PODCASTThe Science of Happiness

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What can a singing bird, a neighborhood walk, and a pair of puppet adventurers teach us about awe? Sit down with Wowsabout! creators Dorien Davies and Halle Stanford to discuss helping kids—and grownups—find wonder wherever they are.

Summary: Kids may be natural wonder-seekers, but how do we help them hold onto that sense of awe as they grow up? On this episode of The Science of Happiness, we talk with Wowsabout! creators Dorien Davies and Halle Stanford about creating a PBS Kids special inspired by awe, the science behind wonder, and why small moments—a bird singing at dawn, a blooming jasmine vine, or a walk around the block—can help us feel more connected to ourselves and the world around us. Together, they explore how cultivating awe can foster curiosity, resilience, creativity, and belonging for children and adults alike.

How To Do This Practice:

1. Slow down and set an intention: Pause your usual routine and decide to look for something that inspires wonder.
2. Notice what you feel: Tune into physical sensations, like the warmth of the sun, a cool breeze, or your feet touching the ground.
3. Look closely at your surroundings: Pay attention to colors, shapes, textures, or movement that you might normally overlook.
4. Listen with curiosity: Notice the sounds around you—the birds, the wind, distant voices, or the hum of your neighborhood.
5. Follow what captures your attention: If something sparks your interest or amazement, spend a moment with it instead of rushing on.
6. Reflect on your experience: At the end of your walk, consider what surprised you and how it made you feel more connected to the world around you.

Try the full practice here: https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/awe_walk

Today’s Guests:

HALLE STANFORD is the creator and writer of Wowsabout!, founder of 7 Crow Stories, Emmy® Award-winning, and twelve-time Emmy®-nominated executive producer of Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

DORIEN DAVIES is an Executive Producer, Co-Creator, Co-Writer and Principal Puppeteer on Wowsabout!, Word Party, and Julie’s Greenroom. 

Watch Wowsabout! here: https://pbskids.org/videos/wowsabout

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

Cities of Awe Series: https://tinyurl.com/2vyhxvny

How to Find Calm Through Walking: https://tinyurl.com/43dr26re

What Humans Can Learn From Trees: https://tinyurl.com/48te84ps

Related Happiness Break episodes:

How To Ground Yourself in Nature: https://tinyurl.com/25ftdxpm

Pause to Look at the Sky: https://tinyurl.com/4jttkbw3

Experience Nature Wherever You Are, with Dacher: https://tinyurl.com/mrutudeh

Message us or leave a comment on Instagram @scienceofhappinesspod. E-mail us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription:

DORIEN DAVIES: The first time I really felt a profound sense of awe, I was just a little musical theater kid. I just was happiest when I was on stage, and there was this incredible gift when you could make someone laugh, but it felt like I was helping, and it was so powerful in, I just lived for that flow state. When you feel like you can raise them up to a level of joy, especially as a child, it was profoundly formative.

HALLE STANFORD: I think that when I was little, I thought I was channeling magic. I love free weight bridges, for some reason. They really fill me with awe. Under any bridge, I would make a wish, and by the way, there still is a bridge that I will drive under on the way to Temecula that I still make a wish on. I think that one of the things that I've learned is that everybody has their particular brand of awe that they love the most, and definitely in my household everyone's different.

DACHER KELTNER: This is The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Finding moments of awe can take intentional effort as an adult, but we can find it even in the most challenging times, in the simple comforting presence of the moon, or the wake-up calls of our neighborhood birds, kids on the other hand, seem like total naturals at finding awe. Spend any time with a two or three year old outside, and they'll get you thinking about the magic of a pile of rocks, or a roly poly, but even though little kids are great at finding awe, it's as important as ever to help them keep their connection with it.

HALLE STANFORD: Preschoolers are so beautiful, they're so open-hearted and open to the world. It's once they get amongst their peers in a structured environment, that's where I'm hoping they lock in on their awe practice early. But how do we help them sustain it once they are out into the world in these more structured places?

DACHER KELTNER: That's up next on The Science of Happiness. 

