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40,000 years ago,
in the middle of the European continent,
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someone picked up an old mammoth tusk
and made something extraordinary.
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Most of the other hot artists at the time
were depicting things
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they saw in the real world,
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but our ancient sculptor
carved out something else.
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It's one of the oldest imaginary creatures
that we've ever found.
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The body of a human
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with the head of a lion.
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It probably wasn't the first such mash-up,
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and it definitely wasn't the last.
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We are a creative species.
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Whether we're figuring out
how to efficiently peel apples,
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designing a better lawn mower,
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or on TikTok stitching videos together
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into a ridiculous,
endlessly-expanding collage,
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we are all constantly recombining
old ideas to make something new.
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But artistic works
and scientific breakthroughs
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are seen as something
a step above all that.
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We tend to mythologize
the people responsible.
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We think they're different
from us somehow,
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driven by madness
or blessed by some secret gift.
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But creativity isn't mystical.
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It's more like a muscle,
and there are ways to train it.
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In the 1920s, a bunch of surrealists
in Paris came up with one way to do that.
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While hanging out at someone's apartment,
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they invented a parlor game
called The Exquisite Corpse.
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One person would start drawing
whatever popped into their head
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and then fold the paper and pass it along.
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Each person in turn
would make their own outlandish additions,
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ignorant of all but a sliver
of what came before,
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until the page was filled and unfolded,
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revealing a marvelous,
incongruous monster.
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This little game can actually tell us
a lot about how creativity works.
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So, let's play.
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What you're going
to hear about today
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is nothing short of a miracle.
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Beyond the orthodox
and conventional sounds
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that we regard as music.
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Chuck Berry
was the father of rock and roll.
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You can hear the blend of boogie-woogie,
rhythm and blues, and country music.
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In the '50s, people had never
heard anything quite like it.
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Two decades later,
one of Berry's songs
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was etched on a golden record
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and sent to space
aboard the Voyager probe.
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A shining example of modern music
that we wanted aliens to hear.
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By this point, rock and roll's
early stars were long-established.
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And back on Earth,
there were countless rock bands
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who looked and sounded kind of similar.
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There were plenty of other people
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doing copies and imitations,
and I just thought,
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"You might be having a great time
and it might be successful,
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but you're not gonna come up
with something new that way."
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David Byrne
wanted to be different.
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His band, Talking Heads, made music
that was stripped down and weird.
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In 1979,
they were working on their third album,
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teaming up
with legendary producer Brian Eno.
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He had just finished
three innovative records with David Bowie
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and would go on to work his magic
with U2 and Coldplay.
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Brian believes that there are
little tricks that you can use
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to spur creativity.
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Ways to kind of disrupt your patterns.
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He had a set of note cards
he dubbed "oblique strategies,"
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that he would pull at random
during studio sessions
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to jolt his collaborators
out of creative ruts.
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One said, "Cut a vital connection."
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Another, just "Water."
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And then there was,
"Gardening, not architecture,"
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which is basically
Eno's creative philosophy.
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You're planting something
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and seeing how it grows,
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rather than trying to completely
constrain it and know every detail of it.
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Brian Eno may have formalized
some of these disruptive ways of thinking,
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but I think people do that all the time.
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"What if we did this,
you know, twice as fast?"
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"What if we did this as a country song?"
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"What if I turned these words inside out
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and made the last verse
into the first verse?"
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For one song,
Eno and Byrne wrote parts in isolation
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and then grafted them together.
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A kind of musical Exquisite Corpse.
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For another, Eno suggested
that instead of writing lyrics,
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they adapt a 60-year-old nonsense poem.
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Gadji beri bimba gladridi
laula lonni cadori.
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These words were made up
by German poet Hugo Ball
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back in the middle of World War I.
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He was horrified by the war
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and wanted to shock people
into seeing the senselessness of it all,
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so he helped start the Dada art movement.
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This is Ball
performing one of his nonsense poems.
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The absurdity was the point.
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These kind of nonsense things
weren't frivolous.
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They were actually allowing people
to break from nationalistic thinking
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and dangerous mental traps.
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Decades later, Ball's poem
became the lyrics of a rock song.
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And as for the song's music,
that sprang from a different source.
