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South Dakota Stories, Volume 7. My

0:19

trip to South Dakota was the

0:21

best summer ever. Now I don't

0:23

need to go to Mars, because

0:25

I've been to the Badlands. And

0:27

I caught a bigger walleye than Dad when we went

0:30

to the Missouri River. Then

0:32

I rode my bike through these huge

0:34

rocks called Needles. Ooh, I also saw

0:36

my first herd of bison, even a

0:38

fuzzy furry baby one. I can't wait

0:40

to go back and see more. There's

0:43

so much South Dakota, so

0:45

little time. Okay,

0:50

weirdo. I'm Angela

0:52

Duckworth. I'm Mike Monn. And

0:55

you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today

0:58

on the show, what's the point of nostalgia?

1:02

Who's this man flying around in green tights? Hi, I'm

1:04

Peter Pan. I'm Peter Pan. Angela,

1:21

today our question comes from listener Mike

1:23

Hole. All right. He says, sometimes when

1:25

I'm feeling stressed, I'll close my eyes

1:27

and pretend I'm in my parents' backyard

1:29

with my old dog, or at my

1:31

wedding, or pushing my daughter in a

1:33

swing, all super happy places for me.

1:37

I think I'd be a healthier person

1:39

if I had even more of those

1:41

happy places to go when times get

1:43

tough. Why does

1:45

nostalgia exist, and how helpful is it?

1:49

That's beautiful. This is a happy place question. I

1:52

guess it's a nostalgia question. Yeah. So

1:54

the thing that I thought was really interesting about how

1:56

he asks this, he

1:58

uses it as almost a... an

2:00

escape mechanism, a coping mechanism, maybe you'd

2:03

say a grounding mechanism to

2:05

go back to a happy place and

2:08

kind of reset himself. And

2:10

I will say that I have most often thought

2:12

of nostalgia more as a place that I go

2:15

when I'm just sitting around with the

2:17

family and thinking back to great traditions

2:20

that we have or- So like not

2:22

a coping mechanism, but just a savoring-

2:24

Yeah, yeah. Kind of thing. But I

2:26

like the idea of it as

2:29

a coping mechanism. So the first time

2:31

I recall hearing the phrase happy place, like going

2:33

to your happy place, it was the

2:35

summer before my senior year in college. And

2:38

I was very stressed because I was

2:40

working at this summer program

2:42

for little kids, and it was

2:44

a summer school taught by college

2:46

students and high school students. And

2:49

I had spent lots of time with

2:51

kids, with my experience

2:54

as a tutor and as a big sister

2:56

in a big sister program. I had

2:58

never, ever, ever

3:01

worked that hard. I mean,

3:03

it was just brutal.

3:05

I think there was something about the

3:08

hours and the pressure of

3:10

being a teacher suddenly, even

3:12

though you were like 20 years old and you didn't

3:14

know what you were doing. And it was

3:17

just, it was wonderful, but it was

3:19

extremely stressful. And at one

3:21

of the staff meetings, the director, she

3:23

said, I'd like everyone to close their

3:25

eyes. And mind you, this is

3:27

like 1991, I think, right? So

3:31

this is before we did

3:33

like mindfulness en masse. Right,

3:35

right. She's like, everyone close your eyes. And

3:38

I want you to think of a happy place. And

3:41

I want you to each go

3:43

to that happy place. And

3:45

I want you to see and hear and

3:48

smell and

3:50

experience all the things that that

3:52

happy place was for you. I

3:54

closed my eyes and I didn't know where I would go.

3:57

And where I did go, it surprised me.

4:00

I had this friend, Michelle, who

4:02

I was really good friends with

4:04

in middle school. And actually, by the time

4:06

that this was all happening,

4:08

my like nostalgia moment, I

4:11

didn't even consider Michelle and I to be

4:13

very good friends. But in middle school, we

4:15

were best friends. And I would go

4:17

down the shore, as we say in New Jersey. We don't

4:19

go going to the seashore. We don't say going to the

4:22

beach. We go down the shore in Jersey.

4:24

And I went down the shore with Michelle for

4:26

her parents' second home, this

4:29

like condo. I remember it was on the

4:31

second floor. It was gray on the outside.

4:33

I remember it had a deck. And I

4:35

remember laying out on the lounge chair with,

4:38

of course, no sunscreen because those were

4:40

the days. And I just

4:42

would go there every time that I

4:44

was asked to go to my happy place. And you know

4:46

what? When I opened my eyes

4:49

and I got myself back into the president, I

4:51

have to say, I don't think

4:53

it made all my problems go away, but it

4:56

was incredibly calming. It was kind of like a

4:58

balm. I will say when I

5:00

go back to my happy place, my

5:02

family, we would go to this lake

5:04

in Utah called Lake Powell. We went

5:07

there every summer with these

5:09

four other families, an amazing experience.

