Episode 208: Kindness—It’s Good for You!

Courtesy of MIT Press

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On This Episode

We’ve long known that our kindnesses benefit others, but did you know that they also benefit our own health? In this episode, our hosts sit down with the coauthors of a new book, The Biology of Kindness: Six Daily Choices for Health, Well-Being, and Longevity (MIT Press, 2024), that lays out the ways that science has shown prosocial behaviors to benefit us.

This episode was recorded on February 29, 2024.
Released on April 18, 2024.

Guests

Immaculata De Vivo is the Melanie Mason Niemiec ’71 Faculty Codirector of the Sciences at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School for Public Health, and an international leader in the area of molecular and genetic epidemiology of cancer.

Daniel Lumera is a wildlife biologist, a research fellow in the sociology of cultural and communicative processes, and a lecturer and international reference in the area of wellness sciences, quality of life, and the practice of meditation.

Credits

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial manager at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is your cohost, the executive producer of BornCurious, and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

Transcript

Ivelisse Estrada:
Hello, and welcome back to BornCurious, coming to you from Harvard Radcliffe Institute, one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration. This podcast is, like its home, about unbounded curiosity. I’m your cohost, Ivelisse Estrada, and today we have a special guest cohost. Say hello to our producer, Alan Grazioso, who is sitting in for Heather Min on this episode. Hi, Alan.

Alan Grazioso:
How’s it going, Ivelisse? I’m so happy to be here and talk about kindness. It’s such a modest word, but there’s way more to it. In fact, the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the people of Tibet and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, has said, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” So profound, isn’t it, Ivelisse?

Ivelisse Estrada:
I love that. We all know that kindness improves the lives of those with whom we have contact. It eases a bad day, helps us navigate loss, it just makes life better. But what many of us may not know is that it turns out that kindness is good for us biologically. Our guests today are an unexpected pairing—a professor of medicine and epidemiology here at Harvard and a former monk who has studied with one of Gandhi’s disciples. Together, they’ve written a book called The Biology of Kindness, which has just been published in the United States by MIT Press.

Alan Grazioso:
We’ll also note that the connection to this book to Radcliffe is Professor Immaculata De Vivo. She wrote this book with Daniel Lumera, and Immaculata is a faculty codirector of the sciences and one of the most enthusiastic supporters of how the interdisciplinary approach we embrace at Radcliffe can spark pathbreaking work. And today’s conversation is all about that. All right, let’s dive right in. Welcome, Immaculata and Daniel. We’re so happy to have you on BornCurious today.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Thank you very much.

Daniel Lumera:
Thank you.

Ivelisse Estrada:
We are here because you’ve cowritten a book called The Biology of Kindness, which is a sort of hybrid self-help and popular science book. Could you introduce yourselves and give us a little bit of background?

Immaculata De Vivo:
My name is Immaculata De Vivo, and I am a professor here at Harvard. I’m a professor of medicine and a professor of epidemiology. My area of interest has always been cancer and understanding mechanisms—the sort of how. And I underscore the how because that’s also sort of the motivation of this book that I wrote with Daniel.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And what about you, Daniel?

Daniel Lumera:
I am a biologist, but for 11 years I was also a monk from the Indo-Vedic tradition. Right now, I’m in India. I’ve been involved for about 30 years in establishing bridges between science and spirituality, between modern sciences and ancient wisdom, whose values are very, very important for well-being, for health, and for the quality of life.

Alan Grazioso:
We’re curious about your title, Biology of Kindness. How do you each define kindness?

Immaculata De Vivo:
Well, it’s an interesting question. We had the title before we actually had the book. My more recent work that I had done, which revolved around understanding the biological underpinnings of prosocial behaviors. And kindness, to me—the word—sort of is a catch-all for all the good things that one can do to the body and to your DNA, which we will, I’m sure talk about.

Alan Grazioso:
And Daniel, kindness?