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It was quite by accident.
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I was shopping at a record store
in Times Square.
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and they had what was then called
the international section.
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And I picked up some records
purely because of their covers,
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and brought 'em home
and kind of had my mind blown.
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He had stumbled upon
African pop music.
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They were using instruments
that were familiar to me,
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but using them in a different way.
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Afropop combines some elements
of Western music
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with the rhythms and melodies
of the mbira,
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these thumb pianos
that have been around for centuries.
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African guitarists
adapted those plucking patterns.
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You can hear it on this track from 1974.
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That became
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really inspiring.
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The Talking Heads
released their new album in 1979
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and the first track was called "I Zimbra."
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You can hear the echoes of Afropop.
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And then Hugo Ball's words.
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♪ Gadji beri bimba ♪
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Two sources of inspiration
from two different continents
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combined into something totally new.
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Critics called it
the best album of the year
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and a quantum leap for the band.
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I tend to believe,
and I might be wrong here...
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I tend to believe
that everybody is creative,
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and I would love it if neuroscience
could verify any of that,
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but that might be
a little ways down the line.
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You just asked the big question.
That brings us up to the brain.
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Man possesses a brain that gives him
the capacity of imagination.
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Albert Einstein
once told a friend,
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"I want to be cremated so people
don't come to worship at my bones."
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But when he passed, the doctor
who performed the autopsy took his brain.
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It was preserved, sliced up,
and put on display at museums.
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Scientists obsessively studied
every wrinkle,
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looking for some feature
that could explain
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how he came up
with all of those revolutionary ideas.
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But some argue that Einstein's brain
actually looks pretty normal.
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If you see something different
about Einstein's brain,
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that doesn't necessarily mean all people
that have that particular abnormality
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would be a genius like Einstein,
because every brain is slightly different.
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Besides,
creativity is far too complex
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to live in one particular corner
of the brain, or even one half of it.
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It's not like all logical
thinking is the left hemisphere
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and all creative thinking
is the right hemisphere.
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That's a myth.
Instead, creativity emerges
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when different regions talk to each other.
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In particular, two important networks.
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One of which is called
the default mode network,
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which tends to be active
when we are sort of internally focused,
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when we're just letting our minds go,
like when we're daydreaming.
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That's when you can come up with
these really creative, interesting ideas.
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But when you start
to focus on a task,
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when you start to direct your thinking...
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Then you activate
another network of the brain
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called the executive control network,
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and that kind of evaluates
the things you're coming up with.
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So we need the first network
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to help us make
spontaneous new connections
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and the second one
to judge which of those ideas is any good.
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In the brains of highly creative people,
these two networks are more connected.
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They talk to each other more.
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Sometimes, if you're just looking
to get ideas flowing,
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it can help
to do something else for a while.
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Whatever lets your mind wander.
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Or maybe get a little tipsy.
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One study found
that can facilitate sudden insights.
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Sleep can help,
actually, as well.
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You wake up the next morning
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and you kind of have
a little bit of the answer.
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I often trust my subconscious
or unconscious.
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I'll go, "Trust it a little bit.
Let's see where it goes."
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The whole idea is to try to let go
and lose your sense of self
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and let your unconscious take over.
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You could say you'd better
lose yourself in the music, the moment.
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Boom.
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In 2011, researchers watched
the brains of rappers
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while they were freestyling.
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As you might expect, their daydreaming
default network was turned up.
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Parts of their executive network
were turned down, but not all the way.
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It's not just random words,
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so you still have to have some executive
control monitoring what's happening.
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Daydreaming inspiration
can be there as a seed,
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but then one has to kind of
nurture that seed
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and make it turn into something.
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It's very much a kind of work.
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It takes focus.
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You have to make dedicated time
in your schedule
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for your executive network
to prune out bad ideas
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and pursue the best ones.
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Without that, you're just a person
with a wild imagination.
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And we've all been that person.
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Every little child
has no inhibition about doing anything.
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Whether it's playing instruments,
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drumming on something,
or making up a song.
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But our early creations
just aren't very good.
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We need to learn technical skills
and cultural context
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so we can make things that resonate with
the moment or solve some societal need.
