Party Psychology (WHY WE CELEBRATE) with Danielle Brick & Kelley Gullo-Wight

0:00Oh, this is a special bonus episode of Oligis. It's brought to you by Burbo. I've loved making these bonus episodes and today we're talking about celebrations and rituals and the traditions that lead to these shared experiences and this is whether it's making a toast or taking annual vacations or doing holiday traditions, even these small repeated moments to look forward to and how they have lasting psychological impacts way after the fact. How it affects who the rest of the year, it's scientifically different and people study this and they let me talk to them and I've experienced that a lot myself by booking a verbo and having fun with the people I love and Verbo makes it easy to bring your people together in one place to create those traditions. They work hard to get everything right before you arrive and if something goes wrong, Verbo care and their 24-7 support team are there to help. People on your trip are full of surprises. Not your verbo. Book your next day on the Verbo app. I have. Oh hey,

1:05it's your neighbor's cackling Halloween porch hag that scares you every time you walk the dog. Hellyward and this is a bonus. It's a quick fun one and I mean that scientifically because it's about hanging out with your friends and your fam. So we have two guests for this one. They're in fact buddies. They're colleagues who both got their PhDs from Duke University and they are consumer psychologists. So they look at close relationships between people and how we make decisions. So all the time we're consuming everything from books to granola bars and subway tokens and TikToks and air and the people around us influence how we spend our time and our money and that impacts our well-being. So this conversation was like if you got seated at a dinner party next to two friends who study why we have dinner parties. I loved every second. So let's meet them. One Danielle Brick. She her is a professor in the marketing department at University of Connecticut. She has bright, wide eyes, beachy blonde waves and

2:10was wearing a white blouse and the other guest Kelly Gullowight. She her is a behavioral professor at Indiana University's Kelly School of Business and she hopped on the call with a curly quirk's grew bob and a pinstripe suit jacket and a very sweet smile. So it was surreal meeting them because I had been lurking on their work from afar particularly this 2023 paper celebrate good times. How celebrations increased perceived social support. Which number one we love a cool and the gang reference but also it was about why humans gather to have fun. So the fact that they made time for me already felt like a party and we're gonna get to it in just a minute first but thank you to patrons of the show at patreon.com slash allergies and thanks to listeners who leave reviews which help the show so much and yeah I do read them all and yes thank you Selvin Seven who called the show Strange Beautiful and Endlessly Fascinating and I wish this one was endless but yes sadly it's just a quick shorter bonus episode.

3:12So let's get right to it into what defines a celebration what rituals have to do with it why birthday candles are written into your DNA toasting to the bad times the science of anticipation how much is too much for the gram a time machine back to the Middle Ages please and how weathering the good times is part of surviving the storms with researchers professors behavior scientists and in effect party psychologists Dr. Kelly Galloway and Dr. Danielle Brick you study celebrations you co-authored a paper on it first off did you

4:12celebrate it when it came out yes yes we did anytime we have anything go well we make a point and we highly recommend everybody should do that like biggest day go I celebrate everything anything you can yeah and so we find a reason to have a toast to celebrate every time growing up there was a running joke when I was earlier in my 20s about how I felt like celebrations birthdays needed to last month you need to really embrace that and then in grad school I was very fortunate to take classes with some esteemed incredible psychology professors that I was able to take social psychology classes and I saw that there was really fascinating work about how people were communicating about positive life events and how communicating and sharing verbally positive life events led to positive outcomes for the individual and the relationship and had sequentially positive downstream consequences and being a consumer psychologist I started thinking about well what about consumption to help mark

5:16and highlight these positive life events so the idea of celebrations being a very popular important way in which we say hey look this is something meaningful that happens and and connecting with other people around it and building upon that event and creating these relationship and social experiences amplify that positive event which then contribute to perceive social support for mental health physical health reduce morbidity mortality rates and just really understanding how these things all connect together it's where it started and when you talk about consumption what does that mean does that mean like okay you're gonna get candles are gonna get party hats or is that partly psychological so it can be actually sitting around eating drinking but it could be something like going to a concert it could be one that involves a match pit or not it depends upon your personal preference or not but it's beyond just

