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Kirtly: Welcome. We are continuing our exploration of the 7 Domains of Exploring. I'm Dr. Kirtly Jones from Obstetrics and Gynecology at Сòòò½APP. And we have been talking about how exploring and the drive to explore enhance our lives, our physical health, our mental health, and our spiritual health.

Today, we're going to talk about the intellectual domain of exploring. Are you a neophobe? Neophobe, phobic, don't really like new things or exploring? Are you a neophile? You really do seek out new worlds and boldly go where no one's gone before? Or are you a neophiliac? Well, I'm not sure that's a real word, but it means your exploring might be going a little bit too far.

So with me is intrepid explorer Katie Ward. She has a doctorate in nursing practice and a clinical practice in women's health. She is a certified midlife women's health practitioner and is an anthropologist and a world explorer.

So, Katie, when was the first time you knew you were an explorer?

Katie: An explorer or a neophiliac?

Kirtly: Well, I'm just going to let you decide about whether neophiliac actually is the description of your exploring needs, desires, impulsive nature.

Katie: Put a pin in that and see by the time we get to the end of the episode. So when did I first know I was an explorer? I mean, it's funny. Now I think back, and if I think back about myself as a child, I was doing this as a child, right? I was told that the place I could ride my tricycle was to the corner, but I remember riding around the corner.

Kirtly: Oh, to boldly go.

Katie: In thinking about things that really changed how I feel, I actually have a fairly vivid memory of being in college and just hearing the book title "The Selfish Gene." So I had grown up in a really religious household at the height of the '70s evangelical movement, and my family was really sort of steeped in that world. My exposure to things outside of that had been pretty limited until college. And so I just heard that book title, and it was a revelation. It was a life-changing concept.

I didn't read the book until much later, but those three little words changed my entire worldview. It made me really curious for more information, and I started gobbling up books and articles about what we used to call sociobiology. It was a book title by E.O. Wilson. And it started me on a lifelong quest. It's what led me back to school in my 50s to study anthropology.

So, yeah, I do remember how it made me feel. It made me feel really excited for a whole lot of new information.

Kirtly: I think for me, it's when I read something that made me feel much bigger, made the world that I lived in all of a sudden explode into something that was 10 times bigger or a thousand times bigger or an infinity. And when that happens, your chest gets bigger, and your heart feels big. It's an amazing experience to have a new thought that takes you on a new journey.

We've talked about the fact in another "7 Domains" about the fact that humans are hardwired for exploring. And we have been doing it since we could stand up and walk in an energy-efficient way. We are hardwired to explore. We took off, and we never looked back.

Psychologists have a deep interest in novelty-seeking. They have many questionnaires that try to figure and measure the degree of novelty-seeking and associations with other behaviors. And it is a trait that can lead to trouble, short bursts of interest, ADD, ADHD, experimenting with drugs and alcohol and the high that they offer, and gambling, compulsive spending, getting in trouble. It isn't always a good thing, this novelty-seeking.

And men tend to score more highly on novelty-seeking behaviors and drives than women, and younger people more than older people. It could be a genetic thing, it could be a cultural thing, it could be a hormone thing.

Katie, you are an anthropologist, adventurer, and explorer. This is up your alley. Where does the novelty exploring come from?

Katie: That, and it is a bit about the stuff that I study. So forgive me if I go way off on a nerd tangent here. I mean, I think it's probably all of those things. There are some genes, some culture, and perhaps some hormones.

But before I nerd out on the hormones too much, I think it's important to understand that individual differences between people is always greater than gender differences.

So we can kind of overlap two big bell curves and say males fall on this side and females on the other. But individual differences, the spread of those bell curves overlaps a lot. So I don't want to pigeonhole anybody into one risk category more than another.

Kirtly: Most of us don't have tons of kids, but for people who did have tons of kids and have two or three or four boys or girls, they find that in and among their own boys who have the same sort of genetic makeup, not exactly, but they grew in the same household, in the same culture, and birth order does make a difference, but they have some wildly exploring or deeply exploring kid, and somebody who's just a homebody and a neophobe.

