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It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
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Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed?
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Hey, everybody.
It's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network.
You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside.
It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals.
And on my podcast we talk mental health healing, growth and everything you need to step into your next season whole and empowered.
New year, real you.
Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Are you desperately hoping for change in 2026 but feeling stuck?
I'm Dr Laurie Santos and in a new year series of my show, The Happiness Lab, I'm going to look at the science of getting well unstuck.
Unstuck at work, unstuck in your relationships, and even unstuck inside your mind.
I am the absolute worst culprit when it comes to getting into these ruminative loops and just driving myself crazy.
Listen to The Happiness Lab on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.
Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and I thought for my picks this year I would kick off 2026 with a very sweet, moving and also eye-opening episode on forgiveness.
It turns out, all of us have the capacity to forgive, but that's not always the best course of action for any given circumstance.
This episode also has a lot of really great stories of amazing acts of forgiveness by people who forgave others against all odds.
It's a good episode and I hope you enjoy it and I hope your year is going wonderfully so far.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know.
Some philosophical waxing's gonna happen in this one.
I think it's inevitable, Chuck.
That's right, and Don Henley songs.
Oh, yeah, that's a good one, too.
Heart of the Matter?
Mm-hmm.
You like it?
Sure.
All right.
That part was like, I'm learning to live without you now.
It stirs my soul every time.
Forgiveness.
Yeah.
You'd have to be dead inside to not be stirred by that part.
I agree.
It's good.
Good song.
But he really kind of nails it in that because he's talking about forgiveness.
And the heart of the matter.
Sure.
And he wants forgiveness.
He needs forgiveness, even if it's the end of the relationship.
Yeah, even if she doesn't love him anymore.
Sure.
So...
On the one hand, that is a certain kind of forgiveness that an individual or person can – that's a path someone can set down.
But there's been a lot of research, starting in the very beginning stages at the middle of the 20th century but really picking up in the 90s research into forgiveness like legitimate scientific research.
And it's a multidisciplinary thing because there's a lot of different – fields, disciplines.
Sure that have said hey this, actually this is something we can study and measure and produce articles and and work on um, and they have.
They've produced some really good, legitimate work, but what most of them have been focused on is not the don henley position of somebody who needs to be redeemed, who needs redemption to feel better, who needs forgiveness yeah, But rather the person doing the forgiving, the person who is originally transgressed against.
Not the offender, but the offendee.
That's where most of the research has been done on forgiveness.
Right.
Don Henley is a rock star, so he's writing a song about wanting to be forgiven for a foursome he had in St.
Paul.
Backstage.
Sure.
Even if you don't love me anymore, can you forgive me?
Can you blame a guy?
Is what he's saying.
Right.
So, yeah, I think that's probably exactly what that song's about now that you mentioned it.
That's the subtext.
So I think we should start by pointing out something about forgiveness.
Is that a lot of people...
There's a lot of stories about people not forgiving.
We call it revenge, and people love revenge, you know?
Like, think about the revenge movie genre and how many entries there are.
Pretty great.
Like, have you ever seen I Saw the Devil?
Yeah.
Have you ever seen Oldboy?
Yeah.
Have you ever seen Death Becomes Her?
Yeah.
Have you ever seen She-Devil?
No.
Nope.
Oh, you haven't with Roseanne Barr and Ed Begley and Meryl Streep?
Never saw that.
Was that a revenge movie?
Yes.
All of them.
Great revenge movies.
Can I shout out one of my favorites?
Yeah, please do.
Like legitimately, kind of a smaller indie movie called Blue Ruin.
Oh, yeah, I saw that one.
Great, great revenge movie if you're into revenge movies.
And I am.
I enjoy it.
There's a catharsis involved.
Because I'm a big forgiver.
So I think I like seeing movies where revenge happens.
Yeah, and we'll talk a lot about, you know revenge, because they're virtually two sides of the same coin.
And they really interact in some surprising ways that are sensible when you see it laid out, but you might not necessarily be walking around thinking about.
But on the other side, if you look up movies about forgiveness, almost all of them were produced by a megachurch somewhere in the south right.
Or you've got Magnolia and then the Fisher King are like the two legitimate contenders for movies about forgiveness.
Well, I don't know, because I think there's a fine line sometimes between redemption stories and forgiveness stories.
Okay.
They can kind of go hand in hand.
There are plenty of redemption stories.
Okay, like what?
What, redemption stories?
Yeah, let's hear it.
Oh, I mean, Hoosiers?
Hoosiers?
One of the great sports redemption movies.
Okay.
I think that's a pretty loose definition of redemption.
No, are you kidding me?
Former alcoholic coach who was not working because of some bad deeds, gets redeemed by leading a team to a championship.
Dennis Hopper gets redeemed as the alcoholic father?
Wait a minute.
Was Gene Hackman on the road to redemption?
I thought he came in and basically got...
Dennis Hopper redeemed himself.
This was a double redemption.
He was getting redeemed as well.
All right.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
So plenty of redemption stories.
And I think there's a lot of movies that wrestle with the idea of forgiveness in really weighty, heavy ways.
Like these true stories that you hear about these awful things that happen whether a family member is accidentally killed by someone or murdered by someone.
There's a lot of that stuff in movies.
Okay, so my thesis was this, and this is strictly me editorializing here, but I think there's some validity to it.
And that is that.
The reason why it's much easier to name revenge movies is because revenge appeals to our baser instincts.
It makes sense.
It's universally understood.
And like you said, you even consider yourself a big-time forgiver, and yet you enjoy revenge movies.
It's cathartic for you.
There's something to be delivered by a revenge movie.
A movie about forgiveness, it's just more complicated.
It's harder.
We're not as good and we're not as automatically adept at forgiveness as we may be with revenge.