Daniel Lumera:
Kindness for me is a quality of consciousness of the deepest and authentic part of ourselves. It’s a process through which we can include the other people, the nature, inside our sense of identity, of being in this life through love, through compassion, through peace, and through silence.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Love that. And now I want to know, how did you two meet? What’s the story there?

Immaculata De Vivo:
So Daniel and I met October of 2019. And people say, “Oh my goodness, you remember that? Like it’s an anniversary.” I go, “Oh yes. For me, it was a life-changing moment.” We met at a scientific meeting, and at this meeting, I was presenting my research that involved describing the biological underpinnings of certain types of lifestyle and behavior. And Daniel was presenting meditation, but from the practice of meditation and also all his work with forgiveness and in prisons and work with children and refugees. And so we immediately were so curious about each other’s work. I presented at that lecture a project that I had done with a psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, at MGH. And we had done a paper that was called “Loving-Kindness Meditation.”

And in this paper, Elizabeth had approached me, as most psychiatrists or social scientist or social epidemiologists have approached me, and they say, “Immaculata, we see these interesting results, but we need a way to put a biological handle on it. And you’ve done so much work measuring behavior, a lifestyle, at the DNA level. Would you like to work with us?” And I said, “Of course, Elizabeth. It sounds like an interesting question. Let’s see what we find.” I remember telling Elizabeth, I said, “Oh my goodness, of all the research papers that I have, I have a paper with the word “love” in the title? I have arrived.”

Daniel Lumera:
The idea of working together with Imma on a project focused on a biology of values, on a biology of kindness—but more than kindness, compassion, gratitude. And by this I mean the translation into biological terms of the impact of values in our bodies resonated very strongly and immediately with my life purpose.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Daniel wanted to write this book, I was like, Oh my goodness, I can’t write a trade book. I’ve only ever written chapters for textbooks on endometrial cancer and cancer epidemiology. And he said, “No, Imma,” which is my Italian name, “We have to write this.” And I said, “Well, why don’t we start with a paper?” He said, “A paper? Oh, no, that’s not going to happen, we have to write a book.” And I remember coming home and thinking, Is this man crazy?

All:
[Laughter]

Daniel Lumera:
Yes, I am. Yes. For me, Immaculata, she embodies a science that has a heart. And our task from the beginning has been to give science a heart and to give spirituality a brain. And so here we are.

Alan Grazioso:
Yeah. So we’re sitting at Radcliffe, and some may say it’s like the piazza of disciplines.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Yes.

Alan Grazioso:
So, you come from such different worlds. What has influenced you to take this on and collaborate on such a project?

Immaculata De Vivo:
It’s a really great question, and I cannot overemphasize the role Radcliffe has played in giving me the courage to write a book like this. I was coming to events here always, and I am trained as a hardcore molecular biologist to understand cancer. And then, slowly but surely, becoming a little bit wider in my research approach, saw that the role of environment has such a huge impact. So this idea of gene environment interactions and how that impacts cancer and then gene environment and how that impacts just aging, ‘cause if you study cancer, you cannot not study aging ‘cause age is the huge risk factor for getting cancer.

I felt that I needed more to feed my curiosity, and I thought that the programming here at Radcliffe was exactly that. And Alan, you say the piazza, the place where we all gather to discuss different things, and so I was absolutely influenced by all the exchange of information and again, the courage, the confidence to say, “Well, I’ve amassed enough research, I think it’s time to share information and write it in such a way that it’s accessible and interesting.” And what better way to do it than to do it with Daniel, who has a similar want and need to express his love of biology through spirituality. My role here as a faculty codirector of sciences, it has given me the courage to allow myself to present my research in a way that we do our public programming: accessible to everyone.

Ivelisse Estrada:
I want to talk about the structure of the book, which I thought was really clever with most of the concepts being introduced by Daniel from a more spiritual and ancient-wisdom perspective, and then Immaculata coming in with: And here’s the science behind that. Here’s how we know that this is good for you. I really appreciated that, so how did you land on that structure?

