Play is more than just fun
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0:00 - 0:03So, here we go: a flyby of play.
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0:04 - 0:08It's got to be serious if the New York Times
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0:08 - 0:14puts a cover story of their February 17th Sunday magazine about play.
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0:14 - 0:17At the bottom of this, it says, "It's deeper than gender.
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0:19 - 0:22Seriously, but dangerously fun.
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0:23 - 0:27And a sandbox for new ideas about evolution."
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0:28 - 0:32Not bad, except if you look at that cover, what's missing?
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0:32 - 0:34You see any adults?
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0:35 - 0:38Well, lets go back to the 15th century.
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0:39 - 0:42This is a courtyard in Europe,
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0:42 - 0:45and a mixture of 124 different kinds of play.
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0:46 - 0:52All ages, solo play, body play, games, taunting.
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0:52 - 0:57And there it is. And I think this is a typical picture
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0:57 - 1:00of what it was like in a courtyard then.
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1:01 - 1:04I think we may have lost something in our culture.
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1:05 - 1:08So I'm gonna take you through
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1:08 - 1:11what I think is a remarkable sequence.
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1:12 - 1:15North of Churchill, Manitoba, in October and November,
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1:15 - 1:17there's no ice on Hudson Bay.
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1:17 - 1:20And this polar bear that you see, this 1200-pound male,
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1:20 - 1:24he's wild and fairly hungry.
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1:24 - 1:27And Norbert Rosing, a German photographer,
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1:27 - 1:33is there on scene, making a series of photos of these huskies, who are tethered.
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1:34 - 1:38And from out of stage left comes this wild, male polar bear,
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1:38 - 1:41with a predatory gaze.
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1:41 - 1:46Any of you who've been to Africa or had a junkyard dog come after you,
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1:46 - 1:49there is a fixed kind of predatory gaze
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1:49 - 1:51that you know you're in trouble.
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1:51 - 1:53But on the other side of that predatory gaze
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1:53 - 1:58is a female husky in a play bow, wagging her tail.
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1:58 - 2:02And something very unusual happens.
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2:02 - 2:05That fixed behavior -- which is rigid and stereotyped
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2:05 - 2:08and ends up with a meal -- changes.
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2:09 - 2:11And this polar bear
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2:11 - 2:14stands over the husky,
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2:14 - 2:18no claws extended, no fangs taking a look.
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2:18 - 2:21And they begin an incredible ballet.
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2:25 - 2:26A play ballet.
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2:26 - 2:30This is in nature: it overrides a carnivorous nature
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2:30 - 2:33and what otherwise would have been a short fight to the death.
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2:34 - 2:39And if you'll begin to look closely at the husky that's bearing her throat to the polar bear,
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2:40 - 2:43and look a little more closely, they're in an altered state.
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2:44 - 2:47They're in a state of play.
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2:47 - 2:49And it's that state
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2:50 - 2:54that allows these two creatures to explore the possible.
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2:54 - 2:57They are beginning to do something that neither would have done
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2:57 - 3:00without the play signals.
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3:01 - 3:04And it is a marvelous example
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3:04 - 3:07of how a differential in power
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3:07 - 3:11can be overridden by a process of nature that's within all of us.
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3:11 - 3:14Now how did I get involved in this?
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3:14 - 3:17John mentioned that I've done some work with murderers, and I have.
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3:17 - 3:20The Texas Tower murderer opened my eyes,
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3:20 - 3:25in retrospect, when we studied his tragic mass murder,
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3:25 - 3:27to the importance of play,
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3:27 - 3:30in that that individual, by deep study,
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3:30 - 3:32was found to have severe play deprivation.
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3:32 - 3:34Charles Whitman was his name.
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3:34 - 3:37And our committee, which consisted of a lot of hard scientists,
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3:37 - 3:39did feel at the end of that study
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3:39 - 3:45that the absence of play and a progressive suppression of developmentally normal play
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3:45 - 3:50led him to be more vulnerable to the tragedy that he perpetrated.
