1 00:00:07,632 --> 00:00:10,885 40,000 years ago, in the middle of the European continent, 2 00:00:10,969 --> 00:00:15,348 someone picked up an old mammoth tusk and made something extraordinary. 3 00:00:15,890 --> 00:00:18,643 Most of the other hot artists at the time were depicting things 4 00:00:18,727 --> 00:00:20,812 they saw in the real world, 5 00:00:20,895 --> 00:00:24,649 but our ancient sculptor carved out something else. 6 00:00:25,400 --> 00:00:28,695 It's one of the oldest imaginary creatures that we've ever found. 7 00:00:28,778 --> 00:00:29,988 The body of a human 8 00:00:30,488 --> 00:00:32,282 with the head of a lion. 9 00:00:32,365 --> 00:00:35,035 It probably wasn't the first such mash-up, 10 00:00:35,118 --> 00:00:37,370 and it definitely wasn't the last. 11 00:00:48,298 --> 00:00:50,592 We are a creative species. 12 00:00:50,675 --> 00:00:54,012 Whether we're figuring out how to efficiently peel apples, 13 00:00:54,095 --> 00:00:56,431 designing a better lawn mower, 14 00:00:56,514 --> 00:00:58,516 or on TikTok stitching videos together 15 00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:02,020 into a ridiculous, endlessly-expanding collage, 16 00:01:02,103 --> 00:01:05,815 we are all constantly recombining old ideas to make something new. 17 00:01:06,649 --> 00:01:09,110 But artistic works and scientific breakthroughs 18 00:01:09,194 --> 00:01:12,697 are seen as something a step above all that. 19 00:01:12,781 --> 00:01:15,700 We tend to mythologize the people responsible. 20 00:01:15,784 --> 00:01:17,744 We think they're different from us somehow, 21 00:01:17,827 --> 00:01:20,789 driven by madness or blessed by some secret gift. 22 00:01:21,289 --> 00:01:23,666 But creativity isn't mystical. 23 00:01:23,750 --> 00:01:27,712 It's more like a muscle, and there are ways to train it. 24 00:01:29,589 --> 00:01:34,385 In the 1920s, a bunch of surrealists in Paris came up with one way to do that. 25 00:01:35,136 --> 00:01:37,222 While hanging out at someone's apartment, 26 00:01:37,305 --> 00:01:40,683 they invented a parlor game called The Exquisite Corpse. 27 00:01:41,476 --> 00:01:44,395 One person would start drawing whatever popped into their head 28 00:01:44,479 --> 00:01:46,981 and then fold the paper and pass it along. 29 00:01:47,482 --> 00:01:50,735 Each person in turn would make their own outlandish additions, 30 00:01:50,819 --> 00:01:53,988 ignorant of all but a sliver of what came before, 31 00:01:54,072 --> 00:01:57,158 until the page was filled and unfolded, 32 00:01:57,951 --> 00:02:01,246 revealing a marvelous, incongruous monster. 33 00:02:02,163 --> 00:02:06,126 This little game can actually tell us a lot about how creativity works. 34 00:02:06,626 --> 00:02:08,962 So, let's play. 35 00:02:09,921 --> 00:02:11,923 What you're going to hear about today 36 00:02:12,006 --> 00:02:14,134 is nothing short of a miracle. 37 00:02:15,260 --> 00:02:17,929 Beyond the orthodox and conventional sounds 38 00:02:18,429 --> 00:02:19,764 that we regard as music. 39 00:02:24,185 --> 00:02:26,896 Chuck Berry was the father of rock and roll. 40 00:02:29,482 --> 00:02:33,570 You can hear the blend of boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, and country music. 41 00:02:33,653 --> 00:02:37,073 In the '50s, people had never heard anything quite like it. 42 00:02:40,535 --> 00:02:42,829 Two decades later, one of Berry's songs 43 00:02:42,912 --> 00:02:44,247 was etched on a golden record 44 00:02:44,330 --> 00:02:47,000 and sent to space aboard the Voyager probe. 45 00:02:47,667 --> 00:02:50,837 A shining example of modern music that we wanted aliens to hear. 46 00:02:52,964 --> 00:02:56,384 By this point, rock and roll's early stars were long-established. 47 00:02:57,594 --> 00:03:00,263 And back on Earth, there were countless rock bands 48 00:03:00,346 --> 00:03:02,307 who looked and sounded kind of similar. 