0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
So, here we go: a flyby of play.

0:00:04.000,0:00:08.000
It's got to be serious if the New York Times

0:00:08.000,0:00:14.000
puts a cover story of their February 17th Sunday magazine about play.

0:00:14.000,0:00:17.000
At the bottom of this, it says, "It's deeper than gender.

0:00:19.000,0:00:22.000
Seriously, but dangerously fun.

0:00:23.000,0:00:27.000
And a sandbox for new ideas about evolution."

0:00:28.000,0:00:32.000
Not bad, except if you look at that cover, what's missing?

0:00:32.000,0:00:34.000
You see any adults?

0:00:35.000,0:00:38.000
Well, lets go back to the 15th century.

0:00:39.000,0:00:42.000
This is a courtyard in Europe,

0:00:42.000,0:00:45.000
and a mixture of 124 different kinds of play.

0:00:46.000,0:00:52.000
All ages, solo play, body play, games, taunting.

0:00:52.000,0:00:57.000
And there it is. And I think this is a typical picture

0:00:57.000,0:01:00.000
of what it was like in a courtyard then.

0:01:01.000,0:01:04.000
I think we may have lost something in our culture.

0:01:05.000,0:01:08.000
So I'm gonna take you through

0:01:08.000,0:01:11.000
what I think is a remarkable sequence.

0:01:12.000,0:01:15.000
North of Churchill, Manitoba, in October and November,

0:01:15.000,0:01:17.000
there's no ice on Hudson Bay.

0:01:17.000,0:01:20.000
And this polar bear that you see, this 1200-pound male,

0:01:20.000,0:01:24.000
he's wild and fairly hungry.

0:01:24.000,0:01:27.000
And Norbert Rosing, a German photographer,

0:01:27.000,0:01:33.000
is there on scene, making a series of photos of these huskies, who are tethered.

0:01:34.000,0:01:38.000
And from out of stage left comes this wild, male polar bear,

0:01:38.000,0:01:41.000
with a predatory gaze.

0:01:41.000,0:01:46.000
Any of you who've been to Africa or had a junkyard dog come after you,

0:01:46.000,0:01:49.000
there is a fixed kind of predatory gaze

0:01:49.000,0:01:51.000
that you know you're in trouble.

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
But on the other side of that predatory gaze

0:01:53.000,0:01:58.000
is a female husky in a play bow, wagging her tail.

0:01:58.000,0:02:02.000
And something very unusual happens.

0:02:02.000,0:02:05.000
That fixed behavior -- which is rigid and stereotyped

0:02:05.000,0:02:08.000
and ends up with a meal -- changes.

0:02:09.000,0:02:11.000
And this polar bear

0:02:11.000,0:02:14.000
stands over the husky,

0:02:14.000,0:02:18.000
no claws extended, no fangs taking a look.

0:02:18.000,0:02:21.000
And they begin an incredible ballet.

0:02:25.000,0:02:26.000
A play ballet.

0:02:26.000,0:02:30.000
This is in nature: it overrides a carnivorous nature

0:02:30.000,0:02:33.000
and what otherwise would have been a short fight to the death.

0:02:34.000,0:02:39.000
And if you'll begin to look closely at the husky that's bearing her throat to the polar bear,

0:02:40.000,0:02:43.000
and look a little more closely, they're in an altered state.

0:02:44.000,0:02:47.000
They're in a state of play.

0:02:47.000,0:02:49.000
And it's that state

0:02:50.000,0:02:54.000
that allows these two creatures to explore the possible.

0:02:54.000,0:02:57.000
They are beginning to do something that neither would have done

0:02:57.000,0:03:00.000
without the play signals.

0:03:01.000,0:03:04.000
And it is a marvelous example

0:03:04.000,0:03:07.000
of how a differential in power

0:03:07.000,0:03:11.000
can be overridden by a process of nature that's within all of us.

0:03:11.000,0:03:14.000
Now how did I get involved in this?

0:03:14.000,0:03:17.000
John mentioned that I've done some work with murderers, and I have.

0:03:17.000,0:03:20.000
The Texas Tower murderer opened my eyes,

0:03:20.000,0:03:25.000
in retrospect, when we studied his tragic mass murder,

0:03:25.000,0:03:27.000
to the importance of play,

0:03:27.000,0:03:30.000
in that that individual, by deep study,

0:03:30.000,0:03:32.000
was found to have severe play deprivation.