That's why I think there's fewer forgiveness movies.
But that's not to say that we're not moved by it, because I think, if you hear – whenever you hear real-life stories of forgiveness –
They just bowl you over.
Oh, yeah.
Even when you step back and think about like what the person's actually doing, you're like yes legitimately, anybody could do what they just did.
It's akin to hearing somebody solo climbing Mount Everest or something like that.
It makes the news literally when somebody forgives in like a really deep way that the average person might not.
Yeah, like a big time transgression.
A lot of times you'll hear of a courtroom scene where someone has forgiven the person who like, murdered their relative or loved one or something.
And that, man, that stuff is powerful.
You're right.
Every time you see these stories, you dug up this one story.
Berkeley, the Greater Good Magazine, Science-Based Insights for a Meaningful Life out of UC Berkeley of this woman who was a nurse's aide who hit a guy.
She had been drinking, hit a guy in her car.
He went through the windshield and was stuck there and she was so impaired she didn't realize it for a while.
Eventually realized it, got out of the car, could not get the guy out who was still alive, mind you.
And so drove home and parked her car in the garage to let this guy slowly die.
Yeah.
In her garage. over the course of a couple of days.
And she sobered up, would go out and check on him once in a while, but refused to call for help because she was too concerned about getting in trouble.
So instead she let him die, had a couple friends come help her hide the body, move the body and then actually got found out later on, because four months later she was at a party and she joked about it to an acquaintance who went and told the cops.
And this woman ended up getting 50 years in prison.
That's a horrible story.
Like, that's one of the worst things that a human being could possibly do.
There were so many opportunities for this woman to save this man's life.
And, by the way, everyone involved in that court case who had a medical degree said that Had she called the cops, the fire department, taken the guy to the hospital, he almost certainly would have survived those injuries.
But given that she didn't for days get him medical aid, he finally did succumb to them.
But he probably would have survived, almost certainly would have survived.
Like what she did was about as horrific as what a person could do.
And just so irresponsible with human life.
And she rightfully got a 50-year prison sentence. for that crime.
And yet, despite how horrific that was, what made news just as much as that is that a short time later, that man's son the man who was hit and killed publicly forgave that woman for killing his father.
Yes.
At the sentencing said quote there's no winners in a case like this.
Just as we all lost Greg, you all will be losing your daughter to her family.
I still want to extend my forgiveness to Shante Mallard was her name and let her know that the Mallard family is in my prayers.
And this is the kind of stuff, like you said, that makes the news where I think it hits everybody, because it makes everybody stop for a second and say could I do that?
Yes.
Could I reach that point?
And that's a big weighty question because there's all kinds of forgiveness.
There's, you know, a couple of partners together who get in a fight and someone says they're sorry for doing a certain thing and they're forgiven or not.
There are situations at work where people are forgiven.
There are friends who maybe betray you by, like cheating on somebody with someone.
I had a situation like that where I had a former friend.
I felt like cheated with my barely ex-girlfriend.
And I spent quite a few years being upset about that and then forgave him.
And it's a powerful thing.
So there's like levels.
But when you get to this kind of thing where someone caused the death of a loved one and then even laughed about it, like to be able to forgive, like that is just that's next level.
It is.
It is so much so Chuck, that a group of convicted murderers who were serving sentences in prison heard about this and, I guess, got in touch with one another and raised funds and got a 10000 scholarship together for Brandon Biggs to go to college.
The convicted murderer sent the kid to college because this very generous act of public forgiveness of his own father's murderer.
So yeah, it is.
It's an astounding thing.
And yet everything that, like the research that really, like I said, started to take off in earnest in the 90s has shown us is that we're all perfectly capable of doing that.
The answer is yes.
Yes, you can do that.
You totally could do that.
But that we don't necessarily fully understand how to.
And yet there's a lot of evidence also that it's evolutionarily wired into us to do that.
Yeah, and we'll get into religiosity of it a bit more in detail later, but all religions talk a lot about forgiveness.
There's a pretty famous story in the Bible where Peter said to Jesus Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?
Up to seven times?
And Jesus said, I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven.
And Peter said, so 490 times?
And Jesus said, oy, Peter, always so literal.
Yeah.
That one's pretty good.
But you know, you can read Hindu, you can read the Buddhists talk about it.
Like everyone, every religion talks about forgiveness as kind of a, maybe a cornerstone of the religion in some cases.
So much so that when science started looking into forgiveness and just trying to figure it out generally, people just presumed forgiveness was under the realm and the domain of religion.
That's where you went for answers about forgiveness.
And science said, ho, ho, ho, we can top that.
Surely we can beat that 490 number.
And that's what they've said about doing.
Yeah.
I mean, Jesus forgave his crucifiers.
It's like one of the few things Jesus said on the cross, according to the Bible was they know not what they do.
Like, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Right.
And, like you said, it's not just Christianity, although Christianity gets all the accolades for forgiveness.
Jainism is a big one.
There's a kind of a mantra from Jainism that says, I grant forgiveness to all living beings.
May all living beings grant me forgiveness.
My friendship is with all living beings.
My enmity is totally non-existent.
And that's I mean.
When you look at that, especially if you're not a Jainist, you're like wow, how would you ever reach that level?
And I think the point is, it's like you never reach that level.
It's an ideal, a goal that you try to achieve, probably on a daily basis, if you're a Jainist, but it's certainly over a lifetime, you know.
Yeah, and I'd like to read this again, not to pile on the religious stuff, but the Hindu one really spoke to me.
This one part in the middle says what can a wicked person do unto him or unto one who carries the saber of forgiveness in his hand?
And that one really speaks to me in that it's a powerful tool to forgive and it's for you as the forgiver.
