Transcript

Beyond Us vs Them: A Live Conversation with Rick Hanson and Joshua Greene Hosted by John R. Miles

From John R. Miles · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 3 min · 10,327 words · 78 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Beyond Us vs Them: A Live Conversation with Rick Hanson and Joshua Greene Hosted by John R. Miles", an episode of John R. Miles published December 11, 2025 (1 h 3 min, about 10,327 words). It mentions 32 people, works and ideas, including Joshua Greene, John R. Miles, Giving Multiplier, Global Compassion Coalition, Pods Fight Poverty.

What this episode is about

This conversation addresses the pervasive divisions in society characterized by an "us versus them" mentality, highlighting the inherent human capacity for connection, fairness, and collective well-being. Experts Rick Hansen and Joshua Greene discuss strategies for fostering unity and mutual flourishing, particularly through initiatives like Pods Fight Poverty, which aims to combat extreme poverty in Rwanda by promoting direct cash assistance that empowers communities.

Key takeaways

  • Cooperation beats competition: Our survival toolkit balances teamwork with rivalry, shaping humanity’s moral and societal structures.
  • Cash with compassion: Direct aid to Rwandan villages highlights effective philanthropy, turning $100 into $150 of impact.
  • Us vs. them gene: Evolution’s tribal roots foster community bonds but challenge inclusive global empathy.
  • From cells to society: We’re built on cooperation, from molecular actions to United Nations initiatives.
  • Compassion circles: Rick Hansen’s mindfulness draws from neuroscience, turning nervous system reactions into empathy fuel.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Pods Fight Poverty, Being Well Podcast, Giving Multiplier, Global Compassion Coalition
  2. – 20:00: Compassion fatigue, Giving Multiplier, Global Compassion Coalition
  3. – 30:00: Compassion fatigue
  4. – 40:00: Moral beauty, Victor Frankl
  5. – 50:00: Giving Multiplier, Global Compassion Coalition, Pods Fight Poverty, Moral circle
  6. – 1:00:00: Giving Multiplier, Global Compassion Coalition, Lucius Caviola, Mario (Sherry Coleman's brother)
  7. – 1:02:42: Passion Struck

Notable quotes from "Beyond Us vs Them: A Live Conversation with Rick Hanson and Joshua Greene Hosted by John R. Miles"

  • I'm host of the Passion Struck podcast and I am so grateful you're joining us for this important conversation.
    about Passion Struck · at
  • Science Center, a New York Times bestselling author, and he's also the president of the Global Compassion Coalition, something I hope all of you check out, and co-host of the…
    about Global Compassion Coalition · at
  • Fight Poverty which is a joint initiative with Lorie Santos the happiness lab giving multiplier and give directly with one bold goal to lift three Rwanda villages out of…
    about Giving Multiplier · at
  • Physiological response that is biased toward the recognition of threat which is a part of a larger negativity bias in our brain that has enabled our ancestors to survive and…
    about Negativity bias · at
  • Conditions in which boundaries are quite porous between self and other. there is really not a thing compassion fatigue per se because the sweetness even neurologically is…
    about Compassion fatigue · at
  • I just finished rereading Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl and it's a book that I tend to take out every so many years as a reminder and the discussion here reminded me of something I read in the afterward of.
    about Victor Frankl · at
  • About Der Kelner and his work, whom I'm sure you both are very familiar with. And I started to think about moral beauty, as you were both talking because, I think when we are…
    about Moral beauty · at
  • Help people have more beneficial states of being and then help use tools from positive neuroplasticity to accelerate the internalization of those positive states so they become…
    about Positive neuroplasticity · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Joshua Greene — Person · 14 mentions
  • John R. Miles — Person · 8 mentions
  • Victor Frankl — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Rick Hansen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Minds working at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and moral philosophy. First is my friend Rick Hansen, who's a psychologist, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's…
  • Katie Milkman — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Other podcasters who are friends of mine who are part of this are Adam Grant, Lorie Santos, K Katie Milkman, and many others. Dan Harris, Dan Heath, and others. Today's event…
  • Lucius Caviola — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Know is very impactful we'll add money on top. This was research originally done with my former postoc Lucius Caviola who's now a professor at the University of Cambridge in…
  • Mario (Sherry Coleman's brother) — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Job and we we raised a lot of money specifically through her podcast and then she and her team and Matt Coleman on our team had the idea, well, why don't we broaden this and so…
  • Benedikt Herrmann — Person · 1 mention
  • Daniel Ellenberg — Person · 1 mention
  • Forest Hanson — Person · 1 mention
  • Jaak Panksepp — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

  • Moral Tribes — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Green, who's a Harvard cognitive scientist, author of the amazing book Moral Tribes, and co-founder of Pods Fight Poverty, which is a groundbreaking effort uniting the…
  • Psychological Bulletin — Book · 1 mention · first at
    When people experience for example there's a recent meta analysis and psychological bulletin that talked about how perceived social support is a major factor of physical health…

Companies & orgs

Products & tech

  • Tango — Product · 2 mentions

Concepts & topics

Places & events

Full transcript with timestamps

And John, you're recording this, right? Yes. Hey, welcome everyone. I'm John Miles. I'm host of the Passion Struck podcast and I am so grateful you're joining us for this important conversation. Our world is divided in ways we can see and in many ways we can feel. Us versus them, my side versus yours. But beneath those divisions, the science is clear. Human beings are wired for connection, for fairness, and for shared flourishing. So the question before us today in this conversation is, how do we move from a world of us and them to a future of all of us? To help us explore this shift, I'm honored to welcome two friends and two of the most impactful minds working at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and moral philosophy. First is my friend Rick Hansen, who's a psychologist, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, a New York Times bestselling author, and he's also the

