's free, it's Something we can choose to do at any moment. It might just take a little time getting the nature if you're in an urban city. But in most places, you can go somewhere 10 minutes and be in a place where there's some trees, some grass, some water. Even if it's a controlled environment where you can just walk around in nature for a little bit, even if there is cars and everything around you, you can still be in that space. It's a decision to do that unless you live in the middle of America where there's more open space and you're kind of living in nature already. But a lot of people are stuck in cities to try to earn money.

I guess one thing I might mention a little bit there is that, you know, not all nature is created equally. And you know, some parks are nicer, more well maintained and others aren't. And like, we did some studies in Chicago where we had students from the south and west side, west side of Chicago go around and look at the parks in their neighborhood. And they had like data enabled cell phones and they could take pictures of the parks. And we wanted to ask them, like, do you feel safe in the park? Do you feel like the park is well maintained? And turns out a lot of these kids said, you know, there's a park there. They didn't feel safe there. And so, so if you don't feel.

Safe, it's not, you're not getting the benefits.

You're not gonna get the benefits. And so I think this is, you can't, it can't just be you have you put the park there, it's gotta be well maintained and people have to feel safe there.

So crime happening there, there's no benefit.

There's no benefit. So. And that's what I think is really kind of depressing is that in a lot of parts of the US and big cities, there are some nice parks, but people don't feel safe in them, so they're not going to achieve the benefits.

That's so interesting. You know, now you're saying this, like something just came out to my mind. I got married earlier this year and the morning of my wedding, I remember, I just like, I felt like I needed to be in nature. So I went by myself to just go kind of reflect on my life before getting married. It wasn't like I was questioning whether I was getting married. It was more just like, oh, this is happening. This is a big moment. Let me go take some time to like, just reflect on this before the madness of like, you know, people there and all this stuff. And I went for a hike in nature by myself, probably like an hour and a half. You know, over here, near here, there's a beautiful hike that's kind of in the middle of la, but feels like you're not in LA and you're surrounded by trees and you can't hear the cars and you just see the mountains in the horizon. It was such a spiritual, reflective moment, being alone, taking a hike in nature before kind of this big life changing moment that was happening. And it really allowed me to reflect on everything, just kind of relax and calm myself before what was about to happen. And I never regret going for a hike in nature. You know, when you do it, you never regret, like I wish I was like on my phone for the last hour. You're like, you always feel better. It's kind of like going to the gym. It's kind of like getting quality sleep. You never regret getting good sleep. You never regret eating a healthy meal. You regret eating like donuts all day, you know, so it's just something that we need to be baking into our, our daily routine the best way possible. Even if it's 10 minutes, it sounds like it can have incredible benefits. Huberman talks about waking up and looking at the horizon as the sun's coming up. Obviously not direct sunlight, but as the light is coming up, like gazing your attention towards the horizon to get that natural kind of healing benefits to, to support your, your brain health, your body, the circadian rhythm. And it sounds like nature in general, being in nature where you feel safe adds so much more benefit than not doing it.

Exactly. And kind of what, what you're saying, Louis too is people actually underestimate how good they'll feel after going in nature. So people have done studies where they say, how much do you think you're going to like going on this nature walk before they go on the nature walk? And then they have another group of participants go on a nature walk and ask them afterwards, how much did you like going on the walk? And people underestimate how much they're going to like really. So. And I think that's just about liking, but I think we're also underestimating how good it's going to be for our brains and for our attention and for our well being. So I think we really are, as a society underestimating the benefits of nature.

Wow. Mark, is there anything else that you want to add about this that we haven't covered today?

I think we hit a lot of the big ones. I think, you know, One thing, too, that it's not all about liking, that you don't have to love the nature walk to get these cognitive benefits. I think that's important. I think that you can get some of these benefits with the artificial nature, the pictures, the sound. It's not as strong as the real thing, but it can be really beneficial. The physical health benefits of nature.

Spiritual health.

Spiritual. And then also, you know, that people are less aggressive. And, you know, other studies have found that when people interact with nature, they see people as being more human, which I think is also kind of related to less aggression. So it's really beneficial at all these different levels.

A lot of benefits. I've got a question that I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the Three Truths. So imagine hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want to live, and you get to accomplish all of your goals that you have in life. You have unlimited directed attention which allows you to focus on your goals and create the life you want. But for whatever reason, on the last day of your life, you have to take all of your life's work with you. So this book is gone. Anything else you've created, it's gone, hypothetically. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three truths that you've learned about life that you'd like to leave behind. What would those three truths be for you?

So it's got to be different than stuff that I've done.

The same stuff. It can be the same stuff. Could be anything at all. Could be professional, personal information, you know, just some lesson you learned or what you think the world needs to hear.

Wow, this is. That's a good. I never thought about that before. I guess, you know, the first one, I mean, why I got interested in psychology is because my grandparents on my dad's side were Holocaust survivors. And I just couldn't believe that people could do that to other people. It just boggled my mind. I kind of, like obsessed over it. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I just kind of thought, well, Germans must just be bad people. And I remember sitting in an intro psychology class at Michigan, and the professor showed us this Milgram experiment. I don't know if you're familiar with that experiment, but in the experiment, there's two people. One person is the teacher, and one person is like the student. And the student has to memorize all these words. And the teacher kind of tests the student on the words. And if the student gets a word wrong, the teacher has to give the student electric shock. And so. And this is. They didn't really. To the teacher, they thought they were giving real electric shocks, but it was set up that they weren't really giving electric shocks. Although there's still ethical problems with this. Sure. So anyway, so they separate. So the. The student goes into some room, and the teacher is. Is reading the words and testing. Testing the student. And when he gets them wrong, he has to give an electric shock.

