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Discover what happens to our well-being when we respond to suffering with compassion, collective action, and why choosing to care can help us hold on to our shared humanity.
Summary: In the face of widespread suffering, many of us struggle with how to respond without becoming overwhelmed or numb. Drawing on research and real-world experience, this episode of The Science of Happiness examines the psychological impact of bearing witness, acting in alignment with our values, and showing up for others—even when it’s hard. We look at how compassion, agency, and a sense of common humanity can both strengthen resilience and carry real emotional costs, and why people continue to act anyway.
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How To Do This Practice:
- Pause and name what’s happening: Take a moment to notice what you’re feeling as you witness suffering or injustice—anger, grief, numbness, confusion. Naming the emotion helps calm the stress response and keeps you from shutting down or looking away.
- Reconnect with common humanity: Remind yourself: there are no “good people” and “bad people”—there are people.
- Clarify your values on paper: Write down one to three values that matter most to you right now (for example: compassion, integrity, dignity, justice). Studies show that writing values down lowers stress and makes it more likely you’ll act in alignment with them.
- Gently ask yourself: “What does a person like me—with these values—do in a situation like this?” Consider what access, safety, or influence you may have, and what constraints you face. Acting with integrity looks different for everyone, and this step helps you choose a response that is both values-aligned and realistic.
- Choose a safe, doable action: Action doesn’t have to be loud or risky. It might be writing, speaking up in a meeting, supporting someone directly, or adding your voice to a collective effort. Even small actions strengthen agency and social connection.
- Reflect and reconnect: After you act, check in with yourself. Notice any sense of alignment, relief, meaning, grief, or fear. Acting with integrity won’t erase pain, but it helps protect mental health and shapes who we become over time.
Today’s Guests:
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA is a trauma, and critical care surgeon in California. He has also worked as a physician in Haiti, Ukraine and Palestine.
Learn more about Dr. Feroze Sidhwa here: https://www.ferozesidhwa.org/
DR. AKIVA LEBOWITZ is a physician and critical care specialist.
Learn more about Dr. Akiva Lebowitz here: https://akivaforbrookline.com/
DR. SUNITA SAH is a social scientist, author, and psychologist.
Learn more about Dr. Sunita Sah here: https://www.sunitasah.com/
Find her book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes here: https://www.sunitasah.com/defy
Related The Science of Happiness episodes:
Why Compassion Requires Vulnerability: https://tinyurl.com/yxw4uhpf
How to Feel More Hopeful: https://tinyurl.com/4tfwhbpb
How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress: https://tinyurl.com/2hvhkwe6
Related Happiness Breaks:
A Meditation for When You Feel Uneasy: https://tinyurl.com/4x27ut3p
A Meditation to Connect With Your Roots: https://tinyurl.com/ycy9xazc
A Mindful Breath Meditation, With Dacher Keltner: https://tinyurl.com/mr9d22kr
Tell us about your experience with this practice. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or follow on Instagram @HappinessPod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Transcription:
UN BRIEFING SIDHWA: I now give the floor to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Thank you, Mr. President, members of the council. I'm not here as a policymaker or a politician. I'm a physician bearing witness to the deliberate destruction of a health care system, the targeting of my own colleagues and the erasure of a people. I wanted someone to just tell the UN Security Council to please do its job. It's not that some people are good, some people are bad. People are people. And you know, our oath really obligates us to treat all people at all times as needed.
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: We can come with demands or requests to those who are holding on to the power who have control over the situation, people who claim to represent us, who are supported by us in various different ways, from taxes to popular support, and we can approach them with demands to restore these values,
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: The level of dehumanization that exists. It's really quite shocking.
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: I was shocked at how much resistance I encountered when asking people to just set aside their biases and just think about the humane aspect of what's going on, and I still find it hard to come to terms with.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Today, we're reflecting on what it means to show up for one another, especially in moments that are hard to face. Studies suggest that when we engage in collective action, it can reduce stress levels and protect our mental health by strengthening social connection and moral identity. People with a strong sense of purpose around activism also report more resilience and hope, but at the same time, they experience more symptoms of depression and anxiety for very understandable reasons. Standing up for our values, for justice is hard, but many of us do it anyway.
DR. SUNITA SAH: The research shows if you know your values, you're more likely to act in alignment with them, and it also lowers your stress response.
DACHER KELTNER: More after this break.
Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Today, we're exploring what happens when we respond to suffering, both near and far, by taking action together, creating stronger, flourishing communities, which, as Charles Darwin said, is one of our deepest evolutionary drives, is a means of survival. Today, I'm humbled to be joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who has worked in Haiti, Ukraine and Gaza. This past year, he briefed the UN on what he witnessed. Dr. Akiva Liebowitz is also with us. He is a physician and Critical Care Specialist. Together, they've written a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine, urging the medical community and all of us not to look away from the suffering they've witnessed. Their message reflects what the science shows. Responding to suffering doesn't just help others, it shapes who we become. Feroze and Akiva, thank you for the work you're doing and thanks for being here.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Thank you.
