Human Flourishing Conference Wrap-up with Dr. Andrew Serazin, Heather Templeton Dill, Dr. Duncan Astle & Maritza Trejo
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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert. And along with journalist Richard Sergei, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing. We've been so thrilled to share details with you in the lead up to the first ever Global Annual Conference on Human Flourishing. And today, we're going to bring a bit of the conference directly to you.

You'll remember that the annual Flourishing Conference included both a virtual gathering as well as in-person, on-location workshops in the US, UK, South America, Africa, and elsewhere. There was so much valuable information and conversation that we had a hard time choosing which to share. So, we're bringing you a bit of everything. ♪

We'll start with the dynamic opening remarks from Dr. Andrew Sarazin and his colleague and friend, Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation. These two leaders set the scene for the conference. Here's Dr. Sarazin. Dear friends and colleagues, welcome to the first Global Scientific Conference on Human Flourishing.

The world we envision for our children and future generations is prosperous, peaceful, full of meaning and purpose, of joy and discovery, of gratitude and love. These hopes have been a constant throughout our human civilization. They are the subject of ancient faiths and philosophies, ballads, and contemporary policy debates. But although these aspirations are universal, the path to achieve them requires a fundamental rethink.

The breakthroughs that we need to solve our current global challenges, to transform our energy usage, to prevent the next pandemic, to live peaceably together in democracies, will come from people working and living together cooperatively, not just from technical wizardry or top-down legal dictates.

And to get the best from people, we must understand how and why people from different cultures around the world can flourish together, even amidst tremendous adversity. Our speakers represent a diversity of viewpoints, experiences, and geographies, but our ultimate goal is to translate different aspects of the science of flourishing into real, concrete action together. I know that is why I'm here, to motivate action in the real world.

But why are we hosting this conference now? Well, flourishing as a societal aspiration has deep roots in our culture and history. But it is only recently that scientists have demonstrated it is possible to empirically measure and study flourishing in its different dimensions. And yet, despite this progress, we have multiple conceptual frameworks and many different answers to the question, what is human flourishing?

And we'll have the opportunity to debate those views during several panels and presentations throughout the next two days. But most of us here agree that when humans flourish, it means we're on a journey toward a life that is holistically good, a life that goes beyond physical or mental well-being and financial security. Flourishing means a life that is well-lived, full of hope and gratitude, meaning, purpose, and transcendence.

A growing scientific literature, towards which many of you here have contributed, offers powerful examples about how science can inform new interventions and new policies. One of my favorite examples is the burgeoning topic of forgiveness. Over the past 30 years, careful study of the concept of forgiveness has helped us measure some of the underlying physiological benefits of practicing this virtue by reducing anxiety, stress, and hypertension.

At the same time, forgiveness is an important tool for social cohesion, which can facilitate stronger relationships, the pursuit of justice, and may lead to group reconciliation. You'll hear an intimate example of this today during our exciting session with author Cheryl Strayed and the artist Milk. Another powerful example of the dynamic link between science and action is that of gratitude.

Gratitude is the natural response to benevolence, whether that benefactor is a stranger, a loved one, the planet, or the divine. Among many other benefits, gratitude has been linked to sustainability and environmental action by reducing a person's usage of limited resources. These studies show that people who experience gratitude towards nature are morally concerned and intrinsically motivated to act responsibly, and they take action more readily in their own lives.

The theories and practical applications will be discussed tomorrow in our sessions on climate change and other global challenges to human flourishing. A third example relates to joy and self-worth as drivers of good health and healthcare. In Pakistan, arts and storytelling are being tested as a tool to motivate healthcare workers.

In Zimbabwe, researchers are now investigating whether reduction in HIV viral load and increased compliance with medication is mediated through campaigns focused on acceptance and hope. We'll hear about the connection between human flourishing and health and well-being in an upcoming session on aging.

To me, I think these different studies illustrate a new kind of paradigm for science. Instead of seeking to create external technologies, the science of human flourishing focuses on strengthening our innate capacities and scaffolding of human potential. And to me, this is science at its best. Rigorous conceptual thinking combined with data, experimentation, and innovations.