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It is true,
as our brain develops,
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it kind of filters our behaviors
and our thoughts
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to make sure that they are logical,
they make sense,
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they conform to social norms,
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which is good.
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But conforming
is really the opposite of creativity.
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You're doing what's been done before.
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Which to me is tragic.
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A lot of creative adults
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try to get into their childlike mind
where anything goes.
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All artists have that feeling
of childish curiosity.
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It's a form of escape
into the world of make-believe.
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To be truthful, sir, um,
comedy is a passion of mine.
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Yeah, right. Tell me one joke.
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In improv,
performers of every age
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access a childlike imagination.
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I think what made me start liking it
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is that the adults
would act like big kids.
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Shows often start
with a suggestion.
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I need a suggestion
of a job where you work with animals.
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A prompt, if you will.
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- What's that?
- Ham.
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Okay. Ham.
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And based just on that,
they make up a scene on the spot.
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A story that's surprising and funny.
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If you're like most people, that seems
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terrifying.
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I'm always scared when I'm doing improv.
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You're afraid,
"I might say something stupid."
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Faith and Jewel started
taking classes with The Improv Project
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their freshman year of high school.
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I wanted to make the class laugh,
but nothing came to mind,
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so I would just sit down.
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Even the most creative people,
when faced with unbounded possibility,
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come up with boring, obvious stuff.
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Let's say you just said, in general,
"Name things that are green,"
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the most obvious salient thing
will usually come up.
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Like green grass, or frogs, or trees.
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But then, if you give me
what we call a cue,
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like, "Name all the green things in Paris
at the turn of the century,"
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that's going to then activate
some other neural network,
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and then maybe
I start thinking of, like, absinthe.
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Or Picasso's paints,
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or the luminescent chemicals
in Marie Curie's lab.
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It's the same principle
as Eno's oblique strategies.
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An outside-the-box prompt
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challenges the mind
to explore less trafficked neighborhoods.
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A blank page is uninspiring, but if you
have a few short lines to start from,
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you might go
in a more surprising direction.
243
00:13:13,292 --> 00:13:16,253
And for improvisers,
the most specific, helpful clues
244
00:13:16,337 --> 00:13:20,216
come not from the audience,
but from other performers.
245
00:13:20,299 --> 00:13:24,178
You've primarily got to listen
to what your partner is saying.
246
00:13:24,261 --> 00:13:27,014
You have to adapt.
That's what makes the best scene.
247
00:13:27,097 --> 00:13:28,766
That gets the best characters.
248
00:13:29,433 --> 00:13:31,977
Improv's mantra is "Yes and..."
249
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Embrace whatever your scene partner
sends your way, and then add to it.
250
00:13:35,856 --> 00:13:38,609
You might start with a pretty basic scene.
251
00:13:38,692 --> 00:13:40,194
A job interview at Google.
252
00:13:41,028 --> 00:13:44,406
Your résumé looks certainly interesting.
253
00:13:44,490 --> 00:13:49,036
It says here that you have a Google car.
254
00:13:49,119 --> 00:13:50,371
Mm-hmm.
255
00:13:50,454 --> 00:13:52,373
- Mmm...
- Dedicated.
256
00:13:52,456 --> 00:13:55,709
I just want you to know
that we haven't come out with those.
257
00:13:55,793 --> 00:14:00,047
What you've been sold is a rip-off.
I saw it outside the window.
258
00:14:00,130 --> 00:14:01,340
It's just a white Jeep.
259
00:14:01,423 --> 00:14:04,301
I paid five million for that car.
260
00:14:04,385 --> 00:14:07,680
Out of nothing,
Faith has invented this very wealthy,
261
00:14:07,763 --> 00:14:09,431
but gullible character.
262
00:14:09,515 --> 00:14:12,017
An ordinary job interview
got a lot more interesting.
263
00:14:12,101 --> 00:14:14,478
Do not over-think it.
It takes all the fun out.
264
00:14:14,562 --> 00:14:16,146
That's probably why I hated it,
265
00:14:16,230 --> 00:14:19,275
'cause I was like,
"Oh, dang, what am I gonna do about this?"
266
00:14:19,358 --> 00:14:22,236
"What character am I gonna build?"
Just let it flow.
