When Awe Fuels the Fire: A Conversation With Megan Powell Cuzzolino, EdD

Geoff Mitelman: I’m Rabbi Geoff Mitelman. I’m the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses, and sitting here with me is my friend and colleague and former Sinai and Synapses Fellow, Dr. Megan Cuzzolino, who is a researcher, educator, and instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has been doing some fascinating work on scientists and their experience of awe, and how that can help us think about the interplay of religion and science. So, Megan, thank you for taking the time with us here this afternoon.

Megan Cuzzolino: Thank you so much for having me.

Geoff Mitelman: It’s great. We’ve known each other for about six or seven years, and always love learning from you and the work that you’re doing. And you are training so many future educators. The impact that you’re having is so wide ranging that that’s just. That’s got to feel very gratifying.

Megan Cuzzolino: Thank you. Yeah, it’s really fun to get to know or interact with you in this new capacity today after all these years in the fellowship and contributing to the blog and being part of the community.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, I want to start by talking about a new paper that was just published – and you wrote something for us a couple of weeks ago – about how scientists experience awe. And we’ve actually talked with a variety of different people in this podcast about the role of awe and how that manifests itself scientifically, how it manifests itself religiously. But from what I understand, –  what you had said – what you did is really one of the first treatments of how scientists experience awe and how that influences their personal and professional life.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah. So, a lot of the awe research that has existed over the past 15 to 20 years, as it’s gotten more attention in the social sciences, has been lab-based, really heavily quantitative research, trying to capture some measurements of awe, of what it does to our bodies, of what it does to our brains – but less so these kind of experiential elements of awe out in the world. And it’s really hard to capture those, to just go around walking around looking for them. And so, in my research, I was interested in doing it sort of from a retrospective approach, looking at scientists experience of awe as they recalled them over the course of their time as scientists, and even starting in childhood.

And that was another piece that I attempt to add to the literature – really linking awe and science. There had been some work, including some by Sara Gottlieb, another Sinai and Synapses alumni, sort of probing the extent to which awe and science are related. And there are findings to show that people who are more prone to experience awe are also More prone to scientific thinking, likely because of this tendency towards open-mindedness that makes you more receptive to new evidence that might contradict your current way of knowing. But there had not really been a study about scientists’ testimony on their experiences of awe.

Geoff Mitelman: And what’s interesting is that when we think about science generally, we think of it as very analytic and logical, and, for lack of a better word, rational. And that’s why I think there’s a false perception, but there was a perception that it’s religion versus science, that religion is this emotional piece that can’t be described. They talk about faith, and they – as somebody who’s a rabbi – religion and science are view either in contrast or in opposition. And even when they are talking about it in terms of their relationship, they’re often viewed as opposed pieces. Right. The science is very didactic and the religion is very emotional. But it sounds like from what you’re saying that the scientists are experiencing awe because they’re human beings. And we need to be able to tap into the emotional of the scientific knowledge as well.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that thinking about the distinction between awe as we see it in religion versus in science, there’s both a debate in the literature on awe that I think speaks to this, which is that the definition of awe that’s most widely cited in the literature comes from Dr. Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, a paper almost 20 years ago now, where one of the main components of awe, as they describe it, they call it “the need for accommodation.” And what they mean by that is when you experience awe, it’s in part because you’re encountering something that does not fit with your current way of making sense of the world, and you need to sort of shift or “accommodate” this new information. So you have to update or revise your existing worldview to make sense of what you’re experiencing.

And there are others who study awe, who are sort of arguing about the extent to which these awe experiences are triggered by something that you currently don’t know or understand but is knowable versus something that is so profound that it simply cannot be known – something that you’re just sort of humble or reverent in the face of, this thing that is beyond understanding.

And I think when we think about awe in the religious context, that’s often what we’re thinking of is this sense of something that is sort of beyond human capacity to some extent. Whereas I think often in science, the way that we’re talking about awe, or at least the way most of the participants in my research talked about awe, was that there was at least this glimmer of hope that we’re going to get closer to understanding this thing.

That’s kind of the point of the scientific endeavor, is we’re trying to strive towards greater understanding. And so, though we’re confronted with something that we can’t fully wrap our heads around right now, we’re acting in the hopes of future understanding.

Geoff Mitelman: And sometimes, even as we intellectually understand it, to understand it emotionally is so hard. I mean, I’m thinking about going to the Hayden Planetarium in New York, where they have the cosmic walk where you can walk the history of the universe. And as you’re walking, you see that for the first 9 billion years of the history of the universe, there was no Earth.