5:12

But once in a while, my family would go

5:14

just us. And so one

5:16

time we went with just my siblings and my

5:18

parents. And I remember we

5:20

had what I would call the perfect day.

5:23

You know, we tubed and we skied behind

5:25

the boat and we enjoyed the sun and

5:27

each other's company. We were all just together.

5:30

And I said, this is so

5:32

dumb. I'm probably 14 or something.

5:35

And I said to my family at the

5:37

end of this day, I said, if this

5:39

had to be your last day on earth,

5:42

this would be an awesome last day. You

5:45

said that when you were 14. Yeah. And

5:47

they kind of laughed like, okay, weirdo. But

5:49

I honestly, I go back to

5:52

that as this beautiful place of

5:54

nostalgia because there was complete belonging

5:56

in my family. There was complete

5:58

unity. There was so much. fun,

6:00

we were outside with the sun and the

6:06

American Psychological Association, I

6:09

mean I don't think they use the word happy

6:11

place, but they do have a definition

6:13

of nostalgia. Actually, they give two

6:15

definitions of nostalgia. So, according to

6:18

the APA, nostalgia can mean,

6:20

quote, a longing to return to an

6:22

earlier period or condition of life, recalled

6:25

as being better than the present in some

6:27

way. And here's the

6:29

second definition, a longing to

6:31

return to a place to which

6:33

one feels emotionally bound, for example,

6:35

home or native land. See,

6:38

also homesickness. I think what's

6:40

so interesting about these stories that we tell, you

6:42

know, like I'm no longer friends

6:44

with Michelle, you're not 14

6:46

anymore, right? I mean, like pals

6:48

still exist and you're close to your family. But

6:51

what's funny about nostalgia is it's defined

6:54

as a bittersweet emotion.

6:56

So there is this longing,

6:58

this sadness, this

7:01

loss, but then also it's

7:03

positive, right? It's always a memory

7:05

of a very positive moment in

7:07

your life. And most

7:10

people enjoy nostalgia. What I

7:12

think is fascinating is kind of our

7:14

attitude toward nostalgia. If you look at

7:16

it now versus how it

7:19

was once viewed. So during

7:21

the 17th to 19th centuries,

7:24

nostalgia was considered a psychopathological

7:26

disorder. This journalist Julie Beck

7:28

wrote an article in The Atlantic called When

7:30

Nostalgia Was a Disease. So

7:33

a Swiss physician named Johannes

7:35

Hofer coined the term in

7:37

a 1688 medical dissertation,

7:40

and it comes from the Greek nostos

7:42

or homecoming and algos or pain. So

7:45

this idea of homecoming and pain,

7:47

right? Yeah. And they thought it

7:49

was very similar to paranoia. And

7:52

there were so many examples, especially

7:54

in wartime, where these people

7:56

would obviously miss their friends and family. Let

7:59

me tell you this. or in 1733,

8:02

the Russian army says there is a

8:04

quote, outbreak of nostalgia. And

8:06

they're on their way to Germany and the

8:09

general told the troops that the first person

8:11

to come down with the quote, nostalgic virus

8:14

would be buried alive. And the

8:16

general actually made good on the

8:18

promise. Wait, what? Yes. No, you're

8:21

kidding, which is you can imagine. Nip that

8:24

problem right in the back. Wait, somebody started telling

8:26

stories about their childhood and then they like carted

8:29

him off, tied him up and buried him under

8:31

the ground. The second part. Yes, I don't know

8:34

that it was stories about one's childhood, but the

8:36

fact that it was viewed for a long time

8:38

as a psychopathological disorder is kind

8:40

of crazy to me. I

8:42

mean, nostalgia, right? So like,

8:44

no means home and Algia

8:47

means pain. Yeah, no, so

8:49

homecoming, Algos pain. I

8:51

mean, I think there's a reason why APA says

8:54

like, see also homesickness, which

8:56

is different, but it's related.

8:59

I mean, when

9:01

nostalgia studied by contemporary

9:03

scientists, I don't know

9:05

why it's bittersweet. And I don't

9:07

know why the sweet seems stronger

9:09

than the bitter people get

9:12

nostalgic for music or somebody they

9:14

loved, but isn't in their life

9:16

anymore. Things they used to do,

9:18

feelings they used to have. I mean,

9:21

even like TV shows or movies, you

9:23

know, I think it's so intuitive. Like we

9:25

all know what it means to feel nostalgic.