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3:50 - 3:53And that finding has stood the test of time --
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3:54 - 3:58unfortunately even into more recent times, at Virginia Tech.
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3:58 - 4:01And other studies of populations at risk
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4:01 - 4:04sensitized me to the importance of play,
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4:05 - 4:07but I didn't really understand what it was.
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4:07 - 4:12And it was many years in taking play histories of individuals
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4:12 - 4:18before I really began to recognize that I didn't really have a full understanding of it.
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4:18 - 4:22And I don't think any of us has a full understanding of it, by any means.
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4:22 - 4:24But there are ways of looking at it
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4:24 - 4:29that I think can give you -- give us all a taxonomy, a way of thinking about it.
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4:29 - 4:34And this image is, for humans, the beginning point of play.
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4:34 - 4:37When that mother and infant lock eyes,
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4:37 - 4:40and the infant's old enough to have a social smile,
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4:40 - 4:44what happens -- spontaneously -- is the eruption of joy on the part of the mother.
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4:44 - 4:48And she begins to babble and coo and smile, and so does the baby.
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4:48 - 4:52If we've got them wired up with an electroencephalogram,
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4:52 - 4:57the right brain of each of them becomes attuned,
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4:57 - 5:02so that the joyful emergence of this earliest of play scenes
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5:02 - 5:06and the physiology of that is something we're beginning to get a handle on.
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5:07 - 5:11And I'd like you to think that every bit of more complex play
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5:11 - 5:15builds on this base for us humans.
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5:15 - 5:19And so now I'm going to take you through sort of a way of looking at play,
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5:19 - 5:23but it's never just singularly one thing.
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5:23 - 5:26We're going to look at body play,
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5:26 - 5:32which is a spontaneous desire to get ourselves out of gravity.
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5:32 - 5:34This is a mountain goat.
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5:34 - 5:36If you're having a bad day, try this:
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5:36 - 5:39jump up and down, wiggle around -- you're going to feel better.
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5:39 - 5:41And you may feel like this character,
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5:41 - 5:44who is also just doing it for its own sake.
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5:44 - 5:47It doesn't have a particular purpose, and that's what's great about play.
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5:47 - 5:50If its purpose is more important
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5:50 - 5:53than the act of doing it, it's probably not play.
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5:53 - 5:57And there's a whole other type of play, which is object play.
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5:57 - 6:00And this Japanese macaque has made a snowball,
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6:00 - 6:03and he or she's going to roll down a hill.
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6:03 - 6:07And -- they don't throw it at each other, but this is a fundamental part of being playful.
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6:07 - 6:11The human hand, in manipulation of objects,
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6:11 - 6:14is the hand in search of a brain;
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6:14 - 6:16the brain is in search of a hand;
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6:16 - 6:21and play is the medium by which those two are linked in the best way.
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6:21 - 6:27JPL we heard this morning -- JPL is an incredible place.
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6:27 - 6:30They have located two consultants,
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6:30 - 6:33Frank Wilson and Nate Johnson,
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6:33 - 6:37who are -- Frank Wilson is a neurologist, Nate Johnson is a mechanic.
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6:37 - 6:40He taught mechanics in a high school in Long Beach,
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6:40 - 6:45and found that his students were no longer able to solve problems.
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6:46 - 6:49And he tried to figure out why. And he came to the conclusion, quite on his own,
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6:49 - 6:53that the students who could no longer solve problems, such as fixing cars,
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6:53 - 6:55hadn't worked with their hands.
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6:55 - 6:58Frank Wilson had written a book called "The Hand."
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6:58 - 7:01They got together -- JPL hired them.
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7:01 - 7:04Now JPL, NASA and Boeing,
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7:04 - 7:07before they will hire a research and development problem solver --
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7:07 - 7:11even if they're summa cum laude from Harvard or Cal Tech --
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7:11 - 7:14if they haven't fixed cars, haven't done stuff with their hands early in life,
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7:14 - 7:17played with their hands, they can't problem-solve as well.
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7:17 - 7:20So play is practical, and it's very important.