And then even for the first next 4.6 billion years, there’s very little complex life. And then the human being – the dinosaurs and the human beings are basically next to each other. And you can understand that as you’re walking down there. But when you really have that sink in, there’s a reason that in Hebrew, the word for awe, yirah, also means “fear.” There’s a level of trembling that happens.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that piece about scale, that’s the other. In addition to this need for accommodation, the other primary component of awe as it’s defined in the literature, is this perception of scale. And I think we often think of that as something physical but also temporal – as you know, as you were saying as well. And I think I really tried in my research to speak to scientists who worked across all different kinds of scales, and so, in addition to vastness in physical size or in time, I also had scientists who were working with microscopic organisms, but those things where it could be vast in number or in complexity. And so scientists talked about being awed by just looking into a microscope and just seeing unimaginable numbers of living things crawling around in there. So I think, there is this sense of being awed by vastness in many different capacities. And yes, I think that it can sort of tread that line between positive and negative emotion. I mean, I think that awe is sort of neutrally valenced in the literature. There can be awe that’s both positive and that’s more negative related to fear. But I will say that in general, I talked to the participants about this, and overall, the awe experiences that were top-of- mind for the scientists in my study tended to be more positive. There might be a sense of trepidation, especially ones who worked in the field, and maybe their helicopter was descending upon this really remote landscape where they were the only ones around for miles and miles, but they overwhelmingly said that they thought of these experiences as positive.

Geoff Mitelman: I think that’s one of the things that’s important to remember, particularly in America society, which is that the end goal – people talk about a flow state or feeling deeply connected, having those kinds of connections, that it can still be a positive experience without it necessarily being “happy.”

Megan Cuzzolino: Sure, yes. And I think one of the other things that really struck me in my findings was the extent to which experiences of awe served as a source of motivation for participants. And so, they talked about these moments of awe that they encountered in their work. And I should say that while we’ve largely been talking about these kind of conceptual ideas that lead to awe –  contemplating the scope of the universe, things like that – and that’s kind of what I went into this research expecting to find with scientists talking about these kinds of things, by and large, the first experiences that they, that came to their minds were more personal moments of discovery. So they were saying, you know, “The first time that I encountered this finding in my work, that really kind of cracked the doors open for me in my research.” That was a lot of what they talked about. And it wasn’t because these were paradigm-shifting discoveries. They might be very small, but they were important to them. And it was this sense of, “Oh, I’ve just discovered, discovered something new. I’m the only person who knows this thing for this brief moment.” And that those moments, in particular, were the ones that kept them coming back when the work got really hard.

So they talked about how draining the work of being a scientist is – you’re so tired, the pay is not good, the hours aren’t good, you’re just. It’s failure after failure after failure. But they knew they might have that moment that, “Aha, I’ve discovered something,” leading to this feeling of awe. And it was sort of the thrill of the chase of that experience that kept them going. And so there was this sense of that these awe experiences were happening in the context of a largely sort of depressing depiction of what the field of science as a profession is like, but that they were saying, “It’s really because of these moments of awe that I can keep going in the face of professional adversity.”

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and I’m thinking, actually, about a link to Jewish thought and Jewish practice, because in Judaism, at least in moments of prayer and liturgy – hopefully there are moments of awe and wonder and majesty when we pray in Judaism. But Judaism also has a very set liturgy. And there’s a tension in Judaism between what’s called the keva, which is the fixed prayers – “You say these prayers at this time in this way” – and then there’s what’s called kevanah, which is intention or direction, and it’s the spiritual moment that’s there. And you can’t plan for kevanah, in the same way that you probably can’t plan for this moment of awe. But it’s being able to be open to it, being able to know it when it’s there.

And the only way that happens is through the regular practice. If they were not spending those hours in the lab, then they wouldn’t be able to get to that finding that gives them that awe inspiring element. And yet, they also need to have that energy and that fuel – that if it was just the drudgery over and over and over again, then they would quit.

Megan Cuzzolino: That’s right. And I think one of the implications of this research, when we think about science as a profession, is that my participants said, “This interview was the first time I’ve really had a chance to think about this.” And if I were to do it again, I think I would have designed the study to be able to go back and talk to them a second time, because they were already telling me different things at the end of the hour than they were in the beginning, because they’d had this period of reflection.

I think that none of us really take the time necessarily that we could to reflect on these experiences and what they mean to us. The scientists could often pretty quickly pinpoint these moments – “Oh, I felt awe when I…” Not all of them, but many of them could kind of get there pretty quickly and say, “Oh, I felt awe in this moment.” But they had a much harder time articulating what that experience meant for them, or what kind of impact it had. And so, I think that having some sort of reflective practice, that when you’ve had a moment like that, you can say, “That was really profound. Here’s what it means for me. Here are the conditions that allowed it to happen.  So how might I cultivate those in the future?”