6:18actual food it's more of these consumer type experiences which I think is also what makes it really interesting yeah I thought it was so interesting that it's really hard to think of a ritual or a celebration that doesn't involve eating or food or something some kind of shared consumption experience right birthday parties holiday for sure you know you get the promotion yeah exactly you don't have to toast alcohol but you toast something something right or cake or you there's something do you just live by the Julia child like party without a cake is just a meeting have you heard that call no that's amazing I'm going to from now on then she had it right man she definitely did so yeah there is always something that you want to consume together you know I think there's these kind of rituals these scripts we have around celebrating in this research we find that it matters that you're doing social consumption to mark some kind of positive separate event but at its core it kind of comes down to you know having something shared together

7:20showing up for each other did you ever have to go down rabbit holes in terms of history everything from you know luos to medieval cheers and things like that like how far back does that history go so when I started the project I did do some research back on the history I just think of like jousting beers toasting big like drumstick legs but what I did finds was that a lot of the current practices traditions around celebrations sort of evolved around the turn of the 20th century and it happens where the changing in the society culture brought about these traditions embedded them and those continued on through the roaring 20s which of course we also think about consumption probably with drinks and great gaspies and these the celebration of life maybe as opposed to an individual specific event but maybe at a more

8:22cultural or societal level and then the depression happened but what I found in my research was that small businesses helped keep the economy or restored the economy and small businesses relied on celebrations in their marketing and creating communications around holidays and rituals and and this notion of still having things to look for too as a way to bond we have so many rituals around the holidays and so many feasts and you know in the US it might be a turkey and it might be hagginess in other places and yes exactly they seem to have roots also in religious traditions from like Marty Grockakes and fine and a baby in there which is weird but yeah seasonal traditions did we kind of base it on religious rituals and then it became more just cultural like hey it's been a month since we had a party labor day it is you

9:23know yeah our birthday let's throw a little Halloween in there I think it's hard to I would imagine different sheet if you imagine this a chicken and egg yeah breaking bread and this idea of those going together which then translate into stories and and bedded within the religion exactly I sort of see those as going together there's this long tradition of thinking of you know breaking bread as Danielle said like eating and shared consumption together as companionship right I think that's the root of the word companionship is Latin right like bread oh panace what yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sit up I never thought I love etymology but that is not that's so fun so yes I'm still freaking out about this come panionship come panace stop it it just means with bread or

10:24bread fellow so companions we are all just sticking together like couple of weasels sharing a slice of pizza and eating stuff and laughing just goes way back further than the industrial revolution and to our hairier ancestors so somewhere in the middle of that is in fact medieval ragers and I had seen a meme a few years back about how medieval peasants worked only 150 days of the year and that modern humans yes work more than stall muckers of your in tattered burlap but hey we do have electricity and that's got to be good for our mental well being right well more on that in a minute but I did go and I fact checked that 150 days a year and truth be told it is hard to estimate who worked how much because record keeping was a little spotty without time clocks and excel drives but when it comes down to it many historians agree that 150 days a year that figure was probably right give or

11:27take and when wages were higher many chose to work fewer hours and just spend more time chilling some churches even mandated two weeks from labor around the Christmas holidays but for every tale of snoozing in a haystack there's also just a gregious acts of labor exploitation and human cruelty in the name of commerce and different religions but speaking of which while holiday does come from holy day celebrating and marimen predates the church so celebrations seem to fall in seasonal patterns across time and cultures so harvest celebrations to mark the bounty winter feasts to pull us through the colder dark times the renewal celebrations of spring the start of summer pops off and then these cycles and then many more that are written in the stars in the new moons have always been outlets anthropologists say for

12:28people to blow off some steam and then just get cozy with their friends and their neighbors because we would all be dead if we didn't like each other and watch out for each other and share stuff it's hard to know where it starts right you can imagine going all the way back to you know hunters gatherers food is a shared resource it's where we all come together it's serves as social glue I think in a lot of ways and I think it's natural that a lot of our very meaningful traditions and whether it's religious or not is going to center around this kind of shared resource and we see that in our daily life right people will wait to eat until we can all eat together we'll center our celebrations around it right like when we talk about Thanksgiving yeah we're giving thanks but you brought up the turkey when we think about yeah the holidays it's often around the food that we're going to share birthdays cake or some kind of shared experience you know we're going to go to a concert or you know we're doing something to mark this occasion or to do something together to your point food just play a role but it doesn't