49 00:03:03,308 --> 00:03:05,310 There were plenty of other people 50 00:03:05,393 --> 00:03:08,396 doing copies and imitations, and I just thought, 51 00:03:08,479 --> 00:03:11,232 "You might be having a great time and it might be successful, 52 00:03:11,316 --> 00:03:14,360 but you're not gonna come up with something new that way." 53 00:03:15,195 --> 00:03:17,530 David Byrne wanted to be different. 54 00:03:18,114 --> 00:03:22,493 His band, Talking Heads, made music that was stripped down and weird. 55 00:03:23,036 --> 00:03:25,580 In 1979, they were working on their third album, 56 00:03:25,663 --> 00:03:28,541 teaming up with legendary producer Brian Eno. 57 00:03:28,625 --> 00:03:31,628 He had just finished three innovative records with David Bowie 58 00:03:31,711 --> 00:03:34,505 and would go on to work his magic with U2 and Coldplay. 59 00:03:35,089 --> 00:03:38,718 Brian believes that there are little tricks that you can use 60 00:03:38,801 --> 00:03:40,762 to spur creativity. 61 00:03:40,845 --> 00:03:43,890 Ways to kind of disrupt your patterns. 62 00:03:43,973 --> 00:03:46,893 He had a set of note cards he dubbed "oblique strategies," 63 00:03:46,976 --> 00:03:50,063 that he would pull at random during studio sessions 64 00:03:50,146 --> 00:03:52,607 to jolt his collaborators out of creative ruts. 65 00:03:52,690 --> 00:03:55,401 One said, "Cut a vital connection." 66 00:03:55,485 --> 00:03:57,779 Another, just "Water." 67 00:03:57,862 --> 00:04:00,865 And then there was, "Gardening, not architecture," 68 00:04:00,949 --> 00:04:03,576 which is basically Eno's creative philosophy. 69 00:04:03,660 --> 00:04:05,161 You're planting something 70 00:04:06,079 --> 00:04:08,164 and seeing how it grows, 71 00:04:08,248 --> 00:04:12,377 rather than trying to completely constrain it and know every detail of it. 72 00:04:12,460 --> 00:04:17,465 Brian Eno may have formalized some of these disruptive ways of thinking, 73 00:04:17,548 --> 00:04:19,801 but I think people do that all the time. 74 00:04:19,884 --> 00:04:23,680 "What if we did this, you know, twice as fast?" 75 00:04:23,763 --> 00:04:27,267 "What if we did this as a country song?" 76 00:04:27,350 --> 00:04:29,394 "What if I turned these words inside out 77 00:04:29,477 --> 00:04:32,146 and made the last verse into the first verse?" 78 00:04:32,730 --> 00:04:35,358 For one song, Eno and Byrne wrote parts in isolation 79 00:04:35,441 --> 00:04:37,026 and then grafted them together. 80 00:04:37,110 --> 00:04:39,612 A kind of musical Exquisite Corpse. 81 00:04:39,696 --> 00:04:43,157 For another, Eno suggested that instead of writing lyrics, 82 00:04:43,241 --> 00:04:45,702 they adapt a 60-year-old nonsense poem. 83 00:04:47,161 --> 00:04:50,456 Gadji beri bimba gladridi laula lonni cadori. 84 00:04:51,165 --> 00:04:54,085 These words were made up by German poet Hugo Ball 85 00:04:54,168 --> 00:04:56,087 back in the middle of World War I. 86 00:04:56,170 --> 00:04:58,172 He was horrified by the war 87 00:04:58,256 --> 00:05:01,384 and wanted to shock people into seeing the senselessness of it all, 88 00:05:01,467 --> 00:05:03,845 so he helped start the Dada art movement. 89 00:05:03,928 --> 00:05:07,265 This is Ball performing one of his nonsense poems. 90 00:05:07,348 --> 00:05:09,309 The absurdity was the point. 91 00:05:09,392 --> 00:05:12,353 These kind of nonsense things weren't frivolous. 92 00:05:12,437 --> 00:05:17,108 They were actually allowing people to break from nationalistic thinking 93 00:05:17,191 --> 00:05:19,402 and dangerous mental traps. 94 00:05:21,321 --> 00:05:25,074 Decades later, Ball's poem became the lyrics of a rock song. 95 00:05:25,158 --> 00:05:29,495 And as for the song's music, that sprang from a different source. 96 00:05:29,579 --> 00:05:30,788 It was quite by accident. 97 00:05:31,414 --> 00:05:34,375 I was shopping at a record store in Times Square. 98 00:05:34,459 --> 00:05:37,128 and they had what was then called the international section. 99 00:05:37,211 --> 00:05:41,758 And I picked up some records purely because of their covers, 100 00:05:41,841 --> 00:05:44,719 and brought 'em home and kind of had my mind blown. 