I think a lot of times people think it can clear the conscience of someone who's done something wrong.
I guess that certainly happens.
But to me it's really about it's a powerful weapon.
You have to regain your own strength as a human.
Yes, that seems to be the bulk of what psychology is coming up with as far as studying forgiveness goes, that it's really the person who has been wronged.
That's what forgiveness is more about.
That's the psychological aspect of it.
Like we said, it's a multidisciplinary investigation.
And so you've got evolutionary biologists who are like that's really great psychology.
But we found a different reason for forgiveness and it doesn't quite fit that mold.
And then the medical field... says, no, it's even better than that.
You can actually like improve your health by genuinely forgiving somebody.
So there's all these different inputs that are coming together to create this really like complex contextualized picture of what forgiveness is and what it does for us and why we have it.
That's right.
I think it's a great setup.
I agree.
You want to take a break?
I might just not come back.
I don't feel so good about that.
No, we have to finish.
We got to complete.
All right.
We'll be back in a minute to talk about.
What I think is probably the most interesting part of this is the evolutionary aspect, right after this.
Learning stuff with Joshua.
Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally.
And I'm Hari Kundabolu.
It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
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I like to sleep in late and sleep early.
Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed?
We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight.
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You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside.
It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals.
Hey, everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network.
And on my podcast we talk mental health healing, growth and everything you need to step into your next season whole and empowered.
New year, real you.
Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Are you desperately hoping for change in 2026, but feeling stuck?
Just spinning your wheels in old routines and bad habits?
I'm Dr Laurie Santos and in a new year series of my show, The Happiness Lab, I'm going to look at the science of getting well unstuck.
We'll look at ways to reignite your sense of purpose, rediscover your values, and get more creative.
We'll also explore how to design a life that feels more fulfilling.
It's sort of like the game of life.
I don't know if you ever played that game.
Oh my gosh, yes.
You take the car along and you try and get money, and you try and get degrees, and you try and get to the end where either you have a mansion or a ranch or a shack.
And once you get to retirement, you're done.
What about the whole path along the way?
So join me to get unstuck in 2026.
Listen to The Happiness Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.
So this, was this, this is Libya, correct?
Forgiveness was the Dave Ruse joint.
Oh, okay.
I thought this was Libya.
So yeah, thanks to Dave for this.
He did a great job with this research.
But the evolutionary aspect of forgiveness is super interesting to me because I think that a lot of people assume that it's what Dave calls a higher virtue.
Like you know, as Tuk-Tuk and the gang were so base as you know, kind of primitive thinkers is that they didn't have the capacity to forgive.
They would smite somebody.
If someone punched Tuk-Tuk in the face, Tuk-Tuk punched back.
Or if someone attacked Tuk-Tuk, Tuk-Tuk attacked back, maybe even harder.
And there is quite a bit of evidence that they're not mutually exclusive and that fighting back and forgiving both have a big evolutionary advantage.
Yeah.
So the big evolutionary advantage of revenge is if you live in a social group and somebody takes advantage of you, or they hit you or they steal your food or whatever.
If you don't do something to right that wrong, you're broadcasting to the rest of the group that you're open for exploitation.
And that's not good for you.
It's also not good for the chances that you're going to pass along your genes.
And so, under the auspices of natural selection, it makes sense for you to hit that person that steals your food or who hits you.
And that's revenge, and revenge forms that function in a social group.
It says to everybody, it signals to the rest of the group, you are not to be messed with.
This guy tried it, and look what happened to him.
Nobody else should try that.
Go pick on somebody else.
And there's actually been studies that have showed that not just among apes and primates but among human cultures, revenge is found pretty much universally everywhere.
And I saw a study Chuck, that said that the mere presence of a person, a third party who's witnessing an argument increases the chances that that argument is going to come to blows.
Because you're signaling to the rest of the group, and in this case, just that third person, you are not to be messed with.
That that's the purpose of revenge is to broadcast that signal.
Yeah, I mean I would say that any kind of dumb drunk bar fight, half of it is the fact that someone doesn't want to back down in front of other people.
Sure.
You know, more than half.
Totally.
And that if those two guys were just in an alley somewhere, they may just hug it out.
Yeah.
Probably not, but you never know.
That's possible, or they might talk it out at least.
Yeah, or just agree that it's dumb and leave.
Yes.
But you talked about studies in the animal world.
There's a primatologist named Franz de Waal who looked at wild chimps, recorded 350 encounters aggressive encounters between these chimps.
And then what happened afterward?
And In 51 of these encounters the chimps would literally kind of kiss and make up and touch each other and embrace each other after a fight.
We've seen the same thing in bonobos, in great apes.
There's sheep, there's dolphins, there's goats.
Even hyenas have shown traits of forgiveness.
So it's not ubiquitous, but it is all over the animal kingdom.
Animals fighting and then animals making up with one another.
Right.
So, I mean, the revenge one's pretty easy to understand.
But then you're like, OK, well, why would there be the making up part?
But that also ties into the fact that these same animals are also living in social, tight knit social groups.
And so you have a limited amount of people that you can possibly have a dispute or a feud with.
And if you're not working together cooperatively, in that sense also, your chances of survival are decreased.
So what makes sense is what's called the valuable relationship hypothesis, which says if somebody hits you, you should hit them back.
But then after that, you should make up with them.
So you're sending that signal you're not to be messed with.
But then you're repairing that relationship, that valuable relationship that you depend on to help your survival in the social group.
You're repairing it and then you guys can move forward.
And that that is how revenge and forgiveness are basically two sides of the same coin, or at least work in conjunction with one another to keep the group functioning at its best.
Right.
And that kind of dovetails with the second point Part of that thing which is called negative reciprocity, which is if someone hits tuk-tuk and tuk-tuk goes crazy and just starts wailing on the other person who just slapped him in the face.