As somebody coming from an educational background, that was a big motivation for conducting the study – what are the conditions that lead to this kind of experience? And I think that the participants themselves really were like, “Oh, I don’t know. It just sort of happens. I don’t have a lot of control over it.” but the reflection of it allowed them to at least think more carefully about what kind of impact it had.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, that’s where someone that deeply influenced me – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who talks a lot about awe and wonder and majesty, and talks about radical amazement. And a lot of what he talks about is that great line, “Awe is the root of faith.” We praise before we prove. And one of the things that he talks about is that the awe experience is crucial. And yet, how is that going to manifest itself? So you have it, and if you just have it and nothing happens, then it’s kind of lost forever until you reflect on it – until you bring that into a personal or professional milieu. Then it sort of – “it had that wonderful moment, but then it dies.”

But being able to reflect on it and finding language, and “Oh, now I can see how 15 years ago, that’s led me to where I am right now” – sounds like they didn’t necessarily see that connection until you asked that, and they said, “Oh, now I can actually see that through line of how that discovery is leading me to where I am at this moment.”

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah. And I think this piece about time, and also about what happens as you develop more expertise and then have more context to think about your experiences, is really interesting, because I found that it kind of cut both ways. So, participants were able to say, “Oh, you know, when I did my dissertation and I didn’t get these earth-shattering findings, I was really disappointed.” But now, like as you said, “15 years later,” or whatever it was, “I can look back on that experience and realize the way it shaped my career, and I can have some awe kind of retrospectively for that experience, and the things that it generated in me as a budding scientist, and the ways that it led me down different paths and that it wasn’t really about the findings themselves.”

And just in general, one of my participants talked about bringing his parents to a museum and they were kind of walking right by things that he, as a scientist, understood the significance of. And he was trying to tell them, “No,” – like, I think it was about some of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. He was saying, “No, this is important because of all of these things it led to over the years.” And so, he had additional professional knowledge that allowed him to experience awe in this museum that his parents didn’t have access to.

But on the other hand, there was this sense of “been there, done that” for some participants. So, more of the people I talked to were Kind of in the first half of their career, but the ones who were in the later stages – one of them talked about how he was building machines that were going on space missions. And he was like, “Well, now I’ve built something that landed on Mars. And so, I don’t really find awe in Mars anymore. Now my eyes are on Enceladus.” Like, I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to get further and further out there. And so he was saying, “It’s actually harder for me in some ways to experience awe because I’ve had these experiences where the novelty has dissipated somewhat.”

I don’t know that that’s a universal experience, because other elder participants I spoke to were saying, “No, I still feel awe every day when I look out my window and see the deer in the woods. So I think it’s largely personal, but I do think that there is this piece of it that’s about novelty and this need for accommodation, if the more experiences you have, the harder it is to encounter things that make you see the world in a new way.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. I mean – and I’m thinking even of text study, you know, studying Torah each week, that ideally – or you look at how we look back at the same text over and over, over again. And there’s an idea that we have to bring a hiddush, something new, to the text each week. And that is challenging if you’ve been leading services for however many years. But it’s also a challenge of “How do I come back to this?”

And that can be very energizing, to have to find a level of novelty. That’s something that you may be sort of inured to and are now, like, “I’ve done this before. Wait, I’ve got to find something new.” But that can expand our worldview.

 Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah. And I think the process of teaching that is a common experience for clergy and academics largely is something that can help with that – you know, “Maybe I’m encountering this material year after year or semester after semester, but I’m encountering new learners who are maybe being exposed to it for the first time.” And so trying to bring a fresh light, a fresh lens, to that material, so that somebody who is seeing it for the first time can get some of that awe that you had the first time that you encountered it.

And the participants in my research did talk about that as well, that especially as they were getting further in their careers, that they were finding more of that awe through their teaching work, and that getting to share some of that with students was part of what was giving them that feeling.

Geoff Mitelman: Now, are there a couple stories that really struck you that, that you were like, “Wow, I will remember that story for a long time”? Are there any? I’m sure there were several. But are there ones that come to mind that still resonate with you?

Megan Cuzzolino: Oh, gosh. I mean, I think that it’s images, I think – in some ways, more than stories. Like, just the ways that people talked about, like I was saying, descending in a helicopter, or somebody who was a physical oceanographer. And when I asked him to define awe, he talked about it as being “a fly in a hurricane,” which I thought was such a vivid description.

But he described experiences of being on these research missions where they were on these Arctic cruises, and that it was just frozen, and water as far as the eye could see and just the sun reflecting off the ice, and just the beauty. And somebody else who was studying chimpanzees in Uganda and talking about the sunrise – you know, that she was seeing it, and just seeing the elephants in the distance.