101 00:05:44,802 --> 00:05:47,847 He had stumbled upon African pop music. 102 00:05:47,930 --> 00:05:51,351 They were using instruments that were familiar to me, 103 00:05:51,434 --> 00:05:53,394 but using them in a different way. 104 00:05:54,103 --> 00:05:56,647 Afropop combines some elements of Western music 105 00:05:56,731 --> 00:05:59,025 with the rhythms and melodies of the mbira, 106 00:06:00,068 --> 00:06:02,487 these thumb pianos that have been around for centuries. 107 00:06:02,570 --> 00:06:05,573 African guitarists adapted those plucking patterns. 108 00:06:05,656 --> 00:06:08,117 You can hear it on this track from 1974. 109 00:06:14,749 --> 00:06:15,749 That became 110 00:06:16,876 --> 00:06:18,211 really inspiring. 111 00:06:18,795 --> 00:06:21,714 The Talking Heads released their new album in 1979 112 00:06:21,798 --> 00:06:24,092 and the first track was called "I Zimbra." 113 00:06:24,175 --> 00:06:26,636 You can hear the echoes of Afropop. 114 00:06:29,847 --> 00:06:31,724 And then Hugo Ball's words. 115 00:06:31,808 --> 00:06:35,103 ♪ Gadji beri bimba ♪ 116 00:06:36,437 --> 00:06:39,649 Two sources of inspiration from two different continents 117 00:06:39,732 --> 00:06:42,026 combined into something totally new. 118 00:06:42,110 --> 00:06:44,737 Critics called it the best album of the year 119 00:06:45,238 --> 00:06:47,198 and a quantum leap for the band. 120 00:06:48,825 --> 00:06:52,203 I tend to believe, and I might be wrong here... 121 00:06:52,703 --> 00:06:55,373 I tend to believe that everybody is creative, 122 00:06:55,456 --> 00:06:59,502 and I would love it if neuroscience could verify any of that, 123 00:06:59,585 --> 00:07:01,921 but that might be a little ways down the line. 124 00:07:05,258 --> 00:07:08,719 You just asked the big question. That brings us up to the brain. 125 00:07:08,803 --> 00:07:12,473 Man possesses a brain that gives him the capacity of imagination. 126 00:07:16,936 --> 00:07:18,855 Albert Einstein once told a friend, 127 00:07:18,938 --> 00:07:22,358 "I want to be cremated so people don't come to worship at my bones." 128 00:07:22,442 --> 00:07:27,905 But when he passed, the doctor who performed the autopsy took his brain. 129 00:07:28,656 --> 00:07:33,244 It was preserved, sliced up, and put on display at museums. 130 00:07:33,327 --> 00:07:36,122 Scientists obsessively studied every wrinkle, 131 00:07:36,205 --> 00:07:38,249 looking for some feature that could explain 132 00:07:38,332 --> 00:07:41,669 how he came up with all of those revolutionary ideas. 133 00:07:42,253 --> 00:07:46,424 But some argue that Einstein's brain actually looks pretty normal. 134 00:07:46,507 --> 00:07:48,944 If you see something different about Einstein's brain, 135 00:07:48,968 --> 00:07:53,139 that doesn't necessarily mean all people that have that particular abnormality 136 00:07:53,222 --> 00:07:57,518 would be a genius like Einstein, because every brain is slightly different. 137 00:07:58,352 --> 00:08:00,688 Besides, creativity is far too complex 138 00:08:00,771 --> 00:08:04,984 to live in one particular corner of the brain, or even one half of it. 139 00:08:05,067 --> 00:08:08,070 It's not like all logical thinking is the left hemisphere 140 00:08:08,154 --> 00:08:11,032 and all creative thinking is the right hemisphere. 141 00:08:11,115 --> 00:08:13,993 That's a myth. Instead, creativity emerges 142 00:08:14,076 --> 00:08:16,204 when different regions talk to each other. 143 00:08:16,287 --> 00:08:19,207 In particular, two important networks. 144 00:08:19,290 --> 00:08:22,126 One of which is called the default mode network, 145 00:08:22,210 --> 00:08:26,005 which tends to be active when we are sort of internally focused, 146 00:08:26,088 --> 00:08:29,592 when we're just letting our minds go, like when we're daydreaming. 147 00:08:30,176 --> 00:08:33,846 That's when you can come up with these really creative, interesting ideas. 148 00:08:33,930 --> 00:08:36,140 But when you start to focus on a task, 149 00:08:36,224 --> 00:08:38,059 when you start to direct your thinking... 