That's not good either, because everyone's going to go whoa.
Tuk-tuk, I'm not sure I trust him now.
He has definitely burned that bridge forever between him and the other guy, and none of this is very good.
So what they found is negative reciprocity if someone smites you, you smite them back the same amount and then forgive them.
Like if someone takes off their glove and slaps you across the face –
You don't kick them between the legs and then wail on their face.
You slap them back with your glove and then you talk about forgiving one another and everyone sees that you can work with people.
You can stand your ground, but you can also forgive and work with people, which means you're valuable to the group and you're valuable to have around.
Yeah, and so kind of tied into what you were saying earlier about how there's this idea that revenge is a base instinct and forgiveness is a higher instinct, rather than realizing that they're both pretty basic instincts among the animal kingdom.
There's this idea that in human society, we have created these social institutions and these contexts so that—
The individual doesn't have to carry out revenge and then forgiveness, that they can just focus on forgiveness.
Yeah.
As long as those social institutions are doing what they're supposed to do, as long as there is like a pursuit of justice.
Right.
And you can rely on the idea that the person who transgressed against you by killing your father is going to be caught and punished and sentenced to jail.
You don't have to worry about revenge.
It's being it's being conducted for you.
And then you, the individual in this well-functioning society, can just focus on whether you want to forgive or not.
And that that's that kind of higher and lower echelon.
Because in the opposite situation, where there isn't like a good sense of justice, where it does seem like if you want justice you have to go seek it out yourself.
Revenge is going to be much more exercised much more frequently now. than forgiveness will.
Yeah.
Which says a lot about the United States these days, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not trying to be cynical even.
I mean, that's just sort of what we see around us.
I think a lot of people feel like the sense of justice in this country is pretty skewed and that's why you might see the increases in things like vigilantism or revenge.
And I don't know what societies you look to, to do a study like that.
I'm kind of curious on The ones that are very well policed and the justice is sort of fair and equal.
But I think that's one of the problems in the states these days for sure.
Yeah.
Without getting too far down that rabbit hole.
But also even you know, it's kind of eye-opening to me because I've never really thought about the courts and the justice system is set up to help individuals move along.
Yeah, it should be.
You just think of it as punishment.
It's a system for punishment, not for redemption necessarily.
But it's also to help the victims.
I just never saw it that way before.
Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about that guy in court and a lot of times you'll hear the courtroom forgiveness.
Sometimes you'll also hear the opposite and you hear the courtroom like.
I will never forgive you for what you did to me.
And I think, not always, but it seems to be a lot of time tied to whether the transgressor has...
Really acknowledged what they've done and sought forgiveness and said that was the worst thing I've ever done in my life.
And I don't I don't think you should ever forgive me.
Like, it's an interesting sort of dance that happens there because it's not a one to one thing.
It's not like.
Every time a bad criminal that does something really asks for forgiveness and says it was a terrible thing, the other person forgives.
Sometimes the person could laugh it off, like this lady did, and not ask for forgiveness, and the other person could forgive, which I think goes back to the notion that forgiveness comes from the forgiver.
Right, that it's really about the person who's been wronged.
That's who it's about.
And so yeah, now we've reached the kind of psychology's domain over the concept of forgiveness, which is that it's about you, the individual who suffered a wrong, releasing the pain and the anger and the resentment and all of the negative feelings that you're experiencing so that you can feel better, and that it doesn't matter whether the other person is asking for forgiveness, and that it doesn't even matter if the other person deserves forgiveness or not.
That genuine forgiveness, psychologically speaking, according to some psychologists, we'll hear that some disagree, but that genuine, true forgiveness is unconditional.
That you forgive the person whether they deserve it or not.
Yeah, and this is where the language to me is a little...
I could see people debating this because it is forgiveness in a way, but to me it's almost more of just a letting go.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Of an anger.
So it's not – it's so tricky with the definition because when you think of forgiveness, you think I'm saying – and it's really not what it is.
What you're not saying is it's okay what you did.
Okay, so yes, that's a huge point.
You know what I mean?
That's not a key component of forgiveness.
Right.
No, no, it's not.
And that's a very confusing thing for a lot of people too.
Is that the idea that if you forgive somebody, you're condoning their behavior?
You're saying it's okay what they did.
That's not the point of forgiveness.
Right.
And from what psychologists who research this are coming up with.
They're saying no, what you're doing when you forgive somebody is to say I know what you did.
You wronged me.
I know what you did last summer.
I can live with that.
It doesn't make it any better.
Yeah.
It doesn't make it any better.
It doesn't excuse what you did.
Right.
And it certainly doesn't excuse future repeated mistakes. instances of what you just did.
But it's saying like I'm willing to let go of the pain I have associated with this act.
You did against me this wrong.
And I'm going to move forward with my life.
And in doing that, I'm willing to let you move forward as well.
Well, or I think sometimes in a case like this, that kind of forgiveness can make the transgressor suffer worse sometimes.
Yeah, just out of guilt.
Yeah.
And they want to be admonished and hated as part of a punishment.
But, you know, TS, you know, because again, forgiveness is not for you.
It's for the person.
Dave even makes a great point.
The person being forgiven is secondary or even unnecessary to the process.
And that's sort of the key.
You don't even have to Tell that person necessarily.
We'll get to later some kind of like how to forgive.
Some people say that you should tell someone out loud, like literally tell someone.
But you don't necessarily have to tell that person if it's a situation like this, or even if it's like a close personal friend.
Like I think usually you do.
When it's someone you know, because that's a part of communicating with one another in a healthy way.
But if it's the person who killed your family, you don't have to tell them to forgive them.
And you can still forgive them.
Yes.
