WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 So, here we go: a flyby of play. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.000 It's got to be serious if the New York Times 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:14.000 puts a cover story of their February 17th Sunday magazine about play. 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 At the bottom of this, it says, "It's deeper than gender. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:22.000 Seriously, but dangerously fun. 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:27.000 And a sandbox for new ideas about evolution." 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.000 Not bad, except if you look at that cover, what's missing? 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:34.000 You see any adults? NOTE Paragraph 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 Well, lets go back to the 15th century. 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:42.000 This is a courtyard in Europe, 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:45.000 and a mixture of 124 different kinds of play. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:52.000 All ages, solo play, body play, games, taunting. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:57.000 And there it is. And I think this is a typical picture 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:00.000 of what it was like in a courtyard then. 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:04.000 I think we may have lost something in our culture. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:08.000 So I'm gonna take you through 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.000 what I think is a remarkable sequence. 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:15.000 North of Churchill, Manitoba, in October and November, 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.000 there's no ice on Hudson Bay. 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:20.000 And this polar bear that you see, this 1200-pound male, 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.000 he's wild and fairly hungry. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:27.000 And Norbert Rosing, a German photographer, 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:33.000 is there on scene, making a series of photos of these huskies, who are tethered. 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:38.000 And from out of stage left comes this wild, male polar bear, 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:41.000 with a predatory gaze. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:46.000 Any of you who've been to Africa or had a junkyard dog come after you, 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:49.000 there is a fixed kind of predatory gaze 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:51.000 that you know you're in trouble. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 But on the other side of that predatory gaze 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:58.000 is a female husky in a play bow, wagging her tail. 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:02.000 And something very unusual happens. 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.000 That fixed behavior -- which is rigid and stereotyped 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:08.000 and ends up with a meal -- changes. 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.000 And this polar bear 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:14.000 stands over the husky, 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:18.000 no claws extended, no fangs taking a look. 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.000 And they begin an incredible ballet. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:26.000 A play ballet. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:30.000 This is in nature: it overrides a carnivorous nature 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000 and what otherwise would have been a short fight to the death. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:39.000 And if you'll begin to look closely at the husky that's bearing her throat to the polar bear, 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:43.000 and look a little more closely, they're in an altered state. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:47.000 They're in a state of play. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:49.000 And it's that state 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:54.000 that allows these two creatures to explore the possible. 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.000 They are beginning to do something that neither would have done 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:00.000 without the play signals. 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:04.000 And it is a marvelous example 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:07.000 of how a differential in power 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:11.000 can be overridden by a process of nature that's within all of us. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:14.000 Now how did I get involved in this? 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:17.000 John mentioned that I've done some work with murderers, and I have. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:20.000 The Texas Tower murderer opened my eyes, 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:25.000 in retrospect, when we studied his tragic mass murder, 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000 to the importance of play, 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:30.000 in that that individual, by deep study, 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:32.000 was found to have severe play deprivation. 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:34.000 Charles Whitman was his name. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:37.000 And our committee, which consisted of a lot of hard scientists, 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.000 did feel at the end of that study 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:45.000 that the absence of play and a progressive suppression of developmentally normal play 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:50.000 led him to be more vulnerable to the tragedy that he perpetrated. 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:53.000 And that finding has stood the test of time -- 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:58.000 unfortunately even into more recent times, at Virginia Tech. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:01.000 And other studies of populations at risk 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:04.000 sensitized me to the importance of play, 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:07.000 but I didn't really understand what it was. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:12.000 And it was many years in taking play histories of individuals 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:18.000 before I really began to recognize that I didn't really have a full understanding of it. 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:22.000 And I don't think any of us has a full understanding of it, by any means. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 But there are ways of looking at it 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:29.000 that I think can give you -- give us all a taxonomy, a way of thinking about it. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:34.000 And this image is, for humans, the beginning point of play. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000 When that mother and infant lock eyes, 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:40.000 and the infant's old enough to have a social smile, 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:44.000 what happens -- spontaneously -- is the eruption of joy on the part of the mother. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:48.000 And she begins to babble and coo and smile, and so does the baby. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:52.000 If we've got them wired up with an electroencephalogram, 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:57.000 the right brain of each of them becomes attuned, 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:02.000 so that the joyful emergence of this earliest of play scenes 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:06.000 and the physiology of that is something we're beginning to get a handle on. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:11.000 And I'd like you to think that every bit of more complex play 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:15.000 builds on this base for us humans. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.000 And so now I'm going to take you through sort of a way of looking at play, 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:23.000 but it's never just singularly one thing. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.000 We're going to look at body play, 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:32.000 which is a spontaneous desire to get ourselves out of gravity. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:34.000 This is a mountain goat. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:36.000 If you're having a bad day, try this: 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:39.000 jump up and down, wiggle around -- you're going to feel better. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.000 And you may feel like this character, 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.000 who is also just doing it for its own sake. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.000 It doesn't have a particular purpose, and that's what's great about play. 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:50.000 If its purpose is more important 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.000 than the act of doing it, it's probably not play. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:57.000 And there's a whole other type of play, which is object play. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.000 And this Japanese macaque has made a snowball, 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:03.000 and he or she's going to roll down a hill. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:07.000 And -- they don't throw it at each other, but this is a fundamental part of being playful. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:11.000 The human hand, in manipulation of objects, 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:14.000 is the hand in search of a brain; 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.000 the brain is in search of a hand; 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:21.000 and play is the medium by which those two are linked in the best way. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:27.000 JPL we heard this morning -- JPL is an incredible place. 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:30.000 They have located two consultants, 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:33.000 Frank Wilson and Nate Johnson, 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:37.000 who are -- Frank Wilson is a neurologist, Nate Johnson is a mechanic. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:40.000 He taught mechanics in a high school in Long Beach, 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:45.000 and found that his students were no longer able to solve problems. 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:49.000 And he tried to figure out why. And he came to the conclusion, quite on his own, 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:53.000 that the students who could no longer solve problems, such as fixing cars, 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.000 hadn't worked with their hands. 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:58.000 Frank Wilson had written a book called "The Hand." 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:01.000 They got together -- JPL hired them. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:04.000 Now JPL, NASA and Boeing, 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:07.000 before they will hire a research and development problem solver -- 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:11.000 even if they're summa cum laude from Harvard or Cal Tech -- 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:14.000 if they haven't fixed cars, haven't done stuff with their hands early in life, 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 played with their hands, they can't problem-solve as well. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000 So play is practical, and it's very important. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:27.000 Now one of the things about play is that it is born by curiosity and exploration. (Laughter) 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:30.000 But it has to be safe exploration. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.000 This happens to be OK -- he's an anatomically interested little boy 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:37.000 and that's his mom. Other situations wouldn't be quite so good. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:40.000 But curiosity, exploration, are part of the play scene. 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:43.000 If you want to belong, you need social play. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.000 And social play is part of what we're about here today, 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.000 and is a byproduct of the play scene. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.000 Rough and tumble play. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:55.000 These lionesses, seen from a distance, looked like they were fighting. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.000 But if you look closely, they're kind of like the polar bear and husky: 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:02.000 no claws, flat fur, soft eyes, 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:05.000 open mouth with no fangs, balletic movements, 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.000 curvilinear movements -- all specific to play. 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:12.000 And rough-and-tumble play is a great learning medium for all of us. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:16.000 Preschool kids, for example, should be allowed to dive, hit, whistle, 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:23.000 scream, be chaotic, and develop through that a lot of emotional regulation 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:28.000 and a lot of the other social byproducts -- cognitive, emotional and physical -- 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:30.000 that come as a part of rough and tumble play. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:35.000 Spectator play, ritual play -- we're involved in some of that. 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.000 Those of you who are from Boston know that this was the moment -- rare -- 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:43.000 where the Red Sox won the World Series. 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:46.000 But take a look at the face and the body language of everybody 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.000 in this fuzzy picture, and you can get a sense that they're all at play. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:51.000 Imaginative play. 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:56.000 I love this picture because my daughter, who's now almost 40, is in this picture, 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:00.000 but it reminds me of her storytelling and her imagination, 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:05.000 her ability to spin yarns at this age -- preschool. 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:08.000 A really important part of being a player 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:11.000 is imaginative solo play. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:15.000 And I love this one, because it's also what we're about. 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:19.000 We all have an internal narrative that's our own inner story. 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:24.000 The unit of intelligibility of most of our brains is the story. 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:27.000 I'm telling you a story today about play. 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:32.000 Well, this bushman, I think, is talking about the fish that got away that was that long, 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:36.000 but it's a fundamental part of the play scene. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:39.000 So what does play do for the brain? 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:42.000 Well, a lot. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:46.000 We don't know a whole lot about what it does for the human brain, 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:53.000 because funding has not been exactly heavy for research on play. 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.000 I walked into the Carnegie asking for a grant. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:58.000 They'd given me a large grant when I was an academician 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:03.000 for the study of felony drunken drivers, and I thought I had a pretty good track record, 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:08.000 and by the time I had spent half an hour talking about play, 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:12.000 it was obvious that they were not -- did not feel that play was serious. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:16.000 I think that -- that's a few years back -- I think that wave is past, 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.000 and the play wave is cresting, 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.000 because there is some good science. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:23.000 Nothing lights up the brain like play. 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:26.000 Three-dimensional play fires up the cerebellum, 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:29.000 puts a lot of impulses into the frontal lobe -- 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:33.000 the executive portion -- helps contextual memory be developed, 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:35.000 and -- and, and, and. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:41.000 So it's -- for me, its been an extremely nourishing scholarly adventure 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:46.000 to look at the neuroscience that's associated with play, and to bring together people 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:51.000 who in their individual disciplines hadn't really thought of it that way. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:54.000 And that's part of what the National Institute for Play is all about. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.000 And this is one of the ways you can study play -- 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:00.000 is to get a 256-lead electroencephalogram. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:05.000 I'm sorry I don't have a playful-looking subject, but it allows mobility, 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:07.000 which has limited the actual study of play. 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:11.000 And we've got a mother-infant play scenario 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.000 that we're hoping to complete underway at the moment. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:17.000 The reason I put this here is also to queue up 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:21.000 my thoughts about objectifying what play does. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:25.000 The animal world has objectified it. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:28.000 In the animal world, if you take rats, 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:34.000 who are hardwired to play at a certain period of their juvenile years 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:37.000 and you suppress play -- they squeak, they wrestle, 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:40.000 they pin each other, that's part of their play. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:45.000 If you stop that behavior on one group that you're experimenting with, 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 and you allow it in another group that you're experimenting with, 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.000 and then you present those rats 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.000 with a cat odor-saturated collar, 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:56.000 they're hardwired to flee and hide. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:59.000 Pretty smart -- they don't want to get killed by a cat. 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.000 So what happens? 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.000 They both hide out. 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:07.000 The non-players never come out -- 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:08.000 they die. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:12.000 The players slowly explore the environment, 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 and begin again to test things out. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:18.000 That says to me, at least in rats -- 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:21.000 and I think they have the same neurotransmitters that we do 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:23.000 and a similar cortical architecture -- 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:26.000 that play may be pretty important for our survival. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:30.000 And, and, and -- there are a lot more animal studies that I could talk about. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:35.000 Now, this is a consequence of play deprivation. (Laughter) 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:37.000 This took a long time -- 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:42.000 I had to get Homer down and put him through the fMRI and the SPECT 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:46.000 and multiple EEGs, but as a couch potato, his brain has shrunk. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.000 And we do know that in domestic animals 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:51.000 and others, when they're play deprived, 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:55.000 they don't -- and rats also -- they don't develop a brain that is normal. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:01.000 Now, the program says that the opposite of play is not work, 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:03.000 it's depression. 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:07.000 And I think if you think about life without play -- 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:10.000 no humor, no flirtation, no movies, 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:15.000 no games, no fantasy and, and, and. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.000 Try and imagine a culture or a life, adult or otherwise 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:22.000 without play. 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:25.000 And the thing that's so unique about our species 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:29.000 is that we're really designed to play through our whole lifetime. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.000 And we all have capacity to play signal. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:38.000 Nobody misses that dog I took a picture of on a Carmel beach a couple of weeks ago. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:41.000 What's going to follow from that behavior 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:42.000 is play. 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:43.000 And you can trust it. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:47.000 The basis of human trust is established through play signals. 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:52.000 And we begin to lose those signals, culturally and otherwise, as adults. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:54.000 That's a shame. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:57.000 I think we've got a lot of learning to do. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:01.000 Now, Jane Goodall has here a play face along with one of her favorite chimps. 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:04.000 So part of the signaling system of play 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:08.000 has to do with vocal, facial, body, gestural. 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:13.000 You know, you can tell -- and I think when we're getting into collective play, 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:17.000 its really important for groups to gain a sense of safety 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:20.000 through their own sharing of play signals. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:23.000 You may not know this word, 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:28.000 but it should be your biological first name and last name. 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:32.000 Because neoteny means the retention of immature qualities into adulthood. 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.000 And we are, by physical anthropologists, 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:38.000 by many, many studies, the most neotenous, 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:43.000 the most youthful, the most flexible, the most plastic of all creatures. 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:46.000 And therefore, the most playful. 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:49.000 And this gives us a leg up on adaptability. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:53.000 Now, there is a way of looking at play 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 that I also want to emphasize here, 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:59.000 which is the play history. 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:02.000 Your own personal play history is unique, 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:06.000 and often is not something we think about particularly. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:09.000 This is a book written by a consummate player 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:11.000 by the name of Kevin Carroll. 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:16.000 Kevin Carroll came from extremely deprived circumstances: 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:20.000 alcoholic mother, absent father, inner-city Philadelphia, 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:23.000 black, had to take care of a younger brother. 