Daniel Lumera:
In my mind it was clear that book needed two parts. The first one is about values: kindness, gratitude, optimism, happiness, forgiveness. And then how to live these values every day, how to transform every value in a way of thinking, of feeling, of acting. And so, in this way, two parts of our brain, creativity and then rationality, to join together science and spirituality,

Immaculata De Vivo:
The valori, as we say in Italian. Everyone should know that this book was originally written in Italian, and then it’s been translated into Spanish and now in English.

Alan Grazioso:
Just want to interject here, for our non–Italian speaking listeners, valori is the Italian word for values.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Yes. And Daniel came up with the valori and the strategia, and he would say to me, “What’s the science on this? And what’s the science on that?” I said, “Well, it’s really difficult to measure kindness, whether it’s a questionnaire or in the lab.” And then also bring in where we do have heart science, like happiness, for instance, was the Framingham Heart Study. And then optimism—which I was asked to be part of this optimism group at the Harvard School of Public Health—Laura Kubzansky and her group showed that optimistic people live longer, and there’s a very good, very well-cited PNAS paper on optimism and longevity. And so when there’s longevity in the room, it’s like, Oh, why don’t we look at Immaculata? Because she studies the most famous or biological marker of longevity, which is telomeres.

And again, it’s a recurrent story of this book because the research that’s in this book is in this book because I have such great wonderful friends that have brought me in into their world to try to understand the biological pinnings. Is there a link at the molecular level? This is the question we often ask. And at the DNA level, especially with telomeres, once you’ve shortened them, you don’t get it back.

Alan Grazioso:
Telomeres, we have a lot of questions about telomeres.

Ivelisse Estrada:
I’ve been saying it wrong, I thought it was telomeres.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Oh, no, you can say it both ways.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Oh, you can say it both ways, okay. So can you give a brief description for our listeners?

Immaculata De Vivo:
Telomeres are described as the shoelaces, sort of like the plastic on the shoelaces. And this may be lost on a lot of people in the audience because very few shoes now have shoelaces. But in the days when there were shoelaces, there were these plastic caps, and the caps at the end of your shoelaces essentially were there to keep the shoelaces from fraying. And so these telomeres, the bits of DNA at the end of your chromosome, serve the same purpose: it’s to keep the chromosome from falling apart, essentially, in scientific terms is like genomic instability.

Alan Grazioso:
So telomeres are in every cell in our body.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Yes, so Alan, all our cells, all our chromosomes, both ends of the chromosomes have telomere. And your telomeres are a function—the length, so to speak—are a function not just of your genetics but also of your environment. It makes someone like me, who’s interested in the role of gene environment, super amenable. And so they’ve caught the imagination, Alan, not just of scientists, but of the public because they are associated with a biological aging because they are the cell’s clock, as the cell gets older, your telomeres get shorter. And that’s a function of, I don’t want to be too technical, but cell proliferation or replication, but also oxidative stress and inflammation. And so over time, progressively, you lose the bits of the DNA. So why do we care? Well, and you can see—I’ve studied centenarians—you can see that a 103-year-old—in this case, women—and you look at their biological age, they have the biological age of a 70-year-old.

So this idea of using an objective measure to assess aging at the molecular level is very appealing. And because a lot of research, not just—mine is just a tiny drop in the bucket—but the UK Biobank did a huge, I mean, hundreds of thousands of samples over the years have shown that the impact of lifestyle. Telomeres shorten over time, so who cares? Yeah, what we care about is accelerated shortening so that it’s much quicker than what the numbers should be. And the numbers are individual, how much people lose. And that’s again, a function of your genetics and how much life you lived or live as I like to say. So it is individual. So the idea is that if there’s a way to sort of buffer accelerated shortening, this would be good for your health because what you’re doing is, as things get older, you are at risk for chronic disease. And so if you can sort of set back and prevent the accelerated aging so you don’t get the chronic disease earlier, you’re doing great things for your health—and again, by extension, your longevity.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Let me tell you my initial reaction to the book, which was anxiety.