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: Thanks for having us.
DACHER KELTNER: We first learned about your humanitarian work from an academic publication where it was an open letter that you co authored in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the preeminent medicine journals, calling on the American medical community to unite in support of the humanitarian needs during times of war. How would two physicians get to this letter and what it meant to you and what it's done for the community of medical practitioners?
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: As people whose professional life is dedicated or focused towards saving lives being witnesses to such devastation and such travesty and so much misery which is not a natural disaster, but rather a human made, mandated, supported, funded, executed disaster, the natural inclination is to get involved and do what is within our capacity to try and stop this. How is it that the wider medical community has been witnessing this and mostly remain silent?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, I completely agree, like Akiva said, it's the natural inclination for, I think probably for human beings, but also it certainly should be for physicians, nurses, any healing profession, to be involved in such things directly and deliberately. A lot of the people that I worked with in Gaza. Just because of the way the restrictions the New England Journal had on what we could say and what we couldn't say, I asked them if they would still think that we should publish it anyway, despite it being kind of watered down in certain ways, and they all said, yes. Akiva is Israeli, and I'm an American, but I have no, like, kind of ethnic or religious connection to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Our identities, in a way, kind of shield us from a little bit of the most severe consequences. So I think we both recognize that it's important for people who have certain privileges in certain situations to use them and to try and push the other people who do have those privileges but aren't using them for whatever reason to do so, you know, because there's plenty of people with a lot more privilege than he or I who could get involved, and whose involvement could make a big difference, and I think that's what we're trying to work on.
DACHER KELTNER: There's this amazing book by Jonathan Glover, who's a historian, called humanity, and he looks at the narratives of soldiers in real combat, and one of the things that surfaces is a profound sense of humanity, even as people are dying and being killed, et cetera, even in genocides, there is this grappling with humanity, and I know that, in part, inspired you to write this very influential letter. But Feroze, you've worked in crisis zones like the Ukraine and Haiti and Gaza twice, and in your work as well, Akiva, like, what has it taught you about humanity?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: A lot, I guess. You know, if you spend about five minutes in Gaza, you can see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity all bundled up into one. I was supposed to go back to Gaza in November of 2025 but I was blocked from going by the Israelis. But so I went to Israel itself, and I had little, like, kind of unofficial seminars at Ben Gurion University and Tel Aviv University, and meeting Israelis who are in the middle of this and Akiva can tell you a lot more about Israeli society than I can, but it's pretty harsh. Dissent is not something that is embraced. And so seeing people who worked with the Palestinians for 30 or 40 years, despite all of the really huge incentives for them to stop doing that, to just go with the flow. They could have much easier lives. I met an older woman who was 14 years old, and she was on the airplane that was hijacked and taken to Entebbe in Uganda, and when the hostages were taken on October 7, she said to herself, I know what it is to be a hostage. But she had also been working with the Palestinians, specifically of Gaza, for about 30 years. The way she articulated this was they were all hostages, and now they've taken hostages. So she had this drive to help not only the Palestinians, but also the Israeli hostage families. I just think it's very impressive what people can do when they decide to embrace their humanity instead of deciding to embrace the forces that are pushing them away from that humanity.
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: I like to think about the shared humanity you mentioned from a slightly different angle. And every person can choose a historical moment that speaks to them, where they reflect upon and ask themselves, How was this possible? So that unfortunately brings me to the conclusion, or understanding, that for such things to happen, there needs to be a process in which people are convinced in various different ways to believe that someone else is less human, and they are able to exonerate themselves from the responsibility in a way which is contrary to they would want any human to be treated.
DACHER KELTNER: The science on dehumanization as a sort of a cause of genocides and colonization and the like is just robust and right on point. The concept of common humanity, complex as it is, but also the practice of it. You know, if you can do that kind of work, it's good for your heart and blood pressure, but you guys are really looking at a really hard problem Feroze, your description of the medical settings you worked in in Gaza, mind blowing to think about, how would you keep your sense of common humanity, your broader sense Akiva of the systemic issues leading to dehumanization in the Middle East right now. Why do you have faith in common humanity, both at the day to day work you do, and the broader historical view of things?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I guess one, one reason is there's just no other option. You gotta, gotta keep believing in it. That really brings it back to the dehumanization of Arabs in general, and the Palestinians specifically. It's very odd. The Times article that I wrote in 2024, I had to get 65 people, all of whom have worked in Gaza to testify as to what they saw with their own eyes, about what is going on, what they saw, and that ended up being one story. These people need us to humanize them, and that just speaks to the level of dehumanization that exists. It's really quite shocking.