13:31have to be only food if you have a trip or a vacation that's around some positive life event many people go on trips for birthdays or for holidays and so there's also buying airplane tickets or renting a place to stay or finding the perfect location to have your celebration all of that is also really important and I think embedded in our culture and keeps us happy and excited and having things to look forward to and really builds our self esteem and all these positive really great things we have something some kind of shared experience things to talk about things to do together it's not just oh we're going to like sit in the room we're also going to play board games that's another great one absolutely ferocious ferocious sports games yes and yes science can be fun and fun can be science and again one of their academic papers which was published in the journal of

14:32public policy and marketing is celebrate good times how celebrations increase perceived social support so let's crack into the definitions and then the findings you know reading a book on something is is one thing but reading a peer reviewed paper and a journal on this stuff is so exciting how did you define a celebration versus a ritual when it came to the core terms how do you figure that out so celebrations can have rituals but not all rituals or celebrations I think is how we think about it and how we've talked about it there are aspects that have ritual features the script the schema you walk in you sort of know what to expect so that helps to create some of the ease and the excitement around celebrations but there doesn't have to be a specific ritual it could be spur of the moment it could be planned out special occasion or rituals really just a shared script right and it doesn't have to be celebratory script we have scripts for all kinds of things

15:38but we do have a lot of rituals around celebrations so a ritual is something done following a tradition or a custom and that's not always a celebration a celebration is an event to mark an occasion usually enjoyable at least in theory depending on if you're too middle-aged cousins throw hands at the reunion because one of them got the cigarettes wet on the rafting trip but even that was enjoyable from afar and then they made up like 10 minutes later the great reunion the tension fades but the memories don't but what is the architecture of a celebration because it's actually not a cake and also that quote as it turns out was not verifiably said by Julia Child even though so many cross stitch pillows would have you and me sadly believe otherwise I love that there's like three core touchstones of what makes this celebration can you walk me through that and how you decided did you have to pair it down from like 17 and to three or

16:38yes there's a lot of research especially with social support on how perceived social support and response to a negative life event is extremely important not as much as looked at responses to positive life events so that's number one positive life event and then we really being relationship experts is the importance of the social dynamic was really important as well because you could have a positive life event and you could market what you could do that by yourself you don't necessarily have to have other people but to get the benefits on her seat of social support the social aspect was key and then the third is consumption that can amplify enhance and build upon the experience to lead to those positive outcomes downstream those are the three so that's an event to mark there's a social aspect to it and you're gathering and using something to celebrate it whether that's just time spent or making a daisy chain flower crown

17:42in the park or maybe pass around some rice crispy treats or go into a cabin for your anniversary so how did they as social scientists quantify or qualify this fun and we had a lot of conversations around you know each of these dimensions positive separate event and social consumption we are also really systematic in testing each of these things we find really we need all three in combination to kind of get this boost to perceive social support but there's lots of instances in life where you just have one or two or maybe even none of these elements right imagine yeah a negative life event a funeral we're still gathering we're still getting together we're marking this person's life maybe we're even celebrating their life right we could frame it that way and often after services we gather as a group and you know maybe you have sandwiches maybe you have a toast right there's some kind of social consumption happening yeah actually sounds good and nice and there's this really

18:47interesting finding across the social support literature and that you know this idea that social support resources are the belief that others will be there for you when things go wrong and that's really important having these resources believing that people will be there but when something actually does go wrong there's really mixed effects about whether it has positive outcomes for you right yeah our social support network actually comes in in an act support for negative events that can be really awkward because it's so difficult when something goes wrong a funeral to be able to connect and an enact support successfully where is positive life events are much easier because some of the scripts some of the things in the positive emotions that are already going on and so it's showing up for the positive life events in each other's lives that allow us to build these these resources so we have them when when things do go bad we ran studies on this right we had people compare thinking about a time when you marked a positive or negative life event maybe