So I think that there was such vivid imagery that came out in these things – which, again, you know, I went into it really thinking about, “These scientists are going to tell me about, ‘Oh, my mind was blown when I learned about such and such for the first time.’”

And there was some of that, but there was so much of this experiential, just – “Oh, it was just this feeling I had when I was in this new place.” And so, I think for the scientists who conducted field work, it was a lot of that. But also, you know, bench scientists also talked about, you know, “I had a participant who said the first time I saw a mouse ovary,” you know, she said there was such awe, because it looked just like it did in the textbook – and then there it was.

And so, I think that seeing something with your own eyes was a really big theme that came up for me that people just talked over and over about – you know, “I had learned about this thing and then I got to see it myself. And I was just right there encountering this thing.”

And so, I think there is just this vividness to the experiences that has really stuck with me, more so than any particular event. It was just these – a lot of people talked about awe as this, you know, being stopped in your tracks, or “time stands still.” And I think that there was so much of that. There was such a real beauty to a lot of what people told me about.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and what also strikes me is that when we think about the public conversation about science and religion, or bringing together scientists and religious leaders, if you start with a conversation of “So, do you accept evolution or not?” or, “Is climate change real or not?” Most – in fact, almost all – scientists, and probably actually a good number of clergy, would say “Yes,” and those who are going to say “No,” that’s not going to be a generative conversation, right? Like, if you start with a hot-button question where it’s one or the other, the conversation is not going to move forward. But if you ask somebody from both a religious and a scientific perspective, “Tell me about a moment in which you felt awe,” that can actually open up the conversation, because that creates a biography, that creates a story, that creates a good feeling. There’s not a hostility of, “I’ve got to convince you that I’m right,” or “I’m not quite sure how much can I trust you?” But starting with a conversation of “tell me about a moment when you felt awe,” I think that could be a wonderful way – and we’ve done this a few times as well – of trying to think about that kind of question as an opening.

And I know that you talked mostly with scientists. Do you think that that’s a valuable question to be able to bring to religious leaders? And do you think that could be a way of sort of toning down the political rhetoric in this country right now?

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah, I think it was. I didn’t have any explicit questions about religion prepared when I was doing this ,when I designed my interview protocol, even though it was an interest of mine. And prior work that I had done in my doctoral program, I was really interested in, particularly with children: How do children think about religion and science as ways of knowing, and what are the implications of that for how we teach science?

But I really went down this road for exactly the reasons that you just described – that I thought, awe is such a – this unifying experience between religion and science. And that could be such an interesting starting point for discussion. But just given the scope of the study, I wasn’t planning on asking people about religion explicitly, but it came up in probably about a third of the interviews that I did. Some just when people were thinking about how they defined awe – that their minds turned to religion. But I think out of my 30 participants, at least eight or so, unprompted, brought up issues of religion. And they talked about it in a variety of ways. So for some, it was what you’d probably be more likely to expect from scientists, which was that “the awe I get from science is the closest thing I have to religion,” right? So, some scientists, like – “I don’t have an affiliation with an organized religion. I haven’t found the need for it. I get that from science, when I am doing my work or when I am in the field.” Like, “those moments, that experience that I get that enriches my life in the way that religion might enrich some people’s lives. And that’s where I find those experiences.”

But there were also a handful of participants who said, “my work in science has interacted with my own religious beliefs in different ways.” So I had one participant who was a young-Earth creationist when she started college, and she is now a biologist. And she talked about how her views on evolution have changed over time throughout her educational experience. But that has not made her not religious. It has made her reframe her religious worldview, and she’s in some ways more deeply religious because she has thought more critically about what she believes.

And I had another participant who said that s he’d grown up going to church somewhat – hadn’t really been particularly serious about religion. But the more she studied the human genome, the more she felt convinced that there must be some higher power because of just how beautiful the genome was. And that she felt like it was in, some ways, evidence to her of there being something more.

And so, there was a really wide range, even within these scientists, of the ways that awe experiences in science either replaced a need for religion for them or enhanced their religious experiences. So, I think one takeaway from that is that I think we tend to think of different groups as monoliths and, “Oh, all scientists believe X” – and just in my sample, that was certainly not true. There was quite a wide range. And so, I think sharing some of those experiences and humanizing scientists, and saying they believe all kinds of different things that are compatible with their scientific beliefs – “here’s how they go about that, and here are how these experiences have all shaped their understanding and their worldview” – I think that could be a really powerful, powerful narrative to get out there more. And that, I think, could be something that people from a variety of traditions or worldviews could relate to.