[Ad Break]

Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Many kids today are growing up in a culture that deprives them of awe, they're over scheduled, have less access to the arts, to nature, and on top of that, they're experiencing enormous pressure to succeed in school. It's clear that we need to create more space for kids to experience and connect with awe. So I was thrilled when I was recently invited to be the science consultant for a new preschool special that encourages kids to tap into the awe-inspiring power of nature. That special, made for PBS Kids, is called Wowzabout! It's produced by the Jim Henson Company. You probably know them as the creators of the Muppets and beloved characters like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Joining us today are the show's co-creators, co-writer and principal puppeteer Dorien Davies.

DORIEN DAVIES: Thank you for having me.

DACHER KELTNER: And Executive Producer, I think she's won nine or 10 Emmy awards, something like that. Who's counting? Halle Stanford. Hallie, it's great to be with you.

HALLE STANFORD: Oh, it's great to be with you. This is so exciting.

DACHER KELTNER: I'd love for you both to introduce these characters, maybe starting with you, Dorian, since you play Roxy in the special.

DORIEN DAVIES: Roxy is a free-spirited, artistic, fun-loving hedgehog. She has very little filter. She does what she wants, and she lives her life the way she wants. She's kind of free roaming, and she's a real dreamer, and she loves to sing, and she's got these little pink hiking boots on her feet. She's got a guitar, and when she sings from the heart, and in our special Wowsabout! the song that she sings has a relationship to her grandmother, who has passed.

ROXY: My grammy told me stories about this park. She says it's magic. I want to write a song about it. Her grammy always said my voice can't be contained. It's because I sing what I see. 

HALLE STANFORD: How about her solar camper van? 

ROXY: Oh, I got this solar power camper van, and it's got these three panels on top, and it's bigger on the inside, like the Tardis, and I keep a lot of stuff in it, but I'm making room for Ronald, because he's my new best fun-panion.

HALLE STANFORD: Oh my gosh, I love it. I'll tell a little bit about Ronald, Ronald E. Piggington, as he likes to introduce himself, but Ronald to his friends is a pig from a big family. He's from Washington, DC. He's a city pig. He's very well read, loves reading. He loves diving deep into everything he's interested in. So, when we get to know him in this special. All we see, how much he loves the national parks, and he's obsessed with becoming a junior ranger.

RONALD: My watch says it's time for activity number one. Okay, close your eyes and listen to the forest. Activating piggy listening ears. I hear, I hear [wind rustles] wind in the leaves, [quail call] and a quail call.

HALLE STANFORD: Ronald is an eco warrior, he leaves no hoof print behind. He's very adamant in that, so he's teaching Roxy about how to be an eco warrior as well.

DACHER KELTNER: So, first episode is in Sequoia National Park, and so many great scenes in that, you know, Roxy and Ronnald will kind of get into some conflict, and tell us about that scene. It's incredible.

DORIEN DAVIES: I remember Halle and I being like, what, Froxy tied scarves around the trees, and what if we put bunting everywhere? And what if we.. what if she totally like bombed the whole campsite? Let's do that. She's crazy. She does all these weird things.

RONALD: What have you done to the trees? 

ROXY: They looked cold now they're stylin.

RONALD: No, Rocky, we have to leave no trace and keep the campground how we found it. It's a way to protect nature.

ROXY: Excuse me, Ronald. This is my art. I will take it down when I leave.

RONALD: No scarves on trees, that is the rules.

ROXY: No piggy poopers.

RONALD: Piggy pooper? I'm not a pooper.

HALLE STANFORD: I think it's so funny when Ronald gets offended at being called a piggy pooper. People were concerned, like, oh, I don't know if Roxy appears likable, she calls him a name, and we're like, you got to trust us. What's going to happen is when they experience awe of witnessing the butterflies, they're going to reconcile, and then they're going to see how awe has this effect on their behavior, on their outlook, and we need that conflict.

DORIEN DAVIES: That gorgeous shot, where we had the tortoise shell butterflies come around.