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7:21 - 7:27Now one of the things about play is that it is born by curiosity and exploration. (Laughter)
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7:27 - 7:30But it has to be safe exploration.
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7:30 - 7:33This happens to be OK -- he's an anatomically interested little boy
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7:33 - 7:37and that's his mom. Other situations wouldn't be quite so good.
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7:37 - 7:40But curiosity, exploration, are part of the play scene.
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7:40 - 7:43If you want to belong, you need social play.
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7:43 - 7:46And social play is part of what we're about here today,
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7:46 - 7:49and is a byproduct of the play scene.
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7:50 - 7:52Rough and tumble play.
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7:52 - 7:55These lionesses, seen from a distance, looked like they were fighting.
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7:55 - 7:58But if you look closely, they're kind of like the polar bear and husky:
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7:58 - 8:02no claws, flat fur, soft eyes,
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8:02 - 8:05open mouth with no fangs, balletic movements,
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8:05 - 8:08curvilinear movements -- all specific to play.
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8:08 - 8:12And rough-and-tumble play is a great learning medium for all of us.
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8:12 - 8:16Preschool kids, for example, should be allowed to dive, hit, whistle,
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8:16 - 8:23scream, be chaotic, and develop through that a lot of emotional regulation
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8:23 - 8:28and a lot of the other social byproducts -- cognitive, emotional and physical --
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8:28 - 8:30that come as a part of rough and tumble play.
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8:31 - 8:35Spectator play, ritual play -- we're involved in some of that.
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8:35 - 8:39Those of you who are from Boston know that this was the moment -- rare --
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8:39 - 8:43where the Red Sox won the World Series.
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8:43 - 8:46But take a look at the face and the body language of everybody
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8:46 - 8:49in this fuzzy picture, and you can get a sense that they're all at play.
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8:50 - 8:51Imaginative play.
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8:51 - 8:56I love this picture because my daughter, who's now almost 40, is in this picture,
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8:56 - 9:00but it reminds me of her storytelling and her imagination,
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9:00 - 9:05her ability to spin yarns at this age -- preschool.
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9:05 - 9:08A really important part of being a player
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9:08 - 9:11is imaginative solo play.
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9:11 - 9:15And I love this one, because it's also what we're about.
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9:15 - 9:19We all have an internal narrative that's our own inner story.
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9:19 - 9:24The unit of intelligibility of most of our brains is the story.
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9:24 - 9:27I'm telling you a story today about play.
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9:27 - 9:32Well, this bushman, I think, is talking about the fish that got away that was that long,
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9:32 - 9:36but it's a fundamental part of the play scene.
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9:36 - 9:39So what does play do for the brain?
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9:39 - 9:42Well, a lot.
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9:42 - 9:46We don't know a whole lot about what it does for the human brain,
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9:46 - 9:53because funding has not been exactly heavy for research on play.
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9:53 - 9:55I walked into the Carnegie asking for a grant.
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9:55 - 9:58They'd given me a large grant when I was an academician
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9:58 - 10:03for the study of felony drunken drivers, and I thought I had a pretty good track record,
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10:03 - 10:08and by the time I had spent half an hour talking about play,
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10:08 - 10:12it was obvious that they were not -- did not feel that play was serious.
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10:12 - 10:16I think that -- that's a few years back -- I think that wave is past,
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10:16 - 10:18and the play wave is cresting,
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10:18 - 10:20because there is some good science.
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10:20 - 10:23Nothing lights up the brain like play.
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10:23 - 10:26Three-dimensional play fires up the cerebellum,
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10:26 - 10:29puts a lot of impulses into the frontal lobe --
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10:29 - 10:33the executive portion -- helps contextual memory be developed,
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10:33 - 10:35and -- and, and, and.
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10:35 - 10:41So it's -- for me, its been an extremely nourishing scholarly adventure
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10:41 - 10:46to look at the neuroscience that's associated with play, and to bring together people
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10:46 - 10:51who in their individual disciplines hadn't really thought of it that way.