9:28

And you can see why it could

9:30

be considered mostly

9:33

bitter or kind of borderline

9:35

on homesickness or sadness

9:38

or grief, because these are all

9:41

emotions of loss. But

9:44

the positive side is clearly

9:46

there, right? When I remembered

9:48

my happy place, when you

9:50

remember being 14 and being on Lake

9:53

Powell with your family, for some

9:56

reason, the fact that that's

9:58

no longer true. I'm

10:00

not in my happy place and you

10:02

aren't either. Somehow

10:04

research now shows that on

10:07

balance it makes us feel

10:09

better. There's a nuance

10:11

though and I'm thinking about this article

10:14

by Erica Hepburn and Amelia Dennis from

10:16

Rosie Pass to happy and

10:18

flourishing present nostalgia as a

10:21

resource for hedonic and eudaimonic

10:23

well-being. So what

10:25

these two psychologists suggest is that

10:28

there are two ways that nostalgia

10:30

could make us happier

10:33

and they refer to this

10:35

Aristotelian distinction between the good life,

10:38

that's the eudaimonic life, like a

10:40

life that is meaningful, a life

10:43

that has purpose and

10:45

then a different kind of happiness, a kind

10:47

of like shiny cheerful happiness, the

10:49

hedonic life and you

10:51

can guess where Aristotle landed

10:54

in terms of like which one is a better

10:56

life, like yes eudaimonic. But

10:58

we all actually have the need I

11:00

think to experience happiness in

11:03

eudaimonic and hedonic ways and

11:05

what these authors suggest is

11:07

that the evidence on how

11:09

nostalgia could help you lead a more

11:12

hedonically happy life is mixed

11:15

because it's bittersweet because the

11:17

emotional signature, this reverie for

11:19

things in the past that we

11:22

no longer have is not unmitigated pleasure, right?

11:24

There's this like after note, this

11:26

like secondary tone as they put it of

11:28

loss and longing. On

11:31

the other hand, the idea that

11:33

nostalgia could help us lead a

11:36

more eudaimonically happy life, there they

11:38

say the evidence is really solid,

11:41

that consistently when people remember

11:43

things in their past and

11:45

you can randomly assign people

11:47

to do that in experiments.

11:49

What you find is that

11:51

you know inducing nostalgia actually

11:53

does increase measures of

11:56

eudaimonic well-being like feelings

11:58

of social connection. like

12:01

feelings of meaning and identity

12:03

and purpose. So I

12:05

guess I want to say that when I

12:07

think back to what spontaneously leapt

12:10

to my mind when I

12:12

was stressed out, whatever

12:14

I was, 20, 21-year-old, trying

12:16

to cope with the summer that

12:19

I was happy to be in, but it was

12:21

just the hardest thing I'd ever done, I think

12:24

maybe there was this like remembering

12:27

a friendship that was like where

12:29

I felt safe. I

12:31

felt wholly accepted, at least when I was remembering

12:34

it, I felt like I was, I don't

12:36

know, it was like very Little House on the Prairie, feeling like

12:38

you know you're Laura with Mary, if

12:40

that means anything to you. A reference

12:42

that I don't know that I follow.

12:45

No, that doesn't make you nostalgic, just the

12:47

words Little House on the Prairie make me

12:49

feel waves of nostalgia. No, here's what I

12:52

love about what you just said. You talked

12:54

about feeling safe. I talked about these are

12:56

places of belonging. I think to take it

12:58

even one step further, what I found super

13:00

interesting, I read this article, said why we

13:03

reach for nostalgia in times of crisis. It's

13:06

by a journalist named Danielle Campo Amor.

13:08

She wrote in the New York Times in 2020,

13:11

and she references this trauma

13:13

specialist, Florence St. John, who's

13:15

the executive director of Global Trauma Response.

13:19

Dr. St. John talks about nostalgia

13:22

as a way to cope during these times of duress, that

13:25

our brains take us to a

13:27

place and uses the word that you use that is

13:29

safe. It helps

13:31

us to have a group of quote safe

13:33

places that we can go to in our

13:35

mind when people are experiencing trauma. I'm not

13:38

going to go so far as to say

13:40

that Michael, who wrote in this question, is

13:42

experiencing trauma, but he talks about

13:44

in times of great stress. He goes back to these moments.