0:03:32.000,0:03:34.000
Charles Whitman was his name.

0:03:34.000,0:03:37.000
And our committee, which consisted of a lot of hard scientists,

0:03:37.000,0:03:39.000
did feel at the end of that study

0:03:39.000,0:03:45.000
that the absence of play and a progressive suppression of developmentally normal play

0:03:45.000,0:03:50.000
led him to be more vulnerable to the tragedy that he perpetrated.

0:03:50.000,0:03:53.000
And that finding has stood the test of time --

0:03:54.000,0:03:58.000
unfortunately even into more recent times, at Virginia Tech.

0:03:58.000,0:04:01.000
And other studies of populations at risk

0:04:01.000,0:04:04.000
sensitized me to the importance of play,

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
but I didn't really understand what it was.

0:04:07.000,0:04:12.000
And it was many years in taking play histories of individuals

0:04:12.000,0:04:18.000
before I really began to recognize that I didn't really have a full understanding of it.

0:04:18.000,0:04:22.000
And I don't think any of us has a full understanding of it, by any means.

0:04:22.000,0:04:24.000
But there are ways of looking at it

0:04:24.000,0:04:29.000
that I think can give you -- give us all a taxonomy, a way of thinking about it.

0:04:29.000,0:04:34.000
And this image is, for humans, the beginning point of play.

0:04:34.000,0:04:37.000
When that mother and infant lock eyes,

0:04:37.000,0:04:40.000
and the infant's old enough to have a social smile,

0:04:40.000,0:04:44.000
what happens -- spontaneously -- is the eruption of joy on the part of the mother.

0:04:44.000,0:04:48.000
And she begins to babble and coo and smile, and so does the baby.

0:04:48.000,0:04:52.000
If we've got them wired up with an electroencephalogram,

0:04:52.000,0:04:57.000
the right brain of each of them becomes attuned,

0:04:57.000,0:05:02.000
so that the joyful emergence of this earliest of play scenes

0:05:02.000,0:05:06.000
and the physiology of that is something we're beginning to get a handle on.

0:05:07.000,0:05:11.000
And I'd like you to think that every bit of more complex play

0:05:11.000,0:05:15.000
builds on this base for us humans.

0:05:15.000,0:05:19.000
And so now I'm going to take you through sort of a way of looking at play,

0:05:19.000,0:05:23.000
but it's never just singularly one thing.

0:05:23.000,0:05:26.000
We're going to look at body play,

0:05:26.000,0:05:32.000
which is a spontaneous desire to get ourselves out of gravity.

0:05:32.000,0:05:34.000
This is a mountain goat.

0:05:34.000,0:05:36.000
If you're having a bad day, try this:

0:05:36.000,0:05:39.000
jump up and down, wiggle around -- you're going to feel better.

0:05:39.000,0:05:41.000
And you may feel like this character,

0:05:41.000,0:05:44.000
who is also just doing it for its own sake.

0:05:44.000,0:05:47.000
It doesn't have a particular purpose, and that's what's great about play.

0:05:47.000,0:05:50.000
If its purpose is more important

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
than the act of doing it, it's probably not play.

0:05:53.000,0:05:57.000
And there's a whole other type of play, which is object play.

0:05:57.000,0:06:00.000
And this Japanese macaque has made a snowball,

0:06:00.000,0:06:03.000
and he or she's going to roll down a hill.

0:06:03.000,0:06:07.000
And -- they don't throw it at each other, but this is a fundamental part of being playful.

0:06:07.000,0:06:11.000
The human hand, in manipulation of objects,

0:06:11.000,0:06:14.000
is the hand in search of a brain;

0:06:14.000,0:06:16.000
the brain is in search of a hand;

0:06:16.000,0:06:21.000
and play is the medium by which those two are linked in the best way.

0:06:21.000,0:06:27.000
JPL we heard this morning -- JPL is an incredible place.

0:06:27.000,0:06:30.000
They have located two consultants,

0:06:30.000,0:06:33.000
Frank Wilson and Nate Johnson,

0:06:33.000,0:06:37.000
who are -- Frank Wilson is a neurologist, Nate Johnson is a mechanic.