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10:51 - 10:54And that's part of what the National Institute for Play is all about.
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10:54 - 10:56And this is one of the ways you can study play --
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10:56 - 11:00is to get a 256-lead electroencephalogram.
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11:00 - 11:05I'm sorry I don't have a playful-looking subject, but it allows mobility,
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11:05 - 11:07which has limited the actual study of play.
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11:07 - 11:11And we've got a mother-infant play scenario
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11:11 - 11:14that we're hoping to complete underway at the moment.
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11:14 - 11:17The reason I put this here is also to queue up
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11:17 - 11:21my thoughts about objectifying what play does.
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11:21 - 11:25The animal world has objectified it.
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11:25 - 11:28In the animal world, if you take rats,
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11:28 - 11:34who are hardwired to play at a certain period of their juvenile years
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11:34 - 11:37and you suppress play -- they squeak, they wrestle,
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11:37 - 11:40they pin each other, that's part of their play.
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11:40 - 11:45If you stop that behavior on one group that you're experimenting with,
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11:45 - 11:48and you allow it in another group that you're experimenting with,
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11:48 - 11:50and then you present those rats
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11:50 - 11:53with a cat odor-saturated collar,
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11:53 - 11:56they're hardwired to flee and hide.
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11:56 - 11:59Pretty smart -- they don't want to get killed by a cat.
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11:59 - 12:01So what happens?
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12:01 - 12:03They both hide out.
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12:04 - 12:07The non-players never come out --
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12:07 - 12:08they die.
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12:08 - 12:12The players slowly explore the environment,
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12:12 - 12:15and begin again to test things out.
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12:15 - 12:18That says to me, at least in rats --
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12:18 - 12:21and I think they have the same neurotransmitters that we do
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12:21 - 12:23and a similar cortical architecture --
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12:23 - 12:26that play may be pretty important for our survival.
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12:26 - 12:30And, and, and -- there are a lot more animal studies that I could talk about.
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12:31 - 12:35Now, this is a consequence of play deprivation. (Laughter)
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12:35 - 12:37This took a long time --
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12:37 - 12:42I had to get Homer down and put him through the fMRI and the SPECT
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12:42 - 12:46and multiple EEGs, but as a couch potato, his brain has shrunk.
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12:46 - 12:49And we do know that in domestic animals
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12:49 - 12:51and others, when they're play deprived,
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12:51 - 12:55they don't -- and rats also -- they don't develop a brain that is normal.
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12:56 - 13:01Now, the program says that the opposite of play is not work,
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13:01 - 13:03it's depression.
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13:03 - 13:07And I think if you think about life without play --
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13:07 - 13:10no humor, no flirtation, no movies,
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13:10 - 13:15no games, no fantasy and, and, and.
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13:15 - 13:19Try and imagine a culture or a life, adult or otherwise
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13:20 - 13:22without play.
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13:22 - 13:25And the thing that's so unique about our species
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13:25 - 13:29is that we're really designed to play through our whole lifetime.
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13:30 - 13:33And we all have capacity to play signal.
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13:33 - 13:38Nobody misses that dog I took a picture of on a Carmel beach a couple of weeks ago.
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13:38 - 13:41What's going to follow from that behavior
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13:41 - 13:42is play.
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13:42 - 13:43And you can trust it.
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13:43 - 13:47The basis of human trust is established through play signals.
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13:47 - 13:52And we begin to lose those signals, culturally and otherwise, as adults.
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13:52 - 13:54That's a shame.
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13:54 - 13:57I think we've got a lot of learning to do.
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13:57 - 14:01Now, Jane Goodall has here a play face along with one of her favorite chimps.
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14:01 - 14:04So part of the signaling system of play
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14:04 - 14:08has to do with vocal, facial, body, gestural.
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14:08 - 14:13You know, you can tell -- and I think when we're getting into collective play,
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14:13 - 14:17its really important for groups to gain a sense of safety
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14:17 - 14:20through their own sharing of play signals.