13:46

Dr. St. John again uses it with her trauma patients. The

13:51

interesting thing, though, is she's

13:54

very pro using this,

13:56

but also warns of a couple

13:58

of downsides. One

14:00

of those downsides that she talks about is

14:03

in trauma patients, if they're always

14:05

reaching back for nostalgia, especially,

14:07

you know, if they're dealing with things now,

14:09

they have a tendency to just look

14:11

at their past through rose-colored glasses. Mm, and

14:13

get stuck there. Right. They

14:16

might think, for example, about an ex, and

14:18

the time they were with this person and how

14:21

great it was, but they forget to think about

14:23

that they left that relationship because there

14:25

was a lot of negative things, and that's

14:27

why they're no longer with the ex, but

14:29

the nostalgia takes them only to this happy

14:31

place. Mm. And then the

14:33

last thing was this idea of it

14:35

keeping us too anchored in our past

14:38

in a way that makes it so that

14:40

we're just avoiding the future. We're

14:42

avoiding the problem, and in

14:45

that sense, it doesn't allow us to kind of

14:47

overcome the trauma that we may be dealing with

14:49

or the situation that we're fighting. Well,

14:51

it might depend on the person, but

14:53

I think, in general, when you

14:55

remember these happy events that are

14:58

in your past and that you

15:00

no longer have, in general, on

15:02

average, they make you more approach-oriented

15:04

and less avoidance-oriented, right? Oh, my

15:07

gosh, I love that. Like there's

15:09

two things an organism can do. It can,

15:12

like, approach or avoid and approach things that

15:14

are good. You avoid things that are bad,

15:16

and generally, nostalgia seems to kind of, like,

15:18

make you feel emboldened somehow, but maybe that

15:20

depends. I mean, honestly, I've been thinking, like,

15:23

why doesn't this make me feel worse?

15:25

And I don't have a fully

15:28

satisfying answer. I do think you're

15:30

onto something or this general idea

15:33

is right, that what nostalgia is

15:35

is selective attention. It's, you know,

15:38

some people would say that animals

15:40

basically experience the present, but

15:42

only human beings can do time travel,

15:44

that we can fully, in

15:47

our minds, like, represent a future

15:49

that has not come to pass, and

15:51

we can fully recreate in

15:54

as rich an experience as it was when

15:56

we were there, Something that

15:58

happened decades ago. Answer

16:00

this question of like well when

16:02

you do this time travel back

16:04

to one select memory and you're

16:06

only gonna to rate the parts

16:08

that were rosie I do wonder.

16:11

Like why wouldn't you just feel terrible

16:13

that? that's. You know,

16:15

like Sydney's or even at that

16:17

moment been mornings? My last friendship

16:20

with Michelle. Is interesting I watched

16:22

it said zoc that I cannot remember

16:24

what it was right now but it

16:26

was about resilience and I'll never forget

16:28

the question that this person part of

16:30

it was asking yourself does this help

16:32

or does it hurt And the example

16:34

that she used was loss of a

16:37

child and how sometimes you know having

16:39

pictures of maybe that child everywhere for

16:41

she had lost a child I believe

16:43

is it helping or am I doing

16:45

something hurtful in trying to remember all

16:47

the things and my going down a

16:49

spiral. That. Just gonna hurt my

16:51

ability to kind of move on. Or

16:54

is this helpful because it's way of

16:56

honoring the past and honoring their legacy.

16:58

I think on balance Like you're saying,

17:01

It's. Generally helpful, but I think

17:03

that there are times when like

17:05

anything taken to extremes, there's or

17:07

difficulties right? Like when people greys,

17:10

you know my father died right.

17:12

When I grieve for my father, sometimes

17:14

there is a kind of nostalgia. But

17:17

sometimes it's just sadness. Yeah, You.

17:20

Know there's the old adage, the past

17:22

this be learned from, not lived in.

17:24

I think that that is our way

17:26

to think about this, right? Nostalgia? If

17:28

it becomes the only thing you have

17:30

and keeps you trapped in the past

17:33

and you're living there, That's negative. Maybe

17:35

you need to visit but not take

17:37

up residence? Yes, and much more to

17:39

sink the way. As thing to note,

17:41

Angela and I would love to hear

17:43

your thoughts on how nostalgia affects your

17:45

life, how often do reflect back on

17:47

the past and how disease memories make

17:49

you feel. Record voice memo in

17:51

a quiet place with your mouth close to

17:53

the phone and email it to N Es

17:55

Que as freakonomics.com and maybe we'll play it

17:58

on a future episode of the show. Also

18:00

if you like this show and wanna support at

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21:33

Redeem your fifty percent off

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at Rosetta stone.com/questions That's Rosetta

21:38

Stone that. Now

21:45

that I'm I can handle this conversation

21:47

about the cell tower. So.