150 00:08:38,142 --> 00:08:41,395 Then you activate another network of the brain 151 00:08:41,479 --> 00:08:43,481 called the executive control network, 152 00:08:43,564 --> 00:08:46,734 and that kind of evaluates the things you're coming up with. 153 00:08:47,485 --> 00:08:49,487 So we need the first network 154 00:08:49,570 --> 00:08:51,739 to help us make spontaneous new connections 155 00:08:52,365 --> 00:08:55,535 and the second one to judge which of those ideas is any good. 156 00:08:56,410 --> 00:09:01,165 In the brains of highly creative people, these two networks are more connected. 157 00:09:01,249 --> 00:09:02,875 They talk to each other more. 158 00:09:04,293 --> 00:09:06,837 Sometimes, if you're just looking to get ideas flowing, 159 00:09:06,921 --> 00:09:08,923 it can help to do something else for a while. 160 00:09:09,006 --> 00:09:10,883 Whatever lets your mind wander. 161 00:09:10,967 --> 00:09:12,593 Or maybe get a little tipsy. 162 00:09:12,677 --> 00:09:16,180 One study found that can facilitate sudden insights. 163 00:09:16,264 --> 00:09:18,766 Sleep can help, actually, as well. 164 00:09:18,849 --> 00:09:20,685 You wake up the next morning 165 00:09:20,768 --> 00:09:23,229 and you kind of have a little bit of the answer. 166 00:09:23,813 --> 00:09:27,942 I often trust my subconscious or unconscious. 167 00:09:28,025 --> 00:09:30,903 I'll go, "Trust it a little bit. Let's see where it goes." 168 00:09:30,987 --> 00:09:33,781 The whole idea is to try to let go and lose your sense of self 169 00:09:33,864 --> 00:09:35,616 and let your unconscious take over. 170 00:09:38,953 --> 00:09:42,957 You could say you'd better lose yourself in the music, the moment. 171 00:09:44,417 --> 00:09:45,251 Boom. 172 00:09:47,003 --> 00:09:49,630 In 2011, researchers watched the brains of rappers 173 00:09:49,714 --> 00:09:51,048 while they were freestyling. 174 00:09:51,132 --> 00:09:55,136 As you might expect, their daydreaming default network was turned up. 175 00:09:55,219 --> 00:09:58,514 Parts of their executive network were turned down, but not all the way. 176 00:09:58,598 --> 00:09:59,849 It's not just random words, 177 00:09:59,932 --> 00:10:04,478 so you still have to have some executive control monitoring what's happening. 178 00:10:05,229 --> 00:10:08,608 Daydreaming inspiration can be there as a seed, 179 00:10:08,691 --> 00:10:11,485 but then one has to kind of nurture that seed 180 00:10:11,569 --> 00:10:13,112 and make it turn into something. 181 00:10:13,195 --> 00:10:15,323 It's very much a kind of work. 182 00:10:15,406 --> 00:10:16,949 It takes focus. 183 00:10:17,033 --> 00:10:18,951 You have to make dedicated time in your schedule 184 00:10:19,035 --> 00:10:21,787 for your executive network to prune out bad ideas 185 00:10:21,871 --> 00:10:23,873 and pursue the best ones. 186 00:10:23,956 --> 00:10:27,043 Without that, you're just a person with a wild imagination. 187 00:10:27,543 --> 00:10:29,545 And we've all been that person. 188 00:10:29,629 --> 00:10:35,217 Every little child has no inhibition about doing anything. 189 00:10:35,301 --> 00:10:36,636 Whether it's playing instruments, 190 00:10:36,719 --> 00:10:39,221 drumming on something, or making up a song. 191 00:10:39,305 --> 00:10:42,683 But our early creations just aren't very good. 192 00:10:42,767 --> 00:10:46,020 We need to learn technical skills and cultural context 193 00:10:46,103 --> 00:10:50,316 so we can make things that resonate with the moment or solve some societal need. 194 00:10:50,399 --> 00:10:52,401 It is true, as our brain develops, 195 00:10:52,485 --> 00:10:55,112 it kind of filters our behaviors and our thoughts 196 00:10:55,196 --> 00:10:57,823 to make sure that they are logical, they make sense, 197 00:10:57,907 --> 00:10:59,533 they conform to social norms, 198 00:10:59,617 --> 00:11:00,617 which is good. 199 00:11:00,660 --> 00:11:03,788 But conforming is really the opposite of creativity. 