president of the Global Compassion Coalition, something I hope all of you check out, and co-host of the Being Well Podcast with his son, Forest. And second, we have my friend Dr. Joshua Green, who's a Harvard cognitive scientist, author of the amazing book Moral Tribes, and co-founder of Pods Fight Poverty, which is a a groundbreaking effort uniting the podcasting community, which I feel like I'm a small part of, to expand the moral circle in tangible, measurable ways. Other podcasters who are friends of mine who are part of this are Adam Grant, Lorie Santos, K Katie Milkman, and many others. Dan Harris, Dan Heath, and others. Today's event supports a joint initiative between Pods Fight um a joint event we're calling Pods Fight Poverty which is a joint initiative with Lorie Santos the happiness lab giving multiplier and give directly with one bold goal to lift three Rwanda villages out of extreme

poverty through direct cash assistance that restores dignity and autonomy. And why we're doing this is because while matching funds last, every $100 donated becomes 150, amplifying your impact instantly. So over the next hour, we're going to dig into why humans fall into us versus them, what science says about expanding empathy and cooperation, how compassion translates into real world action and opportunity. This is a conversation about human potential, not just to care, but to include. Thank you again for being here. So with all of that, Josh, I'm going to start out with you.

Why are human moral systems built so deeply around us versus them? And how did that help us survive? And how is it hurting us now?

Yeah. Well, so I mean the story of humanity really reflects the story of life on Earth more broadly. that that is everything we see around us all living systems are are built on a combination of cooperation and competition. Right? So you know cooperation at multiple levels means starting with primordial soup you have molecules come together to form cells and cells come together to form more complicated cells and colonies and uh you know individuals with with organs that are you know work together in in complimentary ways and then we have individuals forming small-cale societies you know villages uh chieftdoms nations and sometimes even United Nations and and all of that works because the parts are able to accomplish more together than they can separately and so they form a a whole. But you know what drives that process is is competition. That is groups that are able to survive better and out compete the competition are more

likely to pass on uh their their their genes and pass on their ideas at a at at a cultural level. Um, and so the so cooperation is built in to humans, you know, it's built into the way the cells in our bodies cooperate with each other and it's built into the way that we cooperate with each other as as individuals and what we call morality which has been my main topic of study for now depending on you count something like 30 years is really a a suite of psychological capacities that enable us to to to be cooperative. That's sort of the bright side. The dark side is that the reason this stuff evolved is because teamwork is a is is a powerful weapon either for direct confrontation or for out out competing in a in in in a more peaceful kind of way. And as I see it, the sort of long-term challenge for our species is can we take the cooperative apparatus that we've developed for life within the tribe um and apply it in a

broader way so that it doesn't uh it doesn't have to be a destructive force. Well, thank you for that uh Josh and Rick. Uh I know a lot of your work deals with compassion and one of the things that I love the global um compassion coalition is doing is creating compassion circles. Um and I wanted to ask at a nervous system level. What happens inside of us when we sense we're part of the inroup versus the out groupoup? Well, first off, I want to just say it's a pleasure to be here and uh Josh, I've been a longtime admirer of your work and I find it really quite haunting uh to feel within ourselves experientially. I I say this as a longtime therapist and a longtime you know mindfulness kind of teacher and and also someone for a long time who was a very shy and dorky kid uh very young going through school who felt quite terrified by the groups and the alphas around me and I was you know a living laboratory of some of the things

we're going to be talking about here the longing to be part of an us and the fear and dehumanization and eventually often on a slip pretty slow aggression, callousness, and cruelty toward that. So, as context here, uh, with your specific question, John, and then I'll back up into maybe a bit more of the ways in which, um, it's quite remarkable to appreciate, drawing on a metaphor from the great affective neuroscientist, Yak Punk, bless his memory, that we are each a living museum. We are each living in a body as Joshua is pointing out that's the result of three and a half billion or so years of life on the planet evolving and 600 million years or so of an evolving nervous system including the last only three million of those years in which the brain tripled in volume which has a lot of implications. So one example uh if um you do experiments with people and you show them faces for maybe a tenth of a

second and you ask them what they see uh if you speed up that interval so or shorten it you increasingly people cannot name what they see. On the other hand, if you contrast a um angry face, a threatening face with a loving, sweet, inviting face uh flashed on a screen for a 20th of a second or a tenth of a second below any kind of conscious recognition, people will report I didn't see anything. But if you have shown to them the angry face, their heart will start beating faster. There will be a physiological response that is biased toward the recognition of threat which is a part of a larger negativity bias in our brain that uh has enabled our ancestors to survive and pass on genes that passed on genes which bias us toward um recognizing threat and reacting to it and overarning from it for example. Although on the other hand um when people uh experience for example there's a recent meta analysis and

psychological bulletin that talked about how perceived social support is a major factor of physical health mental health improved performance in educational and occupational settings and a major factor in reducing risk-taking behaviors in both western and non-western cultures. Wow. Perceived social support. So we need to have the actual social support and the perception of it. And it's also true that when people perceive social support neurologically, you know, threat systems in the brain centered around parts of it such as the amydala, as Josh knows well, there are two of these, but they're spoken of in the singular um and other systems in the brain settled down.