19:48you got the promotion or maybe you're fired right you can we don't have to go death we can think of we have to go death today not today we can think of you know more common daily negative occurrences but often we will go together and we'll support our friends when something poorly goes on at work or when something positive goes on and so we ran studies trying to compare these two different situations and we only saw boost on perceived social support when it was positive and certainly I don't think the takeaway is don't support people when things go bad but the take was also support them when things go well do people just showing up do they kind of have this script running for you then that if she hits a fan like you can rely on these people because they were there to celebrate the good times too I think that's kind of the thesis of this paper yeah is this idea that by showing up for these positive life events and creating this shared experience together

20:48making this one you know one person's positive life event a promotion a birthday whatever turning it into a shared positive between you know the whole group not just the person who's celebrating but everybody at that celebration we find gets a boost to their perceived social support resources so whether you're organizing it for your friend whether you're just attending it becomes this shared experience together we're showing all of us how responsive we can be just a side note I'd never watched the series yellow jackets before but I just finished season one and because I've been working on this episode I'm watching things so differently like I noticed when the girls were bonding by dancing around or feasting on bear meat or putting on makeup and drinking berry wine to let's say lift some spirits now as animals if there were never any good times why would we fight to live through the bad ones I mean it's dark but it's in our evolution

21:49yeah so to some extent I would say bring on the fair weather friends and then also the value Kelly just alluded to this of organizing for somebody else we also found positive and not too so it doesn't even have to be your positive event you organizing a birthday or something for someone else can also have these positive impacts although we did find that there's less positive effects if you're organizing your own birthday yeah I've said it before I'm gonna say it in one more time if you have someone with a big event coming up just offer to help them plan it even just asking them questions to narrow down what they really want help so much and it makes it collaborative friends don't let friends plan their entire birthday without offering to help it's not harmful but you don't get as good of a boost yeah as when someone also organizes for you how about surprise parties how do you feel about surprise parties as scholars of celebrations love them all for those as well love

22:51them surprise away Danielle and I have some other research together on secrecy and recently we've been working on it's not published yet we've been working on a conceptual kind of theoretical piece about secrecy with our collaborator Veronica Thomas and we've been having so many conversations about the role of secrecy in celebrations right in gift giving there's a huge trunk of giving a gift where is a secret yes surprise parties like we're creating all these secrets and even just a party that's not a surprise there's often some kind of surprise element right it's a secret that so-and-so is coming it's a secret that we're gonna have a slide show or or whatever and secrecy adds enhanced meaning right yeah well you know I've I've read that gossip can be really destructive but it can also bond people yeah if you're gossiping about like okay I think that they would like this and that that seems like a cute form of gossip like if you're gonna talk behind someone's back the

23:52idea of me okay you land at 4.30 we're gonna get you to the like that's so cute I don't know why that just jazzes me up I think that's really a torment and for more on this you can read their 2022 paper secret consumer behaviors in close relationships which was published in the journal of consumer psychology which essentially found that what Danielle calls small scale secrets or minor transgressions in close relationships like sneaking a candy bar on the way home even though you're having dinner together ultimately those drop people closer because the guilt makes them behave more pro socially as a relationship investment to make sure that the bond is still strong likewise being in on a surprise for another person can bond a group together and just on keeping with the pro social behavior this week both doctors pointed us in the direction of good causes and we're donating to two charities and their names the first is middle way house which supports individuals affected by domestic violence sexual assault and human trafficking and it works to end

24:58those incidents and to meet the specific housing employment and service needs of survivors and their children great cause you can find out more at middlewayhouse.org and then another donation is going to rosesplace.org which is a multi service community center it offers women emergency shelter and meals they have a food pantry language classes legal assistance wellness care one-on-one support they also have housing and job search services and community outreach that's rosesplace.org so both of those causes middlewayhouse.org as well are linked in the show notes thank you so much to verbo for sponsoring today's episode and making it possible for us to donate two causes of the ologist choosing and i've loved doing this one because i learned just how powerful rituals can be because they give us the sense of continuity and connection but also that planning and that time spent together really bonds us and a lot of those rituals too are tied to a place of going somewhere