Geoff Mitelman: And I think that’s part of the responsibility of religion and religious leaders, of being able to present teachings, values, ideas in a way that is resonant with both scientific findings, but also the deep emotional connection. If people are finding a level of spirituality for some, that’s enough and fantastic. But some are trying to say like, “Well, what do I then do with that?” And there may not be a space, really, or they may not know about a space to be able to say, “Okay, now I can do something with that sense of awe.” And I think part of the responsibility of religious leaders is to be able to both frame it as, you know, “this is where you’re finding your spirituality – that is where you should find your sense of spirituality,” and there are ways to be able to build on that, act on that, if you so choose.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah. And like I said before about there not being a lot of opportunity for reflection, and to think about the impact – I mean, one of the things that strikes me in the research on awe that also motivated the work I was doing was this notion of small self that Paul Piff and other researchers have studied, which is this idea that when you experience awe, you have the sense of feeling small in relation to something larger than the self, that it seems to motivate more pro-social behavior. You have this inclination to contribute to the well-being of the collective that you find yourself a part of. And so, as somebody who previously was a science teacher who was really interested in helping kids, and then helping teachers, who I work with more now, think about “How do we teach science in a way that has this moral underpinning?” That, “Hey, we’re all part of these broader natural systems.” How do we contribute to them in ways that are productive?”

I was really interested in “How can we have this sense of small self in science education?” And even my scientists who are steeped in this work, all day long – that was not at the forefront. Like, they might have gotten into science, especially ones who worked in things like ecology or something – that they may have gotten into science, at least in part, because they were concerned for the environment, but they weren’t telling me things like, “Oh, I had this awe experience, and that makes me more likely to compost, you know, because I had this awe experience. I now, drive a different kind of car that is lower-emissions.” Like, that was not what they were [saying]. I was not hearing stories of, “my experiences of awe directly translate into practical behaviors that benefit the collective, that benefit the environment, that benefit my community.”

Like it was a much [more], when they were talking about impact, it was like, “Oh, it made me see the world in a different way.” Or it’s my motivation, It’s the source of fuel to help me do my work. But they weren’t taking that extra step – “oh, I had this experience, or even this cumulative set of experiences that make me behave in this certain way.”

So, I think there needs to be more intentional prompting if we want to get there – if we want to say we have these experiences, and we want them to shape behavior. We can’t just expect that it’s going to happen on its own – or even if it is, that people are going to be aware of it. I imagine that scientists are probably among the people more likely to behave in environmentally responsible ways overall, but they may not be making that link – like, “Oh, it’s because I’ve had these experiences – that’s why I do these things.” I think it could be useful to try to illuminate some of that. But I think you need that prompting to get there.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, there was an article I remember a couple years ago, that I can’t remember exactly the title of it, but it was, “Do Professors of Ethics Call Their Mother More Often?” And what they discovered was that professors of ethics are actually not any more ethical than regular human beings. And I wonder if there’s something of [how] making that explicit leap may even lower the impact. With, I think, both religion and for elements of science, there’s both the instrumental piece and there’s the intrinsic piece of it. You know, what are we doing for itself? And in Judaism, we talk about this as “Torah l’ishma,” Torah for its own study. So, you know, you don’t study Torah to be able to have better business dealings and make more money – you study Torah to be able to study Torah. And do you experience science for. I think, for a lot of people, for a lot of scientists – ultimately, yes, it’s “I want to be able to help the world in some capacity,” but I would think that they’re studying what they’re studying because it excites them, and it’s interesting for its own sake. And so, making that into maybe a forced comparison or a forced link may actually be counterproductive.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah, that’s interesting. This piece with the scientists was half of my doctoral dissertation, and the other half was a study that I did with adolescents on their experiences of awe and feelings of interconnectedness in the context of summer science programs. And these were programs that were intentionally designed to help kids think about the self in relation to something larger in different ways.

But one of the students was talking to me at the end of the program, and she was saying, “I took this summer class because I was really interested in exploring the possibility of maybe majoring in science.” She was a rising sophomore in college, and she was trying to figure out what she was going to do. And she said, “I thought maybe I’d study science, but now I worry that if I pursue science, I will be studying life instead of living it.” So, she felt like, “maybe I should just be making art and just being in the moment, because if I study science, I’m just going to be thinking about the universe rather than just existing in it.” And so, she had this existential crisis about, “Is science too intellectual, and I should just be living this one life and just embracing the moment, and not studying the minutiae of it?” That was her conundrum.

And obviously, the scientists that I spoke to, they, I think, would not have necessarily seen it that way then. I think for them, this really enriched their life, to be able to understand the universe in their field with that level of detail and expertise. But I think there is, as you said, something to be said for over-intellectualizing it to the point that you can lose the magic that makes something awe-inspiring to begin with. And if every time you’re in that awe moment you say, like, “Oh, and because of this I really need to, you know, recycle more…” (laughs)

Geoff Mitelman: Right, right.