So we have both of those and all of that is the result of the crucible of evolutionary pressures and what confers selective advantages. Mother nature doesn't care if we're happy. She cares that we pass on genes that pass on genes. And so it's amazing to realize, at least for me, I'm so blown away by this, that every primate species except humans, and there hundreds of primate species, is organized around alpha dominance within their groups. And between their groups, they're very aggressive and violent, but within the group, they organize around alpha dominance, summarized as holding and controlling, holding food, controlling reproduction.

humans. So that our brain could gradually triple in its volume, which requires an extended childhood, which requires extended care by mothers motivated by compassion for their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who cannot live independently, right? which then requires growing pair bonding based on compassion for the mommy baby unit which then requires uh tighter bonds in the village it takes to raise a child. That process which enabled and helped to drive the tripling in volume in our human brain over the last three million or so years was um driven and enabled a lot by the power of love by the value of um compassion and related pro-social qualities uh in onetoone relationships and then in the group altogether and humans uniquely then evolved a strategy called caring and sharing compassion and justice inside their vance. So that's our that's our deep nature and we feel those two energies and drives today in

the classic parable of the two wolves in the heart, one of love and one of hate and everything depends on which one we beat every day. It's haunting to appreciate how vulnerable we are to appeals for grievance. We see that in our politics today. Josh's better than me for sure. uh appeals to grievance and we see how vulnerable and and easy it is to establish in-group identity um by hating an out group of one kind or another demonizing it. We're very vulnerable there. On the other hand, I think ultimately love is more powerful than hate and we need to find ways today to scale up to 8 billion what worked inside our bands of 50 or so people who spent most of their lives together. And that's what the global compassion coalition is about. And I think that'll be the defining challenge of the 21st century. Can we scale to 8 billion what has worked so well for 97% of the time our species walked the earth. Thanks for

letting me blather on there. Now Rick, I I I thought that was a great foundation uh and complimented a lot of what Josh was saying. And Josh, I I want to talk about expanding the circle, going from personal to cultural um etc. Um, what do you find are the most effective tools for widening our circle of caring beyond people who look or think like us?

Yeah. So, uh, before I do that, I neglected to to exercise my my, uh, emotionally driven gratitude. Thank you again for for for having me here, and it's a special honor since I'm I'm a big fan of of of both of you. Um, uh, I think there are a few different things. Uh the general theme is that you have to meet people where they are, right? That uh that that if if you're talking about being open to some new cause or open to some new person or type of person, they if if people feel that they're being forced into something that they don't like, they won't go along with it. I'll give you an an example. There was this great study that was done by Benedict Herman and colleagues. It came out in science in in 2008. They ran what are called public goods games. So this is essentially a multi-person prisoners dilemma and and and and a kind of cooperation sort of setup where everybody gets a certain amount of

money. They can put their money into a common pool. Whatever gets put in gets doubled by the experimenters um and then divided equally among everybody who participates. And there were plenty of places where where where people they ran the exact same study in different cities around the world. And there are places like Denmark and Boston and St. Gan and Switzerland where people right off the bat put lots of money in and and cooperation stayed high and as a result people pulled out uh made a lot of money. There are other places like Changdu in in in in China and and Melbourne, Australia where people put in sort of mid levels to begin with, but then people could could punish people who did not play the way that they liked and the people who didn't put enough in got punished and and by the end it looks just like Copenhagen uh with people putting in lots of money. And then there were other places uh including say

Athens, Greece which you know in many ways the cradle of western civilization where where where cooperation levels were low at the beginning and they stayed low throughout and the researchers like well what's going on in Athens? Uh where's the wisdom of Socrates here? And what they found was that some people were punishing who didn't put money in the pool were punishing the people who did put money in. And uh and this is a sort of strange thing. They called this antisocial punishment. And they asked people, why are you doing this? And it was a kind of rejection of the setup, right? That and it has to do with with with with people's circle of comfort. So it's not that people in Athens in in 20ou, you know, 2006 or whenever this was done nice people. They're not cooperative people, but it is a a more closed culture where the way you end up having a relationship with somebody is you're introduced. This is my friend. This is

my friend's cousin, my cousin's friend, right? And the idea of going to a room with a bunch of strangers that maybe work work well in Switzerland, but in in in in Athens, it's too antiseptic. It it doesn't feel like it feels like it's being forced on on them. And as a result, you know, in that weird context, they came out uh behind. But if there was, let's say, some crisis in the community, that might be a more densely interconnected community where those people would be more willing to to to to help each other out in in an emergency than perhaps in in in in other places.

Um, and so what you need to figure out is how can you get people to take the next step? Um, and and this has been the theme of of of the the two main sort of public facing projects that I've been working on, which I I won't go into great detail now, but just sort of mention them and and plant some seeds. So, one is giving multiplier, which is part of the pod's uh fight poverty project, which is essentially encouraging people to support charities that they have a personal connection to, but also charities that are highly impactful. and uh and and and this is a way of kind of building a bridge and expanding the circle in a way that feels comfortable to people. Um my other main sort of public facing project is a game called Tango, which is a a cooperative quiz game that you play with a partner uh who might be different from you. So Republicans and Democrats in the US, Arabs and Jews in Israel, Palestine, uh

h Hindus and and and and Muslims in in in India for example. And there, you know, we we we're getting people to connect in a fun game-like context where there are prizes and where, you know, you you you don't have to worry about having a big fight about ideology. The game is set up so that you can easily cooperate and use each other's knowledge and skills in a in in in a in a productive way. And so that's I think the general the general advice I think is you need to you need to appeal to people's motivations as they already exist and figure out how to turn that into a positive experience that makes people want to engage more widely.

I want to um go back to you Rick and uh talk about compassion for a second. Um,

so I know growing up, um, and then serving in the military, um, I I was kind of brought up to believe that compassion is soft. Um, but science, I think, is showing that it actually results in strength and resilience. Um, so I was hoping you could go into that. And then what do we do with compassion for my group and how it feels in conflict with compassion for all of us and how do we bridge that gap? I love the question because it's really practical and at the end of the day I love science. I consume a ton. I produce almost none but I'm really interested in how do we apply it? So tip of the hat again to people like Josh. Um so let's see what is compassion. Compassion is a [clears throat] combination of three things. Empathy for suffering, benevolence.

So there's a caring response to the suffering. Empathy alone is morally neutral. And third, there's motivation to help if you can. In evolutionary terms, that motivational aspect was very primary in the mother baby unit. uh in ancestors with brains you know half our size. Uh today that motivational aspect is still very relevant but there very often are situations in which there is recognition of suffering. There's an empathic recognition that's not merely conceptual uh combined with caring while being unable to do anything at all.