26:01together and experiencing things together and planning it ahead of time and having something to look forward to.org is creating new traditions in a new space that is why group travel can become such an important part of people's lives it's something that anthropologically scientists know that we need and verbo helps make those traditions possible by giving you a space to gather year after year whether it's cooking together celebrating something or just spending time in the same place they also help reduce the stress they can come with planning group trips they focus on getting everything right ahead of time and if something unexpected happens verbo care and 24-7 support are there to help so you can focus on the traditions that you're building and you can find your next day on the verbo app. Okay so we're back and this is a short bonus episode so we didn't have space for listener questions but a huge question i had and you might as well is in all of this talk of consumerism what is too much and in her book plentitude the new economics of true wealth

27:06economist and sociologist dr. Juliet Shaw pinpoints what matters most in the leisure that we're seeking what is worth investing in and that's a shift toward elements like nature and community and fostering learning and spending time and the brain derives pleasure and renewal from experiences and memories and bonding but how far is too far what about around weddings is there a point where things get so like maybe a little off the rail i feel like in the last year this notion of a bachelorette party has to be really aesthetic and really impressive in two dimensions for the people who weren't there and like maybe losing sight of are we happy a good time or is there like a spreadsheet that's like everyone has to be in a pink bikini and dada dada dada dada you know where's the line where you're like okay too much consumption i think it's also raising the

28:11interesting point about you know social media's effect on these aspects that initially are largely intended to be in person in the moment experienced in real time versus creating this secondary aspect to it and how that's extremely interesting how that could change recalling the day the experiences during the day if you're like we all have to be in this pink bikini and we're not actually enjoying this time together because you're so focused on creating this picture pose over and over and over and you're you're removing all the actual beneficial aspects that's fascinating well kind of comes down to are we enacting support for each other are we being responsive to each other in the moment and food and celebrations are way of doing that but as soon as we are layering on these kind of traditions and rituals that are taking away from this focal shared interaction and it's about people who aren't there i think it starts to break it a little bit

29:12i think there's a lot of traditions and norms that we've start to build like rituals around some of these things that are maybe not strictly necessary i have some research on gift giving and what we find is gift givers are so focused on getting the perfect gift right there's lots of research on this like what it needs to be new it needs to be perfectly priced and needs to be all of these things and really people just want to gift like they want to know they were thought of the receivers don't care we get so caught up in what we need to be doing that and you know sometimes these rituals can get in the way are these traditions behind the the core of what matters right when we're doing the bachelorette it's about all of us being together celebrating our friendship and you know bringing our friend into this next chapter of life all of these things but if we're too focused on on the other stuff i agree it takes it away a little bit and again a celebration and a social gathering can happen around a few glasses of water or as many anthropologists can tell you

30:14some firelight so there was this fascinating 2014 paper titled Embers of Society Firelight Talk among the Zhu Guanxi Bushmen and it was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and it analyzed dozens of conversations of South African Bushmen and found that around firelight night activities steer away from tensions of the day into singing dancing religious ceremonies and enthralling stories often about people that everyone knows and night talk it says plays an important role in evoking higher orders of theory of mind via the imagination and generating cooperation and trust and of course it notes that as a species we share this widespread human use of firelight for this intimate conversation and to satiate this appetite for evening stories and the author delivers such a stunning

31:15portrait of human interaction just rendered in this flickering illumination and leaves us with the question is raised as to what happens when economically unproductive firelight time is turned into productive time by artificial lighting and what happens is you're always working to make money or you're trying to relax by making other people money while you scroll and billionaires get richer it's horsepucky frankly and that's not what we've evolved to do or care about I mean no wonder why everyone's tired and lonely so yeah gather around campfires light a birthday candle even the smallest little flame can do something and you said kinship earlier and all of these pieces that helped us form society and communities that could help each other yeah for sure and I think that's evident and how we see these very common you know shared consumption practices and celebrations and things