All:
[Laughter]

Ivelisse Estrada:
I’m reading, and I’m thinking, Oh, the stress I’m experiencing right now, I can feel my telomeres shortening as I read. [Laughs] And this is someone who, sure, I may be experiencing a stressful moment in my life right now, but overall I’m secure, I have a job. What about the people who aren’t living in the most advantaged environments?

Immaculata De Vivo:
We lay out some strategies. And so we know that good nutrition is good. We know that people who eat well and exercise and are optimistic, they live longer and healthier. And so yes, of course you’re going to have stressful days. And there’s a very famous line that’s attributed to Dolly Parton—but it’s not Dolly Parton, we learned—which is, you can’t change the direction of the wind, but you can adjust the sails. So that’s what you’re doing essentially: you’re not going to get rid of stress, but the way you manage your stress—by eating healthy, by doing something good for your body, which is movement, and by sort of countering the stress through quietness, through mindfulness or through meditation—is essentially quieting down that stress pathway.

Daniel Lumera:
Yes, I think that, well, during the pandemic, meditation was recommended by the World Health Organization as one of the three pillars of wellness along with nutrition and physical exercise and is one of the fastest rising health trends—not only as a preventive tool, but above all, meditation is a strong antidote to stresses that are so accepted in our business and social culture. We live always inside a hyper-performing social environment that has a huge negative impact in terms of health, in our quality of life. And meditation is the tool that more and more people are resorting to in order to be able to create spaces in which to stop, slow down, regenerate the mind, and develop vital energy. And also to relax tension and basically to reconnect with oneself. Meditation represents an antidote to an ultimate lifestyle.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Essentially we have shown the three pillars—the meditation, the nutrition, and exercise—and they actually do protect your telomeres. They buffer the shortening. Anybody can go do a Google search and look up telomere associations with almost every lifestyle factor. And if you look up green space and telomere length or something like that—I’m even amazed at the number of studies. Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider and Jack Szostak, they got the Nobel Prize for isolating the enzyme telomerase that maintains telomere length. But the concept of telomeres have been around for a long time. So why all of a sudden? It’s technology that’s pushes the science. So years ago, Richard Cawthon developed a very rapid method for measuring in the lab. We were able to use this method in very large populations, and so some of the papers that have published have 5,000 women, 4,000.

The combination of being open to the role of gene environment from my field in cancer or disease progression, as well as this scalable technique to measure these little bits of DNA that are responsive to the environment, made it quite an interesting project for me that I undertook years ago. We sort of optimized the technique in my lab at Harvard here with my graduate student at the time, Jason Wong. And my lab now has telomerase, I don’t know, in the order of 100,000 samples from all over the world with different outcomes, whether it’s to understand nutrition or physical activity or temperament or phobic anxiety or PTSD or optimism or longevity among the centenarians.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Let’s talk about that prosocial behavior though, let’s talk about those positive attributes. So we have optimism, we have gratitude, we have kindness, and what else? What are some of the things that can help people kind of ground themselves? And what are some of the behaviors that then help promote these values?

Daniel Lumera:
Let’s start with something simple and concrete. I would like to issue a challenge. The challenge is to perform four acts of kindness every day. The first towards ourselves—this is the most impossible, for me. The second toward others: people we love but especially those we don’t know—unconditional kindness. The third one is toward animals and plants. And the fourth one is toward the planet and the nature that is our home. And this for us, if they become a habit, constitutes an excellent investment in health, in longevity, and in quality of life, and in our relationships. But kindness not only benefits the health of those who practice it and those who receive it, but just seeing a kind person, witnessing an act of kindness—what science defines is the ripple effect—triggers within us a series of biological mechanisms that led to the production of hormones related to pleasure and happiness with a corresponding decrease of stress-related hormones.