But we're only at the beginning of this broader exploration of the science of human flourishing. And the field is not without its blind spots. Most research conducted to date has been conducted in a very limited geographic and cultural zone, that of Western, English-speaking, higher-income countries. This leaves out the majority of the people in the world and must be corrected.

I'm pleased to report that a new global study seeks to begin to change this bias. The Global Flourishing Study is a collaboration between researchers at Baylor University, Harvard University, the Gallup Organization, the Center for Open Science, and a consortium of funders, including the three Templeton Philanthropies. This $43 million initiative will follow 240,000 individuals from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries over five years.

The annual data collection will track a broad range of well-being outcomes and represents an important step in creating a deep longitudinal data set that can be mined for decades to come. Today, we'll hear more about this landmark study and hear expert panelists consider what else do we need to know.

This conference is also intended to be a platform to announce new initiatives. Today, I'm so pleased to announce a new request for proposals from the Templeton World Charity Foundation through our $20 million Listening and Learning in a Polarized World initiative. I think we can all agree that polarization is a critical obstacle for solving existential problems like climate change, war, and famine.

TWCF will fund a series of research efforts to take a systematic look at what are the underlying mechanisms and models behind polarization that can be problematic, which mechanisms are universal, which are culturally specific. So whether you're in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the US or Europe, what is the same and what is different? You can learn more about this request for proposals at templetonworldcharity.org. And finally, I just want to thank all of you for joining us today.

I'd also like to thank our media partner, Scientific American, as well as our fantastic journalist moderators. The conference program was guided by a deep engagement from our world-class program advisory committee, including Amina Abubakar, Yuria Seledwen, David De Steno, Bob Emmons, Mark Fabian, Matthew Lee, Michael Muthukrishna, Laurie Santos, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, and Rodney Smith.

Now, Sir John Templeton, the founder of the three Templeton philanthropies, said that we are just now emerging into a blossoming time for humanity. And periods of difficult change, transition, and challenge are ripe opportunities to drive progress and to explore different ideas of what it means to thrive. And science is one of our most powerful gifts, not only to understand our experience, but to reimagine it for the better.

We expect over 3,000 participants for this two-day conference, which signals to me that despite the challenges we face, there exists a critical mass of engaged individuals who are committed to making a difference. We look forward to working with all of you over the next years to build this vital field and to forge a path for all humans to flourish. So now please join me in welcoming Sir John Templeton's granddaughter and president of the John Templeton Foundation, Heather Templeton Dill.

Thank you, Andrew, and good day to colleagues and friends from all around the world. Today is Sir John's birthday, and I am thrilled to add my own welcome to all of you who have joined the Global Scientific Conference on Human Flourishing. Sir John's life began in the United States, in a state called Tennessee,

From an early age, he was allowed to explore first his local surroundings, then to college in New England, graduate school in the United Kingdom, and an amazing trip around the world where he came face to face with different forms of business and commerce, different religious traditions, and places where humans flourished in ways he had never experienced. This trip around the world helped my grandfather appreciate the wisdom and insights that existed outside of the United States and outside of the West.

And when he sold his mutual fund business in 1992, he dedicated himself to exploring the mysteries of the natural world and of the human spirit by creating philanthropic entities to carry out his philanthropic vision for human flourishing. Like many concepts, human flourishing is something that we need to study and to understand. There may be different ways to describe human flourishing. We need to know more about how to measure human flourishing.

We need to recognize the different domains of flourishing, which include well-being across many aspects of life, including especially for Sir John Templeton, spiritual flourishing, love, forgiveness, beauty, and purpose. It is possible to research all of these concepts. And so I invite you on behalf of my grandfather and his mission to make the world a better place to explore human flourishing.

to learn about the research that we are funding, and to understand the application of the findings from such research to the human experience in the 21st century.