Katie: Right. I see this in my own family. Two boys, and they're very different in the kinds of things that they enjoy. So, yeah, I think that that's important there. It's just that this is a complicated thing that you can't completely paint with a broad stroke.

That said, testosterone might influence risk-taking. Risk-taking, I think, is maybe a little different than novelty-seeking. So I think historically males maybe take a little bit more risk in terms of showing off. And there are some evolutionary ideas about their need to take risks in order to obtain rewards, especially when it comes to finding a mate. So there's a lot of interesting research and speculation about why that's different for males and females.

But I think women take other kinds of risks that might be emotional or that have to do with their relationships. And I don't know that we've quite figured out exactly how to measure this in a way that gets us to one specific answer.

I think we also socialize genders differently. So how we socialize kids may influence their access to novel environments. It may be that we socialize boys and give them more opportunities to do things that lead to novel environments.

So I think it's important to distinguish between novelty-seeking, which I think, generally, is something that leads to positive outcomes, and getting into trouble or addiction, where you kind of change what we call the hedonic set point, the point at which you feel you're achieving happiness.

In addiction, the thing that happens really is that that hedonic set point gets set higher, and you have to sort of use whatever the substance is we mentioned, alcohol or gambling or things, more and more to get to the same experience you used to.

And so I think of novelty-seeking as a thing where the journey is the destination, the seeking is its own reward, where addiction and getting into trouble is more of a maladaptive response to a more modern stimulus that just completely hijacks that neural reward system.

Kirtly: Right. And so when we get back to exploring, which has curiosity or novelty-seeking as part of it, we know from interviews of thousands of people, mostly European, that exploring is a crucial predictor of well-being. And it's the kind of exploring that predicts cognitive health and well-being into old age.

The kind of exploring that is a powerful driver for innovation and exploration and renewal is more than just novelty-seeking. It's more than just a quick hit of the feel-good hormone dopamine. It's more than just scrolling through your newsfeed or social media.

There are studies that look at explorers, and the best traits of novelty-seeking that go along to make the explorer are those that include curiosity, and that's the novelty-seeking part, persistence, and self-transcendence. And when you put those together, you get an explorer.

So we're going to be talking about that. And please check in with our other 7 Domains of Exploring. We talk about that a lot because it's so much a part of the human experience and what makes us so human. There are other species, there are some world explorers, maybe orcas fall into that category, but we are way out there on the exploring domain.

So some people are physical explorers. They are seeking new sensations. And some people are cognitive explorers, and they're seeking new understanding and new knowledge. And some people are both. Some adventures include physical or sensory novelty and cognitive novelty.

So, Katie, you're my go-to explorer. Tell me a story. Katie, I love your stories. Tell me a story.

Katie: So, this is a time when I combined my quest for a particular kind of sensory novelty, and I learned something. Again, one of those pivotal moments in my life where I learned something that blew my mind.

So I once went to Australia for a concert. That was the sensory part. I wanted to hear . . .

Kirtly: A long way for a concert, Katie.

Katie: That is a dedicated fan.

Kirtly: I would tune it up on Spotify myself, but that's okay.

Katie: It's a performer that I like, and I saw on social media that tickets were available. The ticket wasn't much. So I bought the ticket because the concert was occurring at a time where I knew I could take a trip away from work. And so I just thought if I could find a deeply discounted airfare, I would go. If no airfare came up, I would sell the ticket on the internet and not be out too much money.

The stars aligned, and I got a cheap airfare. And so I did this crazy trip to Australia. I was gone five days door to door. And I got to see the performer that I wanted to see. I had really a day and a half around the concert to spend some time.

It was my first trip to Australia, and I spent the day in a natural history museum. And so I learned some things about the Aboriginal people who were the original owners of the land of Australia that I did not know.

And so what I learned when I was in this museum was that they walked there, basically. Maybe a little bit of a seafaring component to it, but they'd been on that land for more than 50,000 . . . some estimates are starting to say more like 65,000 years ago. Really, as soon as people were people.

So you were saying as soon as we were upright and energetically could do this, we walked. Folks walked from Africa through Asia, down into Java, and then floated a little bit and landed in Australia.