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14:21 - 14:23You may not know this word,
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14:23 - 14:28but it should be your biological first name and last name.
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14:28 - 14:32Because neoteny means the retention of immature qualities into adulthood.
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14:32 - 14:35And we are, by physical anthropologists,
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14:35 - 14:38by many, many studies, the most neotenous,
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14:38 - 14:43the most youthful, the most flexible, the most plastic of all creatures.
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14:43 - 14:46And therefore, the most playful.
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14:46 - 14:49And this gives us a leg up on adaptability.
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14:50 - 14:53Now, there is a way of looking at play
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14:53 - 14:56that I also want to emphasize here,
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14:56 - 14:59which is the play history.
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14:59 - 15:02Your own personal play history is unique,
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15:02 - 15:06and often is not something we think about particularly.
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15:06 - 15:09This is a book written by a consummate player
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15:09 - 15:11by the name of Kevin Carroll.
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15:11 - 15:16Kevin Carroll came from extremely deprived circumstances:
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15:16 - 15:20alcoholic mother, absent father, inner-city Philadelphia,
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15:20 - 15:23black, had to take care of a younger brother.
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15:23 - 15:26Found that when he looked at a playground
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15:26 - 15:29out of a window into which he had been confined,
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15:29 - 15:31he felt something different.
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15:31 - 15:34And so he followed up on it.
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15:34 - 15:37And his life -- the transformation of his life
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15:37 - 15:42from deprivation and what one would expect -- potentially prison or death --
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15:42 - 15:47he become a linguist, a trainer for the 76ers and now is a motivational speaker.
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15:48 - 15:53And he gives play as a transformative force
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15:53 - 15:56over his entire life.
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15:56 - 16:01Now there's another play history that I think is a work in progress.
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16:03 - 16:06Those of you who remember Al Gore,
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16:06 - 16:11during the first term and then during his successful
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16:11 - 16:14but unelected run for the presidency,
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16:14 - 16:19may remember him as being kind of wooden and not entirely his own person,
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16:19 - 16:21at least in public.
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16:21 - 16:25And looking at his history, which is common in the press,
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16:25 - 16:31it seems to me, at least -- looking at it from a shrink's point of view --
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16:31 - 16:35that a lot of his life was programmed.
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16:36 - 16:41Summers were hard, hard work, in the heat of Tennessee summers.
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16:42 - 16:48He had the expectations of his senatorial father and Washington, D.C.
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16:48 - 16:51And although I think he certainly had the capacity for play --
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16:51 - 16:53because I do know something about that --
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16:53 - 16:57he wasn't as empowered, I think, as he now is
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16:57 - 17:01by paying attention to what is his own passion
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17:01 - 17:04and his own inner drive,
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17:04 - 17:09which I think has its basis in all of us in our play history.
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17:09 - 17:12So what I would encourage on an individual level to do,
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17:12 - 17:16is to explore backwards as far as you can go
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17:16 - 17:21to the most clear, joyful, playful image that you have,
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17:21 - 17:24whether it's with a toy, on a birthday or on a vacation.
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17:24 - 17:27And begin to build to build from the emotion of that
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17:27 - 17:30into how that connects with your life now.
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17:30 - 17:33And you'll find, you may change jobs --
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17:33 - 17:36which has happened to a number people when I've had them do this --
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17:36 - 17:39in order to be more empowered through their play.
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17:39 - 17:43Or you'll be able to enrich your life by prioritizing it
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17:43 - 17:45and paying attention to it.
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17:45 - 17:48Most of us work with groups, and I put this up because
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17:48 - 17:51the d.school, the design school at Stanford,
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17:51 - 17:54thanks to David Kelley and a lot of others
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17:54 - 17:57who have been visionary about its establishment,
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17:57 - 17:59has allowed a group of us to get together
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17:59 - 18:03and create a course called "From Play to Innovation."