21:52

Angeles, there's this article. Hindsight is

21:54

twenty twenty two, The psychology behind

21:56

our cultural nostalgia by journalists Kyle

21:59

Sake of. He talked

22:01

about one of the challenges of nostalgia

22:03

is that culture can get stuff on

22:05

a loop. And he uses

22:07

the example movies he says: unable

22:10

to imagine the future we returned

22:12

to the past. Aluminium like

22:14

Seek was a desolate. The ace.

22:17

In line with a big the i'm

22:19

like Rocky to came out as we

22:21

are like i'll come on seriously you're

22:23

going to make Rocky to and now

22:25

and I know how many Roman numerals

22:28

there are after Rocky, Mission Impossible and

22:30

you look at the Fast and Furious

22:32

franchise. You look at the Marvel movies

22:34

we just got kind of crazy with.

22:36

This is a negative view of nostalgia

22:38

than right. I mean to state the

22:40

obvious but just to make sure this

22:42

is like and for you eat is

22:44

stuck in a right nostalgia. Yes,

22:47

I think the that's what this article was

22:49

referring to. his hates closer as stuff on

22:51

a loop. Because. We're staying

22:53

in the Saudi and we're not

22:55

inventing new things. Like a journalist in

22:57

run, Roman Jones who writes for

22:59

the B B, wrote about this remakes

23:02

nostalgia thing where Disney is than

23:04

all of these remakes and. With.

23:06

Their six recent remakes. As

23:08

if twenty twenty, they'd made

23:10

almost. Six billion dollars at

23:12

the box office. While the remakes where

23:14

The Jungle Book, Cinderella, Beauty and the

23:17

Beast, Lion King, A Lab, and Dumbo

23:19

there things that we experienced in our

23:21

childhood and then your kids are old

23:23

enough for you. Bring kids in, you

23:26

want them to experience it, Then we

23:28

cart them off to the movies because

23:30

we want to relive it ourselves right?

23:33

It's not nostalgia for our kids is

23:35

installed to for us exactly, but because

23:37

the parent is buying the tickets to

23:39

the movie. It. works so i

23:41

think that was the argument against the culture

23:44

get stuck in this loop and maybe we

23:46

are not as innovative maybe we're not coming

23:48

up with as many new stories you know

23:50

it's interesting that that's the conclusion of this

23:53

article because you could have ended that article

23:55

saying look you know don't roll your eyes

23:57

the next time you see like rocky twenty

24:00

Like, it's just human nature to

24:02

want to do this emotional time

24:04

travel and relive this thing that

24:06

was special to you, right? Like, yeah,

24:09

you could say it's getting stuck in a loop,

24:11

it's being in a rut, it's not

24:14

moving forward. And sometimes I

24:16

guess that's just an accurate description. But

24:18

in some ways, I'm like, what? They remade

24:20

Mulan? Like, I can't wait to, like, add

24:22

that to my playlist. Right. I'd

24:24

love to watch Mulan again, right? So

24:26

the fact remains, and actually there's new research

24:29

on this, that nostalgia

24:31

is a universal human experience.

24:34

There's a study that was done across 28

24:38

different countries with thousands

24:40

of adults, and they

24:42

surveyed people about nostalgia and

24:45

also the effects of nostalgia.

24:47

And what they found was that in every

24:50

culture around the world that they

24:52

had studied these 28

24:54

different countries, nostalgia was

24:56

like immediately understood. It

24:58

was always experienced as

25:01

bittersweet and mostly positive,

25:04

that recalling a nostalgic memory

25:07

increased social connectedness, a sense

25:10

of self-continuity or identity

25:12

that was consistent over time,

25:14

and also meaning in life.

25:17

So the fact that this very complex

25:19

emotion is so universal

25:22

makes me think that even

25:25

though there is a kind of like

25:27

stuck in a rut aspect of it, almost

25:29

by definition, I think in a way

25:31

this mental time travel that we do, I

25:34

think it's possible to have

25:36

these bittersweet memories but to have them

25:38

mostly be nurturing. Well,

25:41

the phrase that I loved that you

25:43

said from the research was self-continuity. Right.

25:46

It does give us that groundedness and

25:49

I think helps us to figure

25:51

out who is the self that I created,

25:53

what are the moments or places, even if

25:56

they are romanticized in our minds a little

25:58

bit, those give us now.