ROXY AND RONALD: Wow! 

RONALD: Roxy.

ROXY: Ronald.

RONALD: Wow, a migration of tortoiseshell butterflies!

DACHER KELTNER: We don't know a lot about the science of awe for young kids, even though it's just vital to development. We do know studies of 8, 10, year olds, a little bit of awe makes people kinder, kids kinder, like we see with Ronald and Roxy, during their fight, and all helping smooth that out. It kind of makes them feel less anxious. It connects them to nature. It even stirs their curiosity, you know. When we talked about, then you learned about that science, like how did that guide the themes you wanted to convey in the show?

HALLE STANFORD: So I remember once you talked to us about, we need to see after they experience the awe. How does it affect them? Like, what? How does it propel them to do something new? We call it awe in action. So, in that moment that we were just talking about with the butterflies, that moment of awe not only helps them reconcile their piggy pooper fight, but it propels them to like go on an adventure together. It enables Roxy to open up her mind to, oh, I guess I will go try to do this checklist with this pin. I'm not really into it, but I'm willing to try, and we even have a little moment that maybe goes unnoticed, where Ronald says

RONALD: That was metamorph-amazing. Ah! I just made that word up!

HALLE STANFORD: And that's something new for him, he's never made up a word, like he can't make up words, but with awe he got creative.

RONALD: It makes me wonder.

ROXY: Made me wow.

RONALD: That is what I'm feeling now.

DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, there's a moment where Roxy the hedgehog sings, I feel inspired and protected, the trees, the breeze, you and me, we're all connected.

ROXY: [Singing] Standing next to giants, so incredibly tall. I feel part of something big, though I've never felt so small, and I mean small in a good way. I feel inspired and protected, the trees, the breeze, and you and me, we're all connected.

DACHER KELTNER: I just teared up, and there's actually research showing when we feel like we're becoming part of a community, we tear up for interesting physiological reasons. What was the inspiration for that scene and that song?

HALLE STANFORD: I mean, there's so many things happening at that moment, in that special, for Roxy and Ronald, but of course they both finally meet the Sequoias. They both are so inspired by like getting to see these magical giants, but she really wanted to get inspired to write a song for her Grammy, and experiencing this beautiful awe and sharing it with Ronald. It inspires her to write this tribute, so it just brings all these things together in the special, in that moment, for these characters,

DORIEN DAVIES: It's like the anthem of awe, it's not anthem, the realization of, like, oh, this is the feeling, this is what this feeling is.

ROXY: [Singing] Wow and wonder, wonder and wow, the power of this moment is moving me somehow, looking up at the most amazing things I ever, ever saw, with wow and wonder, a feeling of awe.

DACHER KELTNER: It's so important to give a two or three year old that awareness, you know. I think it's going to change a lot of families to sort of teach them what the feeling is, and to go in search of it. How to make awe more accessible after the break.

[Ad Break]

Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. We've been exploring how we can guide children to experience more moments of awe with the creators of a new PBS program, Wowsabout! Of course, awe isn't just for kids, it's a powerful ingredient for all stages of life. We know from research that awe may be one of the fastest ways to shift attention away from ourselves and towards something larger that we're part of, helping us feel more connected and even physically healthier. Here's the rest of our conversation. For the show you guys did awe walks, and in many ways, Wowsabout! is a show about awe walks. It's two characters who go out on adventures on wowsabouts finding awe. Dorien, I hear you have actually a regular awe walk practice?

DORIEN DAVIES: I do. I have a regular kind of route that I take from my house through the Baldwin Hills up to Stone View Nature Center and down to Kenneth Hahn State Park and back. It's medicinal, and I love it and you can see the views of Los Angeles. There's tons of native flora and fauna, community, animals, and I take great solace in having those walks. I can't always do the full thing, but I'll do like shorter ones, but I have these ambitions of doing them many times a week, but it's sometimes harder than others. Like this last few weeks, I've had a really hard time connecting with those walks.

DACHER KELTNER: Why is that?