Sir John said that we can help create a more meaningful and fruitful world by our thoughts, feelings, consciousness, and actions. We can reflect that inner realization of unlimited love, compassion, kindness, honesty, integrity, strength, and a sense of our purpose in life to every person and situation in our area of experience. I hope this conference sparks more conversation.

more research, and a greater commitment to human flourishing. We begin by watching the trailer to Contrarian, a documentary film about Sir John Templeton. You can find the full version at templeton.org. Thank you for joining, and thank you to Andrew Sarazin and our colleagues at the Templeton World Charity Foundation for drawing attention to the science of human flourishing. When you see the many scandals in the investment world,

John Templeton was honest. John was the ultimate contrarian. He pioneered global investing.

He looked all over the world for investments. John Templeton was way ahead of his time in the emerging markets. John's whole theory was you buy bargains. Every crisis, John Templeton was in the midst of it. I was there in 1987. People were panicked beyond comprehension. John, John, what do we do? And he said, let's go find stocks to buy. The glass was always that full, John.

He was not interested in the trappings of wealth. He traveled economy. He was very conscious of not wasting a dollar a minute of time. It was work, work, work. He predicted the housing bubble bursting. He was the first rock star investor. He had the golden touch. He started to become more spiritually curious. The big questions were always bigger than big. Was heaven possible?

I've rarely met somebody who had more curiosity than he. So he wanted to gather around him heretical, unusual, imaginative thinkers to think with him about the great problems. He was a Tennessee mystic. The scientific community would say, "Oh, you know, John, you can't possibly do scientific research on love. There's just nothing there."

He expected some criticism. John Templeton stuck to his convictions through hell and high water. But it all boils down to that last question: Why are we here? How little we know, how eager to learn. He cared about doing something that could have a major revolutionary effect. He will never be forgotten, and he will never be outdone.

Even though we listeners don't have the pleasure of the visual images, I wanted to leave in the audio of the documentary about Sir John Templeton because his spirit, his curiosity, courage, and generosity runs through every episode we bring you on the Stories of Impact podcast, just as it infuses every Templeton initiative.

Hearing a little more about his story always leaves me feeling awakened to new possibilities. We'll link to the documentary in the show notes, and I hope you'll take the time to enjoy the full film yourself.

We'll come back to speak with Dr. Sarazin about what he took away from this year's event, as well as what's in store for the future of the Human Flourishing Conference. But first, we want to give you a look into two of the nine inspiring in-person workshops. We'll start with one of the participants in the Bogota, Colombia workshop on character development and flourishing in Latin America.

She shares the results of an innovative international nonprofit program implementing a character strengths initiative into after-school programs in a part of the world suffering from pervasive violent crime.

My name is Maritza Trejo and I'm the Regional Director for Education Programs for Glasswing. I had the opportunity actually to come back to El Salvador when I just graduated from Berkeley with my political science degree and I came to do some volunteering work for a year and I just really fell in love with the organization and with Glasswing I really felt that connection with everything I've been doing as a volunteer for my life.

So I've got a master's in education now, so I really focus now more on education, specifically working in public schools and at-risk communities, making sure that students have opportunities that enable a thriving life.

Classroom is about creating opportunities for youth. We work in all of Central America, but most of our work is in the Northern Triangle, which, as you know, it's been inflicted with a lot of social problems, mainly poverty and violence.

We focus on the strengths of the community and enable people, including youth, to be their own change makers. And so in the schools, we provide after school programs and we connect students with positive role models to enable them to thrive.

Trejo and her colleagues work with students ages 8 to 18 years old, from families with low or unstable incomes, from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, where there's a lot of social violence, including gang violence, incarcerated parents, exposure to alcohol and drugs.

Each year, Glasswing works with 10,000 students throughout Central America, Mexico, the U.S., Dominican Republic, and Colombia in after-school programs.

we understood that context matters and what might be valuable or a character strength for me when I lived in the United States might be a little bit different for one of my kids living in a community where there's constant threat of violence. And so we wanted to really first talk to the students

And through a participatory process in a dialogue, talk to them about what are the character strengths that for them, for the most valuable or the most useful in their context. So what are those strengths that youth in difficult situations have?

find most useful for their lives. Creativity, perspective, courage, perseverance, self-control, social intelligence, and hope. When the researchers came back to us, there was one strength that didn't come across in the reviews that they did, but it was one of the top character strengths that our students pointed out that it was very important to them, and it was courage.