Megan Cuzzolino: Really, you know, and I think also when we think about “One individual can only do so much,” and we think about, “Well, I should really be writing a letter to my congressperson because it’s really, you know, corporations are really to blame…” Like, you can just spiral and all of a sudden, you’re no longer in the moment.

Geoff Mitelman: Right.

Megan Cuzzolino You can feel kind of powerless. So, I think striking that balance, where you can just sort of live in the moment while it’s happening, but then maybe have some sort of reflective practice that helps you think about, over time, what are the accumulation of these experiences doing to your psyche, and how are they informing the way that you understand the world. And maybe a broader philosophy for how you behave in the world, rather than specific concrete behaviors, but more just, “I’m going to be a good steward of the Earth because I have these experiences in the remote wilderness and they make me want to protect it, and so I’m going to try to live in a way that honors that.”

Geoff Mitelman: Well, you mentioned – and you talked a little bit about this – about kids and teaching. And I think that’s a really key element, and finding awe and curiosity particularly. And I’ve got two young kids. My five-year-old is deep into a show called Wild Krats, which was on PBS. And now he is coming out with all these great things, like, “Did you know this about the aardvark?”

And we’re walking and sometimes he goes, “Look at the ants that are running around here!” And I think that probably as we get older, we lose that sense of awe and majesty and wonder that five-year-olds have. And we sort of laugh at it and say, like, “Okay, that’s really cute.” But there is a level of wide eyed wonder that young kids have.

Where do you see ideas or recommendations or thoughts about bringing these awe experiences into – whether that’s public school, K-12, [but] I think this is also really key and very applicable in religious settings. How do you tap into that sense of awe in a Jewish or a Catholic or a Protestant setting? Because that’s, ultimately, what we’re trying to inculcate as well. What are some of the thoughts that you’ve seen? Because I know you’ve done some research on this, and done a lot of work on helping future teachers to be able to think about these questions.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah, I think that the authenticity of those experiences – and we were talking about the seeing something with your own eyes for the first time, and how it gets harder to have those novel experiences as you get older. I mean, I think the scientists in my research were having those same kind of moments when they were having these opportunities for discovery that kids are having when they’re turning over a rock in the woods. It just takes more and more to get to that novelty the more experiences you’ve had. And a kid who’s seeing something for the first time, it’s easier to find those – you know, more things in some ways will instill or elicit awe, although in other ways, I think having some context to make sense of it, like we said, and some understanding, is also useful.

But I think so much of what we do in school science is these cookbook labs where the kids know, like, “I’m going through the motions and the teacher already has a result that they’re expecting me to get. And so I’ve just got to follow these steps…” they know that they’re not doing real science, and that they’re just trying to follow a recipe. And so I think giving kids the opportunity to experience something that feels more authentic to the process of discovery, whether that’s participating in real science – citizen science projects, or other things where you’re actually contributing to real scientific research in some ways. But I think, also, simulations that give kids an experience of “this is what it was like.”

So, when I was teaching elementary and middle school science, I would try to do that. One example that comes to mind is with third graders in our geology unit. I did this Pangea activity with them where I started giving kids a kit with just a couple pieces of information. So they had a map of the world, and they had some information from the fossil record – you know, “This fossil showed up on this coast, and it also showed up on this one way over here.” And I started to kind of dole out more information little by little. And as they would ask for things, with the idea that they would be able to reach the conclusion that, “Oh, these continents that are now separated look like they maybe used to be connected.” If you look at South America and Africa and what they look like, you know, that they would kind of get there through the information. And then once they had gotten there, we could then say, “Okay, this is Alfred Wegener. He advanced the theory of continental drift.” And, you know, “Here was what it was like for him to experience this looking at the same information that you just did, and how interesting must it have been for him and his colleagues to have this realization that, ‘Hey, all these continents used to be fused together. Isn’t that crazy?’”

And so, I don’t think you have to do any – you know, that was like pieces of paper that I could cut up and pictures that I printed out. And so I don’t think we need a lot of bells and whistles. I think we can get kids to have that kind of discovery experience without all the resources in the world to do it. But I think we do need support for educators and others who are working with kids to be able to come up with activities like that, and to facilitate them in effective ways.