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18:03 - 18:06And you'll see this course is to investigate
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18:06 - 18:10the human state of play, which is kind of like the polar bear-husky state
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18:10 - 18:12and its importance to creative thinking:
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18:12 - 18:15"to explore play behavior, its development and its biological basis;
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18:15 - 18:18to apply those principles, through design thinking,
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18:18 - 18:20to promote innovation in the corporate world;
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18:20 - 18:23and the students will work with real-world partners
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18:23 - 18:26on design projects with widespread application."
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18:26 - 18:28This is our maiden voyage in this.
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18:28 - 18:32We're about two and a half, three months into it, and it's really been fun.
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18:32 - 18:35There is our star pupil, this labrador,
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18:35 - 18:39who taught a lot of us what a state of play is,
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18:39 - 18:43and an extremely aged and decrepit professor in charge there.
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18:43 - 18:48And Brendan Boyle, Rich Crandall -- and on the far right is, I think, a person who
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18:48 - 18:53will be in cahoots with George Smoot for a Nobel Prize -- Stuart Thompson,
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18:53 - 18:54in neuroscience.
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18:54 - 18:56So we've had Brendan, who's from IDEO,
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18:56 - 19:00and the rest of us sitting aside and watching these students
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19:00 - 19:04as they put play principles into practice in the classroom.
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19:06 - 19:10And one of their projects was to
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19:10 - 19:13see what makes meetings boring,
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19:13 - 19:16and to try and do something about it.
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19:16 - 19:20So what will follow is a student-made film
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19:20 - 19:23about just that.
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19:23 - 19:27Narrator: Flow is the mental state of apparition
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19:27 - 19:30in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing.
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19:30 - 19:33Characterized by a feeling of energized focus,
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19:33 - 19:36full involvement and success in the process of the activity.
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19:40 - 19:43An important key insight that we learned about meetings
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19:43 - 19:46is that people pack them in one after another,
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19:46 - 19:48disruptive to the day.
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19:48 - 19:51Attendees at meetings don't know when they'll get back to the task
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19:51 - 19:53that they left at their desk.
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19:53 - 19:56But it doesn't have to be that way.
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19:56 - 20:49(Music)
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20:49 - 20:52Some sage and repeatedly furry monks
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20:52 - 20:54at this place called the d.school
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20:54 - 20:58designed a meeting that you can literally step out of when it's over.
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20:59 - 21:03Take the meeting off, and have peace of mind that you can come back to me.
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21:04 - 21:06Because when you need it again,
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21:06 - 21:10the meeting is literally hanging in your closet.
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21:12 - 21:14The Wearable Meeting.
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21:14 - 21:18Because when you put it on, you immediately get everything you need
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21:18 - 21:21to have a fun and productive and useful meeting.
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21:21 - 21:24But when you take it off --
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21:24 - 21:26that's when the real action happens.
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21:26 - 21:32(Music)
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21:32 - 21:35(Laughter) (Applause)
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21:35 - 21:38Stuart Brown: So I would encourage you all
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21:41 - 21:43to engage
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21:43 - 21:46not in the work-play differential --
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21:46 - 21:49where you set aside time to play --
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21:49 - 21:52but where your life becomes infused
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21:52 - 21:56minute by minute, hour by hour,
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21:56 - 21:58with body,
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21:58 - 22:00object,
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22:00 - 22:05social, fantasy, transformational kinds of play.
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22:05 - 22:09And I think you'll have a better and more empowered life.
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22:09 - 22:11Thank You.
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22:11 - 22:18(Applause)
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22:18 - 22:21John Hockenberry: So it sounds to me like what you're saying is that
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22:21 - 22:25there may be some temptation on the part of people to look at your work
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22:25 - 22:27and go --
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22:27 - 22:32I think I've heard this, in my kind of pop psychological understanding of play,
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22:32 - 22:34that somehow,
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22:34 - 22:37the way animals and humans deal with play,
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22:37 - 22:40is that it's some sort of rehearsal for adult activity.
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22:40 - 22:43Your work seems to suggest that that is powerfully wrong.
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22:43 - 22:46SB: Yeah, I don't think that's accurate,
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22:46 - 22:49and I think probably because animals have taught us that.