Kindness is viral, contagious. It’s like happiness. And in Italy, for example, we founded with Immaculata the International Kindness Movement. And today we have over 55 cities in Italy that have joined the movement, developing more than 63 social projects in school, hospital, prisons, and involving 350,000 people—only in Italy. And it all started from a small, small act of kindness when the readers of Biology of Kindness, of this book, decided to buy a book for themselves and donate another copy of the book to a school, to a hospital, or leave it in a bookstore as a gift for another reader, creating a real net of kindness. By improving our mood, health, and state of mind, we will be able to take better care of others and, together, create I think a new world of kindness. And this is what we need.

Alan Grazioso:
Yeah, and our world definitely needs more kindness. And Daniel, you are with us right now from India.

Daniel Lumera:
Yes. My master was a direct disciple of Gandhi. And so I am in deep contact with the Gandhi family. Gandhi was a great soul but a great politician. And so I think that politicians should be selected based on specific characteristics and values—among which kindness, empathy, compassion, and forgiveness stand out—and those who foster conflicts, fuel division and competition, and employ arrogance, threats, revenge, insult, and disregarding kindness and empathy. And so I think that Gandhi is a beautiful example. Promoting kindness and building a sense of identity doesn’t stem from the identification of an enemy or culprit but is based on inclusivity, care, empathy. And I think that it is essential to appreciate those capable of creating consensus and a sense of family, a community sense through empathy, inclusion, compassion, and love. And this approach represents the best investment we can do for collective health and well-being. Conversely, leadership based on opposite principles lead us toward destruction.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And you talk in the book about the population explosion and how these prosocial behaviors will only serve us as we go into the future because we’re going to be in such tight quarters. And so the more we can connect with others, the more pleasant our future will be. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Daniel Lumera:
Okay, I think that one of the most important things in thinking of the future will be the relational aspect of our existence because our relationships act as mirrors reflecting aspects of ourselves through the behaviors and reactions of others. And so we can start through a new form of consciousness, our mind have to thought not through the concept of I, of me, but through the concept of we. Everything is interconnected, everything is deeply interdependent. This is, say, the life in this planet is not regulated by competition, it’s regulated by cooperation. This is really important for the evolution of our species in this planet.

Alan Grazioso:
In the book, it talks about kindness and these acts of kindness that we’re talking about as critical to the evolution of the human species.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Yeah.

Alan Grazioso:
That’s the way I understood it, am I hearing that correctly?

Immaculata De Vivo:
Darwin is often misquoted as saying evolution is the competition, the strongest and the most intelligent, where what he said is all about adaptability. Yeah, those who can adapt, species that can adapt to the environment, will fare better. And so what Daniel was saying was that given the population explosion and the fact that there’s so many of us, and the only way to really get through this is not to compete with each other, it is to show each other acts of kindness. Who does a zero-sum game benefit? No one.

Daniel Lumera:
The point is not to deny our personal abilities and aspirations, too, but to avoid building our existence around selfish desires, to embrace a new paradigm of well-being based on kindness. And this is based on reciprocity: awareness of our connection, our interdependence.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And speaking of what people can do in their day-to-day to have a more well-lived life, you mentioned in the book some strategies, right? So you’ve got eating healthfully and listening to music and having strong relationships and meditating and being out in nature. Can we talk a little bit more about those? How did you come up with those five? And were there others that may be almost qualified?

Daniel Lumera:
For example, we choose meditation. I am a meditator [laughs], a professional meditator. I practice meditation, for example, three hours on the morning and three hours on the evening.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Yeah, six hours a day. I can attest to that, yes.