So some psychologists define forgiveness like a full forgiveness, as including you actually seeking out contact with that person.
Right.
And that if you forgive them but don't tell them or you still avoid them afterward, where it's like hey, I forgive you, but good luck with the rest of your life,
Yeah.
You're not in my life anymore.
That to some psychologists – not all –
Some psychologists say that's not genuine forgiveness.
That's akin to like what you were saying, which is letting go of anger and moving on, but not really actually forgiving.
I still say it's forgiving.
I'm not one of the psychologists.
Sure.
And it's very much debated for sure.
But then that also leads to another point too, that if you forgive somebody, it doesn't necessarily mean you forget.
Right.
And that's not part and parcel to it.
Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting.
You can forget.
I'm actually really good at that kind of thing where like I forgive because it just –
Unless it was a really huge wrong.
It just kind of fades from my memory fairly easily and I don't dwell on it.
So it can go hand in hand.
But if you've been deeply wronged by somebody, where you're actually going through the process of forgiving which we'll talk about and it's a deliberate step that you're taking toward finding peace with yourself and your life again, then you know very well what that wrong was and you're not going to forget it.
But eventually the aim is that you will have divorced the emotional attachment from that memory of that wrong to where it becomes akin to like a movie you saw once or a trip you took once.
It's just a thing that happened in your life, rather than this crisis that is sucking up your attention and emotions.
Yeah, I really like this definition from Fred Luskin, who is a psychologist and forgiveness expert, for what it's worth.
Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects.
And Fred's definition is to forgive is to give up all hope for a better past.
And that really lays it out there in a very practical sense that forgiveness, What has happened has happened.
You may not be there yet in your journey to forgiveness or the letting go, but you cannot change what happened, no matter how angry you are or how much you want someone to pay for it or suffer, or how much revenge you want.
So there is no better past.
That's impossible.
So giving up hope for a better past?
It's sort of a bleak definition, but one that I think is pretty instructive.
Yeah, but it's also a realistic definition too, if you think about it, because you can't change the past one way or another.
You can only alter how you let the past continue to affect you or not.
And the other thing I really want to say here right now because it can be confusing for me too When I think about forgiveness and anger and stuff like that is like this is not.
No one is talking about something like throwing a switch or like, rather than feeling anger, you feel forgiveness.
That's actually counterproductive as we'll see.
Like you can't replace anger with forgiveness.
Forgiveness is meant to come after anger, because you use anger or hurt or resentment or whatever.
Your version of that is to protect and guard your own boundaries.
So it's unnatural for you to not have some sort of negative emotion or negative response to being wronged.
But you don't want to replace that or try to replace it with forgiveness, because you may accidentally trip up the process and you're not really legitimately feeling forgiveness.
You're basically just setting yourself up to be wronged again.
Yeah, my deal personally is Emily always talks about what a forgiving person I am, because I really crave to forgive.
I don't know.
I was about to say crave forgiveness.
I crave forgiving.
I guess it sounds funny, but I just – all I need is for someone to say they're sorry for something.
And then it's done.
Nine times out of ten, that's done for me.
And as far as forgetting, I'm a pretty good forgetter too.
I don't know about literally forgetting something, but I definitely look back on a lot of relationships, especially with ex-girlfriends, that were terrible and go – oh, what was so bad in that relationship?
We were pretty good, right?
Sure.
No, we weren't pretty good at all.
Right.
I just have rose-colored glasses and I think you and I are both like as podcasting partners and family and team good about when we had little dust-ups, forgiving one another if the other person like says they're sorry.
Like, you and I both get over that stuff pretty quickly.
Yeah.
Which is...
Oh, it's very key though.
You know, like, Oh yeah.
You can't, forgiveness is like from the heart.
If you really, if you're hanging on to something, then you're not done with it yet.
No, but so and that is so important Chuck, that's important for the individual to remember that That if you are unable to forgive, that means that you're still hanging on to it.
That doesn't mean you'll never forgive.
And that also doesn't mean you have to hurry up and forgive.
It means you're still in the process of reaching the point where you can forgive.
That's right.
It's a deliberate choice from everything I've seen in the research.
You are making a deliberate choice to forgive somebody, but it's not throwing a switch.
It's part of a process.
And during that process, while you're on the road to forgiving the person, you're still going to be kind of angry at them.
Maybe not the whole time, but every once in a while it might hit you before you've fully forgiven them.
And then you're going to be mad about it all over again.
That's okay.
That's normal.
That's natural.
You can't really rush it.
You can, but it's going to be detrimental.
What you want to do is just kind of let it play out and have faith that if you're on the path to forgiveness, you'll ultimately will forgive the person and things will be good again.
Yeah.
And depending on your life and your childhood, like you, probably have an inclination or an instinct to forgive or not, based on what you saw, what was modeled.
There's both nature and nurture involved, but I think people generally have an instinct of revenge or forgiveness.
And to do one or the other that is against that instinct requires great effort, especially in the case of forgiveness, because you may not be inclined to be a forgiver at all.
That doesn't mean something's wrong with you.
That just means that's probably what you saw growing up, or maybe something happened to you when you were young that makes it harder for you.
But it's still possible to get there.
It just might be tougher.
Well, what's neat is another thing that the field of psychology is telling us about forgiveness is that it can be taught.
You can learn to forgive, even if you were raised in an unforgiving environment where you never learned how to do that.
You can learn how to do it.
And I say we kind of jump to those to how to forgive before we go into physical health, because I feel like we're kind of there right now.
Yeah, well, let's take a break.
Okay.
Let's take our final break, and we'll talk about that when we get back, as well as this one sort of interesting study.
I'd like to hit real quick too.
Okay.
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All right, so there's this study that Dave dug up that I thought was interesting.
I think it's flawed, but interesting.