0:06:37.000,0:06:40.000
He taught mechanics in a high school in Long Beach,

0:06:40.000,0:06:45.000
and found that his students were no longer able to solve problems.

0:06:46.000,0:06:49.000
And he tried to figure out why. And he came to the conclusion, quite on his own,

0:06:49.000,0:06:53.000
that the students who could no longer solve problems, such as fixing cars,

0:06:53.000,0:06:55.000
hadn't worked with their hands.

0:06:55.000,0:06:58.000
Frank Wilson had written a book called "The Hand."

0:06:58.000,0:07:01.000
They got together -- JPL hired them.

0:07:01.000,0:07:04.000
Now JPL, NASA and Boeing,

0:07:04.000,0:07:07.000
before they will hire a research and development problem solver --

0:07:07.000,0:07:11.000
even if they're summa cum laude from Harvard or Cal Tech --

0:07:11.000,0:07:14.000
if they haven't fixed cars, haven't done stuff with their hands early in life,

0:07:14.000,0:07:17.000
played with their hands, they can't problem-solve as well.

0:07:17.000,0:07:20.000
So play is practical, and it's very important.

0:07:21.000,0:07:27.000
Now one of the things about play is that it is born by curiosity and exploration. (Laughter)

0:07:27.000,0:07:30.000
But it has to be safe exploration.

0:07:30.000,0:07:33.000
This happens to be OK -- he's an anatomically interested little boy

0:07:33.000,0:07:37.000
and that's his mom. Other situations wouldn't be quite so good.

0:07:37.000,0:07:40.000
But curiosity, exploration, are part of the play scene.

0:07:40.000,0:07:43.000
If you want to belong, you need social play.

0:07:43.000,0:07:46.000
And social play is part of what we're about here today,

0:07:46.000,0:07:49.000
and is a byproduct of the play scene.

0:07:50.000,0:07:52.000
Rough and tumble play.

0:07:52.000,0:07:55.000
These lionesses, seen from a distance, looked like they were fighting.

0:07:55.000,0:07:58.000
But if you look closely, they're kind of like the polar bear and husky:

0:07:58.000,0:08:02.000
no claws, flat fur, soft eyes,

0:08:02.000,0:08:05.000
open mouth with no fangs, balletic movements,

0:08:05.000,0:08:08.000
curvilinear movements -- all specific to play.

0:08:08.000,0:08:12.000
And rough-and-tumble play is a great learning medium for all of us.

0:08:12.000,0:08:16.000
Preschool kids, for example, should be allowed to dive, hit, whistle,

0:08:16.000,0:08:23.000
scream, be chaotic, and develop through that a lot of emotional regulation

0:08:23.000,0:08:28.000
and a lot of the other social byproducts -- cognitive, emotional and physical --

0:08:28.000,0:08:30.000
that come as a part of rough and tumble play.

0:08:31.000,0:08:35.000
Spectator play, ritual play -- we're involved in some of that.

0:08:35.000,0:08:39.000
Those of you who are from Boston know that this was the moment -- rare --

0:08:39.000,0:08:43.000
where the Red Sox won the World Series.

0:08:43.000,0:08:46.000
But take a look at the face and the body language of everybody

0:08:46.000,0:08:49.000
in this fuzzy picture, and you can get a sense that they're all at play.

0:08:50.000,0:08:51.000
Imaginative play.

0:08:51.000,0:08:56.000
I love this picture because my daughter, who's now almost 40, is in this picture,

0:08:56.000,0:09:00.000
but it reminds me of her storytelling and her imagination,

0:09:00.000,0:09:05.000
her ability to spin yarns at this age -- preschool.

0:09:05.000,0:09:08.000
A really important part of being a player

0:09:08.000,0:09:11.000
is imaginative solo play.

0:09:11.000,0:09:15.000
And I love this one, because it's also what we're about.

0:09:15.000,0:09:19.000
We all have an internal narrative that's our own inner story.

0:09:19.000,0:09:24.000
The unit of intelligibility of most of our brains is the story.

0:09:24.000,0:09:27.000
I'm telling you a story today about play.

0:09:27.000,0:09:32.000
Well, this bushman, I think, is talking about the fish that got away that was that long,

0:09:32.000,0:09:36.000
but it's a fundamental part of the play scene.