DACHER KELTNER: We’re going to post a link to this remarkable speech you gave, or briefing to the UN council to the United Nations. One of the most striking findings to me was that 50% of children, Palestinian children in Gaza have suicidal ideation, including five year old kids, which is staggering. Tell us what you wanted to convey to the UN?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: They didn't learn anything from my talk. They all knew what was going on. But nevertheless, I wanted someone to just tell the UN Security Council to please do its job like the UN Security Council has a sacred trust to maintain international peace and security and to prevent crimes against humanity. When I was there, I wanted to make it so that people just can't pretend that they don't know the details of what's going on in Gaza. There's no shortage of documentation about it. I certainly wasn't the first person to bring it up, but I made it a point of saying that I wish the United States would listen to its own people. The population of the United States does not want this to be going on. So why are we vetoing these resolutions? Why are we funding this slaughter?
DACHER KELTNER: It's a very charged issue right now. You know, in American institutions, if you say the wrong thing, you can be put on lists and not allowed to teach, etc. And for both of you, Akiva and Feroze, like, what was your, the reaction to this letter? And amongst your colleagues?
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: There were people who were very, very, very, extremely supportive, and there were the abusive, hateful remarks, which came at no surprise, and I think we were pretty much prepared for that. One of the common criticisms I think we all receive from people who are respectfully arguing with us. They're saying, well, you know, we agree with a lot of your points, but we're not talking extensively about the atrocities of October 7, or we're not talking about what Hamas has been doing throughout this time period. And I think what we're trying to say, in our perspective, is, you know what, there's no symmetry here. We're not trying to make a symmetrical analysis. We're trying to say, what are things that decent human beings should not be doing no matter what.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I think everybody recognized that we weren't so much as making an argument that is difficult to make, or, like, you know, some sort of elaborate academic construction or something. It was just finally someone is being allowed to say this out loud in the medical community.
DACHER KELTNER: What were some of the conditions that you saw or you worked in?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: So, you know, I've been to Gaza twice now, and in 2024 I was working on the eastern side of con Yunus, and there were ground troops in the area. So we saw lots of explosive injuries. We had three or four mass casualty events a day, if not more, and about half of the injuries were in children. But the really striking thing we saw was that on a regular and, in fact, daily basis, small children, I'm talking about, you know, 12 and under, kids that look like kids were being brought into the hospital with single gunshot wounds to the head of the chest. And that was, it was really kind of shocking. I work in Stockton, California. It's not that I've never seen a small child shot. I certainly have. It really undermines the notion that this is a war on Hamas. That's how it's presented in the media. Quite generally, a war on Hamas does not involve the widespread shooting of small children.
DACHER KELTNER: I've been reviewing the science of activism in really hard circumstances, and it gives us reason for hope that you can increase the biodiversity of a region of the environment. You can increase the educational outcomes in a neighborhood. Our actions matter. A lot of us are struggling to think of how to make sense of this and what to do. What do you guys see as the kind of the trajectory of your work? What do you hope for?
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: I think if we had no hope, we wouldn't spend the time, effort and resources in publishing this, I think part of the reasons we thought it was important is that we may be able to touch some people, institutions, societies, with our writing and call them to action, sort of find that spark of humanity which may be dormant we have rewritten it several times to fit publication, and one of the recommendations in the editing process we got is to give it a more personal flavor, rather than a very principled argumentative formation. And I must admit, initially, personally, I was somewhat resistant to that thought. And in hindsight, it may make sense, right? Sharing a personal perspective, sharing personal stories, sharing the humane aspect of this may light the spark for those who do have that ability to look inwards and take it on. And I think that's, that's our hope. I mean, how much has it changed? Who knows? But hope is what I think brought us to do this work.
DACHER KELTNER: Feroze?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I can't recognize that my country is responsible for what's going on in Gaza, and at the same time I'm going to Gaza, and I have so many people supporting me in doing so I can't both be hopeless on the one hand and then also acknowledge that. All these people exist and want to do the right thing, it doesn't make any sense, you know? So, yeah, I think there's good reason to be hopeful, like Akiva said.
DACHER KELTNER: And I want to thank you both for being on the show, you know, Akiva and Feroze. Thank you so much for joining us today.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Thank you for having us.
DR. AKIVA LEIBOWITZ: Thank you for taking interest. If this reaches one more person, as the Talmudic saying says, one who saves a life as if they have saved the universe. Every life is so precious, and here we have infinite universes who have the potential of being saved.
DACHER KELTNER: Next up, how are we trained from a young age to obey, and how does that shape our brain?