26:00

that give us a foundation, but it's

26:02

this continuity of self that

26:04

maybe is why it's so helpful, because

26:06

it's not an anchor in terms

26:09

of like an albatross that's dragging you down,

26:11

but an anchor that's more of a foundation

26:13

that's allowing you to continue to build. Well,

26:15

you know, I know where I came from. I know

26:17

what moments made me who I am today. And

26:20

maybe that's why when my call goes back in

26:22

these stressful moments and says, hey, I wanna go

26:24

to my wedding, I wanna go to pushing

26:27

my daughter on a swing, it's

26:29

identifying who he is, and

26:32

that his self-continuity is not his job,

26:34

is not that stressful moment. It's not

26:36

what he's dealing with in that

26:39

vortex of life sometimes, but it's really,

26:41

hey, who am I? And

26:44

I can create the self-continuity that reminds

26:46

me to go back to my foundation

26:48

instead of reacting to

26:50

the situation that we're in. That frankly, no matter

26:52

how stressful it is, we're gonna

26:54

forget in a month or three months.

26:57

I can't tell you how often in life, I'm

27:00

dealing with this thing at work or whatever, and you're

27:02

like, this is the biggest deal ever, and

27:05

then I can't remember it. And this

27:07

is the worst thing ever. Right,

27:09

we'll never get over this. Mountains

27:11

in retrospect are molehills. Yes. So

27:14

the other day, my friend Naomi

27:17

calls me. My friend Naomi is

27:19

somebody that I have

27:21

stayed in touch with, and she was my

27:23

best friend in high school, not middle school.

27:27

We started, I don't know,

27:29

nostalgia-izing. I think I said

27:31

to her, oh my gosh, do you

27:33

remember when we used to take the

27:36

train in from the suburbs to Center

27:38

City, Philadelphia, and we would walk down

27:40

Walnut Street, the street with all the

27:42

fancy jewelry stores and

27:44

clothing shops, and do you

27:46

remember when we would buy

27:48

a little cup of soup, not a bowl

27:51

of soup, because I don't think we had enough pocket money to

27:53

buy a whole bowl of soup, but we got the cup of

27:55

soup because it came with a

27:57

free roll, like the same size rolls if you buy the

27:59

bowl of soup. She's like, oh my gosh, yeah,

28:01

and then on special occasions, do you remember going

28:03

to the walk? Is the walk still there? And I was like, oh

28:05

my gosh, Naomi, it's not there

28:08

anymore. Like this Chinese restaurant where you

28:10

used to always get the Kung Pao

28:12

chicken, right? She's like, yes, I remember

28:14

that. Anyway, so we take this walk

28:16

down memory lane. And I think in

28:18

a way when you're talking about this

28:20

self continuity and our narrative, we're

28:23

about to talk about personality a lot

28:25

on those stupid questions. Like we're going

28:27

to have a series on the

28:29

big five personality traits. Other

28:32

psychologists who are not big five

28:34

personality researchers think there's a

28:36

dimension of our personality that

28:39

we would best label as

28:41

our narrative personality. The story

28:43

of Mike Bond, the story

28:45

of Angela Duckworth. And I

28:47

think what nostalgia means

28:49

to me is that it

28:51

is a connection to

28:53

the story of my

28:55

childhood and my young

28:58

adult years. It is this

29:00

continuity. I guess it is rose

29:02

colored. You know, I could have

29:04

remembered terrible times with Naomi, but

29:06

I do think it is

29:08

who I am today. Like it's gone.

29:10

Those stores aren't there. The walk's not

29:13

there. I don't get to walk around

29:15

with Naomi. I hardly talk to her

29:17

these days, but it

29:20

was there. And that means it's kind of still

29:22

part of me. Angela, I

29:24

want to end with the story of Peter

29:26

Pan. I never read Peter Pan. Oh.

29:29

So I'm all ears, but don't expect me

29:31

to experience nostalgia. Are you serious? Am

29:34

I the only person who didn't read Peter Pan? Yeah,

29:37

I'm serious. Or have you seen any

29:39

of the plays or movies? No, I'm

29:41

Peter Pan free. Oh, I don't even-

29:43

You can't believe it, can you? You

29:46

cannot believe it. The story is

29:48

that they're, oh, where

29:50

do we even start? There's a

29:52

little boy who can't grow up or something. Wow.

29:56

Peter Pan is a boy who lives in a

29:58

place called Neverland. And Peter- Peter Pan and

30:00

the Lost Boys are all little kids. In

30:03

Neverland, they never grow up. There

30:05

is this mean guy named Captain Hook who

30:07

is, of course, an adult. Captain

30:10

Hook has other pirates, and they're the arch

30:12

nemesis of Peter Pan. Of

30:14

course, it's setting up this idea of childhood

30:16

versus adulthood and the joy of

30:18

childhood and imagination and

30:21

all of these things. Peter

30:23

Pan comes to see a family.