DORIEN DAVIES: I'm sandwich generationing, so I'm caring for my mom, who we moved to memory care, and then who's been hospitalized, and also it happened subsequently with the launch of the show, and then on top of it all, my dog is sick, and it just felt like I was in fight or flight, and I didn't have the ability to take these walks anymore, and I had this really kind of incredible experience, because I was feeling really, really low, and it was 5 o'clock in the morning, and the sun hadn't risen, and I had to take the dog out, because she's not well right now, and kind of helping her down the stairs. I don't even think I had shoes on, I was in my pajamas, and it was quiet, and I just went, "Okay, if I can't take my walks, how can I find it?” And I kind of checked in, and I was like, okay, I'm feeling this cold, wet on the grass, and I didn't bring a sweater. Okay, I'm feeling that way, all right. What do I see? What do I see? And I look around, and I see this purple blue sky. It was before the sun had risen, and I didn't have my glasses on, so it was just a color, you know. And I could see the moon. I looked for the moon, I found the moon, and it was white, and I was like, okay, there it is, and I was like, what do I hear? Just like, so loud, so unbelievably loud. This bird just started talking to me, and I recorded the bird, [bird song plays] I and it was in the night, and it was quiet, and there was no one around, and I was like, "Hey, man, that's not the vibe,” [laughs] and I look up, and he's like making all this noise, and you know, me being a puppeteer, I anthropomorphize everything, and I'm looking at this bird, and I'm hearing this. Word, and it's like he's saying, like, ‘hey, you're gonna be okay, we're here, you're here, the sun is about to rise, and we can do this!” You know? I have this dog, and I'm in my pajamas, it's cold, and I'm on the grass with, like, the just like all the things, [bird song plays] but this bird was like a ladder that took me out of my myopic pit that I had kind of put myself in, because the last thing you do when you're in this fight or flight is you care for yourself, you don't care for yourself, and it was a treasure [Halle and Dorien laugh]. This was like, oh my god. Thank you so much. I got tears in my eyes.

DACHER KELTNER: So, Halle, tell us about an awe walk for you, and just give us the sensory experience, and what it was like.

HALLE STANFORD: I will tell it all. I love taking walks with my husband. We try to do a walk every day, just to get out of our, you know, offices and off our screens. Ian and I always talk on our walks, just talk. We talk about everything, we process everything, and so a couple of times gently I had to say, we're on an awe walk, we're not doing the grocery list, okay? [Dacher laughs]. So that was something I had to keep orienting us, so just for you know, partners out there, and parents, you know, you might have to reorient back to the awe walk, but one thing I really didn't notice was my breathing was different than typically on a regular walk, it was very deep, it was very intentional, and I loved that. I thought that was fascinating.

[Awe walk audio clip]

HALLE STANFORD: My husband stopped to look at these two beautiful trees. Why do these bring you awe?

IAN: Because they're so immense, and I remember someone telling me they were planted when the house was built in 1963 and look at them now.

HALLE STANDFORD: They are pretty amazing.

[Clip ends]

HALLE STANFORD: By being so open. One of my observations was, oh, there are two neighborhoods that I'm walking through. There's the community of people that live here, and then there's the natural neighborhood, and it is loud. The birds were loud. Everyone was very loud that day. The colors of the flowers were loud. The bees were loud, and I thought that was extraordinary. 

[Awe walk clip plays] 

It was just a really nice awe walk, and it's ended with me sitting here reflecting and watching a little hummingbird go back and forth right in front of my eyes, from flower to flower, which is pretty special.

[Clip ends]

DACHER KELTNER: I love your observation that these awe walks and awe, more generally, it's like, oh, I'm part of this human community, I'm part of a natural community, I'm part of something built. Right? 

DORIEN DAVIES: It was interesting, because last night I told my husband, I want to go out, like, let's just get out. Let's go around our condo complex. 

HALLE STANFORD: Yeah! 

DORIEN DAVIES: We walked around the condo complex, and I was like, "Ah, it's so manicured, everything's so controlled.” And slowly but surely during that walk, I started seeing the wildness and smelling the jasmine. The jasmine's blooming. Oh, you're right.