DR. SUNITA SAH: Many of us are socialized for compliance. When people are pleased with us, it increases our dopamine levels, and we want to feel that again and again.
DACHER KELTNER: That's up next on The Science of Happiness.
Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. One of the quietest but most powerful forces shaping our lives is the pull to comply. Our next guest is a social scientist and psychologist, Dr. Sunita Sah. Her work asks a deceptively simple question, when do we go along? And when do we act in line with our true values? She defines defiance, not as being loud or rebellious, but as choosing integrity under pressure, and she's mapped out how to do that, deliberately using what she calls a defiance compass. Producer Truc Nguyen has the story.
TRUC NGUYEN: Many of us have heard the phrase, you are what you eat. There's even been PSAs about it.
You see, you are what you eat from your head down to your feet.
TRUC NGUYEN: But social psychologist Dr Sunita Sah has her own PSA for us. What really defines us isn't just what we consume, it's how we act.
DR. SUNITA SAH: Every single act that we do affects us. How we act becomes who we are at the end of the day,
TRUC NGUYEN: Which can be hard, because Dr saw says we're not exactly socialized to think for ourselves.
DR. SUNITA SAH: Many of us are socialized for compliance. When people are pleased with us, we get rewarded for behavior. It increases our dopamine levels, and we want to feel that again and again. We almost become wired to comply by our parents, by our teachers, by other institutions, by our community and the neural pathways for defiance are often punished.
TRUC NGUYEN: Dr. Sah says one way she challenges this compliance is by asking her students at Cornell to name their values and write them down.
DR. SUNITA SAH: So values such as integrity, benevolence, compassion, equality, they tend to be repeated over and over again, almost like universal values, in a way.
TRUC NGUYEN: Universal values. And yet, with everything happening in the world right now, it can feel hard to believe we actually live by them.
DR. SUNITA SAH: What my research has shown me again and again is, what someone believes their values to be is actually quite different from how they behave.
TRUC NGUYEN: The dissonance is real, and when it comes to confronting large scale harm, many of us cope the same way, by looking away.
DR. SUNITA SAH: When something bad happens to a certain group of people. We want to distance ourselves because it's too painful to think that it might happen to us and that we are also part of it.
TRUC NGUYEN: We might think that looking away helps us keep going with our lives, but…
DR. SUNITA SAH: The amount of distance that we can get can sometimes be quite shocking, accepting things that we don't think are right or that we're looking away from wrongdoing is that it does impact us. It does affect us emotionally, spiritually and even physically.
TRUC NGUYEN: We get anxiety, chronic stress, depression, inflammation, but Dr. Sah says we can use what she calls a defiance compass by writing down our values, just like her students.
DR. SUNITA SAH: The research shows if you know your values and you write them down, you're more likely to act in alignment with them, and it also lowers your stress response. There's less cortisol if you know who you are and what you stand for.
TRUC NGUYEN: She's also clear that when, if and how we get involved in fighting injustice is deeply personal.
DR. SUNITA SAH: Because what's safe for one person is not the same as what's safe for someone else. So someone who doesn't struggle financially is quite different from someone who is thinking about how to make the next rent check. Someone who's perceived as a threat is quite different from someone who can go around unquestioned.
TRUC NGUYEN: A good question to ask ourselves is: is it safe enough for me?
DR. SUNITA SAH: What does a person like me with these values, integrity, honesty, transparency, whatever your values are, what does that type of person do in a situation like this?
TRUC NGUYEN: A lot of us also get caught up in feeling like the problems are too big, nothing will ever change. But that's where knowing our values matter.
DR. SUNITA SAH: Sometimes people will act even if they don't think that is going to have an effect again, because they're so connected to their principles, people feel a lot more authentic, a lot more joy and honesty because they've lived in alignment with their values.
TRUC NGUYEN: That alignment doesn't guarantee outcomes, but everything we do or don't shapes the world around us.
DR. SUNITA SAH: How you act again and again becomes who we are. You don't actually have to be brave. You don't have to be a superhero to incorporate defiance in your life. It isn't just for the brave or extraordinary. It's actually available here right now, and it's necessary for all of us, and there's different ways to do it.
DACHER KELTNER: Next time on the science of happiness.
GEENA DAVIS: Love changes us, it supports us, challenges us and connects us. Join me, Geena Davis, for the Science of Love, a new three episode series produced by The Science of Happiness podcast at the Greater Good Science Center, we'll be exploring the science and lived experience of love in all its forms, from the families we're born into to the relationships we choose, we'll discover what happens inside us when love shows up. That's next week on The Science of Happiness.
DACHER KELTNER: Our associate producers are Emily Brower and Tarini Kakkar. Our producer is Truc Nguyen. Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany studios. Shuka Kalantari is our executive producer. I'm your host Dacher Keltner.
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