Daniel Lumera:
We put inside a book a simple techniques. For example, we can experiment a deep state of well-being through a conscious respiration. If we practice, for example, for three minutes or for 21 or 28 times a deep breath—inhale with the nose, exhale with mouth… Our brain produce epinephrine, epinefrina in Italia, or noradrenaline. And so we can change our body through respiration, through our state of mind. It’s incredible, it’s simple. It’s a natural medicine. Everyone should know this information. I think that the best things that we have done in this book is to simplify everything, and everyone can experiment, can put in practice this exercise. And this is biology of kindness. This is the power of the values.

Ivelisse Estrada:
The one thing that I really appreciated—I’ve never meditated, I always thought that I didn’t have the right disposition for it. My mind just races in all directions at all times. But one thing that I really appreciated in the book was that it said, you don’t have to be a master at it, you don’t have to do it for very long. Even just a short amount of time has its benefits. So I think this will make you both really happy, I finished the book and I downloaded an app on my phone, and I did my first guided meditation last night.

Alan Grazioso:
Ivelisse, you’re bringing up a great point. So you meditated today, how are the benefits? Are there measurable benefits from Ivelisse meditating?

Immaculata De Vivo:
Oh, well, over time.

Alan Grazioso:
Over time.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Over time, you would. If we’re going to use a telomere measurement as a way to quantitate what’s happening at the DNA level, we could. But there’s other ways you can measure.

Alan Grazioso:
But you were talking about earlier the adrenaline?

Immaculata De Vivo:
When we talk about the stress pathway, which is what’s activated during fight or flight, which is an evolutionary adapted method so that you can flee the bus as it comes at you, right? So this concept of you want a short, an acute response so that you get out of danger. But what happens during that response is that you are increasing your heart rate, you’re increasing rapid glucose metabolism and at the expense of other important bodily functions that need to happen. And so this is okay because it’s relatively short-lived just so that you get out of danger. The issue is that when you turn this acute path system, stress system, on chronically. Stress hormones are going to be turned on, they’re going to kept on high. And how does that relate to telomeres? Well, there is a connection with up-regulated stress hormones and impact on inflammation. And inflammation we know impacts telomere shortening. The stress pathway, something that is beneficial, but when it is turned on chronically can have detrimental effects.

Alan Grazioso:
So does meditation help in that way to sort of give us a way to sort of calm our systems and interrupt that sort of chronic?

Daniel Lumera:
Yes. Nowadays, science can demonstrate that the biological link between health and meditation and showing how fundamental this practice is for living long, but above all, for the survival and evolution of humankind on this planet. And so science today is able to show the invisible activity of meditation states but also mental health relating to depressive states, anxiety, cognitive abilities, loneliness, and even pain management. But I want to add something. I think that turning meditation into a business is an inevitable phenomenon because our society reasons in terms of personal gain and loss about almost everything. However, I believe that also the expansion of meditative practice will happen on a large scale precisely because of the logic of personal gain driven by market forces. And this may create the fertile ground so that more and more individuals will then feel the need to deepen and discover this noble art.

Ivelisse Estrada:
So Daniel, you mentioned that meditate three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. So six hours total, which is a lot. What about someone who has a lot of demands on their time? Maybe it’s a single parent. What about them? What can they do?

Daniel Lumera:
No, it’s not necessary to be a monk.

Immaculata De Vivo:
I get it. I’m so empathetic to that situation. I think if you could steal a couple of minutes a day, it works.

Daniel Lumera:
There is a lot of studies that demonstrate that 12 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes a day can change radically in your life. For example, after two months and a half practicing meditation, you can produce 30 percent more of telomerase that can repair your telomeres. The keyword is simplicity. To apply 10 minutes of silence can regenerate large part of our life.

Immaculata De Vivo:
At the risk of making anyone sound shamed for not adhering to a healthy lifestyle, all I can say is that we can try just a little bit every day to just move a little bit, to eat just a little bit better every day. I think it’s sort of like a little bit every day, you’re not even aware that you’re doing it over time, it adds up to a lot.