And then, like, he gives. Push the button. He thinks that.

That he's giving a real electric shock to the student. And he can hear the student go, ouch. And. And you keep increasing. The more he gets wrong. Greater the shock, the greater the shock. Okay. And people don't want. After it gets to a certain point where the guy's going, ow, ow, ow, ow. This really hurts. I don't want to do this anymore. You know, people say, like, look, I want to stop doing it. But then there's this experiment who says, no, you must continue. You have to continue giving the shocks. And, you know, like, two thirds of people deliver the shocks all the way to, like, you know, almost like, killing the person.

Wow.

And I remember seeing that study and thinking, oh, my God, like, that just, like, rocked my world. It was like, I could do bad things. You know, I think I'm a nice person, but maybe in different circumstances I could do better.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so I think that was a really strong lesson to me, where it's not. I mean, we're all born with different capabilities, but a lot of our behavior is very much determined by the environment. And so interesting. I just. So one takeaway, I would think, is that, you know, the environment really, really impacts our. Our behavior. Like, it can make somebody good, it can make somebody bad. And I think, you know, now we know so much about what makes it hard for people, like, not having enough resources, worrying about food, you know, crime. All these things make it. Make it hard. And I guess, you know, what we're trying to impose is like, hey, there's maybe we can design environments that can, like, make people good or better. And. And we need to take it seriously that we're not immune to the environment. So that there's a lot in there. But I think that that one takeaway, that the environment that around us has so much impact on our behavior, like, fundamental things that, you know, you might think, oh, somebody's a bad person or somebody's a good person. Well, it might not be. So that's too simple. You know, you have to think about the person and all the environmental context that They've lived through.

Okay, so that's the first one.

That's the first one.

So what are. These are, Pearl, Three truths. Yeah. Three lessons that you would share that you've learned from your life.

Three lessons I've learned from my life experience. You have to. You have to do what you're passionate about. You cannot. And I feel very fortunate that I'm. I get to do what I love to do. But the people that I see the most unhappy are not really doing things that they're most passionate about. And maybe part of that, too, is feeling like it has purpose. Like, I don't feel like I'm doing busy work. I feel like the stuff that I'm doing, it's meaningful. Meaningful. It's meaningful.

Third thing?

Third thing? Well, you know, this one maybe is kind of controversial. I guess. I. I guess I'm not controversial. I don't know. I. I had a little bit of a complicated. Not a. Not a. Not in a bad way, but, like, I grew up as a. As a kid, so my mom, like, she converted to Judaism, so I have. Half my family's not Jewish. Half my family is Jewish. And like, I remember going to Hebrew school, and I'm saying, like, you have to marry somebody Jewish.

You know, you have to. I said this to you?

Yeah. Or just in general. Yeah.

Yeah, that.

Like, you know, and. And I didn't. Somebody Jewish. But it was very complicated in my head. It's like, well, like, did dad do something wrong? Like, you know, of course. And I think what the truth is there is like, I kind of. Maybe this is gonna sound too simple. I don't like groups. I never like groups. I never like clubs.

Group thinking, Group think.

Or just like identifying in a group. Because I worry that when people identify as a group, they say, like, I'm.

I am this thing.

I'm this thing.

So you don't identify as a Michigan guy then? Right.

That's for fun. That's fun stuff.

That's fun stuff. You gotta. You gotta break that identity. You know? You gotta break that.

I knew when I was saying this, I was like, lewis is gonna get me on this.

The one group you want to be a part of, you can't be anymore.

It's gonna get me on this one. Is that, like, you know, I just feel like groups.

Yeah.

Invariably, like, when you're in a group, you think you're better than the other group.

Of course.

And excluding.

Rather than excluding.

And. And it always bothered me. Huh. And.

But you're also in group. You're A professor of a, you know, of a university. You're. That's a group.

Yeah.

Professors. You're a neuroscientist. Okay. I'm in a neuroscientist community. It's like, you're in. You're a mission. Share that.

It's not exclusive. Like you can, you can bring people in. So I guess I just feel like I, you know, I never really liked exclusive clubs. I just kind of feel like, you know, we're all humans. We're kind of all in the same boat.

Yeah.

And I just kind of wish.

We're all trying to belong.

We're all trying to belong. And I wish we could kind of see that more often, that we're kind of, you know, we all kind of have the same destiny and, you know, we just got to work together. We can't be so tribal, hanging on to the thing.

Okay, so when you, when you come to football season, when you cut. Yeah, yeah. When you cut up your alumni card, send me a photo. When you cut it up and say, I'm no longer part of this group more. I've got one final question for you, Mark. This has been really inspiring. Nature and the mind, the signs of how nature improves cognitive, physical and social well being. Except for when you're part of the alumni group of Michigan. Final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

Boy, that's a. That's a hard question too. I think greatness is when. When you kind of, you know. Do you know Abraham Maslow, Maslow's hierarchy?

Yeah.

I think the top of the hierarchy was self actualization. When you, like, become your best self. And I kind of feel like that's the definition of greatness.

Yeah.

Is becoming your best. Your best self? That's good. I know it might be kind of squishy, like, what does that mean? But I guess when you define your own strengths and become the best version of yourself, I think that's. That's greatness.

That's cool. Mark, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Go buck. Eyes go blue.

The rates of anxiety, especially in children, have tripled in 15 years. Anxiety disorders diagnosed by pediatricians tripled in 15 years. Rates of ADHD have tripled since 2010.

14 years. Triple the rates.

The rates of autism.