The main or the biggest conclusion that we're very excited about and we sort of expected, right, that was our hypothesis, that it does make a difference to have an explicit curriculum that teaches character strengths so that it protects the children from negative impacts of violence or neglect in a much more

profound way than just the after school program. So the main insight for us is that, yes, the after school programs that we have been developing for the past 15 years

are protecting our students, are enabling these protective factors that students in these situations need in order to thrive. But adding character strengths, learning component to this afterschool program really enhances the protective factor in these children and enables them to face adversity and have better wellbeing. I think

The central basis of all of our programming with youth is about allowing them to thrive, to have a better life in the present and also in the future. And human flourishing, I think, is an aspect that

all humans deserve, right, to have a flourished life. And we see that through the character strengths programming, we provided these tools for students and also language for them to enable themselves to take advantage of opportunities that are presented to them to go out and look for these opportunities as well and allow them to flourish.

Like Maritza Trejo, the leader of the in-person conference workshop that took place in Cambridge, England, is devoted to the education and flourishing of young people.

Dr. Duncan Assel, a program leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, led a conversation with an audience of researchers, practitioners, people who work in charity, advocacy, and policy, and people who have been through the education system who are themselves neurodivergent, seeking better understanding of diverse trajectories to good developmental outcomes.

Here's Dr. Assel. Certainly in the UK, there's for a long time been a relatively narrow focus on what school success looks like. So for instance, if you get to the end of primary school and you've got your level four reading and maths, that's success. And we don't really ask many questions beyond that. That's how the government would capture success. I think people are becoming increasingly aware that actually surely there is a lot more

to what we want to achieve with an education system than those kind of crude benchmarks. And the benchmarks surely should be different for each child. We need to start having the conversation about what does a good education system look like and what does success look like at the end of it? And how do we marry that up with the idea that each child is different? What is a good outcome for any given child?

And how do we put together the growing science that we have about how our brains develop and how we are all developing differently with a system of education that seeks to achieve good outcomes for each child? How do we kind of marry those two things together? What are the barriers to learning? What are the barriers to well-being? What are the ingredients of a good school inclusion policy? How do we marry up this idea that there'll be different kids in the school with different needs?

And what would a good school level policy look like for how we ensure that they get the most out of their school experience? And then what would a good national level inclusion policy look like? In order to understand what does a good educational system, what does a good school experience look like?

it has to embrace a lot of things outside what we might consider to be the traditional confines of education, because ultimately school is much more than that. And I think that ultimately underpins why we think an interdisciplinary approach is really necessary. When we realise that what happens in their school experience actually lays a foundation that often stays with that person for the rest of their life. It isn't just where is the kid or the young person at the end of their school experience.

and how will that serve them in the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Those early trajectories can impact all sorts of aspects of, for instance, mental and physical health. If you have difficulties in literacy or numeracy, you're six times more likely to experience a mental health difficulty when you get to adolescence. So empirically, there is a really strong relationship between how one does at school, academically, and mental health.

Is it that spending years being told that you're not great at things like literacy and numeracy isn't great for your well-being? Is it the case that if you are experiencing high levels of anxiety and really poor mood, it makes it really hard to engage in learning? Or is it that there are certain cognitive skills like the ability to kind of regulate thought and emotion that

are really important for not only learning but also for mental health. And I think probably all three of those things can be true. Difficulties in learning can start to trigger difficulties in mental health. Difficulties in mental health can start to trigger difficulties in learning. And both of those things can be downstream consequences of underlying difficulties. Solutions might be decades in the making.