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:26.000 Found that when he looked at a playground 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:29.000 out of a window into which he had been confined, 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:31.000 he felt something different. 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:34.000 And so he followed up on it. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:37.000 And his life -- the transformation of his life 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:42.000 from deprivation and what one would expect -- potentially prison or death -- 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:47.000 he become a linguist, a trainer for the 76ers and now is a motivational speaker. 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:53.000 And he gives play as a transformative force 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:56.000 over his entire life. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:01.000 Now there's another play history that I think is a work in progress. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:06.000 Those of you who remember Al Gore, 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:11.000 during the first term and then during his successful 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:14.000 but unelected run for the presidency, 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:19.000 may remember him as being kind of wooden and not entirely his own person, 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:21.000 at least in public. 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:25.000 And looking at his history, which is common in the press, 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:31.000 it seems to me, at least -- looking at it from a shrink's point of view -- 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.000 that a lot of his life was programmed. 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:41.000 Summers were hard, hard work, in the heat of Tennessee summers. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:48.000 He had the expectations of his senatorial father and Washington, D.C. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:51.000 And although I think he certainly had the capacity for play -- 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:53.000 because I do know something about that -- 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:57.000 he wasn't as empowered, I think, as he now is 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:01.000 by paying attention to what is his own passion 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:04.000 and his own inner drive, 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:09.000 which I think has its basis in all of us in our play history. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:12.000 So what I would encourage on an individual level to do, 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:16.000 is to explore backwards as far as you can go 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:21.000 to the most clear, joyful, playful image that you have, 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000 whether it's with a toy, on a birthday or on a vacation. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:27.000 And begin to build to build from the emotion of that 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:30.000 into how that connects with your life now. 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:33.000 And you'll find, you may change jobs -- 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:36.000 which has happened to a number people when I've had them do this -- 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:39.000 in order to be more empowered through their play. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:43.000 Or you'll be able to enrich your life by prioritizing it 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:45.000 and paying attention to it. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:48.000 Most of us work with groups, and I put this up because 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:51.000 the d.school, the design school at Stanford, 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:54.000 thanks to David Kelley and a lot of others 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:57.000 who have been visionary about its establishment, 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.000 has allowed a group of us to get together 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:03.000 and create a course called "From Play to Innovation." 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:06.000 And you'll see this course is to investigate 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:10.000 the human state of play, which is kind of like the polar bear-husky state 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:12.000 and its importance to creative thinking: 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:15.000 "to explore play behavior, its development and its biological basis; 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:18.000 to apply those principles, through design thinking, 00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:20.000 to promote innovation in the corporate world; 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:23.000 and the students will work with real-world partners 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:26.000 on design projects with widespread application." NOTE Paragraph 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:28.000 This is our maiden voyage in this. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:32.000 We're about two and a half, three months into it, and it's really been fun. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:35.000 There is our star pupil, this labrador, 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.000 who taught a lot of us what a state of play is, 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:43.000 and an extremely aged and decrepit professor in charge there. 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:48.000 And Brendan Boyle, Rich Crandall -- and on the far right is, I think, a person who 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:53.000 will be in cahoots with George Smoot for a Nobel Prize -- Stuart Thompson, 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:54.000 in neuroscience. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:56.000 So we've had Brendan, who's from IDEO, 00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.000 and the rest of us sitting aside and watching these students 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.000 as they put play principles into practice in the classroom. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:10.000 And one of their projects was to 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:13.000 see what makes meetings boring, 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:16.000 and to try and do something about it. 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:20.000 So what will follow is a student-made film 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:23.000 about just that. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:27.000 Narrator: Flow is the mental state of apparition 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:30.000 in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:33.000 Characterized by a feeling of energized focus, 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:36.000 full involvement and success in the process of the activity. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:43.000 An important key insight that we learned about meetings 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:46.000 is that people pack them in one after another, 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:48.000 disruptive to the day. 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:51.000 Attendees at meetings don't know when they'll get back to the task 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:53.000 that they left at their desk. 00:19:53.000 --> 00:19:56.000 But it doesn't have to be that way. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:49.000 (Music) NOTE Paragraph 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:52.000 Some sage and repeatedly furry monks 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:54.000 at this place called the d.school 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:58.000 designed a meeting that you can literally step out of when it's over. 00:20:59.000 --> 00:21:03.000 Take the meeting off, and have peace of mind that you can come back to me. 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:06.000 Because when you need it again, 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:10.000 the meeting is literally hanging in your closet. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:14.000 The Wearable Meeting. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:18.000 Because when you put it on, you immediately get everything you need 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.000 to have a fun and productive and useful meeting. 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:24.000 But when you take it off -- 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:26.000 that's when the real action happens. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:32.000 (Music) NOTE Paragraph 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:35.000 (Laughter) (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.000 Stuart Brown: So I would encourage you all 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:43.000 to engage 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:46.000 not in the work-play differential -- 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:49.000 where you set aside time to play -- 00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:52.000 but where your life becomes infused 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.000 minute by minute, hour by hour, 00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:58.000 with body, 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:00.000 object, 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:05.000 social, fantasy, transformational kinds of play. 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.000 And I think you'll have a better and more empowered life. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:11.000 Thank You. NOTE Paragraph 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:18.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:21.000 John Hockenberry: So it sounds to me like what you're saying is that 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:25.000 there may be some temptation on the part of people to look at your work 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:27.000 and go -- 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:32.000 I think I've heard this, in my kind of pop psychological understanding of play, 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:34.000 that somehow, 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:37.000 the way animals and humans deal with play, 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:40.000 is that it's some sort of rehearsal for adult activity. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:43.000 Your work seems to suggest that that is powerfully wrong. NOTE Paragraph 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:46.000 SB: Yeah, I don't think that's accurate, 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.000 and I think probably because animals have taught us that. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:53.000 If you stop a cat from playing -- 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:57.000 which you can do, and we've all seen how cats bat around stuff -- 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:02.000 they're just as good predators as they would be if they hadn't played. 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:04.000 And if you imagine a kid 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:07.000 pretending to be King Kong, 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:10.000 or a race car driver, or a fireman, 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:13.000 they don't all become race car drivers or firemen, you know. 00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:19.000 So there's a disconnect between preparation for the future -- 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:22.000 which is what most people are comfortable in thinking about play as -- 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:26.000 and thinking of it as a separate biological entity. NOTE Paragraph 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:31.000 And this is where my chasing animals for four, five years 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:36.000 really changed my perspective from a clinician to what I am now, 00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:40.000 which is that play has a biological place, 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:43.000 just like sleep and dreams do. 00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:48.000 And if you look at sleep and dreams biologically, 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:50.000 animals sleep and dream, 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:53.000 and they rehearse and they do some other things that help memory 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:56.000 and that are a very important part of sleep and dreams. NOTE Paragraph 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:59.000 The next step of evolution in mammals and 00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:03.000 creatures with divinely superfluous neurons 00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:06.000 will be to play. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:09.000 And the fact that the polar bear and husky or magpie and a bear 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:15.000 or you and I and our dogs can crossover and have that experience 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:18.000 sets play aside as something separate. 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:22.000 And its hugely important in learning and crafting the brain. 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:25.000 So it's not just something you do in your spare time. NOTE Paragraph 00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:28.000 JH: How do you keep -- and I know you're part of the scientific research community, 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:33.000 and you have to justify your existence with grants and proposals like everyone else -- 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:35.000 how do you prevent -- 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:41.000 and some of the data that you've produced, the good science that you're talking about you've produced, is hot to handle. 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:45.000 How do you prevent either the media's interpretation of your work 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:51.000 or the scientific community's interpretation of the implications of your work, 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.000 kind of like the Mozart metaphor, 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.000 where, "Oh, MRIs show 00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:00.000 that play enhances your intelligence. 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:02.000 Well, let's round these kids up, put them in pens 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:06.000 and make them play for months at a time; they'll all be geniuses and go to Harvard." 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:09.000 How do you prevent people from taking that sort of action 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:11.000 on the data that you're developing? NOTE Paragraph 00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:14.000 SB: Well, I think the only way I know to do it 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.000 is to have accumulated the advisers that I have 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:19.000 who go from practitioners -- 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:23.000 who can establish through improvisational play or clowning or whatever -- 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:25.000 a state of play. 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:27.000 So people know that it's there. 00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:31.000 And then you get an fMRI specialist, and you get Frank Wilson, 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:36.000 and you get other kinds of hard scientists, including neuroendocrinologists. 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:42.000 And you get them into a group together focused on play, 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:46.000 and it's pretty hard not to take it seriously. NOTE Paragraph 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:49.000 Unfortunately, that hasn't been done sufficiently 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:52.000 for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:55.000 or anybody else to really look at it in this way seriously. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:01.000 I mean you don't hear about anything that's like cancer or heart disease 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:03.000 associated with play. 00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:08.000 And yet I see it as something that's just as basic for survival -- long term -- 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:12.000 as learning some of the basic things about public health. NOTE Paragraph 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:14.000 JH: Stuart Brown, thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:16.000 (Applause)