It screams social psychology.
They took 46 people.
They divided them into two groups.
One wrote about a time when they had something – some wrong committed against them, but they forgave.
The other wrote about a time when they had something wrong committed against them, but they did not forgive.
And then they told those people to stand at the bottom of a hill to estimate how steep it was and also, in a separate part of the study, to jump as high as they could.
The unforgiving group – guessed that the incline was five degrees steeper on average than the forgiving, and the forgivers jumped seven centimeters higher.
So the takeaway here is, is you literally, it's more difficult for you.
You see the world as being more difficult and steeper and you can't jump as high and you can't accomplish as much if you're holding onto that.
All kinds of red flags here to this study, especially when it comes to the jumping part.
But I thought it was interesting, the guessing the incline of the hill.
There may be something to that.
Well yeah, and I mean it is backed up Chuck, by the physiological studies of how stress and anger affect you and how releasing those can actually help you.
There's a lot of research that shows that you can suffer from chronic stress when you're angry all the time, and that that's tied to everything from high blood pressure to diabetes, to poor cardiovascular outcomes diabetes.
Just a whole host of chronic conditions can be traced back to chronic stress, and chronic stress can be traced back to chronic anger.
And what they're discovering is that forgiveness can actually undo that, can actually reverse that.
There was a study that rated people based on the life stresses they'd had, and they apparently recruited participants for this study who'd been through a lot of stress, so much so that they were basically always chronically stressed because they have had so many terrible events in their life.
And there was one group that actually did not have poor health compared to the rest of the group.
And they found that when they gave them a test of forgiveness of how forgiving they were generally, they found that this subset was actually overall, a very forgiving group.
And that that somehow was battling back the chronic stress or the effects of chronic stress on their health in life.
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes complete sense.
If you were someone who really has a problem with forgiving and just holds on to these deep, deep resentments against people, usually against people very close to you and your family.
Even that just that can't be good for you physically.
I've seen it happen.
I don't want to get too personal, but there are people in my family who haven't spoken for 20 plus years over dumb stuff that it's like.
You see, that kind of like stubbornness coupled with resentment.
And it's just, man, that is just no way to live.
Yeah.
No way to live.
Yeah.
So there was another one that – another study that Dave turned up that shows that, even like in a very short term, thinking about holding a grudge can actually affect you physiologically.
Yeah.
By activating your sympathetic nervous system as Dave puts it, the battle or skedaddle impulse.
Uh-huh.
And they found that they cut these two groups into – or they cut the participants into two groups.
All of the people had to think about some time when they were deeply wronged in the past.
And then one group was taken through an exercise where they learned to forgive the person.
The other group – this is so mean – was encouraged to hold a grudge.
They were basically taught – they went through an exercise to hold a grudge and be angry and resentful about that.
And they found that the people who were taught to hold the grudge had elevated skin conductance, which meant their nervous system was aroused.
Higher arterial blood pressure, not good.
They also had muscle tension in the brow area.
You know when your brows furrowed when you're stressed out or mad.
Sure.
And the symptoms.
Even after they went through an exercise to basically de-escalate everything, the symptoms persisted.
Yeah.
And this was just an exercise, where you were just thinking about being wronged and then holding a grudge about it.
This was like an hour out of their lives.
And that was the effects.
That was the findings of that.
So it's pretty clear that...
That, yes, anger can affect you physically.
And we don't have the reams of data that we have supporting it like we do.
That anger hurts you physically.
But there seems to be the opposite of that holds true, which is releasing that anger, which is forgiveness, in whatever form it takes, can actually improve your health as well.
Right.
Earlier in the episode, we were talking about religion.
All religions talk extensively about forgiveness.
And when they do studies these days, usually like questionnaires and stuff.
Depending on the studies you look at, you would think religiosity does play a role in that people who describe themselves as religious – supposedly in some studies are two and a half times more likely to say that others should be forgiven unconditionally.
But I know you found some studies that found that religiosity does not play as big a role as a lot of people think it does.
And that sometimes religious people may be more inclined to say that they are forgiving when they aren't, because it's the right thing to do.
Yeah, the study found that when you ask, basically when you survey them, people who are religious tend to come off as more forgiving.
They self-report as forgiving.
Right.
But then if you ask them other certain questions—
I guess in real world situations, they're no more forgiving than other people.
So that would be an interpretation that they think they're more forgiving or tell people they're more forgiving than they actually are.
But there is another way to look at it too.
And they went back and followed up on that study.
And they found that, over a longer term, people who are religious actually do tend to be more forgiving in their lives.
It wasn't like the most set in stone study, but I found it interesting that they were.
They had it harder.
The religious people in this study had more difficulty in relating grudges that they're carrying around, compared to the control group of people who weren't religious.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Sure.
There was some redemption there.
Yeah.
As far as how to forgive, like we said, hopefully we've gotten it through that.
It's something you can learn if you are not an inherent forgiver.
You can learn how to through practice.
There's a psychologist named Worthington.
Everett Worthington.
Edward?
Everett.
Everett Worthington.
There should be a third after that if you ask me.
There totally should be.
And Worthington has developed the REACH model. which we'll go through.
It's an acronym.
Of course.
Recall is the first step.
And that's to really recall the event in detail, but in sort of an objective way, and not necessarily something that was done to you, but just to look at the detail of it and try not to judge yourself or the other person.
Just simply bring that back to your mind.
Yeah, and the point of that is to feel the feelings.
Like we humans have such a tendency to try to get away from negative feelings and run toward positive feelings.
And I think Worthington's position is that we have to feel whatever feelings are associated with it.
And that's a huge part of it.
We have to go through that experience.
It's part of the recall.
Right.
The E stands for empathy.