0:09:36.000,0:09:39.000
So what does play do for the brain?

0:09:39.000,0:09:42.000
Well, a lot.

0:09:42.000,0:09:46.000
We don't know a whole lot about what it does for the human brain,

0:09:46.000,0:09:53.000
because funding has not been exactly heavy for research on play.

0:09:53.000,0:09:55.000
I walked into the Carnegie asking for a grant.

0:09:55.000,0:09:58.000
They'd given me a large grant when I was an academician

0:09:58.000,0:10:03.000
for the study of felony drunken drivers, and I thought I had a pretty good track record,

0:10:03.000,0:10:08.000
and by the time I had spent half an hour talking about play,

0:10:08.000,0:10:12.000
it was obvious that they were not -- did not feel that play was serious.

0:10:12.000,0:10:16.000
I think that -- that's a few years back -- I think that wave is past,

0:10:16.000,0:10:18.000
and the play wave is cresting,

0:10:18.000,0:10:20.000
because there is some good science.

0:10:20.000,0:10:23.000
Nothing lights up the brain like play.

0:10:23.000,0:10:26.000
Three-dimensional play fires up the cerebellum,

0:10:26.000,0:10:29.000
puts a lot of impulses into the frontal lobe --

0:10:29.000,0:10:33.000
the executive portion -- helps contextual memory be developed,

0:10:33.000,0:10:35.000
and -- and, and, and.

0:10:35.000,0:10:41.000
So it's -- for me, its been an extremely nourishing scholarly adventure

0:10:41.000,0:10:46.000
to look at the neuroscience that's associated with play, and to bring together people

0:10:46.000,0:10:51.000
who in their individual disciplines hadn't really thought of it that way.

0:10:51.000,0:10:54.000
And that's part of what the National Institute for Play is all about.

0:10:54.000,0:10:56.000
And this is one of the ways you can study play --

0:10:56.000,0:11:00.000
is to get a 256-lead electroencephalogram.

0:11:00.000,0:11:05.000
I'm sorry I don't have a playful-looking subject, but it allows mobility,

0:11:05.000,0:11:07.000
which has limited the actual study of play.

0:11:07.000,0:11:11.000
And we've got a mother-infant play scenario

0:11:11.000,0:11:14.000
that we're hoping to complete underway at the moment.

0:11:14.000,0:11:17.000
The reason I put this here is also to queue up

0:11:17.000,0:11:21.000
my thoughts about objectifying what play does.

0:11:21.000,0:11:25.000
The animal world has objectified it.

0:11:25.000,0:11:28.000
In the animal world, if you take rats,

0:11:28.000,0:11:34.000
who are hardwired to play at a certain period of their juvenile years

0:11:34.000,0:11:37.000
and you suppress play -- they squeak, they wrestle,

0:11:37.000,0:11:40.000
they pin each other, that's part of their play.

0:11:40.000,0:11:45.000
If you stop that behavior on one group that you're experimenting with,

0:11:45.000,0:11:48.000
and you allow it in another group that you're experimenting with,

0:11:48.000,0:11:50.000
and then you present those rats

0:11:50.000,0:11:53.000
with a cat odor-saturated collar,

0:11:53.000,0:11:56.000
they're hardwired to flee and hide.

0:11:56.000,0:11:59.000
Pretty smart -- they don't want to get killed by a cat.

0:11:59.000,0:12:01.000
So what happens?

0:12:01.000,0:12:03.000
They both hide out.

0:12:04.000,0:12:07.000
The non-players never come out --

0:12:07.000,0:12:08.000
they die.

0:12:08.000,0:12:12.000
The players slowly explore the environment,

0:12:12.000,0:12:15.000
and begin again to test things out.

0:12:15.000,0:12:18.000
That says to me, at least in rats --

0:12:18.000,0:12:21.000
and I think they have the same neurotransmitters that we do

0:12:21.000,0:12:23.000
and a similar cortical architecture --

0:12:23.000,0:12:26.000
that play may be pretty important for our survival.

0:12:26.000,0:12:30.000
And, and, and -- there are a lot more animal studies that I could talk about.