But I think creating that feeling of discussion, discovery, and noticing it when it’s happening organically – so, I also think about when my first graders were sitting on the rug, and we were trying to do something else, and then all of a sudden they were saying, “Hey, as we’re pouring water into this beaker, we can still fit more. It looks full, but with this dropper we can keep going and it’s not spilling.” And we just all laid on our bellies with the dropper adding more and more drops to see that meniscus form. I scrapped the lesson because they wanted to do that, and I think it was a more powerful experience for them. But again, there was – I had flexibility. I was teaching at an independent school where we did not have high-stakes testing. I was not beholden to some external set of parameters that said “you’ve got to get through this lesson today or else.” So, we could scrap it and use an eyedropper and water for 20 minutes.

So I think that there are a lot of structures, at least in formal educational settings, that are prohibitive for teachers who want to just kind of run with kids’ innate curiosity and those awe moments – that I think in other places, perhaps in religious settings or informal learning, you might have more flexibility to be able to just notice those moments and run with them.

Geoff Mitelman: And I wonder if there’s something that’s valuable, of the better questions you have, the more knowledge that you have in advance. So there’s value in coming at it with a beginner’s mind and being able to be amazed. But I think there’s even more value of when they already kind of know, and have a scaffolding to be able to find deeper connections and bigger connections. Well, I think that there probably are some very significant challenges with K-through-12 education with testing and metrics and all of these different pieces. But are there ways of saying, “Okay, once you have this baseline of knowledge, what are some new questions that we can, that we can create and move down in this way?”

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah – well, I should, in that vein, shout out – there’s an organization called the Right Question Institute. I did a little work with them many years ago. You’re nodding.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah – actually, we’ve used them, and I’ll tell a story when you’re done. So, go ahead.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah. But for anyone who’s watching and is interested in “How do you help kids or adults ask better questions that get you to more interesting answers?” And more sort of effective questioning that can help you get to the answers you’re looking for – they have some really great, very sort of basic but effective strategies of just being able to brainstorm questions and choose the best ones. And there are really great resources available for teachers and anybody who’s trying to help themselves, or kids, or learners that they work with ask better questions.

Geoff Mitelman: And hopefully – actually, as we’re talking, I worked with them a little bit now almost 10 years ago, and hopefully, maybe they can be a guest on this show. But we use that when we were training seventh graders to write a d’var torah, because in synagogues all across North America, seventh graders have to read sections of the Torah and then interpret it. And it’s hard enough translating it from English to English, let alone Hebrew to English. And it’s often decoupled. And yet, the questions that the Torah raises are very universal questions. So, we actually used the Right Question Institute, and the quality of the divrei torah shot way up because they were able to generate better questions. And then we were able to say, “Okay, the questions that you’re asking are great questions. And by the way, they’re the same questions that people have asked for thousands of years, and you didn’t even know that – but look, the question that you asked was this brilliant rabbi from 1200 years ago that was asking that question. So let’s see, what did they say? And now how do you react to that?”

And I think that’s how science works also, right? Like, “Oh, that’s what prompted Newton to be able to have this experiment. That’s where Galileo started to think about these kinds of questions.”

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah. I mean, my scientists talked about how another thing that generated awe from them was being part of this lineage of scientists that extended for, you know, throughout humanity. And that they were saying, “Well, maybe I’m not doing work that’s going to win a Nobel Prize, but I am chipping away at this kind of human project of contributing to our greater understanding of how the universe works, and so were all of these famous scientists that I revere from centuries ago, and the journey continues for generations to come.” And so, I think knowing that you’re part of that enterprise – that’s powerful in and of itself.

Geoff Mitelman: And I think part of the fun of science, at least, is being able to be surprised. And again, something that we watch with our kids is Mythbusters – which, unfortunately, there are no longer new episodes, but there are a lot of great ones there. We started watching it last year. So my kids are six and four. And what we would do is, the Mythbusters would ask a question, and we would pause and we would say, “Okay, what do you think is going to happen?” And then we were able to predict, and sometimes we were right, and sometimes we were wrong. And sometimes we were wondering, “Okay, why do we think it’s not going to work?” Or, “Why do we think it is going to work?” And then they would show why that experiment did or didn’t work in this way, or how could they change the parameters? And that’s the kind of thing that I think can really get people excited about science – it’s a fun question. I don’t think we’re going to bring explosives to public schools like the Mythbusters did, but being able to say, “Here’s this question. What’s your prediction? What do you think is going to happen and why?” I don’t think that happens enough in science classes in K-12, at least.

Megan Cuzzolino: No, you’re right. I think that’s also something that teachers could use some more support for, as it’s hard enough to just get through your day. You’re preparing lessons, and you’re just hoping it all goes according to plan. And the more you invite those organic questions, the more your lesson is going to stop going according to plan. And so I think being prepared for that, and thinking, “If a kid asks a question that I don’t know the answer to or that changes the direction of the lesson, how can I be flexible and go with that?”