This is one that is, I don't know about controversial, but it's not everyone agrees at all on whether or not you need to actually have empathy to forgive.
But empathy can certainly help you forgive if someone has broken into your home and stolen from you.
It might help to forgive them, to empathize and think about where they may be in their life to feel like they needed to do something like that is one example.
Yeah, and he points out also, like you're not excusing their behavior, but you're just thinking about them beyond just a villain or criminal or a person who wronged you for sure.
And actually we should say Everett Worthington had to put his money where his mouth was, because his mother was actually murdered by a burglar, I think back in 1997.
And he put himself through the reach method and he said he came out on the other side better off than he had been.
And I think he was already doing this, right?
That didn't inspire his career, did it?
No, no.
I think he was already doing it, coincidentally.
Wow.
The ironies.
So the A stands for altruistic gift.
And the point of this is that you realize that you are actually giving a gift to by forgiving somebody even, I guess, if you don't tell them, even if you don't necessarily empathize with them.
But the way you do this, the way you recognize that your forgiveness is an altruistic gift, is to think about times where you've wronged somebody and that they've been forgiving, and even if you didn't necessarily deserve it, and what a gift that that was.
You're kind of bringing it to mind, which I think is really suspiciously kind of tied in with empathizing if you ask me yeah i mean he was trying to make the word reach sure uh commit to this is what i mentioned earlier about telling someone else doesn't necessarily have to be the person you're forgiving although that could help uh if you want to go that route but telling someone else at least in worthington's mind makes it uh gives it a degree of permanence and it basically makes it part of your story like you're changing the story essentially Exactly.
And then hold.
And this is very important too that we said earlier, you can forgive, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to forget.
So when you do remember that kind of thing, you're still going through the process and you're still angered by it.
You're still hurt by it, but you're on the path to forgiveness.
You have to hold on to the idea that you're working on forgiving them that it's not an instantaneous thing.
So you have to hold the fact that you're forgiving them, even in the face of being triggered by or flooded by this again when you think about the memory of it.
Right.
Luskin has a nine-step process which we're not going to really get into, but step eight is interesting.
Just like REM says, living well is the best.
Revenge is the sort of the nuts and bolts of number eight.
And there's something to be said for that.
But I think it also makes it much harder to forgive and move on if you're not able to live well.
And that doesn't mean, you know, money and riches and stuff like that.
That means just living a full life.
But if you're not able to forgive and get past that, I mean there are plenty of movies of people that have been have some awful thing from their past that they're Just wallowing in all these heroes later, and that's the central plot of the film, you know.
She-Devil.
Hoosiers.
Hoosiers.
That's right.
But that's I mean, that's the point of forgiveness is to free yourself, to find peace within yourself.
And yes, it's great for the person who wronged you if you overtly forgive them and let them know, but you don't have to.
And then also Chuck, there's a whole school of thought in psychology that says not only do you not have to tell the person that you're forgiving them, you don't have to forgive them.
Right.
At all.
And that there's this whole almost kind of not culty but really kind of dogmatic idea that if you don't follow these steps and you don't like genuinely fully forgive somebody, you really haven't worked out the process.
There's something wrong with you.
Maybe you're an unforgiving person and that makes you tacky.
That's what psychologists call it.
And there's a whole group of psychologists say no no, no.
There's way more to this process than just you know nine steps or the reach method.
Like there's.
It's more nuanced than that and that you can be a fully functioning person, emotionally developed person, who says you know what.
I don't forgive you.
I may never forgive you, but I'm still going on with my life.
And if the point of forgiveness is to achieve peace in yourself, if you can achieve peace in yourself and you do it without forgiving somebody because you don't want to forgive them or you don't feel like you should forgive them, then that's okay too.
As long as you're getting inner peace, that's the point.
Yeah.
And there is a school of thought saying that in cases where, like it's, a harm has been committed to you, that could happen again.
You may be more likely to have that harm committed to you again if you do forgive too much.
There is research about spousal abuse that when you're quick to forgive the abuser, then you are victimized more regularly than spouses who aren't as forgiving.
And that's based on operant learning, basically.
You're less likely to engage in a behavior that has a negative consequence.
So they've done plenty of research on that and a lot of psychologists say like Yeah, forgiveness is great, but while you shouldn't be bitter, there are a lot of times when you should not forgive somebody, and that's okay.
Yeah, there's a whole there's an article from 1999 on psychology today called Must We Forgive?
And it is really interesting.
It's fascinating.
It's.
This psychologist writes about probably half a dozen or more people and their different individual circumstances and the reasons they chose not to forgive.
And she kind of pigeonholes them into like three general categories.
But because psychologists love doing that.
But it's a really compelling article and it's definitely worth reading.
And it provides this kind of alternative idea that like no, there's definitely situations where some people don't deserve your forgiveness.
One of the chief among them is if you say, like a sibling or a family member of some sort you have like some sort of falling out with, or they've wronged you and you choose not to forgive them, you might feel tremendous pressure from the rest of your family to just go ahead and forgive them.
That's a terrible reason to forgive somebody.
And if you do forgive them under those circumstances or say, because your religion decrees it, you're like that's not full forgiveness.
And it may actually harm you, because you may suffer from a distorted self-image or lowered self-respect because you basically went back to this person who not only wronged you in the past, is unrepentant about it, but is just going to continue the behavior again in the future.
So there's definitely instances where, Like you, probably shouldn't forgive, but that doesn't mean that you should be stuck in resentment and anger and letting that person have power over your life.
You might just need to move on without them and without forgiving them.
And you can make that work as well.
Yeah, I mean, there was that one terrible story that you sent about the woman who, as a child, had this terribly bullying and abusive older brother.
And we won't even talk about the awful things this guy did.
But the parents were really always pushing like oh, he just doesn't know how to say he loves you.