But in the meantime, there's a growing awareness in schools, society and government that changes need to be made. The idea that we have co-creation, that we envisage young people as active learners who need to be actively in a kind of controlling role in the way that learning is constructed in the classroom. You can imagine that to many policymakers or even to many parents, that feels like a risky decision.

approach and the default always seems to be that you return to this quite traditional model of teacher-led learning from the front of the class and it seems to me that to adjust that requires us to be willing to take a degree of calculated risk. My suspicion is that innovative practices like that probably likely result in better learning in the long run. But I think it all comes down to how willing are we to change our model for education and the way that we assess whether it's successful.

I think that there is no single definition of flourishing, but that somewhere in there has to be that each person has the capacity to pursue their dreams and to achieve their goals on their own terms. And I think that will vary across different individuals, across cultures, geographically, and that that poses a real opportunity, but also challenge for designing an education system.

What is an education system for such that each person who experiences it has an increased chance of flourishing, not just whilst there, but for the rest of their lives? And that's, for me, how this kind of all comes back to the idea of flourishing. It's providing someone with the opportunity to pursue their own goals on their own terms. And to me, surely that has to be at the heart of what a good education system does.

I wish we could bring you more of the virtual and in-person conference conversations, because I know they would all ignite new thinking about the role of human flourishing in every aspect of our lives and in our personal development, which can, of course, continue no matter what stage of life we're in.

But we'll close today's episode with Dr. Andrew Sarazin, reaffirming what the Human Flourishing Conference accomplished, why it matters, and how it will continue to have an impact in the years to come. The mission of the first annual global conference on human flourishing was to create a space for the whole field to

to think, feel, and to act together. So we had scientists represented, we had practitioners, we had innovators and technology developers, we had communicators, we had artists, and we had policymakers. So really the mission was to gather all of those people together in one platform. And what an amazing platform it was. Ten panel discussions, nine global workshops,

over 150 scientific abstracts which were displayed in a virtual gallery, over 50 speakers and a live audience of registered participants of about 4,000 people. The question, what is human flourishing? What was clear to me was that there are robust, universal aspirations that different people share that we may not have all of the pieces together, but I think we're going to be coming to more of a robust answer

with a few caveats. And I think we had some very, very fascinating discussion about things that are kind of on the frontier of us measuring. So beauty and aesthetics and relationship between creativity and beauty and what that provides in terms of meaning for people and meaning making institutions. Very fascinating research that was presented on how

elderly nuns who in many respects are flourishing despite their infirmity, but some protective factors. Other research presented on incarcerated men who are facing life sentences and

their ability to generate meaning in really the most dire circumstances imaginable in their lives. So I think while there is a sense of these sort of universal features of flourishing, there's a lot to learn in different contexts to supplement some of those things. And I think that's going to make this discussion just much more enriching over the future. And that's individual panels shining a light on something like creativity and music and beauty

on the one hand, or on the other hand, adversity, really taking a look at why we should be hopeful no matter what circumstances we're in and really shining a light on people who flourish despite really tough situations. I don't think about this as a unified theory. I think there are some human universals, but there are different dimensions. So thinking about human flourishing, number one, as a process, not an end state,

So it's dynamic, it's an aspirational goal. But then there are different dimensions of that. For example, work on gratitude. There are all these benefits to gratitude, right? And those are the same benefits when you talk about forgiveness.

There is a sense that it doesn't matter where you start on the flourishing journey, I think, or in these different dimensions of flourishing. If you find a way to practice, or societies and institutions find a way to promote different means of flourishing in different contexts, they all go the same direction, actually.

Fundamentally, we're all human. There are going to be different contextual features that are more salient depending on the circumstances of the individual or the group, but I think there are some universal features because the outcomes that we report, whether it's in gratitude or forgiveness or any other kind of intervention, all kind of point towards the same thing. Science is the most reliable form of knowledge that humans have.

But without broader inspiration from culture, from arts, from creativity, from religious perspectives, science is sort of sterile and meaningless in some sense. In fact, actually, one of the more interesting discussions was with Nobel Prize winner and Templeton Prize winner Frank Wilczek, who talked about his practice as a mathematician and physicist.

As a creative act, and you hear that a lot with mathematicians specifically, that for them, logic and creativity and beauty come together in their work in ways that perhaps we don't have otherwise. So I think science is super critical, but one of the most interesting things was actually how science should be in dialogue with other modes of thinking or other modes of being, really.