And I think, just to get back to the science and religion piece as well, I think the more we allow kids to just ask the questions that are on their minds, the more they may ask questions that delve into the spiritual or the philosophical realm and that we also have to be prepared for as educators – that those are the kinds of questions that might come up. And I think, especially in public schools, we’re so hesitant to invite conversations that might delve into religion. We don’t want that happening in the classroom because we’re afraid [that] we’re going to get a call from a parent, or we might say something that offends, or that if we acknowledge that religion exists, somebody’s going to think that it means we’re preaching. But kids are not blank slates. They’re coming with life experience. Even kindergarteners are coming with whatever they’ve been taught from the adults and other people in their lives that are informing the way that they are going to understand science. And that we know from research on learning that you’re going to be a much more effective teacher if you know where your learner is starting from, because that can help both illuminate misconceptions or gaps in understanding, but also be a bridge to say, “Okay, this is an understanding that you have. Let me take that prior knowledge you have and build on it to help you understand something more deeply.”

And I think we really face that challenge – in schools, in particular – of, how do we let kids feel free to ask whatever questions are on their minds when we’re worried about how are we going to handle it? And a kid says – I remember in the essay I wrote to be a fellow for Sinai and Synapses, I talked about a first grader who asked me, in a lesson on matter, “What was the first matter? Where did it come from?” And those are big questions. And so, I think we have to be prepared for that. And we have to support educators who are working with kids to help them think about “How am I going to address those?” Because those can be such rich opportunities for learning. But you have to be ready for it.

Geoff Mitelman: Right. And trained. And the school systems also have to be able to allow for that. I mean, that’s a whole systemic question of K-12 education that is certainly above my pay grade, but it’s something that I think is really important, of being able to think about these questions philosophically – not necessarily theologically, particularly in public school, right (I think you’re right that we’re hesitant to think about these questions theologically), but I think we can approach them philosophically. And also, to think about them from a perspective of metacognition, of how and why are they thinking about these questions? And that’s something that I think can be really key to be able to have a deeper and richer understanding of whatever topic they’re looking at as to how that connects to other fields, how that connects to our body of knowledge, how we feel about it – whether that’s history, whether that’s politics, whether that’s science, whether that’s mathematics, of how and why this body of knowledge is valuable and may make us uncomfortable, and being able to live with that discomfort.

Megan Cuzzolino: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that idea of structural knowledge, of how do pieces of information fit together and interact, what are the relationships, is such a – that’s really important to the development of expertise. There’s a whole body of literature on that, and I think we’re so focused on facts and getting the information crammed into kids’ heads. But I think you’re right, that stepping back and saying “How do these bodies of knowledge or disciplinary perspectives fit together, and how can they all contribute to our understanding?” is so important.

Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, and that’s why your work is so interesting and so fascinating and helping us really appreciate the value of awe and how that can be so generative. And I think that’s something that we often forget, that the awe experience has a wonderful – as you said, for most people it feels good, however we define what feeling good is, but that it also can be create new questions and create new opportunities and create new connections. And just – how not only do we find those moments of awe, but I think even more importantly, how do we articulate those moments of awe and reflect on them, and how they can impact who we are? And I think that’s a really key takeaway, I think, for me.

Megan Cuzzolino: I’m glad to hear you say that. And I’m hoping to be able to continue this research. It was such a pleasure to do this work with scientists, and to be able to then live in the data afterwards and have – it was a very meta experience for me, to be able to reflect on all of these other people’s awe experiences and have that kind of “What does this all mean for my own life?” So, it’s been fun to sort of swim in this water for the past few years.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, if people want to follow you, your Twitter handle – if I remember, it’s @MeganPowellCuzzolino, right?

Megan Cuzzolino: That’s right.

Geoff Mitelman: So, as she writes more papers and moves on this trajectory, you should follow her and see the kind of work that she’s working on. So, Megan, thank you for taking the time to talk about your work and all the exciting subjects that you’re delving into here.

Megan Cuzzolino: Thank you so much. This is really fun. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, we’re looking forward to continuing to be in conversation and we thank all of you for joining us. You can follow us on Twitter at Sinai Synapses or you can follow me. I’m Rabbi Mitelman. We’re also on social media. You can follow us there. We have this conversation Every Tuesday at 2pm Eastern.

Next week is going to be our conversation with Professor Julien Musolino of Rutgers University, who’s written a book called The Soul Fallacy. How do we understand about the soul from a scientific perspective and what does it mean from a religious perspective? And what do we understand about our knowledge about this world?

So, a lot of these wonderful philosophical conversations over these last couple of weeks. So we hope you will join us. And thank you all for taking the time this afternoon. And thank you, Megan.

Megan Cuzzolino: Great to talk with you.