Episode
How nature restores the mind
- Podcast
- Many Minds
- Published
- Sep 10, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 5103
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://manyminds.libsyn.com/how-nature-restores-the-mind
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Summary
One afternoon you decide to snub your responsibilities and go for a hike. You spend a few hours in the woods or the mountains. You study the bark of trees, you bathe in birdsong, you let your eyes roam along a distant ridgeline. And you come back feeling better, restored somehow—like you have more energy, more patience, more bandwidth. We've all, I'm guessing, had experiences like this. But what's behind these effects? Why would nature restore us? What's the evidence that it really does? And what is even being restored, actually? My guest today is Dr. Marc Berman . Marc is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago where he directs the Environmental Neuroscience Lab . Marc is also the author of a new book, Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being . Here, Marc and I talk about Attention Restoration Theory—the idea that nature experiences restore our limited capacity for directed attention. We discuss the broader field of "environmental neuroscience," which Marc helped kickstart and continues to lead. We range across studies from Marc's lab that show nature's beneficial effects—on attention, on mood, and on health. We talk about what the active ingredients in nature seem to be. And we discuss the field's prospects for understanding how nature impacts not just the mind, but the brain itself. Along the way, Marc and I touch on: soft versus harsh fascination; the elusive concept of "mental energy"; trees, wood, fire, and rain; the architect and theorist Christopher Alexander; the value of fake plants; fractalness in space and time; curvature and spirituality; and how nature tends to steer our thoughts in certain directions. Needless to say, we're stoked to be kicking off a new…