Maybe about a loss that someone has suffered and also of course compassion can be applied to oneself. So that's the nature of compassion in general. uh as to whether it's soft. Well, it is soft. You know, it softens your heart a little bit. And interestingly, first of all, compassion um contains the bitter and the sweet. And the aspect that sweet, the caringness is protective and strengthening. Uh there is such a thing as empathy fatigue particularly under conditions in which boundaries are quite porous between self and other. uh there is really not a thing compassion fatigue per se because the sweetness even neurologically is actually buffering and protective. So the caringness is protective already. It is strengthening and compassion also has been shown by much research to as you said John to increase resilience because of the warm-heartedness in compassion and the sense of connecting with others that

often follows our supportive factors of individual resilience. Compassion also supports um relationships and that then confers benefits typically not perfectly but often they reverberate back to individuals and there's a place for self-compassion uh which for example increases ambition because self-compassion is a great buffer against harsh internalized criticism. So people then become more willing to take risks, good risks in their career, swing for the fences because they know that if they strike out, and let's remember that Hall of Fame hitters strike out two out of three times, um they won't be so devastated by it. So compassion is is really good in that way. And um there's even some really interesting research that is suggestive of the fact that the ways in which compassion is of udemonically fulfilling in the ways it it brings a sense of meaning and purpose to one's life distinct from hedonic

rewards that are fine but ordinary pleasure as well. Udonic udimonic there we go rewards tend to be protective of the tieumirs these little caps at the end of chromosomes that whose degradation over time and decay is associated with diseases of aging. So who knows you know having a warm and caring heart could actually have benefits in terms of the lifespan. So that's part one. Part two how do we cultivate it? That's really the question. So we have states and traits. We have momentary states of compassion and then how do we develop trait compassion and also trait uh factors of compassion such as empathy uh self-regulation so we can tolerate that empathic uh sense of suffering and other things within us. Well, um I come from a contemplative tradition, Buddhist tradition, particularly early Buddhism, that's quite deliberate about the cultivation of kindness, which does not presuppose suffering, but can be a

response to suffering, as well as the cultivation of compassion, which is a response to suffering. And people can deliberately cultivate it. And there's good evidence now that as people do deliberate training in cultivation um they uh report certainly increases in trait compassion and then there's evidence for neurological changes relatively lasting changes in the brain that underly that development of greater trait compassion. Uh it's so part of it is a matter of intent and then when I think about um other groups the us versus them us and them dichotomy uh how do we mobilize uh you know states of compassion grounded in traits of compassion in real time? Well, one thing is it's really important to do what we can in larger objective systems outside of people to reduce the de the demands on them and the wear and the tear because when people feel desperate inside, they're running for their lives. They're

impoverished. They're being attacked. They're in a war zone. Uh their family feels like a war zone. It's harder to mobilize pro-social qualities. It's kind of like Maslo's hierarchy. People are now dealing with issues that are raw survival. So if you want to help people become more compassionate, establish the social uh democracy systems like in Copenagen and in Denmark, you know that put more of a flooring under most people. Uh part one inside the person. I was thinking about four factors that are quite real and people can pay attention to them. So research shows that it for a typical person and there are exceptions for people who are have developed a lot of trait compassion. Typically it's easier to mobilize compassion for someone who is similar to you that you like um that you do not feel wronged by while fourth you are not desperate yourself.

Uh oh and pardon me who and fourth their suffering is not their fault. Okay. While fifth, not feeling desperate yourself. So, you can help yourself if you're trying to expand your circle of moral concern. It's a term that jobs is very familiar with. Uh James Kirby and others in Australia, for example, have done work on this. How do you expand your circle of moral concern to include more people? Um recognize similarities. You know, meditations like this. Like me, you will suffer and one day die. Like me, you love your children. Like me, you enjoy chocolate. like me, you're a sports fan, similarities, right? Two, uh can you find some sense of liking them or anything along the lines of wishing them well? Even if you don't like them, can you wish them well?

Third, can you recognize that whatever they've done to you is part of a much larger hole in which yeah, they have their part. You're opposed to them politically and otherwise, but there's more to it than that. And fourth, can you see the ways in which their actions towards you are the result of another wider complicated collection of actions um that you know don't relieve them of moral responsibility but contextualize it in a much bigger way. Now these are cognitive efforts but they're quite helpful. And then just to finish um you know we have a lot of influence over how we feel period and how we feel toward others. We have a lot of influence over how loving we can choose to be. I had an experience personally spy the details in my 20s where someone I loved had betrayed me and I had to decide what to do about it and I just made a choice to love it well for a while and then see what she did over time.

[clears throat] I was willing to give it some months. It wasn't going to be years but during those months I was going to love it will. And I realize that the heart emotionally is like a muscle. you can exercise it, strengthen it. And there's a certain within a range of what's available to you. Are you going to the high end or defaulting to the low end of your range of what's authentically available to you? Mobilizing an affective response to others in addition to the more cognitive four things I've said so far. So, so Josh, I want to um touch on compassion fatigue for a second because I think it's very real right now, especially when so many people are exhausted by conflict, uncertainty, AI, um everything that's going on. How do we stay compassionate when all of that is going on with us? And what role does curiosity play in helping us dissolve fear and building trust?

You know, I I think Rick is in a better position to answer that question than than than than I am. So, I'll I'll pass it to him if if if he wants. I'll speak more from personal experience because it's not something that I that I directly research. I think that uh that that curiosity can be an entryway to to that broader understanding, right? that if you want to understand the people who really piss you off, you know, uh but you just you really you have a drive to understand that that can lead to an understanding. Well, why are these people so angry and why are they lashing out at me, right? Um or or or or people like me. And you know, there's a I think a a French saying to to to know all is to forgive all, right? and and and curiosity sort of hopefully doesn't make you a know-it-all but makes you want to know more. Uh and and that's not just about, you know, the physical world, but about the social world and what makes

people tick, including the the the people who make your life challenging. Um I I'll leave it at that. Rick, do you want to add anything?