So you had very few people, kind of a small founder group there, and the seas rose, and they were cut off from the rest of the world for the next 60,000 years. That sort of blew my mind. Since then, I've been back to Australia multiple times just to explore this land, because that one little story ended up sparking a huge interest for me.

Kirtly: Well, it is transcending to understand that once they were there and they were early on as people, although we've been people as people for a very long time, they had their own worldview. There's an amazing way of looking at the world and interdigitating time and space. The concept of songlines, and when you walk through space, you walk through time. That blew my mind. And so having lived in Australia myself, that was one of those deep dives.

Well, for me, I've been an addicted reader since the time I was 5. And I read all the Nancy Drew mysteries as a preteen and onto James Bond when I was a teen. And I knew that reading mysteries and thrillers gave me a dopamine hit. I was curious, I was persistent, and reading those books took me out of the daily sense of self. I could shut out my brothers and sisters.

But I became a cognitive explorer when I felt the overwhelming beauty of the natural world. And I took a deep dive into biology and evolution when I was in high school, beyond what they were teaching. And I had the support of my family.

Family, for an early explorer, can be critical. Not always. There are kids that do it on their own. But I had a daddy who was invested in my becoming an explorer, and it was transcending. I didn't have to travel to learn biology and learn about the sensory and the natural world.

So back to adventures that combine sensory explorations and the cognitive. If you are fortunate, as I just mentioned, your parents planted the exploring bug through museums or books or car trips. And for those who were lucky enough to have resources or family that had the resources, maybe they studied abroad when they were in high school or they took a summer abroad and maybe their first dive into exploring. Maybe it didn't stick, and they just went and had beers with their friends and hung out. But maybe it was a little bug that got populated, and now you want to go.

Katie: Well, I didn't have the means for study abroad as part of my early education.

Kirtly: Me neither.

Katie: And my family didn't have a lot of money for vacations. But we did take some long car trips and some long train trips. So that was how my parents liked to explore the world. They wanted to see it from a window, but not be outside in it. Climate controlled. But I had that experience of sort of traveling across a landscape.

And so as I've grown up and become an adult and my children are raised and I have a little more freedom, my favorite kind of exploring is really to be out in the world, and especially walking on it. So if I had to pick one vacation, it's a long-distance walk.

Kirtly: Oh, with someone who can teach you along the way. I like that one. And for people who are older and have resources, there are learning adventures combined with travel with the organization Road Scholar. And you can go to that at roadscholar.org. These are moderately priced trips with, often, active walking with learning along the way. That can be something that people of modest income who can save can actually get there.

Katie: Yeah. And then through the University of Utah here, where our podcast is based, there's Osher Lifelong Learning. If you don't want to go on a trip, but you're just interested in taking classes, all kinds of classes that you can take, I think for free after a certain age.

Then there's another program here at The U called Go Learn. This is my plan for my own retirement. So, in Go Learn, you can sign up for a curated trip led by a university professor that has local knowledge of the place you're traveling to.

Kirtly: Well, for those curious but unable to travel because of physical or financial or family constraints, there's still a whole world of cognitive exploring. You have to start with curiosity. Are you curious about something? Seriously curious? More than a 10-minute visit to Wikipedia? Or you checked out something on Wikipedia, and you want to go deeper? Okay, you're curious, and now you're showing some persistence. So you're getting there to get your explorer badge.

At the bottom of most Wikipedia articles are links to the sources from which the article was written. And you can take a deeper dive into the origins of the article, which is usually just a summary.

Then there's this amazing institution called a library and the heroes who know how to find out about anything, and that's librarians. And your local library is free, and many university libraries are free to explore with the help of librarians, even if you can't check the books out unless you're a student. Your dive can go much deeper.

Katie: And museums are another amazing place. So I was telling my story earlier about killing some time at a museum in Australia that changed my life. So that was a free or nominally priced exhibit where I learned one thing that then sent me back. I've gone on long vacations in Australia, spending a month traveling across the red outback Nullarbor, where no trees grow, and another trip camping under the stars to see Uluru. And that was all sparked by one day at a museum.