0:12:31.000,0:12:35.000
Now, this is a consequence of play deprivation. (Laughter)

0:12:35.000,0:12:37.000
This took a long time --

0:12:37.000,0:12:42.000
I had to get Homer down and put him through the fMRI and the SPECT

0:12:42.000,0:12:46.000
and multiple EEGs, but as a couch potato, his brain has shrunk.

0:12:46.000,0:12:49.000
And we do know that in domestic animals

0:12:49.000,0:12:51.000
and others, when they're play deprived,

0:12:51.000,0:12:55.000
they don't -- and rats also -- they don't develop a brain that is normal.

0:12:56.000,0:13:01.000
Now, the program says that the opposite of play is not work,

0:13:01.000,0:13:03.000
it's depression.

0:13:03.000,0:13:07.000
And I think if you think about life without play --

0:13:07.000,0:13:10.000
no humor, no flirtation, no movies,

0:13:10.000,0:13:15.000
no games, no fantasy and, and, and.

0:13:15.000,0:13:19.000
Try and imagine a culture or a life, adult or otherwise

0:13:20.000,0:13:22.000
without play.

0:13:22.000,0:13:25.000
And the thing that's so unique about our species

0:13:25.000,0:13:29.000
is that we're really designed to play through our whole lifetime.

0:13:30.000,0:13:33.000
And we all have capacity to play signal.

0:13:33.000,0:13:38.000
Nobody misses that dog I took a picture of on a Carmel beach a couple of weeks ago.

0:13:38.000,0:13:41.000
What's going to follow from that behavior

0:13:41.000,0:13:42.000
is play.

0:13:42.000,0:13:43.000
And you can trust it.

0:13:43.000,0:13:47.000
The basis of human trust is established through play signals.

0:13:47.000,0:13:52.000
And we begin to lose those signals, culturally and otherwise, as adults.

0:13:52.000,0:13:54.000
That's a shame.

0:13:54.000,0:13:57.000
I think we've got a lot of learning to do.

0:13:57.000,0:14:01.000
Now, Jane Goodall has here a play face along with one of her favorite chimps.

0:14:01.000,0:14:04.000
So part of the signaling system of play

0:14:04.000,0:14:08.000
has to do with vocal, facial, body, gestural.

0:14:08.000,0:14:13.000
You know, you can tell -- and I think when we're getting into collective play,

0:14:13.000,0:14:17.000
its really important for groups to gain a sense of safety

0:14:17.000,0:14:20.000
through their own sharing of play signals.

0:14:21.000,0:14:23.000
You may not know this word,

0:14:23.000,0:14:28.000
but it should be your biological first name and last name.

0:14:28.000,0:14:32.000
Because neoteny means the retention of immature qualities into adulthood.

0:14:32.000,0:14:35.000
And we are, by physical anthropologists,

0:14:35.000,0:14:38.000
by many, many studies, the most neotenous,

0:14:38.000,0:14:43.000
the most youthful, the most flexible, the most plastic of all creatures.

0:14:43.000,0:14:46.000
And therefore, the most playful.

0:14:46.000,0:14:49.000
And this gives us a leg up on adaptability.

0:14:50.000,0:14:53.000
Now, there is a way of looking at play

0:14:53.000,0:14:56.000
that I also want to emphasize here,

0:14:56.000,0:14:59.000
which is the play history.

0:14:59.000,0:15:02.000
Your own personal play history is unique,

0:15:02.000,0:15:06.000
and often is not something we think about particularly.

0:15:06.000,0:15:09.000
This is a book written by a consummate player

0:15:09.000,0:15:11.000
by the name of Kevin Carroll.

0:15:11.000,0:15:16.000
Kevin Carroll came from extremely deprived circumstances:

0:15:16.000,0:15:20.000
alcoholic mother, absent father, inner-city Philadelphia,

0:15:20.000,0:15:23.000
black, had to take care of a younger brother.

0:15:23.000,0:15:26.000
Found that when he looked at a playground

0:15:26.000,0:15:29.000
out of a window into which he had been confined,

0:15:29.000,0:15:31.000
he felt something different.

0:15:31.000,0:15:34.000
And so he followed up on it.

0:15:34.000,0:15:37.000
And his life -- the transformation of his life

0:15:37.000,0:15:42.000
from deprivation and what one would expect -- potentially prison or death --

0:15:42.000,0:15:47.000
he become a linguist, a trainer for the 76ers and now is a motivational speaker.