267
00:14:22,319 --> 00:14:24,321
But like freestyling rappers,
268
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a good improviser can't completely
turn off their executive network.
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00:14:28,617 --> 00:14:31,954
If doing a live performance,
you check in with the audience.
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00:14:32,037 --> 00:14:33,163
How did they respond?
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And often,
they don't respond well.
272
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:37,918
But that's part of the training too,
273
00:14:38,002 --> 00:14:41,046
as a veteran improviser
once explained in an interview.
274
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You learn how to fail,
because you mostly fail.
275
00:14:43,966 --> 00:14:46,677
But not taking yourself
too seriously
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doesn't come so naturally to everyone.
277
00:14:51,307 --> 00:14:52,975
If I fail, it's no big deal.
278
00:14:53,058 --> 00:14:56,061
I'm earning some sort of experience
I can use somewhere else.
279
00:14:56,145 --> 00:14:59,231
So I just kind of work without fear
because it's fun for me.
280
00:15:05,195 --> 00:15:09,909
So my career started
because I built the toothbrush helmet.
281
00:15:09,992 --> 00:15:13,287
It's recommended
by zero out of ten dentists,
282
00:15:13,370 --> 00:15:16,916
but has still managed
to have a really big impact on my life.
283
00:15:16,999 --> 00:15:19,418
I was just, like, a straight-A student.
284
00:15:19,501 --> 00:15:21,545
I would cry if I got a B on a test.
285
00:15:21,629 --> 00:15:24,381
I would push myself really, really hard.
286
00:15:24,465 --> 00:15:26,592
I put so much pressure on myself,
287
00:15:26,675 --> 00:15:30,763
and I still have that in some aspects
where I'm, like, too scared to try.
288
00:15:30,846 --> 00:15:33,933
And in an effort
to, like, lower the pressure on myself,
289
00:15:34,016 --> 00:15:36,185
to break free from perfectionism,
290
00:15:36,268 --> 00:15:39,730
I decided to just build things
that set out to fail.
291
00:15:40,731 --> 00:15:43,609
It's easy to get the impression
that some people never fail,
292
00:15:43,692 --> 00:15:47,029
but the creative journey
is almost always a bumpy one.
293
00:15:47,112 --> 00:15:50,115
For example, an analysis
of the sketches Picasso made
294
00:15:50,199 --> 00:15:52,701
as he prepared to paint
his masterpiece Guernica
295
00:15:53,243 --> 00:15:54,703
don't show a smooth progression
296
00:15:54,787 --> 00:15:56,372
toward the final version.
297
00:15:56,455 --> 00:15:59,249
There's a lot of backtracking
and missteps.
298
00:16:00,167 --> 00:16:02,419
Here's the bull in the completed painting,
299
00:16:02,503 --> 00:16:05,214
and here's the series of sketches
that led up to it.
300
00:16:05,756 --> 00:16:09,843
Simone's YouTube channel
documented a lot of ups and downs,
301
00:16:09,927 --> 00:16:12,471
but those failures brought success.
302
00:16:12,554 --> 00:16:16,141
Please welcome Simone Giertz.
Thanks so much for being here.
303
00:16:16,225 --> 00:16:19,520
You're welcome. You're very welcome.
304
00:16:22,648 --> 00:16:25,859
But Simone's
more recent projects are a bit different.
305
00:16:25,943 --> 00:16:26,777
They work.
306
00:16:26,860 --> 00:16:30,239
Like this paper shredder
based on the shape of her own brain.
307
00:16:31,240 --> 00:16:33,909
One of the very few perks
of going through brain surgery
308
00:16:33,993 --> 00:16:36,453
is that you get a bunch of MRI scans.
309
00:16:36,537 --> 00:16:41,375
The kind of turning chapter for me
was that I had a brain tumor
310
00:16:41,458 --> 00:16:44,169
and I went through some...
311
00:16:44,253 --> 00:16:48,382
...really hard months or years
where I had very limited energy.
312
00:16:48,465 --> 00:16:50,926
So she decided to spend
what energy she had
313
00:16:51,010 --> 00:16:53,012
on things that were functional.
314
00:16:53,095 --> 00:16:55,973
Converting a Tesla into a pickup truck.
315
00:16:56,056 --> 00:16:58,350
Building a chair
to accommodate her needy dog.