He doesn't know how to talk to you, so he does these things, and you really need to forgive him.
And that's just... that's bonkers.
You know that that is a situation where you were doing such great harm as a parent to to teach your daughter to accept this kind of behavior.
Right.
And not only accept it, but forgive it.
It's like just setting her up for unless she really therapies through that stuff later in life of just a series of terrible relationships.
So exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
You can't, uh, forgiveness isn't always the thing.
Um, I have a friend who had a terrible thing happen to him when he was younger.
And we talked a lot about this, and he has forgiven that person in his heart.
And I was like, well, I haven't.
And I was like, I'm still angry about it.
And he was like, thanks.
Like, that helps.
Like, I'm angry and have not forgiven on his behalf.
And I thought he was going to say like, no, man, you need to do the same.
And he was like, thank you, man. that.
Yeah.
And I think that's another thing worth pointing out too is we have this concept of people who forgive others being saintly, and it's not necessarily that kind of a thing.
It's not necessarily that kind of a process.
Sometimes it is just straight up self-preservation.
That's the way that you're going to get to a point where you can feel peace again in your life.
And That doesn't mean you're a saint or you're even feeling saintly, or you're conducting yourself in a saintly manner.
And that doesn't matter as long as you're feeling inner peace and your life is no longer in turmoil.
And this person who wronged you doesn't have power over you any longer.
That's the point of forgiveness.
Yeah.
And that that was totally the deal in his case is that was his only way forward to to healing himself.
Uh, but since this wasn't something that happened to me, I was able to not forgive and remain upset about it.
And, uh, He was okay with that.
Yeah.
And still to this day, you won't buy that guy beers.
Oh, man.
So there's one other thing that has started to kind of come out of the shadows, that's just getting picked up by psychology as far as forgiveness goes, and it's self-forgiveness.
And we don't really have room to talk about that here, but it's worth exploring sometime, maybe in a short stuff.
Yeah, that's a big deal.
Just a lot of times when I'm beating up on myself, Emily says, you need to be nicer to my friend.
Oh, I know.
You've told that before.
It's good stuff.
One of the sweetest things I've ever heard.
What a kind thing to say.
It works.
You know who needs to hear that?
Don Henley.
You got anything else on forgiveness, Charles?
I got nothing else.
This is a good weighty philosophical discussion.
I like these.
Agreed.
Thanks a lot to Dave Bruce for helping us out with this one.
And if you want to know more about forgiveness, you should seriously go out and do some reading, especially if you have something to forgive.
It's not something you necessarily can understand just instinctively.
It helps to see what the experts say.
So maybe go explore that and free yourself.
Since I said free yourself, that of course means it's time for Listener Mail.
I'm going to call this dental art.
Hey, guys, been a listener for a while.
We've nearly finished with the sandwiching method before I knew it was even cool.
You were talking a few shows back before the holidays about putting a kidney stone in Chuck's replacement tooth.
This would be unusual, but people actually get custom inlays and artwork made for their crowns.
Inlays are generally gold or gemstone with a custom artwork, and it's referred to as a tooth tattoo, which is hand-painted onto the crown before it gets a final coat of glaze.
The most common requests here in the Chicagoland area are sports logos.
Oh, no.
Like a little Chicago Cubs logo on your tooth.
But I've seen names, company logos, even a tiny version of Starry Night on a tooth.
While a lot of modern crown and bridge manufacturing has gone digital, highly leveraging cam, CAD and 3D printing for most restorations, tooth tattoos are a unique manifestation of the relatively unknown artistry of a subset of dental technicians.
Wow.
While I recognize the dentistry as a whole is widely disliked and a pain to endure, I appreciate that you guys probably unknowingly helped to destigmatize restorative dental work by openly talking about your dealings with it.
Tooth wear and decay is part of the human condition.
No need for shame.
After all, it will keep me and my cadre employed and happily listening to stuff you should know.
Many regards.
That is from Eric Crowley.
Or Crowley?
Probably Crowley.
I'm going with Crowley.
In Park Ridge, Illinois.
Very nice.
Thanks a lot, Eric.
That's awesome.
Can you imagine seeing Starry Night on a tooth?
I've got to look that up.
Wonderful.
I'd have to scream.
And then you could scream whenever you reveal it, too.
Yeah, just freak people out.
And speaking of sports teams Chuck, I feel like we should congratulate our Georgia Bulldogs for winning the national championship.
Yes, never thought I would see the day.
What a great, great game.
Just unbelievable feeling.
Two championships in three months for this long-suffering Atlanta-slash-Georgia fan.
I know.
It's amazing.
I don't even know how to reconcile these feelings that I'm having lately.
They'll be robbed from you next year.
Don't worry.
It'll go back to normal.
But that is pretty great to go out on a high like that.
Probably so.
It was great.
Go Dawgs!
Go Dawgs, indeed.
And if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I and Jerry or Frank the Chair or Harry Dawg, even we can probably pass along emails you send.
You can wrap your emails up, spank them on the bottom and send them off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradiocom.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally.
And I'm Hari Kundabolu.
It's a new year and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
I like to sleep in late and sleep early.
Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?
Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, everybody.
It's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network.
You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside.
It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals.
And on my podcast we talk mental health healing, growth and everything you need to step into your next season whole and empowered.
New year, real you.
Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Are you desperately hoping for change in 2026 but feeling stuck?
I'm Dr Laurie Santos and in a new year series of my show, The Happiness Lab, I'm going to look at the science of getting well unstuck.
Unstuck at work, unstuck in your relationships, and even unstuck inside your mind.
I am the absolute worst culprit when it comes to getting into these ruminative loops and just driving myself crazy.
Listen to The Happiness Lab on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.
This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.