32:15across cultures right right it's not just in the US that we're we're doing this uh it's not just and you know kind of the western world quote unquote it's everywhere we gather around food we gather around these kind of shared experiences and if we're seeing something that spans cultures that pervasively that suggests to me that we're rooted in something far deeper yeah new years youth as a celebration and the worldwide aspect of it and watching it turn across all parts is a great example of how it is culturally connecting yeah any other traditions culturally that surprise you or that were like oh that's a great idea you know my friend Simone she Swedish and she every year for her birthday Swedish tradition you make a cake in the shape of something or decorated with something really cool that happened that year that to mark the year and one year she got a she got sprayed by a skunk we made her a skunk cake then had like a it had like a cheese cheese

33:20whiz yeah yeah but you could press the cheese whiz um she got a how cool she got a car she got an honorary doctorate so we made a a laurel wreath cake she adopted a dog we made her a cake that was shaped like her dog with coconut flakes on the top so every year it's like okay what are we gonna do for Simone and I just think I was like that's so cool that people do that in Sweden after about the third or fourth year we were talking about it she's like oh they don't do this it's sweet and this is just a the weird thing I like and I was like I love that and looking on the earth and thought and how you're highlighting all these events and being part of it I love that for years though I was like oh that's incredible that's amazing I sort of wish bring you back to the secrecy she hadn't even told you that and she just kept letting you think it was part of the culture I just assumed I was like yeah I mean at the end of the day what do you have but

34:20those memories and that bonding in it yes even if something goes wrong you can still like laugh about it or you know I remember one of my fondest memories is horrible from my 40th birthday as my friend Dalyne showed up with like balloons it was so sweet she was the first person there and immediately something happened the knot slipped and the balloons just floated into the ether it was like five minutes into it but we laughed about it a lot and like that's like a memory from my birthday that's indelible just because it was like oh at the time it was really funny so I don't know I think sometimes these these rituals it's more of what you experienced together than does it go perfectly do you know what I mean oh absolutely and it kind of goes back to this idea of we don't have to make it perfect right these rituals give us a basic script but we don't have to follow it precisely right doesn't have to be a perfect Instagramable no birthday party yes it's almost better if it isn't exactly the whole goal is to have something that we can share and all of a sudden

35:24it becomes not just your birthday but a shared thing we all have and then that's something we can look forward to going into it it's something we can enjoy in the moment and it's something we can talk about and can build into our relationship and the story of you know our friendship and our relationships and our life afterwards it's okay if we break the script a little bit the goal is to get together in a meaningful way and I've been so excited to get this aside all episode because there was a 2018 study published in frontiers of psychology titled well-being and anticipation for future positive events evidences from an FMRI study so anticipating anticipation it noted previous research dating back a few decades that suggested that anticipation has really important implications in human well-being and in our mental health and that thinking in the future has important evolutionary benefits we have to be able to imagine what's going to happen right and it also sites earlier studies that people who are more anxious tend to anticipate more negative

36:30future experiences whereas people with depression tend to anticipate fewer positive experiences so people's depression don't necessarily anticipate negative events that's for the anxious people just a lack of positive ones like generally speaking if any of this sounds too familiar listen up so anticipating positive events increases something called reward sensitivity in the brain and that helps boost a positive mood and it leads to higher levels of mental well-being which also helps with stress coping and also helps with physical well-being so to prove it these researchers put 40 people in functional MRI machines to see their brains anticipating good stuff and they watched the brains light up in the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex that's an area that is associated with higher well-being the study says so since I did this interview and this episode I keep thinking all the time like am I anticipating a bad result am I anxious can I tweak

37:37that thought and imagine a better outcome are am I bummed am I depressed am I even looking forward to anything and then I try to think of three things that I'm looking forward to from like tomorrow mornings cup of tea to going to a perfume counter to sniff some stuff for free or a pie baking contest that's happening in two months anything think of anything you can look forward to scientists have worked so hard to tell you that it helps also doctors heal themselves is there anything any ritual that y'all are looking forward to this year or any holidays or favorite days or anniversaries or birthdays or dissertation anniversaries that you you guys are looking forward to I just had one I'm not looking forward to it anymore it just happened but one of my best friends my roommate from undergrad just got married and that was so much fun right a bunch of our college friends got together a bunch of us were in the wedding we got to celebrate not just our friend and