316
00:16:58,892 --> 00:17:01,061
In one video, Simone's team challenged her
317
00:17:01,145 --> 00:17:03,981
to make something useful
out of a random piece of junk.
318
00:17:04,064 --> 00:17:06,608
This is so random.
319
00:17:06,692 --> 00:17:10,070
I want to turn this one
into a kibble dispenser.
320
00:17:10,154 --> 00:17:11,739
And then she did.
321
00:17:12,656 --> 00:17:16,326
In another video, she picked suggestions
from her audience out of a jar.
322
00:17:16,410 --> 00:17:18,370
- Coffee table.
- I like a coffee table.
323
00:17:18,454 --> 00:17:19,872
I like a coffee table too.
324
00:17:19,955 --> 00:17:22,291
- Matches!
- Yeah.
325
00:17:22,374 --> 00:17:24,001
And then she made it.
326
00:17:24,626 --> 00:17:27,880
Sometimes it doesn't make sense,
but you just roll with it
327
00:17:27,963 --> 00:17:31,008
and you go off of what you get.
328
00:17:31,091 --> 00:17:35,054
It's helpful to have a sort of
"yes and..." approach to your life.
329
00:17:35,137 --> 00:17:38,057
Dealing with uncertainty
and kind of rolling with the punches.
330
00:17:38,140 --> 00:17:40,559
If you bounce around
trying different things,
331
00:17:40,642 --> 00:17:43,353
you might worry
that you'll never get good at any of them.
332
00:17:43,437 --> 00:17:46,523
But it turns out
that kind of aimless curiosity
333
00:17:46,607 --> 00:17:48,859
is a perfect foundation for creativity.
334
00:17:54,239 --> 00:17:56,450
Escape into the world
of the brain.
335
00:17:56,533 --> 00:17:58,952
Beyond the orthodox
and conventional.
336
00:17:59,536 --> 00:18:01,080
Work without fear because...
337
00:18:01,163 --> 00:18:02,724
...the capacity of imagination...
338
00:18:02,748 --> 00:18:04,708
...is nothing short of a miracle.
339
00:18:10,047 --> 00:18:13,717
Creativity is just
combining things in new ways.
340
00:18:13,801 --> 00:18:16,178
So the more experiences
you expose yourself to,
341
00:18:16,261 --> 00:18:18,806
the more raw material
you have to work with.
342
00:18:19,306 --> 00:18:21,725
People who tend to score high
on open-mindedness,
343
00:18:21,809 --> 00:18:23,435
who are more open to experience,
344
00:18:23,519 --> 00:18:25,604
tend to be the people
who are more on the edges
345
00:18:25,687 --> 00:18:27,564
in the extremes of creativity.
346
00:18:27,648 --> 00:18:32,861
What I tell myself is, if I wake up
one morning and I'm like, "Orchids."
347
00:18:32,945 --> 00:18:36,657
"I ******* love orchids.
I want to make videos about orchids,"
348
00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:37,908
then that's fine.
349
00:18:37,991 --> 00:18:40,410
Charles Darwin
seemed to follow that creed,
350
00:18:40,494 --> 00:18:44,957
flitting between zoology and botany,
geology, even psychology.
351
00:18:45,040 --> 00:18:50,212
He studied earthworms for decades
and even wrote a book about orchids.
352
00:18:50,295 --> 00:18:53,882
A study of scientists found that those
with a lifetime of breakthroughs
353
00:18:53,966 --> 00:18:57,719
bounced between different topics
more often than their mediocre colleagues.
354
00:18:57,803 --> 00:19:01,265
And a lot of them
made art or music on the side.
355
00:19:01,849 --> 00:19:05,269
David Byrne has also been
an intellectual nomad of sorts,
356
00:19:05,352 --> 00:19:07,604
experimenting with theater and dance,
357
00:19:07,688 --> 00:19:11,108
starting a record label to promote
music from Latin America and Africa,
358
00:19:11,191 --> 00:19:13,902
even directing and starring in a movie.
359
00:19:13,986 --> 00:19:15,654
If one thing does not succeed,
360
00:19:15,737 --> 00:19:18,240
you've got other things
you can fall back on.