0:15:48.000,0:15:53.000
And he gives play as a transformative force

0:15:53.000,0:15:56.000
over his entire life.

0:15:56.000,0:16:01.000
Now there's another play history that I think is a work in progress.

0:16:03.000,0:16:06.000
Those of you who remember Al Gore,

0:16:06.000,0:16:11.000
during the first term and then during his successful

0:16:11.000,0:16:14.000
but unelected run for the presidency,

0:16:14.000,0:16:19.000
may remember him as being kind of wooden and not entirely his own person,

0:16:19.000,0:16:21.000
at least in public.

0:16:21.000,0:16:25.000
And looking at his history, which is common in the press,

0:16:25.000,0:16:31.000
it seems to me, at least -- looking at it from a shrink's point of view --

0:16:31.000,0:16:35.000
that a lot of his life was programmed.

0:16:36.000,0:16:41.000
Summers were hard, hard work, in the heat of Tennessee summers.

0:16:42.000,0:16:48.000
He had the expectations of his senatorial father and Washington, D.C.

0:16:48.000,0:16:51.000
And although I think he certainly had the capacity for play --

0:16:51.000,0:16:53.000
because I do know something about that --

0:16:53.000,0:16:57.000
he wasn't as empowered, I think, as he now is

0:16:57.000,0:17:01.000
by paying attention to what is his own passion

0:17:01.000,0:17:04.000
and his own inner drive,

0:17:04.000,0:17:09.000
which I think has its basis in all of us in our play history.

0:17:09.000,0:17:12.000
So what I would encourage on an individual level to do,

0:17:12.000,0:17:16.000
is to explore backwards as far as you can go

0:17:16.000,0:17:21.000
to the most clear, joyful, playful image that you have,

0:17:21.000,0:17:24.000
whether it's with a toy, on a birthday or on a vacation.

0:17:24.000,0:17:27.000
And begin to build to build from the emotion of that

0:17:27.000,0:17:30.000
into how that connects with your life now.

0:17:30.000,0:17:33.000
And you'll find, you may change jobs --

0:17:33.000,0:17:36.000
which has happened to a number people when I've had them do this --

0:17:36.000,0:17:39.000
in order to be more empowered through their play.

0:17:39.000,0:17:43.000
Or you'll be able to enrich your life by prioritizing it

0:17:43.000,0:17:45.000
and paying attention to it.

0:17:45.000,0:17:48.000
Most of us work with groups, and I put this up because

0:17:48.000,0:17:51.000
the d.school, the design school at Stanford,

0:17:51.000,0:17:54.000
thanks to David Kelley and a lot of others

0:17:54.000,0:17:57.000
who have been visionary about its establishment,

0:17:57.000,0:17:59.000
has allowed a group of us to get together

0:17:59.000,0:18:03.000
and create a course called "From Play to Innovation."

0:18:03.000,0:18:06.000
And you'll see this course is to investigate

0:18:06.000,0:18:10.000
the human state of play, which is kind of like the polar bear-husky state

0:18:10.000,0:18:12.000
and its importance to creative thinking:

0:18:12.000,0:18:15.000
"to explore play behavior, its development and its biological basis;

0:18:15.000,0:18:18.000
to apply those principles, through design thinking,

0:18:18.000,0:18:20.000
to promote innovation in the corporate world;

0:18:20.000,0:18:23.000
and the students will work with real-world partners

0:18:23.000,0:18:26.000
on design projects with widespread application."

0:18:26.000,0:18:28.000
This is our maiden voyage in this.

0:18:28.000,0:18:32.000
We're about two and a half, three months into it, and it's really been fun.

0:18:32.000,0:18:35.000
There is our star pupil, this labrador,

0:18:35.000,0:18:39.000
who taught a lot of us what a state of play is,

0:18:39.000,0:18:43.000
and an extremely aged and decrepit professor in charge there.

0:18:43.000,0:18:48.000
And Brendan Boyle, Rich Crandall -- and on the far right is, I think, a person who

0:18:48.000,0:18:53.000
will be in cahoots with George Smoot for a Nobel Prize -- Stuart Thompson,

0:18:53.000,0:18:54.000
in neuroscience.