And it's a combination of those things that's super powerful. Did anything unexpected happen during the conference? I was really surprised by how natural conversations of ultimate meaning or spirituality or religion were.

came up in the conference. I think oftentimes these discussions are scary for academic researchers because they sort of border on spaces which make people who are working within certain disciplines very uncomfortable. These are questions of ultimate purpose and meaning and truth and

And science is really not equipped to answer those questions definitively, right? But I think what was really nice for me to see was that there was a warm embrace of those faith traditions, and then it was incorporated, but in a really great way, not in a dogmatic way. I was struck specifically in the context of the discussion on climate change, where it was felt that by working within faith traditions who have

view that nature has innate value more than just an instrumental value. Nature is not just about providing resources or services in many faith traditions. That's a critical perspective, actually. And we were reminded that 80% of humanity also shares those kinds of perspectives. And so I felt like that was a really amazing way to bring in

different faiths from around the world on a critical topic, but then put that in dialogue with science about communication on climate change just by raising awareness of sea temperature changes or CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Knowledge is really not enough to change behavior and the kind of authority and

place that many faith traditions, including indigenous traditions, play in the world, I think points to sort of, again, more of a recipe for success and a reason to be hopeful. Dr. Sarazin shares his main takeaway from the Human Flourishing Conference. I loved the broad tent. I loved people feeling like

They belonged in a space. We heard over and over that they didn't know that this community existed or this kind of academic work existed, but they were happy to find us and see themselves in that work. So one thing that's going to be really, really important going forward is to connect people

these studies of human psychology and cognition and well-being, but connect those to things that really, really matter. And they matter to a large number of people. So poverty, healthcare, climate action, development of technologies, mental health, all of those kinds of

outcomes that have a much broader purchase in the world and show that this approach, by focusing on what's inside, actually makes a difference. What's next for the Templeton World Charity Foundation, I think, is to continue to invest in this platform, to create networks. There are any number of networks around the world that are talking in similar spaces. I think it's important not to be too precious to

about our approach versus somebody else's approach, but I think there are a growing number of people that recognize some fundamental similarities. So I think all of these things are pointing in a direction which is really similar and that share a lot of key features with human flourishing, which sort of focuses on non-material progress.

progress that is about, you know, really the progress of the human spirit in the most sort of deep and fundamental ways. What this conference showed me was that we can play a critical role in connecting communities that don't know each other already. What does Dr. Sarazin think Sir John Templeton would have thought about the conference? Would he have enjoyed it? Oh, yeah, loved it. I mean, I think...

I think it's such an evolution of the mission of the organization to be open. We have this picture from Sir John of him in the ocean and he's standing looking back towards the shore and his arms are open and open wide and it's an invitation to come in and enjoy the

where he is. And I think that that's what this conference was. It was this open invitation, not in a defensive way, not in a kind of elite way. It was really a welcome, and he would have loved that. I never met Sir John Templeton personally, but I do feel a closeness to him in this third year of our podcast, where we tell stories of the impact that Sir John Templeton still supports, years after he left the Earth.

I think Dr. Sarazin is right. Sir John would have loved the Human Flourishing Conference, and he would love all the projects focusing on the science and art, data and beauty that celebrate and perpetuate the thriving of human beings and planetary beings, whether plant, animal, or environmental.

I'm honored to be a part of extending the story of Sir John, and I hope that whether our episodes focus in on one aspect of flourishing or they're more broad, they do light you up and make you feel that you're a part of something big and rich and connected and purposeful.

We're taking a brief break for the holidays, but we'll be back on January 17th with an episode I am so excited to offer. The story of Kululam, a social musical initiative aimed at empowering communities and strengthening the fabric of society. This episode is going to be amazing. ♪

In the meantime, we at Stories of Impact wish you a holiday season filled with peace, joy, purpose, and meaning. We can't wait to return in the new year. This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergay and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert with senior producer Katie Flood. Music by Alexander Filippiak.

Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer, Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.