30:26

He sees these three siblings,

30:29

Wendy, John, and Michael, and he

30:31

watches them sleep sometimes, which sounds

30:33

so creepy. It's not in the

30:35

way it's written. But he

30:37

comes into their bedroom, again, sounds so creepy,

30:39

I guess, when you think about all these

30:41

things, and he can fly.

30:44

And he's teaching Wendy, John, and Michael

30:47

at some point to fly because they

30:49

all are going to go together to

30:51

Neverland. Oh, he like at some point

30:53

introduces himself to these three

30:55

children. Yes. Okay, got it.

30:58

He's this man flying around in green tides. Hi,

31:00

I'm Peter Pan. But this is

31:02

what he does when he teaches them to

31:04

fly. And this is a quote from the

31:06

book. You just think lovely, wonderful thoughts, and

31:08

they lift you up in the air. Oh,

31:10

God, I love that. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah.

31:13

And so I love this idea. Now,

31:15

again, this is not just rose-colored glasses.

31:18

This is not just, hey,

31:20

avoid your problems. But

31:22

I do think there's something really beautiful coming

31:25

from this question from Michael, who's

31:27

saying, hey, in these times of stress, I go

31:30

to this place. And maybe it's

31:32

you just think lovely, wonderful thoughts, and they lift you

31:34

up in the air. And you

31:36

can kind of rise above the stress

31:38

of the moment. You rise above whatever

31:41

you're going through. And nostalgia

31:43

can be that place of anchoring. It can be

31:45

that place of foundation, that place of self-conduity. Yeah.

31:48

You can see the whole

31:50

landscape from this place with

31:53

perspective, which we generally can't

31:55

do when we're feeling stressed. Our vision

31:57

goes like a laser to the thing

31:59

that's... the problem. Maybe

32:01

that's why we were doing that exercise, right? When I

32:04

was 20 or 21, listening

32:06

to somebody just walk me through this, but I

32:08

think actually that is what happened. Like it gave me

32:10

perspective and I was like, you know what? In

32:13

the grand scheme of things, there's a lot to

32:15

be grateful for and in the grand scheme

32:17

of things, this is gonna be okay. I will say

32:19

one of the best pieces of advice I

32:22

heard recently was from someone was telling

32:24

me about a children's book, I don't

32:26

know what book it is, but the

32:29

entire book just repeats over and over

32:31

the two words zoom out, zoom

32:33

out, zoom out and maybe

32:36

that's the power of nostalgia. Put simply,

32:38

it allows you to zoom out. Zoom out

32:40

and then zoom in on this

32:43

very positive, probably highly curated

32:46

memory. So I think maybe this positive

32:48

time travel that we do is

32:50

exactly what you said. It kind of like lifts us up

32:53

and maybe that's why we do it when we're myopically

32:55

focused on problems.

32:57

Exactly. But I think it's such

32:59

an interesting complex emotion.

33:01

And now

33:08

here's a fact check of today's conversation.

33:11

Florence St. Jean is the executive

33:13

director of global trauma research,

33:16

not global trauma response. The

33:19

TED talk about resilience that Mike

33:21

refers to is The Three Secrets

33:24

of Resilient People from 2018 by

33:26

Lucy Hone, who happens to be

33:28

a former student of Angela's. And

33:31

the children's book Mike discusses at

33:34

the end of the episode is

33:36

Zoom by Istvan Banyai, although it

33:38

doesn't contain any words, just pictures.

33:41

Finally, Mike gets a few details wrong

33:43

about the story of Peter Pan, at

33:46

least as it's told in the original

33:48

1911 novel Peter

33:50

and Windy by Scottish author

33:52

and playwright J.M. Berry. Mike

33:55

says that Peter Pan and the Lost Boys

33:57

never grow up. In

33:59

certain adaptations, of the story, this is

34:01

true. But in Barry's classic,

34:03

the Lost Boys do have the capacity

34:06

to grow older and are eventually forced

34:08

to leave Neverland. Also,

34:10

Mike says that Peter teaches Wendy,

34:12

John, and Michael that in order

34:14

to fly they just need to

34:16

think lovely wonderful thoughts. Peter

34:18

does say this in Barry's book, but

34:21

the children find that his instructions don't work,

34:24

and that they actually need fairy dust

34:26

in order to fly. That's it for

34:28

the fact check. Before

34:31

we wrap today's show, let's hear some

34:33

thoughts about last week's episode on gut

34:35

instincts. Hello,

34:37

NSQ. I have a story

34:39

where I ignored my gut. I had just

34:41

purchased a car three weeks earlier and drove

34:43

to work during the rain. There

34:46

was parking along the side of the

34:48

building and the first position closest to the

34:50

loading dock was vacant. This never happened.

