🎙️ This is a 5AM StoryTalk Podcast BONUS EPISODE. Be sure to also listen to this week’s feature conversation — “Psychologist Dacher Keltner | The Cultural Necessity of Awe”.
📖 READ this episode instead by going to the transcript tab.
Psychologist and awe expert DR. DACHER KELTNER returns to discuss a seminal piece of art from his life — the 1670 Dutch Golden Age painting Merry Company on a Terrace by Jan Steen. It’s a madcap, hyperkinetic depiction of an unruly household that serves as a stunning visual celebration of human joy, drunkenness, and collective effervescence.
Dacher, who grew up in the artistic chaos of late-1960s Laurel Canyon, recounts how encountering this piece as a young man slowed down time, reconnected him to a deep yearning for communal life, and ultimately propelled him on the scientific course that would make the study of human emotions his life’s work.
This is a deep conversation about the vital necessity of everyday wonder, the radical history of the Dutch Masters painting “real humanity” instead of the wealthy, and why we must actively fight the modern Western bias that treats positive passions like joy and awe as less serious than the darker emotions.
If you’d like to listen to this bonus episode with Dacher, but aren’t yet a paid subscriber yourself, you can upgrade now for $6 US a month or $60 a year. You’ll get full access to hundreds of articles and educational resources for artists and art fanatics alike, as well as exclusive articles and podcast bonus episodes like this one.
And don’t forget to listen to the first part of my conversation with Dacher!
Psychologist Dacher Keltner | The Cultural Necessity of Awe
🎧 LISTEN to this 5AM StoryTalk episode as audio here at Substack.
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