Alan Grazioso:
There’s so much to talk about. We haven’t touched on forgiveness and the book—forgiveness and gratitude. Could you speak a little bit about that?

Immaculata De Vivo:
Forgiveness, as I’ve learned from Daniel, is really quite an incredible thing to have. And the reason I bring that up is because the pathway through which forgiveness would be harmful is the stress pathway. I have not conducted any telomere studies on forgiveness, but there are many studies out there that show the role of forgiveness on cardiovascular health, and how not forgiving… There’s an expression about when you don’t forgive, it’s sort of like—what is it? Drinking the poison so that your enemy will suffer. I’m mangling, but essentially that’s what’s happening. Of course, if you keep your hormones, cortisol hormones, stress hormones, the impact to your cardiovascular, inflammation, heart rate, we know where it’s going to end: it’s not going to end well. And so one of the most striking things, to me, there’s a lot of work going on with social justice and criminal incarcerations. And so Daniel, do you want to speak on the work that you do with prisoners?

Daniel Lumera:
Yes, thank you, Imma. Well, I think that it is important, first of all, to make people understand what forgiveness is, and what it is not. To forgive is not to forget, first of all, but to give new meaning. New meaning to memories. To forgive is not to justify, for example, but to understand the deep reasons for discomfort. And to forgive is not to not react but to act free of resentment. And finally, in our model, to forgive is not a sign of weakness but a strength to improve the quality of our lives. It’s interesting that the word itself, “forgiving,” implies the act of giving as a gift. Through the act of forgiving, we can turn pain and love into a gift. We have a structured experiential program, which includes a series of protocols which apply, for example, in school setting, in hospitals, in prisons, in jails. And we have developed about 30 experiential protocols. And currently in Italy, these programs have been developed in 19 prisons and for more than 10,000 students in school.

Alan Grazioso:
Incredible.

Ivelisse Estrada:
As we wrap up, I wonder what is the message that you hope your reader will take away? The most important message from this book?

Immaculata De Vivo:
When we were writing this book, it dawned on me that a lot of the work that as a scientist I do, has real social implications. And to me, it’s a way of spreading the science socially through kindness in every way: kindness to your DNA, kindness to others. The social implications of the work that we do in a lab is pretty impactful.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And you, Daniel?

Daniel Lumera:
I think that the deepest message of the book is that life is not something about our ego. Life and love manifest itself in the exact moment in which we go beyond ourselves. We need to stop, and we need to listen.

Ivelisse Estrada:
That’s beautiful.

Alan Grazioso:
Excellent.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Yeah.

Immaculata De Vivo:
The whole point of this book that Daniel and I put together is one of compassion, and real kindness can help. I don’t see a downside to eating a little better and quieting our lives a little bit and just moving a little bit. I think they can all be related.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And the science is in this book.

Alan Grazioso:
So thank you for joining us. Thank you for taking the time, Daniel and Immaculata, we really appreciate you sharing your insights.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Thank you.

Immaculata De Vivo:
Thank you again.

Daniel Lumera:
Thank you very much.

Immaculata De Vivo:
And namaste.

Ivelisse Estrada:
BornCurious is brought to you by Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Jeff Hayash is the man behind the microphone.

Alan Grazioso:
Anna Soong provided editing and production support.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Many thanks to Jane Huber for editorial support. And we are your cohosts. I’m Ivelisse Estrada.

Alan Grazioso:
And I’m Alan Grazioso, sitting in for Heather Min. And I also produce this series.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Our website, where you can listen to all our episodes, is radcliffe.harvard.edu/borncurious.

Alan Grazioso:
If you have feedback, you can e-mail us at info@radcliffe.harvard.edu.

Ivelisse Estrada:
You can follow Harvard Radcliffe Institute on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. And as always, you can find BornCurious wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alan Grazioso:
Thank you for joining us today, and we’ll see you next time.