Well, can I ask you a question? So, um feel free to evade my question. Anyway, so when you look out at uh American politics these days and we can see similar tendencies in other areas there you I think are probably toward the liberal end of the spectrum. Doesn't matter. You could be at the other end of the spectrum in your your views. How do you personally practice with people that from your standpoint are morally corrupt and doing terrible things that hurt people

to bring it home? You know, I I find this is one of the most interesting kind of questions when you get a bunch of talking heads, especially dudes to like, okay, that's great. I love your ideas. There's this classic line in psychoanalysis. The client doesn't need a new idea, they need a new experience. So, I think getting at the experience here is really useful. Yeah.

I just kind of wonder, Josh, with everything, you know, what do you do inside yourself about this?

Yeah. Well, I I will be honest. I mean, I I'm living in a liberal bubble, right? I mean, I I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, uh, and and a at a at a left-leaning university, so I don't encounter a lot of people whose views are different from mine

in a in a in a more right-leaning way. I actually end up in some cases often playing the conservative in the room because I might, you know, be be relatively more moderate or, you know, open to compromise in a way that that that some people around around me are are are not. But, you know, culturally it's not so so uh so far off. So, mostly to the extent that I've I've dealt with this even in a relatively local way, it's been more through my research and and social impact ventures. And here I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm thinking of tango which you know would require a little bit of explaining and I don't want to usurp the answer to this question but again to just kind of plant a seed. Um I think that what makes people work is if you say look I know you're not a monster and I know that you're not stupid. Uh and we try to set up our interactions in our game so that right off the bat everybody feels uh not just uh you know feel feels

respected in in in in two senses in a moral sense and in and in a capabilities or intellectual sense. And I think you you can't you can't really have a meaningful connection unless that baseline level of trust and respect is there. You can't really build until you get that foundation in place. And that's part of our strategy.

Do you I mean for me it's been helpful to wish people well. Minimally, I wish that they not be harmed. Right? So that's a wish. There's a moral motivation there. And then it's been interesting to realize that again based on some neuroscience that if we can warm up the circuitry as it were inside ourselves by starting with feeling cared about ourselves

we're part of a group even if we're affiliation is pretty minimal in our softball league or team and so forth. uh we're we're cared about ourselves then we're we're able to care about others and then in turn for many people the hardest of all is to bring that compassion to themselves. So I find that that kind of warming up is really helpful and then um meanwhile I think it's also really important to bring in the dimension of self-interest. We we have to take care of ourselves too. uh you know we autonomy supports intimacy by taking care of ourselves we're more able to be compassionate toward them and so I think that anything we're saying about expanding the circle of us so forth does not mean being chumps are saying so and it and it includes the capacity to be a fierce advoc advocate you know to find an integration of kindness and assertiveness together as as we stand up for ourselves so that to me is really

baked in and it's important to appreciate I think it's also being personal. Uh some years ago I realized that my anger at other people was an infliction on me. And you may know that of all the four so-called negative emotions categorically loosely, anger, sorrow, fear, and shame, the one of the four that's actually rewarding is anger. You know, there's a mobilization of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. Um, there's a Buddhist proverb that describes anger with this honey tip and poison bark. You know, we just love it. We love getting righteous. I have did you didn't know the righteous mind. That was hate, I think. But anyway, the tendency toward righteousness. Oh, so we have to really be aware I think the appeals of all that and to reframe that if we let hatred in, if we let ourselves be hijacked by those righteous grievances, that's an affliction on us. And it's especially important to pay attention to that

affliction because it can feel so rewarding. Yeah. I remember many years ago hearing about uh the the Dalai Lama being asked if he was angry at the Chinese uh you know and his response was well this is in reference to Tibet. He said well they they've they've already stolen my country. Why would I let them steal my mind? that that that that uh you know it's you're only hurting yourself if if if if if you allow that anger to to to to dominate you instead of you know taking what information value it has and then channeling it in a productive way.

I just uh finished rereading um Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl and it's a book that I I tend to take out every so many years uh as a reminder and uh the discussion here reminded me of something I read in the uh afterward of of the book and uh a person asked Frankle, you know, why do you write your books in German, the the language of Hitler? And he he said uh back to him, "Do you have any knives in your your kitchen?" Uh why do you use a knife when you eat when it has caused so much harm to so many people? Um and I I think it's it's a valuable point. Um, but the the other thing is as I was reading the book and I'm going to tie this in is is Frankle talks about meaning and and says that there really three ways that people can find it and says one of those is through work.

Another one of those is through proximity of of love. So loving someone, caring for someone and he says another one is through suffering. Um I I wanted to ask and and maybe I'll ask you both this. Um, as I was thinking about this, uh, for some reason I started to think about Der Kelner and his work, um, whom I'm sure you both are very familiar with. And I started to think about moral beauty, um, as as you were both talking because, um, I think when we are cooperating with others, often times um, we we feel awe uh, inside. and he found that moral beauty happens the most when we're expressing kindness or service or some type of reframing to another, either doing it ourselves or witnessing it from someone uh who's doing it to to another. Do you think that moral beauty uh Josh, I'll ask you first, could help scale cooperation at a societal level?