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22:49 - 22:53If you stop a cat from playing --
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22:53 - 22:57which you can do, and we've all seen how cats bat around stuff --
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22:57 - 23:02they're just as good predators as they would be if they hadn't played.
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23:02 - 23:04And if you imagine a kid
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23:04 - 23:07pretending to be King Kong,
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23:07 - 23:10or a race car driver, or a fireman,
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23:10 - 23:13they don't all become race car drivers or firemen, you know.
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23:14 - 23:19So there's a disconnect between preparation for the future --
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23:19 - 23:22which is what most people are comfortable in thinking about play as --
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23:22 - 23:26and thinking of it as a separate biological entity.
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23:26 - 23:31And this is where my chasing animals for four, five years
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23:31 - 23:36really changed my perspective from a clinician to what I am now,
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23:36 - 23:40which is that play has a biological place,
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23:40 - 23:43just like sleep and dreams do.
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23:43 - 23:48And if you look at sleep and dreams biologically,
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23:48 - 23:50animals sleep and dream,
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23:50 - 23:53and they rehearse and they do some other things that help memory
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23:53 - 23:56and that are a very important part of sleep and dreams.
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23:56 - 23:59The next step of evolution in mammals and
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23:59 - 24:03creatures with divinely superfluous neurons
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24:03 - 24:06will be to play.
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24:06 - 24:09And the fact that the polar bear and husky or magpie and a bear
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24:09 - 24:15or you and I and our dogs can crossover and have that experience
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24:15 - 24:18sets play aside as something separate.
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24:18 - 24:22And its hugely important in learning and crafting the brain.
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24:22 - 24:25So it's not just something you do in your spare time.
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24:25 - 24:28JH: How do you keep -- and I know you're part of the scientific research community,
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24:28 - 24:33and you have to justify your existence with grants and proposals like everyone else --
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24:33 - 24:35how do you prevent --
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24:35 - 24:41and some of the data that you've produced, the good science that you're talking about you've produced, is hot to handle.
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24:41 - 24:45How do you prevent either the media's interpretation of your work
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24:45 - 24:51or the scientific community's interpretation of the implications of your work,
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24:51 - 24:54kind of like the Mozart metaphor,
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24:54 - 24:57where, "Oh, MRIs show
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24:57 - 25:00that play enhances your intelligence.
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25:00 - 25:02Well, let's round these kids up, put them in pens
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25:02 - 25:06and make them play for months at a time; they'll all be geniuses and go to Harvard."
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25:06 - 25:09How do you prevent people from taking that sort of action
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25:09 - 25:11on the data that you're developing?
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25:11 - 25:14SB: Well, I think the only way I know to do it
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25:14 - 25:17is to have accumulated the advisers that I have
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25:17 - 25:19who go from practitioners --
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25:19 - 25:23who can establish through improvisational play or clowning or whatever --
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25:23 - 25:25a state of play.
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25:25 - 25:27So people know that it's there.
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25:27 - 25:31And then you get an fMRI specialist, and you get Frank Wilson,
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25:31 - 25:36and you get other kinds of hard scientists, including neuroendocrinologists.
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25:36 - 25:42And you get them into a group together focused on play,
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25:42 - 25:46and it's pretty hard not to take it seriously.
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25:46 - 25:49Unfortunately, that hasn't been done sufficiently
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25:49 - 25:52for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health
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25:52 - 25:55or anybody else to really look at it in this way seriously.
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25:55 - 26:01I mean you don't hear about anything that's like cancer or heart disease
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26:01 - 26:03associated with play.
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26:03 - 26:08And yet I see it as something that's just as basic for survival -- long term --
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26:08 - 26:12as learning some of the basic things about public health.
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26:12 - 26:14JH: Stuart Brown, thank you very much.
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26:14 - 26:16(Applause)
- Title:
- Play is more than just fun
- Speaker:
- Stuart Brown
- Description:
-
A pioneer in research on play, Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults -- and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 26:26
TED edited English subtitles for Play is more than just fun | ||
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