361
00:19:18,323 --> 00:19:20,242
The projects inform one another.
362
00:19:20,325 --> 00:19:23,829
You learn a skill that could be
definitely useful in other areas.
363
00:19:24,830 --> 00:19:28,792
And one of the greatest
sources of inspiration is other people.
364
00:19:28,876 --> 00:19:31,962
One study found that dating people
from other cultures
365
00:19:32,045 --> 00:19:33,630
makes you more creative.
366
00:19:33,714 --> 00:19:35,549
You learn to think more flexibly.
367
00:19:35,632 --> 00:19:38,302
It seems to have worked for Marie Curie.
368
00:19:38,385 --> 00:19:39,386
And Picasso.
369
00:19:40,137 --> 00:19:41,513
And the Einsteins.
370
00:19:41,597 --> 00:19:44,516
Crossing a border
and leaving your comfort zone
371
00:19:44,600 --> 00:19:47,436
forces the mind to explore new territory.
372
00:19:47,519 --> 00:19:51,356
People who've lived in foreign countries,
score higher on tests of creativity,
373
00:19:51,440 --> 00:19:54,193
but only if they really engage
with the culture.
374
00:19:54,276 --> 00:19:57,529
A spring break trip to Cancun won't help.
375
00:19:57,613 --> 00:19:59,323
Whenever brains collide,
376
00:19:59,406 --> 00:20:01,867
there's potential
for creative sparks to fly.
377
00:20:03,327 --> 00:20:05,370
The creator of the term "brainstorming"
378
00:20:05,454 --> 00:20:08,540
believed those collisions
had to be as gentle as possible.
379
00:20:08,624 --> 00:20:11,585
"Creativity is so delicate a flower,"
he wrote,
380
00:20:11,668 --> 00:20:14,546
"that praise tends to make it bloom."
381
00:20:14,630 --> 00:20:16,215
But that's not quite right.
382
00:20:16,798 --> 00:20:19,509
When brainstormers only praise each other,
383
00:20:19,593 --> 00:20:23,680
studies show they have fewer ideas
and less creative ideas
384
00:20:23,764 --> 00:20:25,224
than if they just worked alone.
385
00:20:25,307 --> 00:20:28,101
But when they're encouraged
to debate and criticize,
386
00:20:28,185 --> 00:20:29,603
they perform best of all.
387
00:20:30,979 --> 00:20:36,443
Still, there are times you have to ignore
the critics and follow your own vision.
388
00:20:36,526 --> 00:20:40,030
You have to be so passionate about what
you're doing in the face of criticism.
389
00:20:40,113 --> 00:20:43,825
You have to have, again,
this unreasonable faith
390
00:20:43,909 --> 00:20:46,078
in something that doesn't exist.
391
00:20:46,161 --> 00:20:49,414
You have a fictional narrative
in your head
392
00:20:49,498 --> 00:20:51,375
that this thing will come to pass.
393
00:20:51,458 --> 00:20:54,086
I say to myself,
"I'm gonna do better in this scene."
394
00:20:54,169 --> 00:20:58,173
"I'm gonna come up with something
really good and it's gonna be funny,
395
00:20:58,257 --> 00:21:00,008
and everybody's gonna like it."
396
00:21:00,092 --> 00:21:03,679
If you get that label as, "Oh, that person
probably knows how to do it,"
397
00:21:03,762 --> 00:21:05,013
you're gonna figure it out.
398
00:21:05,097 --> 00:21:08,976
It's the same as there's
a disproportionate amount of dentists
399
00:21:09,059 --> 00:21:10,060
named Dennis.
400
00:21:10,143 --> 00:21:14,064
It's like, "Oh, my name is Dennis.
I can probably be a dentist."
401
00:21:14,147 --> 00:21:15,649
"I'll figure it out."
402
00:21:15,732 --> 00:21:18,902
And if you're totally stuck,
take a walk,
403
00:21:18,986 --> 00:21:22,281
take a sip of wine,
take a suggestion from the audience,
404
00:21:22,364 --> 00:21:24,574
take a slip of paper out of a jar
405
00:21:24,658 --> 00:21:27,411
and see what new ideas unfold.
406
00:21:31,832 --> 00:21:32,833
I'll figure it out.