[Awe walk audio clip plays]

Oh my gosh, smell it. 

[Clip ends]

We're smelling the jasmine, the night jasmine. It's star jasmine, and this bush is absolutely covered. They smell so good. And I saw a guy carrying his dog up the steps, just like I had been doing, and we saw a family of ducks, and it's just this tiny little community, and by the end of it, I went, it's the practice, it doesn't have to be Stone View Nature Center, it can just be the grass at 5 o'clock in the morning when you have a sick dog, you just have to find that literacy, and I think that's the thing we've always been trying to do with the show, because I learned about this in my 40s. What if a kid knows about how to tap into their awe seeking at five? What is that going to do for the course of their life?

HALLE STANFORD: Some things that I really think about Dorien is when they hit the playground, you know. Preschoolers are so beautiful, they're so open-hearted and open to the world. It's the playground, it's once they get amongst their peers in a structured environment, that's where I'm hoping, you know, that like Doriens saying, they lock in on their art practice early, but how do we help them sustain it once they're out into the world in these more structured places.

DORIEN DAVIES: So, here's my question for Dacher, and I've thought about this for years now. It is hard to get kids to go on hikes. We changed the word hike to adventure, and now my daughter thinks the word adventure means hike, so I'm wondering if you have any advice, and this applies for me too, because when things get hard, it's hard to go on a long hike. How do you make it accessible for parents and families to have a regular awe practice without totally scheduling your life around it?

DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, I think a lot of parents understand, like, God, we try to do these hikes with these adventures, and they kind of break down, and in some sense, we're imposing the adult version of finding awe on a child, a three-year-old, right, of long hikes, eight miles, et cetera. And I really like the idea, and we got this from science, or the science tested the idea of just finding little moments of awe. Right, we found during COVID, if healthcare providers would just take 30 seconds or a moment, and where is the awe, they would find it. It was very good for their depression and anxiety, and I think that's a pathway with families, like just find little moments of awe, like you do in the show, right? Little wowsabout moments, of you know, with my daughters, it was just to go look at this tree, or to go find the cat up on the hill, you know, or we're gonna go down to the stream in Berkeley, and that's all we're doing, right?

DORIEN DAVIES: I love that. I love that.

DACHER KELTNER: What did you want to give to young kids out there, Dorien? I know you have a 13 year old daughter, and that's a whole different age group, very challenging sometimes. But what are you hoping to give our young people out there in terms of awe through the show?

DORIEN DAVIES: Gosh, I think about that every single day now, and if Wowsabout! I think, can allow one or two, or maybe 100,000 kids to look out the window to look at their walk differently, to go back into their bodies instead of living in ambition, in pressure, in rigor. That's what I'm really hoping for this show.

DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, me too. Thank you so much for being here. And let's go on some more wowsabouts together.

DORIEN DAVIES: Yes, can't wait! 

HALLE STANFORD: There's nothing I'd rather do.

DACHER KELTNER: You can watch Jim Henson's Wowsabout! special at any time at pbs.org. We'll link to it in the show notes. Next time we talk with two scientists who join forces to dispel common misconceptions about what's good for the planet.

ELIZABETH DUNN: We all obsess over getting a reusable cotton tote bag, but do you know that a single organic cotton tote bag needs to be reused 20,000 times to offset the environmental impact of a single use plastic bag?

DACHER KELTNER: We explore a more joyful path toward caring for our environment.

JIAYING ZHAU: Honestly, as a happiness researcher, it didn't even occur to me that I had something to contribute. So many of the things that we need to do in order to tackle climate change are actually good for our happiness too.

DACHER KELTNER: Thank you all for listening to The Science of Happiness. Our producer for this episode is Kate Parkinson Morgan. Our associate producers are Emily Brower, Tarini Kakkar, and Anna Zou. Our producer is Truc Nguyen. Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Our executive producer is Shuka Kalantari. I'm Dacher Keltner. Have a great day.