200 00:11:03,871 --> 00:11:06,207 You're doing what's been done before. 201 00:11:06,290 --> 00:11:08,292 Which to me is tragic. 202 00:11:08,376 --> 00:11:10,378 A lot of creative adults 203 00:11:10,461 --> 00:11:14,548 try to get into their childlike mind where anything goes. 204 00:11:16,759 --> 00:11:20,596 All artists have that feeling of childish curiosity. 205 00:11:20,680 --> 00:11:23,808 It's a form of escape into the world of make-believe. 206 00:11:26,894 --> 00:11:29,980 To be truthful, sir, um, comedy is a passion of mine. 207 00:11:30,064 --> 00:11:31,565 Yeah, right. Tell me one joke. 208 00:11:33,317 --> 00:11:35,611 In improv, performers of every age 209 00:11:35,695 --> 00:11:38,030 access a childlike imagination. 210 00:11:38,114 --> 00:11:39,615 I think what made me start liking it 211 00:11:39,699 --> 00:11:42,660 is that the adults would act like big kids. 212 00:11:42,743 --> 00:11:45,621 Shows often start with a suggestion. 213 00:11:45,705 --> 00:11:48,249 I need a suggestion of a job where you work with animals. 214 00:11:48,332 --> 00:11:50,668 A prompt, if you will. 215 00:11:50,751 --> 00:11:51,961 - What's that? - Ham. 216 00:11:52,044 --> 00:11:54,088 Okay. Ham. 217 00:11:54,171 --> 00:11:57,842 And based just on that, they make up a scene on the spot. 218 00:11:57,925 --> 00:12:00,136 A story that's surprising and funny. 219 00:12:00,636 --> 00:12:02,722 If you're like most people, that seems 220 00:12:03,305 --> 00:12:04,306 terrifying. 221 00:12:05,474 --> 00:12:07,727 I'm always scared when I'm doing improv. 222 00:12:07,810 --> 00:12:10,312 You're afraid, "I might say something stupid." 223 00:12:10,396 --> 00:12:14,066 Faith and Jewel started taking classes with The Improv Project 224 00:12:14,150 --> 00:12:15,735 their freshman year of high school. 225 00:12:15,818 --> 00:12:18,738 I wanted to make the class laugh, but nothing came to mind, 226 00:12:18,821 --> 00:12:20,823 so I would just sit down. 227 00:12:20,906 --> 00:12:25,035 Even the most creative people, when faced with unbounded possibility, 228 00:12:25,119 --> 00:12:28,122 come up with boring, obvious stuff. 229 00:12:28,205 --> 00:12:31,375 Let's say you just said, in general, "Name things that are green," 230 00:12:31,459 --> 00:12:34,295 the most obvious salient thing will usually come up. 231 00:12:34,378 --> 00:12:38,007 Like green grass, or frogs, or trees. 232 00:12:38,090 --> 00:12:40,384 But then, if you give me what we call a cue, 233 00:12:40,468 --> 00:12:47,183 like, "Name all the green things in Paris at the turn of the century," 234 00:12:47,266 --> 00:12:50,144 that's going to then activate some other neural network, 235 00:12:50,227 --> 00:12:53,439 and then maybe I start thinking of, like, absinthe. 236 00:12:53,522 --> 00:12:55,232 Or Picasso's paints, 237 00:12:55,316 --> 00:12:58,277 or the luminescent chemicals in Marie Curie's lab. 238 00:12:58,360 --> 00:13:00,946 It's the same principle as Eno's oblique strategies. 239 00:13:01,030 --> 00:13:02,323 An outside-the-box prompt 240 00:13:02,406 --> 00:13:05,409 challenges the mind to explore less trafficked neighborhoods. 241 00:13:05,993 --> 00:13:10,164 A blank page is uninspiring, but if you have a few short lines to start from, 242 00:13:10,247 --> 00:13:12,625 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 00:13:32,061 --> 00:13:35,773 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 00:14:24,405 --> 00:14:28,534 a good improviser can't completely turn off their executive network. 269 00:14:28,617 --> 00:14:31,954 If doing a live performance, you check in with the audience. 270 00:14:32,037 --> 00:14:33,163 How did they respond? 271 00:14:33,247 --> 00:14:35,916 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 00:14:41,130 --> 00:14:43,883 You learn how to fail, because you mostly fail. 275 00:14:43,966 --> 00:14:46,677 But not taking yourself too seriously 276 00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:49,138 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.