0:18:54.000,0:18:56.000
So we've had Brendan, who's from IDEO,

0:18:56.000,0:19:00.000
and the rest of us sitting aside and watching these students

0:19:00.000,0:19:04.000
as they put play principles into practice in the classroom.

0:19:06.000,0:19:10.000
And one of their projects was to

0:19:10.000,0:19:13.000
see what makes meetings boring,

0:19:13.000,0:19:16.000
and to try and do something about it.

0:19:16.000,0:19:20.000
So what will follow is a student-made film

0:19:20.000,0:19:23.000
about just that.

0:19:23.000,0:19:27.000
Narrator: Flow is the mental state of apparition

0:19:27.000,0:19:30.000
in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing.

0:19:30.000,0:19:33.000
Characterized by a feeling of energized focus,

0:19:33.000,0:19:36.000
full involvement and success in the process of the activity.

0:19:40.000,0:19:43.000
An important key insight that we learned about meetings

0:19:43.000,0:19:46.000
is that people pack them in one after another,

0:19:46.000,0:19:48.000
disruptive to the day.

0:19:48.000,0:19:51.000
Attendees at meetings don't know when they'll get back to the task

0:19:51.000,0:19:53.000
that they left at their desk.

0:19:53.000,0:19:56.000
But it doesn't have to be that way.

0:19:56.000,0:20:49.000
(Music)

0:20:49.000,0:20:52.000
Some sage and repeatedly furry monks

0:20:52.000,0:20:54.000
at this place called the d.school

0:20:54.000,0:20:58.000
designed a meeting that you can literally step out of when it's over.

0:20:59.000,0:21:03.000
Take the meeting off, and have peace of mind that you can come back to me.

0:21:04.000,0:21:06.000
Because when you need it again,

0:21:06.000,0:21:10.000
the meeting is literally hanging in your closet.

0:21:12.000,0:21:14.000
The Wearable Meeting.

0:21:14.000,0:21:18.000
Because when you put it on, you immediately get everything you need

0:21:18.000,0:21:21.000
to have a fun and productive and useful meeting.

0:21:21.000,0:21:24.000
But when you take it off --

0:21:24.000,0:21:26.000
that's when the real action happens.

0:21:26.000,0:21:32.000
(Music)

0:21:32.000,0:21:35.000
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:21:35.000,0:21:38.000
Stuart Brown: So I would encourage you all

0:21:41.000,0:21:43.000
to engage

0:21:43.000,0:21:46.000
not in the work-play differential --

0:21:46.000,0:21:49.000
where you set aside time to play --

0:21:49.000,0:21:52.000
but where your life becomes infused

0:21:52.000,0:21:56.000
minute by minute, hour by hour,

0:21:56.000,0:21:58.000
with body,

0:21:58.000,0:22:00.000
object,

0:22:00.000,0:22:05.000
social, fantasy, transformational kinds of play.

0:22:05.000,0:22:09.000
And I think you'll have a better and more empowered life.

0:22:09.000,0:22:11.000
Thank You.

0:22:11.000,0:22:18.000
(Applause)

0:22:18.000,0:22:21.000
John Hockenberry: So it sounds to me like what you're saying is that

0:22:21.000,0:22:25.000
there may be some temptation on the part of people to look at your work

0:22:25.000,0:22:27.000
and go --

0:22:27.000,0:22:32.000
I think I've heard this, in my kind of pop psychological understanding of play,

0:22:32.000,0:22:34.000
that somehow,

0:22:34.000,0:22:37.000
the way animals and humans deal with play,

0:22:37.000,0:22:40.000
is that it's some sort of rehearsal for adult activity.

0:22:40.000,0:22:43.000
Your work seems to suggest that that is powerfully wrong.

0:22:43.000,0:22:46.000
SB: Yeah, I don't think that's accurate,

0:22:46.000,0:22:49.000
and I think probably because animals have taught us that.

0:22:49.000,0:22:53.000
If you stop a cat from playing --

0:22:53.000,0:22:57.000
which you can do, and we've all seen how cats bat around stuff --

0:22:57.000,0:23:02.000
they're just as good predators as they would be if they hadn't played.

0:23:02.000,0:23:04.000
And if you imagine a kid

0:23:04.000,0:23:07.000
pretending to be King Kong,

0:23:07.000,0:23:10.000
or a race car driver, or a fireman,

0:23:10.000,0:23:13.000
they don't all become race car drivers or firemen, you know.