Well, I think there's certainly an aesthetic dimension to to to uh things that that that build, right? That when when you when when you meet someone and at first you're skeptical and you think, "Ugh, this is not going to go well. This is not my kind of person." Gritting your teeth and preparing for the worst. And then you find uh a surprising connection there, right? whe whether it's about some shared interest or just just you know your shared humanity. It's it's even sweeter than than than you know when when it's something that you're expecting and there's something sort of beautiful about it that makes you not only think I like this person but it makes the world feel a little bit bigger uh and and and and and more like likely to surprise you in a positive way tomorrow. So I think that all of those kinds of social growth experiences have a a kind of beauty to them that is it's it's built into the nature of the

process. I this makes me think about exemplars and our strong tendency because I'm a developmental psychologist to for what's called social learning where we observe people and I have a friend Dr. Daniel Ellenburgg um past president of the division of the APA that focused on men and masculinities anyway he makes the point that the problem which al which goes back to we said earlier John we don't have enough models mainstream models of compassion and action we don't have enough you know macho men being compassionate we don't we don't have as much models of that including in our politics and and in business and so forth and when we see someone like that who is morally beautiful like your comment about the Daly Lama considering everything that he and his people have had to deal with at the hands of the Chinese government which I separate from the Chinese people make a distinction there. Uh we're very very moved by that

and I feel like we need more and more of that. We need more and more examples of that. Um one example that just comes to my mind which you can find on the internet is Frank Rogers. Mr. Rogers, famously a TV person working with kids, was testifying before Congress, which was about to cut off funding, I think, for PBS or that sort of thing. And a very hostile, I think it was a Republican Congressman who was the chair of the committee at the time, was grilling Mr. Rogers, who then just did not get defensive and really spoke from his heart about the children in America who were benefiting from the show. And you could see that his embodiment of moral beauty there um was deeply persuasive to that congressman who was started on a righteous path this way and he finished being a complete supporter and things like that. So I I look for more examples like that and um maybe that's an area of research for you Josh

I don't know but I am also looking for ways that you and I have talked about John to invest some money in social media and in influencers who can foreground more of these models because I think we really need them and it's our culture that's toxic right now in particular as a quick sidebar I had this interaction with Gabbor Mate about this and he said as a physician and biologically trained person. If you take a species of bacteria from one petri dish and you put them in another petri dish and they flourished in the first petri dish and they start to die in the second petri dish, you don't blame the bacteria. You look at the culture, the culture here. And in much the same way, we need to look hard at our culture uh right now and look for ways to address toxic influences in it and to bring in more influences that are pro-social and healthy.

Yeah. I I want to um go back to kids here for a second. Um I I happen to read this uh pretty alarming article yesterday. There was this uh research study which included 17,000 fifth grade through 12th grade girls uh in the girls index and it revealed this troubling trend in those adolescents. 60% of those girls reported that they don't say what they're thinking or disagree with others even if they think they're wrong because they want to be liked. um they want to to feel like they're part of the tribe uh that we've been talking about. Um and you know 17,000 kids is is a lot to survey to get that uh that statistic. So how do we teach expanding this moral circle that we've been talking about to kids not just in theory but in real world conflict that happens on the playgrounds at school on screens and in social media. Um, I'm not sure which one of you would take it first, but it's a really interesting and

important topic. Yeah. Are you guys parents? I am. We have a adult daughter and son. Yeah. I was surprised it was only 60%.

I mean, I think this is something that we all do to some extent, right? And in some cases, it's not so bad, you know? Tell tell me what you really think of this new outfit, right? uh you know that that that you know there there's a skillful kind of way of keeping your mouth shut. Um and then there are times when it can be really dangerous, right? And um and so the the the the challenge is to you know give people the skills to know when it's constructive to speak up and speak your mind and and and and how to do it right in a way that is more likely to solve whatever problem you're you're you're voicing your opinion about rather than just start a new fight to add on top of whatever the the the existing problem this this is much more at the level of kind of you know interpersonal relations and so I I I defer to Rick on all all all all such things but um yeah what what are your thoughts here? Well, well, how about I

take before before Rick and Yeah. Yeah. because I have two kids and uh you know, one boy, one one one girl. They're they're both now uh adults. But what was alarming to me is that that when they both hit middle school, um this whole tribal instinct was was really a big thing for for each of them. Um my son experienced it uh when we when we lived in Austin, Texas and my daughter experienced it when I lived in Tampa, Florida. So it it doesn't depend. It does it geography didn't matter. My my son was uh having a lot of push back um from his his peer group um because he joined band in a high school or in a middle school um community in Austin that was very pro- sports leaning. Not not to say he wasn't a great athlete because he was. He just had a passion in a different area. And so a lot of his uh friends would bully him. In the same way, I found uh my daughter um experiencing this as well. And um hers

was more social bullying through um apps than it was in-person bullying. But what I found is that in both cases, we had to to kind of open their minds to to realize that the people who were saying these things to them were hurting themselves and they were lashing out um um because of their own insecurities, not because of what either one of them were doing. And so for me it became a discussion that we were trying to get them to stay true for who they were um for their value system that uh we had worked so hard as parents to try to instill in them and and to be themselves and not feel like they had to wear a mask because someone um was telling them not to feel accepted as as they are. And I don't know if that resonates, but that's as a parent what I was trying to do.

Yeah. Well, I relate to this question and I've spent a lot of time in schools actually and um there are definitely things we can do at the individual level like you did with your kids, John. Um and there are programs in schools that uh increasingly, you know, are helping kids to be bullyproofed and, you know, to build up mindfulness and self-worth. And they often will use different words because those words even sound a little too left coasty uh for some people. uh you can do that and I say as a guy who spent a lot of time watching you know what really goes down on the playground and at the end of the day those individual events and experiences occur inside of larger systems that often have a lot of hierarchical and cultural pressures in those systems that also have upstream causes in poverty uh class um culture, you know, racism and so forth and then upstream pressures with their parents. So to address those systems and