34:53

I pulled right in and when I

34:55

opened the door to get out, I noticed

34:57

a lot of water was swirling around a

34:59

drain right by that space. I

35:02

thought about it for a moment and then shrugged it off

35:04

and went in. Three times

35:06

I got up to my desk during

35:08

the morning to go out to check

35:10

on the car, possibly even to move

35:12

it. And three times I stopped myself

35:14

and sat back down at my desk

35:16

thinking, nah, there's nothing wrong. Then

35:19

suddenly there was an announcement over the PA. Hey,

35:22

anybody parked by the loading dock in

35:24

the back of the building, you need

35:26

to move your car. It's flooded. I

35:29

was running out there. There was a crowd and there was

35:31

a huge pool of water and water

35:33

above my door wells. I

35:36

should have listened to my gut. Anyway,

35:38

that's my story. I hope you enjoy

35:40

it. Hi, my name

35:43

is Aoella from Mergenti, Colombia, and

35:45

I just heard your episode on

35:47

when to trust your intuition. And

35:49

all through the episode, I kept

35:51

thinking about my career choice. When

35:54

I was in high school, I used to

35:56

be like a physics nerd. I went to

35:58

math and physics Olympiads. And

36:00

he was very clear to everyone

36:02

around me that I was going

36:05

to go into physics math sorry,

36:07

engineering or something of the sword

36:09

and somehow I was really into

36:11

literature and I discovered. History novels

36:14

and about three months are graduating

36:16

high school as like oh no

36:18

I think that if you need

36:20

junior he decided to go into

36:22

history. That's and

36:25

it was a big shot for

36:27

my family. My dad's an engineer

36:29

and he didn't get it ends

36:31

well. I went into history, I

36:33

did the program and now I

36:35

have fantastic for it as a

36:38

curator and an investigator at a

36:40

science museum and I design museums

36:42

for other parts of the world

36:44

and in the university. I met

36:46

my girlfriend and now we have

36:48

a beautiful houseboats. That we just friend

36:50

of a this and we have a really. Really

36:53

nice climate laws and this

36:55

yeah my Then went with

36:58

my God again everything that

37:00

was planned for me by

37:02

me and it turned out

37:05

for. And I

37:07

dunno, maybe that's not the way

37:09

you should always choose your career.

37:11

But I do believe that. Has

37:14

a big role in to. What?

37:16

We've really busy once. I was really

37:18

really like Been Artist soul. That

37:21

was respectively Anthony The and

37:23

Isabella the A House Career.

37:26

Thanks. To them and everyone who share. Their

37:28

stories with us. And remember

37:31

we'd love to hear about your

37:33

experiences with nostalgia and a voice

37:35

memo to and ask you out.

37:37

Freakonomics, Dot Com and you might you

37:39

days on the same. Coming.

37:44

Up will keep on the city

37:46

to finish this is your personalities

37:48

and really happy allow for free

37:51

and much more sensible of myself.

37:53

A in Success Stories on

37:55

know stupid questions. Know

37:58

who that person is so of the second. Radio

38:00

Network, which also includes Freakadomics

38:03

Radio, People I Mostly Admire,

38:05

and The Economics of Everyday Things.

38:08

All our shows are produced by Stitcher

38:10

and Runbud Radio. The

38:12

senior producer of the show is me,

38:15

Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Fouditch is

38:17

our production associate. This

38:19

episode was mixed by Greg Rippon with

38:21

help from Jasmine Clinger. Our

38:24

theme song was composed by Luis Guerra.

38:27

You can follow us on Twitter

38:29

at NSQ underscore show and on

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38:36

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38:38

at freakanomics.com. To learn

38:40

more or to read episode transcripts,

38:43

visit freakanomics.com/NSQ.

38:46

Thanks for listening. By

38:58

the way, you did not mention the Star Wars franchise.

39:00

You better not, or you're going to get like, death

39:02

threats. It

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looks like an other radio manager who

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should have seen everything. We're

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in a period of rapid change, and sometimes it

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With political tensions, anxiety, and loneliness rising,

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millennia, spiritual thinkers have offered wisdom and tools

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lot to offer. To join

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the conversation, look for How God Works

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wherever you listen to podcasts. The

39:51

South Dakota Stories, Volume 5. South

39:54

Dakota seemed like the perfect place to unplug,

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But I ended up connecting to the world around

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sunset was painted. For I

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felt adventures pulse with every step.

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And were cold water trickling,

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pine swaying and grunting base

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became my season it's and.

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I. I just wish I didn't have to leave. There's

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so much South Dakota, so

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