38:41her new husband and their relationship but it was so fun to just be together right we did this whole trip together we are all staying together I think that was my big one for the years is celebrating my friend and all the rituals that go along with it not everything went perfect but I think it was a perfect wedding I was just gonna say at the end of the day it's really less about like are the napkins the exact color of sage or did the grooms brother do the warm on the dance floor and what do you remember yeah and there was there was maybe like a kerfuffle around the flowers like are the flowers gonna show up I'm like okay we'll just run to trade our jokes like we'll yeah we have to get up onto flowers we'll get up onto flowers we're gonna have this great wedding and the flowers showed up they were beautiful the wedding was beautiful but ultimately you know the memories aren't about the flowers the memories about all celebrating together right yeah and Danielle you're gonna say your son's birthday is Friday and he loves mini golfing and this will be our third year

39:41going mini golfing on his birthday and I am actually excited about it and it's just like a very low key but it'll be a fun little thing that it will be our ritual I'm realizing so I'm excited about that is he good at it yes he is he is turning eight and he is better at some already a lot of sports than I am like we went when he was maybe six yeah he's better at mini golf than I was so I imagine he's still very good yeah that's so great oh my gosh this has just been really affirming in terms of get goofy get together celebrate bigger yes yes I think it really does matter and it's really heartening to know that when you're there for the good times it helps during the bad times two yes exactly it gives me like butterfly to celebrate things that's so sweet and great so keep up the amazing work it's so cool that someone gets to study this and it's

40:47y'all it is yeah it's so far it's a best job yes it is the best job I'm very grateful to be able to ask these questions and do this research and look at these exciting and important things and also benefit from it yeah so hard to integrate celebrations more into my daily life and yeah I think I'm better off for it's it's a great way to live so ask festive people your festering questions because what's the point of anything if you can't enjoy something so thank you Danielle and Kelly so much for agreeing to let me ask you so many questions and please do find out more about them and their causes of choice this week right in the show notes we are at allergies on blue sky and on instagram and I'm at alleyward one L on both we have shorter kid friendly episodes are in their own feed wherever you get podcasts thank you as always to supporters at patreon.com slash allergies for supporting the show from the very beginning we'll be back of course on Tuesday with

41:47regular episodes and thanks to Aaron Talbert who admins the allergies podcast Facebook group avalan malic makes our professional transcripts Kelly are dweired as the website spending quality time is scheduling producer new al dillworth social and occupational support comes via managing director Susan Hale bonding together all the clips and the cuts are editors Jake chafee and lead editor Mercedes mainland of me land audio nick dore burn gifted us with this theme music and if you stick around to the very very end i tell you a secret and this is one of my favorite birthday candle traditions i feel like it started around quarantine and then as people were coming out of quarantine it felt super weird to watch someone like blow on their candles on a cake and i was like it's like too soon for that so what i started doing instead of one person having to blow out a ton of candles and either have an asthma attack or spread germs everywhere everyone gets a candle it gets lit and

42:48then everyone makes a wish for the person who's having a birthday and blows it out at the same time so that person gets like 20 wishes from various friends who are wishing good things nobody spits on any cakes i know i'm talking about this too much but i'm just saying it's i think it's a beautiful thing to say hey everyone make a wish for me will yeah make it something good i think that's a great idea if you don't like it you don't have to do it happy birthday okay bye bye i am fun and it's been scientifically proven thank you again so much to verbose for sponsoring today's special episode i was so stoked to find the two best people to talk to you about this about creating meaning over time and also the social support that brings warmth to not only your

43:53good times but bonding and support that sustains us all year even the rough times and the investment of traveling and enjoying these shared traditions is literally good for your health and the health of the people you love you deserve it your ancestors agree 300,000 years of gathering over rituals and traditions whether it's under a new moon or it's your yearly holiday 2000 piece puzzle it's a form of medicine it's also fun and verbo helps support these moments with a reliable place to stay and support when you need it the people on your trip are full of surprises not your verbo book your next trip on the verbo app yay