this goes to the global compassion coalition, etc. And what we're doing here with pods fight poverty to address these real issues, we have to move beyond the merely individual level. It's both. We need to address and elevate individual consciousness. We need to help people have more beneficial states of being and then help use tools from positive neuroplasticity to accelerate the internalization of those positive states so they become lasting durable traits inside. Need to do that with individuals. But additionally, we need to change the systems and the upstream sources of and factors that these kids and then and adults and so on are living with. And the only way to change systems is as our ancestors did inside their bands through collective action, through coming together to change the culture of a school, to change policies in a school board, to reduce ridiculous, you know, teach to the test pressures in a school

district, uh to change those systems in various kinds of ways. And what's really interesting is the question then becomes how do you mobilize collective action less effective? And around us we see so many examples of wonderful people and wonderful NOS's that are doing great work that never collaborate and combine their resources at a scale that's big enough to make a difference. So the kind of founding notion behind the global compassion coalition uh which other people I think are increasingly seeing as well. So we don't you know own this idea. It's to explore the power of compassion to bring people together to change the world right. So you can come together around a common enemy and that's very motivating but it's fraught with some peril. On the other hand you can help people come together around recognition of suffering and the motivation to do something about it in terms of its systemic causes and then

you can actually change the world. And that's what I yeah that's what I'd like to see more and more of these days.

So So let's now talk about how we are trying to expand this circle um through pods fight poverty. So, uh, I'm going to turn this over to you, Josh, but, uh, Lori Santos, a friend of mine, has has been on this podcast, has a great podcast herself, Giving Multiplier and Give Directly, um, have come together to try to raise a million dollars for 700 plus families across three villages in Rwanda. Um, why Rwanda? Why these villages? Um, and why is this important?

Right. So it begins with the recognition that uh we have an enormous power to do good. Uh and this is or ordinary people with you know the kind of disposable income that you know uh uh many listeners of this podcast have. I don't mean to assume that everybody's in that situation. Um, and that's one. And and and and in particular that some charities are far more effective than others at producing a positive impact. and that the uh the size of the impact, the bang for your buck that you get out of uh you know a certain way of spending money to to to improve people's lives um doesn't necessarily track with our feelings about what is most meaningful to us. So uh my my connection with with give directly began with with the the work that led to giving multiplier. And as I alluded to earlier, the challenge we have there is that there's this kind of dilemma between giving with the heart and and and and and giving with your

head. Uh and the the heart we're all familiar with, right? That you know, you love animals and you want to support the local animal shelter or your aunt died of breast cancer and you really want to support breast cancer research to help people so that others don't have to suffer what she suffered from. And you know th those are th those are some of the most powerful and and sort of beautiful and noblest motives uh that we have. At the same time uh the the things that we're most compelled by are not necessarily the most effective. Uh and uh you know when I first learned about this I thought okay well a more effective charity might be like the difference between you know someone who's very tall and someone who's not so tall. You know it might be a difference of 50%. that someone who's really tall is 50% taller than a relatively short person. But in fact, when it comes to charitable giving and and impact, it's

like redwood trees and shrubs. Uh that that the most impactful charities can be over a hundred times more impactful in terms of lives saved for dollar or the amount of good it does to improve somebody's life. Um and there are a lot of examples of this. A classic example now is in the case of blindness. For example, in the United States, uh training a seeing eye dog to uh someone in in in the US uh might cost $50,000. Uh in some parts of the world, people lose their vision to a disease called traoma, which can be treated and eliminated with a surgery that in in context costs less than $100. Now, we don't want to say I at least don't want to say that we should abandon blind people in the in countries like the US and and say, "Okay, everything goes only to to people overseas." Um, but uh I think we shouldn't ignore that that that opportunity as well. Um the connection with give directly is

give directly is one of these highly impactful charities and it's an interesting story about how the impact of of this strategy was discovered. So give directly just gives people cash directly and and uh and in some of the poorest places in the world. And this has really been made possible by the revolution in digital banking reaching you know far far-flung and poor villages where there's satellite networks up in the sky and and and one person in the village could have a flip phone and that can enable you know financial freedom for for for for the entire village.

Okay. So how did give directly get started? There were economists who wanted to do experiments on different ways of improving the lives of poor people and they like good scientists said well we need a control condition. What's the standard of care? What's the baseline? And and they asked around and there wasn't really an accepted kind of standard of care. So they said all right well maybe our baseline for comparison should just be what happens if we take the money that you could spend on this program doing some specific thing and just gave it to them directly. And what they found was that giving people cash directly actually did better in many cases a lot better than the innovative programs that they were looking to test.

So they created this organization called give directly uh that that follows this simple strategy. Um and you know the first thing people worry about when they hear about this is okay well are people going to spend the money you know on on things that are destructive? Are they going to spend it on alcohol or or things like that? And what they found when they first studied this is no. What people tend to do is first satisfy their basic needs. If they don't have food, if their children are are are in danger of dying from some disease, they get treatment. If there's a hole in the roof, they fix the roof, right? And then with whatever money is left, they invest in themselves and they invest in their communities, right? And this is where give directly really is sort of different from other interventions because not only can it account for people's or support people's most immediate needs, but someone who wants

to start a business, uh, but let's say they need some way to sell their goods in the surrounding villages, they can buy a motorcycle that can allow them to travel around and and and and allow them to sell their goods and allow them to uh to to to make a living. So, it's it's not just giving a fish and it's not teaching a fish because they already know how to fish. It's it's giving people the money to buy the the fishing rod that they know that they need and they know exactly the the the the right one for them. So, it gives a lot more sort of freedom and agency than uh than than than typical charitable uh in initiatives. And recent research has shown that for every dollar that's given directly to somebody, there's a 2.5x multiplier in terms of the local economy. So it really is sort of pulling people up uh in in in a broader kind of way and holding out the promise that there can be the kind of sustained

growth that really makes it a long-term difference when it comes to poverty. Okay, so we like give directly pods fight poverty. What are we what are we doing? So this started uh when when Lori Santis is an old friend of mine and I went on her podcast to talk about giving multiplier where the idea is instead of saying to people forget the breast cancer charity you should just give to something like give directly we say look you know it's your values you know if do both and if you're willing to do both and if you're willing to expand and support a charity that you hadn't heard of before like give directly but that we know is very impactful we'll add money on top. This was research originally done with my uh former postoc Lucius Caviola who's now a professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Um we found that people really like splitting between a charity that they chose and that's close to their heart and one

that's that's that's highly impactful um like give directly. And we found that people were willing to uh do it even more if you add money on top. And we found that people are willing to pay to put money for future donors into a fund. So a sort of pay it forward kind of system. So Lucius and I started giving multiplier based on this research to try to create this virtuous uh circle. And the and the great news is we've been doing this since 2020. We've raised over $5 million this way and over three million of that has gone to super effective charities like Give Directly.