Kirtly: Yeah. I think when you walk through a museum, there are these people kind of standing by, and some of them are a little more outgoing and they'll come up to you, but they usually have a tag or they have a lanyard, and they are docents. Sometimes they're volunteers. Sometimes they're professionals.

The word docent or docere means to speak or to teach, and they know something deeper about that. And if you just spend a minute with the docent who happens to be standing by an exhibit or a painting, you can learn a lot.

Well, do you have a deep curiosity about something or want to improve your cognitive skills so you can explore something more deeply? There are free online courses from many universities that are sorted by how much time you want to spend or how much you already know.

is a great website that's sorted by topic and expertise and time if you want to learn about something in two hours, a shallow dive that might lead you to do a deeper dive, or courses that go up to four years.

And the Khan Academy at kahnacademy.org has free courses on many subjects. You can do that for free on your computer if you want to learn more about something.

And you can explore the kitchen. You can explore new foods and new techniques. You don't have to go to baking school to become a master baker if you have the curiosity, the persistence, and the ability to think above and beyond yourself.

And knitting, crafting. Katie, you do all these. I have many things that I wear in the winter that are thanks to Katie's persistence.

Katie: I mean, these are all things I've taken up. They're not things I grew up doing, but I took up knitting at a particular time in life. Knitting is probably my big craft. But I have friends who have developed incredible crafting skills in their retirement. It's never too late to take up a musical instrument. Don't ever let anybody tell you that it's too late to learn something.

There are citizen science projects. You can get involved in counting birds or collecting data about air quality. Lots of people I know have gotten into genealogy. It's a great time to think about writing, seeing the world through a different view and taking up photography, gardening. Exploration and growth like this are not just activities. They're a way of life.

Kirtly: Well, I have been much more curious about what is new in early childhood development for many reasons. And there's a lot out there for parents and grandparents if they want to know what goes on in little minds.

Of course, the mother of all video libraries is YouTube, but you have to be careful of the content because it isn't always curated, and it isn't fact-checked. So some are really quite reliable if they're ones that are, let's say, linked to Nova, the PBS science videos, but some are not necessarily that science-based. You've got to be a little careful.

Katie: Oh, man. So I've been exploring AI and virtual reality. I'm sure this is not going to surprise you, but I'm loving both of those things. And both of those were a little bit accidental, really.

So I was at a library at a demonstration of virtual reality and saw an opportunity to merge what I do for a living and using virtual reality as a way to teach. So I worked with a company to develop a virtual reality trainer for my students, and now we're kind of beta testing that to see how to use it in education. That's been a whole lot of fun, and it wasn't something I was expecting to get into at this stage in the game, but I'm really enjoying that.

Because artificial intelligence is something my students are using, as a teacher, I need to figure out how to use it and incorporate it into my learning. It's out there, I know students are going to be taking advantage of that, and so I needed to get ahead of that. And I have to say I've been blown away and having so much fun learning AI. So maybe that'll be an episode one of these days.

Kirtly: Probably so. How does your average grandma incorporate AI into the roles that she plays in her family? I'm going to have to think about that, because you're a grandma and I'm a grandma. So can I be a better grandma with AI?

Katie: I would say to any grandma listening, if you want to come up with a new game to play with your grandkids, pop it into whatever AI you have available to you and say, "I'm looking for an idea to play with my grandkids. This one likes exploring out in the world, and this one likes being inside. How do I merge that?" And you might be amazed at the number of ideas that will come up.

Kirtly: Well, people who created AI were bold explorers. They were curious, they were persistent, and they were self-transcendent in their focus, so deep, so long to create something like that.

And for those of you who will not be traveling right now or may never travel farther than your own home state, there's still a lot to learn. In your garden, in your backyard, in your neighborhood is a world of novelty and experiences. Time can slow down when you really look deeply at what's in your own domain.

There's a great quote from the poet William Blake in the poem "Auguries of Innocence": "To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour."

So thank you for exploring with us. If all of you are deeply diving into the 7 Domains of Exploring by listening to all of the seven domains, you can get them wherever you get your podcasts at the "7 Domains of Women's Health," or at womens7.com. You have curiosity, persistence, and hopefully self-transcendence. Good on you.