0:23:14.000,0:23:19.000
So there's a disconnect between preparation for the future --

0:23:19.000,0:23:22.000
which is what most people are comfortable in thinking about play as --

0:23:22.000,0:23:26.000
and thinking of it as a separate biological entity.

0:23:26.000,0:23:31.000
And this is where my chasing animals for four, five years

0:23:31.000,0:23:36.000
really changed my perspective from a clinician to what I am now,

0:23:36.000,0:23:40.000
which is that play has a biological place,

0:23:40.000,0:23:43.000
just like sleep and dreams do.

0:23:43.000,0:23:48.000
And if you look at sleep and dreams biologically,

0:23:48.000,0:23:50.000
animals sleep and dream,

0:23:50.000,0:23:53.000
and they rehearse and they do some other things that help memory

0:23:53.000,0:23:56.000
and that are a very important part of sleep and dreams.

0:23:56.000,0:23:59.000
The next step of evolution in mammals and

0:23:59.000,0:24:03.000
creatures with divinely superfluous neurons

0:24:03.000,0:24:06.000
will be to play.

0:24:06.000,0:24:09.000
And the fact that the polar bear and husky or magpie and a bear

0:24:09.000,0:24:15.000
or you and I and our dogs can crossover and have that experience

0:24:15.000,0:24:18.000
sets play aside as something separate.

0:24:18.000,0:24:22.000
And its hugely important in learning and crafting the brain.

0:24:22.000,0:24:25.000
So it's not just something you do in your spare time.

0:24:25.000,0:24:28.000
JH: How do you keep -- and I know you're part of the scientific research community,

0:24:28.000,0:24:33.000
and you have to justify your existence with grants and proposals like everyone else --

0:24:33.000,0:24:35.000
how do you prevent --

0:24:35.000,0:24:41.000
and some of the data that you've produced, the good science that you're talking about you've produced, is hot to handle.

0:24:41.000,0:24:45.000
How do you prevent either the media's interpretation of your work

0:24:45.000,0:24:51.000
or the scientific community's interpretation of the implications of your work,

0:24:51.000,0:24:54.000
kind of like the Mozart metaphor,

0:24:54.000,0:24:57.000
where, "Oh, MRIs show

0:24:57.000,0:25:00.000
that play enhances your intelligence.

0:25:00.000,0:25:02.000
Well, let's round these kids up, put them in pens

0:25:02.000,0:25:06.000
and make them play for months at a time; they'll all be geniuses and go to Harvard."

0:25:06.000,0:25:09.000
How do you prevent people from taking that sort of action

0:25:09.000,0:25:11.000
on the data that you're developing?

0:25:11.000,0:25:14.000
SB: Well, I think the only way I know to do it

0:25:14.000,0:25:17.000
is to have accumulated the advisers that I have

0:25:17.000,0:25:19.000
who go from practitioners --

0:25:19.000,0:25:23.000
who can establish through improvisational play or clowning or whatever --

0:25:23.000,0:25:25.000
a state of play.

0:25:25.000,0:25:27.000
So people know that it's there.

0:25:27.000,0:25:31.000
And then you get an fMRI specialist, and you get Frank Wilson,

0:25:31.000,0:25:36.000
and you get other kinds of hard scientists, including neuroendocrinologists.

0:25:36.000,0:25:42.000
And you get them into a group together focused on play,

0:25:42.000,0:25:46.000
and it's pretty hard not to take it seriously.

0:25:46.000,0:25:49.000
Unfortunately, that hasn't been done sufficiently

0:25:49.000,0:25:52.000
for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health

0:25:52.000,0:25:55.000
or anybody else to really look at it in this way seriously.

0:25:55.000,0:26:01.000
I mean you don't hear about anything that's like cancer or heart disease

0:26:01.000,0:26:03.000
associated with play.

0:26:03.000,0:26:08.000
And yet I see it as something that's just as basic for survival -- long term --

0:26:08.000,0:26:12.000
as learning some of the basic things about public health.

0:26:12.000,0:26:14.000
JH: Stuart Brown, thank you very much.

0:26:14.000,0:26:16.000
(Applause)