So, I went and talked to Lori about this and we and and Lori did an incredible job and we we we we raised a lot of money specifically through her podcast and and then she and her team and Matt Coleman on our team had the idea, well, why don't we broaden this uh and and and so now we're working specifically with Give Directly and Lori invited a lot of her podcasting leading lights like you, John, and and you uh Rick to be to be part of this. So what we're doing is giving multiplier is now our matching funds are not are are are we're we're doing a 50% match on all of the the donations that are made through uh these podcasts and uh the goal is to we we do this village by village or giving give directly does we are looking to lift people out of uh out out of poverty. I see that we're getting at time. Uh so John I'll let you take it from here and uh I'll just mention the the the the link for this which is givedirectly.org.

org/passionruck. Um, sorry for going on, John. Go ahead. Um, well, I I I know we're getting right at time, but I I I feel because we have a number of questions from the audience, I I would just like to ask one

and and given that uh we're talking about an African uh um charity here or benefiting charity. Uh we have a question from Victor who is in Nigeria and he is asking and I think I'm going to direct this at you Rick. How can ordinary people feel like their compassion matters in a world with such big problems?

I know Josh certainly would have something to say as well and you too, John. I'll just say briefly um in our immediate networks uh the people who receive our compassion are touched by it. It matters to them. Think about what it does for you when someone takes the time, if only a few seconds, to let you land in their heart. So they have a sense of what it's like to be you, including what's hard for you, perhaps horribly hard for you. That uh when when that happens from them, you benefit. Turn it around. When you give people that gift yourself, you are helping them immensely. Second, even if your compassion for suffering does not change anything out there for those other people, it changes you as it moves through you. It opens your heart. Um, it illuminates your mind and over time it purifies you and so that increasingly you rest in this stream of lovingness as your own identity. Those are profound

benefits. And then there's increasing research that shows the ways in which speaking of multipliers that compassionate acts and other related pro-social act acts ripple through social networks. You know touching one person who touches another person who touches another person in turn. And I find it helpful to appreciate that there is so much in the world that we cannot change. Uh it's beyond our control. What is in our control going back to Victor Frankl who John quoted earlier uh is how we relate to the conditions that we're dealing with out there in the world and inside our bodies and inside our own minds. How do we relate to them? What's our relationship to them? How do we practice with them? And uh to me it's it speaks to the most fundamental of human freedoms that no matter how bad it is outside deep down inside ourselves we always have a choice in how we respond to it and do we respond to it with

indifference or coldness or do we respond with a warm heart and that's the opportunity and compassion for all of us. Well, I wanted to thank you both so much for joining us in this discussion. Uh Josh, thank you for and Lori for having me uh part of this initiative. Happy to have Passion Struck help contribute to this great cause. Um and um just if I could leave the listeners with one thing. Um Rick, if people want to hear more about the Global Compassion Coalition, where can they go? Uh

just go to the website globalcompassioncoalition.org. Thank you very much. It's free to join. The whole idea, like I said, is [clears throat] to explore how compassion can bring us together to change the world at scale. That's the really ambitious and kind of crazy but still very cool idea behind it all. And uh I also think that people should really look into your work, John. You're like a hidden treasure and uh you know, not so hidden actually. So I totally support that too and what you're doing too, Josh. It's an honor truly to be with you.

And and then lastly, Josh, if we can give the call to action again for where they can go to support this initiative.

Oh, sure. So again, that's that's givedirectly.org passion struck uh all one word. And um you know, we're adding 50% on on on top. And you know, these funding these these funds allow people to take care of their immediate needs and also build a better life. And you know, in in in in a world where there's so much we can't control, this is something we have good evidence that we know we can really make a huge difference even as individuals. So I I I I hope people find that motivating and invigorating and uh and and and get a kind of uh charge out of out of doing that that that you know light lights you up for a while and keeps you going. So thanks and thank you John for having me on and Rick, it's a great pleasure to to connect with you as well. This has been great. Well, thank thank you for everyone who turned in today and thank you again Josh and Rick. Um be well everyone and we will also be posting

this on the podcast um in the coming days if you want to listen to it there and get a recap as well. Thank you everyone.

Questions about this episode

What is "Beyond Us vs Them: A Live Conversation with Rick Hanson and Joshua Greene Hosted by John R. Miles" about?

This conversation addresses the pervasive divisions in society characterized by an "us versus them" mentality, highlighting the inherent human capacity for connection, fairness, and collective well-being. Experts Rick Hansen and Joshua Greene discuss strategies for fostering unity and mutual flourishing, particularly through initiatives like Pods Fight Poverty, which aims to combat extreme…

What is mentioned in this John R. Miles episode?

32 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Joshua Greene, John R. Miles, Giving Multiplier, Global Compassion Coalition, Pods Fight Poverty, Empath. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Beyond Us vs Them: A Live Conversation with Rick Hanson and Joshua Greene Hosted by John R. Miles"?

The episode runs 1 h 3 min; the transcript is about 10,327 words in 78 timestamped sections.

More from John R. Miles

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.